session tuesday and will work on a senate passed bill to increase the debt ceiling to keep the federal government solvent through december 3. the house comes into session at 3 p.m. eastern so follow live house coverage on c-span, online at www.c-span.org for with the c-span now app. >> download c-span's new mobile app and stay up-to-date with live video coverage of the days biggest events from livestream to the house and senate floor and key congressional hearings to white house events and supreme oral arguments, even our love interactive morning program, "washington journal," where we hear your live voices every day. download the >> coming, dr. scott gottlieb talks about his new book,

“uncontrolled spread," about the u.s. response to the coronavirus outbreak. in breaking down how the biden economic plan compares to fdr's new deal with price fishback. "washington journal" is next. ♪ host: good morning. monday, october 11, 2021. a3 hour "washington journal" on this columbus day. we want to hear about your view on the nation's future and its past. tell us if you think this country upon stress best days lie ahead or do you think america's best days are already behind us? phone lines are split by political party. republicans can call in at (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000.

independents, (202) 748-8002. you can text (202) 748-8003. please include your name and where your friend. you can catch us on twitter, @cspanwj. and on facebook, facebook.com/c-span. you can call in on the question about america's best days. a recent report finds that hope for america's future is fading. from the survey of 1000 adults conducted earlier this month, the latest national telephone survey finds only 33% of american adults now say america's best days are in the future, a steep decline from last november, 147% of likely voters believed the nation's best days were still ahead. as recently as april of 2019, some 54% of voters saw america's best days in the future.

that is a topic that opinion writers often address in their columns. from the "washington post" recently, a headline, it is our job not to give into it. this is what he wrote earlier this month. if you feel, as so many do today, that these are some of america's worst days, if you fear for the future of this democratic republic, then your duty is to master the fear and refused to be governed by it. if the voice on the tv is trying to scare you, turn it off, he writes. shut down your social media. at the worst of times bring out the best of you. your light shines its brightest in the dark. that was from the "washington post." we are asking you, are the united states' best days ahead or behind? republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000.

independents, (202) 748-8002. a little bit more from the peace that we will turn to in a moment. it says, it is fashionable to say that the united states is at its low point and the rest of the world is going to blame biden. our problems are too large for our leaders are too small for their jobs. what that diagnosis gets wrong though is the historical dimension, he writes. little has happened now that has not happened before. the climate crisis appears more menacing than the potential nuclear holocaust in the canadian because one is in the foreground and the others receded. on the immigration crisis, it is no more urgent than a century ago, but this one is ours. the racial reckoning feels unusually raw, he writes,

because it is happening to us, not because it is not somehow more painful than lynchings or chattel slavery. that is from the october 5 piece in the washington post. monday, october 11, federal holiday, columbus day. the headline from the washington times today, tensions between columbus' legacy and american indians persist, noting that a holiday dedicated to christopher columbus highlights the ongoing divide on the representation of italian american history, and it ignores native people whose lives and culture were changed by colonialism. we will start -- there was a deeper look at columbus. president biden issued the first proclamation of indigenous

peoples days, significant effort to refocus the federal holiday and celebrate columbus. in that proclamation, the "washington times" focusing on some of president biden's words, saying for native americans, western exploration ushered in a wave of devastation, of violence perpetrated against native communities, displacement, spread of disease, and more. that from president biden's statement. "the washington times" contrasting this with former president trump's statements during columbus day during his administration, who said during a proclamation, sadly radical activists have thought to undermine christopher columbus' legacy. extremists seem to replace discussions with his contributions with talk of failings. with achievements with transgressions.

we must not consent to such a bleak view of our history. that is from president trump's proclamation, in contrast to president biden's from friday. this morning on this columbus day, we are asking you about this country's best days. do they lie ahead, have they already happen, do they lie in past? gary is up first come out of fletcher, north carolina, and independent. where are america's best days? go ahead. caller: the best days were in the past. i was afraid to say that because i am a little older, and i always heard other people speak that way when i did not have any problems. the problem is now, the people who usually seek justice always held a high standard, and they

would correct situations. and a party that was trying to seek betterment acted worst than the people they were trying to correct. and that was an eye-opener for me, that this country has never seen before. and i just see the erasing of history, which normally has been a way to talk about things in the past, to remember to not repeat, trying to be erased. and in concert with having a president who is very ill, he is cognitively having problems, if we had that in our house, we would not give him the remote control. we would be looking after him, trying to take care of him. and we voted him in out of hate. i cannot think of anything else,

but we had hate going in our heads, and we put this man in. host: hate for what? caller: hate for the last administration, hate for social media, hate for -- there was just so much hate going into the election that we put it against our reasoning, our sensibilities. we just put it aside, and we put an old man into office. host: now to a democrat out of rhode island. tad, this country's best days, are they had? caller: thank you very much for taking my call. no, i believe the best days are behind us. i created a little survey two or 3, 4 years ago, and i used a bell curve. at the lower left-hand side of the bell curve was slavery, then

halfway up was freedom, and the top of the bell curve was prosperity. and on the way down on the right-hand side of the bell curve, halfway was apathy, and then at the bottom was slavery. so anyway, i entitled it the lifespan of empires. so i asked a number of people, many people, put a mark on this survey where you think we are as a society, in the lifespan of empires. 75% approximately put apathy, we are over the top come over the peak, past prosperity, on our way back to slavery. what was interesting though was that those folks that put --

nobody said prosperity. 75% of us have gone for apathy. now with immigrants and minority people, interestingly, they put their mark on the left side of the bell curve, halfway up, and freedom, heading towards prosperity. i thought it was quite a thing. but anyway, just wanted to pass that along. host: what made you decide to do that? caller: well, going back a couple three, four years, i wanted to find out how people felt at that time. where are we in the lifecycle of empires? i mean, i am a student of history. i am an old man. i am just wondering, what are people thinking? host: where would you put your mark should -- today?

caller: at apathy. and i can tell you why, ok? back in the late 1970's, i was a community organizer. i have done a lot of organizing. and the participation rate was approximately 4% of those who were involved. back in 2007, 2008, i was involved in another project, again doing doorknocking, and the participation rate was under 1%. so i was shocked at that. that may have been part of the reason why i wanted to do the bell curve chart. host: tad in rhode island. this is kay, a republican out of utah. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you? host: doing well.

hope you are well. caller: oh, good, thank you. no, i do not think there are the best days ahead. i am 81 years old, and this is the first time in my life that i can honestly say that there is not a day goes by that i am not upset and nervous over watching the news. and i just hate it. and i cannot keep from watching it. that i hate the border, i hate afghanistan, what happened over there, i hate our military getting slaughtered. i don't know, i just cannot think of anything positive right now. i hope it changes. host: you say you hate the news. why not turn it off? caller: i can't. i try. and i turned to another channel, and the thing i know, i am right back on, wanting to know what is going on so i can get upset and can get nervous. host: do you feel like that our best days are behind us?

you say you are adc -- 80 years old? caller: i am 81. host: when were our best days? caller: well, they were not bad up until a year ago. host: why is that? caller: never been happy since biden got into office. i have respect for the office and have respect for every president, but i am a republican -- love trump would vote for him again in a minute. but i just have not felt comfortable, and a do not know if i ever will with biden in office, i don't. host: kay, a republican out of utah. we are asking simply, are the united states' best days ahead or have they already happened? are they in our past? on her comments about this presidency, let's focus on the

week ahead for a minute on president biden. let's go to newsweek, a washington correspondent, joining us via zoom on this holiday. tell us what you know about president biden's schedule in the days to come. there was not much information in the press briefing on friday. what way have --what have we learned over the weekend? guest: since it is a holiday, we know the president will not be returning to washington from delaware. there is not a whole lot that has been out there about what his schedule is like, but i think it is pretty reasonable to assume that he is going to keep doing these meetings, trying to build support for his agenda. he has had constant streams of meetings with democrats across the political spectrum, from left to more left, i guess.

and obviously, a lot of meetings with senators manchin and sinema to try to build consensus around his agenda, which seems to be faltering right now we have democrats in control of both chambers of congress and in the white house. i think there is a lot of frustration really building over the fact they have not been able to move he pieces of what they campaigned on. so we saw him just in recent days go to illinois and michigan to try to build more public support. he has had meetings at the white house. i think we can expect to see more of that, his trying to kind of grease the wheels a little bit on these key pieces of legislation for him. host: from your conversations with white house officials, what is the realistic timeline at this point to move the build back better bill, the budget

reconciliation bill? can it bleed into december? we are talking about new timelines in december for government funding, and if the house passes the debt ceiling bill on tuesday -- what is the timeline to get his signature piece of legislation move through the house and senate? guest: yeah, so we have heard a lot from house and senate leadership. they continue to keep kind of pushing back these deadlines that they are setting for themselves. now senator schumer and speaker pelosi are both kind of aiming for october 31 to be there new deadline. i still think that you are hearing from a lot of people that there are still too many questions out there that that is not reasonable, especially with

the breaks going on right now in the senate, and the house will temporarily be coming back tomorrow, but they're still technically in a recess and everything. like you said, there are a lot of things that actually do have real deadlines that are coming up in december. you do not want a government shutdown and do not want to default on the debt ceiling. they are kind of setting up a lot of things in december. and remember, they have a short window between thanksgiving and christmas. not a lot of people like to be in town during that period. so yeah, it constantly seems like there is a new deadline, but it could realistically all get pushed back into a very kind

of wild december. host: before all that happens, october 18 is the deadline to raise the debt ceiling. the house comes back in tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. you can watch coverage here on c-span. they will be working on that bill to increase the debt ceiling. and if and when they do pass, goes to president biden's desk. if we do not know the details of biden's schedule this week, what about key officials in his administration? do they have any significant meetings this week? guest: the white house, so far, maybe because it is the holiday weekend, they have been kind of lighter with the details of what all will be happening this week, to be honest. host: and stay tuned, because they will announce it when they are ready, as they always do it. elizabeth, newsweek washington

correspondent, you can watch for coverage on twitter and newsweek.com for her work. thank you. guest: thank you for having me. host: back to your phone calls. we talk to you about america's best days, a question we return to once in a while. is america's best days still ahead or have they already happened in the past? republicans,. (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. two kenneth, an independent. caller: how are you? host: doing well, sir. caller: i am a veteran. and when you asked the question about if america's best days were ahead or in the past, the question has to be, the best days for who? who in america? you had a lady call who said she

was 81 years old and that she would vote for trump again. so right then, that puts in the mindset, a color like me, when they say, oh, i would vote for trump or this or that, their best days. but when have there been debt -- a caller like me, when they say, i would vote for trump or this or that, their best days, but for who? columbus discovered america -- how could he discover something when people were already here? so when we talk about america's best days, the best days for who? host: what would you say were america's best days for everyone? caller: oh, perfect question. america's best days for everyone, when it does not matter who you are, you're treated the same. you know, today is monday.

every sunday in a black community in a church, they take up tides and offering, and those people take that money on a monday and deposit it in a bank that does not give loans to black and brown people. millions and billions of dollars over generations. so it will be america's best day when they quit looking at everyone and when they start looking at everyone as equal and quit judging them just because of the color of their skin or just because the way they dress or just because they got tattoos or whatever. but we will never get there, never get there as long as there is this divide. when you have 74 million people who would vote for a person to be president, and that person would talk bad about goldstar families. host: joel is next out of

mountain home, arkansas, republican. good morning. caller: good morning. how you doing this morning? host: doing well. when were our best days, or when will our best days be? have they already happened? caller: i think they have already happened. i am a military vet i retired out of the service. i served three years in vietnam. i have been married 54 or 55 years this year. my wife and i, we discuss things that is going on. and most people have no idea. they do not listen to the news, do not read the newspaper. they are just not interested. they just do not care anymore. the woman that spoke, she should have never said she voted for trump.

