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>> c-span's washington journal. every day we take your calls live on the air and news on the day and discuss policy issues that impact you. coming up sunday morning we'll look at campaign 2022 with henry olson followed by bill press. watch washington journal live at 7:00 eastern. join the discussion with your phone calls, face book comments, texts and tweets. and official washington is quiet ahead of the little season, california banning new gasoline powered vehicles by host: good morning and welcome to "washington journal" as washington is quiet during the fall season, the state of

california made headlines by banning the sell of new gasoline powered vehicles by 2035. is thif government? do you think electric cars will become more affordable? we want to hear from you. if you support california's policy on electric vehicles, dial (202) 748-8000. if you oppose the new policy, your line is (202) 748-8001. if you are the owner of an electric vehicle or a hybrid, call us at (202) 748-8002. you can also send us a text at (202) 748-8003. include your name and where you live. you can tweet us, as c-span wj -- @c-spanwj.

as you start calling in, we first want to get to axios business reporter nathan bo ehme, who has been following the story all week. good morning. guest: good morning. host: start by telling us exactly how did this rule from california come about and how significant is it? guest: the state of california has been pursuing more fuel-efficient vehicles than the rest of the country for decades. this is not unusual in that respect. they've always had tougher fuel economy standards for vehicles. they are taking this a step further. started two years ago, when governor gavin newsom issued an executive order saying this should be the goal, but when the california resources board put out the rule and voted to approve it, that is when this became official.

host: so how will this rule affect people who currently own gas powered vehicles? you know, are they going to have to sell it or can they sell it? can you explain that? guest: it does not affect any current vehicle owners at all. it will not affect any current vehicle owners in 2035 either. this only affects the sale of new vehicles. new vehicles will have to be ev's starting in 2035, though actually it ramps up on a percentage basis from now until then. it is not like it goes from 0% to 100% in 2035. they gradually decreases as a percentage of vehicles from dealerships that must be ev's by then. current owners will not be forced to give them up or scrap them. it will be a more gradual transition.

host: can you tell us about how our automakers -- how are are the makers -- how are automakers reacting? and can they bring down the price of electric vehicles to be affordable for mass consumption? guest: there has been an uneven response. you have seen automakers that are a little bit nervous, because they see currently that their supply chains are not currently capable of making this many electric vehicles. if they had to do this tomorrow, they would not be able to do it, because there simply are not enough raw materials. for example he, the batteries needed to make these ev's, they cannot make them in the quantities needed tomorrow. but they have time. they can plan this, bolster their supply chain over time. it is challenging but they are

giving some tepid support. they are not outright opposing it. that is a difference than even a couple years ago, when president trump tried to remove california's ability to set tougher, stricter fuel efficiency standards than the rest of the country. a lot of the automakers were supporting that at that point. as soon as president biden took office, a lot of them started to say, now, we are ok with california having the ability to set tougher standards. they did a bit of an about-face there, maybe sensing the political winds had shifted again. host: can you tell us how other states are already responding to california and what do we expect could happen in other states as a result of this policy? guest: california has often set the tone for a lot of other states with similar political motivations.

the state of washington has already essentially announced they are taking the same steps as california. that is not unexpected. california is so big that it can move the market. they understood that one they made this decision, because as an automaker, if you are ford or general motors or toyota, you cannot afford to not be in the state of california. they have to be there. it is a gigantic market for new vehicles. they have to be there. other states are going to probably follow. however, we are certainly not expecting any red states to follow the lead of the state of california. this will not become any sort of nationwide policy soon. you could see a patchwork of policies going forward. host: can you tell us about next steps? when you mentioned the potential supply chain issues that still exist, is there any chance that,

you know, california does not reach its goal and what happens then? guest: i do think there's a chance they cannot reach this goal. there are two types of goals. there are ones that are realistic and there are stretch goals. this may be a stretch goal in the sense that it may not be fully realistic to get to 100% by 2035. it might be, but even the california air resources board officials this week, on a media call, said that they are always revisiting this sort of goal or target whenever necessary. so they basically are already signaling that they will take a look at this down the road to see if it is realistic. i think one of the things we have to keep our eye on here is perhaps it becomes realistic from a logistical perspective to produce that many ev's, but how does it affect the price of new vehicles? this could end up leading to

significant increases in the overall price of your average new vehicle. right now, the average new ev is costing more than $62,000 and the average new vehicle is $47,000. that's not affordable to most people as it is, but 62,000 is even less affordable for the average person. 20 to see the difference in the cost of ev's -- we need to see the difference in the cost of ev's versus gas powered vehicles shrink. host: this has been a great way to set up our discussion for the rest of the hour. thank you for joining us. that is nathan of axios, who has been following all week this new policy out of california to eventually limit all sales of gas powered vehicles. thanks again. guest: thank you.

host: let's get to some of your calls on this issue. the number to dial is (202) 748-8000 if you support the new policy in california, (202) 748-8001 if you oppose it, and if you are an electric vehicle or hybrid car owner, dial (202) 748-8002. our first caller is duke in stonington, maine, opposing the policy. tell us why you oppose it. caller: well, you take up here in the northeast, we have a lot of cold weather, late fall through the winter into early spring. there was a guy up here that had bought an electric vehicle and had it on one of our local news stations that have bought one and he kept his old gas one too.

with the cold weather, it will sap the life out of a battery, especially when you're heat is going and everything. the cold weather affects these batteries. i think he said the vehicle he bought had a range of somewhere around, like, 400 miles, and he was getting like 175. good luck. you cannot go anywhere in these things. you got to stop and charge them up and everything. host: how long ago was this anecdote, duke? just want to set the scene. caller: this was last winter. i'm guessing in the middle of the winter, they did a segment on battery cars here in maine. the cold weather does affect the batteries.

another thing i think about is what are you going to do about these batteries when they wear out? you have to replace them and i understand they are very expensive to replace. what are you going to do with these spent batteries? and the fuel and stuff it takes to generate electricity. i am totally against electric cars. i think it is ridiculous. just leave things alone. host: thank you. the next caller is built in massachusetts, who supports it. tell us why. caller: i think they are good and everything but there only seems to be one problem, though. they might be good but what happens if you have a business where you've got to drive a truck, like, you know, a quick -- a pickup truck and

you have to do masonry and carry stones? i don't think it would be able to handle the power. another thing, i lied. i'm against it. this is communism. host: thank you. the next caller in nevada opposes the policy. go ahead. do me a favor. start over. caller: i want to start by saying i am by no means against environmentally friendly measures or precautions for certain things, like the paper drinking straws everyone makes fun of. i am ok with that. i don't want see a plastic drinking straw to end up in the nose of a sea turtle or something. but in my opinion this is gavin newsom setting himself up for a 2024 presidential run. i know he may not have been directly involved in the

legislature, but here is the deal. with california -- i want to start by saying people don't seem to realize that it's not magic, that you plug something into an outlet and, my goodness, it is electricity. it comes from a power source or a coal plant. it is not always renewable energy. in the state of california, 47% of their electricity comes from natural gas, 14% solar, 7% wind, 11% other renewables, and hydroelectric dams. california, maybe, but that is not a thing across the country. pennsylvania, for example, natural gas is 52%, nuclear's 33%, coal is 8.9%. the electric vehicles are only as green -- i think the first caller said this -- only as

green as what's generating electricity. another point is if you want to drive an electric vehicle, you cannot have a gas powered vehicle in california, if you want to travel from calabasas to malibu, great. there are charging stations everywhere. but if you want to drive from pittsburgh to louisville, you might have some trouble. they need to look at the infrastructure for charging these vehicles. host: got your point. i will have to move on to the next caller. let's go to steve in alexandria, indiana, an electric vehicle owner. tell us what kind of car you own and what the experience has been like. caller: i have a toyota hybrid. i have been driving hybrid cars for the past five years on account of gas mileage. he gets good gas mileage. what we should have done a long

time ago is get rid of these big gas guzzling vehicles and go to four cylinders. if we had done this 10, 15 years ago, we would not have the problem we have now, nearly the problem you have, with this pollution. it is these big gas guzzling vehicles. they come out with vehicles with 700 horsepower engines. we don't need that. host: i want to ask you, steve. you live in indiana. it is cold there. do you find your vehicle is not as efficient in the winter months? caller: a hybrid vehicle uses gas too. i have had to replace two of them already on account of the -- these batteries do not last long in these cars.

they go bad. and i have not had a problem with it. it doesn't get real cold here in indiana, as cold as it does in a lot of places up north, you know. host: thanks for chatting with us. let's go to the next caller, dave in new york, another electric vehicle owner. let me know if i pronounced that city correctly. caller: we are in endicott, new york. thank you for taking my call. i am a hybrid owner. i've had it since a year ago. i have been to the gas station 19 times since last september. it doesn't cost any more than a humvee or a pickup truck, so i don't know what the winding is about. they said 120 years ago we would never replace the horse and that

is what these people sound like. host: thanks for sharing your thoughts. let's bring up bob in garfield, new jersey, another electric vehicle owner. go ahead. caller: my concern is actually from an i.t. perspective. and that is, there are not things that protect the population from government overreach with information technology. i have a 2017 toyota and it happens to say you can restrict the data they share and send back, and that's just a verbal agreement. it still has the technology to track everybody. as we learned with teslas, they have the ability to shut off your vehicle remotely. supposedly, that's for theft, but in the u.s., we have to look at that from a protest

perspective. if there's an unwanted population who may be seen as a potential -- not physical threat but threats with already whose protests may be successful, they can shut down an entire population moving toward a protest. host: all right. we will go to the next caller now, joe in florida, to opposes the california policy. tell us why. caller: you heard the previous caller or one a couple times before say that the batteries don't last long. he's had to replace two sets already. my point is it is not the cars that are causing the pollution. it is industry.

they pollute a lot more than vehicles do. that is the problem. gasoline cars -- i can remember when they got eight miles to the gallon and they are getting 40, 50 miles to the gallon. it is industry that causes a lot of pollution and it is hard to stop that because we all need whatever they are manufacturing. that's my point. have a good day. host: next caller is ed in winsted, minnesota, an electric vehicle owner. caller: i have a honda accord hybrid. it gets 50 miles to the gallon. i am in minnesota. it works fine in the wintertime. i've never had a problem with

the car except the spark plugs fell out once. this car gets on average 45 miles to the gallon, and in the summer, 55. why we did not do this earlier is beyond me. host: we will get to more of your calls in the moment, but i want to bring up some video from last month. there was a hearing in the house. republican congressman thomas massie of kentucky questioned transportation secretary. about the cost of president biden's plans to boost the use of electric vehicles. [video clip] >> it would take four times as much electricity to charge the average household's cars as the average household uses on air-conditioning. if we reach the goal by 2030 that biden has of 50% adoption, that means the average household would use twice as much

electricity charging one of their cars as they would use for all the air conditioning they use for the entire year. do you think this could contribute to rolling blackouts and brownouts in areas of the country where air-conditioning is basically considered essential? >> not if we prepare. the fact that people who have electric vehicles are going to use more electricity cannot be a reason to give up. the idea that america is inferior to the other countries that have figured this out doesn't sit well with us at the administration. >> in the time i have left, i'm not saying we shouldn't prepare. i've told you at the beginning of this i am bullish on this technology, but the numbers and the rate of adoption has been developed using political science, not engineering. they are in practical and if we blindly follow these goals it will cause pain and suffering

for the middle class. host: some more of your calls. next up is guy in fort lauderdale, florida, an electric vehicle owner. caller: i would like to say i have a tesla model three, which replaced a nissan, my second electric vehicle. nothing but positive experiences. i can say that tesla has more range so we can take it on long distance road trips. i can see that i saved $119 in the past 31 days based on my charge stats. i'm saving money. i don't have to go for maintenance so much, so for me, it is an easy win. the american population that are naysayers would see -- if the american population that are naysayers sought a much happier they would be with electric vehicle ownership, they would not feel the simile. host: next is scott, an electric

vehicle owner. caller: i was going to say that it is such a personal choice, these types of things. i made the call to go with the chevrolet bolt and i was fortunate enough to drive a saturn in california down there. this saleslady through me the keys to it or whatever. that was a multimillion dollar car, the most expensive car i have ever driven, and i got paranoid driving that very far, but when i took it back, they gave me a survey thing and, after that, a couple years went by and i got a postcard from detroit saying they would have the next generation of them coming out, it was preproduction in 2008. anyway, i was not able to open it up.

