life -- streaming live on c-span.org or the c-span video cap -- app. >> comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to -- comcast supports c-span as a public service along with these other televising -- television providers to bring you a >> this morning, a look at president biden's 2023 budget request. sean talks about waste fraud and abuse and distribution of federal pandemic relief funds.

later, the wall street journal joined us to investigate the federal investigation into hunter biden's business deals. washington journal is next. ♪ host: good morning. it is wednesday, march 30. house returns at 10:00. the senate also in at 10:00. the select committee will investigate the january 6 attack on the capitol. new documents have shed new light on what led up to and during the attack on the capital. this morning, we are asking your

opinion on the committee and whether you support. one line for democrats, one for republicans, one for independents. you can also send us a text this morning. if you do, please include your name and where you are from. otherwise, catch up with us on social media. a very good wednesday morning to you. you can go ahead and start calling in now. a lot of moving parts when it comes to the january 6 investigation, including on monday. the committee recommending criminal contempt referrals for two top aides to then president trump. the committee requested emails from january 4 through january 7 emails from january 4 through.

january 7 said the former president likely committed federal offenses by attempting to prevent the counting of electoral votes during a joint session of congress. on tuesday this week, the washington post and cbs news reported that there was a seven hour gap in the white house call logs on the day of the capitol riot's. the january 6 committee now looking to see if there was a cover-up there. this comes after reports from the washington post and cbs news last week that the wife of justice clarence thomas sent text messages to former white house chief of staff mark meadows, urging him to overturn the results of the 2020 election. that is a lot of what is going on in the past couple of days. we are asking about all of it this morning. it was that last story, the text by jeannie thomas that continued to make waves on capitol hill yesterday. this was senate majority leader chuck schumer at his weekly press dugout when he was asked

whether justice thomas should recuse himself on any future cases about the 2020 election. this is what he had to say. [video clip] >> first, i do think you should recuse himself. the information we don't know right now raises serious questions about how close he and his wife were the planning and execution of the insurrection. you were very clever. i think there should be some kind of code of ethics for supreme court justices. >> [indiscernible] >> the january 6 committee is investigating and doing a good job. i think they will turn over every stone, and we await to see the outcome. there is enough evidence already, i believe, that he should recuse himself. host: chuck schumer yesterday during the weekly press conferences. republicans holding their own post party lunch press conference.

this is senate minority leader mitch mcconnell, asked about reports he had declined phone calls from president on january 6 of 2021. [video clip] >> i have said repeatedly the last time i spoke to the president was the day after the electoral college declared president biden the winner. i publicly congratulated president biden on his victory. and received a phone call after that from president trump. that is the last time we spoke. >> [indiscernible] did you try to call president trump back that day? >> i just answered your question. host: minority leader mitch mcconnell. january 6 very much a topic of conversation on the hill, not just in the press briefings, but also in other events over the course of this week. we are asking you right now, do

you support the january 6 committee investigation in light of everything that happened the past couple of days. we will go through more of it during this first hour. at first, out of philly, the line for democrats. caller: i support it, but in actuality, i don't understand why this is not being done by merrick garland, the attorney general, and the department of justice. at the end of the day, this is a civil investigation, where clearly, this is a criminal investigation or should be a criminal investigation. ok, january 6, fill in the blanks, but in my opinion, as soon as merrick garland was confirmed as the u.s. attorney general, he should have started a criminal investigation into trump and his cronies from

january 6. host: democrats on capitol hill, some of them would agree with you. one congressman saying yesterday, i have long said attorney general garland needs to act more swiftly and decisively to hold those responsible for january 6 accountable. every day the justice department delays is a day president trump and his cronies escape justice. this is dolores out of pennsylvania. line for republicans. caller: hi. i think what happened on january 6 was the result of what happened earlier with black lives matter, the protests that they carried on. if they are not going to prosecute black lives matter for their protest, i don't think they have any business bringing charges against january 6 protesters. that is just the way i feel. fair is fair, i'm sorry.

host: seattle, washington, independent. good morning. caller: merrick garland should drop the ball on this. this is the worst criminal investigation to be going on in united states history. republican members of congress, this is an inside job from president trump. what we need to do also, we need to find out what those documents were, those classified documents were that trump had in mar-a-lago. i feel like this was something that was involved in what is going on. jared kushner, none of these people would come in and talk, but they were working for the government taking my taxpayer money, and we were paying them in order to overthrow the government. it makes no sense. merrick garland has dropped the ball, just like trump left john durham in. host: derek, you mentioned to

jred kushner -- jared kushner. this is another aspect of the story. from politico, saying that as the former president's son-in-law and daughter could voluntarily appear before the january 6 select committee this week "the president has spoken to the fact that january 6 was one of the darkest days of our country's history and we must have a full accounting of what happened to ensure it does not happen again." kate said they have been quite clear that the constitutional executive privilege should not be used to conceal information about the attack itself. as a result, the white house has excited not to assert executive

privilege over testimony of jared kushner and ivanka trump. republican line, good morning. caller: good morning. i don't support this committee because it is not focusing into investigation on why the capital was so insecure how did a bunch of people just break into the capitol building it should have been a much more secure facility. having said that, this is clearly a political operation. it is one more, let's go get trump operation. the truth of the matter, if they are not investigating mr. biden's son for his crimes, if they are not investigating black lives matter for their crimes, then this committee has no business going after mr. trump. thank you very much. host: stick around, later today and our 9:00 our, we are going to talk more about the federal investigation into hunter biden.

we will have a conversation about the and talk about the latest reports this week on the federal tax investigation there. you mentioned the politics of this. it was krista writing for cnn about the political reality of a ticking clock here for the january 6 committee. this is what he writes "the january 6 committee is racing against the election clock. if republicans retake the house majority come november, they will almost certainly move to disband the committee and make it very unlikely the public ever here's the full extent of that committee's findings. the goal is to release an interim report this summer and final report in the fall just before the midterm elections. if the committee chairman keeps to the deadline it would mean the committee would have taken roughly 15 months to conduct its investigation. for comparison's sake, that is

less than the independent commission formed after the september 11 terrorist attacks took to conduct its investigation and issued its report." doug in florida, democrat, go ahead. caller: good morning, america. i am in full support of this committee. anybody that says it is not fair because republicans are not in it, they were invited but they wanted to just throw a wrench in the process. i think that everyone of them that was found guilty should either be sent to getmo, but that is the way i feel. have a good day, america. host: we go to al in east hampton, massachusetts. caller: hello, i'm a democrat

and him so disappointed. it is so bad with the democrats have done, the way they lied to us for so long. i heard someone the other day calling and asking about hunter biden and you told them there was a washington post article and they could go to some far deep .org article on your website. how come they don't talk about it? they had plenty of time to talk about the tribes they have investigated for six years and found nothing. they have charged him with nothing and everybody is so disappointed. what about the biden crime family? it is just ridiculous. i don't like being a democrat anymore. host: you are talking about miranda divine. it is not a deep dive on our website, we covered her speaking at an event last month for book tv.

we will be talking about the hunter biden investigation today on this program. it was also a topic of conversation on capitol hill yesterday. that is because congressman matt gaetz, at a house judiciary committee, was asking the assistant director of the fbi's cyber division about the location of hunter biden's laptop. here is a little bit of that exchange from the house judiciary committee. [video clip] >> mr. assistant director, have you assessed whether or not the first family is compromised as a result of the hunter biden laptop? >> as a representative of the fbi cyber program, it is not within the realm of my responsibilities to deal with the questions you are asking me. >> has anyone in fbi cyber been asked to make assessments whether or not the laptop creates a point of vulnerability? >> we have multiple lines of investigative responsibility in the fbi. they are all available on public sources. >> i would think you would know this one.

i would think if the president's son, who does international business deals, referencing the now president with the chinese, the ukrainians. have you assessed whether the hunter biden laptop gives russia the ability to harm our country? >> we can do this back-and-forth and forth for the next couple of minutes. i don't have any information about the hunter biden laptop or the investigation. >> should you? you are the assistant director of fbi cyber. >> buy the block and line chart, i should not. >> who should we put in that chair to talk about the laptop fbi has had for three years. >> i'm not in a position to make a recommendation. >> you don't have it, you don't know where it is, you are the assistant director. earlier, you talked about whether you are the graham hill or christian lightner. sounds like you are the chris webber trying to call a timeout when you don't have one. who is it? do you even know who has it? do you know who we should put in

that chair to ask these questions to? >> no, i don't know who has it. host: that exchange yesterday. a little bit later in the hearing, matt gaetz claimed to have the contents of the laptop available to him and asked for it to be put into the congressional record. this was that exchange. [video clip] >> for unanimous consent request. >> the gentleman is recognized. >> after consultation, i seek unanimous consent to enter into the record of this committee, contents from files and copies from the hunter biden laptop. >> without objection. host: that all taking place yesterday in the house judiciary committee. more on the investigation into hunter biden. the federal probe, tax probe today in our 9:00 hour if you want to join us for that. this first hour, we are talking about the january 6 committee, plenty of work on that front in

the past couple of days. we are just taking, your pulse on the latest do you support the committee. this is john in amsterdam, new york. independent. caller: good morning. i think this is all a waste of time. i supported donald trump all the way. i think a lot of people believed this election was a farce because of the situation with covid and like that. i don't think it really tallied up right and i think a lot of people had a right to dispute the election. i'm not in favor of this violence, but donald trump did not want all this violence. i look forward to voting for him. look at the president we have got now. look at all of the problems that we have got now. and it is just worse. the democrats hated this donald trump from day one.

if hillary clinton was upset with the election in 2000, then she should have complained more or something. we know that people in 1960 -- i understand dead people voted for john kennedy in illinois. we have a lot of problems with our elections. donald trump was not a politician, he is a businessman, and that is what we need in the white house and i think if he was still president, we would not have all of these problems with russia. host: speaking of former president trump and hunter biden, a story from politico yesterday. former president trump and a new interview calling on vladimir putin to release information regarding alleged dealings between eastern european oligarchs and hunter biden. trump's remarks were in an interview with the journalist john solomon published tuesday

by the just the news television show on the real america voice network. trump cited the findings of the controversial, highly politicized investigation by senate republicans, which was published weeks before the 2020 election. that story is an politico if you want to read more. this is mike in laurel park,. new york democrat. caller: you spent a lot of time talking about hunter and not the topic. i am in favor of everybody in this country should be in favor of what is going on with the people. they tried to overthrow the election, what is considered probably the most secure election ever from what the republicans have said, the ones from the heads of state. the president tried to overthrow the election. that is up there with september 11 and other things as well.

these people are talking about hunter biden. he got a job because his father had a bunch of connections? i have never heard of that. my god, everybody is a bunch of jealous fools. host: mike in new york. this is cape cod, mass. caller: good morning. talking about the committee investigating what happened on january 6, but you are not really talking about what caused that riot. i think what caused the riot was the american media, the cia, the fbi, the democrats all conspired to deceive and interfere in our election by not bringing up the hunter biden story. it was a conspiracy. people were thrown off the internet. articles were taken down.

we were lied to. don't you understand, when everyone feels as though all of the media is lying to them, and the election is not valid, that is going to cause a major problem, and it did. to this day, that is still the case. this committee that is investigating allegedly the riots, they are ridiculous committee. the republicans were not allowed to put jim jordan, the expert on all of this. there were some many people not allowed on the committee. so that makes it a sham, invalid committee and ridiculous, almost insulting undertaking, insulting the american people. you, c-span, are a big part of it. when is the media going to apologize for interfering and destroying our election integrity by holding all of this

information about hunter biden? it is crucial and that is what caused the riots. it is not over yet because the media has to admit what they did and that it was wrong, and they have to apologize. nbc, cbs, abc, all of them, every single one of them are wrong. they lied to us and they did it openly and continu -- continuously and it destroyed our election process, and now, there is hell to pay. host: that is ivan in massachusetts. two republicans on the january 6 select committee. this is liz cheney from monday on the committee taking that contempt vote, the vote for charges of contempt against former trump deputy chief of staff and communications director, dan spivey now and peter navarro. these were some of her statements before that vote.

