later, looking at state and local funding in the latest round of covid leaf. washington journal is next.♪ 4 good morning -- host: good morning. the senate is out in the house and a two-week recess. they will return for the biden speech before a joint session of congress. we will of course carry it live here on c-span and c-span radio app. it's monday morning. the speech tied to the first 100 days in office, a milestone the dates back in part to the first three months in office of fdr. that's our starting point. your assessment so far of the presidential performance? phone lines are open for

republicans, (202) 748-8000. if you are a democrat, -- republicans, (202) 748-8001. if you are a democrat, (202) 748-8000. independents and all others, (202) 748-8002. you can send us a text message, tell us your name and where you are from at (202) 748-8003. a lot to get to on this monday. thanks for being with us. we begin with "the washington post," a new survey marking the president's first 100 days in office. mostly positive marks, here are some details. 52% of adults approve. president trumps ratings the reverse four years ago. overall according to the survey

host: meanwhile this morning, this headline, "100 day sprint leaves him behind on bipartisanship approval

host: and "the national review" has this headline, "eight and switch from moderate to socialist." here's part of the interview yesterday with chris wallace. [video clip] >> people want fairness in the tax code. america says yes to infrastructure. the roads won't be built for more than a decade and we spend more on subsidizing electric cars. i don't think that will be popular but what we should read and that is that we should work together and in your same poll you would say to a 2-1 margin the american public wants this president to work with the republicans to find a solution. i have not met with the president 100 i -- 100 times. we have a crisis on the border that he created.

the person that he put in charge hasn't even been down to see it. she thinks her idea is to have a zoom call with the president of mexico and pay people to plant trees on the other side. that's not going to stop the people on the terrorist watch list from making our border less secure. host: that from "fox news sunday," usa today has this headline, the first 100 days of joe biden ends this week. why does the presidential milestone matter? calls and comments in a moment, plus or text messages. -- your text messages. first, this interview with kamala harris. [video clip] >> tell me something that has surprised you. or something you are going to do. >> we are going to lift half of america's children out of

poverty. how about that? how about that? think about that. i can't tell, if it's obvious, how much that means. what that will mean. that's good stuff. that's really good stuff. host: that is from "state of the union." the associated press has this headline, "more action, less talk, distinguishing the biden sprint." pennsylvania, good morning. caller: good morning, c-span. thank you for taking my call. i think biden has done an excellent job compared to the messy narrative from trump. trump left him a mess. the economy was a mess mostly because of the covid, but he kept lying about it.

if he had acted the way that biden did, he could have awarded -- avoided 200,000 to 300,000 people dying in america. having said that, from the last 30 years, from the time of reagan, the republicans have extorted the middle-class class in this country. earnings adjusted for inflation are much less than 40 years ago. america looks rich, but it's rich on wall street and in the upper ranks of society but everyday americans are suffering because republicans have been focusing on helping the super rich. finally, when biden helps out the middle class to start various programs, the republicans are quick to jump and say some settlers him -- say socialism. host: do you think that the government is getting too big

under the biden administration with so many programs and federal spending? caller: the reason it looks big, remember, we gave a $2 trillion tax cut going to people like bezos. nobody cried foul at the time, republicans i'm talking about. biden is trying to correct all this baggage that has been left behind. obama tried to correct it. host: thank you for the call from virginia. speaking of taxes, this is the article from "the wall street journal," "the dumbest tax increase," making this point, "the current top rate is 23.8%, including an obamacare surcharge . even the economically irrational 1970's, the capital gains rate never broke 40%."

joe is next from dayton, ohio. republican line. good morning your view so far of the biden presidency? caller: my view is name me one thing that joe biden has done in 100 days. just one. he has done nothing but covid. this was all under the trump administration on operation warp speed. anyone, even myself, could distribute vaccines. it was under the trump administration that if you got these vaccines going, jobs are leaving this country. general motors pulled out of lordstown, sending electric cars manufacturing down to mexico. foxconn, they quit doing that factory in wisconsin. you eliminated over 11,000 union jobs on the pipeline. it like i said, just name me, as

far as the numbers, your weekly jobless claims falling, those are people going back to work. so, what has he done in 100 days? host: joe, thank you for adding your voice. on the sunday shows, lindsey graham with these comments to chris wallace as he talked about whether or not the president is working in a bipartisan manner. something the president talked about in his inaugural address. [video clip] >> during the campaign, joe biden made it seem like he was the moderate choice and suddenly we are changing the structure of the supreme court. a radical idea changing the makeup of the senate. aoc in his first 100 days exceeded her expectations. that's all you need to know. i like joe biden but i'm in the 43%. he's been a disaster on foreign

policy. the borders in chaos. he's opening up negotiations with the iranian regime -- regime and they haven't done a damp thing to change dashcam -- damn thing to change. economically he's throwing a wet blanket over the recovery, wanting to raise taxes and a large amount and regulate america basically out of business. i'm not very impressed with these first 100 days and this isn't what i thought i would get from joe biden. host: fox news had its own survey, saying that many say that border security is worse under joe biden. here are some of the details from the pole. on a 15% margin voters say that voter security is worse today than it was two years ago according to the latest survey so it isn't surprising that they give him his worst job ratings on border security and

immigration. more disapprove than approve host: rob is next, democrats line from new york city. good morning, rob. caller: good morning, god bless you. you mentioned the tax cuts. the tax increases that biden is proposing, yes. you should mention that it applies to people who make over $400,000. i don't know about you, but i never made anything near $400,000. it doesn't affect me at all. what i don't understand when we talk about tax increases, we are talking about people who have

throw away money for the most part. they throw it away in different ways and the suggestion is that people who are making over $400,000 will put some money back towards the government. i don't understand why. it has to be perfectly here. this is what they have made recently, these average annual incomes. i don't understand how people like me could be so against tax increases on people who make 400,000, 800,000, $2 million a year. i heard of a guy once that aid tens of millions in a year. what are you worried about them for? why are you fighting a tax increase against your own health economic interest? that's my main point.

people, look at your own income. it doesn't affect you. look at the people. i know some rich people, i know how they live, it's throw away money and they are still against giving a few dollars back in they can well afford it act into the government. look at your own income. host: just to be clear, you are talking about this, that's right, what i read in "the wall street journal" is the capital gains tax. different tax increases and your point is made. caller: you know, if you can afford, if you can pay a tax on capital gains, that means you made money, you can afford to pay the extra tax. you made money. most of the capital gains are going to the savvy people, the rich people. let's put a few more dollars back in the government and all

get along. host: thank you for the call. we are checking in with brett samuels of the hill.com in a moment, but first, marlene, on the independent line. your thoughts? caller: [indiscernible] host: marlene, can you hear us? unfortunately, we are going to have to lose you, you are breaking up. john is joining us from tennessee. johnny, good morning. caller: good morning. i'm from brentwood, tennessee and i'm a republican. one of the biggest things i think that what happens is when you start to tax the rich to an extreme of 43%, it doesn't count the social security tax and the other taxes. it doesn't include the tax that is state and local government taxes. in tennessee we don't have state income tax, that's an advantage, but then you are talking about

60% of their income after the 43%. who wants to go and work for $.40 on the dollar? nobody, not even a person, especially the rich people who can do that. also, when you start to tax the rich? guess what they do? they start to cut the jobs they are hiring because they got to make more money in order to sustain their businesses or sustain their income. host: john, thank you for the call. the headline at the hill.com, the presidential address to congress dominating a busy week here in washington. joining us by zoom is brett samuels. let's begin with the speech on wednesday. what do we expect to hear from the president? guest: thanks for having me. wednesday, everyone will have been waiting for weeks now for the president to make his first

big speech to a joint session. there will be a couple of big items people are expecting him to discuss. it's the next prong that we are expecting it to focus on. this will be his next spending push and we will see how that is received and there will be other items. policing reform is a big topic right now and i'm sure the president will call on congress to act on that and we may hear some other items in other veins, like gum maws or something along those lines. i'm sure that we will get the president again urging the congress to act but certainly this will be his first big speech where he will have a big national audience with members of congress and it will be his chance to outline his vision

moving forward for the country. host: can you give us a sense of how this is going to look? this is a recess week and yet the white house timing this to mark 100 days for the president in office and we have pandemic. what will the chamber look like wednesday evening? guest: absolutely, yeah, we won't see the traditional packed chamber of commerce -- congress lining the rose trying to shake the hand of the president as he walks by with the usual pomp and circumstance that we are use to with the state of the union. we are expecting from what congressional and white house officials have said, expecting about 200 members of congress to be in the buildings, to offer some social distancing. they won't be allowed to bring guests as they have in the past for the state of the union. the first lady, for example, won't ring guests for her box as we have seen in similar speeches in the past.

the first lady is expected to attend and it will be a little thinner crowd in the chamber there. it will be interesting to see, something to watch which lawmakers choose to attend in person. that will, that will certainly be something to watch and a lighter crowd then we have come to expect. host: we have been talking about the polls from fox news and "the washington post," getting good marks except on the issue of immigration. that came up yesterday on a pretaped interview with kamala harris. let's hear part of that and get to your comments after. [video clip] >> this is the work we are doing but it won't be solved overnight . it's a complex issue and if it were easy it would have been handled years ago. >> that's what i was going to ask you. when the president said would you like to do this, we you will do this, did you say g thanks?

>> he asked me to do it just as he was asked to do it by president obama to focus on the northern triangle and he has asked me to carry on the work that he did. you know, you get back to the question that you have asked. we are making progress, but it is not going to evidence itself overnight. it won't. but it will be worth it and i shall tell you that part of my approach to this is that we've got to institutionalize the work and internationalize the work. i'm working with ambassador greenfield and we will be increasing the requests we are making of our allies because again, this is, this is about the western hemisphere. we are a neighbor in the western hemisphere and it is about understanding that we have the capacity to actually get in there if we are consistent. part of the problem is that under the previous

administration, they essentially old out a lot of what had been the continuum of work and it is essentially -- it essentially came to a standstill. host: that from the vice president on "state of the union." what are you hearing from her and more significantly what will change moving ahead with the biden policies on the border? guest: as you mentioned with the polling, this has been one of the main issues they have struggled to find the right messaging and policy on and it has been something that republicans have really attacked this administration for and blamed them for what we see on the border in their first few months in office and i think the vice president, what she has been saying for a few weeks, since she was put in charge of the northern triangle region is that this will take chuck -- take time and won't be fixed overnight. republicans especially are skeptical voters and in those polls they are looking for a

shift at the border, whether it's to be able to get a number of children in government custody, get that number down, see some sort of change in migration patterns in central america, voters will be looking for a meaningful shift in the coming weeks and months to show that this administration is getting it under control. it's a big issue, they aren't the first administration to deal with it today the vice president along with the vice president of guatemala said she will be meeting the president of mexico soon, and i believe in june she said that. something that we will be seeing an increasing amount of action on in the weeks to come from this administration. host: thursday the president will be in georgia to do what? guest: marking his 100th day in office in georgia, state that allowed him to accomplish much of what he wanted to accomplish so far.

