the irs backlog in efforts to modernize the agency. join the conversation with your phone calls, text messages and tweets. "washington journal," starts now. good morning, it is saturday, 4/9/2022. president biden has extended the pause on student load repayments. russia attacked the train station and eastern ukraine filled with surveillance -- civilians. we are taking your calls on president biden's extension, if

you oppose the extension you can call. you can also send us a text at (202) 748-8003 be sure to send us your first name and city and state. you can send us a tweet at http://twitter.com/cspanwj and follow us at instagram. welcome to washington journal. we want to show you the articles from usa today talking about the student loan repayment pause. the headline is by then to delay the repayment as dems push

for forgiveness. this time inflation is climbing and gas prices are soaring, all the while the nation's 1.7 trillion student loan debt portfolio continues to grow with no firm direction for the indebted. it saves 41 million borrowers per month. here is president biden making that announcement on twitter. while we will get back to you as soon as possible in the meantime you can go ahead and start calling us we have the author of that article on zoom ready to talk to us.

chris, welcome to the program. guest: thank you for having me today. host: this pause goes to -- into effect. guest: this does not include private student loans. but this includes about 41 one million americans and it is saving them about five billion dollars a month. host: will this be the last extension? guest: it is hard to say. it has previously tried to say that one of the extensions was final and that did not happen. every time we reach the point where we think repayment will begin there is often another reason to continue the extension. it is hard to say this one will be the final one given that it wrapped up on august 30 force.

host: some progressives are calling for debt cancellation what are the chances for that? guest: if you look at what the president campaigned on, he wanted to cancel $10,000 per borrower. senator warren wanted 50,000 per borrower. other democrats are somewhere in the middle, the ranking member of education talked about canceling some amount of suited dad. there is a desire for some cancellation from the democrats. the challenges are the republicans are growing more frustrated on the moratorium. host: and how much is the

moratorium costing? guest: it cost more than a hundred billion dollars since march 2020. borrowers are not paying interest, there are costs associated with this program. host: it has been two years since the first pause when the pandemic started. what kind of impact does this having on student borrowers? guest: usa today had a story that covered seven borrowers and a lot of the people they talk to talked about the things they were not able to afford with their student loan payments. they were not able to put a down payment on a house or finish their degree, and this is the

first time he is not living paycheck-to-paycheck. this is having a big effect on the 41 million people who are benefiting from it right now. host: is this causing some confusion among borrowers, it was supposed to come back may 1. what do you think about it? guest: i am glad you mentioned it. i was at a demonstration of student loan borrowers at the education department and they mentioned that. what kind of one way or another, it is hard to live their lives and these chunks but there is this question of when august rolls around, are they going to have to pay or will they get another extension, or forgiveness? there is a lot of uncertainty and it causes a lot of distress

for not an insignificant amount of borrowers. host: thank you for joining us. caller: thank you so much. my pleasure. host: here is that announcement from president biden. >> we are extending the pause on student loan repayments. i know that folks were hit hard by the pandemic and they are still recovering from the economic crisis. this pause will help americans as they are recovering and rebuilding from the pandemic. if you need support visit student aid.gov. host: that was the president making that announcement. we are taking your calls about that. i want to show you representative virginia foxx, she is a republican on the education committee.

she says like clockwork, they continue to govern by executive fiat. today's decision is par for the course. the education department has provided zero information included the services who will be continued to be tasked with this decision. let's go ahead and start taking your calls. cheryl is first from daytona beach, florida. caller: as an adult who paid off their student loans we feel strongly that should not be happening. the bid to make has been used as an excused and most of it is not even spent. if you get a degree from the

college and university, that university should be responsible for you not getting a job and that deal. they should be responsible for paying back the money they borrowed. we need to stop making excuses for people. somebody paid for this. those of us who are working pay for this. host: cheryl, are you still there? do you think colleges are to sensitive now? caller: absolutely. i think the government should do more to control the cost of education. it is outrageous. host: let's go to mara in salt lake city, utah. caller: i went to college in the

60's on the part scholarship in the interest rate was 3%. i came from a poor family and that was not easy to pay back either. this is difficult for me to sound logical. there are still too many poor students who need this help. i think due to the fact the president widen was born with the silver spoon in his mouth, -- host: how long do you think this pause should be in effect? when should people start repaying their debt? or do you think it should be forgiven completely?

caller: honestly, i don't know. there are better minds than mine that should make this decision. host: let's hear from stephen who has student debt. caller: good morning america. i do have student loans and i have been paying them off for 10 years. i graduated in 2012. i have a wife, i have a small baby. i never thought that i would never have to pay it back but at this point, if the government is going to assist people like me who have been doing their part, paying taxes. the rich get tax breaks. the very poor, they get their tax breaks. what about the middle class like me? i have 10,000 dollars worth left

and if that goes away i would be very happy. host: how long ago did you graduate? caller: 2012, about 10 years ago. host: how long do you think it will take to pay off? caller: about five more years. host: was it worth it? caller: i did get a great job and a great career. the cost of college now compared nothing to win most of the callers are calling in. college was so cheap, you cannot compare college now to college back in the 70's and 80's and people have to understand that. host: richard is calling us from

nashville, tennessee. and richard, you will pose. caller: and i don't oppose because i am against people getting help, especially the poorest of the poor. the problem i have is i am 65 years old. my baby girl just graduated two years ago. we always had her in advance classes and when she went into university, she did not have to take any remedial courses. she went straight into college courses. and now she is in the big corporate world. she has $18,500 left over. she was not a valedictorian where she was going to get every bit of her student loan pain for

-- paid for. i live 15 miles from the university might daughter graduated from. i did not want to pay $20,000 for her to live in a dorm. i told her i would not do that when she would be on campus doing things with her friends. it did not make sense to pay that kind of money. she found a way through the university to help pay for her room and board which now she is graduated. i paid off her debt because i was so proud of her and i wanted her to be debt free. there are a lot of parents that can't do that. i want better for all children in this world. you have a state run university, i am a taxpayer. all of these schools, my

daughter still has to pay full price to go to that school. then again, there are those who are poor that can't get help. if you don't have the education you can't get the job. why is the government making more money off of these public universities? host: you are saying that public schools, public universities should be cheaper than they are now? caller: when i say cheaper, i am not saying that a math or science teachers should not make money. you have to follow where the world is going with technology. i had a young couple that came to work for me and she had a psychology degree and could not get a job and had $2000 in debt. her husband had $80,000 in debt.

unless you are going to become a professor you will make a living with that. host: let's take a look at what president biden said. here's a quote from him. "we are recovering from the pandemic and unprecedented economic distress. there are millions of student loan borrowers who would face economic hardship in loan defaults that could threaten american stability. " let's talk to wanita. caller: we could compare the prices of universities to those from the 60's and 70's.

we worked our way through school , when i got out of school in 1973 there were two big differences. number one, our interest rates. number two the government gave me nine months to find a job in number three, and what i don't hear. the introduction of private banks. things seem to go awry when ronald reagan said get private banks in here.

what we need to do is to get back to what this country was about to begin with, the grants. they were for one purpose only, to get a scientifically rivaled with the soviet union. go back and talk to your older sisters and brothers in mind out why they went to institutions in the first place. host: let's talk to jane in michigan. caller: i have student loans. i think it is ridiculous. i am not saying college should

be completely free. although, it would be nice. i think the fact that a person has been ignoring the promises that he made, it is ridiculous. he was elected on a platform that we are going to cancel student loans. and then it became we are going to cancel a certain amount of student loans. and then in his become, you have to pay it all off, it is very frustrating. like the gentleman from tennessee was saying, it gives the bridge of privilege where they get to attend any school they want and middle-class and the poor have to settle for less. it is difficult because college is becoming more expensive and jobs requiring college more and more. it captures poor people in that state of mind that we don't have

any choice but to take these horrible jobs. host: you have not paid on your student loan debt for about two years through the pandemic, what impact does that had on you? caller: my job does not pay me that well. i still have been struggling but it has made it somewhat easily but i am dreading the day it comes back. host: how long will it take you to pay it off completely? caller: with the job that i have it will probably never happen. the reason i am going to college is to get a better job. i am not sure when or if it will ever be taken care of. host: here's the quote from the brookings institution. it is a think tank here in washington dc. whether measured by income or

wealth, student loan borrowers are better off than other americans. some argue that loan forgiveness is not regressive, but that is because such measures is glued the assets that people borrowed so by an education. host: let's talk to david in south carolina. caller: good morning, thank you for having me. host: go ahead david. caller: i think it is ridiculous that they should forgive student loans. delaying it, i don't understand that either when there are 11 million open jobs and i had a lot of student loans when i went through school and i worked

hard, paid them all off as soon as i possibly could and i was without loans five or 10 years later. i don't really think it is fair that others take the loans and have it forgiven. there is a wide range of people that have these loans, many of them can well afford to pay off the loans and others would have a more difficult time. i think overall, to just wipe the loans away would be especially unfair. now we have two families, one makes 50,000 year, one spends every penny they have and goes on trips and gets new televisions every year in the other scripts and saves and make

sure they have money put away for their children to go to college. is it fair that the family that scrimped and saved should have to pay for the family -- host: what about the borrowers that did make sacrifices but can't pay? caller: as one of the other callers said i think the loans can be restructured. there are a lot of open jobs, you can work harder. you can get second jobs to pay off those loans. that goes for any loan. i would like if the government would wipe out the mortgage on my house. we have been through the

financial crisis where many borrowers were not able to pay, they did not wipe out their loans just because they could not pay. that is just part of borrowing and part of the risk that the lenders take when they lend money to the borrower. host: let's go to virginia now. joe, you support the president's decision. caller: i do support the extension and here is why. i owe about 50%, i am not paying back dying. i contacted the consumer protection bureau. they garnished my check. sometimes, unbeknownst to most americans.

you can pay your debt off and it gets sold to another debt collection and you have to start all over again. so i am not paying back dying. thanks for taking my call. host: let's hear from vivian and silver springs, maryland. caller: my student loan debt is not only for myself, i had or children and i had to take out loans for them because they had overextended that they could borrow. my dad came from, i went back to school to become a teacher and before that, i never paid for school. but now i had to pay and i am older so i am a teacher. i have a problem with that because as a teacher, as an educator i think we should not

have to pay to go to school. on the flipside, i can understand because as an educator i want to be able to get paid. so for those who take their time to teach the deserve to get paid. my thing is not really understanding and knowing the process because i know it is tax dollars. host: i wonder as a teacher, do you think that universities are charging too much right now? are they making too much of a profit? caller: they are charging too much but it is not going to the right places. teachers are not getting it so i don't know why they are charging so much. host: let's check in with some members of congress and check in with their suite.