[video clip] >> mr. steube no works directly with president trump to spread his false message that the election was stolen. and to recruit americans to come to washington with the false promise that january 6 would be an opportunity to "take back their country." this effort to deceive was widely effective and widely destructive. the committee has many questions for mr. scavino about his political social media work for president trump, including his interactions with an online forum called "the donald," and with qanon, a bizarre and dangerous cult. president trump working with mr. scavino, successfully spread distrust for our records, which had repeatedly found no basis to overturn the election. and trump's stolen election campaign succeeded in provoking the violence on january 6.

on this point, there is no doubt. the committee has videos, interviews, and sworn statements from violent rioters demonstrating these facts. mr. navarro is also a key witness. he has written a book boasting about his role in planning and coordinating the activity at january 6. and yet, he does not have the courage to testify here. we have many questions for mr. navarro, including about his communications with roger stone and steve bannon regarding the planning for january 6. as judge carter concluded today, "based on the evidence, the court finds it more likely than not that president trump correctly attempted to obstruct the joint session of congress on january 6, 2021. our committee will start -- continue to litigate to obtain the testimony we need. we have already defeated

president trump's efforts to hide certain white house records behind a shield of executive privilege. as the court said today, not today, but as the court said in that case, under any of the tests advocated by president trump, the profound interest and disclosure advance by president biden and the january 6 committee far exceed his generalized concerns for executive branch confidentiality. that same conclusion should apply to mr. scavino and mr. navarro. host: congresswoman liz cheney there, the republican from wyoming member of the select committee to investigate the january 6 attack on the capitol. she mentioned that statement in that ruling by district court judge david carter. based on the evidence, the court finds it more likely than not that president trump correctly attempted to obstruct the joint session of congress on january

6. that written into his ruling. some questions since monday on whether that could perhaps -- provide perhaps a roadmap to an indictment against president trump. the new york times taking on that question today. they note that prosecutors would need to persuade a jury that the same evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt and much higher standard to meet that the former president committed a crime, saying it is not necessarily a roadmap to an indictment, or a roadmap persuading one judge of that prosecution. the quote a law professor as saying "a judge making a finding to decide whether evidence has to be disclosed is nowhere near the level of proof you will need in a criminal case. beyond a reasonable doubt means the jurors would have to be almost positive that in fact trump did it and he did it with the intent required by the law."

if you want to read more from the new york times today, why a ruling may not mean he will be prosecuted. new jersey, you are next. caller: how are you doing? host: i am doing well, go ahead. caller: the whole thing was planned by president trump. he was fined like $7 million. he got killed in the electoral college. [indiscernible] host: you are a little muffled, but i think we got your point. we go to mike in mechanicsville, new york. republican. caller: thank you for taking my call. good morning, america. when are these trump haters going to wake up? this january 6 committee is a total sham.

the person that should be on there should be policy. she was responsible -- p elosi. she was responsible for calling the national guard and is totally responsible. this is a total sham. also, as far as hunter biden -- the whole biden family is corrupt. our president is corrupt. as soon as we win back the house, he is going to be impeached. that is the bottom line. wake up people that hate trump. i am a veteran. i cannot see what is wrong with you all. host: that is mike in new york. the caller two back was referring to the first impeachment of president trump. i did want to note that congressman markwayne mullin, the republican, yesterday with this tweet on the resolution he has introduced in the house to

expunge the first impeachment of president trump. he said the entire charade was an unimaginable abuse of our constitution and exactly what our founders warned against. we must restore credibility to the impeachment process. let's make it right. congressman markwayne mullin with his tweet yesterday. back to the phones asking whether you support the january 6 committee's investigation. new york, independent. caller: good morning. i am a ross perot independent. i remember when dick cheney was the most hated man in america on the democrat side of things, so it is pretty ironic to see how they defend liz cheney. liz cheney is right. there are videos. two major instigators instigating problems, and they are not in jail. how about the cops that removed

barriers to allow people in? how come they are not in jail they still have their jobs, let alone not being in jail. they assisted by moving the barriers. host: if republicans take over the house -- caller: if they were worried about something, why wasn't there a national guard? it is all a sham. it is a kangaroo court. everybody they have on that court -- host: if republicans take over the house, do you think there should still continue to be a january 6 committee? caller: get nancy pelosi up there and find out -- the fbi has already been asked. how come this guy is not in jail? he is on video, we have videos of him. why was he a major instigators if he was working for the government? host: that is brent in new york. this is lance in fort

lauderdale. a democrat. caller: good morning. how are you doing this morning? host: i'm doing well. caller: i don't really support the committee. they have every right to do it, but when i learned law, it is always the first thing they stress. if they want people to believe if they want people to believe this they shouldn't have stopped the republicans choosing their own people to be on the committee. transparency is supposed to be the magic that brings truth. corruption dies in the sunlight. why aren't they doing it the way they would want to be done if they had been in the minority. if the situation was different and the democrats were in the minority and were barred from putting people of their own choice which is the rules on the committee they would raise holy hell and they would be well-founded and that. i don't understand why the

democrats feel, and i'm a lifelong democrat and it bothers me, if you're going to do this, you have the right to do it if you want to, but if you do it, do it all above board. show everything. question everybody. do it outfront so everybody can see the truth. the way they are doing it raises more than a hint of impropriety. i don't know. i'm one of these old-fashioned guys that believes in proof. but if you're doing it behind closed doors, how my supposed to believe what you're saying. host: we are expecting there will be more open hearings perhaps in the coming weeks and certainly months, will you feel better about the work with those kind of hearings? we saw the vote on the contempt resolution.

guest: this help -- caller: this helps and they're trying to give the appearance of transparency. if they had been the minority and were denied the right to put their own people of their choosing on the committee they would have every reason to be upset about it. again, if you're going to do this, do it right. the whole idea of our country is that everybody gets their say and when it's out in the open we will figure out the truth. i don't know what the truth is what i know it will be awfully hard to find it if it appears to people you are breaking the move, it appears to people and that's not a good thing for the country, not a good thing for the democratic party or the republican party. host: that's lance out of fort lauderdale, florida. caller: good morning. i just wanted to call to tell you about what i think about the committee. it's a joke.

it's been a joke from the start. it's a joke now. you have liars up there lying back to back. who believes any of them sitting up there. they hate trump, they've always hated trump. it's been russia, russia, russia. now saying he went in there and had all those people get together to take the capital. which we know it was alive. those folks are mad. i don't condone that. i don't believe it should have happened, but folks were upset because the election was stolen. we all know it. americans know what happened. they can have a committee until hell freezes over, but we know what happened. >> the committee trying to figure out more about what

happened when it came to president trump on january 6 the 2021, of story from the washington post and cbs news yesterday showing a seven hour gap in the call logs of the white house. the white house. how select committee investigating whether it has the full record or whether trump communicated that day through back channels, phones of aids or personal disposable phones according to people familiar with the probe. that is the latest of the washington post cbs stories. bob woodward and robert costa, their story last week gained a lot of attention. the wife of justice clarence thomas urgent the white house chief of staff to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election according to texts that they were able to view, that story dominating the news cycles for a couple days last week and continuing on

capitol hill yesterday. this is from msnbc. january 6 committee member was asked about the texts in an interview yesterday. this is what he had to say. [video clip] >> let's start with this, ginni thomas is a private citizen who has the right to engage in political activity. but she also has no more right to engage in criminal insurrection or coup plotting than anybody else does. so we are in the business of trying to figure out what happened on january 6. to the extent she entangled herself and embroiled herself in these efforts to actually overturn the presidential election results then we would be interested in talking to her. if she was just expressing her political views then we wouldn't be interested. i would say we should just follow where the evidence leads us. host: democrat jamie raskin and

that interview yesterday. it was a publican senator josh hawley who had a committee hearing. reporters asked him about the text from ginni thomas, whether he things clarence thomas should recuse himself from any cases involving the january 6 attack. [video clip] >> what's the implication, that the justices signing off on her text messages? >> she was texting urging mark meadows to overturn the election. >> i get that, but listen, she is an independent adult woman, it just seems strange to me all these calls for her husband to be what, minding her better? it's kind of misogynistic. she's out there saying stuff you

better get her under control. you're responsible for what she says. she's an independent person and she has her own political views. she's been doing this a long time. i don't know, to me it just seems wow. host: missouri republican josh hawley on capitol hill monday of this week. this story -- the call and response on that story continuing on twitter yesterday. here was one exchange. congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez saying clarence thomas should resign if not his failure to disclose income from right wing organizations, recuse himself in the matter involving his wife and the hope to block the generate six information -- commission must be investigated. the democratic congressman from new york yesterday, that we turning this response from marjorie taylor greene of georgia.

saying a direct reply to that tweet, while people can't afford gas and food because of your steaming pile of poop emoji policies, please use your ivy league degree to its plane to the american people why the should care about impeaching innocent clarence thomas. marjorie taylor greene yesterday. this is john in michigan, republican, good morning. caller: good morning c-span. i want to know why every morning c-span -- it's been for the last three years, you are going to keep this up till the election to help the democrats. -- host: we are not trying to help anyone. we are just asking whether you

support or don't support the january 6 committee -- commission. guest: i'm -- caller: i'm against it. what i want to find out is whether think about police shooting a woman. she didn't have anything in her hand but they killed her. that hasn't been brought up. host: that's john in michigan. caller: thanks for the call. i'm going to try and be slow so people can understand what's going on. the january 6 committee i fully support what's going on there. i believe when they tried to form a bipartisan 9/11 type commission where i don't think congress was going to be involved. and mitch mcconnell informed the senate gop to vote that down so

that was the opportunity for there to be some real clarity, some real evidence and for it to not be so partisan in a sense and i think that was it. after that it became evidenced that republicans didn't want to get to the truth of what happened. something really bad happened on that day to our country that has really changed it in a way no one can even fathom. so let's just stop there for a second. people want to put this connection to people on january 6 to the summer of 2020 and i just don't get it. as if there's some justification of the way they feel the way america responded to the fact that there's been hundreds of years of killings of people of color in this country and people decided at that point in time they were tired of seeing that and wanted a public display and

decided they would come together around this country and in those times some riots happened, some property got burned down. but if you'd actually did your researchers -- research, the people saying they didn't get charge, by and large they are getting charge heavily for the crimes they committed during the summer of 2020. there is evidence they are getting charge and being held accountable for the things they did. now on january 6 that's a whole other story. i just don't get where people don't understand, it doesn't matter what party you are affiliated with. host: are you still there? i think we lost them. call or two back was talking about an investigation into the officer who fatally shot ashli babbitt during the january 6 attack calling for an

investigation of that incident. the officer was cleared after an internal probe by the capitol police, the federal prosecutor also declining to charge that officer. so probes of that shooting did happen and the officer was cleared by the internal capitol police probe as well. just to add some context to that. this is robert in california. good morning. caller: a couple of points and wanted to make. the first one is that no one that's been arrested to my knowledge and who has been prosecuted going january 6 was charged with either treason or insurrection. the second point i want to make is the people on this committee are highly partisan. jamie raskin, adam schiff, these

people are not sam ervin, they are not robert jordan, they are not people that america trusts and this whole process is going down a very bad road and when you pick the only republican whose father in my opinion, if anyone should be prosecuted for war crimes, it is dick cheney. to put her on a pedestal only because she hates the trumps is really a sad state of our country and i think this committee, the justice department has more than the ability to prosecute people, they can indict for treason and none of that has happened. not a single person that's been arrested has been indicted for treason or insurrection. and to put someone like liz cheney up there is some kind of

patriot is really nauseating. >> that's robert in california. caller: hello. january 6 was a symbol of anger. i guess the new world order coup on our nation of the world economic forum by charles schwab and the committee of 300. host: we will go to mark in austin, texas. good morning. caller: good morning. i just have a couple of points i want to make. let's just say for instance president obama did the things donald trump did while he was in office. what do you think would happen? you know -- and it just baffles

me because january 6 was something the trump started. if that had been a group of black people going to the capital, what do you think would've happened? this everybody trying to say it's a sham or there's something wrong, trump did wrong. that's the bottom line. that's all i have to say. host: dan, independent. caller: thank you for having me on. there should absolutely be a january 6 investigation. but what we have with this panel is not an investigatory panel.