giving democrats that majority in the senate, he will be holding i believe a drive-in rally with multiple cars hearing him speak, he will be marking his first 100 days and i'm sure we are all looking forward to the coming months, but certainly georgia has a lot of electoral significance for this president and for democrats especially to look forward to it as a key state. host: almost $2 trillion in the covid relief bill, just part of the spending that we are seeing in this white house so far. the headline from the hill.com, if you can react to it, republicans wearing that fiscal -- worrying that fiscal conservatism is losing its rallying cry. what's going on? guest: democrats are making a bet with the public not being so worried about deficits and deficit spending and of these big price tags on these bills. they are more concerned with, you know, does this ill provide

direct payments to americans? does it provide assistance to the people who struggle with their rent? increased child care and health care. democrats are making these bets and the president is among them, that they can with these spending bills and they won't necessarily pay the price at the polls just because americans you know, see the price tag or wonder about deficit spending so much, that it's a bygone issue. republicans will need to find a new angle to attack democrats over it because it doesn't resonate like it once did, i don't think. host: is there a sense that the debt matters? now approaching close to $29 trillion. guest: it's an issue that republicans talk about now. democrats will say it's hypocritical because they didn't seem to care when president trump in office. so you know, it's something that

i think people are certainly mindful of. we have seen these presidents kicked the cans, adjust the debt . it's an issue that's a great question. i don't know if it is top of mind for a lot of voters, but certainly for some people i think it is sort of the next generation will be the ones that pay for that. it's something that is always in the back of peoples minds and it's just a question of how much people care about it now and what the sense of urgency is to address it now. host: brett samuels, thank you for being with us on this monday. we appreciate it. guest: thank you. host: this is from the fdr library, a look at the first 100 days really becoming the brett -- benchmark for presidents since fdr was in office and his new deal. we are getting your comments on president biden's first 100 days in office.

this is from steve on twitter saying infrastructure, jobs bill, immigration yet to come and unfortunately democrats will have to go it alone because republicans are not interested in americans succeeding unless you are wealthy or a part of the good old boy club. harry is next from norcross, georgia, good morning. caller: good morning, c-span. nice to talk to you. yes, the democrats will have to go it alone. joe biden will have to go it alone. the republicans -- well, let me start here. this is going to take just a minute. in 1980 i broke $30,000 at nine dollars an hour. in my wife and child were able to live much better than i can live today on $80,000 -- and my wife and child were able to live

much better than i can live today on $80,000. remember, conservatives like mint -- limited government. it was under ronald reagan when the budget deficit started to balloon, you know? cutting taxes from 70% down to 35%, the top marginal tax rate. it's what created my conservative ideas, the far right conservative ideas that have created this difference in wealth here, the inequality and wealth here. for lindsey graham, for lindsey graham to accuse joe biden or democrats of packing the court, that's ludicrous. if anyone remembers, he made the promise that if a supreme court nomination came up at the end of

the donald trump term, he would vote against it. he would vote against confirmation because of what they had done to merrick garland. this business of immigration, you know, all these failures they are blaming on joe biden, these failures are created by republican policies. remember, what did donald trump do? he strong-armed mexico to keep all these refugees in mexico south of the border. so, they were building up in tent cities for the last year or two. hundreds of thousands of them waiting their and what donald trump did was shut off letting any of them in. he slowed down the process of the refugee entries to like one per day or something like that. you are going to get there in the next 20 years, these people.

host: harry, leave it there. that moment that you mentioned with lindsey graham is available on our website. he said that back in 2016. all of our programming is available at c-span.org. this from another viewer saying that joe biden wants to add trillions to the deficit and the debt, sending companies overseas, claiming credit for things that trump set up, canceling jobs, continuing partisanship and continues splitting the country. from nbc news.com, this headline, the pole and 100 days, biden approval remaining strong, can the honeymoon last? let's go to derek from randall's town, maryland, good morning. caller: good morning, harry. good job, harry. you know what, ronald reagan was the king of deficits. the reason i don't talk about him bad is that when i graduated in 709i was hired by raytheon

and i retired from northrop grumman did and during that time, the united states was putting a lot of money into the military. that's the reason i don't trash him all the way. i never cared for him, but the national deficit was under $1 trillion when he took office. but i think that biden is doing a good job. his priorities are in order. first it's the american people. number two is the vaccine. let's not give trump credit something he waited four or five months to do -- deal with because he was courting ally. he's responsible for a couple of hundred deaths out there -- couple of hundred thousand deaths out there because of the covid. let's not forget the fact that trump, who has absolutely no respect for the man, let alone the president, had the highest national deficit of any

president. the highest trade deficit of any president. as far as joe biden goes, i think he's doing a good job. his priorities are in order. he will get the immigration situation straightened out and lindsey graham is right, he's part of the 43%, he's always been a part of the losing side and they aren't going to you -- they aren't going to lose the midterms. the young people out here believe in equal rights for all people and they believe in diversity. thank you for taking my call. host: it's the bottom of the hour and we are getting your calls and comments on the president's first 100 days. he will address congress wednesday evening. live coverage on c-span and c-span radio and the free c-span radio app, thursday marking his first 100 days. more of your calls in a moment that this headline is from "the new york post," joe manchin

disputing the claim that he's a roadblock in the senate, coming yesterday on "state of the union." [video clip] >> this is good government. i can't believe that people believe doing it my way gives us the momentum to get us through the next election. but when you do something that everyone tags onto, i have seen good things happen when people went back against it, we won't give the system a chance to work and i won't be a part of blowing up this senate of ours or basically this democracy of ours over the republic that we have. if we have the threshold and the senate the same as the house, the house wasn't designed to be partisan. it was designed to be hot as a firecracker. that was the founding fathers and their brilliant strategy. why can we not try to make this work? if you have a violent swing every time there's a party change, we will have no consistency whatsoever.

host: that was joe manchin. then there's this, biden immediately caving on minimum wage increases, "we can the illiberal foreign policy saber rattling, kowtowing to the military-industrial complex." more than 80 people killed at a covid-19 ward took place on saturday in this photo is from inside that hospital ward that killed those. right now the death toll is at 82. mary is joining us here in washington, d.c., good morning. caller: nice to have you on the air again steve. a question for the moderators of c-span. the last gentleman i called in, part of my question, why don't the moderators, when people like us call in, if you all know that

we are not telling the truth about something, you should correct us. maybe you don't have to say anything, but if you know that we are telling the truth, you should say something and if anybody calls in and you know they are lying about any politician, the moderators should be the ones to correct that. host: go ahead. caller: and, and joe manchin from west virginia, he comes across as a democrat but if you ask me and my personal opinion, he's a republican and democrat clothing. i just wish that when the republicans like lindsey graham get up and say something incorrect, the democrats should come back to correct that. first of all, the democrats

don't speak up for themselves like we would want them to speak up for the democrat party. whereas the republicans, they don't mind lying. i'm not saying some of the democrats don't lie, i'm sure they probably do, too. but the republicans will tell a lie about anything just to make them feel better and i think it's up to you all to correct them, the callers, we are listening to someone tell a lie about another person, you all should know what's true and what's not. host: we try to correct the facts if it's obvious, but clearly if it's an opinion, we want to make sure that this is an open forum and that people who express their opinions one way or the other, we want to make sure that their comments are heard. thank you for the call. cliff, essex, maryland, how would you assess the president's first 100 days in office. caller: i can think of one thing

he hasn't completely destroyed. he's destroying everything. for one thing, he's not the legitimate president. i can't wait for all of these communist lawbreakers to be arrested. host: stanley, independent line, good morning. caller: how are you doing, steve? host: good. caller: if they could build a fence around the border 17 feet high, 20 feet high, they will go right around it anyway. as far as the vaccine goes, this is the good vaccine, not the one with bleach in it like trump was pushing. that guy said that trump did the vaccine? you might have started it, but he couldn't even keep the virus

out of the white house. and if -- everybody in his family had the virus. his son had it, his wife at it, he spread it around the country flying all over the place. i think biden is doing a good job. he got the virus out. these people complain because they watch fox news and every democrat was called a communist and a loser. that's all they do. i watch fox news once in a while. i used to like fox news when they had shepard smith. he would tell the truth about the weather. no hurricane can go to to florida, into alabama and still go up to the carolinas. he told the truth and boom, he was fired. fox news is being sued for $1.5 billion for lying about the election and that's why this guy just said he won. he didn't win. he got beat, tried to cheat in georgia and in arizona and they still counted that in arizona.

if you watch fox news, you will think that joe biden is the worst president in the world. but i don't watch fox news and when i do, i hear him talking about the border, the border, the border. the border is never going to get fixed because the republicans hire the people. are you still there? host: thank you for the call, we appreciate it. the first 100 days, more about the disruption of trump than anything else in the country, being better off because of that. we thought it would be interesting to go back to the column from "the wall street journal," from january 18 of this year to give you context as to where we were back then and where we are today. writing the following, every new president and congress faced their own particular set of challenges that tended to feel unique and daunting though sometimes they are not as unique and momentous as they seem but

that is not the case as joe biden host: that from january of this year from "the wall reet journal." barbara, michigan, good morning.

caller: i just want to say a couple of things. first of all, i'm black and i used to be a strong supporter of joe biden until the 1990's. i also majored in american history and it's extremely sad to hear people so angry and upset who do not know black american history or american history. if you know the record of joe biden, i thought the world of him until in the 1990's he pushed through, i'm a senior, i remember it well, he pushed through and bragged about mass incarceration that affected thousands of young black men. he hates black men. caused them to have really harsh sentences in prison for marijuana offenses. people think -- seem to forget that kamala harris pinned him during the debates, when they were debating, about who is going to get the nomination, she called him a racist and pointed out some of the things that he did over the 50 years that he

was in office. people act as if she didn't say that. she said joe biden you are a racist and she went and she gave specifics about his background. joe biden was a good friend of the rate -- the late robert byrd. robert byrd was a recruiter for the clue clocks clan, -- recruiter for the ku klux klan, lawyer for them. a bunch of them went to his funeral and i don't recall people saying, by the way, robert byrd wasn't -- was one of the most famous members of the ku klux klan in history and people like joe biden talking about jim crow. joe biden a good friend of his. i remember when joe biden was supportive basically of jim crow. jim crow, people don't even know what it is. i experienced it when i was a child. it's separate and unequal.

jim crow was created by the southern democrat party. the ku klux klan was created by the southern democrat party and of these people don't even know american history because they are not teaching it anymore and all this stuff used to be taught at the university and i don't think they are teaching it anymore and i am just so shocked. when joe biden gets up and talks about white skin, he's a racist. when he talks about everyone white being racist, he's sick and people. white people were made by god, just like people with black and brown skin and skin color does not make you racist and all white people are not racist and the last thing i want to say is that abraham lincoln died, assassinated because he freed the slaves. assassinated by john wilkes booth because he freed the slaves and if anyone wants to study american history, find out who the dixiecrat square and how

they created the white citizens council and how they created jim crow. i heard obama talking about how some of the sheriff's who attacked black people during the 1960's, i saw it, i saw it in the 1960's. i was there. the bottom line is that these people are so ignorant about our country's history. all white people are not people, all white people are not racist and i am disgusted when i hear the president getting up to foam and hatred against the white race and i'm a black woman. people. -- people. host: we will eat -- evil. host: this from cnn, the biden approval rating is historically consistent. al gore with these comments on the first 100 days of president biden. [video clip]

>> yes, we have the ability to come together. by the way, the american people are telling pollsters and others that they like the biden approach. i think he has made the strongest start in his first 100 days of any president since fdr and i genuinely believe that. i think that they are hitting on all cylinders. they have appointed an a plus team and are hitting it out of the park every single week and i think that that by itself is also going to help to restore some of the trust in government, in institutions, and in our ability to restore the health of american democracy. host: that from "washington post live." russ has this, "disaster, pipeline fallout, gas up over last year, stock market taking a dive, vaccine rollout mismanaged, failing to work with republicans at this point."