we will start with republicans first. jason smith says that today's repayment extension is the example of using a pandemic narrative to bailout wealthy borrowers. steve policing they say the pandemic is over to end title 42 but it is not over when they want to keep causing student low payments and demand more tax dollars for covid relief. let's make sure students have clear pictures of these calls before they take out a loan before making others pay it.

and from democrats patty murray says the biden administration took a good step for student borrowers, now we need to build a student loan system that works for students and borrowers. and representative frank alone says, i commend the potus for the pause on student loan payments. they need certainty and relief. i strongly urge him to eliminate up to $50,000 of student loan debt or borrowers before payments resume. and alexandria alexandria ocasio-cortez says i don't think folks understand the panic and disorder it causes people to get so close to these deadlines just to extend the uncertainty. it does not have the effect people think it does. we should cancel them.

and with another representative says, i am grateful that the pause on student loan repayment and interest will be extended. another member tweets, we want to hear from you. host: good morning john. caller: thank you for having me. i oppose any student loan forgiveness and i will explain. i was from a low income family. i would've liked to go to college but i was smart enough not to get caught up in the loans. if you take out a loan and sign your name to it you agree to pay it back especially to the american tax payer. i have three sons and i raise them by myself on my own.

they are fiscally responsible, none of them went to colleges. i have a son that owns his own business, one who climbed the corporate ladder, i have a son that climbed another corporate ladder. they went to trade schools, got their education. host: you are against for giving the loans but what about just pausing the loans? so people have a little bit longer to pay it back? caller: my opinion on that is when you sign your name on it that, i went through the pandemic. my sons went through the pandemic. none of the loans we had were forgiven. nothing paused for us. here is the other thing, there

are millions of taxpayers in this country, what about my 10,000? where is my 100,000 dollars, i would like to have that. i am paying taxes. taxpayers should not pay bills of people who signed the loan. you pay your debt. host: let's take a look at some of the numbers. the total is $1.75 trillion. 46 million people have student debt and 92% of the debt is owned by the federal government, 11% of loans were 90 days overdue and were in

default before the coronavirus. in the average monthly payment was $300. let's hear from philip in michigan. caller: welcome to washington journal, c-span. if you want to help, he needs to put a 2% mandatory interest rate . he should be forgiving the taxpayer by removing all of the binds on your ira and rothko so people can access their money that they are savings so people can get there teeth fixed, by hearing aids and other things that need to get done.

thanks a bunch c-span. host: elizabeth is in north hills, california. caller: all this talk about they get their debt forgiven. they should have known, they are supposed to be adults that they need to pay any loan they take. i think a lot of them take a loan and they take more money than they need and they live in the dorm and by expensive things and they could cut costs drastically. a lot of them are too good to go to community college and that is a lot cheaper than going to university for four years. i know of young people who will live for people or six people to

save money on rent. a lot of these people who don't want to pay their debt, they got a great job because of the degree. host: let's take a look at pramila jayapal. >> when i ran for congress, student debt was at 1.3 trillion. today, student debt is at 1.9 trillion. a lot of this money is money that the federal government makes in that these debt collectors make on interest rates that are higher than what we actually need to be charging. if you look at the whole issue, why would we work against our self if the ax stepped of is to

get as many people educated as possible and get them into jobs where they can support themselves and their families. this all shows that you should cancel as much data as you can cancel is going to stimulate the economy. if we were to cancel all of the debt that is out there, we would raise the wealth of black families by 40%. this is a racial justice issue as well. host: the washington post put out an editorial about the subject. their headline is extending the pause on student loan repayments makes no sense. they say that president biden blundered with his extension on the pause of the payments, what

was an emergency measure is no longer justified. it is hard to make an argument that college graduates are struggling right now. there is a near record number of job openings. a similar story for americans who took college courses or did not graduate. the unemployment rate with some college is 3%. that is down dramatically from an unemployment rate of 15% in april 2020 for people with some college then when mr. biden was sworn in. let's talk to connie from pennsylvania. you are opposed to the decision. caller: good weekend to everyone.

you started out with the florida crawler. aller. i have a little bit of background. i started to work when i was 13 years old. i was not allowed to spend that money. i put it in the bank. i also worked through my college years while everyone else was partying and having a good time, i was working. i chose my profession wisely. i am in the health care profession. as long as i am healthy i could work until the day i die. it is taking ownership of what you do. i applied to three different schools, i chose the most affordable one because i knew i

was not going to sign a loan. i paid for it all, my parents helped a little bit. my parents are middle income. we are not extravagant. we live below our means. this is the problem with the socialist idea, everybody owes me something and people need to take responsibility for what they purchase. what they do in their lives. you buy a service, you buy an item. you buy a house. you have a child. you are responsible for the decisions that you make. no one else is responsible for it. host: perl is calling us from florida. caller: thank you, good morning.

i agree with setting aside, deferring until august. everybody speaks to the pandemic being a reasonable cause for failure to continue as things were before. but the pandemic is a serious event that has taken place in this country. and with that in mind it affects a number of things. this is been an economic problem as it relates to being able to work, being able to make the income that you had. people were struggling before the pandemic, so when i imagine the added stress that has been imposed upon americans as it relates to the pandemic. to have the opportunity to relieve those people who are struggling economically, who are

struggling mentally in order to keep marching forward in their lives. i am sure everybody's plan has been disrupted. host: are you in favor of more extensions or do you think that august 31, people need to start paying? caller: i think an assessment needs to be made as i am sure one has been made in order to make this decision. an assessment needs to be made. we need to continue to strive to be competitive in the world. education is key. so to promote those people who have said who cannot afford it but they have the bandwidth to make a difference in the future, it is prudent and fair.

i also think that the overall mental health issue that accompanies the pandemic is something that is considered in this decision. so yes, deferring it until august is a good decision and should go further. this is an asset that they have, and unsecured asset as it relates to the bank. host: let's check in with some of our tweets. sorry, some of our text. this is bert, student loans are a created crisis. keep them in debt as a form of control. let's just rescue loan

repayments and gas prices first. and james says, you can be assured there will be another pause come august to get past the november elections. also, i paid my loans back, will i get reimbursed? how about the companies they get subsidies, we all think that is fine. let's hear from lewis in new jersey. caller: hi, good morning. let's get right to the point. they ran on canceling school debt. they ran on it. my daughter and my son both went to rutgers. i worked two jobs, my wife were two jobs.

my daughter graduated and started an engineering job making 86,000 year. my son took a job making 62,000. they work and they graduated with no school debt. host: let's hear from erin. caller: people do not think about the fact that we bailed out the banks, why can't we bail out the people? a lot of people are hurting from student loans. i know the loans need to be paid back. if they were forgiven the money could go somewhere. people's debt to income ratio is such that they can't buy a

house. i am going to be paying off well into my retirement years. i am not asking for a handout. but some relief would be remarkable in that is is all i'm going to say. host: let's take a look at this graph from the peterson association. it says that student loan debt has doubled, the total student debt and billions of dollars. it is pretty steadily climbing from 2000 and eight to 2021. john is from the virgin islands. caller: good morning, thank you for the time. i love washington journal. i am in favor of canceling the debt like the gentleman said

before, we canceled it for wall street and we left main street hanging. universities take huge endowments and then charge ridiculous prices for the same courses that were being taken 30 years ago. host: what about the people who pay their debts back? is it unfair to them? caller: no, not if we pay them back as well. they did what they were supposed to do. it is unfair the way it was set up. it has gotten so convoluted that people are paying three times what they were charged. host: you are saying the interest rates are unfair for student debt? caller: for what some people are paying back, yeah. social security people want to talk about making sure you do the right thing when you borrow

money. republicans wanted to take trillions of dollars from social security had never paid it back. host: alright john. let's hear from carla in missouri. caller: when i got up i was groggy but now i have been coming out my ears. i am 90 years old. i went to school back in the 50's and my tuition for each quarter, $22 a quarter. people only earned a dollar an hour. my sisters and i were two and three jobs and got out of school debt free. i don't understand students today. i have a four year degree and

masters degree. i taught at the high school and college level. why do people think they have to go to four year college? i had a young man who worked for me in my garden and he went to a trade school. he made $80,000 a year as a line man. i don't know why some of these students who go to college are not fit for college. they have the mental ability they feel like they have to go. the other thing is, why don't they get a second job and pay off these loans? i don't understand this. a debt is debt and people who don't pay back the student debt have other debts they won't pay back. host: what if people want to go to college. you say that they can go to

trade school. what if they want to go to college and they want to have a job that you need a college degree for? caller: then you better plan ahead. you better save money and go to a school you can afford. i would like to fly to the moon but i know i can't. we have to do what we have to do. some of these kids go to school, if you want to major and basket weaving that's fine. but where are you going to get a job and basket weaving? i think today young people, they want the moon but they don't want to pay for it. host: let's go to philadelphia, pennsylvania and talked to whitney who has student loan debt. caller: thanks for having me on

c-span. i want to address all of these people that think their personal anecdotes matter. your personal stories don't matter. we have plenty of fellow americans who have debt that is keeping them from moving forward in their career and lies. i am a millennial and i can attest that my generation is overburdened and overwhelmed with debt. we can't afford houses in philadelphia. if you want people who are doctors, lawyers, politicians, anthropologists who do any kind of creative work, graphic designers. they have to go to college and they will come out with college debt. it is important that we support the work. host: americans for tax reform,

they are headline is they oppose a moratorium on student loan repayments and they say that the moratorium as a special favor to the progressive elite that contributes to the united states massive debt. it was signed by 13 other organizations. let's talk to lori in pennsylvania. caller: i am a parent and i have two daughters. they are seven years apart. she went to a very wealthy college on the west coast which offered her almost a full scholarship. i made payments to that college and she came out of it debt free. she is now getting her doctorate

and she is a teacher. now my youngest daughter, she did not get a full scholarship. i have also paid that college 500, $600 a month. and i did take out a student loan. they are not only in students names, they are also in parents names. i had to house them, feed them, utilities, clothed them. what it is, it is 7.5 interest student loan. you can make a monthly payment but your payment will not add up to what that interest adds up. that is why you get so far behind and find it hard to pay off these loans. host: how is your oldest

daughter paying for her doctorate? caller: she has lived in different places throughout the world. she did take out a loan but not a big one. she is living off the money she saved herself. she does not buy a lot of things, she is not a fashion person. education is very important because they learned different aspects of how the world works. they meet different people from around the world. a lot of colleges require you to study abroad. it gives you a whole new perspective on life itself and how to deal with each other.