many people have said, it is completely one-sided. a couple of interesting facts. january 6, i believe that was a hybrid false flag attack. you've got however many hundreds of thousands of people there who are passed off about what happened during the election, of rules getting changed because of covid, things going against the constitution as far as federal elections are concerned and some states went ahead and changed the laws against the constitution for the election of our president of the united states. it was a hybrid false flag attack. you have many people upset to their and then you have the agitators there who coincidentally enough, they said

the proud boys in the oath keepers. here's another fact. the leader of both of those groups were known fbi informants. henrique tauro, public information, he was one of the best informants the fbi has ever had. what his role was setting people up. host: 800 people arrested for participating in the attack ranging on charges from seditious conspiracy, obstruction, offenses like trespassing and picketing. weapons violations. you don't think any of those people should be charged? caller: anyone that went into the capital violently, of course they should be charged. what i'm saying is we are being very selective, there's all

kinds of video out there. our government had to -- has obtained so much of this video out there early on and we can't find it anymore. host: that was dan in massachusetts this is becky in kentucky. caller: good morning, thank you for being on here every morning. i just wanted to let you know that i do agree with this committee. i hope they find everybody that needs to be held accountable accountable and if it is biden, he needs to go, that would be fine. whoever's guilty needs to be found guilty. donald trump started all of this, we watched it in live action and it was devastating. host: john in waldorf, good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. very interesting conversation. i really aligned with seeking the truth regardless and i think

there's a lot of people out there whether it's republican, democrat or independent feeling the same way. i was watching the interview with the bbc and the president of belarus the other day, in that interview he's asked about his election and there was some shade on whether or not it was valid that he was elected as the president of belarus. and he replied in an interesting way. he said you're accusing me when you consider what happened in the united states with biden and that was a very interesting conversation, the way he said it, it was almost as though there was a known fact there that was the basis of his comment. i think it was quite apparent to everybody that there was some stuff going on. i witnessed the stack of ballots going through an atlanta several times. i saw that video.

everybody saw that video. why wasn't that run down? the election system was developed in venezuela and it is the exact system that's used to keep what was then chavez in power and it is still used to this day. host: this is raymond in colorado, independent. good morning. caller: i believe in the committee, i also think we have two americas and the hypocrisy runs through this country. and if you look at the russian media and what they said about donald trump, c-span should play that clip.

there is something wrong going on and donald trump has already begun the fulfillment of revelations. republicans, wake up. we are the beast on the land. host: that was raymond. the january 6 committee, winning a court victory that would allow them access to john eastman's records. around 100 emails sent between january 4 and january 7, 2021 and it was the chairman of the select committee to investigate january 6 responding to that federal judge ruling in that case. this is what he had to say on monday. [video clip] >> on the ruling today and john eastman's lawsuit to stop the committee from obtaining certain records. as the vice chair chair as i

said in her statement earlier today this ruling is a clear victory for the rule of law. i encourage people at home to read what judge carter wrote and consider his words very carefully. his warnings about the ongoing threat to american democracy should alarm every person in this country. i want to read a short excerpt of the ruling. dr. eastman and president trump launched a campaign to overturn democratic elections. an action unprecedented in american history. the campaign was not confined to the ivory tower, it was a coup in search of a legal theory. the plan certain -- spurn violent attack on the seat of our nation's government, led to the death of several law enforcement officers and deepened public distrust in our

political process. more than one year after the attack on our capital, of the public is still searching for accountability. i am proud to say that this committee is helping to lead that search for accountability. >> chairman thompson, the head of the select committee to investigate the attack on the capital on january 6. a few minutes left in the segment asking you about that committee's work. with all of those various aspects, we want to get your answer to this question, do you support the investigation. sandy in maryland, good morning. caller: you are all terrific. at c-span. as far as the committee, i support it. they keep talking that it's all democrats, you can trust is on the committee.

funny that mr. jordan, so there can it be on the committee? not at all. do these people -- who in their right mind called donald trump a businessman. six bankruptcies -- let's see, people died because they committed suicide because they work for him and he doesn't pay them. host: we are focusing on the january 6 committee and the attack on the capital. so we will try to stay focused. obviously a little all over the place on some of this. there's a lot of moving parts. we will try to focus on the committee's work. hank, good morning. caller: this committee is a

sham. it's all political and we have to get this all out in the open and it has to be done thoroughly and without politics involved. i served in the submarine service for over 21 years from the korean war through the cold war and i am really upset at what's happening. let's get this out in the open and do the right thing the congress did for the impeachment of nixon. we need to know what's going on. it's a big cover-up. thank you. host: gina in mississippi, republican. good morning. caller: good morning. i would just like to point out to the democrats in our

government and the democrats in this country that the -- a lot of america has already seen all of those videos that were first put out. we cannot un-see that. that's one of the reasons why nobody believes this is fair. also it's not fair the committee. they should be nonpartisan. there should be six republicans and six democrats on this committee. so it's all a joke. again i would like to reiterate even though the government has taken down all those videos. millions of people saw those videos. host: what videos are you referring to? caller: videos on twitter that saw the people in the capital talking -- laughing and talking to the policeman in their and things like that.

it's not like the democrats are describing it was in there. and also another point i would like to make is all these charges these minor charges that they have been charged, haven't they been in jail already long enough? this is absolutely ridiculous. putting american citizens in jail for over a year for these minor charges. host: so you say it should be six and six on the committee. it was may of last year that legislation was up in the senate to establish an independent commission to investigate january 6 attack on the u.s. capitol. that legislation failed in the senate as republicans filibustered it. the final vote, 54-35. republicans withholding the vote necessary to overcome the filibuster. that independent commission that was proposed was blocked. caller: well i don't -- i can't

really hear what you're saying. but i have another question for you, i don't understand why you are always trying to prove that republicans are wrong and democrats are right on your show. it is obvious. i'm not trying to be unkind to you -- i want you to work on being fairer. it shows, you are showing your side too much. host: i'm not trying to prove anything, but this was a vote that happened last year for exactly what you are talking about is what i was bringing up. caller: i wanted to say we have already seen all these videos, this is what being said on the news. host: ok. this is glenn in illinois. democrat, good morning. caller: good morning, john and

good morning america. we have a problem with this because in the house of representatives we have people that were involved in this, you've got trump in the white house and he's out of there now and they don't want to prosecute him. he should be in jail and we can get a lot more done if we just put him under it. that would do it. host: put him under oath? caller: no let's put him under the jail instead of putting him in it where he can keep agitating. he goes in there and bringing up all this stuff that's nothing.

host: i hope that's not a call for violence. that something we won't tolerate on this program. we will end this first hour there, plenty more to talk about this morning in the next two hours of washington journal. we will turn to president biden's 2023 budget proposal that was released this week. jason of the bipartisan policy center will be our guest for that. later, of the project on government oversight's will talk about waste, fraud and abuse in the distribution of federal pandemic relief funds. but first, don young of alaska, the longest-serving republican in the history of the house of representatives was remembered by capital colleagues yesterday as his body lies in state statuary hall. one of the tributes came from lisa murkowski. here is a portion of her

remarks. [video clip] >> there will be many stories about his career, his character, truly his tireless devotion to alaska and alaskans, about his many adventures, many that perhaps shouldn't be shared in polite company and certainly many of his accomplishments. but i think you will hear repeated over and over that don was larger-than-life. he was as colorful as they came, he was tough, but he was loyal. and loyalty nowadays seems to be a commodity that can be in short supply. but don young was loyal. he was gruff but he had a soft spot. he could be so caring and compassionate.

and he was not just a colleague to me, but he was a mentor, he was my friend. he truly has been my congressman for all of my tenure and again, the congressman for all of alaska for so many alaskans lives. 80's also important to know that is much as he loved alaska and alaskans, he loved the institution. he loved the house of representatives. and it showed. it showed in the respect he had for his colleagues that he would be barking at you, but then he would say let's make this happen. let's make this happen for the right reasons.

partisan politics was one thing and he could fight with the rest of them, but he was a man who wanted to get things done. we celebrate don for his incredible contributions to alaska and to our nation and to his family, we owe you all such a debt of gratitude. you have shared him with us for so long, for some of you for all your lives. and as we go forward we are saddened but we go forward with resolve knowing that there is a new star shining in the night sky to guide us true north. don, your heart was always alaska. and your legacy will shine forever.

we will miss you, we will mourn you, we thank you. rest in honor and rest in peace. >> washington journal continues. host: jason joins us now for conversations about president biden's fiscal 2023 budget proposal, larger federal budget process. simply on trying to digest this budget and all of these budget documents. this one checks in it more than 1400 pages. as you look at these, what are the hallmarks of a good federal budget and what are the hallmarks of a bad federal budget? >> good morning and thanks for having me on. the public looks at these pages and things 1400 pages is a lot, how do i understand this. how do you pull back the politics and think about the process and have always started

with the framework. which is important to think about how you should look at these budgets. let's start with the good. this is a $5.8 trillion budget. there's about $4.5 trillion in revenues. so you can just focus on the spending. i think from a good standpoint the president has shifted his focus back to that. and at least in the narrative framework, that matters again. there's also a narrative about spending. there is also a shift to policies that are more moderate in nature. we are moving from -- away from some of the harder left policies that were divisive and created some potential problems for democrats coming up. that sort of the good.

the bad, there are no major spending reforms in this proposal whatsoever. we still have trillion dollar deficits every year in the public debt continues to grow every year. at the end of the budget window it will be a most $40 trillion. interest costs will exceed $1 trillion at the end of the budget. that's what we spend right now on social security benefits. to give you an idea of the cost. the share of gdp deficit up 4%. we are basically double that and then spending as a long-term share of gdp up 24%. and even the increase in tax, revenue would be about 19%. we've got that gap in the deficit. what is the ugly. parts of the budget that are out

of data already. it functions already out-of-state, of the 10 year treasury rates are higher than the budget. the federal reserve has signaled they will raise interest rates four times this year which means the interest raised -- interest rate cost assumptions are out-of-date. the reduction mostly comes from reduced overflow spending. we spent a lot of money with covid. that contributed a lot to hide deficits. we are not spending that more -- anymore. the president taking credit for reduction in deficit, last on the ugly side there is no mandatory spending increase proposals for reform. there's a lot of them talked about but there's no reform proposals. medicare for example, the fund for medicare will expire in 2024

and social security will be in the early 20 30's. there's a lot in the budget on a narrow framework. it's important to think about what is this budget supposed to do. it has too many functions. to set the priority but also messaging about what the administration values and that's a political statement. we have to think about it as a political document and is a budget. host: would love to hear what viewers think is you've digested this over the past few days here. democrats 202-748-8000. republicans 202-748-8001 202-748-8000 -- republicans 202-748-8001. independents 202-748-8002. for visual learners let me put those numbers you mentioned on screen. $813 billion for defense, one point $4 trillion in deficit spending. deficits will total more than $14 trillion over the next 10 years.