i was on a closed course with an engineer with me, but there was another survey after that. i put in the order in 2012 for the 2013 volt, but anyhow, it ended up being a good deal for me. it is an expensive decision. i could have bought two hyper ones for the price of the wonderful -- the one volt. i could have bought two pr iuses at that time. that's a lot of money. i had to have my house rewired to take the charger. so all these are considerations. if you are looking into doing something like this, you cannot really force it on anybody, but it is admirable to have sort of an aspirational goal, but as far as a realistic goal, a lot of

people are going to have to -- i mean, i was told on mine -- host: we will have to move on to the next caller. stephen anaheim, california opposes the policy. caller: good morning. i oppose the policy because most people will have to rewire their houses. california has not upgraded their power lines. the cost of doing that because the ceos are too busy filling their pockets. and one thing i need everything to do is go to google and look up the ne engine. it runs on water. i built one and took it down to the college because i was trying to get this thing financed to replace the regular motors. all right? the other thing you have to look

at is it is all agreed. they don't realize where these batteries come from. we will have to pollute the ocean, and slave people to get these rare metals -- ocean, enslave people to get these rare metals. trying to reinvent the wheel. i have a pre-us. they are great, but i also know the cost and the problems with them. it is easier to go another way. thank you. host: next is k in eagle bridge, new york. caller: hi. i have a previous that is well over 10 years old. it has been great. i love the hybrid. have not had any problems with the battery whatsoever. only had to have a smaller battery replaced upfront when i

couldn't start the car for the very first time over this past winter. my concern is i live in a condo. my concern is that, at the present time, i could never go to a total electric car. we don't have the infrastructure to charge, and i would be very concerned about the price. the price has to come down. if i have another car -- i'm sure i will have another car -- i would like to get another hybrid for sure. like i said, it's been a great car. it gets very good mileage. i don't change out the winter tires, because i don't have any place to store them, but initially, i was getting around 60 miles to the gallon.

i am concerned about the cost and i'm concerned about the infrastructure to recharge electric vehicles. thanks. host: got it. let's move on to sylvia in virginia, who supports the policy in california. caller: yes. i'm excited about -- i'm a little older. young people are getting lectured cars -- are getting electric cars. i believe the price will come down by 2035. i have nieces and nephews that have hybrid cars and they swear by the. i'm excited, as i get older, i may not own one but they can take me in a ride in it. thank you. host: our next caller is kathy in texas. tell us why you oppose the policy, kathy. caller: it is not actually the car, the product, it's the fact that newsom is a communist and

he's forcing people to do this. i think we should have everything, everything, all different kinds of cars and gas. you can have gas, you can have electric. that is fine. you cannot force us to do that. that man is insane and you cannot do that. just like the vaccines, you cannot force people to do things. they need to figure it out by themselves. we need all these different types of products. but he cannot force these people to do this. it will not work. he's a communist, by the way. he will never be president. thank you. host: let's pull up when the policy was first announced earlier this week. governor newsom posted on his twitter account, he wrote, california will end the sale of new gas cars by 2035 and our $10 billion incentive and rebate package will make them more affordable.

transportation makes up 50% of our greenhouse gas emissions and this will create cleaner air for our kids. we are leading the clean car revolution. in response, representative doug lamalfa wrote, california's ban on cast -- ban on gas powered cars is another tax on middle income californians. the average american can neither afford nor wants a brand-new $50,000 electric vehicle. is his goal to make our state the most unaffordable in the country? it's working. that's doug lamalfa responding to the electric vehicle policy out of california. clear taking your calls. if you support the policy, dial (202) 748-8000. if you oppose it, the number is (202) 748-8001. if you are an electric vehicle

or hybrid car owner, give us a call at (202) 748-8002. let's go to more of your calls. john in california opposes the policy. tell us more, john. caller: good morning, america, and beware of gavin newsom. he's a real weirdo. i would like to make a comment that what they are talking about in their statistics is the emissions, but you have to take into account the emissions caused by the manufacturing of each of these products. you have plastics, tires, steel, all the pollution that comes with that. the problem with electric cars, they only last 100,000 miles before the battery goes dead. the real answer to this would be build a 500,000 mile

low omission gas powered car, see you build one car, not five cars -- low emission gas powered car, so you build one car, not five cars. they do not save any money because you have to put a new battery in every 100,000 miles and they are not going to last. the answer is to get a car that is standardized, has -- you can make one car, one manufactured car, last a long time. to get rid of the manufacturing processes that these electric cars have because they have to reuse them every 100,000 miles. the electric cars are not the answer. gavin newsom is a strange, strange man and, america, i hope it wakes up and sees this guy is a real phony. thanks very much.

host: next call is lori in modesto, california. she supports it. tell us more. caller: i think gavin newsom is a great man. i like him a lot. california also has 4000 miles of canals. if you cover them with solar panels, it is good jobs and it saves water because it stops the water from evaporating. it stops the solar farms from destroying the soil. it makes all kinds of sense. the 500,000 miles the last caller mentioned, well, charging stations could be right by the freeway. i support it 100%. host: let's go to dave in harrisburg, pennsylvania, also a supporter. caller: mi on?

host: yes. caller: thank you. i am a man of years. i am 63. in 2000, i took my kids to have cotton center -- to epcot center. in that year, they had electric vehicles, 22 years ago. when the naysayers spout all these reasons not to do this, we are already to -- we are already 22 years behind. it is the oil industry and all these other people who are resistant to change holding this back. there was a time when even a gas engine operated on a carburetor. well, we got fuel injection, which is more efficient, and the carburetor went away. the farmer no longer uses a horse and plow. and if i'm reading this correctly on your screen, it

says gas only cars by 2035. that means hybrids will still be available. that means for those people who still want that gas component to their car, for strength in trucks or in heavy equipment for construction, that is still available. do you know what i mean? he's saying no production of these cars by 2035. when barack obama did the cash for clunkers, that got rid of a lot of old cars so that we could move onto the next car that gives us those 40 miles to the gallon. this is just the next phase of the evolution of the automobile in america. it is time to move on, except it -- accept it, and one thing i would like to add is the average person, if they said the average vehicle got 400 miles to a charge, the average person

doesn't drive 400 miles a day. that means if our homes are equipped with solar panels and we come home and plug in our hybrids or electric vehicles, they are charging overnight. that means if we lay down at 9:00 in the evening, plug our car in, once that car is topped off, the rest of the charge goes back to the grid. you are actually making money from the car while you sleep. host: thank you. we will move to our next scholar, paul -- caller, paul in south carolina. tell us why you oppose this policy -- this policy. caller: it is a pipe dream. the grid will be down in what are you going to do -- down and what are you going to do if there's a hurricane?

what about jets in the sky? are we going to have all electric jets? they are polluting the atmosphere more than anything. that's my comment. this is a crock. host: next caller is crag in linden, michigan. tell us why you support this, especially in a state known for gas powered cars. caller: because it's due. i'm here. host: go ahead. caller: i hear you. and it is something that's long overdue. my dad was born in 1910. people were yelling, get a horse. the technology is fast approaching.

the difference between gas powered cars and hydrogen cars. now is the time. i mean, yeah, they are expensive now but the price will go down. do you hear me? host: yes. next caller now, mike in rocky point, north carolina. tell us why you oppose the measure. caller: yes. this has morphed into a discussion about hybrids versus gasoline, but the problem is that this should be the time to think about why the politicians have the right to step into our lives? this is america. we have the pursuit of happyness. if we want to drive a dodge truck that has 400 force power -- 400 horsepower, we should have the right.

gavin newsom should not have the opportunity or the right to impede progress in our lives. thank you. host: i want to bring up an article written by our guest at the top of the hour and it says the california air resources board voted on a rule requiring all new vehicles to be fossil fuel for you by 2035. the widely expected move comes after governor newsom issued an executive order in 2020 calling for such a goal. this calls for fossil fuel free by 2035, which indicates that even hybrid vehicles, new hybrid vehicles, would not necessarily

be in the market in california after 2035. let's go to more of your calls. we have raymond in west virginia. good morning, raymond. caller: yes. my question is -- i live in west virginia, which has got a lot of mountains and stuff. i wonder how the vehicles will perform in those situations. also, i would like to know the crash test ratings and stuff for these types of vehicles and what that does to the environment and occupants of the vehicles. host: ok. let's go to the ad when -- to edwin in south carolina. caller: good morning. host: what are your thoughts? caller: my thoughts are, number one, we are living in america. anybody that projects because

they think something ought to be this way or that way, whether it is to do with gas, oil, for electric, they have -- boil, or electric, they have no right because we are in america. we have the right to decide what we want to end do not want to purchase. when it becomes the way newsom is doing it, it's not only control, its dictatorship and its communistic. communism we don't need in america or telling people what they can and cannot buy. we should be able to buy and purchase anything we feel like. he needs to go for a hike and grow up. thank you. host: we are going to pull up a couple of tweaks we've received. michael bush writes, the newsom plan is unworkable. they want him to appear to be the green savior for all the sheeple in the 2024 race against

a fake pence or cheney candidate. you cannot charge them because we don't have the grid capacity. victor writes, that is what the inflation reduction act will address, creating the charging station infrastructure across the country. again, we are talking to you all this morning about california's new policy that would ban the sale of gas powered vehicles after 2035. our next caller is john in washington, an electric vehicle owner. good morning. caller: good morning. i want to make this statement. a few callers a -- callers ago, someone made some valid points about recharging vehicles at night and selling energy back to the grid. i want to echo his statement and his points. but my point is this.

just like the cigarette industry, secondhand smoke kills people. i'm not a smoker. so you don't have -- i do not think you should have the right as a smoker to harm me with your secondhand smoke. the same thing with this electric situation. the environment affects everybody, ok? we are going to have some serious issues in the future if we don't change. yeah, i don't think all gas vehicles are going to be taken away. you can still use certain gas vehicles to do certain things. but we need to at least cut back, make plans on moving forward with technology that can help us sustain our lives, ok? it is the same situation with everything when it comes to change. someone is always talking about,

taking away my freedom, taking away my rights, just like with the gun situation. we need to think about policies that sustain our lives. host: let's move on to our caller in brooklyn, maryland, who opposes the policy. caller: i was a former ford employee and we actually did a lot of analysis of this when i was there. there are two unintended consequences of this mandate. the first is people will keep their internal combustion engine vehicles longer. so your fleet turnover slows. it actually works against a more efficient vehicle fleet. the second adverse consequence has to do with used vehicle sales. now, what is california going to do when someone goes to turn in there -- turn in their

internal combustion engine for their new ev? are you going to ban used vehicle fleet sales? the consequent of that is people will substitute away from ev's to greater use of used vehicles. so another example of poorly designed, politically motivated public policy. thank you. host: our next caller is mary and ashburn -- in ashburn, virginia, who supports the policy. tell us why. caller: i support it because i think it will improve our environment and we need to be concerned about how our earth is being affected. one other thing that, in hearing all the other calls, i want to say is it is interesting how many people support that we have the right to choose what kind of vehicle we want and the

government has no right to tell us what we need to buy. and it is interesting. i just thought of the same response when it comes to the issue of abortion. women should have the right to choose what they want. and not be told by the government. host: our next caller is robert in conway, pennsylvania. good morning, robert. caller: good morning. the same rhetoric you keep hearing over and over again, nobody likes anything shoved down their throats. change has to be made. i think they're pushing it too fast. the guy that was on previously that talked about secondhand smoke kills. i don't know anybody that died from secondhand smoke. i know people who have smoked for 90 years and they didn't

die. it is a matter of your genes. with electric vehicles, i'm all for them, just not pushing them too fast over the country can handle it. thank you. host: next caller is jim in west virginia, who also opposes the measure. jim? caller: i am all for electric cars if it's feasible, but people with electric cars, i mean, it's a fact. you cannot use them in extreme cold weather. you cannot use them in extreme heat. gasoline cars. they are putting nine and 10 speed transmissions in vehicles now. if they put those in a four cylinder car, you get 80 miles to the gallon, but they cannot do that because there are businesses that just cannot fail. it would ruin the economy. i mean, electric is good -- and

you cannot cram it down people's throats. it is ridiculous. newsom, he's in his own world. it is not feasible, plain and simple. it is not feasible. not now. thank you. host: next caller is darren in merle's inlet, south carolina, an electric vehicle owner. caller: i'm a hybrid owner. i have a 2021 audi q5. i get about 300 miles to the charge. the charge takes about 24 hours in the development where i live. we are not allowed to have solar panels, so i am charging off the grid. this is a court before the horse scenario. we need to look more into this. we need to get an infrastructure built first.