host: it is very expensive, that study abroad. caller: college is expensive and it is included in there. colleges require that they study abroad. one thing, a lot of colleges have taken advantage of the government by putting their costs up so high in the government foots the bill. in the legal sense of it, they are able to do that. we subsidize a lot of operations. a lot of corporations get free money. fossil fuel companies, they get subsidies. host: let's talk to cindy and

henrietta, new york. caller: thank you for having me. i used to collect on student loans and turn them over to the government when they defaulted. there are deferments out there that could possibly happen. if there is a hardship, of a hardship deferment. there were school deferments, military deferments, when i would collect i would say listen, i have son with the student loan. my sister how to student loan and she paid on it. we have had doctors, lawyers that i worked with and basically, we need companies

that are student loan companies that work with people as opposed to the banks trying to get things over on people. it is a debt that you owe. host: so you don't think they should be positive more? caller: with the repayments start, make sure the company offers deferments. maybe you can pay pay the interest on the loan rather than the full payment. host: let's go to tom in alabama. caller: i'm a just an old country boy but i've been working since i was 15 years

old. i had a brother who went to college, he owed over a hundred thousand dollars and he is cutting fabric for of fabric company. he got a doctorate. host: what did he study? caller: physics. he is one of those guys who thinks about the stars and all of that kind of stuff. i am just a carpenter but i worked on my life. forgiving the loans, it is not going to make the country better. it will make the country poorer. how do you pay that back plus all of the money we paid in the past two years? host: is your brother going to be able to pay that money back? caller: he votes for everybody

who wants to forgive the loans so they will be forgiven. that is how smart he is. host: alright tom. let's talk to mary from iowa. caller: the united states belongs -- out of those 34 countries, 33 countries have free education and they are further ahead in their education. when we educate people we will bring them out of poverty. when we give free education to the gis, we made seven dollars more in taxes from educated people. poverty leads to crime and drugs.

week of oil companies tax because. give them an education, whether it is community college. also, grade three -- preschool should be free. all community college. another thing that united states is ranking 34 is an health care. all other countries have single-payer health care. host: let's not get into health care quite yet. we will get to your point on free community college.

let's talk to patrick from texas. caller: i just wanted to tell you my story. i graduated at the age of 35. i had to work full-time i whole life. i went to three different community colleges. i did not qualify for student loans because i made too much money to qualify. i put that on credit cards. i am asked $28,000 in credit card debt by the time i graduated. if people go to school they need to pay back their debts. they are going to develop some integrity and honor if they honor what their debts are and what they have signed up for. that is all i have to say. host: brian is in erie, pennsylvania.

and you have student loan debt. caller: i don't have a problem paying student loan debt. i think people need to be more educated on what they are taking out. when you have 18-year-old kids signing that sign a piece of pat they don't know what they are signing, that will present problems down the road. the education is important as far as what they are actually signing for. federal loans are 6% interest. if you have a $30,000 balance, you are paying $5 a day on interest. my income-based repayment plan is $200 a month. $150 of that is going to interest. a lot of these programs are fine and well for income-based and

income-driven repayments, but people don't realize that they are never getting out of debt or that it will take a really long time if they are only putting $50 on the principal per month. there is a reason that people are not talking about forgiveness from mortgages or home equities or personal loans. i think that student loans are a problem. i don't have a problem paying on the debt, but i think that there needs to be more education behind it. have a great day. host: that is our last call for this segment. the white house celebrated the 12th anniversary of the affordable week. we will look at the law's impact with two doctors. later, david stewart, the host of the tax note podcast takes

your tax questions ahead of the april 18 filing deadline. we will be right back. >> next week on c-span, congress is in recess. at 9:00 p.m. eastern officials from the department of interior and the forest service testified on several wildfire management for the house natural resources committee. tuesday at nine :00 p.m. eastern testimony about evolving trends regarding overdraft programs and fees, their impact on consumers, and avoiding overdraft fees. a look at substance abuse, suicide risk, and the american health system by the house ways and means committee. thursday at 9:00 p.m. eastern, an interview with supreme court justice amy coney barrett and the reagan presidential library.

and at 10:00 p.m. eastern a conversation with sonia sotomayor at washington university in st. louis. watch on c-span or c-span now, our free mobile app, or head to c-span.org for scheduling information or to stream video live or on-demand anytime. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. >> book tv, every sunday on c-span features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction book from tulane university. author and historian discussions on the legacies of james baldwin and james lewis. authors on race and history. on 10:00 p.m. eastern on afterwords the former australian

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series first ladies in their own words will look at the role of the first lady, their role in the white house, and issues important to them in their own words. we feature laura bush. >> sometimes first ladies are trivialized. in fact, our contributions to the united states from first ladies in many cases are more profound. >> watch american history tv and find a full schedule on your program guide. watch online anytime at c-span.org/history. >> washington journal continues. host: welcome back. i am joined by a panel, dr. robert pearl the former ceo of permanente medical group, and dr. joel zinberg a senior fellow at the competitive enterprise institute. we are talking about the affordable care act. welcome to the program. guest: good morning.

host: i want to ask you, i will start with doctors and -- dr. zinberg. what do you think has been the single biggest success and/or failure of the law over the last 12 years? guest: there have been multiple failures from the aca, but i would say that the biggest failure is the failure to ensure as many people as possible as were promised. the obama administration promised when he 5 million people would gain insurance and it never even approached that. it was more in the order of 10 million to 15 million depending on the given time. most of the people gained insurance through medicaid, which is an inferior form of insurance with poor access to care.

it did not deliver what it promised to deliver, and many others. host: what about you, dr. pearl? guest: the biggest success was the expansion of coverage. 10 million to 12 million people, individuals, in the exchanges, people who had previous conditions that were excluded from coverage now had coverage, in addition to medicaid i estimate the total number between 16 million and 20 million. the biggest challenge, and i said it at the time, is that the legislation did not address issues around improving quality or making care overall more affordable. that is at the delivery system level. it was a political compromise at the time required to get it through congress. host: dr. pearl, do you think that the aca has made health care more affordable? >> it has not -- guest: it has

not changed the delivery system. i agree with joel that it expanded coverage to people who could not get coverage. there is no way that you can pay a premium if you're paying $30,000 a year and your employer does not offer it, or because you had pre-existing conditions and the insurance industry excluded you. now you can access it. the underlying delivery of care, the doctors, hospitals, drug companies come the aca did not touch that. congress hasn't. i believe it should. i believe we need to change the underlying american health care approach. that is an entirely different piece of legislation. host: viewers can call in and ask questions to our panels. our lines are if you have aca insurance, affordable care act you can call (202) 748-8000. if you have private insurance,

(202) 748-8001. if you are not insured at all you can call (202) 748-8002. all others can call us on (202) 748-8003. you can also send us tweets and see us on social media. dr. zinberg, do you think people have more options with their health care because of the affordable care act? guest: well, in some regard they do, but basically they do not. a lot of the individual options that they had prior to the aca were basically on the native. -- were basically eliminated. there is the minimum benefit package that requires people to buy a particular type of insurance whether they want it or it suits them or not, whether it is more insurance than they need or not. that is reflected in the fact that the young and healthy, who

the aca were counting on to buy insurance and subsidize the elderly and sick, were not enthusiastic about the aca, did not purchase exchange plans, and as a result you never have that expansion that was promised. the expansion of people who signed up on the individual exchanges was offset to people who left other types of individual insurance who could no longer get it, and by people who lost employer insurance coverage. the bulk of the newly insured got there coverage through medicaid. the promise that you can keep your doctor come you can keep your insurance, that was not fulfilled. the promise that your premiums will go down was not fulfilled. premiums on the aca exchange more than doubled since the aca started to be initiated in 2014.

the only reason that people signed up on the exchanges at all this because they are heavily subsidized. very few people who are not subsidized are signing up on the exchanges because the exchange premium, and it is a premium deductible that is your entire cost, has really skyrocketed. host: i want to show a clip from our c-span archives looking back historically. this is president obama in 2010 signing the bill into law. [video clip] pres. obama: the bill that i am signing will set forth changes that generations fought for, marched for, and hungered to see. it will take time to implement them fully because we need to implement them responsibly. we need to get this right. but the hope of desperately needed reforms will take effect right away, this year.

[applause] this year will start offering tax credits to 4 million small businessmen and women to help them cover the cost of insurance for their employers. that happens this year. [applause] this year, tens of thousands of uninsured americans with pre-existing conditions, the parents of children who have a pre-existing condition, will finally be able to purchase the coverage they need. that happens this year. [applause] this year insurance companies will no longer be able to draw

people's coverage when they get sick. [cheers and applause] they won't be able to place lifetime limits or restrictive annual limits on the amount of care that they can receive. this year, all new insurance plans will be required to offer free preventive care. this year, young adults will be able to stay on their parents' policies until they are 26 years old. that happens this year. host: dr. pearl and dr. zinberg, let's hear from our viewers and take their questions. first up in cumberland center. go ahead. caller: good morning. can you hear me? host: i can. go ahead. caller: i don't know where to start.

i had a ppo when i lived in florida. i received it when i was about 30. i just have changed my residency to maine. now i have d aca. i don't know where to start. it was affordable before when i had a private health insurance plan. now i pay more and i receive nothing. i have to pay everything out-of-pocket. as far as my deductible, it is $3500. then it goes up to $8,300. in a year i have to pay 8300 dollars before my insurance picks up anything. in the state of maine anthem is no longer going to be accepted at maine medical center.

consequently, that is where i would go if i had an issue. apparently they are going to cover you if you get into an accident. it is quite confusing. anthem has not reached out to any of their customers. it is on the news, but it is up in the air -- i don't know. it is a mess. host: dr. pearl, i wonder what you think? guest: it is so hard to sort out the broken system of american health care. it varies from state to state. i cannot tell what is going on in her situation. she should have through the aca coverage based on her income, how much is subsidized. as joel said, one of the biggest challenges is that americans cannot afford to purchase health care, and the program that has

been put in that is an insurance program is going to make them responsible for the cost, which in the united states averages over $12,000 a year. that is not affordable for the typical person earning $50,000 a year. we might be caught in those crosswinds. i don't know if it would be better if she tried to get the state ppo from florida. we need to have a more consistent and better national health delivery system plan. host: let's talk to keto in rockville, maryland. caller: hi, i remember what it was like before we had the american health care act. i remember i was making maybe $60,000 a year as a software developer. i remember my insurance, my

deductible, rather my monthly payment had gone up to $800 a month just for me and my family. there were three of us. i just remember that it was killing me. it was a lot of money. that was before obamacare. i remember before obamacare the cost of health care was -- in one year it would be one thing and the next year it would be 40% higher, the next it would be 40% higher, and the health care costs were spiraling out of control. i remember when obamacare came, all of a sudden it forced the health care people to lower their stuff. all of a sudden the cost went down. what i paid today, i mean -- i pay significantly less. i may not actually make more money, -- it has been x amount of years, i make more money, but i pay less for my family.