the national debt would grow from $22 trillion in 2021 to more than $39 trillion by the year 2032. those are some of the numbers from this budget. here are some of the numbers the white house budget director -- the white house budget directors focused on presenting this budget to members of congress yesterday during committee hearings. [video clip] >> our country has made historic progress in the face of unprecedented challenges. we created more than six point 5 million jobs in 2021. the most our country has recorded in a single year ever. our economy grew at 5.7%, of the strongest growth in nearly 40 years. the unemployment rate has fallen to 3.8%, the fastest decline in recorded history and the deficit is on track to drop by more than $1.3 trillion, of the largest ever one year decline.

this progress was not on accident. it is a direct result of this presidents strategy to combat the pandemic and grow our economy from the bottom up and the middle out. the president's 2023 budget details the vision to expand on that progress and deliver the agenda he laid out at the state of the union, to build a better america, reduce the deficit, reduce cost for families and grow the economy from the bottom up in the middle out. host: on that statement of the progress she talked about was not an accident, a result of policies of the president. guest: i think it falls into the ugly category. a lot of the deficit reduction the director mentioned is because we are not spending as much on covid. it's important to realize when we were going through the pandemic and the government was spending a lot of money on child tax credits, on state and local support for financing, this was

the response from the lessons learned, the fact that the federal government had to step up. you really can't blame a president for stepping up and giving money to businesses, individuals and helping the economy during a pandemic. that's can create a lot of deficit. then taking credit for it for not spending more money after the pandemic is over is also misleading. we had massive job loss, we were forced to stay home, businesses closed down. you can't blame president trump for the job losses and so went -- with them bouncing back up i don't think a president can take full credit for that either. will you also didn't hear that statement is we have inflation running near 8%. inflation is running the highest it's been in 40 years. and inflation eats away at purchasing power.

one of the interesting things about this budget, inflation is going up. if you but the increase is being offered for programs, inflation its current level the actual purchasing power of those dollars in a real sense will be in decline. but it's important we talk about . host: republicans quick to point out that issue of inflation just minutes after she gave her opening statements. this was jason smith, the ranking member of the house budget committee responding to her. [video clip] >> so now we have president biden's fiscal year 2020 three budget, a proposal that deliberately makes every crises american families are facing because of the one party democrat rules in congress, that much worse. american families are facing a spike in prices not seen in this

country in over 40 years. a $3500 inflation tax on every family in america just last year alone. the presidents budget keeps the reckless spending going on. doubling down on the delusion that the answer out of inflation is to spend more money. this proposal spends $73 trillion over the next 10 years. >> that was jason smith yesterday. on inflation, how do you fix that? can you budget to fix inflation? caller: in a cent -- guest: in a sense yes and no. you also need to call out when republicans are giving them things -- when they have no control over.

inflation is one of those mixed things. right now we have two things contribute into inflation. high gas prices are hitting the wallet. obviously the war in ukraine will affect the high prices of gas and energy. i don't think we want to back off helping ukraine right now. we should stand up with the president on this. when it comes to other issues, a lot of it comes from the backlog of pricing problems due to covid . that's not president biden's fault. there's only so much you can do to relieve the backlog. the administration is trying, they have things in place to decrease supply chain issues and remove those barriers. but those don't happen overnight. more ports, more rails, you can build those overnight. and the president is doing that. passing the instructor bill last year on a bipartisan basis shows

both parties can come together, we should point out when they work together and give them credit for that as well. we need to focus on what those issues are with the supply chain. i'm hoping as long as it not another variant comes through we might be out of this by the end of the calendar year. >> the bipartisan politics always happy to give credit for bipartisan bills. joining us for the next half hour taking phone calls. kathleen in chicago, a democrat, good morning. caller: i have three questions. why is it republicans can jump on board when it comes to spending our money, our taxpayers money on foreign countries.

humanitarian aid or military aid, just come up with money like it grows on trees when it comes to the people here in america that's actually paid taxes, they don't want to help with the build back better in america. i don't understand that. -- look what we are doing for ukraine. 60 billion in one month. where does that come from? they're always crying about what this president is trying to do to help people in this country. we have people in this country. host: let's focus on that question. caller: it's a good point to bring up and talk about that money is a priority. there's an old joke amongst us budgeteers that the party in the minority is the party of fiscal responsibility. when republicans are in power they want to spend money, when

they're in the minority they talk about deficit reduction. when the democrats are in the minority they talk about deficit reduction paired when they're in power they want to spend money. we need to talk about what our priorities are and whether it's a priority for one type of spending for things like ukraine and helping foreign countries or talk about what we still need for things will run out of money to pay for, will we have another pandemic surge, do we need to stockpile? that's part of the conversation. childcare needs, paid family leave. , a prescription drug prices as well. these are part of the discussion, i don't -- we can just print digital dollars, it all has something. it's important not just with

spending would wear money comes from. that's money out of the american people's pockets and that can create distortions in the economy and lack of investment. but borrowing and raising interest costs it will crowd out others. we need to have a nuanced discussion and a lot of that is political today. host: some more numbers, of the top line from the fiscal 2023 budget proposal. $5.8 trillion total. $773 billion for the pentagon. another $682 million directed towards ukraine and $7 billion more for nato and european allies. $82 billion in this proposed budget for covid funding over the next five years. some $18 billion for client -- climate reliant programs. $17 billion for law enforcement programs. those are just some of the top

line numbers. this is brian out of massachusetts. good morning. caller: good morning. the rich get to retirement age and don't need their social security benefits, i don't know how many people it is but i'm sure there's some out there who feel they paid into it all their lives and not -- and when they don't need it. the failure to resist so security tax on the wealthy which is ridiculous. the failure to allow medicare to negotiate drug costs which is ridiculous. many other countries do it, canada, u.k. with success. you made a statement that trump can be blamed. he can be blamed for everything. my last point is i'm drinking tap water that i know is not

safe but i can't afford to buy safe drinking water at the supermarket on a daily basis. that's a little part of my story. we are practically a third world country. the spending that this country needed, we were looking like a joke. the divisiveness is really not what we needed. host: what do you want to pick up on? guest: a general response, he had some really good points that are important. we do need to focus on social security, on both the spending and revenues raised to be more fair and also giving a bump of the benefits to those who need it and making sure the increased benefits don't go to those who don't. with medicare and prescription drugs, it is interesting the

federal government can negotiate for those benefits but not on the medicare side. any sort of market economy it with a willing buyer and a willing seller, we should have some negotiations. there's a lot more nuance there, but we need to fix that. inflation is a problem. drinking water, infrastructure. there was how long do we have infrastructure week, it was going on for six years and they finally got something done. we now have to pass that, but it will take time. the divisiveness in this country , i am very concerned about that as an economist and a citizen. people start blaming president trump for everything or buying for anything as any -- is constructive.

we need to focus on what we need to do to come together. to fix these problems we have. host: the caller about raising taxes on the rich. what were your thoughts on the proposal and that budget, 20% minimum tax on households worth $100 million or more, estimates in this budget but that would raise three and $60 billion over the next 10 years. caller: i don't think it is the best way to do it. as a tax economist we talk about the realization principal. if you go out and we have a wage our employer pays to realize something. if we have capital gains, that brings cash into us we realize some sort of return, some sort of gain. taxing unrealized gains really isn't efficient, there's a lot

of market timing and could force people to sell assets to pay back even though the proposal has a way to carry things over to nine years. there's a lot of problems with it. it's really good political theater to say tax the rich but you really want to thing about better tax policy that are more targeted, think about what they are spending money on. maybe something on the consumption side, a taxing things like second homes or one-time payments or transactions on certain investments, investment when they are actually sold and bought. we need to be more nuanced about the incentives and disincentives of these policies. i appreciate the president trying to focus on this, but the tax proposals is put before -- he's put forward, but it's not the most efficient way to raise

revenues. host: 20 minutes left with jason. his work, bipartisan policy -- the partisanpolicy.org. this is bob in michigan. -- bipartisan policy.org. this is bob in michigan. caller: interesting to see the defense budget went up, it was initially pegged at $703 billion. is there still any kind of auditing system at all at the pentagon, and it isn't just the pentagon. both of them are budgetary expenditures of our tax dollars. is there any ongoing audit of either one of those agencies?

jumping up $30 billion from your initial budget seems just outrageous to me without some sort of auditing process. could you comment on the audit process of these two agencies please? guest: you bring up a good point. the short answer is yes. the long answer is are they effective? not really. a really hard time to track all the money, the federal government is doing -- trying to do better. where covid money is spent, defense money is spent. there's resource for the public to go on. it's a complicated challenging process. they have always had problems with their audit. an unqualified audit --

dod gets a lot of qualified audits. it is frustrating. part of it goes to the budget process. we think about a budget in a nonpolitical sense. how much money do i have coming in, what am i spending it on, we just passed the 2022 budget which was basically finalized mounts before the end of the year. it is hard with that. i would like to see a better job. they are aware of this issue for a while and trying to fix it. it's a big problem and i appreciate you bringing it up. host: mary in las vegas, good morning. caller: the former president, according to i believe -- said

trump spent money like a drunken sailor. we had a big tax cut to put lots of money in billionaires pockets and he went to mar-a-lago and said how he made them all rich. now with regard to social security and medicare, we have a senator in florida who wants to eliminate social security and medicare within five years, that's real rich coming from someone who will probably get a $7,000 a month pension when he retires. to deprive people of their 1600 or $1700 a month that they contributed to and that they rely on to live on. i don't know, this spending, we had to spend during the pandemic. people were in food lines. naturally we are going to have supply chain issues.

