the alliance for securing democracy discusses the pandora papers and federal legislative response. then the managing editor of the university of virginia cristobal, kyle kondik, talks about u.s. political portal is a -- polarization. "washington journal" is next. ♪ host: good morning. it is friday, october 8. today, the labor department is set to release its september jobs report, and president biden is said to offer his remarks this morning on washington journal, here's to you, the top news story of the week. give us a call, the phone lines a split as usual by political party, republicans (202) 748-8000.

democrats, it is (202) 748-8001 . independents, it is (202) 748-8002. you can send us a text this morning, that number (202) 748-8003. if you do, please include your name and where you are from. you can give us your comments on twitter @cspanwj, and on facebook, facebook.com/cspan. your top news story of this week. the top story is the vote to extend the debt ceiling. today's "washington post," the headline, lawmakers adopting that proposal along a partyline vote, 50-48 voting to lift the country's borrowing cap by $480 billion. that is the story from the "washington post," and this from

senate majority leader chuck schumer from the senate floor last night. and we will get that to you pretty soon here, in just a second from the senate floor, and chuck schumer asking you for your top news story of the week. republicans, call in (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. an independents, (202) 748-8002. this is chuck schumer from the floor last night. [video clip] senator schumer: republicans played a risky and partisan game, and i'm glad that their brinkmanship did not work. for the good of our american families, for the good of our economy, republicans must recognize in the future that they should approach fixing the debt limit in a bipartisan way.

what is needed now is a long-term solution, so we don't go through this drama every few months. we hope republicans will join us in enacting a long-term solution to the debt limit in december. we are ready to work with them. leader mcconnell and senate republicans said they wanted a solution come but democrats must raise it alone by going through a drawnout, convoluted, and risky reconciliation process. that was simply unacceptable to my caucus, and yesterday, senate republicans finally realized that there obstruction was not going to work. i thank, very much thank, my democratic colleagues who are showing our unity in solving this republican-manufactured crisis. despite immense opposition from leader mcconnell and his caucus, democrats held together

and pulled her country back from the cliff edge republicans tried to push is over. host: senator chuck schumer. still, the "washington post" notes, in its stories today, republicans did advance the votes needed, but even that proved to be a significant undertaking for gop leaders, including senate majority leader mitch mcconnell, who face criticism from his own members simply for making that deal with democrats. this is senator mitch mcconnell from yesterday, just a couple of hours before those remarks from chuck schumer. [video clip] senator mcconnell: all year, the democratic government has made unprecedented and repeated use of reconciliation to pass radical policies on partyline votes. so back in july, republicans informed our colleagues they would need to pursue any

long-term increase on the debt ceiling through the same process. the president, the speaker, and the democratic leader had three months notice to do their jobs, but for two and half months, the democratic leaders did nothing and then complained that they were actually short on time. the majority did not have a plan to prevent defaults, so we stepped forward. the pathway our democratic colleagues have accepted will spare the american people any near-term crisis while definitively resolving the majority's excuse that they lacked time to address the debt limit through the 304 reconciliation process. now there will be no question, they will have plenty of time. or if our colleagues would instead prefer a more traditional bipartisan discussion around a sick evidence, they can stop trying to ram through yet another reckless taxing and spending spree that would hurt families

and help china. that would be the path towards that kind of discussant. -- discussion. host: mitch mcconnell on the floor yesterday. that pathway that he talked about to allow the debt ceiling to be raised, at least tip warily, to overcome the filibuster, a tough vote for republicans, as noted in the "wall street journal" today, that said democrats should be responsible for raising the debt limit, as a protest against the social policy and climate spending plans would clear yesterday, they write, senator john cornyn made a gesture of falling on his sword. mitch mcconnell also voted yes, as did senator john thune south dakota, senator barrasso, senator ron portman, senator murawski, richard shelby of alabama, blunt of missouri, and

my clowns of south dakota. 11 vote supplied by republicans. they raise the debt ceiling through early december. that now goes into the house. the house is expected to be back in session on tuesday, the 14th of october, just days ahead of what the treasury department says is deadline for default, if the u.s. bid to raise money is not raised by that point. so that is where we are on the debt ceiling. plenty more physical fight the head, and amid all of that, we are asking you this morning for your top news story of this past week. again, (202) 748-8001 for republicans. democrats, it is (202) 748-8000. an independents, (202) 748-8002. dan is in jackson heights, new york come up first this morning. what was your top news story this past week? caller: hi.

i just heard a congressional hearing on arizona elections that preceded your program, and i am, frankly, utterly shook. i am a republican. i came here as a refugee. i was felt that republicans, cold-blooded, if necessary, but always had the nation's interest in mind. , and would negotiate with democrats. but today, listening to supposedly wheels who supposedly know the law, looked like such and whistles in the questions they asked and the way that they attacked, a term almost like something out of captain kirk as the agency that validated the election, and here we are now, over a year after

the election. i just think that republicans became something else than what they were. they became a party of angry former democrats or people who have been in the military and gave their lives and struggled for america's causes and then came back home, and there were no jobs for them. there was nothing, because all of our businesses go through china. so i just hope that we find the point every conciliation with the people, because i come from countries where i have seen what happens with this kind of polarization, nonsense, and exploitation goes on. host: stick around. today at 8:45 a.m. this morning, a segment on political polarization with the center of politics from university of virginia, that hearing that you are talking about on the arizona

election audit, took place in the house yesterday. the ceo of cyber ninjas, the ceo that -- the company that conducted that audit, declined to hear, despite being invited. maricopa county gop election officials who oversaw that result testified at the hearing. here is a bit of the exchange between democrats and republicans on that panel from yesterday's house hearing. [video clip] >> the claim that some of our colleagues have decided to float again today, which has been rejected all the way up to the supreme court, was one that was thoroughly vetted. the idea that when state election administrators or state supreme courts under state constitutions under state legislative commanded act in the process, that is somehow

unconstitutional -- there is no basis for that. it has been made up. it has been floated in all these courts, rejected in all these courts. it was floated by the attorney general texas, who sued in the supreme court. it was rejected. and it was floated again on the house floor in january 6, as the violent insurrectionary mob attacked us. it was rejected again. and yet the big lie lives now in these phony audits around the country. it is amazing, yet telling, for meeting or the gentleman from arizona essentially, i think, he tried to ally the fact that this audit rejected the claim that donald trump had won in arizona. i never really understood members from arizona challenging the result by which they themselves were elected, the exact same election where they were elected, and yet still, mr. biggs can correct me if i'm

wrong, i hear him not even accepting the results of this audit, which say that joe biden got more votes than what was reported by the state. >> will be gentleman healed? i am happy to respond. rep. raskin: do you accept that joe biden won? >> that is not what the audit concluded. you are cherry picking. that we would have expected to be very similar, and it wasn't them anything that might had a enured president biden -- rep. raskin: who won? rep. biggs: we don't know! there are a lot of issues that took place, and we will go through those today, but speaking of the big lie, you can continue to perpetuate it if you

want. rep. raskin: madam chair, there is the problem we have. unfortunately, we have one of the world's great political parties, which has followed him off of the ledge of this electoral lunacy. host: that exchange yesterday at that house hearing. if you want to hear that in its entirety, you can watch it on our free c-span video out, c-span out. -- video app, c-span now. bill is in nebraska. we are asking for your top news story in a very busy week in washington. caller: it was. john, i still think it is january 6, and we are not going after these republican representatives that were acting up. they have to be called out for what they did. i mean, they are calling mike

pence out to be hung. what kind of nonsense is that? mike pence the other day, making like nothing happened. and i don't hear the democrats speaking out on this. that and the right to vote. bernie was great this week. bernie was the only one who made any sense. he kept the whole thing together with the democrats, and i want to applied bernie. host: you say "the whole thing," what are you talking about? caller: january 6 insurrection, the democrats not being able to get together and come out and take these people to test, like representative shea-porter, for the comments he made, right after january 6, he was looking for a rope. what kind of representative bentz that? host: that is built.

good morning to you. guest: hi. good morning. it is hard picking a topic, but i have been upset with bernie sanders, you know, for lambasting christian cinema and joe manchin. how dare they hold up their agenda, what the american people want approach. it is not with the american people want. they don't have a mandate. i don't like this extension now, because the senators are going to be short in a couple of months. just vote on the whole thing. this harassment of the american people, our senators, put in place, they have constituents, but nobody cares about the

constituents, and hope they will care about the next election and do what is good for america. you know, i just feel like right now, the supply chain is a big story for me, because if you connect all the dots -- and it is not hard to do. what we are doing to small business, i feel like our government systematically is trying to take us all out. covid, the mandate, the shots, and the lockdown, now the labor shortage. no problem getting this all over the country, but we can't get, you know, cheese and chips and all this other stuff. the container ships sitting offshore, polluting water, you know, and then we want to muck up the environment. all of it just keeps you up on night. i did not like the way the american people are being attacked by either free speech

or the ability to operate their businesses. host: that is cindy in norwalk, connecticut. cindy, on deadlines, you talk about the fiscal deadlines in your comments, here is where we are now, and this is assuming that the house passes on tuesday the debt ceiling increase ahead of that october 18 deadline. if so, here we are now, punch bullnose with a rundown of the new deadlines, fiscal deadlines. october 31, that is the date speaker nancy pelosi had sent for passing the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. october 3 is the day that it would run out. the government funding deadline is set in stone, while the debt limit deadline could shift, depending on the level of inflows and outflows of the treasury, but punchbowl writing

this, "know this, late november and early december will be rough . we will really have a default crisis and a government shutdown showdown on our hands." craig is next, mechanicsburg, pennsylvania. good morning. caller: yes, good morning, mr. mcardle. my comment, the most important news stories the lack of coverage of the hypocrisy of the biden administration and the democrats. i have called several times. i am a fan of c-span but not everybody that moderates. sometimes i criticize you. i called the comment line often. my story is the hypocrisy. for example, number one, why is it that it is a woman's decision to decide on abortion, with her

medical provider, but it is not the decision of a person who does not want to take a shot, with a medical provider? why is that -- why is it ok in one scenario but not in the other. why is that? why the hypocrisy? how about the emoluments that is going on now in the biden administration with hunter biden , compared to the bs that was raised about eric and donald junior in the trump administration? somebody has to say, if the emperor has no close, then you have got to see it. c-span and the mainstream media wants to speak truth to power. ok, ok, but do it all the time, not some of the time. that is, i think, the big story.

i see an effort it is a year, to the next election, it is starting to ramp up. listen to msnbc, listen to see it -- and i do, not as much of the other media outlets, but i do all of those. there is an effort going on to do what happened in the last five years to get -- keep the majority in at least one house. either the house or the senate. that is what is going on right now. mainstream media hypocrisy. is the mainstream media hypocritical, or are they objectives? i suspect that as a topic for c-span. thank you. host: speaking of speaking truth to power, what we allow on c-span is for you to speak truth to power, to call in and speak about the topics you want to talk about. you mentioned the abortion issues.