in reference to the other lady, i think that there is more there. there are more details that she would have to say why. i know that there are different levels that you can choose with the american health care plan, so i would wonder what level she is on. if you choose the cheapest one you have to pay the most out-of-pocket, and a lot of your normal expenses are automatically covered. there's a lot of i believe good from the american health care plan despite the fact that many politicians, being politicians, also known as used-car salesman, they tried to gut it as much as they could. it helped more than anything else. does it need more work? absolutely, but it did help a lot. host: let's get a response. dr. zinberg, what do you think? guest: i think what lynn experienced was typical. the plans that are offered on

exchanges are usually quite narrow. they only cover a limited number of providers. she is finding that a major health care provider in her area is not participating in the plan, and often these plans to cut costs don't include the premier providers in their area. in texas there are no plans that cover the leading cancer center in the country. she is also experiencing the very narrow choices that she has. more than half of the counties in the country only offer one or two plans to choose from on the aca exchanges. you don't have much choice. you are very limited. what happens is that they replace a system where people had more options that they could go to for cheaper plans or plans that were not quite as inclusive. there were a number of initiatives in the last administration, things like

short-term plans, association plans, health reimbursement arrangements that would improve the people's opportunity to choose a plan that works best for them. instead, people are locked into the specific plans on the aca exchanges and insurance companies are not that enthusiastic about it. host: bob is in philadelphia and has private insurance. caller: good morning, c-span. thank you for taking my call. i have private insurance and i am getting hosed. i have to pay the first 87 hundred dollars because i do not qualify for the aca. i do not begrudge people who are on it, because i have a son who is on it who benefits from it. again, it is income redistribution. there are two specific questions i would like to ask. the first is, the burden that

medicaid has had on rural hospitals, if they could address the rural hospitals that do not have great world-class cancer or cardiac care to float their hospital, what medicaid has done to those rural hospitals. the other point is, what in the world -- the 26-year-old freeloading off their parents. what has that done two premiums? what incentive does it have free kids to gainfully get their own so they could make a life for themselves? if your two guests could answer about those things i would appreciate it. host: let's start with dr. pearl. guest: once you speak about the reality of health care, and bob has done a great job talking

about how expensive it is for americans today. that is not an insurance issue. the aca for the most part is about insurance. it is the care delivery. to bob's question, when you expand question to include people to the age of 26 you have more people being paid by the employer. what you see will be higher costs that can be simply paid at the business level, or it could be paid by others who are covering themselves. in rural areas, the issue is medicaid. we don't pay enough. california pays $.70 on a dollar to medicaid patients. you cannot deliver care when

you're getting paid 60% to 70%. these are social issues, congressional issues, and the underlying theme is that the aca was a step in the right direction but not fully there. i will go back to the same theme. people can check my website, i talk a lot about this. we have to change the delivery system if we want to make american health care work, whether it is through the aca, whether it is provided through an employer privately, or whether it is offered through the government, it doesn't matter. it is a system that is way too expensive, inefficient, and quality that is last among the 12 most industrialized nations. host: any of bob's points about the burden of medicaid on rural hospitals or the 26-year-olds who he says are freeloading on their parents' insurance? guest: i would hardly call it

freeloading, but the aca that required insurers to offer insurance up to 26 years old on the parents policy was great for the insurance companies. they are inexpensive. they are healthy. because the aca required community rating, you could no longer rate on risk, they were getting higher premiums for those people than they normally would because the whole idea of the aca was to have the young and healthy subsidize the elderly. that was a win for the insurance companies. some kids did gain coverage. i'm saying that it is shortsighted. regarding rural health care, that has been a problem regardless of the medicaid issue. medicaid is a federal state program where they share the cost. the federal government subsidizes at minimum 50% up to

75% of the cost. the problem with rural health is that providers do not necessarily want to be there. the aca did exacerbate that problem because it said because of the new medicaid expansion provision they were going to get rid of some of the other subsidies. they were going to get rid of some of the subsidies that existed for hospitals that delivered care in underserved areas. it actually made the situation a bit worse for rural hospitals and worse for the people who depend on rural hospitals. host: let's look at a few numbers on the aca marketplace from 2014. that started at 8 million people enrolled. at 2022 we are at 14.5 million.

those numbers are steadily rising. let's talk to alicia in columbia, maryland. you are not insured. why is that? caller: i guess i called on the wrong number. i am insured. can i speak to you even though i called on the wrong line? host: go ahead, alicia. you must be a new moderator. welcome. host: thank you. caller: and to your guests, good morning. good morning, america. when the affordable care act came into being, what happened to my insurance was the money we got for medicare for medicine, obama took that out and gave it to his affordable care act.

when i had long-term care, and that was agreed upon that mike conaway do you call it -- that was agreed upon that -- what do you pay into it -- host: the premium. caller: it increased. i tried three members of congress of maryland and one from tennessee. i called them and i called them because that had increased. i couldn't get any of them to respond to me. that was very unfair. host: alicia, let's get a

response on the rising premiums. what do you think, dr. zinberg? guest: i'm not sure what part of medicine she is talking about. if she's talking about the medicare part d plan which covers prescription drugs. if that is what she is talking about, that plan actually started prior to the aca and amended and changed and manipulated several times since. it is not so much an aca problem. in terms of premiums in general, the aca, the obama administration rolling out the aca had promised that they would save $2500 per family on premiums and the reverse has happened. the premiums have doubled. premiums have soared, but that is just one of the broken promises.

one thing that i think it is worth reminding viewers is that the aca insures, the total increase is 6% of the population. we are very excited and celebrating and we have had all sorts of battles for 12 years about the aca, but it covers a small fraction of the people in the country. employer-provided insurance still covers the majority of people in the country. that is a much bigger issue when we are talking about the health of the nation then the aca. host: let's take a look at republican congressman ted budd. he was on the news talking about the ac anniversary. [video clip] >> i would not use the word celebrate. maybe mourning. our office gets inundated with calls. these are people making $50,000

a year and the lions share of their income is being taken by what obamacare is. look, this is things like, if you like your plan, you get to keep your plan. you will realize that was now the 2013 lie of the year. the counties in north carolina are limited to one or two plans. it has hurt consumers and limited their choice. host: let's go back to our callers and talk to kelly in longview, texas. good morning. caller: i have a couple quick points. i am disabled and on medicare, and i'm 60 years old now. i have been on medicare for a few years. and of the problem i have is i was going to get a supplement to where it would cover my 20% out-of-pocket, all expenses, doctor visits and everything.

however, because of pre-existing conditions, being disabled, i am unable to purchase a supplement, so i'm on a low fixed income and i have to pay 20% until i turn 65. then i will be eligible for a supplement. the other comment is a lot of, in my area, we have a lot of new, innovative emergency rooms popping up with state-of-the-art equipment, new doctors coming in, but they don't take medicare because they call me -- they tell me it takes about a year to get their money, you know, paid to them for services, and that's all. thank you. host: any comments, dr. pearl? guest: kelly is raising a crucial point, and this is the last piece of health care today where, because you have

pre-existing conditions, you can be excluded. the thing to realize is that, prior to the aca, that was a common event. insurers figured out how they could maximize their profits by being able to find the healthiest people and exclude the individuals likely to need medical care. so i think that kelly's situation was the typical problem for americans before the aca. much of that has been resolved, but going back to what kelly has said, i think the issue is going to be, how do we make healthier affordable for people earning $40,000 a year? today in our nation, it is not, whether it is insured through the affordable care act or paid for by the individual. guest: i do think that the whole issue of pre-existing conditions was greatly oversold by the aca.

there were some people but not the tens of millions advertised. and if that was really the major issue, then it should have been addressed head on by creating either a risk pool or a particular type of insurance for people who have difficulty getting market insurance because of their pre-existing condition, but instead the aca decided it would upend the entire system, destroy the individual plans that were available that some of your callers dependent on prior to the aca, so it has created a brand-new system to address what was really a much smaller problem than advertised. guest: let me dive ben because joel has mentioned a couple times the plans of before. a lot of these plans paid so little that you thought you had insurance but did not.

a good example as they excluded pregnant women who needed to do delivery i don't know how many listeners have delivered a child lately, but there's no way they can afford to make those payments, particularly earlier in her life when they tended to have babies, without having that kind of insurance. you can exclude a lot of conditions that simply made it look -- it was the illusion of coverage and what i think it did is it raised the bar. didn't raise the cost? absolutely it did. but it raised the bar. i see the negative sides of the aca but i think we have to give it credit to where it took care of stains and blots on our health care system and made coverage better, but even then, we have heard from the listeners today, the out-of-pockets are so unaffordable whether they are in or outside the aca, you know, $5,000, $8,000. that's just not possible.

we have to have listeners understand there is insurance coverage as a delivery system, and if we do that, everything, including the aca, will be unaffordable. host: let's stroll down on that. what do you mean about the delivery system and what means to change -- what needs to change? guest: it is the amount we spend. today, $4 trillion, almost 20% of our total gdp. last week, the government released numbers that said the cost of health care was going to rise 5% to 6%, and that is without considering inflation and supply chain or all the issues happening today. this is going to be 2.5 trillion more dollars over the next 10 years the nation is going to spend on health care. they will become $7 trillion or maybe a trillion dollars when you factor in the other pieces.

we cannot afford to spend that and simply providing insurance coverage at that rate is going to affect businesses and individuals and families, other services, so we have to address that, and that, to me, is the greatest problem of the affordable care act. it did not take on the inefficiencies and costs of delivery, whether at the individual doctor level or the insurance level. don't let any listener get me wrong. our physicians work incredibly hard. they are working in a broken system, but if we cannot change the system of health care in the u.s., how care is delivered, and make it more efficient, than almost no one will be able to afford it. host: let's talk to barbara, on aca, calling from missouri. caller: good morning. i don't have aca insurance

because there's no such thing as aca insurance. aca is a law that affects all insurance. the insurance on the exchanges are private providers, private providers decide premiums and deductibles. the aca is a law that helps protect americans from being victims of insurance companies. please stop calling it a provider. thank you. host: ok. dr. pearl or dr. zinberg? guest: i agree. q said it exactly right. it is not the care delivery. it is a coverage for care mechanism delivered through insurance companies that have the ability, as elsewhere, to set the premiums and to set the terms under which the care is provided.