and people need to understand we are still plugging into a fossil fuel supported grid. thank you. host: our next caller is robert in silva, missouri. tell us why you support the measure. caller: i don't know if i support it or not. from the people who have electric vehicles, do you have to pay for the charging station at your home and what the vehicle costs and what it costs to charge one? that's all i need to know. thank you. host: let's go to robert in east hampton, connecticut. you oppose the measure. caller: yes. this green new deal, climate change -- i think we are being sold a bill of goods like we were with weapons of mass destruction, the vaccine, the war on drugs, globalists -- on drugs, globalism.

electric cars will not change the climate when you have india and china polluting more than ever. and china makes the batteries, 80%. we are going to give them more power over us? they already make 90% of our pharmaceuticals. you have politicians deciding on the complexity of the power grid going over to unreliable systems such as solar power and wind mills. we are heading for trouble. things were getting better and now the government is getting involved. it will be a disaster. that is what i have to say. thank you. host: george in jacksonville, florida, tell us what you think. caller: good morning. i am an engineer. this thing is the wrong way to go. i don't have a problem with moving more slowly to electric cars, but one, we don't have the power grid to do this.

number two, the whole premise we have global warming that will be cured by this is a fantasy. if you look at 20,000 years of history, when volcanoes have gone off, it is like a nuclear winter. if we put some sand between the sun and -- you know, the satellites, enough to bring the temperatures down a little bit, we can do that. it will work. additionally, we are going to put about 40% of people who work on cars out of work, especially aftermarket, because this is -- the head of gm basically said this. 40% less parts, 30% less work. where will we employ these people? we will have to cut down a massive amount of trees around houses to install panels. and communists love to push everyone down into the poor and not let people move up into the middle class and this is another

instance. i have an electric car but it is a conversion. if you take a $5,000 kit and put it in an older car, you take the engine out and put the electric equipment in -- and this started in california. we need to look at what it is doing to society. i look for shell oil -- i work for shell oil and they are doing hydrogen in iceland for fishing boats. there are ways we can do what we want to accomplish here in a lot underway -- lot better way. host: we will have to move on. next caller is michael in new york. tell us why you support it. caller: yeah. i support it because i have written in an electric car just recently. just to see how nice they are, i

mean, they are beautifully designed. it was able to wagon i think -- it was able to wagon, i think. i can look at some of these other vehicles out there, 60,000 dollars, that are gasoline operated. we are paying more money for those fossil fuel vehicles already. so there is a little bit of a savings already that i can see. but what i do not understand, and this is where we will have to sharpen our skills here, like the engineer was saying, how are we going to get transportation as far as trucks and buses? i know hydrant is an alternative but we need to have things that will be more feasible, like, in the trucking industry, i cannot see us transitioning that fast, ok? but i do support it.

i am all for doing what they want to do technologically because i am for technological advancement and i'm sure most engineers are. i am not an engineer but i can tell you it is a good move in the right direction for the environment as well. but what are we going to build this stuff with? is it going to create problems with our environment, the waste from these cars? are these cars recyclable? that needs to be answered before you legislate things and dictate to people how it is going to go by 2035. i don't think those questions have been answered thoroughly enough or explained to the public. i need to take a look at that first before you make a law. that is my opinion. host: let's go next to craig in church point, louisiana. tell us your thoughts. caller: the way i think about it, start off with, when you kill the pipeline, there's also about 11,000 people working at

good jobs. they all went to work in a gas car, a diesel truck. now they want to turn everything over to electric. in the state of louisiana, you could dig a trench around the whole state, cut off all the pipelines leaving the state, we could still support ourselves. we don't need electric cars. we don't need all these idiots trying to tell us what to do or what not to do. wait -- everything would be a whole line nicer if they would let a businessman run the country instead of a lifelong politician that has not done nothing in 43 years other than put his son in business -- a crack addict, meth head, thanksgiving and billions of dollars -- meth head, and giving

him billions of dollars, but there is nothing i can do. i'm 68 years old so my grandkids are the ones that will be suffering with the government trying to -- host: let's go to the next caller, bob in amsterdam, ohio. tell us what you think. caller: everybody is looking at this in the wrong way. within 10 years, they will develop a $20,000 electric car, and you will rent the batteries. the batteries are going to be flushed and recharged through liquids. they are not going to use electric to charge these things. they are going to have stations all the way across the country. you can pull into a place, get something to eat while they change your battery system. you rent the batteries. you don't recharge them at your house. this is the next thing coming up and it will be here within 10 years. everybody might as well get used to it. gasoline cars and all this hydrogen and all this other business, it just is bunk.

they don't have any idea how bad people are with asthma. and most of it is caused from these coal plants and cars and trucks moving down the road, polluting the air. we got -- we are overrun. everything is flooded out. the ice caps are melting. this world is getting destroyed by idiots like the guy from louisiana that don't want to change anything. go back to the horse and buggy like the homage. you would be saving the planet. thanks. host: next caller, john in hague, virginia. tell us what you think. caller: first of all, we have all these leftists telling us they have the science that fossil fuels are bad for the environment and they have a science, the science, the science, that i haven't shown

me any science that it is bad for the environment -- science, but they haven't shown me any science that is bad for the environment. if you want to drive an electric car, drive one. i want to drive a gasoline car. that's my preference. host: we are going to take a quick break. next, we will hear two different perspectives on president biden's student loan forgiveness plan announced earlier this week. that discussion will be with jared bass from the center for american progress and preston cooper from the foundation for research unequal opportunity. later, podcast posts discuss their podcast this day in esoteric political history. we will be right back. ♪ >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government, funded by

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with a nisi guard, the author of "buys, lies, and algorithms." >> i think we are living in a reckoning akin to 9/11, where the intelligence community has to undergo a reimagining to deal with new technology. i think about these threats, and driven by technologies in terms of five wars to create for the intelligence community, more threats that can work across distances in cyberspace, more speed, threats are moving at faster paces than before, more data that intelligence analysts have to confront. they are drowning in data. more customers that don't have security clearances that need intelligence. people like voters who need to understand foreign election interference and tech leaders. and more competitors. i think that is probably the most challenging, which is that

u.s. intelligence agencies do not dominate the collection and analysis of information like they did in the cold war. >> the author of "spies, lies, and algorithms," sunday night on c-span's "q&a." you can listen to "q&a" and all of our podcasts on our new c-span app. >> caller" continues -- "washington journal" continues. host: we are joined by jared bass of the center for american progress and preston cooper of the foundation for research article opportunity. they join us for a chat about president biden student loan forgiveness plan. good morning. guest: good morning. host: preston, can you start by telling us what is the foundation for research on equal opportunity and let us know how you approach this topic of

student debt forgiveness? guest: thank you. the foundation for research on equal opportunity, we are a market east organization that we want -- market east organization that we want to improve the lives of people who leased have opportunity. we are focused on lowering the cost of college, health care, energy, pocketbook issues that are affecting americans. my perspective on the student loan forgiveness plan, announced by president biden this week, and just as a refresher, it will forgive the $20,000 of student debt for pell grant recipients, $10,000 for everybody else, and it would also reform repayments going forward so that people will pay either half or less on their student loans going forward. my perspective on this plan, which is probably going to cost upwards of $1 trillion, according to estimates released

by the penn warren budget model is it is not a well targeted use of taxpayer money. to say nothing of the fact that it is being issued by executive order without any debates or any input from congress, which is supposed to have authority over the power of the purse. and going forward, it is also going to create wrong incentives for colleges because president biden has created the expectation that rounds of forgiving student loans are going to be a regular feature of the executive branch's powers, and colleges are going to react accordingly by exploiting increased willingness to borrow, raising tuition, and passing the cost to taxpayers. host: jared, tell us about where you were, the center for american progress, and your approach to this. guest: sure, the center for american progress is a nonprofit that seeks to deal with current

day crises, such as the student debt crisis. right now, we have a crisis where people borrow, where folks go into default, or the realizing the economic benefits and opportunities provided by higher education. they delay in starting a family, a business, investing in communities, and that is a real crisis for all of america. by helping upwards of 43 million borrowers with over $1.6 trillion in debt, we are seeing the president take decisive actions to provide relief to student loan borrowers. these are people who have taken out certificates, and just to the finer point on this, college goers are not just bachelor degree or graduate degree holders, they are people going to better themselves and taking out loans to go into certificate programs like plumbing, farming, and there are also parents of

college students, farmers and plumbers, taking out loans to help their students, as well. we are providing relief through the present action to those people, tilde 43 million people who are struggling with student debt. we have been debating this for three years, and there have been congressional involvement and input, and we are seeing more congressional input through reactions to this, and, you know, we have 20 million people who are going to have their debt canceled in full, according to estimates. and 27 million about who will be eligible for upwards of $20,000 in debt cancellation because of the program. that is helping many students, helping people who by and large, their families make below $60,000 a year, which is less than the median household income in the united states. we are helping those people.

congress does have the power of the purse because they provided the funding upfront. $85 billion will go out to student loan debt right now, and we are talking about the modification of the authority the president has through the heroes act to waive or modify student loan contracts with people, so waive their debt. thank you for having the, and i look forward to debating the discussion. host: we will get to some of your calls. we want you to weigh in and ask our panelists questions. if you have student loan debt, call (202)-748-8000. if you have paid off student loan debts, call (202)-748-8001. and everyone else, we want you to dial (202)-748-8002. again, we are talking about president joe biden's student loan forgiveness plan caller: --

plan. jared, a big part of the plan is relief for students who went to college on pell grant's. they can get up to $20,000 canceled as opposed to $10,000 for everyone else, as you have mentioned. tell us what are pell grant's? what kind of borrowers use them? and how can people even know if they qualify if they were pell grant recipients? guest: sure, so the pell grant is the foundation of federal aid within the higher education system and goes to the neediest of students. we talked about how a large majority of people who received the pell grant make below $60,000 or their families make below $60,000, and it affords them the opportunity to be able to buy things like books, housing, pay for educational costs.

however, when we talk about the share of the pell grant used to cover college, you see around 80%, so there was a concern around investment that has been going into the pell grant to actually help people afford the cost of college. this is actually helping people who have had to borrow. the other characteristic to the pell grant borrowers, they have to borrow more than counterparts, so this is helping to provide relief or aid on the backend to pell grant recipients who had to shoulder the burden of student debt because there was not enough to go around to begin with. so for people to know whether or not they have got the pell grant, log on to studentaid.gov and use their id to figure out if they had a pell grant. also, you can go to studentaid. gov/debtreleaseannouncement.