some news on that front this week. texas planning to appeal a federal judge's order that blocks enforcement of the state's and abortion law. robert pittman of austin made a plan to file an appeal to his ruling that temporarily bars state actors including court judges from enforcing issues in that law. it ministered in this court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right. this followed a lawsuit from president biden administration back in september, declined to block that law. that is the latest this week. rebecca, illinois, you are next. caller: yeah, john, thank you for taking my call. that gentleman from pennsylvania, he was trying to

compare and abortion and then also, like, the covid vaccination. well, the difference is, caller, since you don't know the difference is abortions don't spread like a disease does, with the covid right there, so, i mean, the person that gets an abortion, that is not going to affect you or me or anybody else right there. but if you don't get the vaccination, that would affect everybody, including you, caller from pennsylvania. so you need to get off your high horse and stop trying to tell c-span about what it is that they should say and who it is that they should describe two. now, getting to what i called for, the debt ceiling, mitch

mcconnell folded. he really did. he went along with the rest of republicans to lift a temporary debt ceiling. that is my comment. host: that is rebecca in illinois. a little more of the reaction yesterday, after 11 republican senators joined democrats in overcoming the filibuster, the procedural hurdle, before the final vote on raising the debt ceiling. we played at the top of the program schumer's remarks, directed at republicans, plenty of criticism directed at republicans from the majority leader, and some ire from republicans and others about those remarks in the wake of republicans supplying those 11 votes to overcome the filibuster. this is monte raju, cnn, his tweet yesterday, "schumer railed

on republicans after the debt drama after 11 voted to overcome the filibuster. multiple republican senators were angry about it. "classless," mike rounds told me , and he was one of the 11." "i thought they was totally out of line. i thought it was totally partisan after we just help them to solve that problem." the hill newspaper, reporting about democrats frustrated by those remarks, too, including a democrat senator we have often been talking about in the past 10 months, joe manchin. joe manchin could be seen with his hands over his face, the right, during parts of schumer's remarks. afterwards, this is what manchin told reporters as they left the capital, "i don't think it is appropriate at this time. we had a talk about those

remarks. i'm sure chuck's frustration was up, but that is not a way of kicking it out." joe manchin with his comments, saying that senators need to do weaponize and stop playing politics. annie, clearwater beach, florida, republican, you are next. caller: i think that what is happened with the votes, not passing bills, is republicans realize they have to do something, so that two-week vote is probably their answer, for at least the time being. i don't see how we can get out of this situation, but nobody is going to do anything. you can't shut the government down -- well, you can -- but it can change again. give time. but right now, i think they are trying to work out something that is going to be suitable for

both parties. very hard to do. host: we will see what happens by december 3. do you want to finish your comment, annie? caller: that was not the one i was going to call about. [laughs] the one i was calling about was the meeting over the problems with the voted arizona. -- the vote in arizona. there was a lot of talk, and a lot of it went back and forth, but really what i wanted to complain about is when the opening chairman starts with nailing the gop, then how can any decent conversation go on after that? somebody is always going to be insulted, and yet they say, "the gop should be ashamed." anybody who talks like that during a meeting where you are trying to come to some

reconciliation and figure something out, you are never going to do that, making spitballs and spitting them across the way, you know? host: do you get a chance to watch a lot of these congressional hearings? that spit billing you talk about, it happens often in these congressional hearings. caller: it sure does. [laughs] it almost makes you want to just run up to washington, d.c. [laughs] host: that is annie in florida this morning. we will go to washington, d.c. pj is here, independent. good morning. caller: hi, good morning, john. we had a little bit of a lull in the last year or so. regarding, like, mass shootings. we had the incident and, what, arlington, texas, i guess, the other day.

and during that lull, we probably should have focused, you know, because every time there is a mass shooting, there's no time to bring up second amendment issues and our way of, you know, answering, like, what does the second amendment really do? and what is becoming really clear to me, to a lot of people, is the reason why the republicans don't have any kind of stones, for lack of a better word, is because they are afraid to get shot by their own constituents. you know, it is a fascism of the individual.

if anyone can clearly describe, you know, the 19 or 20 agencies that have dropped the ball -- most of our military forays around the world, since i was a little boy, during vietnam, and culminating with afghanistan, there is no right and left. we are a very corporate, go along, get along people, and, you know, about 1% divides us. but one thing that is killing us , as a society, it is our interpretation of the second amendment. and people can say, well, geez,

people in d.c. can go around and use whatever weapon -- no. that was not the way it worked. host: i think you are going to be hearing a lot more about the second amendment in this term of the supreme court. one of the two cases is set to involve second amendment rights, and another big two months coming up in terms of the arguments taking place, october, november, and december, several key arguments, from that gun case to abortion to separation of church and state and religious rights issues as well, all coming up in this term. robert is in worcester, mass, democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. the story of the week is not letting steve bannon with this insurrection. now, the insurrection, we had donald trump, right-wing brothers, nationalism, we had

campus police. donald trump told all of them to stay away from this white house, the capitol building, because he knew there was going to be in insurrection. now, when you start talking about people like jim jordan, these people are a disgrace to this country. i don't want to say no names. that is the only name i can call a disgrace. my only thing here is, like, donald trump -- he should be arrested. all the things he did in office -- if he is out of office, then you have not listened to all of the problems, he had hid everything that he does. host: that is robert. on the investigation into the attack on the capital, this from the "new york times" this morning, former president trump

had instructed his former aide's not to comply with subpoenas investigating the capitol riot. mr. trump's lawyer asked that witnesses not provide testimony or documents related to their official duties and instead to invoke any immunities they might have to the fullest extent of the law. mark meadows, the white house chief of staff, janz camino junior, deputy chief of staff, advisor patel, pentagon chief of staff, depositions and furnish documents and other materials relevant to his investigation. they all faced a thursday deadline to respond. jay in wake forest, north carolina, republican, good morning. caller: good morning, john. i have two things to say, if you don't mind. the first is about the racist, tyrannical, terrorist that is sitting in the white house, that

is sitting in gestapo, on parents. against children with racist people, that they are white supremacists. in all these, like the last guy that just called, black terrorists that can bring down cities, and then they want to talk about january 6. here is the thing about january 6. the media tells people that 500 people took to the capital. that is with the media has been lying to the american people about for the last year. joe biden has a 36% approval rating. what the hell is he going to do when 5 million show up? host: elk grove, village, illinois, speaking about the issue of vaccinations and vaccination -- a stubborn part

of the public that refused to be inoculated and jeopardize the lives of others. the associated press story on biden's visit and here are some of president biden's remarks yesterday. ♪ pres. biden: we have to beat this thing. so while i did not raise to do it right away, that is why i have had to move toward requirements, of everyone get vaccinated, or i have the authority to do that. that was not my first instinct. my administration is now requiring federal workers to be oxidative. it is also requiring federal contractors to be vaccinated. we are requiring active-duty military to be vaccinated, making sure health-care workers are vaccinated, because if you seek care in a health care facility, you should have a certainty that the people providing that care are protected from covid and cannot

spread it to you. the labor department is going to shortly issue an emergency rule, which i asked for seven weeks ago, and they are going through the process. here's the deal -- these requirements are already proving that they work. host: president biden yesterday in illinois. it is just after 7:30 on the east coast this morning, and on the "washington journal" this morning, we are asking you for your top news story come again come a very busy week in this country, a very busy week in washington.

judith, youngstown, ohio, what was your top story of the week? caller: one was about the debt ceiling. the debt ceiling, i don't think they care. 15 million senior citizens will not get their social security checks if it goes through. i live on that! something has to be done. senators have to get off their rear and say i care about the people, i care about our senior citizens. everybody get together. the senior citizens need help. that is it. goodbye. host: jess, democratic caller, iowa. good morning. caller: the parties just can't work together for the common good of the american people anymore. it is really damaging our country. you know, we cannot build a car without getting a tip from china.

china stole all of our secrets, and they build nuclear bombs, so they have got new and better nukes than us. what else do i got written down here? our store shelves are filled with china products, and, you know, they are more focused on the future than us. what we are doing to our own country is horrifying to me. this is worse than the cuban missile crisis. i wish we could work together, and leaders would come to their senses. thank you. host: on the issue of china, a new focus on china, from the central intelligence agency, the cia embarking on a realization to focus more on china, the agency's director announced on thursday. that director, william j burns, at the heart of the effort would be a new china mission center, meant to bring more resources to

studying the country and better position officers around the world to collect information and analyze china's activity. the "new york times" story noting the agency has briefed congressional leaders on those changes and increased focus on china is likely to be greeted warmly. both democrats and republican's have argued the intelligence agencies need to china and improve their analysis of the chinese government. again, if you want to read more on that, in today's "new york times." clarence, west virginia, republican. good morning. caller: good morning, sir. thank you for this opportunity to talk. first of all, the second amendment is done away with, we can just look at australia and see what is going on there. the most important thing, i think, is the situation that is going on in the border, where we have hundreds of thousands of people coming into our country that our country cannot support. and we need to enforce the laws that the border.

in the budget situation is definitely out of control. we are bankrupting our great grandchildren. i just pray that america would come back to the christian values that it was established on. thank you for this opportunity to talk. host: cary, durham, north carolina, independent. you are next. caller: good morning. i want to talk about a topic that i do not think it's enough coverage in the news, and that is the democracy of the american public. i feel the news media does not want to address this issue and dances around it, and does not want to offend the public, but i want to say what the media need to say more. the american public is very uneducated, very selfish, very afraid, and it leads to great hypocrisy. i hear examples of it this morning and the things you are talking about caller and the and things the callers are talking about, for instance, the caller from pennsylvania, who

compared a fetus to a virus. that is a crazy comparison to make. the caller talking about the government lying to us about 500 people, as if we cannot see with our own eyes what happened on tv that it. ok, that is very, very ignorant and foolish to think we are all as stupid as that caller. i am appalled at the hypocrisy over china. i do not love the fact that our products are all made in china. my father used to work for company in north carolina. the company moved offshore. they chose to do that. millions of american jobs when offshore because the company had chosen to do it, and because millions of americans were buying key product at walmart, which are all over our house is now. it is really amazing to me to listen to the american people call in and complain about china and january 6 when americans perpetrated all of this stuff. nobody made anybody by things from china. nobody made companies move off to china. they chose to do it themselves.

lastly, we had 30 million immigrants come to america between 1870 and 1930. to sit here and act like we are not a nation of immigrants is one of the biggest topographies i have ever heard of. i know many states where the majority of their agricultural workforces work by immigrants, many of them illegal, and these very seem people turn around and vote for people that hate immigrants and say that they hate immigrants. to sit here and rail on chuck schumer because he said something at a speech yesterday, with joe manchin's face in his hands, republicans call income and john doing put out a statement saying how on partisan, how not bipartisan that was, and how disrespectful that was, where were all of these people for the last five years with donald trump? host: carrie, are you optimistic about the future of this country? caller: not with the american people. and i am saying this as a

51-year-old person. i am a retired high school teacher. they got i retired, because i am scared of parents. do you know how many deck as i went where i could not get parents to return my phone calls or show up to meetings about their children, and now suddenly they want to get into teachers' faces? now suddenly they want to show up and spit in my face and threatened my life? no, i do not have faith in this country, and the number one reason why is because of the american people. host: carrie in durham, north carolina. this is rhonda in new jersey, a democrat. good morning. caller: good morning, america. i would like to say to the sister that just called, don't lose hope. we are coming back. we are just going through a little something here with the vision in our country. i totally agree with the hypocrisy of the maggots supporters.