china had a lock down again. we have big problems because we had a unique situation and now we have fit compounded with the war in ukraine. caller: -- guest: i think those are excellent points. the caller is correct that their unique circumstances that led to increases in spending and inflation. we have to have some ways to get through this and figuring out where we can best spend our resources to reduce some of the supply chain backups. the money was spent in covid for a reason. we were in a pandemic, a global emergency. we can debate whether or not it was spent too quickly or slowly, but we had to have a response, it had to be done. same thing with the war in

ukraine, the american people need to be in some ways for joint and patient about what's going on and focusing on the reforms in the long term to get where we want to be. host: as we come up to 8:30 on the east coast we have this budget proposal now. remind us what supposed to happen next when it comes to passing the federal budget and what is likely to happen. guest: it's also important to point out, we talk about the budget, a 5 trillion. -- $4.5 trillion in revenue being taken out in tax dollars, but think about what percent of that is on automatic pilot. mandatory spending like medicare and medicaid, social security. 29% goes to education. we talk about what happens on capitol hill, that's what they

are budgeting over, this 29%. the rest is on automatic pilot unless they pass laws, those continue. so now you go into this discretionary spend, what is supposed to happen? the president is supposed to submit the budget by the first monday in february. we have missed that by two months. the congress is supposed to get together and pass a budget resolution by april 15. i will bet dollars to donuts they are not going to make that. there is an appropriations committee that has 12 subcommittees. they are supposed to pass in the house and senate 12 appropriations bills, iron out their differences, and get all of those passed by the end of september. so by august 1 the next budget is supposed to be done. that is what is supposed to happen. the likelihood of that is very slim. the last time we had all 12

appropriations bills passed on time was in 1996 for the 1997 budget. that is 25 years ago. the budget process is not working, and it is time to think about that. what is likely to happen is that we are likely to hear budget hearings happen where they were call agencies to defend their budget. whether what the president has is good, bad, we will hope to have some appropriations bills passed. the likelihood is we will not get them all, and it will be some sort of continuing resolution because they will not have the budget passed by september 30. they will pass a resolution to keep the budget going, and we have seen this happen the last few years. it will probably get to the midterm elections and come after the midterms and try to pass the budget for the rest of the year. those 12 bills you get all clumped together, which is one big giant bill, he might have

heard the term any bus before. -- minibus before. the idea of budgeting in the traditional sense of the term is a lost art. host: if it were up to jason fichtner, how would you change the budget process to make it work again? guest: again, a few things. i would change to a two-your budget. i know there are pros and cons with every proposal, but right now we are doing this budget process every year that is not working. i would rather see us do the budget the first year after an election, and then the second year for an election it is oversight for congress. congress can still pass packages as needed. i would also have some long-term planning. one of the things you did not see is there is no discussion going back in these last three budgets, what were the long-term plans? we had a 10 year budget window. let's look at some things 20

years, 30 years out. also, better enforcement. we have tried to have deficit reduction targets. they don't work very well. thinking about the process right now, the president was supposed to submit a budget in february, it didn't happen. nobody goes to budget jail if the budget is not in on time. proposals need to be put in place that have teeth on them. the reconciliation process is also broken. it was sped up to help members of congress passed legislation that would reduce the deficit. it no longer does that. public and stick it out you could use those targets in tax cuts and the gate is now open and reconciliation is used as legislation. that technically -- [indiscernible] let's go back to something that is focused on deficit reduction.

lets serious focus on deficit reduction, because, again, we are going to hit $40 trillion of debt and that is a lot of money. this one last thing -- i know it's as like a big number, what does it mean? think about what $1 trillion actually looks like. if you had a $100 bill and you had a small half-inch thick stack of $100 bills, you could put it inside your coat pocket. to have a trillion dollars worth $100 bills you would have to put on a pallet six feet high and it would take up an entire football field. we are going to owe 40 trillion football fields of pallets? that is what we are talking about? that has an ink -- an impact on the economy, future generations have to pay it off. we need for -- we need to start focusing on deficits. host: albany, georgia. this is a. good morning. caller: good morning, america.

what you said about donald trump and economics and how he did so much, we fired him, and we hired president biden. we fired him, we hired president biden because of tight debt. everything president biden has done -- [inaudible] in other words, this president has an agenda. what he did was, come in knowing he got to get rid of the pandemic so we all could go to work. so, number one. we all knew we was out of work for one year, and knowing that one year all of us was out of work everybody was doing bad. everybody. so they came up with stimulus package between trump and between biden, to help the american people, and that is what they did because the

economy started growing. now with social security, any time one american is working on a job they take out social security for that one person. now from that time, that one person working until he is 62 or 65 years old, he can retire with that social security. but this is the kicker. he said that social security was running out. but i'm talking to the people now in america that is 18 to 55 years old and let them know that under president roosevelt, 1932, when he started the social security, it is a revolving door, where everybody works and pays in social security, and that person retires another person is paying social security. the reason social security is

going out -- tell them the truth, jason -- is because the congressional people are taking that money from social security, giving it to the army, like billions and billions of dollars, and they are not putting that money back into our social security. host: we will let jason fichtner jump in. guest: there is a lot to unpack there. i am not an apologist or defending donald trump. i think it is important from a standpoint that we do not attack presidents for things that are not their fault and we are honest about what residents can and can't do. it is not fair to brain -- to blame president biden for gas prices. president trump did a good job on things like operation warp speed, helping getting vaccines to the market. we need to be responsible.

i want us to have a civil, honest discussion about what worked, what didn't, then move forward. donald trump got fired, president biden got hired. on social security, the importance to realize is the dependency ratio. the number of workers to beneficiaries has declined. at one point in time you had three people paying in for every beneficiary. we are getting closer to that one-to-one ratio, which we cannot afford. and the trust fund has been invested in treasury securities. the government owes its self. the federal government owes social security billions of dollars in trust fund assets. those assets are being depleted. they are being used to pay benefits right now. that will run out in the early 20 30's. social security is not going anywhere, so it will only be able to pay investments when it collects from those payroll taxes you mentioned on workers. that covers about 75% of what is

promised. so, social security is short. we are going to get to that cliff -- and i know there are some members of congress working to try to figure out perform plans to do something before we get to that fiscal cliff, but if nothing happens benefits get reduced automatically. i don't think that is politically likely. i think congress will step up and do something. the question is, what? the longer we wait the bigger those changes have to be. if we are being honest, social security is not going bankrupt, but the trust funds are being depleted. we need to do something on the revenue and benefit side. the benefit side it should be curtailed for high earners. the earlier caller said we do not -- they do not need it. for lower-wage lifetime workers who do need it, make sure there is enough support their. that would be increasing benefits on the lower end and increasing taxes on the higher-and earners. we need to start doing that now, not wait 10 more years. host: you talk about cliffs. when we went over the numbers in

this budget projection out 10 years, had that point in 2032 the federal debt could be $39 trillion. how much debt is too much debt? [laughs] guest: i have been nervous for years. the question is, when do people who buy our debt instruments, it is no longer a good investment? where else are you going to put your money? you are not going to put it in russia. you're not going to put it in south america. maybe you put a little bit in canada, but they do not have a big enough economy to absorb that, but we are the best looking country at the beauty pageant, even though our fiscal position is not as great as we would like it. we are over on a debt standpoint , we have more debt than our economy puts out every year. our gross debt to gdp ratio is

too high. what he would like to see over time is right now that the deficit and the president's budget is around 4%. post economists want to see it at 2%. you want to make sure it is lower than your economic growth over time. decreasing the debt means not just reducing the deficit but also going to the point where you have some surplus to pay off previous debt. and that is really hard politically to do. we need to start thinking of ways to reduce the deficit down to zero, increasing economic growth so over time we start paying off that that over the course of decades. i'm already worried about the size of our nation's debt. host: jason fichtner here with the bipartisan policy center. it is bipartisanpolicy.org. or follow him on twitter. this is allen in indiana, a

democrat. good morning. caller: good morning, good morning, sir. thank you for taking my call. love watching the journal. best show ever on cable tv. i think you for that. i would like to ask -- he was talking about inflation, it is, like, 7%? dean them what the inflation rate was in 1980? guest: he was more than it is now. look at the mortgage rates you are paying 40% to 16% on mortgage rates. if you are saying it has been worse, you are correct. that is something to keep in mind. we have had low interest rates for a significant number of years. now the people have gotten used to it it is important to keep this in perspective. if we were to go into a 3.5 percent inflationary figure per year that would probably seem pretty good. that is sustainable. you are right to point this out,

and i think -- [inaudible] i do think it is going to level out, but that will take several months. host: connecticut, democrat. good morning. caller: thanks for taking my call. i always enjoy the conversation. i thought i would talk about inflation a little bit. i think everybody is aware that inflation started before the invasion and inflation is a monetary phenomenon, so the money printing, we have to really consider all the interventions the federal reserve has been doing and all of the stimulus that we produce, 40% of the current circulation of dollars. i believe we have printed since 2020, inflation is a scary issue.

i also believe inflation is being drastically underestimated by adjustments. i believe it is the metrics were used to calculate inflation has been changed approximately eight to 10 times since the 1980's. there is a great guy -- you guys have got to get him on your show -- john williams at shadow stats gives you the correct inflation measures before all of these adjustments were made if you were to measure inflation like was measured in the 1980's, it would be about 50% to 20% right now. it would not be 7% to 8%. host: jason fichtner, what do you think of that? guest: inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon. it is too much money chasing too few goods. that can be the volume of money in circulation, as well as a

restriction of the supplies due to covid. that is a really insightful thing to point out. i appreciate the caller bringing that up. what do we go -- what do we do going forward? now the federal reserve has got to do an interesting balance. they are trying to land an airplane in the dark by raising interest rates to slow the economy without trying to tip it into recession. that is going to be tough. trying to figure out how we pull back on this easy money using monetary policy while also allowing the economy to shift backup has a supply chain issues are unwinding is going to be a balancing act. that is when inflation comes down to. when people start thinking about when inflation means to them, it is what they spend money on. if you do not pay for gasoline you are not seeing much inflation. if you are driving, you see it the american people see where they spend. bread, water, food -- food

prices are up as well. the concern i have with inflation is what is called a wage-price spiral. the public starts seeing inflation at 7% in think it is going to be permanent, and they're going to ask their employers for higher wage increases. that feeds into higher prices, which means you ask for higher wages, and the spiral keeps going. the federal reserve has to tamp down on the easy money policies. they are saying the right things. the question is whether or not they are too short, too late. we will only find that out in hindsight. host: we will have you on again down the road. some of these issues, not going away. jason fichtner, bipartisan policy center, it is bipartisanpolicy.org. up next, the project on government oversight's sean moulton talk about waste, fraud, and abuse, and the -- in the distribution of federal pandemic relief funds.

later we will be joined by sadie gurman to discuss the federal investigation into hunter biden's business dealings. stick around. we will be right back. ♪ >> at least six presidents recorded conversations while in office. here many of those conversations on c-span's new podcast, presidential recordings. >> season one focuses on the presidency of lyndon johnson. he will hear about the civil rights act, 1964 presidential campaign, the march on selma, and the war in vietnam. not everyone knew they were being recorded. >> certainly johnson's secretaries new, because they were tasked with transcribing many of those conversations. they were the ones who made sure that the conversations were taped, as johnson would signal to them through an open door between his office and there's. >> will also hear some blunt talk.