we know, as a republican, that that is a bad taste in people's mouth. i am not saying he was perfect. there was only one man who walked this earth perfect, and they killed him on a cross. but what i am getting at, if you ask most people the question, what do you think about the food price up 40% since this last administration took over? what do you think about your gas price up 50% and still rising? taxpayers' money are going to freeloaders. you give them too much money, and there are some people that need money. in our church, some just got their social security, and it is not enough for them to live on. that is what we need to think about.

if you are young and able, you should be working. the bible teaches us, teach a man how to fish, and he will not go hungry. this country -- listen, i have two boys -- let me say this, i have two boys that work 60 hours a week, and i am not lying, sir, one works in the mississippi and one works for a medical company and travels the world. he does not see his family that much and everything. but biden is in over his head. he just don't have good people around him. with afghanistan, he should have listened to those generals. when i retired from the army, i know that first to get your people out, second you get your equipment out, and 30 you bring the troops home. host: we are taking your phone

calls. our phone lines, republicans, democrats, and independents, asking about america's best days. it was david von drehle in his piece in the "washington post." the headline, be yourselves, our job not to give into it. a little more from that column. back on october 5, writing, what distinguishes this present age is the widespread and nuclear focus on the apocalyptic, the magnification of the west and the minimizing of opportunities, exaggeration of differences, desire to see things as worse than they are. we invent evermore outlandish conspiracies, we foretell ever bleaker futures. a healthy society is not a society without problems. no society has ever been without problems. a healthy society is one that

faces problems without fear because the people have courage, and that courage raises religious leaders. history records that 1933 was the worst of times, when the global economy was sunk in the great depression and tierney was happening across europe and asia, a turning point marked by franklin d roosevelt's declaration, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. so the thing is not to give into it, that is the headline. so we're talking about america's best days and when they will be or when they were. roosevelt, speaking of 1933, we will be talking later about the new deal, comparisons being made between the new deal back in the 1930's and the build back better agenda. we will break that down in our 9:00 hour. we will be joined by professor price fishback of the university of arizona, if you want to listen to that conversation,

9:00 a.m. eastern. but for the first hour this morning, your phone calls on america's best days. michelle, baltimore, maryland, good morning. caller: hi, i would like to think that the best days are ahead of us. i think we are at a point in time when we are, as a nation, identifying people who are operating in hate in plain sight and are being exposed. and i think the reason why they're acting so dangerously is because of their numbers appeared we are coming upon an age where people can be gay, can be bisexual, can be recognized as another ethnicity but not have that count against them. and i am really excited about that. and i think it is so unfortunate that so many people are saying

that the best days are behind us, when those days were so horrible for such large swaths of the population. host: do you mind if i ask how old you are? answering this question about our best days, asking whether there is a generational divide here, whether this is something younger folks i'm more optimistic about it? caller: i do think there is a gap. i am gen-x, late 50's, i guess i am a bridge between the boomers and the millennials. i just see the damage done to so many people's lives when they had to live or hide in the shadows or deny who they were over all these years, and it is a relief to see that is over. and it is going to be a relief when people who, like i said

come operate in hate are kind of like removed from being in power. and i cannot wait for that. host: thanks for the call. stacy is next out of virginia, and independent. caller: good morning, john. good morning, america. is america's best days ahead, as longest republicans remain in office, that would be a no. if they cannot run the country, they will destroy yet, and they will destroy americans if they have to. what sickens me the most is that they complain about the debt and raising the debt ceiling, but yet you do not want to lean heirs and millionaires to pay the debt. you have congressman and senators right now with $3.5 billion in back taxes. they are not paying taxes now and will not pay taxes later. as far as leaving that for your grandchildren, what are you going to leave them, a shithole

country? because this place is falling apart. it has to be fixed, and it has not been fixed since eisenhower was in office. we cannot put a band-aid on a bridge that is falling apart. they say they want to make america great, here is your chance, put up or shut up, make america better. let's rebuild america. but when it comes to republicans wanting to rebuild america, as long as democrats are in office, let us fall apart. as long as republicans are in office, this country is doomed. we may as well have putin writing it, because they're going to destroy it. host: on your point, republicans do not control the house or the senate or the white house right now. caller: [laughs] you don't think they control it? they got snakes in the democratic party posing as republicans, sabotaging anything that the democrats do. so even if they are not in power, they are still in power. they have done things to remain

in power, whether it is gerrymandering -- it is funny that elected officials can elect their own voters, but voters cannot elect their own politicians. our system was not broken, they made it that way so they could cheat and win and profit. how do you get into office making 174 thousand dollars a year and leave a multimillionaire? host: plenty of calls as we round 7:30 on the east coast, including herbert, and independent from columbia, south carolina. good morning. caller: i am optimistic. really, you cannot be a defeatist. what do you have to live for? for all the people who said we are not going to be greater, we're not going to survive this,

they need to go. you know? they need to go and go to another country or start another one and let us do this one. the ones from january 6, they need to go. they are trying to destroy the country. we want to build it. if they don't like it here, they can go. host: we talked about the generational divide here on this question about mop -- about optimism or pessimism for the future. "the washington post" with an unusual poll, because it is a pulling of teens, those aged 14 to 18, looking at their concerns about the future of this country. among the findings, this question, how big of a threat each of the following to your generation? those teenagers found that political divisions in this country, 59% said it was a major threat to the upcoming generation.

57% said the cost of health care is a major threat. 57 percent saying racial discrimination is a major threat. gun violence, another 57% saying it is a major threat to their generation. terrorism a bit less so, 53%. climate change, 49%. when it gets to economic issues, the lack of career opportunities, 34% said that is a major threat to the upcoming generation. 30% saying immigration is a major threat. access to education, 20% saying it is a major threat. that poll from over the summer, some 1400 rizzo teenagers ages 14 to 18, national poll. darren out of massachusetts, democrat, good morning. caller: yes, good morning, c-span, and good morning america. this is to stacy -- she is

absolutely right. the people in this country are sleeping. the elite have got you turned against each other. there is a documentary i came by, and i challenge c-span and all the listeners to go to this documentary. jfk to 9/11, everything is a rich man's trick. i challenge c-span and your producers to dig into this and to let the people know exactly what is going on. get ready, it has been 20 years since 9/11. bush had his hands all over it. host: to french lake, indiana, a republican. david, america's best days, are they still ahead? caller: yes, good morning. happy columbus day, by the way. well, i do not think america's days are better ahead. i do believe that certain things in the media are controlled.

as long as -- we do not really have free speech in the media, so we really do not have much for anything. this question today is in grants to an article based in the "washington post." i would have thought you would have more creativity. perhaps you should maybe do a program, and i am just suggesting this, on the durham report that is coming out. no one has even mentioned that. the president has harassed and was subsequently impeached by a criminal act, such as the dossier, please give us time, and if you have an opportunity to discuss the durham report. thank you very much. host: the question is based on a rasmussen poll that came out earlier this month on this issue of america's best days. they're finding in that rasmussen poll, just 33% of american adults now say america's best days are in the

future. we have also been talking about some of the recent op-eds that bring up this idea of america's best days. and that "washington post" story is one we focused on. here is another one from breitbart that is in response to this rasmussen poll, saying if you want our best days ahead of us, you must become a single issue voter, and that issue is individual liberty. he writes, the freer we can live our own lives, speak, worship, and create, the better off america is. he goes on with criticism for the upcoming generation, saying if you want a brighter future, young people need to pull their heads out of their asses and see the light. it is no skin off my nose, the future does not belong to me. i will be retiring and live in rural america. i got mine because i earned mine. i am said. it is your future, not mine, so i suggest you put down the phone and do something about it.

john nolte in breitbart. john is next, an independent. caller: good morning. happy columbus day. columbus was a great man who achieved something that was unbelievably tremendous. no one has done anything even close to that in the last 500 years, and yeah, we celebrate him for his achievement. as far as the future is concerned, i am sure everything will come out ok. people from northern virginia and maryland, from the dmv, are absolutely out of their minds and calling you constantly on this show, they are far, far left wing, not independent. we are going to be fine. trump did a great job. he had the media jump on an epidemic, and they called it something much, much worse than it was, just so we would have stay-at-home voting, and votes

were harvested all over the country. he won by a landslide. host: why are you so confident that we will be fine, that our best days are ahead? caller: once america understands what the left is doing, this far left, blm/antifa group, once america understands what they are doing and why they are doing it, we will get control of it. and i think we're going to be ok. whether it is a republican or a moderate democrat -- not biden or obama, they are far, far left wing ideologues. host: who is a moderate democrat that you would be ok with? we lost john. a few comments from social media on this question about america's best days. pep on twitter referring back to a column about fear selling. pep writes, hope will pay that bill. this from andrew in new jersey, said to say, but if we continue

down this road of division, there will not be any best days. if there is a societal breakdown, the 20-somethings of today will not have what they need for tomorrow. no medicines, no food, etc., please stop this radical madness before it is too late. a text message from sam from ashburn, virginia. it says, i believe the best time for america is over, and we need to work together a lot harder to get it back. america needs to be more like c-span and be neutral and not opinionated. this one says the country could be the greatest country in the history of the world, could be leading humanity to a better, brighter future by sharing our technology and wealth, sharing everything we have to improve the lives of billions, but instead, we are greedy. a few comments from social media. richard is next out of tennessee, republican. caller: good morning, sir. i appreciate you taking my call. i want to say good morning to

the rest of america. i am optimistically hopeful. i am 59 years old, and i am looking towards retirement. i live in rural america, and i know things are different here than they are in big cities. i believe i can speak for a lot of america that we just want both sides to work together for the common good, instead of running to each side and pointing fingers and hollering at the other side. we need to elect leaders that are not so partisan. when i heard senator schumer from new york say that he wanted to change the united states and change the world, i was sad. lots of good things about america -- there are some bad

things, but a lot of good things . and i want to be optimistic. host: what are the two best things about america right now? caller: for me, freedom to go out and earn my living. if i work really hard, i can achieve things. two generations ago, my grandfather was a sharecropper, a one-legged sharecropper. he never took any sort of social money, because he was a proud man. and today, my daughter is in medical school and i have one in nursing school. my son is an electrician. so you can't get things instantaneously. this is not a microwave society like people want. people want things instantly. it takes a few generations, so that is where i am at. host: this is ann in portland,

oregon, a democrat. are americans best days still ahead? caller: i believe so, and i was born in 1933 and was 88 years old yesterday, so i have lived a long time. host: happy belated birthday. caller: thank you. i think our best days are ahead. i think we are taking baby steps right now. and i just wish that the media, both sides, would stop promoting the fear and start working together. and i am one of those who does watch everything, and i would certainly suggest that the american public tune into what is happening in our congress, what is happening in our marketplace, and what is happening -- and i really feel hopeful that things will be better. and i am hoping that maybe we

can do something like franklin roosevelt suggested and like john kennedy suggested, start thinking of each other and look for the good instead of keep promoting fear. i would so much like to have no more media presence for donald trump. he is not the president, and i think that this is just feeding on this diversion, and we need to feed instead on the good things that are happening. i think our young people are hopeful, and i think our women are hopeful. things are better than they have been, but we have a long way to go. host: when you talk about your criticism of the media, is it just broadcast media? is it print media social media, as well? would you include social media in that criticism? caller: yes, somewhat. i think print media is a little bit more realistic. and i do try to watch

everything, both stations, and i do have a lot of division within my family who live in virginia. i grew up in the washington, d.c., area, so i am very much in tune of what is happening. and unfortunately, my folks around here outside of portland are not watching anything, not learning anything. they are only making their opinions known, and they are not based necessarily on what is the truth. host: thanks for the call. on the issue of social media, certainly a focus for congress last week, plenty of criticism of facebook, in particular, in some of those hearings that you could watch here on c-span and on c-span2. it was yesterday on abc news "this week" that the facebook vice president of global affairs went on the sunday shows and responded to questions about the comparisons between the social media giant and big tobacco. [video clip]