-- maga supporters. donald trump had a six-point plan to take over our country. he is a fascist, ok? we have to accept that, and he is causing the republican party to become better. they are so angry, and i feel so sorry for them! their hearts have just turned ice cold. they hate brown people now. he has talked them into this psychotic fantasy. he does not want to leave, because he is going to jail, period! donald trump is going to jail, and so are his kids. host: rhonda in new jersey this morning on president trump. his actions leading up to january 6. the senate judiciary committee with their dueling reports released yesterday on the president's actions leading up

to january 6 democrats and publicans on the judiciary committee participated in the investigation, but they each released their own reports yesterday. the one from richard german put the findings in a catastrophic light, saying that it is an unprecedented fracture only because of justice department officials that stood up to president trump your they note the other reports from senators chuck grassley of iowa, the top of public on the panel, put it in much less dire light yesterday. that president trump and his team was notifying the justice department of accusations but did not put undue pressure on leaders when it came to the 2020 election. here is, again, from the senate floor yesterday, the chairman of that committee, democratic chairman, dick durbin, on his committee's report yesterday. ♪ [video clip]

[video clip] senator durbin: most people are saying, we have heard this story before, so what is the point of it? the point of it is we were close to a constitutional crisis that it bears discrimination and disclosure, so the american people know that we should never be complacent when it comes to our rights as citizens and to ours possibility is to our constitution. this president, former president, donald trump, has treaded the constitution to keep his office in the presidency. there is no doubt in my mind. and to think that we have reached that stage in history is certainly worth reflection free moment. what more should we do, going forward, to make certain that we protect this democracy from the likes of donald trump or any of his successors and interests? that is a major responsibility that we face. i hope that this report from the senate judiciary committee will reopen the conversation. i hope as well that the select committee in the house on the january 6 occurrence, the mob insurrection near the capital,

we submitted this evidence to them, i hope it is a benefit to them as they move forward, and i certainly hope that on a bipartisan basis, we can decide that the ordinary course of action with a valid, legal election in this country is owed to democracy. host: senate judiciary committee chairman dick durbin yesterday from the senate floor. there are about 15 minutes left in this first segment of the "washington journal" this morning. we are simply asking for your top news story of the week. republicans, as always, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. we have also been listening to your comments on social media as well. this is from michelle in illinois. "my top stories the facebook whistleblower. if we relied less on social media, we cannot be brainwashed by misinformation. who knew?" nl become "my top story this

week, social security and pension checks will be sent out this month." myron saying, "people are obsessed with that living on the budget cohort, not us." steve saying, "mine would be republicans want to see nation and its economy crash and bone, as shown by the debt limit crisis." your comments this morning. we will keep looking at the social media comments, and especially your phone calls. this is david, and independent from ashland, mississippi. good morning. caller: yes, sir. good morning. i have got a couple of topics, but one of them is the debt limit. one thing that republicans have definitely learned from donald trump is that you don't have to pay your bills, and all of these bills were racked up during the trump administration. as far as the infrastructure, they are talking about $3.5 trillion over 10 years.

we spend that in four on the military. if they would link the inter-structure in the military bills, where one cannot be more than the other, we would have roads, bridges, and airports in this country. it is hard to follow the woman in north carolina, so i will just leave it there. host: on the line for republicans, this is tom in connecticut. good morning. caller: good morning. i only and calling in because i heard that retired 61-year-old high school teacher in north carolina, and the rage that she displayed on the telephone made me question what kind of a high school teacher she was. i am totally opposed to the attorney general, merrick garland, now going out and

investigating boards of education meetings. participation on our children grandchildren, classifying them as terrorists -- i think the terrorists, you would have to listen to the 51-year-old retired schoolteacher they are. thank you for listening to me. have a great weekend, everybody. host: jill, a democrat, good morning. caller: hi. i guess my biggest worry is the dueling report from the senate judiciary committee, because they were so completely opposite, one very detailed, giving you, you know, people's intense and their actions. the other report by mr. grassley, who i have to say started out as an iowa farmer with integrity and has slowly lost all of that integrity, really would even own up to trump's intent.

i mean, he really has become a cult member at this point. as a teacher myself, i heard the anger of that 51-year-old high school teacher. i was in elementary school teacher. but her anger, i am sure, has been building for a long time. i just wish these parents would, you know, it is not that you can't dissent. it would be your manners or lack of manners, as you wanted to bring forth that dissent. and i tell you, i was under no child left behind in the 1990's. [laughs] what we need now is a new law called no constituent left behind. that might shore up some of the integrity of our politicians. maybe before you enter a political race, you also agree that you are going to abide by the results and that you will concede if you lose. you know, we need to put some more integrity back in the oval

office and in our elections. for josh hawley to participate in that insurrection and then to prorate witnesses, i am with the people who organized january 6 to go to jail, not just from des moines and the idiots who think on the internet. it is time for some of the organizers and the planners, it is time for some of them to end up in jail. host: you started mentioning chuck grassley in iowa. he is running again, a man who was born in the great depression, and has announced he is running for another six-year term in the senate. do you think he is going to win? caller: well, we are not the state that we used to be, obviously. sadly, i fear that he will be reelected.

we do have some democratic contenders this time. but just the cult like atmosphere, i won't even say the republican party, because they don't even have a party platform. that is another thing you can put in no constituent left behind, that if you have a party, a political party, then you have a party platform and at least lay out what you stand for. and if you don't have a platform, you are a cult. host: in south portland, maine, this is michael. an independent. good morning. caller: hi. what do you want us to do to protect democracy? go to court, enter the law, all new federal laws must coexist with state law. we have not seen our announcer, paid by state, let the vehicle

down, 150 years he had been happy with. now you have got the collection with the last 20, 40 years, 50 years, federal laws have been coming in. i still want to see it by the microphone. host: all right, that is michael in maine. this is steve, san jose, california, republican. good morning. caller: my biggest story of the last week is the falling poll numbers of mr. biden, and i think that the american people are starting to realize that what the democrats are up to. as more and more stories come out on this 2400 page -- 350 billion dollars -- no, $3.5 trillion bill, we are realizing

that we are slipping into socialism, and by the time that we realize that fully, it will be too late. the tentacles of the beast will surround us, and we will never shake it off. and one other topic that is very important is overflights of taiwan, which -- by china -- which rose to 56 warplanes, and biden has not spoken out against it. at the very least, he should comment, china, you would not be so foolish. we are going to realize that biden is in the pocket of the chinese, and he will not defend

taiwan. and he is preparing us for it. host: steve in california. steve, on the first part of your comments come on president biden's polling numbers, here is a chart we often show. this is real clear politics, average of polls when it comes to job approval of president biden. you can see starting back and in late january february come in the mid 50%'s, now down to the mid-40%'s, president biden's polling numbers underwater near, making a switch in the late summer to more americans disapproving of the job that he is doing than approving of the job he is doing. realclearpolitics.com is where you can see that chart and plenty of tarts on polling. just about five minutes left, your top news stories of the week. this is miguel. good morning. caller: good morning, sir. i just want to say my story is

all the information that has been coming out here lately from the investigating part, you know, the investigating committee on the insurrection and how a lot of things that more knew that was happening and who was doing everything that was going on, the things that trump and his people behind him, supporting him, how involved in so many different ways, that we were just close, very close of literally losing our democracy. as a marine corps veteran, i just don't understand how the gop can go ahead and continue to give ex-president trump the coverage to continue to go ahead and do and say, even currently, the things that he has been

saying. host: miguel in the buckeye state. we will head to the magnolia state. this is gina in picayune, a republican. good morning. caller: good morning. trump supporter, i want to say that i do not understand how the democrat are using trump to cover up what the president they elected is doing to this country. as a marine, i would think you would know an insurrection would require weapons. you people have been duped. the media is destroying this country. oh my god, it is a joke. the democrats are the dumbest people on earth. host: last call, craig in chattanooga, an independent.

caller: how are you doing? host: well. caller: the biggest joy is like the last caller, it is the media that is splitting the country up. they do not tell all the truth. they tell half-truths and half-lies. whenever you have government involved, that is a third party, so republicans realize the small minded democrats looked down on us. they can tell how we feel. oh, la, la -- they know we are racist and all that. no, they think we feel that way because that is how they feel. we love babies, we do not want to murder children before they are born. what kind of sickos are they? host: that was craig in

tennessee. plenty more to talk about, including the jobs numbers for september coming out in a half-hour. we will spend the final segment of our program going over those. whatever they will show from the department of labor. next, a discussion on the legislative response to the "pandora papers." alliance for securing democracy fellow josh rudolph will join us. later kyle kondik discusses , political polarization. we will be right back. ♪ announcer: in the past 30 years, eric larson has written eight books. six landed on the new york times's nonfiction bestseller list. some of his best-known books include "the splendid and

the vile." "dead wake," about the sinking of the lusitania. and "devil in the white city," which hit bookstores in 2003. in his most recent work, he makes a transfer to ghost story fiction. the title, "no one goes alone," is available on audio only. announcer: you can listen to book notes plus and all of our podcasts on our new c-span now app. ♪ >> nobody really thought that this is going to happen. and it was thinkable when it finally happened. the city of lights was supposed to be this bastion of enlightenment, freethinking, and just an open society.

when the nazis got into poland, there were mass executions. they executed liberals, freethinkers, and everybody was scared as they came to paris, that that was going to happen in paris as well. announcer: the author of "taking paris" on germany's occupation of paris and its liberation by american and french forces in august of 1944. watch on sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern. you can listen to q&a on our c-span now app. host: we are joined by josh rudolph now, a national security staff member during the obama

administration. now he works at the alliance for securing democracy. explain what you do there. guest: hi. the alliance is a transatlantic think tank program housed at the german marshall fund, focused on stopping autocratic efforts to interfere in democracy. on the money guy -- i;m the -- i'm the money guy. host: a busy week for the money guy with the revelations in the "pandora papers." a headline, "lawmakers call for a crackdown on financial enablers" after those revelations. what do we mean by financial enablers? guest: i am glad it is picking up, because that was the second headline from the "pandora papers." the first was all these politicians, the king of jordan,

heads of state who have fortunes overseas, but the enablers are the second story, which is american professionals who are handling this dirty money, enabling foreign corruption and bringing it onto our shores. i am talking about unregulated lawyers, hedge fund managers, art dealers, trust administrators who set up these legal arrangements, and then move money into the united states. so, what that means, in terms of the u.s.'s role in the pandora papers, is the policy response to this problem needs to similarly be made in america. host: why should americans worry about dirty money? why is money laundering a threat? guest: it is a great question, because sometimes in the cases of the "pandora papers", it is not even necessarily illegal.

sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. that is the biggest scandal, when it is not illegal. but to give examples of the types of individuals who were apparently holding a billion dollars in south dakota in these trust arrangements, these are not good folks. these are tycoons bulldozing homes in the dominican republic. they are injured trafficking rings, violating labor laws and guatemala or underpaying farmers in brazil, so for the u.s. to be enabling that kind of crooked thuggery. chris, we failed to live up to our values. we have taken money not investing in american communities. we are propping up adversarial regimes and sowing resentment against america all over the world. it's a security challenge. host: who is we? who are these people? guest: professionals who, like i

mentioned, the trust administrators, lawyers, accountants, hedge fund managers who are handling the money. i do not say in that particular list bankers, although there is good and bad apples everywhere. but i am focusing on the professional enablers, because they do not have similar regulations. they do not have to scrutinize their clients, figure out the source of their wealth the way we require of banks. that is with the policy response has to be. host: what is congress proposing to do about the nonbank enablers? guest: to watch out for dirty money. and let the treasury department know if they see any. it would mirror the regime currently in place very bankers, where they have to have compliance officers, audits and controls meant to spot dirty money by scrutinizing transactions, keeping records

and reporting suspicious activity to the treasury department. host: the legislation that lawmakers have dropped, it's called the enablers act, proposed by a democrat of new jersey and other members of the caucus against foreign corruption and kleptocracy. it would direct the treasury department by december 31 of 2023, to create due diligence rules on sources of funds for investment advisors, attorneys involved in financial activity, company service providers, accountants, pr firms and third-party payment providers. what would that do? guest: it would require them to ask their clients, where did you get the money from? send me documentation to justify it. if the numbers do not add up, if the money is coming from some other secrecy jurisdiction and they say that they are going to

start xyz business, but they have, for example, flows in the middle of the night, vast amounts of money that does not seem logical in relation to that business that they say they are creating, then the enablers would have to flag it pray law enforcement so they could look into it and make sure everything is above board. host: the enablers act and financial regulation and light of the revelations from the "pandora papers." that is the topic of conversation. if you want to join the conversation, the phone lines are as usual. 202-748-8001 for republicans. 202-748-8000 for democrats. 202-748-8002 for independents. josh rudolph is with us from the alliance for securing democracy. if you have read a story on this topic, you would probably find a quote from josh rudolph. he's been very busy. we talk about the enablers act

squeezing out of these routes for dirty money to be laundered. you talked about bank regulators have a rules they have to follow, but how much of this in the federal government is squeezing a balloon? and if we start going after the real estate agents, the trust fund managers, folks who are moving money will just find another route down the road to launder their money through. guest: interesting analogy. that's exactly what has happened. there was a lot of dirty money in the bank's before -- banks before we imposed these types of regulations after 9/11. what has happened since 9/11? first of all, we have not seen -- one of the many reasons we have not seen a terrorist attack on that scale is these regulations work. when the u.s. got into the about about compound, where bin laden was, one thing they found evidence of he was spending a

lot of his time looking for channels of money, saying the treasury department had cut him off. so it works, it is just over time new ways to stash money comes up -- come up, and regulatory elements are taking advantage of by bad actors -- taken advantage of by bad actors. eventually, you will cover all the major bases of it they are putting their money. so i do not think it is endless balloons of additional types of areas of goods and services. they like their yachts and fancy condos. host: banks a bigger business than the local real estate agent, an part dealer or investment advisor, so how much of the burden when the enablers act, or something similar, how much of a burden would it put on these small business owners in america to look into the finances of folks overseas?