kevin joins us from marshall, texas. caller: good morning. good to see you back, steve. host: good morning. caller: kudos to the michigan caller on her history. i wanted to get in some economic history. a lot of the callers were talking about reagan and how the deficit exploded. i mean, you need to go back. the deficits began again under lbj. when he began the war on poverty, that was the light, the spark. if you look at tax revenues during reagan, reagan increased revenues tremendously and that was partially due to some of his tax cuts. reagan also raised taxes if you look at social security, for sure.

so, you can't blame reagan for the deficit. you can't blame that kind of economic policy for the deficit. and then you had one caller there talking about the rich. that certainly would, biden is going to propose tax the rich. the biggest tax increase in his policies is on corporate taxes. after trump aide lowered them. we began to see a boom before the pandemic. when biden raises those corporate taxes, i wish people would ask themselves, who do you think pays corporate taxes? that isn't jeff bezos's or any rich person you want to talk about. it's the consumers of those products that are paying those corporate taxes. look at gas prices now. that's the regulations coming.

you talk about wanting to help the middle class, i mean that's, that's what you are hurting right there. i just wanted to correct that. thank you for your time. host: thank you they're from texas. this tweet, "joe biden doing great so far, no disaster yet." greensboro, north carolina. good morning. the president reaching 100 days on thursday. how is he doing? caller: i think he's doing great. i wanted to make three points. first of all, i find it very interesting that republicans have such an outcry about the immigration at the border now when they had nothing to say when the republican administration was taking children out of the arms of their parents and not keeping any record of who the children were of the parents.

recently they have been able to, this administration, they have been able to find some of the parents of the children, but it is still hundreds of children in care who nobody knows who the parents are and how horrific that must be for the families and for the children to experience something like that. as i said, republicans had no outcry about that. host: thank you for the call. kurt has this on twitter, will the gop even attended the biden address? maybe they will show up to boo. from the sunday shows, rick scott, republican, saying the gop will continue to block some of the big spending items the president is proposing. [video clip] >> republicans don't like the

biden agenda. they like closed borders and they don't like packing the supreme court's like the democrats. republicans believe in this country. we don't believe that everyone's a racist. this country is the land of opportunity and i'm proud to be a republican and i know that we are going to have a big win in 22 and biden is helping us each and every day. host: that's rick scott. ithaca, a regular viewer, pastor, good to hear from you again. good monday morning. caller: good monday morning to you, steve, to your family and everyone who works at c-span and again, a big thanks to everyone who puts everyone on. guests, hosts, especially all callers of every stripe behind the scenes. if we are not working together, we don't even have c-span.

that's the first point i would like to start off with. caller: thank you very much. -- host: thank you very much. caller: pastoral preferential note, this is pastor michael, my human rights ministry started in d.c. in 1990 and is called one world life systems and contrary to a lot of people thinking that i want to take over the world, no no no, all politics is local, as tip o'neill said and one of my chores is getting the people there basic necessities that can't do it on their own. so, there is a quality, to update the french revolution instead of fraternity i say liberty, equality, humanity. the last time that we spoke, if i may we use this one minute, then i have three's a sink points on biden, this is a part

of it. we spoke when newt gingrich came on. he gave the advice to contact the vatican ambassador, the holy seed. people don't understand, it means the seat of the holy catholic church. i worked two months and i sent his wife, who was the ambassador, she has resigned now, alyssa gingrich, eye center 30 years of documents that all the catholic cardinals about in the seminary and nothing was done. i was accosted and fired after nothing was done and my service dog, whose name is respect and hospitality, we got all the way to kennedy airport and because of covid changes, ready to go

see the ambassador and set up this appointment with pope francis, we were turned back. host: i've got to jump in because we are short on time. quick point about the biden presidency and then we have to move on. i apologize. caller: i would love for him. i'm a peace corps veteran. i have survived cancer with 90% of my esophagus gone. i think that what he's doing is putting new coffee into old filters. he's got to step it up and do more and that is where he is going to run into trouble, even with people like joe manchin, who is just a blue dog democrat. host: we will have to leave it there but thank you, pastor, regular viewer calling every 30 days. another viewer says great job, it's a wonderful feeling not to

have to dread and wonder which country we are about to go to war with come up which ally we were insulted or being fed a constant stream of lies, propaganda, and racist attacks. from "the new york post," michael goodwin says what to make of the new and radical joe biden? "on the surface it seems like an odd question, but the new biden, president biden, doesn't sound and act like the former senator and vice president. this one is so

host: let's go to patricia, joining of this morning from ohio, republican line, good morning. caller: i have one comment i hope you will take to heart. when people call in, they don't give their opinion, they just turn around and everything trump did was wrong and i think at that point it would be nice if you would just cut them off and say we have heard your opinion and it doesn't need to go further. thank you for taking my call. host: we will go next to ron in west chesterfield, ohio. caller: good morning. you guys are awesome. i love the show. he we are not a communist country yet, like republicans

thought we would be. let's see here. we are no longer prudent puppets. -- putin's puppets. that's a good thing. but we should have been doing with covid, we are now doing. that's a good thing. i got to tell you, as a democrat i really don't care to work that much with republicans after the last four years of the daily trump tweets about how bad democrats and media and everybody else is every single day. finally we have an actual president that is getting things done for the people. yeah, i'm happy with his first 100 days. i'm all good with it. host: thank you for the call. we are going to frank in birmingham. caller: good morning, steve. i vote 90% democrat, but i hold my independency across the line. i'm totally dissatisfied,

particularly in alabama. knowing the process of u.s. attorneys, joe biden asked all u.s. attorneys, all 46 to resign back in february i think it was. here in alabama we have three again in the middle of the northern and southern districts. all three of the u.s. attorneys are still trump older verse and in alabama of all places why are we subject to the trump u.s. attorneys in our state? it's ridiculous. it's the biggest thing as far as i'm concerned, the judiciary process. especially with the police shootings and the different things we have had here in alabama and across the state where we have had a number of black shootings. killed at the largest mall in alabama, there was a shooting

and they wiped it under the rug at the time. mr. townes has since resigned, but president biden needs to do a better job and attorney general garland needs to address it. we called a press conference here in alabama and we announced for the speed at which they save the buffalo phillies and the quick foot to get it done and we have probably traveled over to atlanta also to a press conference over there to put more heat on the president. he has to do better. we also plan to ask that he go to the justice department, because he has to move expeditiously in dealing with these attorneys in the state of alabama. there's three of them and every single one of them are still trump appointed carryovers. host: we will leave it there. thanks for the call. tim ryan, democrat from the youngstown, ohio area,

announcing officially today that he will run for the u.s. senate and he posted a three minute video on his twitter page saying that he's running for the senate and will fight like hell to cut workers in on the deal. the other issue that congress is dealing with is the george floyd crime bill that passed in the house and is now in the senate and the chief sponsor of the house, karen bass, outlining what's in the legislation and what happens next. she made her appearance yesterday on "this week." [video clip] >> we've been having informal conversations with the problem solvers in the house, a bipartisan group, along with senators scott and booker, so i believe that we can get there and what's most important is that we come up with ways to hold police officers accountable so that we will stop seeing these videos, ending qualified immunity and decreasing the

standards needed to prosecute an officer so we won't see so many times when we know that a person has been killed or brutalized and then we find that they are not even prosecuted because the standard to prosecute is so high. >> one of the biggest sticking points in negotiations now, tim scott says lowering the standard for prosecutions is not on the table. >> well, we still have to talk about it. often times people say that there are redlines and then you find a pathway forward. i'm hoping that we will be able to do that. host: that piece of legislation will likely come up before the president's speech this wednesday evening and one bit of information we want to share with you today on the president's first 100 days, seven laws have been enacted in the current congress, which is low compared to the number of

laws passed in the past presidencies. according to 538 analysis host: the conversation continues on our facebook page and on twitter. the first 100 days. when we come back, we will turn our attention to a book that is now an hbo documentary. we are joined by james and deborah follows to talk about the our town series. and later we will talk about state and local funding as part of the rescue plan.

one of the signature accomplishments of the first 100 days of the biden presidency. you are watching and listening to "washington journal." we are back in just a moment. ♪♪ >> tonight on the communicators, a look at social media and content moderation with jessica, director of the senate for

technology and innovation at the competitive enterprise institute. >> republicans tend to be very upset about the content moderation being too much and that it seems to them to be politically motivated and putting conservative voices at a disadvantage online. where a lot of the democrat members of congress seem upset that more content is not being taken down. they feel that dangerous or untrue things are being left up and that is creating all sorts of other problems that spill over into our off-line world. while i think a lot of washington can agree that content moderation is something everyone is upset about, they come at it from two separate ways. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern on the communicators on c-span2. >> washington journal continues. host: joining us in washington,

james and deborah fallows. there book, our town's 100,000 mile journey into the heart of america, a book turned into an hbo documentary. here is a preview. >> five years ago, we asked people to tell us the story of your town. ♪ >> we had been traveling and reporting. >> we thought there must be something going on in america. people wanted to talk about their town. >> what we saw, how towns rise and fall, has a lot to say to our world right now. >> this was a depressed town. >> he was grafting for what was going to be next. >> the past is the past. >> we need to replace judgment with compassion. and we need to replace punishment with treatment. >> we are a safe haven, we feed the kids.

they think this is just a boxing zone. it is far from the truth. we are fixing what needs to be fixed around here. >> almost every place we went, people said the u.s. is in horrible shape but here, things are moving ahead. >> what's your secret? >> we all come together. >> anything can happen here in the poorest of all states than can help in -- happen elsewhere. host: the hbo documentary, titled our town. let me begin with the point you make in the trailer, james. what is the common denominator in these communities that are rising? guest: i think the common denominator is that almost every place in the u.s., through history, and certainly every one of the towns we filmed in the movie, has had problems.

if it is west virginia, they have had coal problems. if it is mississippi, they have historical problems and down through the list. the fascinating part, the connecting link was that the time when national politics in the united states, as you know more than anybody, has been dysfunctional. we found the functionality evident at the state, local and regional level, of people saying we can figure out a way to move forward even though we don't agree on everything under the sun. if you want an example of american minded practicality, it exists. host: how did you determine which towns and cities to visit? guest: it was an evolving process, steve. at first, jim put a post on his blog at the atlantic, asking for town square, there is a story

that we might go see. within one week, we got about 1000 replies from people. they were not just the name of a town, there were stories about their town and long essays. we had a lot to work with. we started in sioux falls, south dakota, where we knew a few people who we thought could help us. it evolved from there that we moved up geographically to the northeast and then swinging around to the south. this was developing into an interesting project and we tried to cover the whole nation. we went to smaller towns where we thought we could get traction and understand it in the weeks we had to visit each town. then we looked for different kinds of scenes that might depend on geography or the movements of people. it was partly hit or miss. it was partly targeted.

host: you not -- you are not only producer -- the producer and writer, james fallows, you're also the pilot. guest: deborah and i made this trip when we -- in our serious sr 22 plain. -- plane. there is a parachute for the entire plane. fortunately we have never used that. hbo would not allow us professional photographers to go up with an amateur pilot, which i am. so, the camerawork you see from inside the plane is by deborah fallows, who had her camera person role in the plane. guest: i will add that jim was a cautious and conservative pilot.