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>> "washington journal" continues. host: a conversation on the distribution of pandemic relief funds. when and how often they have fallen into the wrong hands. sean moulton is our guest. he is a policy analyst at the project on government oversight. first on the project on government oversight, what is it and how long have you been around? how are you funded? guest: we are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, basically a watchdog group that is trying to get government to be more open, accountable, and efficient and effective with public -- the public's money. i have been at the project on government oversight for just over five years. and have been working on good government issues for more like 20 years. we are funded primarily by major foundations, again, across the political spectrum. a small amount comes from individual donations, but we do

not receive any money from the government would or corporations. -- government. or corporations. host: you have been working on the covid-19 spending tracker. it is it, how can viewers use it? guest: the covid spending tracker is exactly what the name makes it sound like. macron attempted to pull together all of the money that was being spent in response to the covid-19 pandemic, put together in one database to allow people to search it, to find out how much is going to their state, if it is going to particular companies, to evaluate how well your spending this. if you want to look at a particular program or where that is going, or a particular agency and how they are spending money, you can pull that up, you can download the data and really try and get a sense of where these trillions of dollars really went. host: topline numbers here, how much has been spent so far? how much has been authorized and is waiting to be spent? guest: so, it is a little tough

to get all of those numbers exactly. what the tracker really tries to look at is how much goes out the door. we are going out the door, it is tracking about $3 trillion worth of spending, which is an enormous amount of money. it is hard to say how much is left in the coffers. the way the government puts this together makes it confusing at times. host: overall spending right now, 1.2 trillion in loans, 1.2 chilling dollars in direct payments. another $3.6 billion in grant money. then contract spending as well. explain what some of those different categories are. guest: sure. the first category is all of the contracts kind of go together and what is largely considered to be assistance. it is kind of award where the government is the direct

benefactor. you have the loans, which include the paycheck protection loans, which are the biggest piece of that. you have other disaster assistance loans where the government either loans the money out directly or guarantees it, which is what it did in the ppp program. then you have grants, which is basically just giving of money. it doesn't have to be paid back. he could be a research grant, he could be a disaster assistance grant just to help companies rebuild, direct assistance is more payments -- again, don't have to be paid back -- but they are to individuals rather than organizations and companies. those are kind of the big pieces of assistance, then you have contracts, which really is -- most people would understand that the government is purchasing a good or service. the protective equipment they distributed, or the vaccine, paying for those services.

host: also good government groups like yourself, whose job is it to make sure that these funds are going to the individuals and groups that congress intended them to go to? guest: there is a couple of lines of responsibility here. first and foremost would be the program staff that are running these different programs. they have that kind of front-line responsibility of making sure the program is operating properly and that the money is going out to the proper individuals. after that we do have some, you know, once the money is out the door there is oversight from the inspectors general, and under some of the pandemic legislation we have built up some additional oversight where we have put together something called the pandemic responsibility and accountability counsel, which is really a counsel of inspectors general.

so they work together collaboratively to provide, sort of, broader oversight around the pandemic spending, both in terms of the agencies, but looking at the recipients as well. host: what you think the biggest waste has taken place here? guest: that is always hard to nail down, to be sure. when you have disaster spending -- we have seen this years past, hurricanes, other disasters -- it can be a real magnet for fraud and for waste. it was an urgency to get the money out, and so you may not do the same level of due diligence before writing those checks. i think the program that justifiably has gotten the most attention for the level of fraud we have seen, and potentially waste, would be the paycheck protection program. it is a very big program. there were not a lot of verification steps, not a lot of

accountability steps before that money went out the door. and we are seeing a high level of fraud that occurred, and stories about companies that really did not need the money to support them, and yet still got big loans and got those loans forgiven, which a lot of people categorize that as wasteful if that money was trying to prevent job loss. host: what is a typical fraud scheme when it comes to that program? how would it work? guest: there will -- there were a couple of fraud schemes we saw. one that was the most disappointing to see it occur so often was people who were going in and pretending to be existing companies. you know, claiming -- it was all most identity fraud, but for companies. or even making up companies or cloth. didn't exist before the pandemic, and then they claimed they were a company with a fair

number of employees and they were able to collect checks. and use the money for whatever they wanted. host: sean moulton, our guest in this segment. we are talking about the pandemic relief funds fraud schemes, waste, fraud, and abuses our topic. you can join the conversation by calling phone lines as usual. democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. what about the stimulus checks? efforts to prevent waste and abuse there? guest: the stimulus checks are a tough one for our organization to be sure of. they are going to individuals, so the data that gets released is aggregated. i cannot see how much you gone or my neighbor got because of -- they want to protect personal privacy. the data gets aggregated, but

even with that protection we have aggregated it too much. the only data we have ever been able to see is aggregated at the state level. you can see literally how many millions of checks when out to new york or texas. if we do not get data that gives us something like a zip code-level, then it gets harder to figure out if this money missed certain communities or pooled in other communities and, you know, there was two big payments going to certain communities that you know, maybe should not have gotten it. it was capped at a certain income level, and you could take some of the census data that gives us information on average income in areas and try to figure out whether or not there are disconnects between the stimulus checks and what would seem to be the level of need in those areas. host: according to pogo's

covid-19 spending tracker, some at $10.2 billion in stimulus money went to the state of maine. jerry is it to is in bay harbor. good morning. caller: i am a disabled veteran and i get benefits. a democratic operative told me i might be eligible for unemployment they took a picture of me and my license. they did everything on their phone, they never even used a computer. i was given $36,000 in unemployment. then i got a letter that said i had to call a number because i was not eligible for it, and that i would have to pay back. when i called the number they said all i had to do was say that i made a mistake and they wiped it all clean, i don't have to pay back any of that $36,000 that i got. that is ridiculous. thank you, democratic operatives. thank you. guest: we have seen, you know, basically both a lot of fraud going on.

again, we have the corporate identity theft we talked about, but there have been cases where we have heard of -- and this goes back to, again, previous disasters, people trying to use people's identity to get a certain amount of money or send -- of money, or sign them up for programs they should not be signed up for. we would like to see more transparency around the paycheck protection program. we are not seeing the same level of transparency when the money went out as to what is going on when it comes to forgiving the money, which really is when the taxpayer spends the money. before that, when we have done the paycheck protection program, the unemployment insurance jerrod is talking about, that is private money to start. the government is merely guaranteeing it. once it gets started, -- gets forgiven, the taxpayers are shelling out their money to pay that.

host: in the pine street -- pine tree state is tim, republican line. caller: good morning, america. as a taxpayer, i am concerned with the trillion dollars to fund covid relief. i know some of it was necessary, that i am concerned about all the money that has gone out, and cannot wait to see where it has gone to. why is the government making it harder to identify what can be done to make it easier to track and see who actually got these funds? guest: good question, tim, and it is hard to say for sure kind of the why. there is a couple of big reasons we can at least add to our list without conjecture here. i think part of it is that the government really does not get a lot of credit when they make things more transparent. i have heard the front officials

say we do all the work, we get more transparency, and people find more problems, and we get blamed for the problems and get no credit for the transparency and accountability we have built, for which i often say that is just the nature of your business. this helps save money. it helps make these programs more effective. we should be doing it as programmatic integrity. the other problem is that it takes a fair amount of work. some of the systems we have in place have not been significantly updated or overhauled in many years, even though we know some of the limitations and problems. essentially, if congress does not tell an administration at some point to make these changes, the administration -- and we have seen several administrations doing this --

they will leave the system as it is and forgo the investment and hard work to try to collect more information. probably one of the biggest things we are missing from this piece of the puzzle is recipient reporting. we have very bad sub recipient reporting. basically, some of these billions went to state agencies, and we want to find out where it goes after that. you need to follow the money much further than we are even trying to follow it now. we even have data quality checks on those payments that would get us a lot further along in terms of following the money more. host: you talked about the agencies themselves and the inspectors general. i wonder about the select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis and some of its work. if you go to the homepage right now, they will give you the number for the coronavirus tip line to report on abuse of relief funds.

guest: that was a good idea put together out of the cares act, one of the first big pieces of legislation we had. but we have never really gotten together and realized its full potential. there was a lot of sort of partisan bickering over membership and staffing, things like that. while it has done some good work, i think it has been limited by the fact that it never got a full membership and full staffing to get more work. it is a smart thing to do if congress is going to authorize trillions of dollars. they should be putting together a new layer and an extra layer of oversight. in the future, it makes sense as something we might want to copy when we have big payments going out. host: stepping away from covid

for just a second to get he was up-to-date on some of the latest news -- this coming out from usa today. also plenty of news sources. you are probably saying it on your twitter feed if you are following along. republican senator susan collins will vote for judge ketanji brown jackson, giving her bipartisan support for her supreme court nomination. "usa today" quoting senator collins saying after reviewing judge ketanji brown jackson's extensive record and watching the testimony and meeting with her twice in person, she has the experience, qualifications, and integrity to serve as associate justice on the supreme court. i will therefore vote to confirm her to this position. we expect a boat with the judiciary committee to come monday and a floor vote late this week is the expected schedule. returning to the topic at hand,

covid relief funding, 20 of calls for you. pogo.org is where you can find them, the project on government oversight. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. here in south dakota, there has not been much transparency concerning how much money was given for covid relief funds. our governor gave money to her dad's farm for business purposes, and 200 thousand dollars to her brother's business, and that is about all the news we have. i do not know how many people were helped with business loans. i had one good friend go out of business because he tried and tried to get loans, what was never successful.

i hope there is oversight for the state of south dakota, because we certainly need it. host: 9.8 billion dollars in covid relief funding going to that state, to the mount rushmore state. guest: again, the example of having serious questions about who is getting the money after he goes to the state just underscores what i am talking about about the recipient money. if a governor or whoever, an agency official, has family that winds up benefiting from some of this money going to a state that they have control over, that is going to family, those concerns need to be answered. the caller mentioned not knowing how many people were really help.

you can see how many recipients got this, but one of the real problems has been we don't know for something like ppp -- we do not know how many people are benefiting in terms of employment. do not collect information on how many people these companies have in their employ. we tried to collect that under the ppp program, but only for that program, and the date it very questionable. a lot of companies only said they had one employee. it was not something we could really rely on. there is a piece of information we have never collected, that we should. we should have a better conversation about whether it is going to smaller business, bigger businesses, and how many people are benefiting. host: 50 billion dollars in pandemic funding going to contractors.

what did the contractors do? guest: the biggest pieces of the contracting contribution to this were protective equipment, lab work, development of the vaccine. there were some contracts for interesting things like deep cleaning of different government offices was a big thing at the beginning of the pandemic. they had to pay a lot extra to cleaning services to come in and clean down antibacterial wipes and things like that, all the surfaces that get touched on a common basis. so we did see typical contracting expanding, and more money going to it. as you might expect for a pandemic, it was mostly around gowns, masks, inc. like that, protective equipment, reinstalling sort of those big plastic guards that we now see in a lot of businesses,

government offices, courtrooms, things like that, to try to protect people. and then of course the lab work and the medical were going on that helped to test people but also to get the vaccine and then to distributed. host: $35 billion spent in the state of south carolina. this is chuck in clinton, a republican. the morning. caller: good morning. i think what is wrong here is they never, ever teach finances in like high school. i use write mortgages, and as part of my job, i would sit down and explain compound interest, and you would be amazed how many people had no understanding of compound interest and home when he really works. i think if they did that, people would not allow the government to take money out of their checks, take the interest on it.

at the end of the year, they would write a check. that makes it real. i also think there should be a law that congress cannot pass any law without passing a budget, and it should be a balanced budget. that's all i have got. host: we were talking about the federal budget. any thoughts on that front as it comes out this week, at least the president's proposal? guest: i think it is a great point that the budget is one of the fundamental responsibilities of congress, and it year after year fails to pass a comprehensive budget and do all of the appropriations bills they are supposed to do. it should be something we should all push harder on for congress to get serious about and get back to doing on a regular

basis. a host of problems we keep pushing off down the road. there are arguments around the balanced budget and smarter people than me can weigh in on it. i do think that congress needs to get to the budget. they need to say what it is they are going to approve and why, and defendant, rather than continuing to do these omnibus bills that are essentially admissions of defeat. that we can't decide and are going to push it down the road. host: sean oulton -- moulton from the project for government oversight, pogo.

over his shoulder, a comic book character, pigman, saying "support clean government." is that from an actual strip? is that actually in a panel? we might have lost sean walton -- moulton for a second. mr. moulton, go ahead. guest: sorry, it dropped out on its own. host: all the talk about "peanuts," i guess. in the land of 10,000 lakes, minnesota, go ahead. caller: i wanted to get some perspective on the ppp program. a small business, family owned business that is in the construction field -- restaurants and some of those

places were hurt. they received like 300,000 loans . they came back, did not want to talk about it, and no protection for the workers. it was mentally very strange. i left my job. they talk about people leaving work, and they are not working. i think there is a lot of disappointment that people get money who did not need it, and we, the taxpayer, are paying for it. host: thanks for sharing your story. guest: there was, as i said at

the start of our segment -- there was probably not nearly enough evaluation of need. we talked about verifying that the recipient was really who they said they were, but there is also this need that we overlooked in terms of money going out the door, but also in terms of forgiveness. we did not factor it in, and made it very easy. on the one hand, people would say you don't want to make it difficult or worrisome for a company. you want companies -- we are trying to get the aid out. we do not want them to feel they could get trapped, take the money, and send all the money back. that is where we would see it coming in when it comes to forgiveness. did you need the money?