there are instructions to figure out if you qualify. this is supposed to help the neediest of individuals be able to afford higher education and better themselves and their lives. host: jared, i will ask you one more question and then i will come to you, preston. many see student debt as a racial justice issue. do you agree, i do you think the plan does enough to close some of the racial disparities om the economy -- in the economy? guest: i think the plan is the first step. the president talked about the announcement and about how this is about narrowing debt. it will not solve it completely, but because of characteristics of black borrowers who tend to borrow more, who have to take longer to pay off their debts, sometimes we even owe more than we originally took out after 12 years, and providing debt

cancellation will help target those things. a large grant of pell grant recipients -- a large population of pell grant recipients are black. i think we are helping the target aid to reduce the racial wealth gap, but it is the first step. we need more actions and policies to actually make more of an effort to narrow the gap. host: preston, we hear a lot about fairness. do you think, you know, if this is a fair policy/ there has been -- fair policy? there has been a lot of talk about what happens to people who already paid off their debt and their potentially left out but they need relief because they do not have any debt to pay off now. what are your thoughts about the fairness issue that has been raised from the policy? guest: i think if you make a list of all the people who need financial help, most are in the

federal government, and if you make a list of people who benefit of this week's announcement, i don't think there will be a lot of overlap. if you never went to college and only have a high school degree and no student debt, you get nothing from this. if you went and got a graduate degree, if you got a pell grant that many years ago, even if you are doing fine now, you will get $20,000 worth of relief. if you went to a community college, yes, there are some people who borrow to go to community college, but that accounts for a small share of outstanding student debt. most people who graduate with an associates degree from a community college graduate completely debt-free. this policy is still going to be skewed toward people who are better off, people who have bachelors degrees and graduate degrees, and the policy will skew towards younger people who may be toward the beginning of their career, so it may look like their incomes are more middle-class, but over the course of their lifetime, they are probably going to have much higher incomes and end up in the top half of the american

society. i do not really think that this makes a whole lot of sense as a targeted policy. if we are going to spend $500 billion, $1 trillion on providing leads to people, why are we at conditioning that on if you went to college, how expensive the college was that you went to, and the timing? if you already paid off your student loans, you get nothing. if you have not, you could potentially get a very big check from the federal government. ny did retirements of ash and why did we -- and why did retirements so people who are borrowing going forward will apparently not get any relief. if we have another democratic president, they may get another round of relief, but that creates a whole other bag of incentives we can talk about later, but it is arbitrary and not targeted toward the neediest people in society, and i don't think it would be defensible. host: let's get to some of your

calls on the issue. first up, jay in riverdale, maryland, who has already paid off your loans, i believe? tell us your thoughts. caller: there was nothing said about that. when donald trump bailed out the farmers for the trade with china to 16 billion, and it was 01% of that money, there is a racial component. we have a score of countries that offer free college or low-cost college, yet, the u.s. doubles their budgets as far as the military. germany, france, denmark, all of them together, the military

budget, is eclipsed by the u.s. so the investment in military industrial complex were a lot of the congresspeople have stocks and interest in, compared to the education of your citizenship and citizenry, this shows that as long as there is a one-time benefit given to average or black americans, then it is fine. host: next up is carol in new york. carol, do you have thoughts or questions? caller: yeah, i have a lot of questions. i'm so tired of everything being black, white, green and yellow. how about everybody would like to rights? not black and brown rights, not white rights, but equal rights. my partner graduated from school

a few years ago, 10 years ago, and the whole ecosystem is a crock, and we are senior citizens, and when he graduated, he paid off student loan completely, so he gets nothing. how about the idea that we, instead of charging the 2% that we would charge to buy a house, the federal government was stealing over 6%, how about knocking those things down? you should be able to get a federal loan for no interest. no interest. as far as this crock on that's gave everything for nothing, can't people get it through their head that you get nothing in this world for nothing? host: jared, i want to let you respond to the fairness question

as a proponent of this policy. how do you respond to those who say it is not right to pay off debt that other people will not be able to reap the benefits of? guest: yeah, so i think, first, i don't think it is right for loan borrowers to struggle for years and not be able to receive it, so we have a few select programs that offer cancellation or 10 years, and it is supposed to offer forgiveness after 20, 25 years, and those programs are not working, so people were promised debt relief, but they never got it. i also think that this argument about people who have paid off their loans, i think that is great area i think it is great that people who have interacted with the system of positive reactions but not everyone does though. i think that is why the president did what he did.

also for folks who struggle to make it through college, i think that is evidence in favor of change, not against it. if the only way to get through college is to make widespread sacrifices for yourself, for your family, and have to suffer, and we should do something about that. we should make the path easier to travel and not just expect people to keep walking down a path that is overgrown, that has brambles and thorns, just because they are able to do it. to her point about future changes, i think that congress can step up to the plate to make long-lasting reforms. she talked about other investments that other countries may. the president doubled down on that stage during his announcement this week, so i think we can look to the future and look to congress to make changes to our loan system moving forward so that we can prevent this reemerging. host: our next caller is linda in utah, who has paid off loans.

go ahead. caller: good morning. the following about student loans, and i don't think a lot of people who have not taken out student loans, understand that it is owned by the federal government, but there are over 20 services on the internet, they make money on the amount of interest you pay on your student loan, and they keep reselling it, and you cannot declare bankruptcy on your student loan because they decide that is against the law. when i took out my student loan, i was 8%. i was unable to load the interest rate. still, a loan in itself is about a program created by george w. bush, the first bush president, and i think what has really gone on has helped universities who

grow, i'm all for universities growing, but it became a crutch that universities used to grow. the more money you pay for tuition. when i went to school, tuition was maybe 2000 to 2000 a year, -- 2000 to 3000 a year. it has caused problems that were not foreseen. host: preston, your thought on that caller's point? guest: i think she brings up a good point in the rising tuition. i think we could stop and think about the implications of the view that canceling student debt is necessary. people take on student debt to go to college, to get a better education, to achieve economic mobility. if people are doing all of that and not able to pay back their student loans, that suggests that for a lot of people, the promise of college is not

delivering on its promise of economic mobility for a lot of people. going forward, we really need to be thinking about, you know, not just how are we making college more affordable, but how are we going to make college deliver on that promise? right now, the cost of college has gone up a ton over the past several decades, a lot of it is due to increases in administration and stuff that is really not delivering value for students, and, also, you have a lot of degree and certificate programs out there which are not providing a lot of economic value. there are a lot of programs where they do not increase student earnings enough to justify the cost, especially at the graduate degree level. you have a lot of masters degrees that do not make a lot of sense. "the wall street journal" reported last year that columbia university, and ivy league, is selling students $180,000 masters degree in film, where the earnings for students after

they graduate from the program are only about $30,000 a year. and they are getting tons of federal money in order to offer the programs. we could talk about increasing the pell grant. we could talk about all of these college affordability moves, but we are not going to fix the problem if we do not actually bring down the underlying cost of college, bring down what colleges are actually spending, and make sure that any federal subsidies are being targeted to programs that are actually providing students with a return on investments. host: let's get another caller. kenny environ, georgia, what are your thoughts -- kenny in georgia, what are your thoughts? caller: my question is for preston, if there are any republican kids out there with student loan debt and they are eligible, i want to hear preston convinced them that they are dummies for applying, thank you. guest: well, you know, i do not have any resentment for people who are benefiting from

yesterday -- excuse me, from this week's policy move. i'm sure that many children of republican politicians will benefit, and i do not resent them in any way, good for them, but i do question the larger policy wisdom of the move. we are at 9% inflation right now. this will probably add 30 basis points to inflation, according to the committee for responsible federal budget, which means more spending. the rest of america is going to pay for it. whether that kind of transfers wealth from the rest of america to small group of student borrowers really makes sense. i really question that. host: next caller is lance in fort lauderdale, sort of, go ahead -- fort lauderdale, florida, go ahead. caller: i think this is terrible. the underlying message it sends to people is that if you make commitments, you do not have to lead it. this goes through, i don't know, if it goes through, you are going to help out a small group

of people, and then the republican -- the public getting loans this year, they will think, i might as well get more loans because by the time i have to pay them back, i can talk the government into forgetting them again. you are setting a precedent for people, go ahead and scan the system. if this was the colleges that were forgetting the loans, this i could agree with. maybe they should think about what they are selling and what it is worth, but as it is now, you are basically telling people a mistake in the system -- people, stay in the system, borrow money, because you never have to pay back, and i think that is terrible. host: conrad in philadelphia, pennsylvania, you are on. caller: yes, how are you doing? my question is for preston. i wanted to say this, you know if they cancel the loans for the -- the low income people that have filed for loans, you know,

they saying that it is going to make the cost of living go up, taxes are going to go up, but, listen, people making under $30,000, they are not in that category, what they're talking about on tv. they have always been poor. we were not born into a rich family, so if a mother and father makes $200,000 a year, they will get $10,000 a month, but people working at mcdonald's, inflation is never going to affect us. we are not in that category. rich people -- they hung up on me. host: go ahead, preston, do you want to respond? guest: sure. i think this kind of underscores the poor targeting issue of president biden's announcement that we do have a lot of people in this country who might not have student debt who are struggling to get by, and if we are going to target the least, why don't we target the people who are in the greatest financial need. just to give an example, so the

child tax credit is something that had bipartisan support, you know, and expanding that child tax credit would benefit people for the lower end of the income spectrum, and you could extend that for decades just for the cost of yesterday's -- excuse me, this week's announcement. if we are going to spend money on america, why don't we spend it on the people who most need the help? not necessarily college and grad school graduates. it just does not make any sense. host: we are talking to preston and jared about president biden's student loan forgiveness plan announced earlier this week. let's listen it now to president biden, explain his plan, and defend the economic cost during his remarks on wednesday. [video clip] pres. biden: it will pay for the

programs many times over. i will never apologize for helping americans, working americans and middle-class, especially not to the same folks who voted for eight to trillion dollar tax cut -- voted for a $2 trillion tax cut that slow the economy, did not to leopard, -- do a lot for economic growth, and was not paid for, and racked up this in norma's debt. just as we have never apologized when the federal government for gave almost every single cent of over $700 billion in loans to hundreds of thousands of small businesses across america during the pandemic. no one complained that those loans caused inflation. a lot of these folks with small businesses are working and middle-class families. they needed help. it was the right thing to do. so the outrage over helping working people with student loans, i think is simply wrong,

dead wrong. [end video clip] host: let's take more of your calls, if you have student loan debt, dial (202)-748-8000. if you have paid your debt off, dial (202)-748-8001. and everyone else, your number is (202)-748-8002. next, we have shelby in albany, georgia. you have loan debt now, shelby. caller: yes. good morning. i have loan debt as a parent. i have three young millennialss. one who did pharmacy five year degree, and two who did -- when did radiology, the other did ob/gyn. they did receive merit scholarships, but, because of the advanced degrees, -- i'm an african-american woman, upper middle class suburbia lifestyle,

so i, though, support holistically because there is a construct that comes from historic -- i am in my mid-60's. they are now 40, so they came from a black construct of sacrifice, a family that sacrificed much, and they themselves are now in the service of having their loans because they are public service, they are serving in the radiologist and ob/gyn and the pharmacist at the v.a., and the radiologist and the ob/gyn is serving the public service for the forgiveness, but let's speak to merit. i called about the merit funding that we get. the real construct is a historical journey that we did not -- black people, pro-marginal people, i am in my