guest: they are not -- they are mostly not small business owners, we are talking about hedge funds and private equity firms. when i say art dealers, that is not any random art dealer, the threshold would be $10,000 or more pieces of art, so the big auction houses, the museums, where we found out this week that looted cambodian art is sitting in the metropolitan museum of art. for it to cover investment advisors and realtors, there would be ways for them to outsource due diligence. many of these are sophisticated professions, where they know how to -- when you purchase a home, there is so much paperwork to do, and to have one more saying where did you get the money from is cannot a big burden. it's actually helpful, to most american businesses because it is a leveling the playing field

so they do not need to compete with the shop down the street that's taking money from a russian oligarch that can offer lower prices that way. we need a clean economy and i think most would appreciate that. host: to other countries require this level of due diligence in all these industries? guest: 90% of other countries do. the u.s. is among the 10% of countries, less than 10%, that did not require these nonbank enablers to watch out for dirty money. that is one reason why you see it concentrated here. that is why we are the enablers, because we are among the few countries that allow it. host: who does it the best? guest: the european union, actually, has -- or is very good at creating rules that cover the full financial system, because they look at these gaps. like the balloon you were talking about, after they make new rules they have a process of

coming back and figuring out, how is it being abated. and some derive one way or another the rulemaking process in brussels, but over time it creates a strong and comprehensive regime. they are not as good at supervising and enforcing as we are in the united states. every time you hear about a massive, multibillion-dollar bank money laundering scandal, inevitably they are european banks, and that is because in the united states we have multimillion dollar fines. if you were to combine our enforcement strength with a broader regulatory gambit, that would be the most powerful in the world. host: you are talking about putting regulations on banks after 9/11, but why didn't we look at the balloon again and see where the money was going? guest: good question, i wish you they're raising that question 20 years ago, because in the patriot act, right after 9/11,

that was one of the underappreciated elements, section three, which requires the treasury department to extend these rules to real estate agents, sellers of yachts and planes, and others. unfortunately, in 2002, the treasury department issued exemptions. and that is one thing that the enablers act does, in addition to adding seven new rules, it also asks for the appeal for these exemptions and that have been around for two decades. at that time in 2002, the government got distracted into focused elsewhere, among other things on the ground wars in other countries. with those ending, this is a stronger way to support democracy and our values in the world. host: i want to give you a chance to talk to the callers. the phone lines for you to keep calling in.

the republicans on 202-748-8001. the democrats on 202-748-8000. the independents on 202-748-8002 . in alabama, willie is a republican. caller: good morning. my comment is, and i am not sure if this is related to what he is speaking to, and i apologize if it doesn't, but i know about 11 years ago, halliburton was investigated by 60 minutes, they were doing a story on them because they had a shell company in the cayman islands and it was occupied by no one. it might've been money laundering. and i know that they get all the military contracts and so forth, so i would like for you to speak to that. guest: such a great question. you are probably more up to

speed on that case than i am, but there are a number of cases like that of military contracting that we do not know ultimately where all the money goes to, and unfortunately the latest and very important case, an example of that, is in afghanistan, where our top source or top destination of aid is in the world. and a lot of that money ended up in corruption. and sewing resentment against america. that is what produces a military that will not be so inclined to fight for their corrupt leaders. an echo of that same situation could potentially be in jordan, where one of the biggest regulations in the "pandora papers", the king of jordan spend more than $100 million on lavish properties around the world. he's already embattled over corruption in his own country, and that is the third-largest destination of american aid

around the world. so we need to take a close look at that and start cleaning up our own system. host: in arizona, mary. she's an independent. caller: did your investigation touch at all on the russian oligarch demetri --, who bought the former president's home for about $95 million? guest: yeah, that is a great question. my research, i do have a research piece called "regulating the enabler." and that comes up as one of the many examples of how foreign adversaries can potentially funnel money into our system. not just our financial system, but potentially to interfere in our political system. there's reporting that upon selling that property to demetri

rye blow, president trump said to a close confident that that is putin's money. when robert moeller saw president trump on the stage in helsinki with putin, he said if trump is compromised by putin, it would be because of money. that was a concern. we were not fully able to corroborate that, that it was intentionally the kremlin's money. but it does show how we do not know how and why foreign money comes into the u.s. host: rudy in seattle, good morning. you are on with josh rudolph. caller: i only have a comment in regards to our political system. it is set up in such a way that you can hire lobbyists to make

up certain laws to never be passed, that would take care of these problems. and as long as we allow billions of dollars of dark money in our political system, you are going to have a bunch of problems like this gentleman is talking about. that's all. goodbye. guest: thanks for that point. and you are right, so the enablers act, for example, is going to regulate all of these professional enablers. that's a lot of powerful interest groups. and on the others of that, enablers inflict a wide array of harms and dangers across american society, so the good news is that is reflected in a diverse motley crew of bipartisan lawmakers who are introducing the enablers act. at the top you mentioned tom lemanski, a former diplomat who sees corruption as the issue of

our time. on the other side you have maria salazar, the daughter of cuban exiles who knows thugs like castro -- like the casters. -- the castros. you have steve cohen focusing on yachts pushing up home prices. and joe wilson is focusing on china, iran and russian oligarchs. there is something for everyone in taking on the enablers. host: we focus a lot on the enablers act, but what about the other legislation that has been proposed, the justice for victims of kleptocracy act, combating global corrupting -- corruption act? guest: we are seeing the ground shift on capitol hill in terms of treating this corruption as a top national security challenge.

it's like the new communism compared to the cold war. it's our top challenge, how are adversaries are organized. and so you are seeing, for example, the kleptocracy caucus organize all of these new laws that would expose klepto clients -- kleptocratic. s. when the u.s. bars somebody for significant corruption from our country, these laws would require revealing who that is, coordinating with other countries to share information about who we ban, publicizing on the department of justice's website when we confiscate money, so that people in those countries can see it. lots of important movement on this issue. host: these are all bills, not laws yet. do you think they will become laws? how much pushback will they face in congress? guest: there is a bipartisan consensus around a lot of these, most of these. the ones you mentioned, i think

six new anti-kleptocracy bills were recently included, bipartisan bills, included in the house a version of the ndaa, so we have to see that continue on the senate side. but yeah, these pieces of legislation are moving. host: sean in ohio, a republican. you are on with josh rudolph. caller: hi, thank you for taking my call. i have a question when it comes to, when you happened to do the research of these papers, you mentioned trump's old house. has anything come up about the stuff with the bidens or soros, or with hunter biden, you know, his history and the millions in china? has anything looked into that?

same on the republican side, the american oligarchs with their money getting involved? guest: a great question, and i appreciate the way that you are asking it, asking about both sides and asking it as a genuine question. it's important to know. it's important to live in a country when we are asking questions, not just accusing the other side. one of the reasons why data leaks and careful investigations like the "pandora papers" are important, is because we do not want our political discourse to be based on innuendo but to be grounded in facts. i've not seen that, substantiated evidence with regards to most of those cases, frankly on either side. even though i got the question about real estate, about donald trump's real estate empire. the "pandora papers" is full of heads of state that cannot explain how they got hundreds of

millions of dollars. i have not seen evidence that puts trump in that group either. corrupt politicians have gotten and are mostly wealthy off of their positions. his background is more an enabler of foreign corruption, spending his life in real estate, selling his brand name to anybody with money without doing due diligence. but the pandora papers is mostly about the professional enablers in the united states and corrupt figures abroad. host: it is a good time to talk about the genesis of the "pandora papers." we did that yesterday on this program. greg miller, an investigative reporter, one of those who has been involved in the "pandora papers." and in plenty of the stories coming out this week on the "pandora papers." he answered viewer questions. one of the first he got was on how the "pandora papers" came about.

[video clip] >> it came through an organization of investigative journalists, which is a group of journalists that has gathered material like this before. they are best known for "the panama papers," which won a polluter prize of five or six years ago. they work with partners around the world, because the information they get is so expensive, it is too much for any single media organization to go through. so "the washington post" was part of a team that worked on this project for most of the past year. host: what did the information you got from the icij focus on? what were you looking for? guest: this is all offshore financial data, so that is referring to files, secret records, private business,

shell company and other registrations in a number of jurisdictions around the world. basically what we are looking at is kind of this parallel economy, this secret economy, in which wealthy individuals use jurisdictions, like the virgin islands, singapore and other places, to set up shell companies where they can hide wealth. and these were files from inside the company's that those individuals work with. so we are looking at millions of accounts. host: that was greg miller of "the washington post" yesterday on the genesis of the "pandora papers." what would you add? is there anything you can tell us or that you know about the origin of the leak of these papers or where they may have come from? guest: leaking from 14 companies, offshore financial companies, and their role is to

hide money around the world for people who are extremely wealthy, and sometimes corrupt. in terms of the ultimate origin of the leaders, this group of journalists were able to obtain documents from the 14 companies. that's kind of a tradecraft that i do not know. and i would not want to know, or for all of us to know, because it is important for them to be able to protect that so they can continue to have access to this type of information. in terms of what i would add to that, the importance of these investigations -- this is the civil society response and corollary to the international globalized, you know, manner in which corruption now occurs in an offshore system. if an oligarchy is going to be moving their money all around different jurisdictions, and

ultimately destined for real estate in malibu or around the world, then civil society, journalists, need to similarly by organized and collaborating -- i think that there were 600 journalists working on this for over a year, the biggest collaboration in history -- that's an important way of how we fight back. host: in the buckeye state, john, a democrat. caller: mr. randolph, are you familiar with the case a few years ago with bradley bergenfield and 19,000 secret bank accounts in switzerland? our politicians, he filed a whistleblower, and the department of justice put him in prison rather than go after the 19,000. hillary clinton ordered the department of justice not to

dive all of the names -- divulge the names. cheryl atkinson did a report on this. i called in before to talk to her. john, you cut me off and did not finish the question i wanted. those 19,000 of our government officials have stolen money from united states citizens. the went aftery 3500 at the bottom, recovered over $9 billion. and he got a settlement. and i would like to see that pursued further. they have trees and u -- trea soned us, stealing our money and lining their pockets with secret bank accounts. thank you. host: i am sorry you felt like i cut you off. we has cheryl atkinson here on this program in december of last

year, here to talk about her book. all of her appearances are available on our website at c-span.org. to the caller's question. guest: it is a great question about an important case. that case is what opened up, and ultimately help to break, swiss bank secrecy. and there was a response, a policy response and a legislative response that's now in place with regard to the americans who were keeping their money in swiss bank accounts so they wouldn't have to pay taxes. it's a law that requires overseas banks to tell the u.s. treasury treasury department about american citizens who are holding their wealth overseas. and so, if that was what happened with bank secrecy, and we saw a legislative response,

what i would like to see is something similar now with the "pandora papers," with regards to the nonbank enablers. host: clark in tennessee, good morning. are you with us? caller: yes. host: go ahead, sir. caller: i would like this gentleman to explain dark money. host: dark money, mr. rudolph. guest: whether it is called covert money or dark money, that is a really important issue, carter. money that is not transparent. in the case of the enablers act, we are talking about not even public transparency, but it is dark to the government and to law enforcement. dark money can refer to -- it can refer to campaign-finance

and the types of nonprofits that are used to, get money into elections it can refer -- get money into elections. it can refer to how money is put into our political system. i've had a report on that topic. but we live in a society where we need to live up to our values of transparent money by regulating the enablers. host: to rich in pennsylvania, a republican. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. as far as the dark money, and what you have been talking about with respect to lobbyists, i want to touch on something a previous caller mentioned. i will ask it in a different way. that's influence peddling. i've read that in every other, not every, but almost every other major country influence

peddling is a crime. it is not in america. can you talk about that? guest: sure. i guess it would depend on what exactly you mean by influence peddling, whether it is a lobbying or whatnot. so, we do have -- we have access to and rights to assistance with public relations and lobbying, it is part of our democracy, but it needs to be transparent first and foremost. so there is -- there's multiple regulatory apparatuses set up around what is called foreign agents registration or lobbying systems. my focus is on the illicit, dirty money that flows through professional enablers, because that is the part of the system that does not have similar regulatory set up, as would be required in the enablers act.