guest: yes, but they do set those terms and the premiums within strict guidelines set up by the staff -- by the statute, so there's the medical loss ratio, the minimum benefits package that has to be offered, so that is really the reason why you get so few insurers who are willing to participate on these exchanges. they are so restrictive. i agree with dr. pearl, we need change, but though i suspect we would disagree on the change we need, the way to drive down costs and improve quality is improved choice and competition. if you are locked into very rigid government guidelines, it becomes difficult to innovate, difficult to offer plans that people actually prefer, and as a result, people don't buy the plans.

it is more insurance than they are interested in or they feel they need, and they will not abide. -- if it is more insurance than they are interested in or they feel they need, they will not buy it. talking about emergency care centers or walking clinics opening, those are people setting up a market-type arrangement where they are not accepting medicare but they are offering a medical service for people who can afford it or seek it out, and over time, what happens is that, if you get enough competition, that will drive down costs. the problem with our system now is it is set up to discourage competition. the aca and other statutes placed all sorts of mandates on providers that ended up encouraging them to combine and consolidate, so you have medical centers combining with one another. you end up with very few providers in any area. and when you have that sort of situation, prices go up. if you allow more competition,

prices would head down. a good example of that is the procedure we do on people's eyes called lay sick -- called lasi k. that's not covered by most insurance. that market has been allowed to flourish and the price has come down substantially because of the competition. we need something like that, initiatives like i referred to earlier that enable people to get the insurance or medical plan that's best for them, and that will allow competition to flourish and costs to come down and then people will be able to select plans based on the cost and the quality those plans offer. guest: i would love the chance to discuss with joel on a different show the care delivery aspects, because he is right. something like lasik, paid by individuals, creates a competitive marketplace.

that is not true in the insurance world today. he talks about the 80%, what's called the medical loss ratio, 20% of insurance premium is the maximum an insurance company can keep for administrative costs and profits. they used to be, often, 30% or 40%. with the cost of the insurance company going up, the less money spent on care delivery. i don't know how many lizards believe they should be spending more than 20% -- how many listeners believe they should be spending more than 20% of their premium on administration and profits for insurers. i don't know where we disagree. measures could have been taken to create the competition joel is describing. we just did not get there. i think it is a congressional issue. i'm not sure we will be able to address it in the future, but until we do, listeners can

expect their health-care premium to go up year-over-year over your. -- year over year-over-year. guest: part of the problem is you have many people in congress who think the solution to this is not to allow competition to flourish, it is to decrease competition, to have the government provide increasing amounts, perhaps all, of the health care in this country. that is a recipe for rising costs and spending an inefficient delivery of care. host: let's take a listen to former president obama, who was back at the white house on tuesday, talking about the aca anniversary and places where it needs to be improved. [video clip] [video clip] >> even today, some patients still pay too much for prescriptions, poor americans are falling through the cracks. in some cases, health care subsidies are not where we want them to be, which means some working families are still having trouble paying for their coverage.

here is the thing. that is not unusual when we make major progress in this country. the original social security act left out entire categories of people like domestic workers and farmworkers and had to be changed. in the beginning, medicare did not provide all the benefits that it does today. that had to be changed. throughout history, what you see is that it is important to get something started, to plant a flag, to lay a foundation for further progress. my view about the aca is that, in the same way it was true for early forms of social security and medicare, it was a starter home. it secured the principle of universal health care, provided helped immediately to families, but it requires us to continually build on and make a better.

an president biden understands that. that is what he has done since the day he took office. host: that was the former president the white house tuesday. dr. zinberg, your reaction to what he just said. guest: i think when he said plant the flag, he was actually perhaps being inadvertently honest. many people in his party see the aca as an opening wedge towards a complete takeover of health care by the government. so bernie sanders with his proposal of a single-payer system would actually prohibit any kind of private insurance. and that's, as i mentioned before, just a recipe for disaster. it is a recipe for increased spending an inefficient spending and a lot of waste, so i think, you know, the president was honest.

this is what his vision was for the future and it is one we should resist. host: let's talk to elaine in blue springs, missouri. caller: hi, elaine. hello. good morning. the aca has a lot of instances on what i think they said was preventive care. why, since the health of a person's mouth is so important to the health of the rest of the body, it really does very little with respect to -- you know, related to dental care? the second question is about that gap insurance. i think it is called -- it is totally unaffordable. if you are between jobs for any reason, you cannot continue your health care. it really costs a lot. that is all. if they would just respond. host: all right.

dr. pearl, why don't you go first? guest: i agree completely with the lane that dental care is essential. our nation has chosen not to fund it for people who otherwise cannot do it for themselves. that's a social question and a congressional one. i think probably president obama would have included that in the plan if he had the ability back then, that that was not possible, again, politically. the other question is in terms of the medigap coverage is this is an individual necessity to buy it if it is not there. and prior to the aca, what happened was, when you lost your coverage, you had to purchase a plan that allows you to continue

itm, but sincee the people who lostdi continue it -- continue it, but since the people who lost it and wanted to buy it found the price unacceptable, the aca offered an alternative. rather than something that was unaffordable for almost everyone, you could engage during this transition period and it was a solution. i had a cousin who lost his insurance, ended up with major medical issues because he couldn't get coverage. had it happened in the current time period, he would have been able to enroll with subsidies through the affordable care act inside individual exchange and it would have made a big difference. host: the reason cobra -- dr.

pearl. guest: the reason cobra is so expensive because now the patient is responsible for paying their part of the cost and the part of the employer was paying before. the aca is an alternative, the plans on the exchanges. most are expensive plans. the typical plan for a family of four with premiums and deductibles is about $25,000 a year. that's not an and expensive plan -- that is not an inexpensive plan. and if you don't qualify for subsidies, you are probably paying more than you would through your employer. it is not an inexpensive option. what we need are things that allow you to make your health insurance that most people get from their employer affordable. for example, health reimbursement arrangements, formalized by a rule beginning

in january 2020, would allow employers to give you tax-advantaged dollars to then make your own decision about which insurance to buy, so you are not locked into the plan or plans that the employer selected. you get to take those tax-advantaged dollars, by the insurance you want, and take that with you to your next job, again utilizing those plans. the biden administration has not been terribly enthusiastic about any of the rules carried out from the trump administration, but that is a real step in the right direction to allow people to make their own choices about what plan works best for them. host: dr. zinberg, what do you think about the issue of dental care being included in dental care -- in preventative care? guest: for one reason or another, dental care is not included in most health insurance plans. medicare does not have a dental coverage plan.

so that's a legislative decision. if congress decides it should be covered, and i am on board with that, but you do have to realize once you start subsidizing something like that, generally the result is that prices rise, so you have to be clear-sighted and careful about how you end up providing that coverage, because once you do that, it is often a recipe for rising costs. guest: for listeners who might get confused, the exchanges that we are talking about, these are individuals who are now looking to purchase coverage for themselves. these have major subsidies -- subsidies that are relatively low, in the $35,000 to $50,000 range, where the majority of americans are today, and if you

are a person who finds your software elaine was, without a job or income, you have options. there is a cost absolutely but i don't want anyone not getting medical coverage because they feel they cannot afford it. in the past, cobra became the full responsibility of the individual and it was far higher than the average expense. but people in elaine's situation can get coverage through one of the provisions in the aca. host: valdes in illinois, good morning. caller: i wanted to agree with dr. pearl about the money that will be infused and it will not fix the problem. as a former soldier and retired police officer from california, i had insurance my whole life. never struggle for it. i have always been thankful for it, never took it for granted.

i think everyone should have health care. we will not be like some of the countries i have seen where people are left to die in the streets. neither doctor has mentioned the most critical part, that we need to be understanding we are not citizens in this country, we are customers. you cannot drive a street corner without some fast food slop being offered to eat. everyone's health, generally, two thirds of adults i believe are of -- are either overweight or obese. if we don't get that under control, and we won't because it is part of our economy, we will implode. we won't be able to survive because our health care system will bring us down. thank you and i only hope people realize getting unhealthy and older when you are poor is a terrible place to be. i don't know either condition so do what you will. thank you. host: dr. zinberg, your comments.

guest: he is pointing out a very important problem. i was at the council of economic advisers from 2017 to 2019 working on health policy and in our health chapter in the 2018 addition -- the addition of the economic report to the president, we addressed the problem the caller is talking about that, while the aca focused on expanding people covered by insurance, that's not a guarantee you will improve health. in fact, the relationship between health care coverage and actual health is actually pretty minimal. there have been a lot of studies, many of them finding no relationship. the ones that find a positive relationship, it is quite small, and it is only for certain types of people with specific conditions. so the issue is not how you increase insurance coverage. the issue is increasing -- issue is addressing the determinants of health, and obesity was one

of the things we wrote about in that chapter, how obesity is an epidemic in this country. it affects our health much more than insurance coverage does. another thing we wrote about was the opioid crisis. how that was leading to thousands, tens of thousands of excess deaths. so those are the real determinants of health care. those are things i'm am interested in and now. i'm director of the american public health and well-being initiative. we are looking to address what are the true determinants of health, what can we do about that, rather than sort of focusing solely on insurance coverage. host: dr. pearl, any comments on that? guest: i completely agree. we have an epidemic of chronic disease. 70% of the problems we have in this nation tie back into that. they are preventable, many of

them. they are treatable. complications can be avoided, but it is not going to happen with the current health care delivery system. something like technology, you know, the most common way doctors communicate with each other is the fact machine. -- the fax machine. when i tell my students, they have no idea what i'm talking about, this 1834 invention. one of the principles and the affordable care act that wasn't carried forward and needs to be is creating accountable care organizations, bringing doctors together into groups, integrating them with hospitals, finding ways to deliver care that's higher-quality, safer and less expensive, but that still has not happened in this country, and i will tell you, i am concerned. when i look forward, and less we can accomplish something like that and make investments in the

social determinants of health and provide care equitably to more people, we will see chronic disease just get worse and we will see costs rise and life expectancy -- by the way, it was flat for 20 years in the united states. we are five years behind european nations in life expectancy, last in childhood mortality, last in the maternal death rate. that was published out of the cdc. we have double the rate of mothers dying from delivery. these are problems of health care delivery and that needs to be a major focus for people. the aca i think has become the target. it has a lot of problems. i am not a true believer that it is perfect in any way. i believe, as president obama said, it may be a good step forward, but the big opportunity will be around how we change the

delivery system to improve the health of americans, and a lot of that will be around obesity, reducing diabetes, controlling hypertension, preventing cancer, the things we know we can do and don't do well. host: let's talk to john. guest: i would like to mention something. the affordable care act and legislation the year before, both promised we would get this sort of renaissance in the delivery of health care if we only adopted all sorts of new technologies, electronic medical records, things like that, and if we adopted accountable care organizations, the aco's just referred to, and there were a number of experiments that have been run over the last 10 years with accountable care organizations, with other things, and they have largely been a bust.