mid-60's, i went through all segregated schools and then at graduate had to be sent north from the south to appear in graduate programs because of segregation, so this is the historic notion that you refuse to explain and include in this conversation. we have not had -- we created a lottery system so that we could give and buy the votes. i remember well when that rotary started -- lottery started in georgia, florida, tennessee has it. primarily middle-class, my neighbors, my neighbors' children, middle and upper-class white children, received the merit because of the historical value and problematic history that this country -- host: i think we got your point, appreciate your call. jared, can you tell us more about some of the other provisions in biden's plan that

is intended to address the issue beyond just debt forgiveness? guest: of course. preston alluded to this earlier about the needs to not just have a cancellation to other reforms, as well, so increase in grant aid, also the loan program for giving options, and then strengthening accountability, and the president touched on all of those. first, there was the change to the income retirement program, which was capped at the percentage of the discretionary income, how much of student loan you have to pay back. that is changed from the current plans right now. when president bush started it at 16%, president obama changed it to 10%, and now president biden is changing it to 5%. and then, also reducing the payment period, so under the plan now under current law, it

is twenty-year repayment, you know, repayment window, and it will reduce it now to 10 years for folks who have about $12,000 on their original balance, or under $2000 on their original balance. the caller called up the changes to the psl select program to make it easier for more folks to qualify and have more payments qualify, and we see the benefits of the waiver we have right now. also, the president talked about options for the cost of college, and strengthening accountability within our system to ensure that folks, when they do attend college going forward, they receive college education, get rid of problematic creditors who primarily go off to colleges, so there is more work that needs to be done, the president is outlining some plans moving forward to help address some of those issues, and go into those

issues with more detail, all that so president biden cancel student debt, but there are other things to this announcement that speaks to the payment pause, as well, and the policy under the current administration to the biden administration now will end december 31, 2022. host: let's go to another caller . jane in north carolina. you have student debt. caller: yes. well, i do not have it now. i paid off student loans. i wanted to have a fresh start in life, a start that i did not have. i have no trouble with the president forgiving students. i will tell you why, i'm originally from ohio. ohio, just last year, they passed a bill to give student

vouchers to parents who have kids in private schools. they decimated the public schools, but they gave vouchers to students in private schools to help them pay to go to private school. still, you have teachers on strike in ohio because they are not getting the money for public schools. you do not hear the people in public school saying, well, they should not have got those vouchers. but they got them. and most of those private schools are catholic schools. in cincinnati, there are more catholic schools than public schools. you know, so this game about who gets a "hand" or a chance to get some of that debt off of them is always about who is getting the money themselves. they have been getting the money for years. host: let's go on to another

caller. linda in spring hill, florida, what are your thoughts? caller: hi, please give me a minute. i am very sick and tired of the black/white issue. it should not be that way, and you are creating prejudice. my parents, my relatives fought a new england and died for you. offering that up to me, that is what i'm tired about. student loans. i have no children. i have been paying taxes for student loans all my frick and left, and i'm tired of it. if you cannot afford it, do not go because most of it is stupid. go to a trade school. go to a different college that allows lower, you know, lower colleges and stuff instead of ivy leagues and crab. it is ridiculous. i do not owe any of you people,

-- host: let's go to the next caller in missouri, tell us your thoughts. caller: yes ma'am. i believe that universities who made all this money, the money is in their hands. it is recruiting this money from the universities to bailout these useless degrees, and what it does is it perpetuates itself . most of these people graduate from useless universities with useless degrees and become professors teaching these useless degrees. we have got to stop that. we have got to get the money back from these schools. there was one university called kaplan that made millions and millions of dollars and went out of business, and sold out to purdue university who does not recognize kaplan university. so, let's go back to the

universities, the ones who are the real thieves who stole the money. host: we are talking about president biden's student loan forgiveness plan. this is from a poll that found an arrow majority of americans support for giving up to $10,000 in federal student loans but support waiting for proposals of a larger amount. it shows that 55% of americans support forgiving up to $10,000 of student loan debt, but it goes down to 47% when the number is up to $50,000, and when the proposal is forgiving all student loan debt, support goes down even further to 41%. we are talking with jared and preston. let's get another call. michelle in whittier, california, what are your thoughts or questions? caller: my question is, what are

the numbers of black and minority recipients versus white recipients you got pell grant and loans? host: jared, can you talk about the racial breakdown of schools and if they can or will benefit from the relief, to clearly it comes to pell grant's? guest: yes, as i alluded to earlier, a larger share of black students receive pell grant's compared to that of their white peers, and then the breakdown as far as who borrows more and defaults, you know, basically the burden being harder on black and brown borrowers for sure. i think what we will both see in the coming weeks and 10 days, based off of the president's plan is who will benefit by race, but, certainly, by the white house's estimates from

what they're proposing and other recipients, there will be a chance to narrow the racial wealth gap here, so there is only a benefit to all borrowers here, but it would help to alleviate some of the burden that is shared by lack borrowers in particular. host: our next caller is tim in colorado, your thoughts or questions? caller: good morning. my thoughts of this, you know, i agree with president biden for student loan forgiveness for the simple reason, two of them. one, he mentioned in his speech ppp forgiveness loans. nobody shouted about that because when you hear some of these politicians who have taken these ppp loans, they have got

forgiveness for over millions of dollars. let's talk about 2008, the housing crisis, nobody has went to prison, and then they had the audacity and nerve to go to the government and ask for almost $1 billion to save their company basically being too big to fail, but now because the president realized, hey, i want to take debt off middle-class people who have student loans, if you are not arguing or making a bunch of noise about 2008 and you were not making any noise about ppp forgiveness loans for some of the politicians who were taking those loans and got forgiveness, be quiet. let it be an equal playing field. you are not whining and crying when the rich go out and commit crimes and then go after the public to save them.

that is their welfare program. host: let's let preston respond. guest: well, i want to clarify the issue about the ppp loans because i think that there is a lot of confusion about what these loans actually were. first of all, they were not supposed to be loans at all. basically, ppp was enacted in the midst of an economic collapse. we were emerging millions of jobs per week in early 2020 with the covid pandemic. with the public a sickly set is, we are going to give loans to biz -- basically said as we are going to give loans to businesses and forgive them if they don't lay off their workers. that is what the program was. it was a program intended to make sure businesses had the funds to keep their workers on payroll in the midst of this unprecedented economic collapse. and it was structured as a forgivable loan program because it was much easier to administer than having everybody apply for grants, and anyone who ever applied for government benefit knows that it took forever, and

they wanted to get the money out to go quickly, so it was structured as forgivable loans. there is really no comparison to student debt because ppp was a one time, a one-time program, not ongoing, the loans were always meant to be forgiven, and in contrasted student debt, student loans, the federal government could make $85 billion in student loans over the next year, you know, and even as the federal government is forgiving loans that have been made in the past, you know, there is no thought going forward about what is going to happen to those loans going forward. there really is just no comparison between those two programs as to the bank bailouts and trump tax cuts, i think that you can cast a lot of versions on the policy wisdom of those. you can say these may not have been the best policies, and i think he would not get much argument from either, but one

bad policy does not justify another. if one party passes this massive waste of money, then the other party does not get a get out of jail free to waste a bunch of money, too. we are trillions in debt, and as long as the parties keep up this tit for tat by passing wasteful, expensive policies, we are not going to solve the going forward. host: let's go to robert in washington, d.c. caller: yes, hi, i just went to make a comment about fairness, which seems to trouble a lot of people. i had a student loan. i paid it off. it was 30,000, $40,000 in today's dollars, and i had a job and i could afford to paid off area what is wrong with that -- paid off. what is wrong with that? a tornado passed, and we all chipped in to fix it up, and i

did not know where oklahoma was, i had never been there, but we are americans, and that is what we do. eight guy called in i think yesterday, he worked in the construction sector on the same topic, and you think the construction sector does not get huge government subsidies and subsidizing mortgages, tax abatements, and publicly funded baseball stadiums/ it is ridiculous -- stadiums? it is ridiculous these complaints. stop the whining and get a life. host: our next caller is rob from kansas city, missouri, go ahead. guest: good morning -- caller: good morning, everyone. i love the weight preston softballs all the republican trading of dollars for tax giveaways but is hyper focused on student loans. if the job of the government is to avert crisis, and we have done that for a long time, student loan is at one point seven point -- $1.7 trillion debt that can balloon into the housing crisis echo we had

during the pandemic, so the government is basically doing its job because what you have on the republican side? for student loans, nothing. thank you, president aydin, and thank you, elizabeth warren, for making this happen area i'm probably going to get $20,000 paid off. by the way, if you don't pay your student loans, you know it happens when you retire? they take it out of your social security check, so they have got to fix the problem. thank you. host: we are going to wrap it up. we have been talking about president biden student loan forgiveness program with jared bass of the center for american progress and preston cooper of the foundation for research an equal opportunity. thank you for both joining us this morning. guest: thank you. host: later at 9:15, we are going to have podcast host and producer jody avirgan and nicole hemmer discuss their podcast "this day in esoteric little history." first, it is open

forum, your chance to talk about whatever political or public policy issue is on your mind this morning, so start calling in it now. republicans, (202)-748-8001. democrats, (202)-748-8000. and independents, dial (202)-748-8002. we will be right back. ♪ >> book tv sunday on c-span2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction book. at 8:00 p.m. eastern, herbert hoover details the life and legacy of the former president and his journey through politics and his leadership during the great depression. at 9:00 p.m. eastern, tim miller, msnbc analyst and author of "why we did it" talks about

his time in their publican party and weighs in on why many in the gop support president trump. join us saturday, september 3, for the library of congress national book festival, were for the past 21 years, book tv has provided live, in-depth, uninterrupted coverage featuring hundreds of nonfiction authors and guests. watch book tv every sunday on c-span2 and find the full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. funded by these television companies and more, including buckeye broadband. ♪ >> buckeye broadband supports c-span as a public service,

among these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> now available at the c-span shop, c-span's 2022 congressional directory. go there today to order a copy. this compact, spiral-bound book as your guide to the federal government with contact information for every member of congress, including bios and committee assignments, also, contact information for state governors and the biden administration cabinet. order your copy today at c-spanshop.org or scan the code with your smartphone. every purchase helps support c-span's nonprofit operation. >> "washington journal" continues. host: the lines are now open. we want to hear from you. republicans, (202)-748-8001. democrats, (202)-748-8000. independents, dial (202)-748-8002.