>> democrats and republicans comparing facebook to big tobacco this week. how much those that worry you? >> i think it is a misleading analogy. of course, we are not. we are a social media app that many people around the world use. it brings utility, helps businesses, brings joy, pleasure, it connects you with people that you care and love the most that is what facebook is about. do you are number the 1980's and 1990's, analogies sing watching too much television was like alcoholism or arcade games was like drugs? i sometimes think we get this overblown, somewhat simplistic analogies and caricatures. if there's any silver lining to this week, maybe we can now move beyond the slogans, the soundbites, the simplistic caricatures and actually look at solutions.

and yes, of course, regulations. there are certain things only lawmakers can do, only lawmakers can amend section two or introduce federal privacy legislation, introduce laws to protect our elections and so on. that is not a substitute for the responsibility facebook has got to continue to invest. we do on a huge scale. we invested their team billion dollars in recent years in how to keep people safe -- we invested $13 billion in recent years and they had to keep people safe. we will continue to do that. but in the end, we cannot make all of these decisions and provide all of these societal solutions on our own. that does require lawmakers to act, as well. host: the facebook vice president on abc's "this week" yesterday. we are beginning our program with this question, are united states' best days still ahead?

eric, seattle, washington, independent. caller: hey, how are you? host: doing well. go ahead. caller: better days are coming. i am 30 years old, and i believe that our youth are really going to surprise us. i think everyone right now is kind of discouraged by bipartisanship, and i do not really look at, like, i do not really pay attention to the politics that way. i pay more attention to corporations and what they are doing. and i feel like our government is more like a tri-partisanship, with wall street being this third-party that does not really want you to see where the money is coming. we usually just always follow the money, and it will show its

intention. host: do you think that the influence and power of what you describe is that third party of wall street, does that diminish in the future or grow in the future? caller: no, i think it is going to go away. right now, people are realizing that there is big money in our government, and the solution to that would be to remove it from elections and remove it from our governing bodies. and it is possible. it is possible. but you do have to ask for it. and you do have to demand it. and i think the next step is to remove money from our political system. host: this is donna just across the potomac river, falls church, virginia, democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. i do not know is our best days

are ahead of us, if we have already had them, because i will say this, i am just an average citizen, and i did vote for president biden. right now, my thought is neither party is worth a damn and probably has not been for quite some time. two choices, you pick which one identifies with you. can you go ahead and you do your vote. i cannot see how someone who sits in office and comes off like a bully, like how you're telling your children how to behave when they are in school and how to interact with each

other, and when that bully comes into the picture and everyone is sitting down to try to resolve that problem. but you cannot do that with a grown-up because it is a grown-up, and the grown-ups should know how to behave and how to carry them self. unfortunately, you do not represent me if you come off as a bully, how you speak about other people. there is a thing called debate, and debate is using your intellect to challenge an issue or problem and try and resolve it or do you do not resort to name-calling or bashing because you think you're in a position to do that. the problem with this country is you have a group of people who think in a superior mindset. as long as that is in place, there will be problems.

those people will always think they are superior. host: just about 10 minutes left. carl is in west virginia, republican. caller: good morning. i think things would start to get a whole lot better immediately if nancy pelosi would retire and get out of d.c. she began to draw up articles of impeachment before donald trump ever moved into the white house. and it is all about power. you know, power corrupts. believe me, there is a lot of corruption down there in washington, d.c. for instance, joe biden and obama used the power of the office to spy on donald trump. they used the irs to go after the tea party. the politics are getting to be a bloodsport.

it is just absolutely out of control. and the media is like a bunch of cheerleaders egging it on. host: do you think there was any misuse of power during the trump administration? you talk about the blame in the biden and obama administration. caller: yes, there was probably things going on that should not have. but it was just over the top when obama and biden used the fbi to spy on the trump campaign and used the irs to go after the tea party. that is what really turns me off. i thought, holy cow, they say donald trump was a dictator, now there is the perfect example of being a dictator, when you use the power of the office to go after your opponents. and another thing is the media -- social media is like a

campaign contribution. host: that is carl in the west virginia. to bakersfield, california. good morning. caller: good morning. i have been listening to c-span ever since 1979, and what i have really learned about us as human beings, we can always see what is wrong with the other person when we do not see what is wrong with ourselves. democrats think it is what is wrong with the republicans and republican see what is wrong with the democrats. until we see what is wrong with ourselves and try to become a better person, nothing is going to change and let this country and no place else. so it starts with us as individuals, seeing ourselves and trying to be a better person , not seeing what is wrong with someone else. and today is today, be grateful for this day. yesterday has passed, and tomorrow nobody wants to know what is going to be. so i have been listening to

c-span for all of these years, i am grateful for c-span, and i listen every morning. and every day the person that is calling can see what is wrong with some one else. but has he or she seen what is wrong with them so they can correct themselves? thank you, and have a wonderful day. host: before you go, and thank you for listening and watching for so long, would you say you are more hopeful about america today or do you think you were more hopeful back in 1979? caller: i am hopeful for america today because i am hopeful for myself today, and i enjoy each day, and i am grateful. so i am hopeful. thank you. host: michael is next in appleton, wisconsin, independent. good morning. caller: hey, the problem, i think none of the callers have mentioned yet, it is sort of an independent idea. i am 69 years old.

when i was born, there were 2 billion people on the planet. today, we are well over 8 billion people on the planet. i am not hopeful for the future, because i think the politics that are played are not really addressing the issues at hand. and if we continue to have the population increases the way we have seen, migration difficulties are going to be huge, the environment will be a challenge, water, heat, fire, floods, hurricanes, etc., are only going to get worse. and a fundamental problem that no one seems to want to talk about is, how do we cut the population back to a sustainable level in terms of resources? and until we do that, and we do not seem to have politicians willing to talk about containing our unbridled capitalism, because that is what unbridled

population growth feeds. without unbridled capitalism and unbridled population growth, because they go together, things simply cannot -- i want them to, i am an optimist -- but they cannot get better. the fundamentals were not --will not permit it. host: new york city, democrat. your answer to this question, are america's best days still ahead? caller: no. i really do not believe so. i am 73 years old, and i look at it both ways. the past and what can be done for the future. going back to accepting all people, without that, things cannot get better. the problem is, so many corporations have taken our jobs away and put them overseas.

they do not pay taxes. so america cannot go forward. like china, everything you pick up is made in china, made in china. bring the jobs back here and pay the people a decent wage. it is so unfair what corporations do to us today. as far as people, hey, we need to all come together. listening to the news, just like in the california where this chinese company is making all these electric buses and everything, and here you have washington talking about they must be spies. there is just so much misinformation.

host: time for one or two more phone calls. we wanted a few more social media post. this is maggie and the illinois writing that we're in the a worldwide depression, better days are ahead. gene sang the younger generations embrace so much more than older generations. those of us want to see more equity, be it in the income or health care, education, or the environment, are here to support them, too. this is anthony in texas. good morning. are america's best days still ahead? caller: they are behind us. it all comes down to this, morals. if our moral compass continues to decline, our best days -- you cannot build on division. we have to come together as one. i grew up here.

together, we stand. divided, we fall. if we do not come together as a nation, it is pretty much over. host: we are coming out of a global pandemic. what is something that can bring us together as a country? caller: well, you know, that is the big question right there. it just all comes down to unity and love. there is just all this hate and division. politicians. it is not about country with them anymore. it is all about staying in power. and that is one of the biggest problems. politicians need to come back and understand that this country is for all of us. it is not about keeping a seat, it is about bringing your neighborhoods, city, your

state, and your country together. it all falls down to that, morals. if we do not come together, that is it, and it is pretty simple. host: that is anthony in texas, our last caller in this hour of the "washington journal." plenty more to talk about. after the break, we are joined by former fda commissioner dr. scott gottlieb to talk about his new book, "uncontrolled spread," the book about the u.s. response to the covid-19 pandemic. later, some call president biden's bill back better plan li ke the new deal. we will discuss with professor price fishback. ♪ >> this week on the c-span networks, the senate will be out after passing an agreement that would lift the debt ceiling

through early december. the house will meet early tuesday to vote on the measure. the u.s. supreme court will hear oral argument on several cases throughout the week. you can listen to them all on c-span.org and the new c-span now app. kentucky's attorney general argues that his office should be able to seek -- we'll have live coverage of that oral argument. wednesday a 10:00 a.m. eastern, live on c-span.org and the new c-span now app, the supreme court will hear a case seeking to reinstate the death sentence for the boston marathon bomber a previous federal court had vacated. and the house veterans affairs mitty will hold a virtual hearing on the recruitment of veterans by domestic extremist groups. witnesses include veterans who have been targeted for recruitment and academics who study the issue, among others.

watch this week on the c-span networks or watchful coverage on the c-span now app. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. ♪ >> in the past 30 years, eric larson has written eight books. six of those landed on the "new york times" nonfiction bestseller list. some of his best-known books include "the splended and the vile," "isaac's storm," "dead wake" about the sinking of the lusitania, and probably is best known work, "devil in the white city." with his most recent work, he makes a transfer to a ghost

story fiction. the title, "no one goes alone" is available on audio only. >> author erik larson on this week's "booknotes+". ♪ ♪ >> "washington journal" continues. host: c-span viewers are very familiar with dr. scott

gottlieb, former fda commissioner and author of the newly release the book "uncontrolled spread: why covid-19 crushed us and how we can defeat the next pandemic." before we get to the book, remind the viewers of the various roles you have served in over the course of this pandemic and what those roles have allowed you to see on the micro and macro level of the pandemic. guest: i served on the board of pfizer, so i got an inside view on the development of the vaccine. i also served on the board of alumina, which has been important to try to distribute sequencing machines to trace the virus around the world, marrying the tools of traditional epidemiology with the tools of being able to sequence the virus, which has allowed us to trace how the virus is spread around the world in a way we have not been able to doing past pandemics. i spent a good amount of time

early on advising various officials in the trap administration, where i had served as fda commissioner, at i had also been in touch with officials in the biden administration, continuing to try to provide some ideas and guidance where i can. and obviously providing a lot of commentary on the outside, including through this book. host: with all that, the question a lot of our viewers will ask is when and how does this pandemic end? guest: i am hopeful that this alto wave of infection is the last major -- delta wave of infection is the last major surge we see and hopefully we move from a pandemic phase two and endemic phase, where it is a constant nuisance but it is not the extreme amount of virus we see now. it becomes second -- sort of a second circulating flow. that in itself is menacing. we will have to do something different and the winds of time,

but we will not see the extreme outbreaks that we saw in the south and out in the midwest and plains states that is causing us to reorient our society and change the way we do things. i think we will learn to coexist with this virus. this virus will be persistent and it will be a menace. it will claim lives every year. but we will learn how to reduce its impact through both vaccination and therapeutics on the market, and better practices when it comes to respiratory health inside confined spaces like workplaces and other forms of recreation, where you get a lot of people congregating indoors and creating conditions where this virus is easily spread. host: the book "uncontrolled spread: why covid-19 crushed us and how we can defeat the next pandemic" -- you talk a lot about the future but also look back at the earliest days of this pandemic. you write in the book that those who suffered and died into the rising generation in our country, we owe a clear eyed review of the facts. what did we get right and what

did we get wrong? that is one of the questions you pose. how do you answer it? guest: i think what we got wrong as we did not really have the capacity in this nation to mobilize the kind of response we needed. there was a perception the cdc would be able to mount the logistical response needed, being able to develop and mass deploy diagnostic testing, stand up mass vaccination sites, being able to collect information in real-time fashion and do quick analytic work to inform policymakers on what they ought to be doing and inform consumers in a timely fashion, and the cdc was not really a crisis oriented organization. it did not have the logistical capacity to mount that response. it is a high science organization, deeply retrospective, does backward looking analysis, and needs time to be afforded the definitive, -- we do not have the capacity to

deal with this, we do not have a fema or department of defense when it comes to this, and we need to build that capacity. i do not think we need to create a new agency. it needs to reside in the cdc but in a much different component of the cdc. we also did not have the base of manufacturing we thought we would have. we couldn't scale up quickly the amount of drugs, like the new merck drug filed today, and even the vaccine. there was a perception that you would have facilities you would sort of overbuild and mothball and ready in times of crisis, and what we learned is that does not work, that in order to keep a facility ready for a time of crisis, it has to be in constant operation. so we need to figure out how to operate certain components of our manufacturing base for maximum resiliency, building more resiliency into the system.