they have not delivered the cost savings are quality improvements that were promised. so things -- so these are things that sound good in theory. they were worth trying and perhaps worth trying again, but they are not the panacea they were promised to be, and in fact, some of the requirements, like adopting electronic medical records and other requirements, have proved to be driving the increase in costs that many smaller providers face that ends up -- that they cannot afford and it ends up driving them into the arms of larger providers. so you notice the disappearance of individual practitioners or small groups. they all now work for hospitals. those hospitals combined with other hospitals, so you end up with maybe one or two large providers in an area, which is a recipe for higher costs and less responsiveness to consumer needs, so those initiatives have a lot of unintended consequences.

so we have to be very careful when you talk about proposing those as a solution to all of our problems. host: all right, well, dr. joel zinberg, that will be the last word. p is director of the public health and well-being initiative at paragon health institute. we are also joined by dr. robert pearl, former ceo of permanente medical group, author of culture of uncaring. thank you for being on the program. guest: thank you. guest: thank you. host: later, david stewart, post of a podcast, will discuss his podcast and takes tax questions ahead of the april 18 filing deadline. after the break,, we will take your calls on open forums on any

foreign policy -- on any policy issue on your mind this morning. republicans, (202) 748-8001, democrats, (202) 748-8000, and independents, (202) 748-8002. we will be right back. ♪ >> first ladies in their own words. our series looking at the role of the first lady, their time in the white house and the issues important to them. >> there was a great advantage to know what it was like to work in a school because education is such an important issue both for a governor and also for president. that was very helpful to me. >> using the -- using material from c-span's award-winning biography series, first ladies. >> i am a person who believes he

should say what you mean, mean what you say and take the consequences. >> and c-span's online video library. we will feature first ladies lady bird johnson, betty ford, rosalynn carter, pat nixon, laura bush, hillary clinton, michelle obama and others on c-span2, or listen to the podcast on the c-span now mobile apps or wherever you get your podcast. presidents reported conversations while in office. peer those conversations on c-span's new contest -- listen to those conversations on c-span's new podcast. >> you will hear about the march on selma, the war in vietnam. not everyone knew they were

being recorded. >> certainly, johnson's secretaries knew, because they were test with transcribing many of those -- were tasked with transcribing many of those conversations. johnson would signal to them through an open door between his and their office to record. >> you will hear some blunt talk. >> look at the #a to kennedy the day he died and the number to me now. i will not go anywhere. i will stay right behind. >> presidential recordings. find them on the c-span now mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. washington journal continues. host: welcome back to washington journal. it is open forums, so i'm taking

your calls on anything public policy related on your mind. go ahead and start calling in now. i want to show you the new york times, the headline, "we made it -- jackson celebrates supreme court confirmation." it says "the confirmation of judge ketanji brown jackson has changed the course of american life, says president biden." the article says "judge jackson, the first black woman to be nominated to the supreme court, celebrated her confirmation friday, saying it was the honor of her lifetime and understands what it meant to the young black women and girls who followed along with her nomination process." we have a portion of that from the white house. here it is. [video clip] >> i have spent years toiling away in the relative solitude of my chambers with just my law clerks, in isolation, so it has

been overwhelming, in a good way, to be flooded with thousands of notes and cards and photos expressing just how much this moment means to so money people. the notes that i have received from children are particularly cute and especially meaningful, because more than anything, they speak directly to the hope and promise of america. it has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a black woman's be selected to serve on the supreme court of united states. [applause] but we have made it. [applause] we have made it, all of us. all of us. host: that was judge jackson at

the white house yesterday. other piece of news from the hill. the headline says that "white house acknowledges biden would get covid -- biden could get covid," for stresses he's been vaccinated. he was exposed to some people that apparently were positive, but we haven't heard any further news about that. let's start taking your calls. sergio's first in schenectady, new york, an independent. medigap good morning -- caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. c-span offers everyone of the political spectrum to hear opinions from everyone. it is a great opportunity for me to speak a little bit about the last segment. it seemed that we are always talking about private health care. the issues we have, the problems we have. and we spend i think close to $1

trillion a year honor miller -- a year on our military. no way we would let the military be -- let the way the military is run be determined by this company or that company. when we talk about health care, i believe it is $4 trillion we spend every year. i think it is time we start focusing on the fact that private health insurance does not work. we do have an answer called medicare. in the aca, i believe there was a provision in the aca that capped the amount of money that private health care insurance companies could spend on overhead, you know, you go past is huge -- past these huge buildings for this insurance company, people are in their pushing paper around, and 20% of what i spent all my premiums paid for that, whereas with medicare, the overhead costs are

about 2% or 3%. you also don't see a lot of people on medicare out on the street protesting about, you know, medicare doesn't work. so i think it is -- i implore my fellow americans, you know, it is now time to start thinking about, you know -- and we could see it with these two gentlemen 's discussion. private health care doesn't work. so maybe it is time to think about another way of doing things. host: all right, sergio. let's talk to lewis in staunton, virginia. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for having me. i want to agree with the gentleman who spoke just now. i have fourth stage cancer and private insurance companies will not even accept me. if they do take me, i cannot afford the premiums. that is what i want to say about

that, so thank you for mentioning that. i also want to say that judge jackson will be an asset to the american judicial system. i am so proud of her and that she's there. she just gave a wonderful speech. the other thing i want to mention is that the war in ukraine is such a slaughtering event of all the people in ukraine and i feel as though nato, the allies and mr. biden have a disconnect with the pentagon in sending them the ammunition and armory they need to fight the demon putin. this is a horrible event in our lifetime and we watched a democracy fall to ashes and i get confused as to we are a democracy and yet we watch another democracy just tumble into ashes. it is a terrible event and heartbreaking to see, the children and people slaughtered

at the train station, the war crimes being committed, the ra pe and murder of citizens. it is a sin against humanity and i think mr. biden needs to think about other things other than sanctions. sanctions take years to have an effect upon a country, and although they are valuable, they are not immediate. what president zelenskyy needs now is armor and military to fight the russians that are destroying his country, destroying families and just killing people indiscriminately. host: all right, lewis. you mentioned that attack on the train station. here is the headline from the washington post, the front page. it says "50 dead after attack on ukraine train station, allies validate and -- allies

vow aid and denounce killings." president zelenskyy called it an n attack on a train station. grizzly scenes emerged with bodies strewn among luggage, toys and debris. witnesses described a large explosion followed by four or five cluster bombs that tore into a crowd of people who gathered to catch an arriving train. the head of the donetsk regional administration said 30 died at the station, another 12 died at the hospital. among the dead are five children. 16 children are injured. let's talk to joe in stowe, ohio. a republican. hi, joe. caller: how are you? host: good. caller: good. i am going to talk about high

gas and food prices. i have a few kids on their own. i am 60 and they are in their late 20's. they are having a hard time just paying their bills, buying food, higher gas prices, and they are living on the edge, barely making any money. and, you know, the policies of the democrats have really, you know, made it rough. they all voted for biden and me and my wife voted for trump and now they are realizing that, you know, they made a mistake and they are having a hard time just getting by and, you know, i think the democrats need to get together and the republicans get together and work together and, you know, tried to start drilling again. that's the important thing. once they start drilling again, the economy will come back and,

you know, i think that would be really good for the country and start bringing things around the way they used to be under trump, where, you know, the economy was roaring and not all this stupid stuff about the craziness they are teaching kids in the schools and all the abortions and, you know, i think when they took god out of the equation in the 1960's and the schools, there are so many atheists teaching the kids in schools, how to go to hell, not to be good christians, said i think that's probably the main problem they are having, so that is all i have to say today. host: all right, joe. let's talk to martin in dayton, ohio on the independents line. good morning. caller: thank you for having me. the first two callers, i thought they were very good. girl a quote i -- there's a

quote i heard recently, "there's no such thing as a former kgb man," and that was said by vladimir putin. he is moving in the poll bought direction -- in the pull pot direction, like stalin. if you watch fox news, they are talking about the gas prices and the border. there's a great podcast by david beck worth that looks at demographics. we don't have a birthrate that's replacing the people in our country. we are an older country. we are not as bad as japan or russia or parts of europe, but still not good. at the same time, we still have so many open jobs and such a low unemployment rate. there's a solution here. you need to vet these people at the border, not them all, vet them with a lot of people.

a lot of them are just in the immigration process. make sure they are legitimate, they have a legitimate reason to come, they want to be hard-working people, they have a -- people, give them a social security card, a green card, not citizenship, start having them paying into the system so we can have a better system of social security going forward and they can be part of the system. we have plenty of land and jobs and that will grow our economy. there are people on the other side that would rather have 150 million people in our country. we have 320 million now, but a smaller u.s. is not a stronger u.s. when you can accept more people in a legal, organized, orderly way and get people into the system the right way, but no one will ever say that because people benefit the way the system is now.

host: all right, martin. let's talk to william. you will be our last call, from murfreesboro, tennessee, on the democrats line. good morning. caller: good morning. i am a little nervous but first i wanted to speak to the original topic of the morning, the repayment of student loan debt. i am in favor of absolving student loan debt, although i must several years ago, repaid all my student loan debt. i am a graduate. i majored in a technical field, architectural engineering. i also have an advanced degree, and that i researched. my field -- host: william, you are breaking

up, but i appreciate your call. that will be our last call. next, david stewart is the host of tax notes talk podcast, and he will talk about his podcast and take your questions ahead of the april 18 filing deadline. stay with us. ♪ >> april 19 marks the anniversary of when jackie robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. it has been known as jackie robinson day. sunday, on q&a, a former senior

writer for sports illustrated talks about his book true: the four seasons of jackie robinson, where he writes about robinson's life, career and role in the civil rights movement. >> one way to think about this is realized when he made that debut, martin luther king had still never given a public speech. he was not a large figure yet, so what we think of is that era of the civil rights movement hadn't begun, and jackson was truly a pioneer in that sense. so when you think about dr. king, probably with characteristic generosity but also being true to facts, said he would not have been accepted as he was were gotten where he was what it not for what jackie had done. >> sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on q&a. you can also listen to q&a and all of our podcast on our free c-span now app.