host: are hedge funds less regulated than a traditional bank? what are the differences versus banking regulations? guest: yes, it is surprising. but hedge funds and private equity firms are not required to have the same compliance officers that have to set up anti-money laundering programs to scrutinize their funders and to figure out where they got the money from. it's a good question and an important issue. the part of the u.s. government that is most concerned about this is the fbi, they have been fighting it for some time. a decade ago, there was a warning on the hedge funds that were investing in silicon valley, ultimately from russia, according to research. they were using that to try to steal military secrets. a year ago, the fbi had an

intelligence bulletin that said it is these hedge funds that do not have money laundering regulations that are being used by drug cartels, by organized crime, and increasingly what they pointed out was adversarial regimes to tried to control individuals. so it is a really important issue, regulating hedge funds. host: a separate issue as we get past 8:30 a.m., the bureau of labor statistics out with their september jobs report. we are keeping you updated on that. 194,000 jobs added in september. the unemployment rate fell to 4.8%. we will talk more about that in the final segment today. that news just out. back to your phone calls for josh rudolph. edward in grand prairie, texas, an independent.

caller: mr. rudolph, my concern is that we balance the books as it relates to african-americans, before we are overcrowded. and i have looked at the illicit money that the government is -- from all over the world. all of us that were kidnapped were not just jungle bunnies, some of us were kings and queens, and we still have those genetic traits. what we would like to see is the u.s. allow us to sit at the table when we discuss racial matters, which we do not see on tv. mr. biden was put into office primarily by the congressman from south carolina, with the promise he would create a committee to look into things so we could bring about parity. that has not occurred. we observed the way that he looked at the gentleman that was debating against him, who was encouraged to do this as soon as possible.

host: what would bring about parity in your mind? caller: i think a start -- the country is not even starting. allowing african-americans to settle land, like the original anglo-americans did, and giving them a small amount that could be agreed upon by the majority of the american people, say $300,000 each to start, and for 450 years of free labor. if i do not make my house payment in three months, you come and take it. host: we are getting a little off our original topic. and we only have a few minutes left to talk about financial regulation in the wake of the "pandora papers." luis in charleston, you are next. caller: i was concerned as to whether or not the act in the papers would cover a situation where the major oil companies go

to the countries on the coast of africa and have huge oil deposits offshore, but within the country's jurisdiction. it has been shown now that in the gone area -- ghana area, the leader got paid a huge amount of money and he and his son have purchased property in california. it was brought up that it was paid to him for a big oil concession. you are talking about looking into major oil companies purchasing oil drilling rights by basically bribing leaders in small countries about her on the coast of africa. guest: great question, maurice. while oil companies per se are not one of the enablers that would be regulated by the enablers act, the way they move their money, not just the oil company, but the corrupt officials who receive large

amounts of money, the way that they move their money is through enablers. on the coast of africa, for example, in angola, the kleptocrats, the daughter of a longtime leader there, isabel santos -- she became africa's richest woman, but the way she did so was the only on his job she ever had was an accountant, so she knew how to use the world's most effective accountants. she was able to use pwc and higher accountants to run her empire. sometimes even craft the presidential decrees that made her so wealthy. and so, yes, there are oil companies and kleptocrats, but we have to focus on the way the u.s. system enables them to move their money.

host: do you think that mexican cartels have assets in america? that's a question from twitter. guest: assets and networks or ways of laundering drug money to and from the united states, including cases like one of the ones i mentioned earlier, this gentleman who -- i guess this was a colombian cartel, but they used a black market peso exchange where they had a system of currency exchange to laundering drug money back into their home country. but than the money came back to america again in the form of sitting in a trust in south dakota. host: jenny, a republican. good morning. caller: -- host: are you with us? stick by your phone. sydney in louisiana, you are next. caller: good morning.

i would like to know where he is blaming all these foreign countries, russia, china and all - why don't you discuss the 131 federal judges that have just been put out that they were ruling on case courts, where they were making money by the decision. did you hear anything about that? guest: i did hear about that case. you probably know the details better than i do, but you are right to be asking -- we cannot just focus on corruption overseas when we have corruption here as well. so that is why the legislation, like the enablers act, would focus on all u.s. persons in

terms of the financial intermediaries of corruption, regardless of where it comes from. if it is anybody in the u.s. with ill-gotten gains and they are trying to stash money in south dakota, that would be covered as well. host: josh rudolph, we have seen so much from the "pandora papers" these past couple days, what more do you think is there, what should we be watching for in the coming days? guest: it has been striking, the fact that there are 35 world leaders, 14 currently sitting heads of state, one up for reelection today in the czech republic. so i think we have to continue to watch for the fallout around the world, what will happen in jordan. that will be the first stage,. but the second is what we will do about it. are we going to finally regulate the professional enablers who

are identified here? is legislation going to move on? we have not talked about the administration. is the treasury department going to take this on isaiah priority? -- on as a priority? will president biden launch a regulatory initiative around enablers, as i recommend in my research? so there is a lot we can do, including on both ends of pennsylvania avenue. host: thank you for joining us. josh rudolph is a fellow from the alliance for securing democracy. you confided them -- can find them online, if you want to see his work. thanks for the time. next, we will be joined by kyle kondik and explore political polarization.

we will be right back. ♪ ♪ announcer: weekends on c-span2 bring you the best in american history and nonfiction books. on saturday at 2:00 p.m. eastern, during their terms as president, thomas jefferson, abraham lincoln, lyndon johnson and richard nixon faced not only political opponents, but americans that hated them. here a panel examines the reasons. and at 8:00 p.m., we will feature two programs on women's political causes. first, the wentworth institute of technology professor allison lange teaches a class on the women's suffrage movement. she describes how women's voting rights activists and opponents

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undertake a study on this topic. guest: where i work is working with a new group that is concerned about, as we are, they divide in the country and at the deep amount of distrust between people who voted for donald trump and people who voted for john biden -- joe biden. we have been rolling out pieces of the study. we introduced the project last thursday. and one of the things that comes out is on certain policy matters, a decent number, trump and biden voters are not far apart, it is the details of the infrastructure bill that passed the senate and is now kind of awaiting its feet in the house -- fate in the house, but most of it is things that are strongly supported by bothsides. -- by both sides. then you get to contentious

proposals like tax increases, making community college free, and that is where you start to see differences on policy matters. and there is also extreme distrust in that. a big swath of voters do not trust those on the others. they think elected officials from the other side are a threat to the country. i do not think it is earth shattering to say that the country is divided. but i think that the depth of these findings has been kind of alarming to some. and that is why we did the project, we want to expose these things and figure out ways for people to talk more effectively with host: host: each other. on measuring the division, when people say, we are more divided than we have ever been, are they right? guest: this is the first time we have done this actual poll, so i cannot say we did it 20 years ago and it said things were better. we also fought a civil war.

so i think it always feels like things are worse now than they have ever been, but with that said my guess is if you did a poll 20 or 30 years ago, the difference would not be as stark. the country is ideologically sorted out. 30 years ago, you had more moderates in the democratic party, more liberals in the conservative party. i think that the electorate kind of showed more willingness to cross over. now we are in a time where very few states have a senator from each party representing it in the senate. you only have 17 houses districts that voted for a party for president, one party for the house. there's not as much crossover in congress as there used to be.

and it is reflected in these numbers, too, that the partisan camps are well divided and if they do not like each other. host: political polarization is the topic. republicans, 202-748-8001. it democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, 202-748-8002. this is kyle kondik. i should also note he's the author of "the long red thread." i want to get to the booking a little bit, but returning to the findings on political polarization. a strong majority of trump voters see no difference between democrats and socialists. a majority of biden voters agree there is no real difference between republicans and fascists. that's one finding. 41% of biden voters agree that

it is time to split the country into parts, red and blue states seceding from the union. does that worry you? guest: i think it is worrisome. i do not think it is that people will act on those actions, but if you are basically willing to say that we should split the country because it is so divided, which is an opinion you do see expressed from commentators, i do think it is illustrative of the divide, even though i do not think that that is something that will happen. you have to remember, when the country fought a civil war, you had an obvious division between north and south, slave and non-slave states. yes, today you have red and blue states, but a lot of them are a mix where you have kind of big blue urban areas and red rural

areas. how you would actually divide up a country, even if you wanted to, and i personally do not want to, how you would even do that, i do not know how it would work. host: coming back to the historical comparisons. in "the washington post," it's said it is fashionable to say that the u.s. is at its low point. and we are more divided, more deceived than ever before. our problems are too large and our leaders are too small for their jobs. what the diagnosis gets wrong is the historical dimension. not much is happening now that has not happened before. the climate crisis appears more menacing than the nuclear holocaust of the kennedy years because it is in the foreground and the other has receded. the immigration crisis seems more urgent only because this one's reckoning feel robbed

because it is happening to us, not because it is more painful than the lynchings or chattel slavery. guest: those are fair points. i will not guarantee to you that the situation is spelled out -- that's spelled out in this poll is worse than before. part of what happened, and i get into this in the book, is that over the course of many decades, the parties realign themselves ideologically. they realign themselves geographically. and there was far less crossover than there used to be. i think that our political system, there's so many checks and balances, the filibuster in the senate, and all these stopping points in the system that i think requires some bipartisan cooperation to essentially get things done, unless one side has a gigantic

majority. what's different now is we are in a time of small majorities in the house and senate, there are chokepoints in the system and we cannot get through them. that, the governing structure, seems worse, even if the other challenges we face, certainly america has a dark history with race, that you could argue is better now than it has been. but that there continues to be challenges, as the columnist noted. and immigration, of course, is a long-standing push and pull in u.s. history, so i agree with that. but i wonder if the governing arrangement we have with a two-party system we have is equipped to deal with these challenges. i mean, again, i do not think that those are unfair points. host: on the book, "the long red thread, how democratic dominance

gave way to republican advantage in u.s. house elections." republican advantage at a time when democrats are in control of the house. guest: that is a fair point. what i was trying to illustrate is you have this long time from the great depression through the republican revolution in 1994 , where democrats controlled the house. and now, since 1994, the republicans, even though the democrats control the majority now, the republicans have controlled the majority for 20 out of 80 years and appear poised to win the house back in 2022. so, what the book traces is what changed in the house and what has transitioned the house from a time where the democrats would

always win big majorities to one where it is not evenly balanced. host: it is almost like you have a crystal ball you are looking into. now to the callers. richard, a democrat. caller: i want to talk about human nature. you go anywhere in the world, anytime, and you will find people who are very empathetic. and they are the kind of people that would -- to somebody they do not even know. opposite, the sociopaths. they do not care about anybody. and i do not care where you are in that world, there is those groups of people. in the west, in the last century, when the poles divided,

it ended up with the fascists and socialists. you found it in the 1930's. and you find it now, in europe and in the united states. that is where we are now, the socialist versus the fascist. host: again, what we talked about in the polling. guest: democrats will sometimes call republicans fascists, republicans will call the democrats socialists. there's some democrats that refer to themselves as being socialist. one thing i will say, i think the caller goes a little far in his descriptions, but i will say that -- and our research gets into this, and there are other researchers that look at this. there's a book called "the righteous mind," which talks about the psychological differences between folks who end up in the democratic camp and those who generally end up

in the republican camp. and i think there are different ways of looking at the world, different kinds of attitudes, i suppose, that you could associate with one side or the other. i would not make a value judgment on which one is better. i think people think about these things in different ways and it can be hard sometimes to reconcile the opinions of the two sides. host: justin in the peach state. good morning. caller: i'm a true independent that will support either side, but i change a little more towards the republicans after obamacare in 2010. and got real time information. and i can link it to the immigration situation. they know all the money we are giving is doing what is going on with the king of jordan, all the leaders down there are pocketing money and sending migrants our way. i was on a conference call in