finally, on the data question, we did not have the capacity to collect information in a real-time fashion to inform ourselves what is going on and do the quick analytical work that would help us ascertain how this virus was spreading, what the associated geographic parts of spread work, so we were wiping down our groceries, thinking this was spreading through contaminated surfaces, when it was really spreading through aerosols in confined close spaces through asymptomatic carriers. it took us too long to figure that out, because we did not have good information to ascertain those truths about the virus. that is another capability we lacked. and one final point i will make, my closing thought in terms of what we need to do differently, and the book has a lot of focus on what needs to change -- we need to change the global situation. we have relied on multilateral commitments on nations to share information when they are host to an emerging infection like

this, and we have seen time and time again that nations have not been forthcoming with that information. going forward, we will need our clandestine services, our intelligence agencies, much more engaged in emerging bio threats globally. we cannot rely on the good graces of nations -- we need the tools to actively gather that information and protect ourselves. host: "uncontrolled spread" is the name of the book. there is the cover of the book there. if you want to talk to the author, dr. scott gottlieb, a guest that c-span viewers are very familiar with. phone lines are split up regionally. in the eastern or central time zones, it is (202) 748-8000. in the mountain or pacific time zones, it is (202) 748-8001. as folks are calling in, it might seem like a lifetime ago, but it was back in february of

2020 that you testified before congress, one of the first officials to testify about covid-19 before congress. it was a month before it was officially declared a pandemic. remind reviewers what you told congress that day. guest: that hearing was specifically about issues of the pharmaceutical supply chain, and the vulnerability that we had by sourcing a lot of it, things we relied on, medical products we relied on, in countries that may not be reliable conduits for those tools that we needed. what we saw in the crisis is that in complex health care supply chains, it was often the lowest margin product that went into shortage, because often times the manufacture of those products was moved offshore to capture lower labor costs because manufacturing was consolidated as a way to produce low margin products profitably, and because they were cheap

products and did not generate a lot of products, that manufacturing was under invested and so couldn't be scaled easily in times of crisis. so suddenly every nation was pulling on the same supply chain at the same time, and those supplies were not available. so what did we we run out of when it came to testing people? it was not the sophisticated pcr machines, it was the nasal swabs. the hearing you are talking about before the senate was specifically focused on drugs. what we found were a lot of starting materials, the chemicals that went into the manufacture of drugs, were manufactured in hubei province in china, so when the virus initially surfaced in wuhan, those manufacturing was shut off. it gets manufactured in china and gets shipped to india where it gets turned into tablets, which then gets shipped to the united states. that was not necessarily open to

us in a crisis like this. we were very true -- worried early on that there would be cascading drug shortages. we avoided a lot of the drug shortages through careful planning, but the risk was there , that a lot of the supply chains we depend on may not be available for us. host: you mentioned testing. why, in october of 2021, do people still have trouble finding a test kit to get a test for their kid if they are home from school? guest: we did not invest early enough. this is a big focus of my book, what went wrong with a testing. and it was a big focus of the op-eds i was writing when this virus first emerged in china. we did not invest early enough in what i call and all of the above approach. we relied on the cdc to design and deploy a diagnostic to be shared with public health labs. in january, we started -- we needed to start getting the private industry engaged in tests that could be manufactured

and deployed across the wide market, and that did not start in earnest until february or march, so we were always behind the ball. with respect to where we are now with a lack of home diagnostic testing, there are a lot of home test kits available. what is in shortage are the ones that consumers prefer, the ones easy to use and get a readable result in your own home and are liable results -- reliable results. tests that are easy to read and use at home. there is a test you can swap at home and send overnight. consumers do not prefer them. i will say, as a final point, if you are talking about places where the government has undergone a major transformation in how it approaches a category of product, one of the untold stories i try to tell in the book is the transformation that was underway and has been completed at fda when it comes to the development and approval of diagnostic tests.

two years ago, the idea of buying a diagnostic test over the counter that could allow you to self diagnose for an infectious disease inside your home and would not require mandatory reporting of that result, that is something regulators would have been skeptical of. now you see the wholesale embrace of that in the medical device center, in the fda, and i think it will lead to a chance for major and of medicine where we will be self testing for flu and strep throat and a lot of routine conditions rather than going to a doctor's office. we will be home swabbing and augmenting that with telemedicine visit so we can get diagnoses for a lot of routine health conditions. that is a seismic change in the approach of the regulatory agency with respect to these home diagnostic tests that will open up a whole marketplace, as it is with covid, with other infectious diseases as well. host: though it may bring up trash and ask questions of supply chains again, if the supply chains are ready for that sort of generational leap. guest: look, i think the supply

chain is ready for it. i think the commercial market is ready for it. i think now we have seen consumer demand is there for these tests, you will see the commercial market step up and start to supply these tests. right now, the challenges the private manufacturers that make these tests underestimate the demand. there was a perception in the summer that we were through covid and the pandemic had largely plaster -- passed. we knew there was some resurgence. but when we were dealing with b117, if they were still dealing with b117, this would be over. the vaccination rates would be sufficient enough to provide a wall of immunity that b117 were probably not be circular 80 now. what happened is the delta variant. a lot of people, including manufacturers of these diagnostic tests, underestimated that. but as this market takes shape and this becomes a more

permanent feature, and if i am right and more consumers will be home swabbing for covid and flew and stopped throat and other pathogens, i think you will see a vast market open up to supply these tests. you're seeing companies even like amazon. host: 28 of callers for you. mike is out of huntersville, north carolina. you are on with dr. scott gottlieb. caller: hey, dr. scott. it is a pleasure to speak with you. i was wondering, in your book, does it address any of the psychology in the industry? moving forward, lessons learned, associated with the misinformation? i see the traditional journalists have been showing people dying or in the icu and the hospitals who believe they have pneumonia and the whole covid thing is a hoax.

is there anything you can recommend that you maybe have explored in the fact that we have a lot of people hooked on the alternate source of media? host: dr. gottlieb? guest: i spend a lot of time in the book talking about the need to be able to get if iterative answers to questions much earlier. we did not do a good job of collecting information early in the crisis. even now, in a lot of the key questions like the amount of therapeutics working, how many people are being hospitalized every day with covid -- i go through the difficulty we had getting that information from the cdc and why it is so important to develop the definitive information early enough, because one of the shortcomings of not being able to answer key questions early enough is the information void gets filled with other sources of information, some of which may not be reliable. for example, we were not able to establish early enough that hydroxy corrigan was not having

enough of a benefit. even now, some of those views about that therapeutic have become so hardened that when definitive studies, along -- and there have been dozens -- it does not really change minds p8 i think the data on hospitalizations show some of the difficulty we had collecting bottom-line information that should have been readily available. when the cdc was reporting how any people were hospitalized with covid each day -- for example, in april, they may have said 3500 people were hospitalized. they were sampling about 1/6 of the hospitals in the nation, and modeling how many people were being hospitalized off that small sample set. there were not collecting actual information. at the time, they told the president was impossible to collect that actual information. that task collecting data on how any hospital asians there were was taken away from them because they were not able to collect

that. the hhs created a new unit, and ultimately, we were able to get precise information on how many people were hospitalized with covid each day, which was very important when we started to develop therapeutics and needed to ship that to hospitals. he had to know where the patients where, especially if you had scarce therapeutics like early monoclonal and all bodies -- antibodies. it shows the difficulty of doing analytical work answer important questions. the final point on this, most or many of the most many for answers to questions about what therapeutics were working and which ones were not came out of the british study, recovery study. a single british study ended up answering most of the important questions about which therapy purex were and were not working. that is how we learned hydroxychloroquine was not working early on, that

convalescent plasma was not working. in the u.s., we eschewed those kind of studies, though simple, practical trials that ended up being easy to stand up or easier to stand up in a crisis, and we preferred complicated trials we were never really able to run. host: on this topic, from the book, we failed to take special measures for those most affected by covid. debates and divisions over these actions were understandable, but over others like wearing a mask, such rancor was inexcusable. we couldn't even agree on the easy stuff. why couldn't we agree on the easy stuff? guest: look, i think a lot of these things became, unfortunately, politicized. people started to define their political values and their perception of the exercise of their own liberty around things like wearing masks or getting vaccinated. part of it was cultural, part of it was that, you know, the

government was asking, or in some cases, telling and mandating that people do certain things, so i think there was a revulsion i'm being told what to do by certain government officials. i think part of it was we did a poor job as political and public health eaters really trying to galvanize public action and get people aligned behind certain things that were not going to prevent the pandemic -- wearing masks was not going to prevent the pandemic. but it could have reduced the scope and severity of the various waves we have. that said, we have to recognize the extraordinary sacrifices made by the american people. people set up homeschooling on the fly. people sustained closures of their businesses. many people did wear masks and go and get vaccinated and do things to prevent the pandemic, but we did not have uniform adherence to it. part of the country, adherence was very low, and others, it was high. we rose and fell as a nation, and certain part of the country

ended up having large outbreaks -- we were vulnerable as a nation. when you have a large surge of infection in the south, it did not stay in the south, obviously it was going to spread across the country. so we were subject to the weakest point in the nation in terms of compliance in some of these measures and the ability to control the infection. host: to new hampshire, ron. caller: thank you for taking my call. we could end this pandemic if all the people wearing cloth masks switched and wore those respirators, those n95 masks people call them. there was a study that just came out in august, published by the royal society from harvard medical school, very good study, that said if just a percent of the population were respirators, these n95 masks, at the beginning of the pandemic, the epidemic never would have taken hold in the u.s. my question is, if i can ask

you, could you please ask policymakers, the cdc other agencies, if they could please ask people and recommend and have a public education campaign to let people know that they need to wear respirators instead of the cloth masks? the virus is airborne now. host: we got your question. go ahead. guest: i think the caller is absolutely right. early on, we did not have access to the n95 masks and the higher quality masks in the first wave of this infection, but there is ample supply now. i've been saying for a while and writing about this, to clearly on the wall street journal, we should be educating consumers about masks and what they do and do not do and the different quality of masks. and weekend do more to make higher quality assets available, particularly for people at risk