there is never any place you have to be was our one rule. if we were looking at the weather or going to be late, that was ok because we were going to get there eventually. host: it began as a book. now it is a documentary. the newest part of this to talk about today is the city foundation, which is what? guest: we started the our town civic foundation. the idea is to provide an ongoing way to connect people around the country who are involved in these local renewal movements. maybe with libraries or maybe with their downtowns or racial and ethnic reconciliation or assimilation. they don't know they are doing the same thing. we had seen so many people who were doing one thing and the same thing may have been going on in allentown, pennsylvania. they did not know they were doing the same thing. our goal was to continue to

publicize and connect and promote the success of these local renewal efforts. host: we hope you will join in on the conversation. phone lines are defined regionally. if you live in the eastern half of the country, (202) 748-8000. for those of you in the mountain or pacific time zones, (202) 748-8001. we will take your tweets. we are talking to deborah and james fallows about our towns, including this visit to a small community in maine. >> they just assume that you have never seen the bright lights and the big city. they will look at you and see this is a cell phone, have you seen one of those before? just that belief that somehow by living out here, we are not as metropolitan and savvy to what's going on in the world. i would argue perhaps we know better because we take the time to focus on it. that makes us more worldly than people believe. that is one jab when you go to a

big city and some are defined out you are from a small town. they assume you have not been paying attention. host: as we look at that, as a journalist yourself, is this an example that everyone has a story to tell? guest: exactly. we are so delighted you used that clip, steve. that is chris gardner in eastward, maine. a place deborah and i went a lot of times. if there were a background feed and theme of the book that the movie makes so vivid, it is the entire country is still -- instilled with interesting people and interesting places and everybody does have a story. the reason it is worth mentioning is so much of our political coverage boils things down to is this a red state or a blue state? and these other slogans where each one of them has a

novelistic richness. the 1400 characters, each one of them is almost as vivid as chris gardner. host: how do you get beyond the politics, deborah fallows, in a time where we are so deeply divided as a country and have been over the past couple of years? guest: we did not ask. we did not ask about national politics. we went into the towns, asking people to tell us what was on their minds, what are their stories? what are their problems and how are they solving them? curiously, perhaps, the topic of national politics came up very rarely. i can count on one hand the number of times people wanted to talk politics. we started in 2013 and ended in the end of 2016, 2017. during that time, there were the same kinds of national issues going on.

it escalated even farther. but, if you, certainly it is on the minds of people but they don't feel compelled to talk about it if you don't start out with those diner questions of who will you vote for or what about obama or what about trump? if you tell me about tell me -- if you ask tell me what is important, they will launch into what is in their minds. host: you come up with the manager of a best western motel in the south. here is the story. ♪ >> when i moved here from new york, i experienced a little racism. i was managing this hotel and some guests did not understand that i was the manager. that there was not anyone above me. as the town began to grow and i began to meet more people, did more -- there is more of an acceptance of african-american

people getting a leadership position and management position, it takes some getting used to. it is not all of the south. the younger generation is very accepting of diversity. they are making that change. the past is the past and mississippi is striving for change. ♪ host: that is from the new hbo documentary. brooke fallows, why did you include her story in the program? -- deborah fallows, why did you include her story in the program? guest: her story was one of growing into the experience of coming from the east coast and going into the deep south as a black woman, taking on a responsibility and authority in

the job that she had. her story was one of how both she recognized the differences of being in the deep south and adjusted to the change to the existing but changing attitudes of people in the south and how she could look back on mississippi and also try to crash through the stereotypes that people in mississippi must be racist. but to find out that there was indeed a growing respect for her and her position in the rural south, in the deep south. host: you have a long history in journalism -- you both have a long history in journalism and politics. james fallows, give us a sense of your background and then we will turn to deborah. guest: i grew up in southern california, as i lay out in the film. i have been in journalism almost all of my life, except for when i was in my mid 20's. i ended up working on jimmy

carter's presidential campaign in 1976. for the first two years of his administration, i was his chief speechwriter. i worked 40 plus years ago for a democratic president. i have not worked in politics since then. it was a rich experience, both because of the characters of jimmy carter and the travails of that time. the first-hand experience you get from working for politics that you don't get in other ways. we have lived overseas for 10 or 12 years in japan and china and malaysia. we have been in europe and africa, we have been around the world. seattle and berkeley and texas. we like traveling back and forth to our base in d.c. i have been a magazine writer, radio broadcaster and now a film prop. host: and deborah fallows, your background? guest: i grew up in a small town in the midwest, as you can hear

in my accent. it is called vermilion, ohio. it was between the ford plant in the east and the gm plant in the west. growing up in small-town midwestern america, you have a sense of this is a great place to grow up but there is also a sense of i would like to see more of the world. when jim and i got married, we knew from the beginning that we wanted to travel around a bit. we still have two boys who are completely grown up with their own families. we moved to a number of foreign countries. my role during that time was really making the ships keep running. we went there by ourselves. jim was working but we had to make it up on our own. this was the pre-internet days. you could not research where you are going. you had to hit the ground running and make everything happen.

those things in my background, growing up in a small town and being a linguist, made it easy for me to go into small towns and middle sized towns in america. and have a sense of i think i can understand this town. it is not the town i grew up in but i understand small towns. we were comfortable going into that kind of situation. and here we are. in washington, d.c. host: diane, thanks for waiting, you are on with deborah and james fallows. caller: hello. i am originally from lummis. my 90-year-old father and i watched the documentary and enjoyed it. one community, their improvement

was in large part, from the fact that credit card companies have the ability, when they move there, to charge really high, super high interest rates to people who could not pay the cards off each month. i am wondering if you could comment and give us more information. host: thank you, diane. guest: thank you for watching. i will tell you about the credit card story. this is part of the origin story of sioux falls, south dakota, which is a much more technologically advanced and fast-growing place that many people on the coast would know. part of its growth is back in the 1980's, there was a contest among a number of states to relax usury laws. i think that some of the states that were in the finals were south dakota, i believe ella where was in the race.

nevada and a couple of others -- delaware was in the race, nevada and a couple of others. sometimes over the years, you may have seen credit card statements where you send back something by mail and the address is sioux falls, south dakota. they point out that that was only one part of their own regions growth and one reason that the company of citibank and wells fargo came there. there were other reasons of location. mail service went more quickly to sioux falls than most other places. also, they said the companies found that people liked the sound of people who were from eastern south dakota. that was the credit card story that we mentioned in one sentence in the film. host: in the web south --

website, -- a new america is being built. we will go to peter in massachusetts. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i was fortunate enough to spend time this past summer in maine, across from eastport. it was astounding to me as a longtime former resident of maine from 1980 to about 2012 that there had been a progressive move with some resistance to acquire public land and set it aside for use. whether it was way up north or down along the coast, especially from the towns out toward the canadian border. this seems to be more widely accepted because there is a lot

of it now. great hiking, open for different things. it is as if the viewpoint of the people is that what they have is very special. some of it needs to be set aside and watched very closely, because development is going to happen in those areas eventually. as part of development, i want to switch gears. broadband. broadband is coming slowly. all i can say is that i was involved in the broadband push more than a decade ago in maine. i am astounded that we are still sitting, in many places, we are not seeing the level of performances that america enjoys. when broadband gets to rural areas, it will make a big difference in economic development, educations and other -- education and other things.

i am glad you got a chance to go to eastport. eastport is a great town. host: deborah fallows? guest: yes. i will go with the broadband issue. there are still 25 or 30% of americans who don't have fast wi-fi internet connections in their home. i think this has been brought into sharper focus since the pandemic because it has really hit upon how difficult it is for schools to operate in those communities, for kids to go to school remotely. how can they do it? they don't have internet access. they don't have computers. also, for health issues. it is a good side of a bad story that is much more in the public eye. when you live like we do in washington, d.c. or in any major city, you can't really absorb the sense of what this means.

we spent many days and many hours sitting outside on sidewalks after the live, public libraries had closed in these small towns with our laptops, because the wi-fi connections would be kept on. that was the only place where you could count on a wi-fi connection. it was brought home to us when we were in these small towns how necessary it is. it is a moving issue right now. i think that people are aware of it. and the government is acting on it more aggressively and it will certainly help education and health and life in general. host: you mentioned libraries are one of the things we found on your website. deborah and james fallows joining us in washington. (202) 748-8000(202) 748-8000 give us your calls.

-- give us your calls. (202) 748-8000 if you live in the eastern half of the country. (202) 748-8001 if you live in the west. more from the document treat. this is in west virginia and how they view their community. >> when you are out of here, you find out sooner than later that people have a big view of -- have a view of west virginia. they assume you have limitations and assume you will be a certain way and your style will be a certain way because that's what people do there. that's not the way it is. people here, like everywhere, their tastes are wide. they like all kinds of music. >> ♪ >> but i think it is going to take a long time to reverse some stereotypes that people have. it is going to be a long time before people see west virginia like they see vermont, even

though we have a lot of similarities. host: what are the stereotypes? what did you learn and what surprised you? guest: that was the wonderful larry gross, who runs mount stage out of charleston, west virginia. he has done that for many decades. he is one of our friends and guides, a creative spirit of the state. the point he and many others were making in the film, not just about west virginia but also about small-town maine and mississippi and california, etc., is that cosmopolitan people, people in the big cities often have a simplified view of how things are in places they have not been. west virginia, people there are well aware that stories about the state are usually about what is happening in the coal industry and the opioid disaster

, which hit they are probably first and hardest among american states. we talked to a reporter who won a pulitzer prize for getting to the heart of some of the opioid problems. people might also think of west virginia because of this position in national politics as not being an inclusive or tolerant place. we have lots of scenes of white and black residents of charleston, feeling like their identities together is as west virginians who have built fascinating programs. and an innovative drug force. the theme of all of these places is how much more is happening. if you actually look at the tracks of american landscape, -- he was traveling across the country of just seeing how every place you look, there was this

engagement. it was that kind of beehive of activity that we saw, including in west virginia. guest: if i could add one other thing. in many of these small towns, we saw that there were both efforts and there was movement to have young people either see and learn about the sense of hope and why they should stay in their own hometowns, or of people moving back, young people moving back to charleston, west virginia, to develop a part of the west end of the town from a challenged and rough area into an entrepreneurial area, with everything from book shops to coffee shops and affordable housing. you see the life balance. especially during the pandemic, when young people have had a harder time keeping their jobs.

or, earning a living or making things work out in the big cities like brooklyn and the silicon valley. they can get they were going to go home for a while and seeing -- thinking they were going to go home for a while and seeing how it was. maybe i can work remotely now, it is not such an oddball thing to consider. maybe i can help things developed my hometown. the youth movement is something we saw a lot of and continue to. host: this program is carried live on c-span radio. denise is joining us in arlington, virginia. good morning. caller: good morning. my comment was i wondered if you had done any investigation into homelessness around the country, in that my homelessness started after several failed jobs, my

point is i have been homeless for 30 years. it was due to identity theft. someone put my name on their records and knows how to manipulate the computer to keep it from changing. the homeless sector is closing down to a lot of us because of the amount of time we have been homeless. they want us to end our own homelessness. i feel it is due to a problem that started in the country after world war ii and has to do with world war ii and the people that came here after the war and wanted to stay and have taken

our identities and using our citizenship. they like the fact that we are in a situation that is manageable to them and it is easier for them. a lot of times we want to change the situation and we run into their people and they are telling us know, you can't change the situation. host: who would like to answer that? guest: i will say we are very sorry to hear about that. the difficulties of denise that have been going on for so long, thank you for sharing that. the film goes into homelessness at some length. one of the first things filmed in inland southern california, not los angeles or beverly hills, but san bernardino, there is a significant homelessness issue there. one of the things that the film

makes clear it with human portraits of people who are suffering is the many, many origins of it. partly, it is housing crisis. partly to mystic problems. partly mental problems for some people -- domestic problems. partly mental problems for some people. i don't think anybody can presume to say here is the answer to one of america's major problems. one of the four or five major problems america has. we try to acknowledge it as a major issue and show the humanity of people who are involved in it. there are a couple of technical approaches the film illustrates ways in which government is able to get resources to people who need them. i hope that has some bearing on denise's case. host: this is from mark stone, saying traveling from all around america, what surprised you

about the 2020 election? maybe not in the politics but the move of the electorate? guest: that is a challenging question. i guess what impressed us was a connection between what we had been saying was the general mood in most of the communities we saw, which was that it was time to be practical minded and find ways to build a new school for 10 years from now or build a new play area for the kids for 10 years from now or redo the city's power supply. that is a further ahead looking outlook. that seemed to be somewhat linked to a national mood of let's move to something that is more practical minded and less emotionally the center of attention.