2010, where it was said illegal immigration is a national security threat. the biggest difference now is our welfare and social programs. many of them are coming here, unfortunately, and this is from intel from 10 years ago, to get on our social services while we send money, knowingly, 93% of the money we send -- we are airlifting money to kabul. they will not know where that money is going. and the american public is now getting this information. and the reason i do not support the dems anymore is i would sit in consultations with them, they would look at an intel report, and go out and lie about it. host: justin in georgia. the issue of immigration. guest: it is a dividing line between the two parties, in that

either -- how many illegal immigrants we let into the country or what we do about legal immigration, republicans are more likely to be concerned about the issue, favoring or the more restrictive on that issue and democrats attend to more laissez-faire on immigration. but we could talk about history, this has been a dividing line between the two parties. you go back 150 years, the democrats back then, in some ways they were also the party of more recent immigration. and the republicans are more the party who have established groups that could trace their lineage back longer, and that was a push and pull. and be. a lot of people who voted for trump concerns expressed about

illegal immigration, about immigrants coming into the country and affecting their livelihood in some way whether it be social safety net having to take care of more folks coming into the country, job situation, or what have you, so it does represent a dividing line. i also think it's an issue, immigration in general, it is not one that necessarily has easy answers because if you are going to have any restriction on immigration, if you are going to essentially prevent people from coming into the country, how strongly to enforce that, what do you do with folks already here? i'm not necessarily prescribing the solutions here. all them saying is reasonable people can come to different conclusions as to what to do and immigration ends up being also a political headache for whoever the president is. i think biden has suffered in some ways because as trump was seen as maybe too hard on

immigration, biden as seen -- is seen as too soft. there is this constant push and pull on it. these are difficult issues. host: 9:00 a.m. eastern, about a half-hour left with kyle. we have been talking about the series of polls you are working on, the project you are doing at the center for politics along with project home fire. you pulled trump and biden voters. why not do the regular democrats and republicans? guest: there's going to be a lot of crossover between people who identify as democrats, people identify as biden voters, and people who identify as republicans and trump voters. i think he wanted -- we wanted to set up 100% on one side and 100% on the other and avoid the folks who may be voted third party or call themselves one party label but maybe vote a different way. there are still some of those folks in the country,

particularly if you look at party registration in certain states, republicans in say like west virginia, they only recently overtook democrats in terms of part a registration edge in that state and that is a state that voted for donald trump the majority the time. so if you ask about registration, there could be differences but fundamentally, we wanted to look at the attitudes of specifically biden voters and specifically of trump voters. host: somers point, new jersey. this is captain an independent. good morning. caller: good morning. i'm speaking to the situation of creating wealth offshore with american companies, which they have been doing for many years. my family was good at it. at the time, my father was the largest manufacturer of commercial refrigeration in the world, privately owned. his fortunes were made by setting up affiliates and

distributorships but mostly joint manufacturers. host: i'll tell you what, it is a story that might have worked better in the previous segment when we were talking about dark money in the movement of money around the country. you have a comment on political polarization. that is what we are talking about now. caller: yes. i think it benefits some people to make people angry at each other. i think consequently some folks know how to increase their popularity in the polls by pinning people -- pitting people against each other. that is pre-much what has happened. host: we will take the point. guest: i think it is a fair point. one of the things i think we are hopeful to do with this polling and data project going forward is to try to point out some of the messages that politicians can use that instead of may be intentionally trying to divide folks, we can maybe build bridges. in an ideal world, both parties have been incentivized to have

those kinds of messages but unfortunately, as captain said, they are sometimes incentivized the other way in stoking division can be a way to win elections. i think it is maybe not the greatest way to try to govern the country or certainly bring stuff together. host: we want to remind viewers what sabato's crystal ball is. guest: we are nonpartisan elections newsletter and come out at least a couple times a week. you can sign up for free at our website and get our newsletter. we do handicapping of elections and on a midterm year, u.s. house, governors races, senate races, we are following the redistricting going on in the country right now, which is redrawing the house map in most states and all across the country. those are the things we write about and will be publishing more findings in our polling project we have been talking about with project home fire.

sign-up, centerforpolitics.org/ crystalball. host: what does the crystal ball say about the race in virginia. guest: we do ratings anyway from pop-up, 50-50, or safe republican or safe democratic. we don't see any side losing -- we don't see the one side losing in those. in the election cycle, we still see a democrat as a small favorite in this race, though i have to say my understanding is that there has been a lot of public polling and private polling indicating the race is very close, margin of error. there was a pretty respected poll in virginia that came out this morning from the christopher newport university. they had them up by four points. there have been a number of polls that have followed within that range. you might be mcalpine young kim,

and i feel that way, but i think it will be the race. glenn juncker and is the republican nominee, someone from the business world. donald trump did poorly in virginia, particularly the second time he lost in 2020, which ended up being the biggest democratic when for president in virginia since the lyndon johnson landslide. i think that overstates a little bit how democratic virginia is. it has definitely become a left of center state at this point. i think junking has appeal to republican voters in northern virginia. i think this is a closing competitive race, a race that often brace against the white house. it is pretty common for the party that does not hold the white house to end up winning this race after the presidential race.

that means it gets a lot of national attention. so many political commentators and operatives live in virginia and i think that also causes a little more focus to be on it. host: how terry mcauliffe has run this race, what will it mean if he wins? guest: he started by clearly embracing joe biden then i think he is now. i think he has read the tea leaves and set himself he was on a call a couple days ago and admitted biden is not popular in virginia. as biden has gone from his approval in the low to mid 50's for much of the start of his presidency, it is now turned to negative. i think it was dipping in july and august, and the collapse of the government in afghanistan exacerbated the bias problems,

so i think you are seeing mccullough -- mcauliffe, he tried to create distance with himself and the obama white house. i think he has supported biden and had to pivot because he has gone from being a clear asset to maybe not a clear asset. host: from the old dominion to the hoosier state, this is howard, a democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. the polarization in my view is our most critical issue right now. just to cite the reference from tim burns, the documentarian we are all pretty familiar with, he is famous, who has chronicled major episodes in american history like the civil war, world war ii, kim burns counts the times as on par with those episodes in our history. my concern is we equivocate a

lot and attempt to be evenhanded saying democrats and republicans are both guilty, and i disagree with that. we had any insurrection by a specific political party, headed by a criminal president. that is very different. we need to address it more clearly. we have individuals showing up in school board meetings with guns and other violent issues, the violence around the country 's much known, white supremacist groups are on the march. these times are different than others. when we try to do this quick occasion, it worries me because -- equivocation, it worries me because we don't get to the issues. we have a constitutional framework for our democracy where we assume that all of us

agree to what the aspirations we reflect in our constitution. i think today, that is not true. we have a party that is working against our constitutional framework and we need to call that out. we have had people who cheered the insurrectionists who are now sitting in congress. so how do we identify these embedded domestic enemies that now reside in the republican party? host: we will take the question. guest: i do think it is fair, particularly in terms of the kind of lack of trust between the two sides. when donald trump is president, particularly after the election, the stuff he said about the integrity of the election was very irresponsible and he was not backed up at all. i think we know, because even trump criticize -- even though he won in 2016, he criticized

the integrity of that election as a way to sort of deflect from not winning the national popular vote but the bottom line is i think he has propagated a belief amongst many republicans that the election was somehow stolen or biden did not win or whatnot and the results were only audited or what have you that the result would be different. it wouldn't be different. he lost. as mitch mcconnell told him after the election, i think that is documented in the new bob costa book, that ultimately trump was going to say the election was rigged and fraudulent anyway and he has been searching for evidence that backs up that predetermined assertion and has not presented anything compelling. that is corrosive. i think it is fair to say. i will certainly not both sides that particular piece of it. host: to arizona, nathan, a republican. good morning. caller: good morning to both of

you. i wanted to say the last time polarization had gotten out of hand it was the civil war. we will blame democrats for that because it was a democrat-caused war. i used to be able to say voters on the democratic side should not be blamed, but they have as much responsibility now as they did and we found out the democratic national committee created russia-gate, the special prosecutor confirmed that last month. to consider all of this talk about insurrection and stealing an election, it is the democratic leader creating all of this. i was just listening to chuck schumer this morning on c-span talking about how it was republican fault but mitch mcconnell was adamant in saying democrats have insisted they do not need republicans, have proven they do not need republicans, and they did with they did today or yesterday without one vote of the republicans. host: on what happened this week

on the debt ceiling, kyle kondik , the caller pointing out the republicans did not vote for the final bill to raise the debt ceiling through december 3 but a lot of republicans joining democrats to break the filibuster, to end debate and move to that vote. does that give you some sign of hope? guest: [laughter] not particularly. the debt ceiling, and i would have said this -- in fact i did say this when trump was president, the debt ceiling always ends up getting raised. that we have gotten to the point where there is a lot of brinksmanship on the debt ceiling, and it seems to me risking a devault would be a bad situation. for the stature of -- the financial stature of the united states. i think the way you look at this depends on what you think an actual majority in the senate is , because the votes are there to do a longer term debt ceiling

increase, it is just it would be essentially a 51/50 vote if everyone was present with kamala harris breaking the tie. the republicans are choosing to filibuster, and you have to ask yourself, is it sort of a natural state of affairs that everything must be filibustered? that helps you assign what blame is. my thinking would be that republicans don't have to filibuster the debt ceiling, won't have to vote for it, but actively filibustering it prevents it from getting to the senate but you also have to ask yourself, what is the majority in the senate actually. is it a majority or 60 votes because you should assume everything should be filibustered? i think different people could come to different conclusions on that but we have averted this particular debt ceiling crisis but will have another one coming up. the democrats have the power through reconciliation to deal with it. i sort of felt this throughout this whole back-and-forth that

it is in some ways posturing as to what will end up being in political ads next year. i think republicans want to be able to say that democrats are going to argue -- they are going to argue the democrats are spending too much money, that they are busting the budget, and that sort of thing, so to me, they could say that anyway without the debt ceiling. i sometimes wonder what is really the purpose of the debt ceiling other than create these kind of what i think are artificial crises but also real crises in that if we ever did breach the debt limits, who knows what might happen and what that would do to the united states international financial standing. host: you mentioned the filibuster. what argument for those who disagree with doing away with the filibuster, those who support the filibuster say it is one mechanism that forces at least the senate to come together and find some votes on the other side, unless one side has a super majority.