our first caller is gross in north carolina -- is rose in north carolina on the republican line. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call. my question to the audience is how many of you want to get a measly $10,000 when you have been working for 60 plus years and paying into a rigged system? this is an easy choice and also obvious. biden is going to keep the same bankers that tanked the industry in 2008 in charge, the same banking families that caused the great depression, and taking you for a fool. the time is ripe for change, look at a video called america freedom to fascism. it does not involve hiring more irs agents to bully the american citizens with illegal tax structures. the lower courts have to be in compliance with the supreme

court. in the supreme court since 1894 has never given congress the authority to create an income tax. never. every single attempt was tapped down. the bankers went ahead anyways without the required ratification by recorded by the states, let that sink in. host: we are going to have to move on to our next caller in annapolis, maryland, on the democratic line. caller: hello, can you hear me? host: yes. caller: i would like to talk one thing about voting demographic. i do not understand this democratic party where they have 45 million more voters than republicans, and are still -- and they are still not pushing policy. this republican party is on the downside. they, especially other white people know that they are going

to be the minority pretty soon, so when they talk about this immigration thing, who are they talking about? are they talking about illegal aliens? who are illegal aliens? hispanic, black people? we know what type of crimes come across the northern border but because of the southern border, they are scared to death because they know that they are going to be in the minority pretty soon. i just think democrats need to start pushing the policies because they have majority of the people behind them. thank you very much. host: our next caller is diane in connecticut on the republican line. caller: yeah, good morning. when i turned 16, i cannot wait to get a job and start making some money. i was still in high school, worked part-time, and when it was time for me to go to college, my parents cannot afford to send me. i looked to see how much college was, and i did not want to be in

debt for years, so i went to a local college for four years, worked during classes, after classes, weekends, paid my tuition every year and graduated without any debt at all. are these people even working that we are talking about giving this loan forgiveness to? and why are people making over $100,000 not able to pay their freaking loans? i just don't understand. it is highway robbery. thank you. host: next up is very old -- veryl in springfield, missouri, on independent line. caller: good morning. i was just calling to refer back to the first segment. if you notice, talking about the

electric cars, if you notice, none of the calls came from the red states. that is out in the country. and this is the one thing that the whole ballgame has forgotten about. anyone in rural america has been arguing for basically the past 50 years, and i think these are the people who really make up the backbone of trump's maga group, mainly because they can look and see, we have got -- most of us are in the red state area. those are people who -- those republican people have groups that only make $40,000 a year, and the reason they are that high is because the government

pays the bankers and professionals to keep it that much. so really, there has been no fuss for the little guys for the last 50 years. if you look at, nothing has ever gone for the rural people of america. it has always been strictly big cities, and that is where all the money is. you look at d.c., you look at that area right there, everybody -- host: got your point, let's go to another caller on the democratic line, victor in massachusetts. caller: good morning, ma'am. host: good morning. caller: i would like to speak a little bit -- first of all, i am in a marine -- i am an ex-marine, and i always ask myself, why do we have money for

war but we cannot feed the poor? or help the lower class? when the pandemic hit, it took almost a year to get $1500 to people, but when the war broke out, the european war, a white man's war, we had trillions of dollars in 24 hours. i really do not understand how can we go around and say that we care about people when we care about people on the outside, other countries, more than us? the other thing is that why all the wars of the united states are always against minorities? host: our next caller is barbara in salem, new hampshire, on the independent line. caller: regarding the student loan issue, this is not a

democrat or republican issue. it is an american issue. what it does is encourages irresponsibility. if you want to go to school, if you can afford and except that your responsibility is to pay it back by working toward that goal, also, schools need to assume some of the responsibility. if you buy a car, you pay back your loan or the car gets repossessed. if you buy a house and don't pay back your loan, the house gets repossessed. the lesson is,buy what you can afford, and expect to work to pay a little back. this cost all americans approximately $2000 per person. this is not america's responsibility. it is time for the people who take the loans to assume the responsibility. host: next, we have mario from mount pleasant, south carolina, on the democratic line. caller: good morning.

host: good morning. caller: yeah, just a couple of things. i do not know why these people are getting so upset because of that student loan thing. of course, i do know why because they are going to help black people? well, it is going to help white, as well. i'm sorry to tell you, trump people, he committed a crime, and he is throwing that theory out about that is not going to happen, so you to get over it. that is about it for the day. host: up next is peter in silver spring, maryland, on the independent line. caller: thank you very much, and i appreciate you taking my call. i've got two points i would like to make. number one, i am looking at all these people talking at each other and not truly listening to

what their thoughts are and what is the basis of their thoughts. and if we could actually respect each other, sit down, and listen to the reasons why we believe things, especially those we disagree with, i imagine we could probably eliminate half of the problems we have between the parties. on the student loan issue, the real issue is that those loans were inappropriately given out with misinformation, and it was those loans, those colleges that gave them out that were the problem, not the people who were scammed into taking those loans. and so when we are talking about these people not paying them back, they were scammed. how many times are you getting a robo call today on your phone? and if you buy anyone, they are scamming you. that is what this college loan was.

and it is recognizing that was the problem. thank you. host: caller our next is -- our next caller is scott on the republican line in illinois. caller: good morning, how is everybody? hello, can you hear me? host: yes, go ahead with your comment. caller: oh, yeah, so an earlier woman called and she made a point about when you take out alone on a house and you don't pay it, they take your house, the bank does not want the house, they went your money, but they will still take your house or put a lien. same with your car. we have people who don't make the payments and their cars get repo. if you borrow money from a bookie and you don't pay it, you get your hand broke. they want your money! ok. i don't know. i'm just beating the bushes here, tell mr. biden to meet behind the gym with mr. trump and we will talk about it. host: next up, deangelo in

virginia on the democratic line. caller: yes, good morning. listen, i want to make a comment on the economy. you know, the biden administration has not said very much about seniors. the only thing you hear in reference to seniors as they want to try to do away with medicare. rid of medicaid, this and that. if we stop ringing people into the country, bussing them, putting them in hotels and taking care of their medical bills, we may have enough money in the economy to take care of the americans. it's time to stop. i'm not singing the song for trump, but i don't believe everything he said is wrong. we have to stop sending money all over the world and spend money on americans. i don't care what color the american is, black, white, purple, or green. if you are an american you deserve things from the government.

social security is an entitlement. we paid into that. it is like the bank, you put money in the bank and then they tell you that they can't give it to you. you take from the americans to help everyone else. help america. host: diane in jacksonville, florida on the republican, line. caller: good morning. my issue is with the student loans. i agree, to a certain extent, we should be able to help those students who actually finished school and are working and struggling, not the ones who dropped out of school. got student loans and later dropped out, but they still owe that student loan. those are the ones i feel should not get the rewards of helping to pay off a loan that they did not accomplish. also, you should go to a community school.

there is no law stating you have to go to college if you are not ready to go to college. i know friends who got student loans they only got for the money, the extra money that comes with it, and they never graduated. now i have to pay back their loan. i think you should only be for the students who actually graduated and are striving to help america. thank you. host: next, we have ben in detroit. caller: i want to say this. i hope that you will give me a couple of seconds to say this. i live in detroit. we have a billionaire in detroit named dan gilbert who owns quicken loans. i am sure that many of the listeners are familiar with quicken loans. dan gilbert, as we speak, is building a new office tenement

in downtown detroit.he is a billionaire, right ? we just voted, our city council voted recently to extend the dan gilbert, a billionaire, $60 million tax holiday. when we have these hypocritical issues of giving or extending a hand to the poor and then return a different color, a different hand when we talk about billionaires -- why would dan gilbert need 60 million? that is the root of hypocrisy in this country. think about that. thank you. host: i just put up an article from wdet in detroit about the

$60 million tax break for dan gilbert's hudson site project that was approved by the detroit city council that the caller mentioned. let's go to eva in california on the democratic line. caller: i have a question. will of the corporation who cannot collect the student loans write that as a loss and not pay taxes. or the programs, from what i can see you, they come out to help the corporations. we put another connectivity for internet, all the providers they tried to take on the internet

side where they ask you to apply for your credit card. -- that is what i have to say. i will appreciate. thank you. host: those on the line in eagle, idaho. caller: here is an observation. the next time that you need your toilet fixed, call someone with a degree in gender studies. if you need a new roof, call someone with urban studies. the point is, most of these degrees that they award today are useless. if the universities and colleges were on the hook for these loans the whole student program, loan

program, would go away. i paid off my loans in 10 years. . i have three degrees. i work hard for the past 40 years. somehow our work ethic and educational standards have plummeted in this country. thank you. host: our next caller is bill in altamonte. caller: i have been a tax attorney for 40 years. 26 u.s. code 108 income charged for indebtedness. the irs hasn't even participated yet. let's say $20,000 will be forgiven on a student loan. that is going to produce a tax liability of 25% of $5,000.

what happens when the student gets a 1099 from the irs about the code section i mentioned and has to come up with $5,000 on a $20,000 loan? that is never mentioned on the news networks, including cnn and other stations. the president can make all of these wishes but it is not law until he signs it. the irs is a unit that could send out 1090 nine's because they knew how much the loan was forgiven. it's a very extensive code section that goes on forever most of there are some exemptions, but try to find an exemption that is suitable to the irs because you are guilty until proven innocent. they will spend a lot of time trying to justify how their extension and exceptions apply to them, but no one is mentioning 26 u.s. code section 108 income from discharge of indebtedness. that is something that is kind

of annoying to me, because that is part of the decision process. the people receiving the loans, if they knew about this they would consider taking them. host: let's go to harry in greenville, north carolina on the independent line. caller: good morning. host: morning. caller: trump is going to delay, deny, and lie. for all of the people who believe in donald trump, he is always looking for everyone else to pay for everything. he never pays for anything himself, just like mexico paying for the wall, the infrastructure. then you have people saying he donated his salary. yeah, and he spent $140 million of taxpayer money playing golf. this guy is nothing but a fraud and he is begging for money from everybody and t doesn't pay.

he can't even get a good lawyer because he has been bankrupt six times. and we are following this. he might be in cahoots with russia. we have to wake up. this guy does not care about us common people. he doesn't care about poor people. host: that caller was referencing the affidavit that the fbi released of the search of former president trump's mar-a-lago resort. the affidavit was heavily redacted, but we have today's new york times front page and i want to show it to you all. it is the front page of the new york times. they have excerpts that they have highlighted from the affidavit. one says, of most significant concern was the highly classified records intermixed

with other records and otherwise on properly identified. later in the affidavit it says, 184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as confidential, 92 marked as secret, 25 marked as top-secret. the fbi agent observed markings reflecting the following apartment dissemination controls, fsia, and si. those are top-secret classifications. that is big news that just happened yesterday, the redacted affidavit that was released. let's hear from you guys a little more about what you think are the most important topics of the day. bernice in chattanooga, tennessee on the democratic line. caller: good morning.

my thing is -- i was wondering, is anyone concerned about the amount of money spent with credit cards where people are having $100,000 they don't have to pay back to the government? they say that they are spending money on our student loans when in my opinion the money belongs to all of us. if i was borrowing money for myself and then had interest breaks out of this world. i wondered if anyone compared the difference between student loans that cannot be bankrupt, that you cannot file bankruptcy on, and credit cards that you can file bankruptcy on. i don't know if anyone has compared that. that is my question.

host: our next guest is from minnesota. go ahead, dennis. caller: thank you for taking my call. in the first segment there is a caller who was comparing tornado victims and flood victims and things like that will stop the difference is, is that people sign up for student loans of their free will. this is a national disaster that he is trying to compare it to. it's a huge difference. remember, that they did this on their own. no one forced them, there is no law saying have to do it. they did it on their own. i don't want to pay for someone who did it on their own. do i mind paying for someone in a disaster? no problem. they didn't ask for it, it's not

their fault. it's a big difference. host: that is going to be our last color of this segment. up next, podcast hosts and producers jody avrigan and historian nicole hemmer discussed their podcast "this day in esoteric political history". we will be right back. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more. ♪ >> midco supports c-span as a public service, along with these other providers giving you a

front row seat to democracy. >> hello, everyone. welcome to the national book festival. >> over the past 21 years in partnership with the library of congress but tv has provided in-depth uninterrupted coverage of the national book festival featuring hundreds of nonfiction authors and guests. on saturday book tv returns live and in person to the library of congress national book festival. all day long you will hear from in interact with guests and authors such as the librarian of congress, a journalist, a writer and more. the library of congress national book festival live on saturday beginning at 9:30 a.m. eastern on c-span2. >> at least six presidents recorded conversations while in office. hear many of those conversations during season two of c-span's

podcast "presidential recordings." >> the nixon tapes are part private conversations, part deliberations, 100% unfiltered. > let me say that we have the main thing is, my heart goes out to those people who have the best of intentions but are overzealous. i tell you, if i could have spent a little more time as a politician last year and less time being president i would have kicked their butts out. i didn't know what they were doing. >> get it wherever you get your podcasts. >> looking to programs on c-span on c-span radio got easier. tell your smart speaker play c-span radio and listen to washington journal daily at 7:00 a.m. eastern, important congressional hearings and events throughout the day, and weekends at 5:00 and 9:00 p.m.