>> next week, on c-span, congress is in recess for the next two weeks. monday at 9:00 p.m. eastern, officials from the department of interior and the forest service testify on federal wildfire management for the house natural resources committee. on tuesday at 9:00 p.m. eastern, testimony about evolving trends regarding overdraft programs and fees, their impact on consumers, and help to avoid overdraft fees before the house financial services committee. wednesday at 9:00 a.m. eastern, a look at substance abuse, suicide risks and the health care system by the ways and means committee. thursday at 9:00 p.m. eastern, an interview with justice amy coney barrett at the reagan presidential library. at 10:00 p.m. eastern, a conversation with justice sonya sotomayor at washington university in st. louis.

watch next week on c-span or c-span now, our free mobile app. had to c-span.org for scheduling information or to stream video live or on-demand any time. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. >> all this month, watch the top 21 videos from our c-span studentcam documentary competition. every morning, before washington journal, we will hear from one of our studentcam winners, whose documentary told us how the federal government impacted their life. you can watch all the winning documentaries anytime online at studentcam.org. washington journal continues. host:host: welcome back to washington journal. it is our saturday podcast segment. i'm joined by david stewart, host of the tax notes talk podcast. he is the tax notes today

international editor-in-chief. welcome to the program. nice to have you in the studio. guest: thank you for having me. host: first, tell us about the podcast. when and why did you started? guest: we started in november of 2017. we were coming from a print journalism background, so this was a chance to branch out into something new and potentially reach a new audience besides our normal subscriber base, and it had a very good reaction and we are quite pleased with how it turned out. host: what kinds of topics do you talk about? to were the guests you would have on your program? guest: next week, appropriate for tax season, we will have irs commissioner charles rettig. that's a crossover episode with our series tax issues. we've also had a lot of discussion about international

tax and the attempts to reform corporate tax on an international basis, which feeds well into my other job as the editor-in-chief of a publication, and we have spoken with the head of tax at the oecd for that as well as the cochairs of the inclusive framework, which is the group working on the nuts and bolts of those proposals. host: i want to tell viewers how they can talk to you. you can call us according to your region. in the eastern or central time zone, (202) 748-8000 call us on (202) 748-8000. if you are in mountain pacific, (202) 748-8001. don't forget, you can tweet us and send us a text. so the deadline for taxes is monday, not this coming one, but next monday. so if you have already filed your returns, what can you expect?

guest: we heard from the irs commissioner this week that he was on the hill discussing this filing season that there is actually two different expectations. if you are an e-filer, it is being handled quickly, and if you are a paper filer, not so much. there's been a long backlog of paper filings and, as this tax year began, there was a significant backlog of previous year tax filings on paper. host: what are we looking at if you filed on paper? how long of a backlog is it? guest: according to commissioner rettig's testimony, they still have -- it was several million tax returns that they had not gotten to on paper from last year, so he has promised congress that the irs will work through their backlog by the end

of this year, so how that plays out for individuals, i couldn't speculate. host: let's take a look at that testimony. we have it here, of irs commissioner charles rettig at the senate. [video clip] >> with respect to our current filing season, we are off to a healthy start in terms of tax processing and the operation of our i.t. systems. through april 1, we have processed more than 89 million returns, processed 60 million refunds totaling more than $204 billion. however, there are essentially two distinct filing systems -- seasons. filers who do so electronically receive refunds, many of them, within three or four days of submission of their electronic file. for taxpayers who submit paper returns, it is first in, first out.

we are processing approximately 2.7 million returns still that we received in calendar year 2021, so taxpayers who this season choose to file a paper return end up at the end of that stack. host: why is the irs having such a hard time with paper returns? today not have enough people working there -- do they not have enough people working there? guest: it is a people and money issue that's been building for a while, and the pandemic also caused a significant disruption. divide administration -- the biden administration proposed an increase in the budget of the irs. they also received enhanced hiring capability. during his testimony, commissioner rettig i believe discussed the additional hiring they are doing, something on the order of 2500 new hires or thereabouts, with the goal of getting 5000 new hires in, and

that is part of his plan to try and deal with that backlog. host: do you think that is enough? will that take care of the backlog? guest: i personally don't know. it is a very large problem. the commissioner seems to think you can do it. i know there are some who are skeptical. host: i mean, it seems like people really need to move to the electronic if they can, because these paper filings are taking a long time. guest: yeah, and in his testimony he discussed that a significant majority, over 90% of filers, are using the electronic system. and that definitely helps with the irs system, with trying to work through these things, because as has been explained, there is a manual process of taking these paper returns and inputting that information. they have discussed other methods that they could use to avoid that, barcodes discussed

by the national taxpayer advocate, which would allow for an electronic creation of a tax return and a barcode to be created to the information does not have to be manually reentered. host: there's a headline here from the washington post that says "fighting a red-hot job market, the irs struggles to rebuild." let's talk to some viewers. cheryl is up in brookline, massachusetts. hi, cheryl. caller: hi. thank you for taking my call. i have a question that i have not been able to get a consistent answer to. i cannot get any answer from the irs and from one of the major online tax preparer systems. my husband and i both get social security from the state. he also is a dual citizen in the u.k. please work 30 years here but he also gets social security -- he has worked 30 years here but he

also gets social security from the u.k., a state pension. we cannot get an answer as to whether or not he should pay taxes on that. the cpa says yes, the major online tax preparer says absolutely not, there's a u.k.-u.s. trade agreement, but just because we didn't know what to do, we have been paying taxes on that british social security, which doesn't seem fair, because if it was u.s. social security, it would not be fully taxed. host: ok, cheryl. let's get a response. guest: i cannot speak to your specific situation other than to recommend finding an expert who can interpret the u.k.-u.s. tax treaty. i definitely am not an expert in that area. host: all right. tom is calling us from denver

, colorado. good morning. caller: can you hear me ok? host: yes. we can hear you. guest: -- caller: i am using turbotax online. what i did is i moved some money from one ira company to another one, i took part of that, put it into a roth, and i got my 1099(r) back and everything like that but it took my gross income up way too much money and i'm getting a huge amount back that doesn't make any sense. i guess it is, well, it should be neutral as far as i'm concerned. i'm curious how they are working through it. host: what do you think? guest: again, i cannot give tax advice. i cannot speak to your situation.

if this is a situation where you will need to find someone who understands these particular nitty-gritty issues, i'm sorry. host: all right. skip is in washington, d.c. good morning, skip. caller: hello. i have missed filing my 2020 filing deadline and 2021 because of the pandemic and all you people. i just had so much other things that i was dealing with, so what should i do at this point? because, you know, i want to avoid penalties and things like that. i would like to file for all three years this one time, so can i still do that? host: do you know? guest: we're falling into specific advice. host: i wonder if there's any relief, though, for the pandemic, for the tax filing, or was it just --

guest: there have been many extended -- in the first year of the pandemic, they extended the filing season automatically. this last year, there was not an extension, but for people in particular situations like hurricane ida, unfortunately i cannot give tax advice or speak to specific issues. host: we got a tweet from steve and he says this. "i don't know who is still filing via mail but they need to join the 21st century. i got my refund in a week filing electronically." this is a text from sean in massachusetts, "can the guest explain the difference between the rich elite who don't pay taxes and break the law and rich

elite who use laws passed by congress to pay as little as possible? does your guest think attacked overall are out of control?" guest: i don't have any opinion on if taxes are out of control. there are interesting conversations about how to tax the very wealthy. the biden administration put out its latest budget which includes a billionaires' tax. those with more than $1 billion of assets will be subject to a 20% minimum tax.

that is to any issue that republicans have been talking about where the very wealthy only pay tax when they sell their assets. they pay capital gains rate at the time that they sell their assets. for some, they almost never have to sell their assets. they can borrow against them and when they pass on their assets, the assets have the new basis. there is never capital gains recovered on those assets. what the new administrative proposal does cents it would to percent minimum and every year those assets are measured to find out what gains are built into them. for person to has a very large fortune, they will have to look every year and see how much they are worth is here, how much they were worth last time i recorded

this and that factors into their total income for the 20% minimum tax which has a multiyear payment period. that is one of the many proposals out there. there are several market to market proposals. the alternative would be a wealth tax which elizabeth warren has suggested. that has a potential constitutional question that is more acute than the constitutional question on market to market proposals. with market to market, you could argue it is a timing and taxing income with a wealth tax. it is not clear that it falls within what congress is allowed to pass. host: let's look at those numbers on the screen. this is biden's 2023 budget

proposal. that is the minimum tax rate on households worth more than $100 million. that relies -- and would raise $360 billion in revenue over 10 years according to the white house. let's talk to john in penn valley, california. caller: good morning. two questions, one is what is the maximum amount i can give to an individual that they will not have to pay taxes on? the second part of the question is, if there are three individuals in a family, can i independently send a check to each one of those individuals they will not have taxes on them? guest: we are falling into advice again.