what are your thoughts on the filibuster and whether it helps bipartisanship. guest: i don't agree and fosters compromise. it prevents action. in the eye of the beholder, some people might say preventing action is good. a lot of conservatives would say that because they want the government to do less and are perfectly entitled to that opinion, but the thing is the filibuster does not seem to me anyway to really foster compromise. it is just preventing things from happening. one of the things we had in our poll was you saw a slice of biden and trump voters who express what i think is some agreement with what is a fairly extreme belief, at least in the structure of american government, that it would be better if the president could take needed action without the constraints of congress or courts. that is sort of -- that is an

authoritarian tendency that you want to give more power to the president and remove checks and balances. however, i think maybe some people look at our current governing strata your -- governing structure and see chokepoints in the system and wish there were not as many chokepoints, that parties could get more done if they were actually in power. though again, the filibuster does not even necessarily -- sometimes the filibuster is not applicable, like when republicans were trying to change the affordable care act and they cannot figure it out within their own senate caucus to how they could get that to happen. if you did away with the filibuster, you would see more action. you would see extreme action on both sides and then it would be a calculation to whatever party is in position and potentially do away with the filibuster. in this case, it is the democrats. do they want to take the short-term gain now for whatever they can pass and risk a long-term consequences later when republicans have control of

the government and they can do what they want in a more unfettered way. host: mary lou in cleveland, ohio. independent, good morning. caller: good morning. hi. for 44 years i voted republican and was a registered republican. when trump was nominated, i changed to unaffiliated in ohio because i could not vote for a third rate reality tv host. i find the division comes from cable news. the only thing i watch now will be c-span. i watched the hearings, i hear each individual person give their opinion at hearings. i think trump drives ratings, and i think the reason we hear about him constantly is because it drives cable news ratings. i think that is a sin. i read everything, the "new york

times," the dealer, the washington times, everything, the american spectator, i read it all. i find cable news to be the driving force of polarization. host: before you go, of those papers you mentioned, the "new york times," cleveland plain dealer, washington times, defined you end up trusting one of those more than the others? caller: yes. host: which one? caller: the "new york times." i will tell you why. because they criticize themselves. they criticize themselves. i like that. i like retractions. i do like that. the washington times, i used to like it and then they started having journalists that were getting opinions and not facts. i want to say one thing, you had scott mcfarlane on, i think it

was nbc -- host: the local news station? caller: he is the one that you had on following the january 6 insurrection, following all of the court cases you had him on. host: yes, ma'am. caller: what an outstanding journalist. facts, not opinion. that is all i want. thank you. host: we will likely have him on again. he is a local nbc news reporter who has been covering the january 6 and probably come on again as the cases work their way through the justice system. on the media, kyle kondik? guest: first of all, he is a great reporter. i follow him on twitter to get the news what is going on with the fallout from january 6. i think the caller is spot on about cable news i think does function in a lot of ways as a source of division in the country.

i would also add social media. i guess i am, like the color i am a traditionalist in my news sources. i get most of my news from essentially reading traditional mainstream news outlets and finding those on social media. on social media, you can find a lot of good stuff through it but i think you also find a lot of stuff that may be is not particularly accurate and i think contributes to some conspiracy theories, be it queue and other things. that's another thing we ask about in the pole with believe in certain kinds of conspiracy theories and probably not that surprising but belief in certain conspiracy theories was also linked to whether a person was supportive of breaking up the country or not. so you can see the kind of corrosive impact those sorts of beliefs can have on essentially

belief in the country as a whole. host:host: before we leave the topic of social media, we occasionally show political cartoons from the days paper. this is usa today a pack of cigarettes and facebook on a cell phone, asking a question, which hand held product has profited more for human weakness, suffering, and addiction? that is usa today. did you want to comment on that? guest: i was going to say tough but fair. host: janet is next out of massachusetts, a democrat, good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i wanted to follow-up on a couple colors back from indiana. and you won't help because you won't admit trump is still saying he one. it is not in the past, he is still doing it. and he knows how to manipulate

true television. he came from television. at any rate, let's call a turkey a turkey and get on with the business of america. he has got to be shut up. host: what is the business of america right now? caller: it's repairing from what we have been through for the last four years. it is disgusting what he put us through. host: kyle kondik. guest: first of all, i don't disagree with the caller that trump is still doing this and saying frankly, frankly, these crazy -- saying, frankly crazy, things that are not verified. he's just making stuff up about the integrity of the election, which i think was a miracle that in the midst of a pandemic we held such a high turnout election that i think was confidently run across the country and i think it is a shame the candidate who lost

won't admit to that and continues to foster mistrust in what i think was a fairly open and shut election. people can disagree on should we have much mail-in voting as we did in those elections and should we have as much going forward. sure, but that does not necessarily mean there were problems with mail-in ballots and the way the election was administered. so again, i think that there have been all of these criticisms from the former president, day in and the caller has -- and i agree with the caller on that, he has not given this up. i think a lot of republicans feel the need to go along with the former president on this matter and there is no there there in terms of the accusation and believe he did not win, he did not win. host: this is a republican from

new jersey, good morning. caller: the question i have for your guest as if his pole had questions on critical race theory and if that teaching technique or teaching curriculum is in a country where you have a whole generation of american children being grown up to hate their own country. guest: we haven't released anything specifically about critical race theory. we have had findings about racial social justice matters and people have obviously different viewpoints on even those terms and what those terms mean. you find predictable results in that on some of these issues, you find biden voters more concerned about some of the social justice and racial justice matters than trump voters are. different pedal -- different people to find those things in different ways anyway. host: before you go, before you

came on the program, we found out the september jobs numbers, numbers less than expected, 194 thousand jobs added in september but don implement rate did fall to 4.8%. your analysis on what that means and what president biden is likely to say in a few hours when he speaks about it. guest: i am no economist but i know we have this every month and there are certain expectations. the expectations were not met and were not even close. i did see, before i came on, that may be last months number or the months prior to that were advised upward, the impact was not quite as much. president biden, i think he is suffering from -- i think he wanted to bring the country back to normal and have a time of good feeling following what he hoped would be the end of the pandemic. while the pandemic is not over, the economy as part of a consequence is not humming along he -- along the way he

might have wanted, his agenda is bottled in congress. you put these together and these are the challenges the president faces as the term goes on and we are almost at the halfway point to the midterm. i think it struggles in the midterm in this president has tiny majorities in the house and senate. the governing arrangement is at risk. host: kyle kondik is the managing editor of sabato's crystal ball at the university of virginia. when can viewers start looking for your book? -- for your newsletter? guest: it is showing up in people's mailboxes. host: thank you so much for your time. caller: thank you. host: 30 minutes left in the program and in the final 30 minutes, we will get your reaction to the jobs numbers,

194,000 jobs added in september. we want to get your thoughts. republicans, democrats, and independents, the numbers are on your screen. you can call in now and we will be right back. ♪ >> watch the national book festival hosted sunday, hosted by the library of congress, featuring online author discussions and live call-in segments. joseph ellis talks about his book the cause, the american revolution its discontent. that's 1773 to 1783. he joins us live at 2:30 p.m. to take our calls and tweets. a discussion about the opioid after but -- epidemic.

after the discussion at 3:00 p.m., eric air will join us live and catherine belton with her book. then joshua yap, author of between two fires. at 4:30 p.m. time, the history in women in medicine and olivia campbell, with women in white coats. on kansas democratic representative charisse davis her book charisse's big voice. watch book tv's coverage of the 21st annual national book festival, sunday at 2:00 p.m. eastern on book tv on c-span2. ♪ >> at c-span -- c-spanshop.org is c-span's store.

browse apparel, books, the core, and accessories. there is something for every fan . every purchase supports nonprofit organizations. shop now or anytime at c-spanshop.org. >> "washington journal" continues. host: just about half an hour left in the "washington journal" this morning. around 10:00 a.m. eastern, we are i expect it to take you to a pro forma session in the house of representatives. until then, getting your reaction to september jobs numbers release in our ago by the bureau of labor statistics. the total payroll employment rose by 194 thousand in september and the unemployed rate fell by .4 percentage points to 4.8%. notable job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, in professional and business's services, retail, transportation, and warehousing area employment in public education specifically was one

area that so i distinct decline. that is topline numbers. here are the numbers to call in. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. just some of the reaction from economic reporters and those who keep a close eye on the job numbers each month. josh bo act of the associated press notating that number from local schools, local schools shedding 145,200 jobs in the month of september. this from brian chung of yahoo! on this program this week to talk about economic numbers, noting from the reports, among those not in the labor force who wanted a job, the number of persons largely attached to the labor force edged up to 1.7 million following a decline in august. this from the american association of manufacturers

saying manufacturing gained a 26,000 jobs in september and i could grow but supply chain shortages continue to hamper the sector, down 353,000 jobs overall since february 2020. that is just some reaction so far. we bring you more reaction, and we specifically want your reaction. phone lines are open to get your thoughts on the job situation in this country. robert in chesapeake, ohio, a republican, good morning, you are a first. -- up first. caller: thank you for taking my call. how come the republican states are doing so much better in the economy and jobs are now? host: robert, how are things going in chesapeake, ohio? caller: they are doing well. host: what has been helpful in your state? caller: job performance very well because republicans are running the country right now as far as jobs are going. host: robert in chesapeake,

ohio. in phoenix, arizona, good morning. caller: good morning, john. i think this job report just indicates the trickle of number of jobs that will be available within the structured plan and human resources plan. just the amount of work that needs to be done to retool our economy for environmental needs. i think that is a good view of what is to come. can i just make one comment about the open phones, about my biggest story of the week? host: sure, rob. go ahead. caller: i thick the story in phoenix, arizona about reuben, the congressman, putting in a bid or being forward to challenge kyrsten sinema on the 2024 senate seat, i think christensen emma has shown she

is office-gating her real position. i have known her for 20 years and i think she is a great disappointment for arizona. so ruben, go for a seat against kyrsten sinema in 2024. host: rob in arizona, used the word disappointments, a word attached to the jobs numbers from september. this is the cnn headline on it. another disappointed, -- disappointment, the -- economists said the u.s. employers would add as much as half a million jobs last month. just under 200,000 jobs added. clay in florida, any independence, good morning. your thoughts on that report. caller: there is no jobs. everything is in red china thanks to the warburgs that are

completely illegal and in illinois. host: that is clay in florida and this is pam in mississippi. a republican. good morning. caller: good morning. i have quite a number i think of reasons why the job rating is down. part of it i that people have been home and stayed home and do not want to take the free money coming in and stay at home since everything since the pipeline was closed, gasoline has risen, it is going crazy that it is actually not worth working at some places. plus, all of the mandates for teachers, nurses, everything to do with that has to do with

people wanting to go back to work. so i really believe it has been -- it is just a disaster on the democrat part and i like some of the democrats that actually stood up for what they believe. host: pam on the pandemic's impact on jobs in this country, since fairly early on in the pandemic, the bureau of labor statistics has been adding supplemental questions to its monthly jobs question, the polls they used to come up with these reports each month. here's what they write about, those supplemental questions, additional questions for september. in september, 13.2 percent of employed persons telework because of the coronavirus pandemic. little changed from the prior month. in september, 5 million peoples claimed they were unable to work because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic.

that is they did not work at all or worked fewer hours in the last four weeks due to the pandemic. among those not in the labor force in september, one point 6 million persons were prevented for looking for work due to the pandemic, little changed from august. other supplemental data in that report. that is available at vls.gov. we are showing you that data that just came up about an hour ago, coming out at 8:30 a.m. time eastern on the first friday of every month. this is just in indiana, independent. good morning. caller: thanks for taking my call. i would like to connect to couple dots. i tried to get in on the last segment and i think it relates there also. it relates to the job numbers. i live in northern indiana between fort wayne and south bend. help wanted signs everywhere. in fort wayne, amazon is building a plant, not half done with it, and they say that

will employ people in fort wayne. there is already help wanted signs everywhere. where will those people come from? and i saw on the local news in the elkhart area, amazon is also building a plant, probably will employ 2000 people. up there, help wanted signs everywhere. to connect the dots on southern indiana, refugees are coming over from afghanistan, we have people coming in from the southern border. these people are more than willing and able, probably, to take these jobs and would be more than happy these jobs and i bet they will get vaccinated. i would like to see some of those dots connected because the jobs are out there and we are importing the people, we will take them, if we wipe the dust out of our eyes and see the truth. host: fox 59 in indiana with the

associated press story on this and their headline is "amazon to employ more than 1000 people at two new facilities in northern indiana." , the story the caller was talking about. ricky in michigan, democrats, good morning. caller: how are you doing? host: doing well. caller: i think the caller was right. these people who would take the jobs but the main thing is mandating the shots and stuff. because people's is scared to go to work because they scared to get the virus. if these people don't get the shots, who knows what shot they probably -- what job they probably go into. they might spray it up in their job. i think people are just scared to go back to work because they know that, you know, places is not due to mandate.