can you show where your business dropped off? your sales were down. your revenue was down in some way before you needed government assistance. but if you actually have a business that, as the caller was saying, is actually doing quite well -- maybe at the beginning of the pandemic, you worried about drop-off, and it turned out not to be the case. i would worry in that phase when the evaluation comes up that the recipient should be required to pay that money back. the way the ppp loans work, you only had to pay it back with a 1% interest rate, which is unheard of. you cannot get that kind of alone anywhere else. it was essentially paying back the money you borrowed. if your business was booming, you should have the money. those are the kinds of stipulations, those of the kinds of controls that really should have been built into the program from the beginning. instead, we built it as a

program that was easy to get forgiveness from. perhaps too easy. there are stories coming out like the one the caller is outlining where the company may not have needed it, and they still got the debt forgiven because they used it the way they said they would come and the fact they did not need it does not come into play. host: $56 billion of covid relief funds spent. this is sharon and gaithersburg, maryland, democrat. good morning. caller: my question is just that a lot of companies got covid money that really did not need it. i was one of the essential workers for a grocery store. all of a sudden, they were giving us two dollars more an hour. one time, they gave us five dollars more an hour.

i'm just wondering. they tapped into this loan money, got the loan money, and somehow gave us a piece of this. because as a worker, we were really overwhelmed, and thank you for the extra money. but it didn't happen until the pandemic. i am wondering if they got money from the stimulus program and just gave us a piece of it and kept the majority of it. guest: it is hard to say, unfortunately. one of the things that was supposed to happen from the cares act that congress passed was that all the recipients who received large amounts of funds, which they categorized as anything over $150,000, would have to report quarterly to the department what they did to the

money. unfortunately, during the trump administration, the office of management and budget came out almost immediately after that was passed, and they came out with guidance that said we are not doing this. we don't need to. it would slow us down. we have never got these recipients to report back in a detailed fashion where did this money go. did it go to paying front-line workers a higher salary for a period of time? did it go to protective equipment? did it go to something else? we never really got the kind of accounting, and it is very disappointing. i will say for first responders and health care workers, there were some other big programs they could have been drawing from. there was the provider relief fund, which was about health care providers and went out mostly to hospitals and medical service providers.

that could be another source of it. if we got the recipient reporting, you might be able to see what they did with that money. if they got a ppp loan, what did that money go toward? if it could have come from either or something else entirely, without that recipient reporting, you cannot be sure. we go to the covid spending tracker, you will see the award descriptions for most of these funds are very lacking. it will just say the cares act, or something generic, like providing health care providers with additional funds. it does not really tell you what the money got used for. that is where the recipient reporting would have given us a big piece of that puzzle. host: $225 billion in covid-19 funding spent in the empire state. this is carl in manhattan, a

democrat. good morning. caller: ok, first of all, ruth chris got $7 million of money. they have seven stores. what i really want to discuss was george w. bush spent all that money that clinton had left over getting us into two wars and over budget. when obama got in, he had to save us, and they were saying he did it. that is the republican part of it, you know? host: we are focused on the covid-19 really funding, because sean walton -- moulton is only with us for a few more minutes. st. paul, minnesota, good morning. caller: good morning. there is a lot of relief that

was wasted. california got $56 billion for trains and bridges, and new york got $37 million for roads and bridges, and that has absolutely nothing to do with pandemic relief. if you are going to report on fraud, how does anything get done when you are reporting to the democratic communist party? they just turn the air and don't even listen to what you are saying. host: do you want to pick up the infrastructure funding part of that? guest: a lot of money went infrastructure, but i would argue it doesn't have nothing to do with the pandemic. the pandemic providing relief to restaurants and hotels and other businesses -- the same was something we saw was true for infrastructure. we saw problems with the airlines come up with trade systems, where they were not

getting their revenue. no one was commuting anymore. everyone was home. suddenly, you had regional rail and the tollbooths that were collecting money -- suddenly, they were not getting that money, and they need that money. that money was all kind of programmed in, the money they needed to maintain that infrastructure, and suddenly it was just gone. some of that transportation money was to help businesses, airlines, keep their employees on the payroll. some of it was also to replace this revenue that dropped away because of a change in behavior the states could have never predicted. there was a fair amount of infrastructure spending that was to go along with that, but also then to help boost employment, because the states were employing people to do construction and to do infrastructure work on some of these roads and other facilities. it was seen as sort of a twofer,

where we were replacing revenue that got dropped out because of the pandemic. it was also folks tried to boost the overall economy somewhat. it does not mean it should be necessarily the amount, or that the money was spent wisely. this goes back to we really do need to know these states, what they got that money for, and what they use it for. that is still a very fair question. host: 49 billion dollars in relief funds spent in colorado. jackie in wiggins, independent. caller: thanks for taking my call. there is a very good website that is called pro public a -- propubica.com, and you can go on that website and you can check anybody that got these loans and everything, or you can put in your search type, like pharma or

zip code. i've put in the zip code, and it shows all the people in my area that got these farm loans, and it was really neat. especially that one lady -- you could see who got these loans, how much it was, and if it was forgiven or whatever. it's a very good website. guest: propublica is a great organization. they did a really good tracker on the ppp paycheck protection program. you go in and search. it is similar to ours in that sense, you can kind of put in terms or location and pull things up and kind of scroll through to see who got how much. but you can also do it with our covid spending tracker. host: it is pogo.org.

sydney and bradenton, florida, democrat, good morning. caller: good morning. one of the things that i have noticed is how really there has been downward trend in terms of accountability and oversight, going way back to maybe four years ago, when you were almost considered a problem if you wanted to have some kind of complaint about how funds were being done. and then i noticed that also during the pandemic piece of covid, there were a lot of people all of a sudden coming up with these llcs -- loc's, and they were centered around things like the ppe, the ventilators,

and different things. it was almost like they came up overnight and would receive the money for their little projects, and nobody checking to see if it even existed. just to be filed as an llc. that is the kind of oversight. i think your guest for taking on such a task, but i'm sure he will run into a blockade and people that just want to forget it and move on. just like they do the tax thing like when they want to bring in more tax accountant people. you are going to be looking into our personal things. these people are not paying their fair share. some with these individuals who used the pandemic as an excuse

to get money that was supposed to relieve some of the workers. that was supposed to be a paycheck protection. and some of the folks even here in florida never got some of their unemployment. host: we will take your point, just because we are running out of time here. sean, i will give you the final few months -- few minutes. perhaps remind the viewers of some of the most egregious examples of what the viewer talked about, if you are still with us. there you are. go ahead. guest: the caller brings up an interesting point. it is an uphill battle to get this oversight done robustly. i'm not saying there is no one. there is a lot of interest by the inspectors general come up of congress. there is some hope that we can

make some progress here, especially as more and more stories come to light around some of the fraud and some of the uses of this money. more importantly i think than anything is that we take the lessons we are learning, you know, from the pandemic -- both the good and the bad, the things we have wrestled with, and questions we could not answer. as infrastructure money is going out the door right now, lots of money, we know there is going to be another disaster. hopefully no more pandemics in our lifetime, but there is going to be other hurricanes, other disasters when we are spending money, and we need to do a better job of bringing accountability and oversight to that money, so that we don't make the exact same mistakes we made during the covid spending, and we approve that and do a better job.

there are efforts underway. there is something called the disaster act that congress is looking at right now that would really try to bring an extra layer to disaster spending. -- suspended so quickly and it's a magnet for fraud, trying to create transparency around it. if congress passes that we might see some silver lining in all of this and we try and correct some of the problems we've encountered. host: senior analyst, thank you so much for your time. guest: thank you very much. host: in our last 30 minutes before the house comes in at 10:00 a.m. eastern, we will discuss the federal investigation into hunter biden's business dealings. we will be right back. ♪

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host: a look at the federal investigation going hunter biden. the wall street journal just barman reports, the headline from the co-byline story, grand jury heard witnesses in february about past drug use. what do we know about this probe and who is leading it? guest: this investigation started at least in 2018 and it is being led by the u.s. attorney's office in delaware where hunter biden apparently left his laptop at a computer repair shop in 2019. that office has been investigating for at least three years under the leadership of the u.s. attorney who was a trump appointee, but attorney general merrick garland kept him in place when he took office because of this investigation. he wanted continuity in this investigation and to avoid the appearance of any type of trying to meddle in the investigation.

it's been very important to merrick garland throughout this. he is trying to avoid putting the justice department at the center of a partisan battle the dog his predecessors. with this hunter biden investigation it will be hard for him to do that. a wide-ranging probe into hunter biden's business dealings. on the one hand looking if he violated any tax laws and also looking at whether he violated any sort of laws that involve lobbying a foreign government with visits to places like ukraine, china and kazakhstan. host: remind viewers what paris's, is -- burisma. guest: hunter biden got a seat on the board in 2014, a justice's was vice president at the time was the obama administration's point man on

all things corruption. sort of the ambassador figure two ukraine. so many thought the appointment was a conflict of interest and sought as a way for hunter biden to influence the white house and the white house to influence hunter biden and vice versa. opponents of biden particular trump and trump associates have said this is the reason for there to be an investigation into all of the bidens. and you probably first heard about paris's mind 2019 when trump used the board position as a talking point in a phone call with the ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy. who he pressured to basically announce an investigation into the bidens stemming from hunter biden's work and that phone call famously resulted in president trump's first impeachment. so burisma has been in the news for years and has remained the news as part of this.

host: another name from this investigation, a. guest: that's a company he funneled money through. with federal prosecutors are looking at is whether he funneled some of that money through other companies including rosemont seneca to avoid tax liability he was receiving from charisma. -- burisma. there's a federal law that requires anybody who is lobbying on behalf of foreign governments in the united states to register with the justice department. this is a law used a number of times in recent years. these cases are always very challenging. in this case it will be more challenging because what prosecutors are finding is hunter biden often use third parties like law firms or consulting firms to do the work

for him rather than getting his hands involved directly in making things happen in washington. host: through your reporting, how much is the investigation looking into whether president biden or then vice president biden knew about these business dealings and any role he might've had? guest: now president biden has maintained throughout this that he had no conversations with his son about his foreign business dealings in the investigation up into this point has not led to the white house, it has not led to president biden. they may be other investigations we don't know about. at this point they have not found that lee -- link. host: other countries he had business dealings in, what we know about them? guest: reporting's show he business dealings in ukraine, china and kazakhstan as well as other places in europe where he

was working with tycoons who were using the biden name to leverage their connection to the united states and so that would be one area they will be looking at as a possible violation of the foreign agents registration act we talked about. but certainly these tycoons were using hunter biden in the biden family name to sort of leverage themselves in the united states. host: what is the timing of this investigation? when will we know more? will there be formal charges we are expecting at some point? host: the investigation seems to be ongoing. prosecutors were calling people before the grand jury as recently as february and may continue to do so. we don't know what 1 -- what point the investigation stands or if prosecutors will bring charges. this a number of factors they will take into consideration deciding whether there's a case