of contracting the virus because of where they work and people at risk because of pre-existing conditions. we have not educated consumers about masks. there is a false resumption that you are deriving more protection from the mask, as an individual, then in many cases you were. i was involved in early questions in recommending the use of masks with the task force, and what we recognized at the time was there were not enough medical masks available. but what we also knew was, looking at studies involving the flu, what the study showed is if you had a cloth mask on and have the flu, you are 50% less likely to transmit the flu with a cloth mask on, because the cloth mask would cut down on respiratory droplets. for the old wuhan variant, which was spread, at least partly, through droplets and was not a completely aerosolized virus, if you could reduce transmission by putting masks on everyone, that

was -- we knew a lot of the spread was through asymptomatic, so the presumption was if you had everyone wearing masks and you had asymptomatic individuals going out that did not know they had it, they were far less likely to spread the infection if they had masks. that was the idea behind wearing cloth masks. but that was not to protect you. we knew that cloth masks were not going to afford you a high degree of protection. if you are in a room with someone who had covid and did not have a mask, you had a cloth mask on, cloth masks are about 20% effective. a surgical mask is about 40% effective. an n95 or kn95 mask is about 95% effective. it cloth mask will only afford you a minimal level of protection, 15%, 20% protection, probably even less with a more

aerosolized virus. we should be educating consumers about masks, what they do and do not do. a cloth mask will prevent you from spreading the virus, not afford you a high degree of protection from the virus. a medical mask will afford you a much higher degree of protection. and people go online and buy k asks on amazon, those blue masks, you need to look at whether they are level three procedure masks, asim-certified procedure masks. if all they are are dust masks, they will reduce the risk of you spreading the virus but will not afford you a high degree of protection. some states, like michigan, have invested in efforts to educate consumers around these issues. a lot of states have not. i do not think the federal government has done a good job in educating consumers around the difference between good quality masks.

if you come as an individual, one to wear masks to protect yourself, try to get a sort of fda-cleared kn95 or n95 mask. that will afford you a much higher degree of protection. frankly, i wear kn95 masks because i want to protect myself. if i have to wear a mask, i want to make sure it is protecting me. host: about half an hour left with dr. scott gottlieb, talking about his new book, "uncontrolled spread: why covid-19 crushed us and how we can defeat the next pandemic." this is eugene out of newark, new jersey. caller: hello. first, a few points. first, i want to tell you that i so admire how you comported yourself through this whole incident that i wanted to name my son after you. but since it turned out i am too old, i only named my dog, so i hope you do not mind that my dog's name to, with great

admiration -- host: what kind of dog is it? guest: it's a col -- caller: it's a collie. [laughter] but on my second point, i think we have done a little too much epidemiology, too little virology and immunology in dealing with this virus. i would really much i would very much appreciate if we start to look at this kind of virus and the role it plays in the biology of humans and society, the transition from animal to human and so on. we have had so many theories and so much nonsense floating around that people are confused. this is why they are so in countertrend -- in causa trent -- incalcitrent. this started with administration

most people had doubts about. at this point, do you think if we can learn the lesson to invest much more in science and research, we as physicians have our own profession, but if these phd's are underfunded, they have nowhere else to go. it is a waste of talent. i wonder if you can speak to how much better off we would have been if we had invested more in the young people who wanted to get a phd. host: dr. gottlieb, go ahead. guest: i think the point is well taken that this was the fog of viral war in the beginning. it persisted too long. we were not doing good analytical work. it was very disaggregated. a lot of the best work was going

on in academic centers by independent researchers. they were not tapped into the cdc. if you wanted good information, you had to go to twitter to look for great researchers. you had to know who was doing good epidemiological work and posting it to twitter and putting out independent papers. not everyone was able to do that. it was not a clearinghouse for this information. the cdc was not aggregating in a timely way. they were not consumers of other people's analysis. if it is not made in cdc, they don't really adopt it. i think we need to do a better job of aggregating the different work coming out of the academic

community and promulgating it in ways to inform consumer behavior. that was not happening early on. it is still not happening much. you have to be someone in the field, like the color sounds like he is, and going to some of the academic sources to know what is going on. host: on surveillance and testing, tell a story in your book on testing protocols leading up to president trump's covid infection this time last year. explain what it tells us we thought we needed to look for. guest: the white house protocol was leaky protocol. some days, he would get tested with the rapid monocular test. some days, they would use the

reliable pcr test. different tests at different levels of reliability. some of the tests they were using were sub optimal. one of the tests is not ideal unless your screening someone across multiple days. they were relying on testing to keep the virus out of the white house compound. i went inside the compound early on in the epidemic to visit officials in the white house. once you are inside the compound, there was no mitigation. people are not wearing masks. there was no distancing. testing was there first and only line of defense. if that is your first and only line of defense, you will use testing to keep it out of the

environment and you want to keep the environment secure. there was no environment we wanted to keep more secure than the white house. you need a zero fail system. they were far from a zero fail system with respect to the kind of testing they were using and how they were using it. the virus got into the white house multiple times. they had outbreaks in the white house. the one that is most remembered is the outbreak we think occurred around the elevation of judge barrett to the supreme court where multiple people came infected from what we think was an event probably held indoors at the white house that day. we still do not know who patient zero was. in the book, i go through it in detail. they did not do a lot of epidemiological surveillance after the outbreak to pinpoint the source of the infection. it was possible to do that.

if you had tested everyone and sequenced samples, you might have been able to isolate patient zero, but they did not do that. it was a couple of months before the election. i think they probably did not want to know. host: connie, you are on with dr. gottlieb. caller: hi, doctor. i am allergic to corn and carrion epipen all the time. i was looking at the pfizer ingredients. one was sucrose that comes from fructose. fructose comes from corn, maize. i am terrified of getting the vaccine. i was told when it comes to panic attacks that i do suffer, they are very close in margin. my fear is if i take the

vaccine, and my having a reaction or a panic attack? i am terrified myself to take it. host: what would you tell connie? guest: i have not heard of that particular ingredient and i'm not familiar with whether there would be cross-reactivity between the particular allergy you have and the ingredient. i will ask the question after the show is over. if i can get an answer, i will post something to twitter. that is the first time that has been raised. i am not there with it. -- i am not familiar with it. host: dr. gottlieb's twitter handle is @drscottgottlieb. caller: i was curious to hear dr. gottlieb's take on the amish in lancaster, how they handled

covid with no vaccines in the masks. thank you. guest: i missed the caller's question, if it is possible to repeat it. host: she was interested in comparisons with how the amish community has handled covid, if you know or have looked into that. guest: i have not looked into it. i do not know if they were able to create a bubble around the community and keep the virus out. host: from twitter, a question for you around preparedness and masks specifically. n95's were not available during the pandemic for many, saying the cdc should be prepared to send a supply of n95's to american homes next time. is that even possible? guest: yes. the twitter consumer is right on

both points. n95 masks were not even available to health care workers early on. consumers tried to buy off of ebay or other places. a lot of times, they were getting counterfeits that were not protective. it is possible to not just stockpile masks. the old notion was we would buy a lot and stick them in a strategic national stockpile. that does not work so well. it is hard to store these things. a lot have been depleted or had become rubbery or brittle. we need to create more of a manufacturing base for the components we need in a crisis. that could be easily scaled up in crisis. there is a way to do this. i talk about creating vendor managed inventory where

government agencies are compelled to secure these through government approved manufacturers. you will be creating jobs and will have supply chains open even in a crisis. i think in the future, we need to have the ability to forward higher-quality masks directly to consumers. early on, if we could have given every senior citizen an n95 mask , that could have helped a lot of people protect themselves. we have this idea that they need to be properly fitted or they will not be 95% effective. all of that is true, but it is better than nothing and certainly better than what people were forced to use. an n95 even not properly fitted will be more protective than a cloth mask. there is a lot we could do

differently in the future to provide better protection for consumers in the setting of a respiratory virus like this. host: about 20 minutes left with dr. scott gottlieb. from louisiana, your next. -- you are next. caller: i would like to ask two questions. i think i might know what your answer would be in part two a question of whether or not the blood type affects covid, because there has been no mention of it today. i have heard that no negative -- o negative is more resistant to the covid virus. i'm wondering what your opinion is on the current research in this area. host: give me your second question real quick before we take the answer. caller: but i really want the answer to that question for sure.

the other is, how many people who contract covid -- is there any data being calculated on the people who contract covid who have major medical illnesses? is it mostly ill people who contract it or is it not? host: got it. thanks for the call. dr. gottlieb, blood type first. guest: on blood type, there has been mixed research about whether people with certain blood types are more predisposed to more severe disease from covid. i am not perfectly up-to-date on the literature but i was reading it along the way. my perception is it is highly mixed and there is not a definitive answer to the question. it is more likely there is not a correlation, based on my reading of some of the literature around this question. the second question i think was around more long covid. we are still figuring out what

the rate of persistent symptoms is in people to get covid and who is more predisposed to persistent symptoms. i don't think we have a clear answer to that question. in some studies, almost 1/3 of people who get covid have persistent symptoms. some are mild. some that are persistent are related to a illness. they are not necessarily directly related to the direct effects of the virus. but there clearly is a component of people who seem to have some post viral syndrome where you see persistent loss of neurological functions or problems with memory. that does seem to be a post viral syndrome. this virus in particular does seem to have some impact on our nervous system. even the lost of taste and smell

, those are components of our nervous system. impacting taste and smell means that virus is impacting the nervous system. this is a sinister virus. i think if people can avoid getting this virus -- we talked about natural immunity and i will be immune after i get the virus, i think you want to do everything you can to avoid getting the virus, including getting vaccinated. i am on the board advisor, one of the companies that makes one of the vaccines available. there's also evidence that people who get infected after vaccination, and we do know there are breakthrough infections, the prevalence of the post viral syndromes seems to be much lower in those individuals. host: on transmission, elaine with this question. initially, we were told you could contract covid via the eyes. should the eyes be protected? if so, how? guest: there probably is some

transmission through your eyes. we see evidence of other viruses being transmitted through the eyes. you probably need to get a large dose of virus in your eyes. if you are talking to someone exuding respiratory droplets on your face, something like that. the eyes are very good at clearing infection. the surface components of the eyes are designed to prevent infections from going in that route. when we look at studies involving monkeys, if you give an animal and inoculate of virus through the conjuctiva, they can get it but it is a higher amount. i think in a normal environment, the risk is low.

probably the yield from wearing masks or glasses is low. if you are in contact with individuals and have an unfortunate circumstance, you could be more likely to get the virus through that route of transmission. most of the transmission i think we can safely conclude is through era solicitation -- aerosolization when you have people maskless indoors with poor air circulation. if you are indoors and a lot of people without masks where people are talking loudly or singing, you think of bars and restaurants as environments that could be conducive to spread, if they don't have the proper air filtration in place. host: joann, you are on with dr.

scott gottlieb. caller: good morning. my question has to do with the pfizer vaccine. i am 75. i have been vaccinated. i have both doses. i was listening to a radio broadcast talking about how pfizer has two types of vaccines. the one in the u.k. is different from what they are using in the united states her this radio station. the fda approved vaccine is the one going to the u.k.. he said the other one is still labeled as experimental. host: let's let dr. gottlieb answer your first question. guest: with respect to the caller, that is not true.