[laughter] there is an inclusion amount, i don't know it at the top of my head and it is per donor per person exclusion amount. host: so you could give to as many people as long as he does not exceed that amount. guest: i would not go as far to get that advice. i recommend discussing it with a tax professional before making a move like that. host: marion is in at this, georgia -- is in athens, georgia. caller: i have a question regarding electronic filing. i filed a paper return in 2019 and they did not process it until after i submitted electronically my 2020 return and it was rejected. now i am stuck.

they finally got to my 2019 return my 2020 return -- i don't want to file it by paper and have the same issue because i have 2021 ready. is there a way i can go back and filed electronically my 2020 return? guest: i don't know that but that does speak to the issue the commissioner was discussing, the massive backlog. it is smaller than it was last year, but it is still an ongoing challenge. host: that was marion in athens, georgia. let's talk to mary in philadelphia, pennsylvania. caller: i would like to let mr. stewart know that i would encourage everyone to file taxes. even if you are below the

operative guidelines, you may be entitled to the earned income credit, child tax credit, and student loans. i am a retired government worker . people think because they are below the poverty guidelines we end up paying you more than what you actually pay into the system. because people are not aware of the tax laws, they really don't file their taxes if they think i did not make that much, i make $10 an hour, nine dollars an hour. we pay you more just like we pay businesses and corporations and they don't pay taxes. we actually pay them more because they hire employees based on that tax system.

the problem is with seniors we have no right off -- no write off to take advantage of the tax system because we do not have businesses, a lot of us. we do not have a nonprofit. we have to pay the full tax amount. please, make sure you take advantage if you have student loans. you file your taxes. it is to your benefit. i have seen people that have gotten $7,000 back, below the poverty guidelines and had student loans. make sure you take advantage of our tax laws. host: any comments on that? guest: i will note that there is a significant portion of what the irs does to distribute money for specific purposes. the earned income tax credit,

the child tax credit which was expanded last year and has reverted back to where it was before. there are these refundable tax credits. a tax credit is a one to one production on your tax bill. a refundable tax credit means you don't need liability for that account. -- for that to count. many people get money back without having tax liability to begin with. host: we have a text from california, "the irs backlogged? no excuse. it is understaffed. americans have been threatened their refunds will be delayed. when any other country asks for money, the check goes out that night." let's talk to sean in california. caller: i wanted to ask a question about the little people

who want to pay taxes, like myself. during the pandemic, i paid taxes back to the irs. this year i am looking to pay again. i filed single but my job is saying i need to file zero now because i'm not paying enough taxes to the irs. they are taking 10% of taxes. can you explain to some people that our children are grown and we don't have write-offs but we own homes. what tax write-offs that are from the irs are for us? the irs just got a lot of money and i feel like they got a lot of money to come after people like me who work ever keeping this country going. host: i am sorry to hear it -- guest: i am sorry to hear about your situation. the one piece of advice i can

give -- i think it is just good standard advice that in a given tax year you end up with either a large refund or a large bill, revisit your w-4 to make sure your withholding is correct for your particular situation. host: this is from axios, a graph showing tax audits drop for the highest earners. the number of irs audits for those earning one million or more has been dropping. this shows from 2012 to 2021. you can see that trend going down. why would the audits be going down for higher earners? guest: this falls into the same discussion about resources of staffing at the irs. it is very difficult to do

complex audits. that is one of the proposals in president biden's build back better bill. the irs is one of the few agencies where if you put money into it, you get more money back. maybe he meant is the only other one -- may be the mint is the only other one. build back better was to pay for spending without enforcement of the irs. there is a tax cap, the amount collected versus the amount that should be collected. that may be between $600 billion and $1 trillion depending on who is estimating. there is a lot of money to be had through enforcement. the question is, there were many questions about the estimates that were used as offsets in

that bill. it is likely more audits could be performed on this complicated tech situations with additional funding at the irs. host: florida, nina. hi, nina. judge jackson: -- caller: good morning. a lot of these people calling in have specialty questions that your guest either legally cannot say or whatever. mine is very simple. how do i efile? guest: i can point you to the irs website. there are resources for free efiling. there is an income cap on that. beyond that, you are looking at finding individual preparers and services.

there was one more i would be remiss -- i remember having a discussion in one of our podcast episodes with the former taxpayer advocate who points out that there are free fillable forms that you can file with the irs directly online. host: let's talk to joan in rochester, minnesota. caller: i have a question. since corporations consider themselves citizens or people rather than a different entity, how come they are not subject to the same usury laws i am? if they were subject to israel laws like the average citizen is, interest rates by companies with drop down to as low or high as we have to pay.

i want to know why only certain make citizens and certain's are totally avoided like the user rely. -- our user rely. host: that is a little outside our topic. guest: i don't have much to say to that. it is a very complicated world when you are talking about what exactly a corporation is. host: constance is coming from cape coral, florida. caller: the last caller, i think she was right. this trickle-down bull is just bull. they overtax things and forget the people who really can't break this country, like people who put fire outs -- who put fires out and police officers. children deserve free education.

i am 69 years old and i had free education. all it did was make want more education. i broke open every library book i could find. there is hardly in thing about the law i don't know so they can't pull the wool over my eyes. i am a very smart woman. i have a 154 iq and i want to hear marcia blackman -- marcia brennan tell us what is her definition is of a woman. host: how does this relate to taxes? caller: taxes need to be fair. i think children should have free education. you want them to be good citizens? give them free education. the only people that benefit on children being stupid are republicans. host: all right. david, you have an episode

called tax mythbusters. what you think is the most common tax myth today? guest: the nefarious smith of the tax world is that as people are filling up their tax forms this year, the idea that if i get something wrong i am going to jail. we discussed that on the podcast . it is best to get everything correct and get it right the first time. but making a mistake is not something that is going to get any ordinary person in jail. the people who are going to prison really worked at it. host: they were really trying. guest: correct. it is different than i forgot to

add an interest statement. host: but there could be fines. guest: there are repercussions for it. the irs will definitely send a letter and you can pay penalties and interest. for the most part, it is not a criminal matter to simply get something wrong on your tax return. host: let's go back to the irs commissioner. he answered a senator's question on fixing returns that have errors and the impact on customer service. [video clip] >> returns fallout for a matter of reasons, failure to reconcile impact payments, mismatches, and whatnot. last year at this point, we had 7.7 million returns in error resolution. as of march 31, we have 741,000

returns in error resolution, less than 10%. our efforts are working we are trending in the right direction. during the summers, we will start seeing the impact of this. beyond a telephone call with a live irs employee which i keep trying to make the point that the same employee in other times is processing paper returns, inventory, and thanks in that context. >> i am just trying to understand, what you said invokes the image of a person who processing tax returns in some form and they have to drop what they are doing and pick up the phone. >> not at all. they are taken off the phones and moved to the paper. host: thomases calling from

delray beach, florida. caller: thank you for having me on. since we are talking about tax myths, i would like to raise this point. one of the criticism towards --'s towards trump's tax cuts is they only applied to the rich. anybody working a minimum wage job paid less income taxes under trump's tax cuts. why are not democrats demanding that he repealed those tax cuts if they believe it was unfair? they should be calling for joe biden to repeal that law but they are not doing it. in my opinion, it is because if joe biden repealed the trump tax cuts, the working middle class would be paying more taxes. i would like to ask the expert if my understanding is correct.

would you agree? guest: the trump tax cuts were very broad. they affected many different taxpayers. there was an increase in the standard deduction. there were reductions in the tax brackets on the other side of the ledger. there was a cap placed on deductions you could take for state and local income tax. the biden administration has a firm line from the campaign promise that the administration will not support any increases in taxes for households making less than $400,000 per year. a broad repeal of that tax bill is very unlikely anytime in the near future. host: how do you rate is divided's first year in office -- rate president biden's first

year in office with regards to tax policy? host: the first year, everything -- guest: the first year, everything was temporary. we looked at the extended payments and the child tax credit which itself was an interesting experiment. it was a much bigger tax credit for children mood from $2000 to $3600 and was made fully refundable. everybody got the full benefit of it. that has been essentially the changes we have seen so far. there are other proposals in the build back better act such as the extension of the child tax credit going into the future and extension of tax credits for electric vehicles.

those have not passed. we are seeing not a lot in the way of change on tax policy. as we saw in that clip, those impact payments and child tax credits are causing a bit of trouble this year during filing season. some filings are falling out for -- out from reconciling those payments. host: let's talk to jason in honolulu, hawaii. caller: aloha. how is everybody doing? i consider myself pretty tax savvy, but paper filing all the way. there are so many resources for

efiling, it is meandering. i consider myself tax savvy and i will still fire paper taxes until they tell us not to. host: it is going to hold everything up and you will not get your refund if you are do a refund -- if you are due a refund. caller: i know. there's nothing more secure than having the photocopy and all of these stories about hacking, i will be sitting pretty once the russians hack the irs. it is any option and i like it my point is, i am to be tongue and -- tongue in cheek about this. but just read through your 1040 forms. there is a lot in there that

needs to be reformed. one of them is -- and i will is this saying i don't have to worry about this. if you procure funds illegally, government wants that. i don't know how that is not seen as a conflict of interest. the second is more important to me. if you need a calculation done based on what your taxes are, there is a blurb in the instructions saying if you want the irs to figure this out for you, send us $1000. i paid the government enough taxes would you guys to figure this out. mr. stewart, telus if there is any significant tax reform to go over -- this is ridiculous. no matter if you have a tax attorney filing your taxes or you are filing your own taxes, the needs to be more tax reform to make it even simpler.

thank you, c-span. guest: as far as reporting illicit gains, i would have recommended al capone to that because it's gotten into a lot of trouble. as far as making the tax system simpler, the difficulty is that in the u.s., we do a lot through the tax system. there are payments like child tax credit or money that is used to encourage clean air vehicles. it does mean that there is inevitably going to be a certain amount of complexity. host: some people have argued that her to bring down inflation, tax rates need to come down. what do you think of that? guest: tax rates coming down might work against you because

that would put more money into the economy. we had an episode a few weeks ago with a chief economist, martin sullivan, who was discussing how over the last several years with all of these rescue plans and various payments that have gone out, that personal balance sheets on average have improved significantly. at the same time, there are significantly fewer goods to be bought with that extra money because of all of the supply chain issues. we currently have too much money in the system. that is causing inflationary pressures. reducing taxes, i would be open to learning specific ideas on it. host: do you think raising taxes would help with inflation? guest: i would never come out

and say that. [laughter] what i said to marty in our episode, it is a very difficult problem. probably the best thing for inflation would be for the supply to work itself out -- the supply chain to work itself out. host: bill will be our last call from johnstown, pennsylvania. caller: i will try to make three quick points. if you have a 1090 what you convert a traditional ira to a roth ira or going to get a 1099, it is going to increase your gross income. number two, inflation, i think some of this is gouging. they're taking advantage -- some companies are taking advantage of the situation and upping prices more than they need to. third, the tax system in this

country has been around over 100 years and we pile on and add to it and modify it and change it. is it time to scrap it and start over? thank you. guest: the last time there was a major civil litigation of the tax system was 1986 -- a major simplification of the tax system was 1986. the trendline is always towards more complexity. as much as -- even if we did have a moment where everything was cleaned out & five, i don't know how long that would last because everyone is always looking to make changes to deal with particular issues. host: if you enjoy listening to podcasts, look at our c-span podcast. they are available on our website, our mobile app, or where ever get your podcasts.

david stewart, host of "tax notes talk podcast," thank you for coming in. guest: thank you for having me. host: that is it for today's "washington journal." we will be back tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern. have a great saturday. ♪c-span washington journal every day. we take your call live on the air of the news of the day and discuss policy issues that impact you. sunday morning, we look at the recent developments in russia's invasion of ukraine with retired army colonel david johnson of the rand corporation.

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