maybe there was a national government moment saying less in the news every second and more things we might do. it might be a can national to the -- connection to the national mood and the local movement. host: dev and james fallows, visiting dynamic communities across america. one person says the massachusetts caller is correct. eastport main is a lovely town -- eastport, maine is a lovely town. let's go to kathleen. caller: i was wondering if you could tell us about the larger cities even visited. i work at the county library. i am a substitute teacher. i had a class that studied topographical maps this week.

anyway, that is my question. we have a very active city and we have a very active recreation and parks district. our school district has the 5000 students that are doing virtual education -- has 35,000 students that are doing virtual education. my question is what about the larger cities? guest: we know fremont, we like fremont. we lived in berkeley for a while. initially, we were looking intentionally for smaller places. the reason was we felt that media attention generally did not go to smaller town of america unless there was a hurricane or a drought or a shooting or some other emergency of that sort. we wanted to offset that balance. eventually, we did go to bigger places. places as big as columbus, ohio, which is in the top dozen cities in terms of population, mainly because we wanted to see if the

patterns we were observing in smaller places like columbus, mississippi would have a bearing on plumbers, ohio or pittsburgh, or duluth. -- columbus, ohio or pittsburgh, or duluth. yes, there were some ways you could derive that communities could be functional. we saw them in both columbuse s, and greenville, south carolina. we believe cities can function at various scales. part of what we are doing with the new foundation is trying to find ways to connect these lessons. host: as you point out in your documentary, part of that is the role of community colleges, including this in mississippi. -- this, in mississippi. let's watch. [video clip] ♪ >> it is a real shock when traditional jobs disappear.

>> the future will be working alongside the robots. >> and the new ones call for skills people don't have. as we have seen around the country, community colleges are incredibly important in preparing students for new jobs. in the bigger picture, fighting inequality. this is the communiversity, near columbus, mississippi. >> is not the old shock. the vocational school was a penalty a person paid. we are a second chance university. to get a job. many are one flat tire away from losing their job or not finishing their education. we help bring partners to

removing those barriers. we lift up the community. >> that is the best description of a community college and what you do that i have heard anywhere. >> if it can happen here, in the poorest of all states, then surely the positive things that are replicable -- the positive things are replicable elsewhere. host: why was that part of this program? deborah fallows, we will start with you. guest: the community colleges were one of the most surprising and important lessons that we have learned during these travels. we knew that they were around. to go from town to town and seeing the kind of impact that a community college can have on its area for people who, as he says, need a second chance, whether it is a high school or a skills level where you have lost

your job at all sorts of ages. we came to think that community colleges were the linchpin of the future for such a huge part of the american population now. it got not only the individuals going back again to see a different kind of future, but engaging them in the areas where they were, where certain kinds of skills and technical training was necessary to equip them to get into the new roles that fit into the whole ecology of the region and the area. i would say one of the main messages we learned was that community colleges are so much at the core of where the country can go now. host: this is a tweet for you, james fallows, from joe, saying

can you talk about small-town journalism and weekly newspapers ? as a journalist yourself, what did you see as we have learned so many stories of newspapers that are shrinking or shutting down? guest: i will say one more thing about community colleges, in addition to what deborah said. part of the joy of traveling over the years is coming across people like him and everyone else you see in these clips. he is someone whose family was from india and grew up in east africa. he is in a very small town in mississippi, helping get better career options and family options for people. the country has lots of people, nobody quite like him but lots of people like him around the country. on local journalism, that is another big theme of the film. we spent time in eastport, maine, with a fascinating paper

there. it is an every other week print paper. it is thick and full of news advertisements. we are asking them, we ask the edgier -- editors what was the way to keep the paper going? they were making the case that the more news you have, the more standing you have. the situation of local journalism is one of the many first order crises for the country. i was mentioning homelessness before and opioids before and gun line -- gun violence. local journalism is something the normal market forces are not going to allow to survive. it has been the case in other times in american history that people have observed that pattern and found other solutions. museums would never have existed if they were run strictly

through the market, nor public schools, nor parks. central park would not exist if it were left purely to the markets. for a wave of purposeful and important information around the country about new models for local journalism, new models for doing it, new models of financing get by aligning with universities or nonprofits or local charities. i think this will be an area of ongoing exploration that deb and i will be reporting to dublin. host: that includes allentown, pennsylvania and burlington, vermont. another 20 minutes, our phone lines continue to be open. dorothy in madison heights, virginia. good morning. go ahead, dorothy caller:. caller:-- host: go ahead, dorothy.

caller: i wanted to call and thank mr. fallows for their book. i can hardly wait to read it. i attended college, one of my daughters attended college at the university of new york in albany. we had a class and one of the students, it was wonderful. i commented on what she had said and she said i thought you southerners were ignorant. that was very intelligent, what you said. i wanted to come and say what a difference living in another state for 15 years makes. thank you so much. it makes a difference in all of the students lives. i want to thank you for sharing with us. thank you very much. host: thanks for the call for

you we have this from a viewer in texas, saying very interesting documentary. please ask your guests if they came to the deep south, texas. i am referring to the area within 20 miles of the rio grande. guest: i will give a little background. we have lived in texas for about four years or so. deborah got a graduate degree at texas austin and i was working at texas monthly. i traveled to almost every county. just before the pandemic lockdown, we spent a couple of days in brownsville, with mayor garcia, who was the mayor of brownsville. seeing the border and all of the other aspects of life there. life in that part of texas, which we have spent some time in, is of course, connected to new mexico -- is connected to mexico and has been from the

get-go. the ways in which the changes in border policy and border dynamics over the past couple of years have transformed, we have not been able to go there in the past 1.5 years for obvious reasons but we plan to go again, soon. guest: if i can take a minute to speak to the caller about maybe wishing we had gone to texas to film, we were so fortunate to work with this incredible -- these incredible filmmakers who have a company called west city films. they were the filmmakers for the documentary. two things about it. one was we felt that they entirely engaged and embraced the message of the book and they brought so much to it by their artistry and vision of how you translate and boil down the 50 towns we visited and 25 towns we

wrote about in the book, into six or eight towns of filming. they had to do the magic of -- magic that filmmakers do, where bringing it down to each nano second represented something we could write thousands of words on. i apologize to brownsville, texas and the other 42 towns where we could not film. somehow, steve and jeannie managed to capture the essence of a lot of these issues, including in brownsville, by representing them in other towns too. host: you traveled to those communities, as your husband was piloting the plane. we have a photograph of the two of you as you were either about to embark or disembark on one of your journeys. loretta is on the phone from saint augustine, texas. good morning. caller: good morning.

i have two comments. i don't know how you define a small town. i grew up in a town of 900 and now i live in a town of 2000. people say it was a small town of 20,000 where everybody knew everybody. even though i lived 25 years in my town of 900, i never knew anybody. in the town of 2000, i still don't know everybody. i would just like to say that i moved from a small town and came to one -- from a small town in the north and came to one in the south. i loved both of them but moving is like having to be accepted into a foster family. it takes so long to get to know people and feel like you fit in. small towns are close-knit communities. it is hard to adjust. i see people like joe biden saying if we shut down the coal

mining jobs, we shut down the pipeline, they can always get jobs in the new energy industry. and it is not as easy. people don't want to move from their hometown. i became a schoolteacher. i did not want to be a schoolteacher but i thought it is one job where a woman can live in a rural area and have a good paying job. and they get the summers off. so, i became a school teacher and taught for 50 years, simply because i could be in a small town. so, when people talk about get another job, that is not the point. it is being able to stay where you call home. host: we will get reaction and comments. guest: these are rich topics which we could spend the next three days on. i will briefly respond to three of them.

usually, we try to say we are working for smaller places. places that were not normally in the news. places that the media normally would not pay attention to except for unusual circumstances. we went to a place as large as columbus, ohio and as small as eastport, maine. there is no scientific addition. you mentioned some of the difficulties of how smaller communities can be closed. there is a fascinating theme in american literature, through its entire history of the push and pull, the yen and yang of small-town village life versus bigger city life. winesburg, ohio, for example. old novels of theodore reiser

were talking about getting out of the farms and going to bigger places. that is something i think we noticed too. it certainly is true that countries and economies make transitions over periods of decades and repeatedly do so. but, individuals within their own fixed lifespan, and you can't always change what you personally are doing. economic disruption is always a challenge for people where it happens. a big thing about film is how this has happened in almost every place in the country. and the question is the country is always going through turmoil. with communities and companies and individuals and policies that make it easier for people, rather than harder. it is always disruptive when it happens. guest: one thing about

hometowns, people have -- we have heard across the country and absorbed the affection people have for the towns where they live. there is one place -- phrase we heard from people in towns of 1200 or 40,000 or 125,000. people would say i love my town because it is just the right size. it is big enough that there is a lot going on and small enough that i can have some impact on the town. it happened in towns from big to little, people have the same sense that maybe you don't have in washington, d.c. or new york or chicago, that both of these things are going on and that that is one of the reasons that people love their hometown. host: the book and documentary

by james and deborah fallows is called towns, the 100,000 mile journey into the heart of america. one of those towns is greenville, south carolina. we will look at the photographs from your website as we are joined by roslyn. caller: good morning. host: good morning. if you could turn the television down because we are getting an echo. caller: i want to say i turned on washington journal this morning and i was excited when i saw west virginia. i can't believe it. i got a congressman, the congressman of the first district of west virginia, that happened in the 1960's. i am in elderly woman and i note

that was in -- know that was in 1960 and they gave me a national courtesy award. that was the industrial region of the united states, the heart of the rich industrial region. congressman arch a. moore, jr.. i also got the state of west virginia's -- it was the governors corporation. that was in the 1960's, also. host: thanks for calling. you can share her excitement for west virginia. guest: people are loyal.

in the 1970's and 1980's, jay rockefeller was the governor of west virginia and a senator. west virginia has punched about its weight in many parts of american ulcer, including politics and leaders. it is important that the leaders connect with that young people in their community as those west virginia leaders were doing with you. host: we will go to mike in california. good morning. caller: good morning. i tell you that your work now is especially well-timed. it is my impression that we have increasingly a one world labor market, where americans must compete in this one world labor market. it strikes me that our k-12 system is not up to the grade, up to the job. but our colleges and universities, the best in the world, they can compete very well.