eastern catch washington today for a fast-paced report of the stories of the day. listen to c-span any time. tell your smart speaker, play c-span radio. c-span, powered by cable. >> washington journal continues. host: welcome back. jody avrigan, nicole hemmer, kelly carter jackson along with their guests take one moment big or small from that day in u.s. political history and inform how it may inform our presence in 15 minutes. new episodes of their podcast, . "this day in esoteric political history", are released three days a week as part of the radiotopia podcast network. we are joined by two of the three hosts. welcome jody and nikki. thank you for joining us.

jody, tell us, what is "this day in esoteric political history" all about? how can people find you? journal@c-span.org the most -- guest: the most important thing is we have a name that rolls off the tongue. about three times a week and find us wherever you get your podcasts, as they say. it is our chance to, as you say, take moments big and small, usually small, that feel like they are interesting stories but maybe have something that resonates or has something to teach about the very history-making moment that we are living through right now. host: we will get two calls that you may have for our podcast guests. you can dial in now. republicans, your line is (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000.

independents, you can dial (202) 748-8002. jody, how do you decide on topics and guests? is it a group effort? do you constantly give ideas? guest: it is a little bit of where our interests lead us. we have a massive google spreadsheet and we are constantly throwing in ideas. sometimes we start with i am interested in this story or i read something in a book that's a nice entry point. occasionally we will work backward saying it would be interesting to find a story that feels resonant to some theme now or larger theme that i'm thinking about. i would say i am not a historian and it is nice to host a show with two actual historians. nikki and kelly are wide-ranging thinkers who have their

expertise. it happens that nikki is in the 20th century and kelly is in the 19th century, so it's nice to have that range. we do jump around. that's one of my favorite things about the show. we go through three centuries of u.s. political history, jumping all over the place, big, small, different euros, in different themes. host: nikki, you are a new faculty member at vanderbilt for the study of the presidency and cohost of this podcast. how were you brought into the project? tell me what you think you bring to the table of the discussion. guest: sure. this started in january of 2020 when i actually met jody for the first time. he and i grabbed a coffee and he pitched me this idea, "this day in esoteric political history". as you can imagine, the name sold me right away. but also the vision of it.

the idea that there would be this space for us to tell cool stories about history at a moment when it seemed like there was a big public appetite for history. january 2020 means that two months later instead of meeting in a studio we were going to our perspective apartments and have been broadcasting from their ever sense. it is good to have historians as part of the storytelling team. as jody was saying, i think that jody knows exactly what a good story is. he knows how to get to the heart of it. one thing that kelly and i bring to the table is we have this wide-ranging background on how a tiny story might fit into some of the bigger questions historians are asking. host: you are missing your third cohost, kelly carter jackson who was not available to join us

this morning, but she is a professor of african studies at wellesley college. why do you think that it is so important, nikki, to take things that happened in the past and apply them to today? why is that an important part of the conversation you guys have? guest: one, it is important in terms of figuring out how we got to. where we are. to take a step back, it is not so confusing how we got from there to here. tensions can be high when there's a lot of polarization. sometimes history allows us a way out of the immediacy of the moment to ask the bigger questions and come at it from a

different angle that might be able to get us over the hump of some of our contemporary blips. guest: i was going to say, on that front, something that i learned from nikki and kelly is that you can do that thing where you look at history and say that was an interesting story or you can say look at the parallels to today. that is satisfying and may be teaches you something. the next level and what we are trying to get to is a real understanding of how the present is a product of the past. more looking at history as a series of tributaries that come together to form a river. and that is the river of history that we are in right now. being able to put things in context and be able to understand over the course of the stories that we have told, how they fit together, and realized that we are a product of the past has helped me navigate this moment. host: before we go to the phone

lines, i want to ask. another episode drops sunday. what is it going to be about? guest: you are testing me. i usually don't pay attention. host: you probably record a bunch in advance. i'm sorry. guest: tomorrow we are doing an episode that is fascinating about the man who killed john wilkes booth. it is a good example of how our title has the word esoteric in it. we talk about big figures, like lincoln, but i don't think that we have done the gettysburg address or the second inaugural. if we are going to talk about a figure, we try to find an interesting way in. we have done a number of lincoln segments, but they are the people who tried to steal lincoln's body 10 years after he died or the man who killed john wilkes booth, understanding that

angle lets us understand that time period. let me see if i got that right. host: let's go to a caller. brad and international falls, minnesota. what question do you have? caller: i have a comment and a question for them both. this is a great topic. they are historians, they like history. one thing that comes to mind with me is we have what is called operation mockingbird. we look forward to today on how it is still impacting our lives. i will use a couple for instances. we know john brennan from the cia came forward and told obama in july of 2016 before the election that hillary and her campaign were going to start this russian hoax.

in the history of it is, why didn't the cia stop it before we got into all this russian collusion with trump? then we have this hunter biden laptop where we had the cia and fbi both knew that it was his laptop, but they carried on and started saying that it was russian disinformation. i think what we need to learn from is our history that operation mockingbird was real, it really happened, and it was to misinform people. that is what i think these two young people on tv today learn from our history that we don't keep repeating ourselves. host: let's go on to another caller. jason and honolulu. your thoughts or questions for our guests. caller: thank you for taking my

call. aloha, everybody. a great idea for a podcast. i hope you get to hawaii.we are the state that has the only monarchy. you don't get more esoteric than a previous monarchy. and hawaii plays vanderbilt in football today, week 0. i hope you get to hawaii. i love your idea and i will listen. i will listen off the air. guest: we have done episodes about hawaii. we did one about the fake nuclear missile morning in 2017 that scared a lot of people. it was a false morning. it is -- false warning. it is on our spreadsheet to do

hawaiian history, particularly the transition of folding into the united states. the previous caller, we have done up so -- we have done episodes about operation mockingbird and in the 70's there was a series of hearings that uncovered sketchy behavior on the part of the nsa and cia. looking into that history helps us navigate things now without putting judgment on the specifics. the one thing that i've learned is you really have to look at the motivations of people at a given moment. for me, when you go back in history you really try to understand who are the actors and what specific thing in that time period where they motivated by? what were the incentives? that puts things into context and into a question that we can take into processing the news today. guest: one of the great things about the history of hawaii as a

topic and one thing we focused on a lot is all of these independent republics that pop up in u.s. history. like texas and hawaii. they have really robust histories before the u.s., annexed them, occupied them. hawaii fits neatly with the prehistory of so many of our states. host: let's go to kevin in florida on the independent line. caller: good afternoon. thank you for receiving my call. the material of history is very exciting to me. i was considered the history president of the class when i was young. years ago, when we were going to world war ii, hawaii was

involved. we had this theory of the president being considered nonconstitutional because he goes to the side then he does america. my question is interests from the young couple there, going back, world war ii we as a country going to keep us free. i understand in some states they had carrying swastikas fla gs. texas is a dead zone like in world war ii when there were germans blowing up gas depots, and of course we had hawaii and pearl harbor. we don't know where the volcano is going to go.

where do we go when the volcano blows? that is our history. we are right back there. texas is getting crazy. hawaii has all of these judgments coming from laws. we have people considering themselves white supremacists with nazi flags running around. our history is our prehistory of those three things alone. host: let's like people are considering themselveses white sell cysts with flags -- white sub emresists with flags running around. host: let the panelists respond to the comments made. guest: the history is rife with conspiracy theories and we've done stories of munition plants

that were broken up in world war i and world war ii that have been lost to history and looking back and understanding both how the fear of internal subversion has shaped u.s. history, struggles over what freedom looks like and who has access to the full rights and full privileges of being a u.s. citizen or living in the united states, those are things that have been in u.s. history we run up to time and time again and the understanding that the u.s. has been through very difficult times and sometimes very wild times and come out the other end. i think that's one thing the show does is remind us as wild as our current time is, it's something the americans have faced in the past before. guest: we've done a lot of different eras that have felt

resonate until now and is a parlor game among us because i think for a while we found ourselves doing so many episodes about the late 196 0's and how many 1968 and 1969 episodes can we do? and it isn't by design but what we gravitate towards and find ourselves doing a lot of episodes with the 1850's and 1860's and is a little dicey and maybe the 1930's are starting to fell resonate. nickie focuses on the book coming out in the 199 0's which really feel like we're a product of a lot of the seeds that were planted there. so you can look for these parallels but it's also just an understanding of what the country felt like on a given moment and all the various things lost to history but really marked an era and led to kind of the top line history that maybe we know world war ii. look a little earlier than that and look at the decade before that and all the scattered violence and different strains and fracturing that was happening.

that's where i find resonance. host: we are talking to two of the three hosts of this podcast, on this day in esoteric political history. we want more of your causes. republicans 202-748-8001. democrats dial 202-748-8000. independents, your number is 202-748-8002. before we get to more of your calls on those same lines as history when it comes to u.s. in times of war, you guys recently had an episode titled "woo'd by mussolini" and about a legendary journalist ida tarbell what had a flattering profile of mussolini, the dictator, and can you talk about why you felt it was important not to just have a

podcast about mussolini but some of the flattering journalism about him during his time, why was that the angle you took on that day in history? guest 1: i think because we know where that story ends, that it runs through the rise of facism in the 1930's and world war ii and facism becomes a dirty word in the united states after that. part of what has been lost to history is how attractive facism was to so many people in the u.s., that this idea you would have a strong leader come in and make big decisions and pull the country out of crisis, you had americans in the 1920's and 1930's praying for a dictator who could help the country through hard times. and we tend to forget that because it doesn't fit in with our image of what the u.s. stands for and how the u.s. experienced facism. and ida tarbell is a particularly interesting person

to zero in on because she was a muck-raking journalist and hero of progressives for her exposes of the standard oil company. so to have this person who i think in much of our history is lionized and to show how attractive this facist philosophy was to her and this facist leader was to her felt like an important story to recover. host: another caller on the democratic line from missouri. caller: i'm 85 years old and seen a lot of political history, you know, and you hear about the shot that was heard around the world, i tell you what, the shot fired in the capitol building saved democracy. them people got the hell out of there whenever one of them got killed. anyhow, if you're talking about

john wilkes booth or remember the doctor that doctored him was dr. mud and put him on an island out in the gulf there, fort jefferson and he turned out to be a hero. he found a lot of cures for diseases on the deal but he was punished pretty bad for helping john wilkes booth. guest 2: that's a great story. host: do you touch on that in your upcoming podcast or maybe a podcast for another day? guest 2: that was one for another day when we did that one about boston corbett. the month long manhunt after lincoln's manhunt is superinteresting. can i ask a question of richard? is he still on? host: he might be gone. guest 2: i wonder which shot heard around the world he was referring to because there are five or six heard around the world. and even in baseball there's one.