i would like to see the source of the information so i can have some way to respond to it. the pfizer vaccine is the same vaccine globally. there are two main manufacturing sites, one in europe and one in the u.s., but they are producing comparable products. some of the vaccine used in the u.s. early on was manufactured in europe. a lot use outside the u.s. is manufactured in the u.s. facility, in pfizer's michigan facility. it is the same vaccine. the caller might be referring to the way different regulatory bodies have acted. some have fully approved the vaccine. the vaccine is fully approved in the u.s. in other markets, it might still be offered under some emergency use authorization process. it might be different in terms

of how they are regulated and labeled but the actual, physical product is the same. host: it might be a good time to talk about what the pfizer vaccine for children is and when kids can likely be able to get the vaccine. guest: the vaccine being developed for children 5-11, it is authorized for 12 and above. the fda will be meeting october 26 to discuss the application from pfizer, the company i am on the board of, for the vaccine for 5-11, assuming there is a positive recommendation at that meeting, the cdc is scheduled to meet november 2-3. they would make a recommendation on which population should be

eligible for the vaccine and how it should be deployed to achieve large public health goals. they will say something like children 5-11 may be likely to benefit from the vaccine or should get the vaccine. they will use some language like that to make a broader recommendation to the population around the appropriate use of the vaccine. the vaccine could be available very quickly. pfizer is prepared to start shipping immediately upon authorization to start making it available. it will be dispensed in bottles smaller than the files used for adults because it is a lower amount. it is the same vaccine used in 12 and about, just a smaller amount. it is a 10 microgram vaccine instead of 30 micrograms. it is 1/3 of the dose used

in adults and 12 and above. hopefully, it will be a small amount enough of vaccine that it could be distributed in doctors offices. the current vaccine is distributed in mass vaccination sites and pharmacies because a lot of small practices cannot take the trays of vaccines because they cannot distribute enough. it is too much for them to be able to distribute. one of the goals is to distribute the vaccine and small enough packages that even pediatricians' offices can get vaccine and distribute it to their local community. if we can get the vaccine into the hands of pediatricians, i

think that will go a long way to providing a point of delivery that will be far more comfortable for the children and parents. it is a place where parents can get counseled by their own personal physician. i think that will help people get properly educated and get more comfortable making a decision to vaccinate kids. i am obviously a proponent of vaccination. i have young kids. i will vaccinate them as soon as it is available for them based on their age. i would encourage other parents to strongly consider vaccinating their kids. a lot of parents have reasonable questions about vaccinating children. it is always a hard decision to make a decision to put a medical product in a healthy child. lots of questions around this. i would encourage every parent to have an in-depth conversation with their pediatrician about this. don't necessarily listen to what you see on tv or on the web. talk to your own personal physician who can help guide you through some questions. host: matt from maryland, you

are on with dr. gottlieb. caller: i would like to address the elephant in the room, which is donald trump, and the unique circumstance of having a pandemic overseen by a malignant narcissist and sociopath who cannot view this virus in terms other than political ones. the reason we did not put all of these measures into place, some has to do with preparedness and response, but most of it has to do with the reality that we had a malignant narcissist who was consistently trying to play this down and did not put best practices into place, discredited government scientists, discredited anyone he thought was in the way of creating this as a wedge issue for his reelection. whether it is george w. bush or barack obama or joe biden, or

whoever is the next president, any of them would have had a good faith effort, listened to the science, and done our best work to get the government and every american together. in this case, it was intentionally set to pit people against each other. and that is the reason there are huge disparities, the politicization of things like masks and the vaccine, that we have never had before. host: dr. gottlieb? guest: my book tried to focus on the more systemic structural features of government where i felt there were shortcomings. some of the more historic, persistent shortcomings that made the country vulnerable to this crisis. i wanted to lay out a roadmap of how we reform government, how we engage private industry more, to make ourselves more resilient to these kinds of threats.

i did not want to focus on the political narrative. i felt other people would do a much better job of that. "nightmare scenario" is an excellent job talking about the politics around this. that said, i also do not pull punches on portable questions around whether poor political leadership also contributed to our vulnerability. i was in close contact with the administration working with the white house. i had worked for the trump administration and had a lot of friends still in the administration. where i come out on the political issues in the book and focus a lot of attention, there's a lot of aspects to the politics that ended up infecting our response, but the one i focus on in the book is a lack of a consistent approach to trying to galvanize the nation around activities and actions that could help mitigate the spread.

we talked about this earlier in this broadcast. having political leadership that could galvanize the nation around the idea of wearing masks, of getting vaccinated, trying to avoid high-risk settings, there was a lot of hardship borne by the american people. there were a lot of sacrifices made. i think if we had political leadership pulling us together behind some of these measures consistently through the whole crisis, we could have been better off. it would not have prevented the pandemic, but we could have helped mitigate some of the surge in infection. i think that is where the white house failed in this regard. early on, there was a seriousness about this. i talked to the president early on. i think they were sober about this, notwithstanding some mixed messages. they were also getting bad information about this. they were told there was no community transmission. the white house did do the 15 days to slow the spread, followed by the 45 days to slow

the spread, with an historic shut down, so they took action. the failure was to follow that through and be consistent and galvanize the nation behind measures that could reduce the spread all the way through. there was a perception that uncontrolled spread was inevitable, that anything we did was just going to be costly and impact the economy without much benefit. towards the end, you had them pulling away from asking the nation to make any sacrifice. you had the president ceremoniously taking off his mask while he was still contagious with covid after he was discharged from the hospital. what message did that send? i think you need to have a consistent set of things you were going to ask the american people to do to try to reduce the scope of the spread. it was not going to be lockdowns and shutdowns forever. clearly, we were not going to shut down again after the first

wave of virus. new york city was on the brink of collapse. there were other things we could have done that would have not been as impactful economically, that would not have been as intrusive to individual lives, and we did not have a consistent message and leadership around trying to galvanize the public behind those actions. that is where i think there was a real shortcoming, to the caller's point. host: time for one more color in the three or four minutes we have left. we have been speaking with dr. scott gottlieb about his book, "uncontrolled spread." will in albany, new york, thanks for waiting. caller: thank you. i had two quick questions. on the last caller, this kind of relates to it, i think president

trump worked with private industry and had the experience to do that. i am glad he did. i think bureaucratic waves would have taken longer to get vaccine to us. if this is a man-made virus coming out of a lab, do you treat it differently than other viruses that came from animals and other places? is a man-made virus more deadly and harder to fight with a vaccine? that is the one thing. what ties into it is what you said before. should we have more companies making masks and vaccines and also having pharmaceutical supplies here? we rely on china for 97% of the ingredients for medicines. that is my question. host: thanks for the questions. dr. gottlieb?

guest: i don't think the conventional wisdom right now is this is a man-made virus so far as it was a virus engineered for some purpose and could only escaped out of a lab. i think there is a real possibility that this was a virus found in nature brought into a lab, experimented with, probably not for nefarious purposes, and in the course of experiment and with that became more humanized. maybe they were infecting animals with human immune systems, growing in cultures trying to alter it as a way to experiment with it, and it explained -- escaped from a lab accidentally. i would apply equal weight to that scenario as that this came out of nature and went from an animal to human and was the spark that lit the flame on a global pandemic.

it is probably not the case it was engineered to be a specific way. regardless of if it was engineered an escape from a lab or came out of nature, a virus is a virus at this point. i think we have a good understanding of its principles. there is not anything we would be doing differently now in terms of how we approach it by knowing its origin. knowing its origin is important for historical purposes and national security reasons. if we accept this came out of the lab, setting aside the diplomatic issues and consequences china would be responsible for, it changes the way we do surveillance, intelligence gathering, and get better security around labs capable of being sources of these kinds of viruses in the future. there are a lot of high-security labs around the world doing risky research, often with poor controls. i think we have to do more going

forward kidding more control around those labs. if we assess there is a moderate or high probability this individual virus came out of the lab. host: dr. scott gottlieb, we always appreciate your time when you stop by. next, some have called president biden's build back better agenda another new deal. we will dig into whether that comparison is on target with price fishback of the university of arizona. stick around. we will be right back. >> tuesday morning, the supreme court hears oral arguments in a case launched by the kentucky attorney general aiming to defend the state's antiabortion law that was struck down by a federal court.

watch live coverage beginning at 10:00 eastern on c-span, online, or on our new video app. >> the house veterans affairs committee holds a hearing on the recruitment of veterans by violent extremist groups. watch live coverage on c-span2, online at c-span.org, or on our new video app, c-span now. >> ♪ >> you can be part of the national conversation by participating in c-span's studentcam video competition. if you are a middle or high school student, we are asking you to create a documentary that answers the question, how does the federal government impact your life?

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economics professor price fishback joins us now. his research expertise is in f.d.r.'s new deal. professor fishback, do you think the build back better plan is a sort of new, new deal for the 21st century? guest: they have been calling it a green new deal. i think the situation was dramatically different back then. when you think about the new deal in the 1930's, a lot of what was spent was temporary because they were dealing with a depression. real gdp had fallen to 30% below what it was in 1929 by 1932 and did the same again in 1933. it is hard to visualize that. think about cutting off everything west of the mississippi river for the

economy, and that is basically what happened. the response with the new deal was they spent a lot of money initially trying to provide relief and unemployment benefits. they did not have unemployment insurance at the time. the federal government had never done anything like this before. they had tons of problems all over the economy. they were throwing everything at it to see what stuck. today what has happened, we have come out of a terrible pandemic and spent a huge amount of money during the pandemic but we are close to recovering to where we were before. the unemployment rate is down to about 4.5%. this is not a response trying to respond to a huge drop in output. this is taking the existing social welfare system, trying to build upon it, and doing a lot of extra spending on things like green new deal and things like this. it is actually quite different i think. host: the debates when it comes

to how we are spending money, we hear about hard infrastructure and human infrastructure. take us back to the 1930's and what the new was created how much did it deal with hard infrastructure and human infrastructure? guest: a large part of the spinning was designed to put people back to work or provide benefits. you always hear about the w.p.a., but the original program that spent a lot of money was the emergency relief administration. the government for the first time started handing out direct welfare payments to people and also introduced work early for a lot of people. work relief became the dominant form after that because they had the civil works administration. they had a bunch of triple-lettered agencies that developed over time. eventually, the w.p.a. placed the emergency relief

administration. about 2/3 of the spending to the states was relief spending that had a work requirement associated with that that was building physical capital in a lot of cases, building roads, schools, sidewalks, all sorts of different things. the w.p.a. almost entirely built infrastructure along with putting people back to work. a typical person on the w.p.a. was paid about 1/2 to 2/3 of the wage you would pay on a normal government project at the time. you had the roads administration hiring people at full wages at the time. they spent about 20% of the money. the final amount of money went to agricultural programs where they were paying farmers to take land out of production. they had a bunch of loan programs and things like that.

they were trying to fix all sorts of things that we are not trying to fix right now. today, we have this view that we will make this shift towards a green economy and things like this and we are going to subsidize a bunch of different things. on the human side, the new deal, they were trying to take care of a lot of people. these people were in dire trouble because they had lost their jobs. the unemployment rate was over 10% for the entire decade. over 19% for five years out of the decade. these were record levels of unemployment. they could not stem the tide easily. they did do things like the social security act. the biggest spender never spent any money in the 1930's. that was social security. we were smart paying it out until 1940. that has been the biggest legacy of the new deal because now we are spending about 4% of gdp on

social security. host: a lot of discussion in the media comparing the build back better plan to the new deal of the 1930's. if you want to join the conversation with professor price fishback, give us a call. phone lines as usual. republicans, democrats, independents. when the build back better plan comes up, the price tag is the thing we hear about. budget reconciliation, $3.5 trillion bill. how do we do an apples to apples comparison on how much would be spent on this plan and how much was spent during the new deal? guest: one thing to think about, the $3.5 trillion is spent over 10 years. you should think of it more like 350 billion dollars a year when you compare it to the new deal because the new deal was spread

out as well. there are questions about whether 3.5 between dollars is an accurate picture of what the true spending will be because a lot of things they say they will cut off around 2026 will be hard to eliminate. $500 billion a year is about 3% of gdp. if you look at what happened during the 1930's, in the first year, they spent an extra 2% in 1934. if pete at about 5% of gdp during the veterans bonus of 1936. and then it dropped back down to about 3.5% by the end of the decade.