guest: if we think of the american educational system in great tears, there is k-12, that i am not an expert on. there is the research universities and community colleges. research universities are the crown jewel of the american education system and they have a world market for students and researchers. we have seen that and everything from the virus and vaccine development to going to mars. i think that community colleges are a very important institution of this moment to try to bring more of the american workforce, to have it be and take advantage of the opportunities it creates for people with lower paying jobs. it is a market in terms of

refreshing the american population with ambitious people from around the world. one of the big themes of the movie, for example, in sioux falls, south dakota, how much of this growth depends on refugees and immigrants coming in, initially working in the meatpacking industry. and then refreshing the communities in other ways. guest: we spent a lot of times in schools, k-12 schools, during our travels. one of the first things we did when we got to town, we would say which of your schools should we go visit? often there was only one school. we saw experimentation in towns, particularly at the high school level, where educators and school systems were trying to figure out how to get the older kids in k-12 more engaged with education. make it more relevant to them in

the places where they are living. if it was in rural california, schools were incorporating a lot of agriculture into the curriculum, whether it was the history of agriculture or the new nano to agriculture -- nano tech agriculture to make it more relevant to the kids. but in an educational way, so that they learned about what was going on, besides the core curriculum of what you learned. same thing in southeast georgia, where there was a lot of technical training in construction and building and robotics and automobiles. same thing in a lot of the towns that we saw. host: this is from jodi who said i moved out tsarnaev ace -- outside of a small town. he says i could never go back even though i am a liberal in a red state.

i love my farm more. we will go to dennis in south dakota. good morning. dennis, good morning. caller: hello? host: go ahead. caller: i am watching your program on c-span. i was a truck driver for 43 years. i traveled in 48 states and three canadian provinces. when i retired at age 67, i had driven 5 million miles. i will be married july. it's a wonder i am still married. i did not go to the national parks because big rigs were not allowed in the national parks. there are other places they are not allowed because of the weight limit. it brings back memories. that's all i've got to say. thank you for your program.

host: dennis, thank you. guest: we are fans of rapid city. this summer, we also celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. we are there with you. we are doing the airborne version and you are doing the long-haul trucking version. guest: when we were flying everywhere, we would fly at low altitudes and we followed route 80, which i am sure you have driven many times. nonetheless, it was really interesting to get into the trucking culture, which we did. we did that for serious xm radio. -- sirius xm radio. host: road. trucking.

guest: we felt kinship as we were flying over the road stay traveled everyday. host: did you find diversity in these smaller communities? young, old, black, white, ethnic mixes? guest: yes, yes, maybe, no, it is all different. maine, as a stay, is unusually white and old. so, the diversity in maine was people who are really different in their experiences. a large native popular in eastport, maine. in mississippi, the black-white interaction is the center of the history now and a significant -- and there is a significant international presence there. the change of the american midwest and plain states is

profound. i think people would be surprised at the diversity in sioux falls, of religions, ages, races, yes. we saw lots of different kinds of diversity. guest: steve, you know well from your hometown of gary, pennsylvania. host: very diverse. we will go to rory. caller: good morning. i am curious about law enforcement in small towns. did you discover -- i am sure it is not mayberry, but differences or similarities in law enforcement in smaller towns? thank you. host: thank you, caller. guest: that is a hard question and one beyond our scope here.

we did not happen to see any famous -- episodes of violence during the time or years, it did not happen. the cities we were in for a substantial periods of time, coincided with the events going on in the news in the last year or two. of course, every town is marked by these episodes through its past, even if it was not happening there directly. in columbus, mississippi, there's a lot of discussion there about the legacy and the present situation of essentially the racial effect of law enforcement in columbus, mississippi. it is on people's minds everywhere as part of the fabric of american life. in many of the smaller communities, the ones that we visited, it didn't seem to be at a standoff, a crisis point.

more, it was, how can we figure out to do this in a more sustainable way? host: in our remaining minutes to both of you, in a sentence, what surprised you the most? deb, we will begin with you. guest: gosh. one of the things that surprised me the most is what a beautiful country this is. we lived in china for a long time, and the name for america is -- which means beautiful country. when i first learned the word, i thought maybe it is silly or superficial, but when you fly over this country at 2500 feet and can see it unfolding below you, it brings back all of those songs that you learned about america the beautiful as a kid. i thought the chinese have

nailed that one, they got it right, beautiful country. that really was one of the refreshing surprises to me. host: james, we will conclude with you. guest: i will use the china comparison, too. we always thought that china looked impressive from a distance and then the closer up you got, you sell its fertility, quirks. the opposite of the u.s. the u.s. looks worse at a distance, more reassuring and self renewing the closer you look. host: deborah and james fallows in their new documentary. we thank you both for being with us. guest: it is an honor. host: we will turn our attention to the government spending, and what it means for state and local communities. joining us from the brookings institution, brad whitehead. from the american action forum, gordon gray. washington journal continues on

this monday morning. we are back in a moment. ♪ >> listen to c-span's podcast the weekly. a conversation with psychology professor april terms. tying the death of george floyd and other social inequities to institutional racism. >> how many of those leaders are individuals of color? not very many. it is still an issue, it is a pipeline issue that we need to look at and fix and not think of the problem solved because we have a black vice president. >> find c-span's the weekly where you get your podcasts. >> sunday, may 2, on in-depth, a

conversation with ross down the, who writes about politics, moral education. >> it is progress along a particular dimension that then feeds back into a larger pattern of decadence. it leads people to spend more and more time in virtual realities and simulations of reality, and to retreat from both certain kinds of economic activity, but also to bring us to another forest, family formation, sex, childbearing, which is the aspect of decadence that i call stability. >> his latest book is "the decadent society." join in the conversation with your phone calls, texts, and tweets, sunday, may 2 at noon eastern on c-span2. >> go to c-span.org/coronavirus

for the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. it is easy to find the latest briefings and the biden administration's response. follow the cases in the u.s. and worldwide at c-span.org/co ronavirus. >> washington journal continues. host: joining us from cleveland, ohio is brad whitehead, senior fellow focusing on metropolitan policy issues for the brookings institution. here in washington, gordon gray from the american action forum. thank you for being with us. as we look at the american rescue plan, the covert release plan the president signed into law earlier this year. let me begin with you, gordon, about the money going to state and local communities. much money is going to these communities, and how much of a

difference is it making? guest: the american rescue plan provided $362 billion in direct aid for state,, local, tribal governments as well as territories. . it also provided $130 billion for emergency public school expenditures, and an additional $30 billion in grants to subnational transit agencies. so far, the funds have not gone out yet, except for a payment to the district of columbia. that was supposed to have been done promptly after the enactment. it is a substantial amount of funding. in fact, if you consider the past amount of spending that has been authorized, we are looking at on the order of $1 trillion, if you include everything that has been authorized so far. there's a lot of money being sent to the states. there is some legitimate needs

for these funds, but my own view is, some of the funds provided in the american rescue plan were in excess of some of the needs of the states. that is my primary observation. host: brad whitehead, you are in cleveland, ohio. how are the funds being distributed in northeast ohio and elsewhere in the country? guest: i couldn't agree more with gordon, it is a boatload of money. sitting here in cleveland, it is welcome. it is good to know that the ship does come in, and it is being sorted out. we have some general priorities of what to do but these are real-time conversations happening right now in cleveland, ohio, discussions around the country with cities, all sorting it out now. what is noteworthy, as gordon

indicated, there is more money here than just the stabilization for most of the municipal governments. it is a chance to make investments beyond this, sort of the stimulus that many had been hoping for for a decade or more. host: we focus on coronavirus every monday at the 9:00 hour. we are focusing on the american rescue plan and how that money is being distributed as part of the pandemic. our phone lines are being divided regionally. (202) 748-8000 in the eastern half of the country. (202) 748-8001, mountain or pacific time zones. this from the senate floor, republican senator john cornyn, critical about how the money is being allocated. [video clip] >> despite the fact that tax revenues have rebounded, many states are sitting on piles of cash from previous covid-19 relief bills.

our democratic friends want to spend another $350 billion to state and local government. but not just on an equitable population-based formula. they rigged the formula to make sure blue states reap the biggest cash benefits. host: that is from senator cornyn, republican of texas. gordon gray, can you elaborate? guest: at the state level, the way the funds are distributed, it is based on a state's share of national unemployment. counties, it is based on employment. on the city level it is based on the community development block grant, which takes into account a number of factors. my assumption is the senator is talking about the state allocation based on national unemployment. to the extent the funds are in excess of needs, you'll find a

lot of states are getting something of a windfall. florida, for example, which has an estimated budget for trial -- a of $3 billion, will get an estimated $25 billion under this. california posted a $15 billion surplus. they will get $60 billion. i don't know that i would characterize this as a blue state bailout, but it is certainly a lot of money for a lot of states that don't necessarily need it. host: that issue came up last month. press secretary jen psaki says how she views the need for the american rescue plan. >> all of this money will be coursing through states and localities. does the president have any sort of preferences, redlines about what they shouldn't do? with tax cuts bother him? how does he think about the money once the money goes out to states and localities?

>> the original purpose of the state and local funding was to keep cops, firefighters, other essential employees at work and employed. it was not intended to cut taxes. i think he certainly hopes that that is how the funding is used. part of the implementation of it will be under the purview of our soon to be starting coordinator and senior advisor to the president. i am sure he will be focused on that. >> in some cases, it has not been as disastrous as it was thought. some states and localities could find themselves with surpluses. i guess you are saying the president and gene by extension would be opposed to any tax cuts that localities pass through, as they would want things more on the building or hiring front. >> the intention was to keep people in their jobs and roles.

like cops and firefighters and others. if there are surpluses, we will have to talk to our teams, what considerations they have for that particular issue. host: the tax foundation breaking down the $1.9 trillion american rescue plan. of that, $350 billion for state and local government aid. to that point, can it be too much money too quickly for these communities and states? guest: too much money, too quickly -- i don't think i would phrase it like that. i think it is more whether the cities and states can use this truly as an investment, not only to get back to where we were, but an investment in the future. will the sibley be expenditures that people make or will it be investments in a lot of things that we need to know -- we know

need to happen? it feels like the pandemic, appears like the pandemic fell unevenly across different municipalities. some need the money more to refill rainy day funds, call back furloughed workers, that sort of thing, and others less so. but you take a place like cleveland, we have been making stone soup for years in the sense that there is so much we need to do in terms of crossing the digital divide, moving from old growth industries, this really could be our moment to take this kind of investment, t ie it into the recovery from the pandemic and invest in those sorts of things that when the pandemic came, fell unevenly. what that means is we are not just spending the money but

investing the money in things that are related to the pandemic but also durable in terms of the kinds of changes that we have needed for a long time. host: we will get to your phone calls in just a moment. the numbers at the bottom of the screen. we are dividing the lines regionally. (202) 748-8000 in the eastern half of the country. (202) 748-8001 in mountain or pacific time zones. gordon gray, i want to go back to one of the criticisms the obama white house received, providing money for shell already projects that were not quite ready. if these towns are getting the money, have they thought through the plans of how they are going to use it? guest: to that point, and i think this speaks to some of the restrictions and rules that come along with this funding -- there are essentially four allowable usages for these funds. the first is to respond to

basically revenue losses caused by the economic consequences of the covid pandemic. number two is to provide premium pay for essential workers. number three is to provide continuing government services, operating budgets. the last is to provide necessary -- as deemed by locality -- investments. there are two other categories. the funds cannot be used to shore up municipal pension plans. lastly, a broad restriction on limitations to how states can affect the revenues in their community, essentially tax cuts. but the restrictions there are really quite broad. in the words of secretary janet yellen, that restriction introduces a number of thorny questions that states attorneys general and governors have to work through. i think there are some

complications that come along with the spending that will probably slow down the efficient use of the funds. particular to the point on shovel-ready projects, that was more about expectations management. the experience of infrastructure plans, projects is that they are long-lived. it takes a while to get an infrastructure project approved. i think the fault there was about overpromising rather than under delivering. if we talk about infrastructure in the way that it is supposed to -- it is not immediate stimulus but building productive capacity. that does not give you the immediate bang for the buck. if we can do infrastructure spending appropriately, we can get around some of the rhetorical challenges that confounded the obama administration. host: what about waste, fraud, and abuse? how do you make sure all of this money going to communities is not misspent? guest: i think that it is

important that we have community groups where there is engagement around this. one of the things that i've been calling for in my brookings role is that we organize to expend this money well, and we do that through engaging the neighborhoods, private sector, higher education sector, civic sector, so there is a real transparency into what is going on. i think it we have good transparency and reporting -- it is always a concern -- but i'm less concerned about that. to pylon to a point gordon was making before. i feel like we are more prepared this time then we were in 2008 and 2009. most of the communities with whom i am speaking have these

plans and priorities that they have been pecking away at for some time that relate to this sort of work. having been in the field in 2008, 2009, i don't think we were as ready for the money coming through. my sense is we can deploy the money more quickly this time around. particularly if the allowable uses include things like workforce redeployment, things of that sort. host: let's bring in our viewers. bill from north brookfield, illinois. caller: thank you for taking my call. a couple of questions. what makes anybody think the federal government sort of understands how local money should be spent? my second question is, how much

of the drop in revenue at a local level was sort of self-inflicted? in other words, these lockdowns, particularly for places that required retail tax revenue, were devastated. to be honest, those should have been considerations on how much you locked down. my last question is, who ever thinks the federal government knows what the industries of the future are? they do not come from the federal government, they come from some crackpot in his basement, not from the federal government. those are my basic questions. host: thank you for the call. let's turn to brad whitehead.