and that something the attorney general would want to weigh in on. it's unclear where things stand. host: grand jury heard witnesses in february about past drug use. what does that have to do with this? guest: so for a while prosecutors in the have been debating whether hunter biden's well-documented history of substance abuse and alcohol abuse could present a successful defense to a case because it speaks to the state of mind at the time he was doing -- filing these taxes or doing these business dealings and he could possibly potentially argue that he didn't know what was going on. that's something he's documented quite extensively in his memoir and something prosecutors have been asking witnesses about before the grand jury. at least one witness was questioned about how frequently he was doing drugs and drinking in 2018, around the time they

are examining and also his state of mind and spending habits and experts have said that could be an indication prosecutors are trying to lock in this type of testimony before defense attorneys have a chance to admit it in a potential trial. host: phone lines are open for you to call in on this topic, the hunter biden investigation. justice department reporter there is our guest. democrats, 202-748-8000. republicans, 202-748-8001. independents, 202-748-8002. what's been the extent of your reporting on the now infamous hunter biden laptop? guest: that laptop obviously been in the news quite a bit. what we've been able to determine is a fairly hunter

biden did drop that off at a computer repair shop in delaware and law enforcement took custody of it. what we can discern at this point is to what extent it would factor into this investigation. it's unclear whether that's something law enforcement authorities are focusing on as they present potential case and it's still unclear to me at least what role the laptop will ultimately play in a potential criminal case. host: james comer lines for democrats. -- james, line for democrats. caller: could you give information on john kerry's nephew and devon archer or any of these things everybody seems to have learned about two years ago that this woman doesn't seem to know anything about. i was wondering if she communicated with kimberly strasser who worked at the wall street journal, what about president biden's brother, all

these things that are going on that this woman -- host: let's give her a chance to respond on any of those. guest: tony was one of hunter biden's business partners and our reporting on the new side of the wall street journal he had accused -- he had set president biden was aware of this -- hunter biden's business dealings and at spoken to him about that. that's something the president has vehemently denied. to your other questions that's not something we've been focusing on in our reporting because we are looking at the extent of the investigation into hunter biden himself. that's an investigation we know about because hunter biden disclosed about it himself in 2020 shortly after his dad won the election biden that's the extent of our reporting at this point. caller: good morning.

it would be 24 hours, seven days a week from everything from cnn and msnbc to pbs if it was the trump family doing this. when we take back the house this year, hopefully mccartney -- mccarthy opens an investigation. all the experts that said this was corruption disinformation. it is so pathetic that the social media like facebook, twitter and all that, all them band -- while joe was hiding in his basement. host: do you have a question? caller: how much force full of this is going to be brought out in the mainstream media from the wall street journal all the way to cnn, not little five minute

clips but just like they are doing the seven hour missing phone calls with trump. host: that's mike in north carolina. guest: what i can say about that is when there's news, the wall street journal will cover it. it doesn't matter which party will involve or who it involves, if there's development in any of these investigations it something we will stay on top of. host: some news out of the house judiciary committee involving hunter biden specifically, the laptop issue. congressman matt gaetz who eventually got the committee to accept the contents of the laptop into the congressional record. but this is matt gaetz yesterday asking the assistant director of the fbi's cyber division about the location right now if the hunter biden laptop. [video clip] >> have you assess whether or not the first family is compromised as a result of the hunter biden laptop? >> as a representative of the

cyber program, it is not in the realm of my responsibilities to deal with the questions you're asking me. >> has any fbi cyber been asked to make assessments whether or not the lap top creates a vulnerability? >> we have multiple lines of investigative responsibility and the fbi. they are all available on public source. >> i would think you'd know this one. i would think of the president's son who does international business deals referencing the now president with the chinese, with ukrainians. have you assess whether or not the laptop gives russia the ability to harm our country? >> sir, again, we can do this back-and-forth for the next couple of minutes. i do not have any information about the hunter biden laptop or the investigation. >> should you? you the assistant director of fbi cyber. >> no sir, i should not. >> who should i put in that chair to ask questions about the laptop the fbi has had for three

years. >> i am not in a position to make a recommendation. >> so you don't have it, you don't know who has it, you do know where it is. earlier you talked about whether or not you were the dutch it's on sick of the chris webber tried to call a timeout when you don't have one. so who is it? do you even know who has it? >> no, i do not know who have it -- who has it. host: on that exchange and those questions that members of congress posed to the issue. guest: that exchange can give you a glimpse into what we've been up against and trying to get answers to these questions ourselves. it's been very challenging. but this goes to show you that the laptop is still a major talking point for republicans and either remains many questions about its existence and where it is and its role in the investigation. host: about 10 minutes before

the house gavels in. democrats 202-748-8000, republicans 202-748-8001. independents 202-748-8002. eric in tennessee, independent. caller: hello. thank you both for your service. i appreciate c-span, i think you do a wonderful job. this is obviously just open political warfare as usual, i would not want my laptop in the hands of anybody else, just me speaking personally. i think joe biden is doing the best that he can. we are in a difficult situation with russia and china over ukraine. and unfortunately for the ukraine there in this difficult situation and hopefully cooler heads will work together, they are a very valuable asset to everybody in that region and hopefully can come to a peaceful conclusion.

i hope we can all resolve things peacefully and god bless you both. host: that's eric in tennessee. going back to your reporting and this tax probe of hunter biden you note in the story hunter biden has paid back about $1 million in back taxes, what does that mean to this investigation, how much more do we know that he owes? guest: it is unclear if that's the extent of the tax liability. what we know is that justice department -- if they decide to bring charges it could complicate things in terms of securing a conviction if it decide to bring charges which they haven't yet. that's because a jury or judge to be more sympathetic to say i paid it back or made efforts to paid it back, that may be seen as a sympathetic defense. it doesn't preclude the from bringing charges, it might complicate things that a potential trial.

host: is that what happens in some of these cases? even if they are late in paying it back they can get credit for doing it if they do it before the trial? guest: in some of these cases yes that can be something the defense can present as a way as a mitigating factor for somebody's culpability. host: maryland, a democrat, good morning. caller: good morning. they've been doing this investigation of hunter biden and all of this other conspiracy -- since 2018 and they haven't come up with anything yet, so what does that tell you? there's nothing there. the republicans are grasping for straws because they know trump is no longer in the white house, a jared kushner made $600 million over four years doing what, where did he get the money from. ivanka trump, illegally getting

these trademarks. the republicans are always talking about the democrats are stupid, but your spending that money and buying is the one you say is been mentioned spending that money, mortgage assistance, rental assistance. host: got your point. on the investigation side of that? guest: i guess i would just say i would not read too much into the duration of an investigation. there are other ongoing investigations that have taken longer. we're seeing how long special counsel john durham's investigation is taking at the end of its third year. it doesn't necessarily mean it's nothing there or something there, it means it is sensitive case and prosecutors are doing their due diligence. i don't think we should perceive an outcome just because it's taking a long time. host: peter, republican, good

morning. caller: good morning. tony, the laptop was verified by the new york times. tony has emails verifying what he was saying was true. also in addition, there was a phone call that was made public between vice president biden and president poroshenko at the time telling the president to fire the investigator that was looking into corruption into burisma and he was going to hold back eight unless he fired him and mr. poroshenko stated there was no evidence this prosecutor was corrupt, but he would do it in order to get the money. can you elaborate on that? guest: some of that predates my reporting on this topic. what i will say is what i know

about them is the president has denied them and there's been a lot of pressure on ukrainian authorities and justice department authorities to investigate this and at this point we don't have anything to suggest there something more there, but it remains a question in our line of questioning. i appreciate the questions, there's just not that much we know at this point more about that. host: as a justice department reporter on how the justice department would perhaps treat this kind of information? the story from politico, in an interview, donald trump called on information -- prudent to release information about russian oligarchs and hunter biden. it was published tuesday on the just the news television show on

the real american voice network. how might the justice department treat information like that coming from russia or vladimir putin? guest: it is hard to say how the justice department might perceive something like that. we know there is increased interest generally, and with the war in ukraine, there has been stepped up efforts to sanction those people. also this might be something to take into consideration keeping this information very close to the vest as we saw with that exchange on the hill yesterday. it is hard to know exactly how that could play into this and what our reporting is showing may be just one sliver of a broader investigation. these remarks were just released , so i think it's too soon to say how that will factor in to this investigation. host: this is amy in georgia.

line for democrats. good morning. caller: good morning. your article is essentially about tax evasion pretty much, at least that's what it sounds like. but most people are going to see the headline hunter biden being investigated and they are knocking to read the article. there can a spin conspiracy theories about the last election being validated. really this is a tax issue. i hope you time to basically talk about the fact he's been investigated for tax evasion essentially and this is not some type of supersecret plan to seal -- steal an election. do our country a favor. host: got your point. guest: i am a little hurt to think people won't read past the headline because at the most important part in my opinion.

to your point, there was a separate justice department investigation which found no substantial election fraud would've change the outcome of the election. we know the former attorney general bill barr said that. there's a separate sort of issue. at the end of the day, prosecutors in delaware are looking at whether hunter biden may have used other companies, funneled money he got from burisma to cover tax liability. it's too sort of unrelated topics, but certainly two things that justice department has looked at and i think at the end of the day, the tax element of the case as you said seems to be advancing. it doesn't necessarily mean they will bring criminal charges, but these are all things we will stay on top of. host: but the aspect here is

violation of rules involving foreign agents lobbying and doing work with foreign agents. guest: that's right. that is another element of the investigation that should not be overlooked. whether hunter biden should have registered as a foreign agent in some of these business relationships with other countries. what we are finding is he frequently used outside firms to sort of do the lobbying work for him. again concealing the liability there. host: a couple minutes before the house gavels and. a couple situations on capitol hill. shalonda young, the director of the office of management and budget will be appearing to talk before the senate budget committee about the president's 2023 budget request. if you want to watch more

c-span3, 11:00 eastern. also on c-span.org. also today, the covid select committee hearing on the response to covid-19. u.s. surgeon general, the head of the cdc will be testifying. that we will air live at 2:00 p.m. on c-span.org. we will also re-air it tonight on c-span and c-span.org. that re-air tonight, some of the events taking place on capitol hill. as we wait for the house to come in, this is steve of new york city. caller: good morning. i've noticed there's some emails on hunter biden's laptop that show we helped secure millions of dollars of funding for a company. a department of defense

contractor specializing in research on pandemic diseases can be used for bio weapons. do you have any comments on that? guest: that is not something i'm aware of personally in terms of the reporting of done on this, but it is true prosecutors are looking at other companies hunter biden may have been involved in and how he received money or funneled money through those companies to avoid tax liability. that is something they would be looking at now. host: what is next for you on this topic and subject? where do you think this investigation goes next? guest: i'm interested to see how attorney general garland handles this investigation because he is someone who is seeking to avoid putting the justice department and the political crosshairs it's been for so many years -- it has been in for so many years. it seems unavoidable that this will have some political element to it but he is trying to do

things in an it a bullet -- an apolitical way. i will be watching to see how he handles it. host: katie is the just apartment reporter for the wall street journal. her article is available at wsj.com. thank you for your time. that's can it do it for us this morning. a couple notes what's happening on the floor today. the house will consider legislation to rename the u.s. transportation department headquarters in washington, d.c. for william coleman and dora, netta -- dora minetta as well as requiring passenger carriers to create policies for reporting and combating sexual assault and sexual harassment that occurs on vehicles they operate. that will be some of what's

taking place on the floor today. gavel-to-gavel coverage beginning in just a minute or so. we will see you here tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. eastern. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2022] the speaker pro tempore: the house will now be in order. the chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's rooms, washington, d.c. march 30, 2022. i hereby appoint the honorable nikema williams to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, nancy pelosi, speaker of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the order of the house of january 10, 2022 the chair will now recognize members from lists s