a lot of the spending goes away in 1942. about 2% of gdp on social welfare spending. it does not get back to that level again until 1954 when social security spending is ramped up. host: let me show the viewers those numbers for visual learners. "the washington post" taking up what professor fishback is talking about in this chart. this is spending as a share of gdp on the new deal. the numbers increased in the mid-1930's. this chart comparing spending as a share of gdp during the new deal, to the obama programs, and the biden agenda, and what is going to happen if the build

back better plan passes. those charts on the screen for viewers. professor fishback, add more context. guest: i have been talking about percentages of gdp. one way to think about it is the new deal spent at most $550 per person in one year. the build back better plan will spend about $1200 per person, in $2021. but as a percentage of gdp, that smaller number looks figure relative to gdp than the modern one. it makes the comparisons different because the timeframe is so different. what we are doing with the new one is a chunk of that is going towards trying to look a lot

more like nordic and european countries for what we do and having more government based pre-k spending and things like that and also childcare expenditures, a variety of health care expenditures, and things along those lines. building that up is a bunch of different things trying to subsidize a lot of green activities and new things along those lines. this is a big bill. it is not just social insurance. it is a lot of other factors they could not fit into the negotiated deal they made about the $1 trillion. that was more like hard infrastructure like roads and things like that. host: another number people tend to get is u.s. debt. let's go back to the 1930's with the help of thebalance.com. this chart showing u.s. debt rounded to billions of dollars.

starting in 1932, it was $20 billion. then the new deal programs start to hit. $27 billion in 1934. $34 billion in 1936. by the end of that decade in 1939, it was up to $40 billion, double what it was in 1932. how much concern was there at the time about the rising u.s. debt? guest: well, they were worried about it. in fact, the hoover administration ran up levels of debt similar to what happened with the roosevelt administration. roosevelt was pretty conservative on this. in the hoover administration, there was a big increase in taxes. it probably went from 35% to 70%

of gdp over the 10 years, including hoover. if you compare that to what happened when we had the stimulus in the great recession, which was partly bush and partly obama, in two years, they went from 35% of gdp to 70% of gdp. a big scaling of debt. when i was writing about this, i made some comparisons at the time. it looked like the response to the great recession was about the size you would have wanted for the great depression and the size for the great depression was about the size you would have wanted for the great recession. it seems like it was flipped. a lot of people talk about the 1930's as being a keynesian thing because that is when he was writing his book and talking about running deficit spending. he was writing letters in the papers writing to the president

saying you have spent more but you are also taxing more. a lot of keynesians since that time have noted this was not a keynesian expenditure. economic historians have known it for decades. for some reason, it never seems to get out to the general public. the people who looked the most like keynesians before obama comes in our reagan and the first bush because they are running deficits about 5% of gdp, even though they're talking about supply-side economics. deficitsduring the great recession were 10% of gdp. one other comparison i think is important is the deficit during the pandemic when we shut down the economy was around 15%, somewhere in that neighborhood. we jacked the debt up to above 100% of gdp held by the non-backed public. we have a hefty chunk of debt sitting there.

a lot is held by the federal reserve. host: you mentioned american economic historians. i should note professor fishback is a published economic historian. with us this morning on "washington journal" to take your phone calls on the new deal and the build back better agenda, taking your calls until 9:40 eastern. ralph on the line for democrats , go ahead. caller: i am from upstate new york. the professor brought up john maynard keynes. the economic thinking was different in the 1930's until the 1980's. their thinking was you help

those at the top and the rest trickles down to the rest of us. we go back to the new deal, one of the cornerstones was the national labor relations act. that helped workers filled from the bottom up. compared to now, we have the act held up in the senate with only 47 cosponsors from one party and there is a lot of opposition to it. i think if we passed the protect the right to organize act, it would help rebuild the middle class. thank you for your time. host: professor fishback, any thoughts? guest: the national recovery administration was trying to do things like that. they were trying to increase employment. one way they suggested of doing it was by cutting the number of hours worked per week.

they also opened the door for organizing and more adjudicating disputes between unions and corporations at the time as well. they actually managed to increase wages. they reduced hours worked. they increased employment to some extent as well. that was kind of their purpose, to do these things paid weekly wages stayed roughly the same. they did organize more. the national labor act was passed in 1934. it took a couple of years for it to get going because no one knew if it was constitutional. that goes along pretty well. there are a number of strikes in the 1940's that lead congress -- that angered a number of people so they ended up passing taft-hartley in 1948 that restricts unionization more. the act he is talking about is

trying to tilt toward union organizing and things along those lines. from 1950 five forward, the share of unionization in the united states has fallen. the dominant unions are found in public schools and public areas. host: mike, in maryland, independent, good morning. caller: good morning, gentlemen from maryland. professor fishback, my daddy idolized f.d.r. and his new deal plan. but i don't think uncle joe biden and his build back better scheme will ever rise to that level of adoration. i would like to know your thoughts on this, professor. thank you very much. guest: one of the reasons is roosevelt stepped into an incredibly bad environment, so when they are doing this spending for the unemployed and poor and things like that, their incomes were about 1/4 of what

they are today. this was helping people in a lot of ways. hoover ended up spending a lot more as well. it is kind of surprising. he almost doubled spending per person, spending as a share of gdp, in the early 1920's -- early 1930's, sorry. he did it within existing programs and did not publicize it much. roosevelt was a genius at this because he was jacking up spending as well, but he was doing it by creating new programs to publicize. the civilian conservation corps, the public works association. it gets this new patina to it. a tremendous number of changes during this period and long-term legacies that follow. this is a shift towards the federal government getting more heavily involved in the economy. what we do during the new deal

is incredible in terms of the range of things going on. one of the questions that comes up, is, how big of an effect does it have west mark everyone talks about the multiplier. i did some estimates where we looked at, when you spent money in a state how much did that stimulate the economy? when you go state-by-state, it is not fully getting out what happens locally. if you brought a dollar of spending per person to stay, that tended to increase income by one dollar. the multiplier was one. spending a dollar and getting a dollar back was pretty good because a lot of times spending will crowd out private spending. this was not the case, so it had a strong effect.

most of this tended to be public sector spending and it did not really spill over to the private sector much. private employment does not change much in response to the spending. but people's incomes go up. it is similar to what happened during the pandemic. when they handed out more money, people's incomes went up when the output was dropping because we had shut down the economy. in that situation, it was somewhat similar. host: when we talk about the build back better plan, it includes climate change and energy initiatives, education initiatives, childcare and family focused initiatives. just a very big bill in one piece of legislation the biden administration is trying to move right now. going back to the new deal, was it one big bill or several bills over the course of that decade? guest: they basically created a bill for every new program.

it was not one big bill. they might have omnibus bills, but they were typically providing new bills every year. each year, they would scale up what they would spend on the w.p.a. they would call it more of a general belief bill. there were not many bills lasting over 10 years. i think the 10-year window has become more popular in the last 20 years. i'm always surprised at that. $3.5 trillion is a huge amount of money. that is being spent over 10 years. that is about 0.6% of gdp as opposed to $3.5 trillion. $5 trillion is about 20% of gdp.

in the bill, there are a lot of moves to shift what we are doing in terms of children and things along those lines. i've have been doing studies comparing sweden and the united states. in america, most of child care is taken care by individual families. pre-k public schooling is not that large. a bunch of states have it. they always talk about the child allowance sweden spends. it turns out sweden's child allowance is about the same size as the tax break most people get when filing taxes. unless you are at the very top of the income distribution. it is about the same amount of money being saved on taxes in

the united states as the swedish tax allowance paying people directly. in the bill, they are shifting and trying to make it so instead of getting a tax break, they pay you in advance during the course of the year. the big difference is the prior to kindergarten spending and things. we have a number of state governments that provide this thing. most people do it on their own or might have family do it or higher a childcare person. in sweden, they have a national system where they go to school provided by local governments at the time. one of the interesting features is over the course of 30 years, almost all of the employment in sweden went up in local governments and it was all women pretty much and they were going back and setting up these pre-k

situations and things along those lines. sherwin rosen at columbia documented this in the 1990's. that was almost the entire increase in employment in sweden during that timeframe. host: coming up on 9:30 on the east coast. time for a few more phone calls. alice has been waiting in grand rapids, michigan, independent. go ahead. caller: i would like to know if you can answer me, what happened to our gold in fort knox that is supposed to be stored there? guest: i'm not absolutely sure. that is one place we hold our gold reserves. gold is not as big of a deal as it used to be because we are not on the gold standard anymore. that is one way we hold america's wealth, but i don't know how much is still there. i remember going to see "goldfinger" when i was a kid,

but i really don't know much about it. host: appropriate with the new bond movie coming out. the phone lines for republicans, democrats, independents, talking about comparisons between the new deal and the build back better agenda. brett, independent, good morning. caller: good morning. professor, go, wildcats. my question is on the build back better. the president says people that make $400,000 and big business, they're going to raise the taxes for them to pay for it. my question is, have they closed the tax loopholes that allow these people not to pay taxes? i was just wondering about that. guest: i don't know about

loopholes they have been closing. that is why you hear about people with very high levels of income not paying much in taxes because they are using donations to charity or a variety of tax deductions provided in the bills. tax bills are laden with all sorts of things because we like to adjust and subsidize with tax breaks. it is kind of interesting in this case because they are putting in a lot of taxes and saying it is above the $400,000 mark and for corporations. this kind of takes us back to the way we were taxing in the 1930's. income taxes in the 1930's had a very high deduction level. that meant only about 7% and less in some years were paying income taxes at the time. there was a big tax increase in 1932 and again in 1936 on income

taxes. another way they taxed in the 1930's was to increase the number of excise taxes on things like gasoline, electricity, alcohol when they eliminated prohibition. excise taxes which are regressive became a major part of the budget during that timeframe. it came out to be about 45% of the budget. another comparison useful to make is another difference is how we tax and how sweden taxes. the sweden taxes go too much lower levels of income. they have average tax rate is about 67% average income. swedish people are paying as much as warty 8% of their income in income taxes including things like social security taxes and things like that and americans are paying more than -- more

like 30%. if you look at people who have kids, he gets lower in sweden but lot lower in the u.s. because we have the income tax credit which -- tax credit which pays -- plays a major role to help people who have a low income. host: this is from campbellsville, mckenzie, -- kentucky a democrat. caller: i'm just calling to say is there any way they can come to an agreement to where maybe possibly they could maybe cut back or eliminate some of what

president biden wants to where people will not lose their social security, medicare, medicaid, their snap program. can they come to an agreement? people don't want to lose their income. host: that's something we can watch together on c-span in the weeks and months to come to see what happens with this legislation. with the new deal in the 19 30's, was there a concerned this was too much growth by the federal government? guest: there were definitely people who are on that. there was a huge majority on both sides of congress with the

roosevelt administration. hoover spent more but it wasn't working. they had a huge mandate to make all sorts of changes and they took advantage of it will stop there were plenty of conservatives and others who were worried about the expansion of government activity and roosevelt was being called a socialist and things like that but he pretty well kept away from socialism to a large extent and was trying to do things. they were trying to avoid replacing what private people would do. almost everything they spent on, when they spent money was on public welfare and things like this and building schools and things like this. the loan programs were designed to help businesses get back on their feet, to help people who are in danger of losing their houses. i wouldn't worry about people losing income from the

government as a result of what's happening in the current negotiations because the programs are there. this is adding programs on top of it for expanding so we are not going backwards. they've agreed on the $1 trillion bill so the big fight is on the bigger one. there is a lot of negotiating going on. we talked about the debt limit and they negotiated that at the last second and then passed what they needed to pass, i'm sure there will be some kind of agreement somewhere along the line. host: chicago, indiana, democrat good morning. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call.