guest: one of the things that gives me comfort in this is that the money is being pushed down to be deployed at the local level. one of the things that can be frustrating for us -- i am in cleveland ohio -- when it is a federal program telling us exactly what we need to do and it does not comport with what we know needs to happen on the ground. as gordon was saying, with this money coming, it feels like there's a lot of latitude for how we spend it locally. not just in terms of what we spend it on, but where we spend it, things of that sort. hopefully this is an example of government closer to the people. if we don't screwed up, this should be a more positive. on the self-inflicted point, i know it is a political discussion about what was needed or not needed.

the reality we have is that there were a lot of restaurants and service industries and other things hurt. whether we could rerun the tapes and do it differently, that is a good debate. we find ourselves where we are. now the question is how we can get ourselves running as quickly as possible. host: next call is from pat in keyport, new jersey. caller: my question is on the restrictions on covid funds. money is fungible. what is to prevent a state or locality from merely adjusting its budget to create shortages in the areas that you want them to? host: thank you for the call. gordon gray, can you respond to that? guest: you bring up a great point. it is fair to characterize on the order of $360 billion that has already been provided prior to the american rescue plan,

while those funds have specific uses attached to them, as you say, money is fungible. in a practical sense, that was able to backfill some of the revenue losses that were experienced. to the extent the american rescue plan says you cannot spend money on contribution to your pension fund, it doesn't say that you cannot indirectly offset contributions to the pension plan. on the others of the ledger, there is a restriction to using the funds to indirectly offset tax changes. that is where some of the complications end up. the law actually makes it easier for the federal government, taxpayers to say in one state to subsidize contributions from another state that it is to subsidize a change in tax revenue. in this sense, there is a little bit of a mismatch. but you are absolutely right, a lot of this money is fungible.

that is why there has been quite a bit of assistance for those states along the way. that is a great point you bring up. host: republicans happen critical of the size and the amount of money being spent on the american rescue plan. our states or cities saying we don't want it? guest: i am not hearing that. [laughter] i am in a red state in a blue city. our attorney general has been part of a lawsuit about the tax cuts and that sort of thing, but meanwhile, the governor has been quite strategic in thinking about our $5 billion allocation at the state level. conversations from cities and counties, they have a long list of things they want to do. maybe in theory people are against it, but in practice, everyone is putting together their lists. host: a commentary from the recent foundation. more census data finds the

government tax revenue has not been negatively impacted by covid-19. aggregate state and local tax revenues of $1.62 trillion is actually about 2% higher than 2019. guest: to that point, it is the case certainly in the aggregate. some national governments did not experience the worst predictions in terms of revenue decline. at the state level, revenue was largely flat. at the municipal level, revenues were actually up. some budgets have posted surpluses. when governments made their projections at the outset of the pandemic, they were basing their projections on the great recession. frankly, the federal government

has done substantially more given the scope and scale of this challenge, compared to 10 years ago. a lot of the worst predictions have not come about. but i don't want to over simplify or suggest this has been a universal experience. there have been disparate impacts of this covid-19 pandemic. that is why i think there was a legend rationale for providing additional assistance. my own view here is that what was provided in the american rescue plan, looking at estimates, anywhere from two to five times what was needed. host: (202) 748-8000 four those in the east. in the central and west, (202) 748-8001. is there a timeline for this to be spent? guest: the money is dispersed over two years and then i think it has another two years after that were in needs to be

deployed. all sorts of questions about what it means to deploy the money, whether that money is simply an expense or if it is put into a fund that provided credit to small businesses. could that money keep recycling as it goes? the idea is to get the money out the door. i did want to make a point as well, comments on the recent foundation, which is true. it shows the perils of averages. as gordon said, the effects of the pandemic fell so unevenly. while things may happen at an overall average, certain sectors of the economy, certain geographies were hit hard, certain populations were hit hard. the service sector was

devastated and the production economy did well. if you were a member of certain employment groups, you got pounded. in others, you didn't. if your tax revenues came from this kind of source, maybe you did well. if it came from that source, maybe not so well. part of what we are doing is filling the overall gap to the extent it exists, but understanding how those dislocations in the economy landed, how do we make sure we are helping everybody get to a place where they can be contribute in again. host: let me go back to your earlier point, looking back at the lockdowns and shutdowns. what are the lessons, what could we have done differently, if anything? guest: one of the things that i rue a bit is when people lost jobs, were furloughed, cut back,

we were not set up to the maximum extent possible to use the period to rescale and get into better jobs. there were a lot of people working in the service economy perhaps earning minimum wage or sub minimum wage plus tips. this was a moment where we could help people re-skill to get those jobs to provide a family a sustaining wage, a real career. some of that occurred but not nearly to the extent that it might have. it certainly did not occur to the extent it could have for certain population groups. one of the lessons learned is how we make sure some of these layoffs payoff. host: let's look at the breakdown of where the $300 billion plus is being spent, part of the one point $9

trillion american rescue plan. state governments getting $195 billion. local governments, $130 billion. territories, $4.5 trillion. tribal governments, just about $20 billion. gordon gray, let me go back to the money, the priorities. where is it being spent the most? guest: the $195 billion there were about four state governments are going to be apportioned based on the state share of national unemployment. four uses, essentially to touch on household and business relief, to backfill revenue losses so they can provide services.

also some allowances for providing premium pay for essential workers, making the necessary investments in local infrastructure. those are the allowable uses. as the previous caller identified, money is fungible. to the extent that states spend money on a given service, not using reserves or other income on that service, they are essentially able to backfill some of those revenue losses. that is the disposition of the funds at the state level. we talked about some of the distribution for some of the other subnational governments based on formula grants, as well as population. with respect to tribal governments, the secretary is granted the discretion to make those apportionments. host: send us your twitter comments or text messages at (202) 748-8003. david and roscoe, illinois, good morning. caller: good morning.

my name is david, can you hear me ok? first of all, thank you very much. i am on vacation, here by myself in the middle of wisconsin. i have never watched c-span in my entire life. but, like a lot of people, our american world is being turned upside down, so i turned it on and this show, washington journal, has captured me. i am now an internal fan of c-span. just want to let you know that. if it was all night long, i would stay up watching. this is my question, and i would like both gentlemen to answer, if possible. one is the obvious one that i have not heard a word about yet this morning.

where is this funding coming from? somewhere -- it comes from somewhere, right? that is my question. host: thank you, david. guest: in general, the funding provided by the american rescue plan will be borrowed, it is not offset. this is in the tradition frankly of the past five covid related bills. these are viewed as essential emergency expenditures. we are borrowing it. from my perspective, that is where i start to be concerned about the extent that we are providing more funding than is needed. while i recognize there can be good things that come about from the suspending, i do think we need a limiting principle on what is appropriate to be spent, just borrowed on an emergency

basis, and when we should start thinking on a go forward basis when we should start thinking about paying this. host: the national debt in excess of $1 trillion. a viewer from california saying our town has shovel-ready projects. needed projects that local funding cannot pay for. sylvia in durham, north carolina. good morning. caller: i have a question. i thought they said, when you took the virus vaccine, that you did not have to pay for it. now they are coming up and saying they want the state and local governments to take taxes out for it, to pay for it. i did not take the shot.

i am not going to take a shot, and i'm not paying for it. anybody wants to be stupid enough to pay for it, they can pay for it, but i am not. host: why will you refuse the vaccine? caller: i don't trust fauci, and i sure as hell don't trust joe biden and kamala harris. i have the best doctor in the world and his name is jesus christ. if i get it, without using common sense, then i get it. but i am not paying for it. a lot of these people who are losing their lives have died because of natural causes, heart attacks or something, and they are putting it down. i will talk to the governor of north carolina -- cooper -- and

i want an explanation wrote down of why i have to pay taxes. i am not paying for this. host: thank you for the call. brad whitehead, what are you hearing in that caller? guest: well, i am hearing skepticism. these are awfully big numbers we are talking about and they are awfully scary issues. i am hearing a lot of skepticism about what is coming down. the other thing that was a trigger for me -- tying it to gordon's earlier point. how do we make sure these are investments, not just expenses that have come and gone, we have may raised our taxes and maybe not made a difference. thank you, sylvia, for provoking

that -- in birmingham, alabama, they are doing an interesting thing. we know we need public health workers to get out into the community to speak with people about vaccines, what is reality and what is not reality, why take it or not. but rather than doing this for the next several months and then it is all done, what they are doing is high got to a creative workforce program, getting the individuals to come in and leading this charge for vaccines but then providing training for health care careers, once we have made the push through coronavirus, so you can move into a public health profession and have a good family sustaining job. to me, that is an example of the investment mindset we can bring to this, where we not only address a near-term need, but position ourselves for a much better future. host: our topic is the american

rescue plan, the money being channeled to states and local communities. our two guests are gordon gray and brad whitehead. jeff on the phone from north carolina. thank you for waiting. go ahead, you are on the air. caller: i wanted to ask gordon gray -- i am 79 years old. my father was a member of the north carolina supreme court. he had a friend who i believe was associated with the university of north carolina by the name of gordon gray. i do not see many gordon grays around. i wanted to know if this was his grandson or son? that is all i wanted to know, if he is the son or grandson of my

father's friend, gordon gray. host: it is off-topic but we will let the question go forward. guest: i appreciate that. this is the second time i've been asked about the grays of north carolina. in my case, my grandfather was from upstate new york on my dad's side. on the other side is from grundy, virginia, from southwest virginia. host: we will go to patricia next. caller: good morning. i had the covid. i suggest everyone gets the shots. when they were available to me, i got the first and second shot of pfizer. on the relief bill, they are doing good. we meeting more help though. host: thank you. george from greenville, mississippi. caller: thank you for taking my

call. first of all, i want to say good morning to everyone. i want to let you know that my wife and i have taken the covid shot. we prayed about it. for years, i've been taking the flu shot. if i have been taking the flu shot, i can take the covid shot. it is always better to have something and not need it, than need it and not have it. i want to talk about the stimulus going out. people need money for bills, people are losing their jobs through no fault of their own. one thing i want to say to the states, yes, joe biden is giving money to the states, but it is up to the governors and the leadership of the states cannot mismanage the money. i don't mind paying taxes, i will pay taxes until i die. the scriptures say that we obey authority.