host: it was yesterday president biden travel to illinois to talk about vaccine requirements and the administration's push for vaccine requirements at businesses. this was the president yesterday. [video clip] pres. biden: we have to beat this thing. while i didn't race to do it right away, that is why i have had to move to requirements, everyone get vaccinated, where i had the authority to do that. that was not my first instinct. my administration is requiring federal workers to be vaccinated. we also required federal contractors to be vaccinated. we have a contractor working for the federal government, you have to be vaccinated. we are requiring active duty military to be vaccinated, making sure health-care workers are vaccinated, because if you seek care at a health care facility, you should have a certainty the people providing that care are protected from covet and cannot spread it to you. the labor department is going to

shortly issue an emergency rule, which i ask or -- asked for several weeks ago and they are going to the process of requiring all employees with more than 100 people, whether they work for the federal government or not, this is in the purview of the labor department, to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated or faced testing at least once a week. in total, this labor department vaccination were armand will cover 100 million americans, about two thirds of all of the people working in america. here's the deal. these are already proving to work. host: president biden yesterday in illinois. we hear more from president biden today, specifically on the jobs report. we expect that in two hours from the white house, 11:30 officially on the president's schedule, eastern. you can watch it on the c-span networks. also president biden later this afternoon, 145 time eastern,

delivering remarks on restoring protections for some national monuments. here is the new york times a story on what we are expecting the president to stay there. the president is expected to announce he will use his executive authority to restore sweeping environmental protections to three major national monuments that have been stripped away by former president donald trump according to people familiar with the matter. he will reinstate and expand the 1.3 million acre boundary errors -- boundaries of a national monument and the boundaries of grand staircase escalante, per steamed protections for wildlife. also the first marine monument, the northeast canyons and see mouth off of the new england coast. that is what we expect the president to talk about at 1:45 p.m. eastern. check the c-span networks for coverage of all of the president's remarks today.

joe in maryland, good morning. >> good morning. thank you for taking my call. putting it on the soundbite is so hard to do and numbers coming down like this kind of makes sense, based on everything going on. i think we have to be careful getting too hung up and it -- up in it. it is numbers i could be changed, might not mean a whole lot. i think we have to get focused. one gentleman said people are scared to work. you can be as scared as you want but i will tell you what, you will go to work if you want to support your family. i know people are scared, only staying home saying they are scared if people are supporting them. they are not living in the streets. you are in the streets you will work. etc., etc. if i can say one more thing on this friday. it is so important to me. in maryland, we are caught in the middle. we live in the beltway, politics, everybody's a

stranger. we are struggling really hard. we have help wanted signs everywhere, people living in the woods struggling from different nationalities. i am an independent now and it is hard to pick a side. seems like they are on the same team. i'm running for governor, 2022, independent. i might make it and might not but i will get things going in the right way. we gotta get in the middle. the sides are killing us. host: what is your platform for governor? caller: meet in the middle. we've gotta get this done. the sides are killing us and we have to get to the middle-of-the-road. we have to look at the books and figure things out. i don't want to talk about the past, we have to talk about tomorrow. we can't talk about who killed kennedy or what trump did, we have to move forward and worry about the future. as a parent, it is all i think about, my kid's future. i appreciate all of the time you give me. everybody has heard me and love

it. we appreciate your work and thanks a lot. i think we can fix all of this. all of the numbers, we can change this. host: that's joe in leonard towne, maryland, running for governor in maryland. you talk about numbers that can be revised. just notes on what came out from the bureau of labor statistics today and what it means for past jobs reports -- excuse me, friday's report revised up each of the last two payroll reports with the payroll revision up by 135,000 to reach 360 6000, the number they now say of jobs that were added in august. the july payroll revisions were up 38,000 to just over one million jobs added in july. those two reports being revised up in the wake of what the bureau of labor statistics found in their september report. these numbers do change as the months go forward and made a bit

more exact as they go. kenny in ellen borough, north carolina, he democrat. topline number, 194,000 jobs added. what are your thoughts? caller: my thought is the right-wing will not get vaccinated because they are still calling it a hoax, like they called russia a hoax. when they will not get vaccinated, the numbers are not going to get better. the very same people that jump up and down saying america's perfect the -- perfect every way, -- you cannot go inside anywhere except your own house if you are not vaccinated in israel. america needs to do that. why do we have these numbers? january 6, we called it any insurrection. no, they try to overthrow the

government of the united states. if you are in the trump party and disagree with him in anyway way, they censor you and kick you out of the party. host: that's kenny in north carolina. next up is a republican. your thoughts on these job numbers coming out this morning. caller: joe biden is so inspiring, isn't he? host: your thoughts on the job numbers, joseph? caller: i think they are wonderful. joe biden is so inspiring. host: that is joseph. this is patty in harrisburg. good morning. caller: good morning. i think we have to get back to the truth about things in science and [indiscernible] host: bring me to jobs numbers. caller: the jobs numbers are there because i think there are a lot of people who want to work

but are afraid, fearful for their safety, even if they have a vaccine. i see there are some people that do not one work. the majority of people do want to work and i think this is all new to them. host: lynn in maryland, democrat, good morning. caller: good morning. thank you so much. is this john? host: yes, ma'am. caller: thank you so much. the numbers are a little troubling but one of the things i keep hearing people say is about the importance of the vaccine mandates. i understand that to prevent serious illness, but what we really need to realize, and what dr. fauci was clear about a month ago and he reiterated it in the white house covid task force meeting later that week, that the vaccine and like any vaccines we usually think about,

measles, moms, whatever, you cannot pass it on. they have learned with this vaccine that the fully vaccinated are still transmitting the virus. that is why it is important we all wear a mask. it will probably -- vaccines will probably stop you from becoming desperately ill, but they do not stop transmission of the virus. host: how long do you think you will be wearing a mask? caller: i've been wearing a mask for 10 years, so at least i'm not the odd man out anymore but i do not go out anymore. host: what got you started wearing a mask? caller: i actually was poisoned with toxic chemicals, so i cannot tolerate chemical smells and perfume and things like that. i get really sick. host: sorry to hear that, lynn. in maryland. on the issue of vaccine mandates, kendra in richmond, virginia, thanks to vaccine

mandates, job numbers will be worse. medical facilities will be overwhelmed with staff members resigning. harvey in new york, independent, good morning. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. i am curious to know how these economists come up with the numbers of expectations of 500,000 jobs. i think there are some things they need to take into the equation now. first of all, people on unemployment for an elongated amount of time took excess money, more than they earned. secondly, a lot of people may be filing for early social security. thirdly, i don't thing many people have confidence in the leadership of the country anymore. as evidence by the big divide between republicans and democrats. it is a shame but that is the way it is. maybe these guys should look at that and see if that would affect their numbers. the unemployment rate is not so

bad, 4.8%. i do not think that the jobs that are offered matchup with the job seekers. i also think that the fact you cannot go into a building because of mandated vaccines has pushed a lot of people -- they don't like to be told what to do. right or wrong. host: are you concerned that lowering unemployment rate, concerned about those who say part of it is caused by people leaving the workforce, citing they no longer want to even be a part of the workforce, therefore they are not counted in these numbers and the unemployment rate goes down? caller: that's exactly my point. i think for a number of reasons, this is what is happening. first of all, americans do not like to be told what to do. so you start telling americans they have to do this and have to do that, that is a problem to start with.

these guys in washington, first of all if they started talking english instead of hieroglyphics with their laws, we would be better off. host: are you talking about how these jobs predations are made and economists had expected maybe perhaps around half a million jobs added in the month of september before this report came out showing less than 200,000. one of the data points that cats brought into this is the weekly first-time filings -- that gets brought into this is the weekly first-time filings for job benefits. the numbers we found out yesterday for the previous week, filings for jobless benefits fell for the first time in four weeks. the labor department reported yesterday that initial on a plane and claims, the proxy for layoffs fell 38,000 in the week that ended october 2 to a seasonally adjusted 326,000 from

a revised 364,000 the prior week which put initial claims close to a pandemic low of 312,000, that number coming the week that ended september 4. that is one of the data points that gets used in this monthly jobs prediction that always comes out before we actually get the numbers themselves. dennis in tennessee, democrat, good morning. caller: good morning, john. how are you? host: doing good, sir. caller: a couple things -- i know ahead as -- i know it has already been said, job numbers are up. those always occur and there is late reporting, you will see that even for september. host: they were off by 131,000, adjusted in august. it is up to 306 he 6000 they now said -- 366,000 they now said. caller: and the same thing will

happen to the month of september at a certain point. when it is less, it is very minor. you don't see a number that large. in reverse, it is a matter of how they report, when they get it into the reporting system, and all of the companies do that. some are late, some are negligent on it, and they say i will send this in. host: you are optimistic things are going up next month? caller: oh yeah. they will go up next month. the only downside talking in nashville, like shopping and retail, that is going to go down on a seasonality piece of it because part-time workers they hire for the big rush of shopping or holidays coming up. usually higher in september. in nashville, they have been reporting all month long. they are not hiring temporary workers to train and develop them and get ready for the push. so you will see that quite a bit across the country. plus, all of the online shopping

because of the pandemic, that is up very high. look at amazon's numbers. their profit was up 33% year-to-date. that's an incredible number for amazon, online shopping and shipping. you will see the shippers busy and i don't know if you will see the retail busy. that is probably well you -- where you will see fallen numbers too. especially basing it year prior, that is where you see the number fell. host: how much do you dig into these reports when they come out each month? sounds like you follow this stuff closely. caller: i have looked at them all my life because i was in the business that we used the numbers. i was in the beer business. so when you look at people working, they are spending. if they are not working, they are not spending. if you look at the whole picture and say what other trends, the trends are good. there are a lot of factors

involved and the biggest is the vaccination rate. if they get that up and going, people will feel more comfortable doing things, especially on the retail side. people want to open up their businesses to get back to normal and really can't because people say i'm not getting vaccinated. that is the downside. it will get better and people just have to bide time. once we get it nailed down, things will grow back. it is just this infrastructure bill, once it gets past, that will be a big blessing, a lot of jobs created from that. then human infrastructure will limit the workforce because of children. hopefully that works out. host: i know it is only about 10 a clock a.m. eastern, but as a guy that works in the beer business for a long time, what is your favorite beer? caller: my favorite is probably michelob ultra. host: just a few minutes before

the house comes in for a brief pro forma session, scott in hutchinson, kansas, go ahead as we wait for the house. caller: thank you, john, for taking my call. i appreciate the chance to call in. i have really liked a lot of the callers you just had. the last one was very knowledgeable in what is going on. i have traveled around a little bit and i do see help wanted signs everywhere. the demographics, baby boomers leaving the workforce, is definitely a component of jobs that are out there. a lot of these low-paying jobs, 10 bucks an hour, it is hard to make a living on. i've seen other jobs that are starting out to near 20 that are still looking for people. in missouri, temkin

manufacturing, good companies that needed help. the thing i'm concerned about is the logistics. we have had a lot of trouble getting things in. when you see all of the ships off of the coast of california not being unloaded, there is a lot of things in a global supply chain that we need that we are not making here that i wish we did. my other point -- host: can i ask what line of work you are -- where in that you traveled around a lot? caller: some of it was a vacation and i did a little bit of traveling for that, but i was involved in paper. and fuel, ethanol. but i wanted to say, wichita last night had a main water line burst and are on a water boil

advisory. so when people kind of bock at infrastructure -- bawk at infrastructure, that is a mistake. so many needs are out there for the basic infrastructure repairs. there will be a need for more workers and a caller earlier talked about the immigration reform where there are some new people coming in that would be happy to have a good paying job to feed their families and have a better life. i just think they keep punting that problem from one administration to the next administration to the next administration, and i'm really frustrated that we have not come up with a good immigration reform. because the baby boomers are retiring and you just look at the needs of people to get things done and there is just not there. host: we will have to end it

there because the house is getting ready to come in for their pro forma session today. a reminder we are expecting to hear from the president on the job support at 11:30 a.m. eastern. we now take you like to the florida house of representatives. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] e by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of representatives.] the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's room, washington, d.c., october 8, 2021. i hereby appoint the honorable jennifer wexton to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, nancy pelosi, speaker of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: the prayer will be offered by the guest chaplain, monsignor catholic university in washington, d.c. the chaplain: good and gracious