i'm glad to see we will try to get out from underneath reaganomics. the last 40 years, that has put as deep in debt with recessions and everything else and we are getting back to more basic economics. conservatives say it's socialism because the next thing we will all be communists. how can you get past the negative thinking about socialism when a lot of our programs in this country are rooted in socialism? it's to promote a better standard of leaving, for the people, not against the people as opposed to reaganomics which is just -- which was just for the rich. guest: over the course of that

time, we had for the longest expansions in history, almost nine or 10 years of expansion so these were good times. people think of these things as bad but we were are better off now than we were 40 years ago. we are fighting about these things all the time and everyone keeps focusing on what's going on but we have fewer recession since 1982 than we have ever had. it's true that real wages for some workers are not doing as well. people are better educated and tend to do better. they are not turning into socialism. people throw that term around pretty loosely. they are trying to do more like european social democrats. if you look at sweden which is an extreme but it is a market economy and has all sorts of

things. they have a big social where phil -- welfare system. i have done some studies of this, the big headline number for sweden is that they spend 38% of gdp be on public and social welfare spending by the government and the u.s. spends about 17%. if you take into account how much they taxes, they tax things along these lines, particular people who get benefits. once you take that out, they are down around 27% of gdp in the u.s. is about 19. the biggest thing we do is we have private health care and they don't. we spent eight or 9% on public health care for the veterans and the poor and the elderly and then we spend another 9% of gdp on private health care. sweden spends about 9% of gdp total for their whole society. once you add in private health

care, sweden is about 28%. we are around 26% and we spend more on these things we do it differently. we have a safety net system where if you are were we try to take care of you but if you are well-to-do, you pay for your own stuff. in sweden, it's universal. they get child payments to everybody. host: jerry in florida, line for republicans. caller: i don't know what i'm talking about but you mentioned earlier about the fdr programs. all those programs ended but this bill joe biden is promoting has programs in it that is going over the next 10 years so will they and after that?

some of the programs are with us forever and they are not working or they get or money. is there accounted to latif for all of this? guest: a lot of the do deal programs ended in a number of them continue on so there is an big legacy. one of the worries about the current thing is that is $3.5 trillion but it starts scaling down around 2026. once you have a federal program in place and you fund things like prekindergarten schooling and things like that, you are setting up a group of people who want to continue doing that so it's hard to get rid of it. some of the money they say they will transfer the cost of the program to the state. then you have to worry about what's going on with state budgets as well so it's a complicated system stop i agree

that when they establish a federal program, it takes a lot to get rid of it. host: professor frank fishback thanks for your time this morning. guest: thank you. host: there is about 20 men it's left in today's "washington journal." we will turn the phone lines over to you. it's open form so let us know what political issue you want to talk of doubt. the numbers are on your screen. >> this week on the c-span networks, the senate will be out after passing an agreement that would lift the debt ceiling through early december and the house will be done tuesday

devote the measure in the u.s. supreme court will haven't oral argument on several days during the week and you can listen them that's listen to them on www.c-span.org and the new c-span app, c-span now. they will discuss a kentucky than on abortion and we will have live coverage of the oil -- carol argument tuesday morning. on wednesday at 10 a.m. eastern, the supreme court will hear a case seeking to reinstate the death sentence for the boston marathon bomber first stop a previous federal court had vacated and live at 10 a.m. eastern on c-span2, the house veterans affairs committee will hold a hearing on the recruitment of veterans by extremist groups. watch this week on the c-span networks or you can watch our full coverage on c-span now, our

new video app and go over to www.c-span.org for scheduling information or stream video any time step c-span, your unfiltered view of government. ♪ >> get c-span on the go, watch the days political events live anytime, anywhere on our new video path, c-span now all stop listen to c-span radio and discover new podcasts for free stuff download c-span now today. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we want to hear from you about the stories on your mind. it's our open form and you can call in as usual at these numbers. as you call in, a fascinating

story from the washington post today about a navy nuclear engineer and his wife who have now been charged with trying to say or submarine secrets with an unnamed foreign country. the story has fascinating details about how this plot was discovered stop there was an email conversation that began nearly a year ago in which the suspect discussed espionage

traits and payments with someone he thought was a foreign spy but was desperate was actually and under all stuff he originally asked for 100,000 in crypto currencies. the fbi agent persuaded him to can -- conducted dead drop of operation in jefferson county we received about $10,000 worth of cryptocurrencies. the fbi later recovered the package you have behind.

that is all according to court filings unsealed yesterday in west virginia and the full story is in the washington post. more of your phone calls with their open forum and neil is up first on our line for republicans. caller: good morning. caller: i know it's on the back burner now but the issue about the various states of voting laws and how they are being deceptively described. one of the things here in new york with early voting starting up is election officials are scrambling to find poll workers and poll watchers address shows

that these officials keep the polls open want to use the resources that they have. expeditiously that if it means 24 hour voting when you only have seven people show up between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., it does not make sense to keep the polls open during that time. those are using resources that could be used during regular polling times. i know there was one of the guests you have was you here a while back. she tried to pass them off as a bipartisan group. they were clearly a democratic pac that took pride in their

help in the arizona raises and the georgia races as well. my point is utilization of workers pulled during the early voting and on election day. host: you mentioned you here. there was a hearing on the tourism industry after covid-19.

we had the international leader of the group will stop john is in buzzards bay massachusetts, good morning. caller: good morning. i guess the caller left but i had some comments about the comparison between the roosevelt years in the present years with joe biden. was there vote or fraud suspicion back then? was there suspicion of voter fraud with hoover compared to trump in a similar way? was civil right's suspended in

order to run a new economy. was there a high amount of political operatives running the results of political elections rather than the voters themselves? host: that's john in massachusetts. this is kay in winter haven, florida. caller: we need to set a good example as democrats and everybody should be ok. host: what happened with

democrats trying to find consensus on this budget reconciliation bill? caller: i don't know what happened but we all need to stick together because we've got to democrats that are not really going along. i don't know what the problem is , maybe we should get some of the democrats to run against them, i don't see what needs to be the problem. the democrats are not together and they need to get a back bone. host: whose job is it to bring them together? caller: we are the people that need to bring them together. we want to see our president look successful but it doesn't look so good stuff host: alan in pennsylvania, good morning. caller: i'm going to be very

brief. we talk about infrastructure money being used. infrastructure and as i understand infrastructure, it's bridges, etc., things that employ people in the project they are doing, their long-lasting and provide jobs and provide opportunities for all of us. i am very much against the social infrastructure. i think it's misleading to many people. i think it turns out to be nothing more than you hand out money. it's a one-shot deal was the people have that money. the next week, they had to have more.

projects that will be used by everyone in america. host: is it fair to say you are in support of the bipartisan infrastructure rim work but not the budget reconciliation bill? caller: exactly. host: this is steven in florida, democrat, good morning. caller: i have two things i want to bring up. us democrats, we put president biden into the white house. we own the house and we share the senate but my problem is is that we are knocking -- we're not working as hard as we were to slow the progress of trump and his cults. i'm upset about the lack of speed on that stuff since we own the house and congress, why haven't we seen the eula report

unredacted? is been put on the back burner and nothing has been wrought up in that sense. bill moyer the other night scared and shocked a lot of us. it was spot on. host: what shock you about it? caller: the whole thing. if every dish if anybody hasn't watched it, full it up and respond to it. it really talks about civil war and where we are going to be is a more divided nation and it just scares me that we democrats will be on the hit list from the republicans as far as where they are going to be back in power because they have just

manipulated with the gerrymandering and voter suppression laws in all the red states and i truly do not think we have a chance to maintain a balance where we are equal. we will be in a situation where it's poorly run because of how the white house is not been properly handling their situation that we own the house and congress and the white house. host: just about five minutes left in our program. tomorrow, the house is back in session and it's set to work on that senate passed bill that increases the debt ceiling through december 3. the house will come in at 3:30 p.m. eastern with gavel-to-gavel coverage here on c-span. you can also watch at www.c-span.org and listen on the c-span now at.

tomorrow morning, the supreme court is set to hear oral arguments in a case launched by the kentucky attorney general defending the state is antiabortion law that was struck down by a federal word. you can watch our life coverage at 10 a.m. eastern on c-span and www.c-span.org. all of that tomorrow but today, time for a few more phone calls in our open forum. caller: good morning, for most of the callers, division has -- says we have to be careful and he said listen to bill moyer and he scared. we changed over our country from

the industrial revolution to now. there is a fear about the technology age so if you compare what's going on with the stimulus and the food lines, it reminds me of the food lines from the russian stop i don't know if economically we are our role into depression we need this helicopter money but the same things happen not just in america but around the world. you look at rebuilding january -- the rebuilding of j -- of germany. it seems like we are stuck in that and we are being standard when we should probably emplace the technology. if you go with the mining jobs in virginia that were supposed to be taken by hillary, it wasn't an evasion file way, it was technology. maybe you need six guys and said

20 guys. host: this is ramona in georgia, democrat. caller: i'm 60 years old my been working since i was 11, paid taxes and i have four kids. they are 30 or 40 years old they been paying pack tech -- taxis is there sitting or 17. i have grandkids 25 years old and they are paying taxes. i don't have any teeth, i'm a senior citizen and i need teeth and hearing aids and i don't understand stop i don't want to pay for the bush wars and the other wars and i cannot take care of things without my medicare. our friends are altogether looking at each other and we

don't have teeth stop we worked all our lives. i don't understand what we talk to kids in the democrats and independents. this is so sad. pay taxes. host: thanks for sharing your story in georgia. good morning. caller: good morning, i just wanted to offer this to get rid of crt in the classrooms. i was a registrar for 30 years in the schools and what you do is you just enroll your kids for a couple of days or maybe a week and then reenrolled him. in my state it cost $30 per day they would lose a boatload of money and they would conform to what the parents want in the

united states for their kids to be taught, math, english, science and history. host: you're calling for an a roman boycott because of critical race theory? caller: absolutely correct. we are not here to socialize our kids, we are here to give them an education and if you look it out poorly our educational system has worked with the money were putting into it versus the shamans going on, get rid of the reppo school do through the bright things they should be learning. host: our last caller but we will be back here tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. eastern, 4 a.m. -- pacific in the meantime, have a great morning. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2021] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> the house is back in session on tuesday and will work on a senate passed bill to increase the debt ceiling to keep the federal government solvent december 3. the house comes into session at 3:00 eastern. follow live coverage on c-span, c-span.org or with the c-span now app. >> download c-span new mobile app and stay up-to-date with live video coverage of the days clinical events from live streams on the house and senate floor and key congressional hearings, white house events and oral arguments. even our live morning interactive program where we hear your voices every day. download the app for free today.

c-span is your unfiltered view of government, funded by these television companies and more, including midco. ♪ midco supports c-span as a public service alongside these other service providers, giving you a front seat to democracy. "washington journal" is next. ♪ host: good morning. monday, october 11, 2021. a3 hour "washington journal" on this columbus day. we want to hear about your view on the nation's future and its past.