there's another thing we've learned over the years, things get names in their time and 20 years later people have forgotten about that event and name something else that and people are trying to write history in real time and give things names and sometimes they stick and sometimes they don't. guest 1: there are a lot of trials of the century out there. many more than centuries we've had. host: next caller is froster in san antonio. what question or comment do you have? caller: it's very interesting what you all are discussing right now and hope i'm not getting off subject here but i've been noticing over the half a year or year or so this issue with regard to the critical race theory that's been going on. i never heard of critical race theory until the politics behind

all of this came about. i just wondered if you all could mention whether or not you all have had this conversation about this because this seems like to me that a certain portion of society here, and i would say republicans have decided they want to kind of hide the real history of the country, that they deem as being too critical and all i want to say, thank you. host: have you touched on it, nickie? guest 1: i don't know we've done one on critical race theory but this is a good topic from how we come up with our episode ideas and just that nugget of a question talking about critical race theory, there are so many friends you could throw and take this moment in the early 2000's when barack obama hugs derek bell, the originator of critical

race theory and a huge story in media at the time which sows the seeds of critical race theory today or talk about controversies and culture wars in the schools which there have been, as you can imagine, so many over the course of american history. so thinking about how could we speak to this controversy and couldn't start with critical theory as was developed in law schools but pull out the different threads of the controversy today in order to help us understand where it fits in broader history. guest 2: this is what we're swirling in and complicated and feels where did it come from, and if you look to history and look to some teams that run through the history of the country, it gives you some perspective, there always have been moral panics in this country and there have always

been deep conversation about race and contentious conversation about how do we teach history and starts as soon as history gets made. what i've learned in doing the series, sometimes you ask yourself why it this story become esoteric and why doesn't anyone know about this story and because it was assumed or put in another narrative the question how do we talk about history as it runs through our show in addition to one of the through lines is concern and sometimes paranoia about what happens in our schools and can you see that with race and evolution and see that with foreign policy. , it's just one of those things every era or era has a drawn out

conversation about how are we teaching our kids. host: and at wj the caller richard was saying the caller was referring to the woman killed ashley babbitt january withstand was the particular shot. guest 2: he was referring to it as a new shot heard round the world and i thought he was saying it to a previous shot heard round the world. but it will be a interesting moment to see in the sweep of what happened the last two years with that particular moment, will it be the one that particulars -- sticks and catches people and allows people to enter into the sweeping story of this era. if richard wants to call in the long line of shots heard round the world it merits that. host: our next caller is lisa from west virginia, your comment or question. caller: it's about how you can get history, the tennessee

valley authority brought up the conversation about how rural electrification and the new deal and how government intervened in the whole industry all the way back to the beginning at the end of depression and where we are now about transitioning to battery operated cars and people think oh, i hope the government doesn't interfere in telling me anything but is there anything you guys have coming up on that? and especially the tennessee valley authority pay a penny back to government each year and got all the funds to build it. guest 2: nickie lives in tennessee, so there's that. i used to live in east tennessee and i think we're very eager to do that. it's been on the list. we've done episodes about the new deal and massive

infrastructure and you have this story oh, in the wake of the new deal are all these programs and massive things and we often maybe remember the social programs but the infrastructure is incredible and we've done episodes on all the labor camps that were established to give people jobs and the forest and infrastructure and we did a story on the highway system and was something i learned a little bit was how massive and quickly the u.s. highway system was built over the course of 5, 10 years in the wake of world war ii and we forget the scale at which those infrastructure projects operated. guest 1: the highway story and

the t.b. story is about the rule of government building up the country and so many city has electricity because it was affordable and profitable for electric companies to wire places that were very dense but it really took the federal government to get electricity out to rural areas and changed the way of life for folks, especially on farms that had just gone through a terrible depression in the 1920's and 19 30's so it was a really big deal but as the caller mentioned it was a big deal in terms of the environmental policy and the role of government when it comes to chimity change and the new deal had a lot to change about how the government thought about climate and environment and is a great suggestion for an upcoming show. host: speaking of tennessee, you guys just had tennessee week because as mentioned, nickie is a new resident of tennessee and you all had a really fun episode about dolly parton, the tennessee legend.

i want you to tell our viewers about the episode and why you decided she in particular was a tennessee icon that deserved a podcast episode. guest 1: dolly parton had a huge podcast all about her in addition to the episode, a call called dolly parton's america hosted by jed who is a native and joined us on the show and he's the founder of radio lab for those of you familiar with that and we talked about dolly parton as a playful figure and that's what's so interesting about her, in a time so many people, so many singers are seen as so divisive, she's seen as somebody everybody loves and this is something yesterday talks about but we talk about the centrality of country music to tennessee and the role dolly parton played in helping to make

country music popular and the staying power she's had particularly as a songwriter of which she is just one of the most phenomenal sample of songwriters in the united states and was a really great episode. guest 2: if you make the list of people unequivocally, democrats, republicans, independents, everyone loves it's a really short list but i think dolly parton is on that list and it's a real interesting thing to think about. host: for sure. let's go to another caller, joan in rochester,man. your question or comment? caller: my comment was that these two young people, i'm going back to the story about where we talked about mussolini, these two young people didn't live in that age and you're glorifying a time when this country was in turmoil and pain

and to glorify that man and to say nazis are no good thing i find an abomination. i just think that she needs to -- you need to have people on the program that lived that time, not somebody coming along and taking a paintbrush and painting it as if it's no big thing because this is becoming a big thing in this country and she better be aware of it because she's going to have to live through it, too, some day. and i find her comments very, very not true and very, very biased and i find her very biased as a republican. host: let's give our guest a chance to respond. go ahead, nickie. guest 1: i wasn't giving my own views about facism and the rise of naziism but how ida tarbell responded to them and there was a strain in the united states where we did have people

attracted to the doctorate of facism which is so important for us to understand today because there is a strain in the united states of people who have questions about mother democracy as the best form of government and whether power and violence might be better ways to grab power in the united states rather than the electoral process. so it's not a matter of praising and finding something good about facism. but rather to say why is it people in the past have been attracted to this doctrine and the fact the 1920's was is so tumultuous and helps explain part of the reason why and done a lot of episodes how difficult it was for americans not only because for americans in rural areas, this was the start of the great depression in the 1920's but there was a red square and it was economic turmoil and all sorts of labor unrest, and the 1920's was a really challenging era and in that challenging time some americans were attracted to a very dangerous doctrine and

that's important to understand if we want to have an effective response to the rise of facism and other anti-democratic movements today. guest 2: i'll just say i don't think there's anyone who is more than nickie sounding the alarm about the kind of conditions that we see right now and through a historical lens trying to understand those conditions and the rise of a new strain of facism and anti-democratic forces in this country and a sort of understanding of how we look to the 1990's, 1960's, 1920's, kelly does this as well with political violence in the 19th century and that's absolutely part of what we're doing is trying to do it but do it through a historical lens to really get some grounding and not just operate. we can't help our age. i appreciate everyone referring to us as so young, that's so nice. we can't help our age but we can control the work we do to understand the past and to me,

you know, as i was saying before, the key is to not just look at the past and pluck a story and say huh, that's neat and maybe has parallels to now but to really try to understand a story in the context of its era and then understand the strains and seeds that got planted and the tributaries that came together to this moment. no matter your age if you take yourself out of the times you're living in and try to understand other moments, it will help you navigate. host: let's hear from rick now from cuyahoga lake. rick? caller: good morning. thank you. i'd like to give kadoos to the two here. i listened to their podcast. today in education, the kids in school seem to only be taught to test, not history or math or whatever it is. by using the electronic spectrum it gives you something to research and maybe learn about

history. when i went to school, all we had was either the tv in the living room or the radio in the car, you know. but things about shots around the world, one of the things is bill o'reilly did a theory of books and one of them was killing patton. what happened to the driver of the truck that hit his sedan and his driver in the is a dan, they pretty much disappeared from military history after that fiasco. thank for you what you're doing, sir and ma'am. guest 2: that's on the list. we'll look into it. host: let's look now to bob from wittman, massachusetts. bob? caller: hi, everyone. let's talk about the iraq war and the other big lie that the republican party has told

everybody. over 500,000 iraqi citizens and over 4500 troops died along with all the injuries. now the republican politicians, a certain number of them lie about weapons of mass destruction, and there are people today, iraqi families who i care about and everybody should care about that cry for their children who are murdered by the republican big lie. ladies and gentlemen, everyone throughout the world, we have to be very concerned about the lies coming out of the republican party and they lied about w.m.b.'s, the democrats voted for the war, too, well, the democrats were protecting the country from your republican lies. host: that's your point, bob. have you all talked at all about the iraq war or in general about justifications for war?

guest 1: i was trying to think, jodi, as he was talking if we did a episode on code pink or one of the anti-war groups. guest 2: we did an episode on camp casey which was a cindy sheahan protest in the run-up to and the aftermath of the war in iraq and did an episode at the time george bush had a shoe thrown at him by an iraqi journalist but was entry point for conversation of the impact on the war for iraq and civilians, absolutely. and i would say it's an interesting thing we keep track of eras we go back to and why we gravitate to this. we've done a number of stores about gheorghe w. bush and that's a time -- george w. bush and that's a time we're starting to forget a little bit and that's the time period the early

2000's we have to revisit and have plenty of lessons and seeds planted in the bush administration to very resolute right now, absolutely. host: next up is zoe in jamaica plain, massachusetts. caller: have you done anything on the history and the recurring history of christian nationalism in the united states, the different ways we've seen that particular movement and secondarily, have you also perhaps tied in or talked about the phrase "make america great again" and how again that phrase

had a had three or four iterations throughout the history of the united states. host: jodi? guest 2: this is nickie's world, i'm going to let her take it. guest 1: it is my world. there are fascinating ways to do this and we haven't focused directly on christian nationalism but there are so many instances in u.s. history where you see a religious movement blending with patriotism and jingoism and into something pretty corrosive and i was thinking of charles and his politics in the late 1930's which moved from kind of a religious revivalism into something much darker and pretty anti-semitic by the end of the 1930's but you see it with preachers in the 19 50's and into the 1970's and there's a

space right between sort of a patriotic religion and christian nationalism which is its own pretty important and increasingly relevant movement. i think it will be a good thing for us to go back and find some of the through lines that lead to had a -- to that. guest 2: we've done episodes of the snow nothing party and the violence and political violence and religious vialence in the 19th -- violence in the 19th century and to reiterate her point, you see religious fractioning tied up with political concerns, concerns over immigration, concerns over race. all of those things blend together and absolutely something we're seeing right now and i think the past helps us to try to understand that. host: up next we have virginia in riverside, california. virginia? caller: the way these people are presented are very flippant and

informing us on this facism and what have you that happened in the 19 30's and 1920's, they're preaching to us like we're not intelligent people, that we're to be listening to all of these right wing trump people, beware of this and beware of that. we're kind of knowledgeable and kind of offensive. i'm not afraid of it, it will be taken care of one way or another but i find them not to be the end all of end all, the information they're passing to the general public, they're really being informative, we're -- informative and we're not dumb and offensive to be listening to these two. host: got your point. john in bradenton, florida, your question or comment. caller: yes, i don't want to disparage the youth of our historians. guest 2: go for it, john. caller: have you done a

correlation between what i see now as between the cuban missile crisis and ukraine war? i saw, i didn't even know 1960, 1961 when i was hiding under the desk that we actually created that situation by putting patriot missiles on the northern borders of italy and greece and point them at russia and their response was to put nuclear weapons in kuba. and now i see a correlation that we want to put troops on the russian border in ukraine and they said this is our -- basically they didn't say it but i see that as their cuban missile crisis and they want to keep the weapons away from their border. biden told us in the first weeks of january that putin was going to attack ukraine because he told them ukraine will be part of nato and we will put missiles on your border and putin said no and nobody -- the media is like putin started this.

biden started this war. have you done a segment on this? host: your thoughts? guest 2: without commenting on the castellation of the moment we're at with the ukraine war, the cuban missile crisis is a great example of understanding the months and the weeks and the years that led up to that moment which has been reduced to maybe a top line moment. that's i think one of the things we try and do. our show is short but we try and do that. let's provide that. people think the story starts here, maybe it starts here and let's think of a story in context to what it does tell us. i don't think we've done the missile crisis but maybe we'll find a more esoteric way to get into the cuban missile crisis story. host: this has been a fascinating conversation. we've been talking this morning

with jody and nicole along with kelly carter jackson are the three hosts of the podcast "this day in esoteric political history." you can find them wherever you find your podcasts. thank you both for joining us this morning. guest 1: thank for you having us. guest 2: thanks so much. host: find our website at c-span.org. that is going to wrap it up with us today with "washington journal" we'll be back in the morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern. have a good day. >> c-span's washington journal, everyday we are taking calls live on the air, on the news of the day, and discussing policy issues that impact you. coming up sunday, we will look at the latest news and politics

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