authorities say that we need to pay taxes. we will always pay taxes, we will always have a deficit. i just suggest that people calm down a little bit and be led by the holy spirit, take the shot if you want to. i think everyone should because it is better to be safe than sorry. as far as taxes, don't worry about taxes. pay your taxes. my mother lived 100 years and she paid taxes. we will all pay taxes. let's just enjoy the day, try to love everybody, supportive leadership in office, whether it is a democrat or republican. let's try to go and support america. other countries are looking at us and saying a lot is going on in this country may fail. let's try to come together. pay your taxes, hope that the

states do not mismanage the money, make sure we have accountability for everything. host: thank you for the call. let me take one part of that, brad whitehead. guaranteeing the money is not mismanaged. are there audits, checks and balances, what is the process? guest: i think the rules are being written. if they are not coming through in the rulemaking, we need that in our communities. let me give a blue example and a red example that reinforces the point george was making. we need to have a light of day on everything that is happening. we can do that through being clear about how the money is flowing. mayor nan whaley of dayton, ohio said this is the scoring i'm using for thinking about the american rescue plan money, how

it is going out. the world can see what the scoring mechanism is. you can agree or disagree, but at least it is clear what is going on. that is the blue example. the red example, governor dewine in ohio says we have this windfall. he has empowered his economic development team to get out around the state, to get input from people working in economic development, and individual communities, to weigh in on the priorities and what will likely have the biggest impact, and the longest term impact, as well. through good light of day, clear rules, community input, and then either formal or informal audit mechanism to see how the money went will get us a long way to where we need to be. host: a comment from our viewers. at what point does our national

debt become a drag on the economy? barbara is joining us in oregon. good morning. caller: good morning. my question is, gordon said the american rescue plan could is borrowed money. who is supplying that borrowed money? host: thank you. guest: the way the federal government raises cash to pay its bills -- we get tax revenue coming in at various times to about the year. essentially, the federal government borrows from credit markets to make up the difference. on a weekly basis, the treasury department auctions treasury notes and bills and bonds to credit markets. when banks buy large tranches of treasury debt, they give the

cash to the federal government. the government then turns around and uses that cash to pay its bills. the end purchaser of those security purchases are households, pension funds, foreign countries, anyone that buys u.s. treasury debt is subsidizing and financing the u.s. federal budget. host: steve in williamson, new york. good morning. kathleen in dayton, ohio. caller: good morning. i would like to ask both guests -- and i think this question applies to what they are talking about. i grew up in a hard-core union family. put your nose to the grindstone, work hard, don't ask the state for anything -- unless you are hit by a mack truck through no fault of your own. the ppp, the money that people are getting, falls under that

oversight. i am not into fat, rich folks getting tax breaks like trump and gave them, but i am also not into people riding the welfare gravy train, if they are capable of working. and i do think people should get paid good wages. i know three people receiving basically $4000 a month with a $600 plus percentage of their income, they are capable of working, their businesses open back up. i don't know how many people are doing that, but quite a few people are staying home who are capable of working and receiving this money. i do like how brad had a littlemantra, like when you are laid off, you can improve your life. i thought it was fantastic, maybe look at things differently.

i would also love to ask c-span -- who i love and respect the program -- to do a program on the human rights report about israel, referring to israel as an apartheid state, and a new human rights watch that will be coming out about israel. host: a lot of political uncertainty in that country as well with the prime minister benjamin netanyahu. to your earlier point, brad whitehead, respond. guest: it is make your layoff your payoff. i cannot take credit for that. that was the head of lorraine community college who said that. i think we will see in the coming months, as the economy comes roaring back, what happens in this labor market. will wages rise, will people be drawn back in? what will it take to get people back in the labor force? my experience is that there is a

lot of people working really hard and really afraid of all that is around them. frankly, they don't have the time or resources to do a lot of the training that could get them into a better place. some of the most innovative programs are those that recognize people want a leg up and a way ahead. for instance, in san diego, they have been doing some fabulous work with something called income share agreements. they are saying, look, i need a certain skill but i cannot afford to do that right now, to get into this new job. we will make training dollars available to you. it is almost like a student loan but it is capped, and then you pay that back once you are placed in the job. and then you can go one step

further. maybe you see it as a handout, but in order to do that, you need money to carry on in life while you are training. so there is a cost-of-living stipend for you to do that. there are creative ways to get at that. i, for one, have faith that most people in the world want to be good parents, raise great kids, have meaningful jobs and get ahead. we just have to help people with that calculus. host: brad whitehead is from the brookings institution, joining us from cleveland, ohio, where he serves as the director of the policy program. he serves at mckinsey and company. also talking to gordon gray, worked for senator rob portman, also on john mccain's 2008 campaign. wayne is joining us from arkansas. good morning. caller: i'm wondering, the banks

are calling up the farmers telling them to come in and get thousands of dollars in loans. if they are having trouble paying them back, they don't have to pay them back. we know how that goes. i have been a farmer all my life. this did not affect the farmers nothing like the rest of the people. i don't think any farmer i spoke to affected them enough to get the loans. it is like we are throwing the money here and there, not giving it to the people that actually need it. i was raised to not waste. i look at it as a waste, to be calling farmers and telling them they can get a loan when they don't need it. host: gordon gray, we have heard that sentiment often in the last two months. guest: i think this reflects

what is kind of a delicate transition. certainly, when the covid-19 pandemic first hit, for good reason, there was a tremendous amount of uncertainty about how long we would be grappling with the pandemic, what the effects would be. now over half a million americans have died, we went through a recession. 22 million americans lost their job in a matter of months. coming from that to today, where the economic outlook is poised for a rebound, folks are going back to work, this reflects tremendous progress. along the way, i commend on a bipartisan basis, the federal government, including the american rescue plan, has provided $6 trillion in fiscal support, when you added what the federal reserve has provided to the economy, there has been tremendous support. as we are coming out of this

recession, there is something of a delicate handoff we go from emergency fiscal response to we need to start posturing federal policy to be more sustainable. that is why we are coming to that transition. at what point do we stop paying people to stay home? there was a good rationale during the worst of the pandemic, may be the federal government should not be competing with the private sector for wages, for example. that was some of the trade-offs with unemployment insurance, some of the other supports in place. that is what we have to grapple with at the federal policy level. host: we are talking about the american rescue plan, specifically the money being allocated to states and cities. from illinois, jane, you are next. caller: good morning. my question is why can't we use this funding for air treatment systems in our buildings? after all, that is what kept us

home, we couldn't go to restaurants and breathe in the air. i happen to have on my furnace something called guardian air, the uv lamp burned out, and it's been a year and i cannot get a replacement lamp. if we started redoing the air in our buildings, we could put a lot of young people to work. maybe similar to the civilian conservation corps that my dad was in years ago. we could solve some of our unemployment in our inner cities by upgrading the air systems. these buildings, for heaven sakes, let's spend the money on that. host: a very narrow topic. is that something that either of you can address? guest: gordon, i can take a swing. i'm not sure that it is precluded.

as gordon went through the parameters for how the money flows, they are quite broad. money going through the local and state governments but also these other grants as a part of the american rescue plan, including dollars to the economic developer corporation. one of the very interesting program that has been funded as a part of the earlier cares act in cleveland, ohio was with our manufacturing support group. they had a program where they were working with small manufacturers to help them reopen safely, relaunch. a big piece of what they were doing was helping companies move into markets like the one you described, air treatment systems. a highly promising industry. it will be one that makes us healthier and safer and so forth. there are federal dollars flowing into provide assistance

to companies to be able to move into that area of manufacturing. i think it's a great idea, a great example of how we can use these dollars for investments not only to meet the immediate needs, but to position ourselves for growth markets in the future. host: next caller from apex, north carolina. barry, good morning. caller: i have two issues i want to address. i worked in the military in the finance area in the 1980's. we used to have periods where there were great arguments going on in the congress about raising the national debt ceiling. here recently they just said we are not going to address it. i think people do not want to be held accountable for the amount of injury that money will cause.

the other issue is, simple math, if you do 5% interest rate which is not unheard of, that is $1.5 trillion a year on just that one issue, paying out the interest on the debt. that certainly -- defense right now is the highest budget line. 1.5 out of $4 trillion doesn't leave a lot for discretionary or mandatory spending. host: thank you, barry. gordon gray, did you want to respond? guest: he makes an excellent point. there's a lot of talk about the ability for the united states to just borrow freely largely without consequence because interest rates are projected to remain low. i am very skeptical of running a national experiment running up a debt on the sole basis of the ability to pretend like you can predict the future for 10 years.

if interest rates were to rise by just one percentage point, it would increase the debt service cost by $2 trillion over the next decade. i am very concerned about our level of indebtedness and the degree to which that level of indebtedness is exposed to interest rate risk. i think the caller brings up a great point. host: a look at the numbers. $350 billion to state and local communities. kevin and mineral, virginia. good morning. caller: i was curious if somebody would actually tell the people where all of this money truly comes from. personally, i have retirement accounts within certain fiduciaries. i know that my money gets borrowed along with everyone else's, as long as everyone is connected with this lovely system we have on the planet, universal lending.

you need to tell people the truth and explain it better to wear other people can understand it. host: a lot of tweets on that as well. bottom line, the money is coming from where? brad whitehead? guest: i thought gordon did a good job explaining it before. government either has its revenues or is issuing debt to make money available. it is ultimately coming from all of us and our children as we incurred the debt to do this. what is important to watch, is the money used well and wisely, so that it allows the economy to come back, allow the economy to flourish? so that not only are people working but markets are going up, people living on pensions are doing well. stock markets are a reflection -- to some degree -- on what people believe is the health of the economy.

we need people at work. there is a great political discussion to be had as to whether this sort of debt gets us back to where we need to go, or whether it burdens us. the proof will be in the pudding. host: gordon gray, what will these states and cities look like in two years once the money's been spent? what will change? guest: this reflects both the disparate impact of the covid-19 pandemic and also the degree to which some of this funding is being apportioned may be in a way that doesn't quite meet the needs. in some locales, the funding will simply be used to shore up federal budgets. in others, it is unclear to the extent the state will be able to use them on the priorities that they think are relevant. that is where some of the restrictions that come along with the funding kinda raise their head.

we are waiting to see how the treasury department wants to address those restrictions. on the others, you also have governors and state attorneys who are looking to sue the treasury department in terms of what they can use the funding for. there are a lot of unanswered questions. host: a conversation that will continue. gordon gray is with us in washington. brad whitehead in cleveland, ohio. we thank you for being with us. thank you for joining in on c-span's washington journal. we are back tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. eastern time. wednesday night, the president's speech before a joint session of congress. coming up, inside the u.s. supreme court, audio of oral arguments. it is a consolidated case challenging the constitutionality of california's requirement that charitable nonprofits disclose big donor names to the attorney general.

live on c-span television, also free on the c-span radio app. all of our coverage is available online anytime at c-span.org. thanks for joining us on this monday. in just a moment. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2021] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy, visit ncicap.org] >> the honorable, the chief justice and the associate justices of the supreme court of the united states. oyez, oyez, oyez. all persons having business before the honorable supreme court of the united states are advised to give their attention. the court is now sitting. god save the united states and this honorable court. [gavel bangs] chief justice roberts we will hear arguments this morning in case 19251, americans for prosperity foundation