>> coming up on "washington journal," your calls and comments live. then we talk with michael tanner of the foundation for research on equal opportunity about how the government should redesign poverty, and lisa davis discusses the group no kid hungry campaign to end childhood hunger and food insecurity in the u.s. "washington journal" is next. ♪ host: good morning. it is wednesday, november 22. last night, a deal was approved with thomas to free 50 hostages and declare a four day pause in fighting.

150 palestinian minors and hostages with be released in exchange. give us a call by party, democrat, (202)-748-8000. republicans, (202)-748-8001. independents, (202)-748-8002. you can text us at (202)-748-8003. send your first name and your city, state. and we are on social media, facebook.com/c-span and x at @cspanwj. welcome to today's "washington journal." here is the wall street journal's headline that says israel-hamas reach deal on hostages. israel agreed to deal with hamas to free 50 civilian hostages held by militants in gaza in return for the release of palestinian prisoners from israeli jails and a series of pauses in fighting.

the israeli cabinet approved the deal after a long deliberation that started tuesday and went into the early morning hours of wednesday in jerusalem. eight cap weeks of painstaking negotiations brokered by qatar, egypt and the u.s., arcing the first major diplomatic breakthrough since the war began on. october 7 hamas confirmed the deal in a statement. it will be carried out in two phases. the first, 30 children, eight mothers and 12 other women will be released over four days. the first hostages could be freed as early as thursday. people familiar with the deal said. in exchange, israel will release 150 palestinian women and minors held in israeli prisons, and there will be a pause in fighting over the entire gaza strip. israel has agreed to forgo drone surveillance in northern gaza for six hours, and in the second phase, up to 30 hostages would

be released over three days. in that phase, non-israeli hostages could be freed. israel will also follow additional deliveries of aid, including fuel into gaza via border crossing with egypt. people said ahead of the announcement, prime minister netanyahu said israel would continue to fight the war against hamas despite the pauses. here is the washington post. that says that they agreed to a hostage deal, since the six-week air and ground assault on the gaza strip after hamas' october 7 attack. key updates include three americans are expected among women and children released in the hostage deal, according to u.s. officials. and that the pause would extend an extra day for the release of every 10 additional hostages.

let's hear what prime minister netanyahu said during a cabinet meeting about that, saying that the fight would continue in gaza until all hostages were released. a quick note for those listening on the radio, this is in hebrew with english subtitles. [video clip] prime minister netanyahu: [ speaking hebrew] [end video clip] host: that was the israeli prime

minister yesterday, saying that we are at war. he says there are stages to releasing hostages, but he would not let go until they reach "absolute victory and bring all the hostages back." we are taking your calls this morning on the noon news breaking overnight -- new news breaking overnight that a hostage deal has been reached with israel and hamas. jim, democrat, in new jersey. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my phone call. i bless you happy thanksgiving to one and all, and let's hope that the war will come to a peaceful agreement of everything. host: happy thanksgiving to you, too, jim. take a look at what president

biden said last week at a news conference about the -- what he thinks is the ending for the conflict. [video clip] pres. biden: i made it clear to the israelis that i think the only ultimate war answer here is a two state solution that is real. we have to get to the point where there is an ability to even talk without worrying about whether or not we are just dealing with -- they are dealing with hamas is going to engage in the same activities they did over the past on the seventh. i am not a fortune teller and cannot tell you how long it is going to last, what i don't think it would be until there is a two state solution. i told the israelis that i don't think it works to occupy gaza.

[end video clip] host: president biden from last week, speaking about what he sees as the endgame for the conflict. we are taking your calls this morning on the israel-hamas hostage deal. your thoughts and opinions on that. give us a call. democrats, (202)-748-8000. republicans, (202)-748-8001. independents, (202)-748-8002. you can text us at (202)-748-8003. we are on social media. this is what we got from tracy on facebook. time to release all of the hostages, prayers going out in jesus' mighty name. sonja says, simply glad to hear. james says, will the biden administration get any credit for this negotiation or will the media continue to say biden is old? host: james, about that, scott from the new york times says

political pressure on biden's health drives secret needs and hostage talks. the deal comes as democrats are divided over president biden's abrasive israel. here is the article. israel's acceptance of the terms for the hostage deal with hamas reflected the intense pressure brought on by the biden administration to reach an agreement that would free some of those held by the armed group and produce potential longer-term opportunities to de-escalate the conflict. the initial approval of the deal by the israeli cabinet came after a "secret cell of top aides to president biden worked furiously over the past weeks on a web of negotiations involving qatar, egypt, and israel, and effort hampered by communications outages in gaza and disputes that derail the talks." white house officials who spoke on an amenity to discuss the

negotiations that led to a deal said the agreement include the release of three americans, two women and a toddler. the officials said they would continue to push for the release of all u.s. hostages. the deal came at a time when, cuts are divided over mr. biden's abrasive israel, particularly as the civilian toll in gaza grows and as polling shows the president receiving low marks on his handling of the crisis ahead of his reelection campaign. mark is calling from florida, democrat. caller: good morning. first, what is to prevent hamas from getting more hostages? i and 83 and have parkinson's -- i am 83 and have parkinson's, so it takes me a little longer to get out the words, but what prevents them from taking more hostages? ? nothing.

and why would they fill up those tubs with water and gasoline? host: where would they get the hostages because israeli defense forces have secured israel at this point. caller: well, not enough to prevent hamas from getting more hostages when they continue the fight. they can take israeli army people as hostages. i do not have to tell you what vermin these people are. they will get some back and then get some more. stop that. nothing in the agreement about not taking any more hostages. host: all right, mark. let's take a look at what president biden, the statement that he released yesterday

evening about this topic. he says, i welcome the deal to secure their release of hostages taken by the terrorist group hamas during its brutal assault on israel on october i thank qatar and the president of egypt for their critical leadership and partnehip in reaching this deal. ani appreciate the commitment that mr. netanyahu and his government made in supporting an extended pause to ensure ts deal can be fully carried out and ensure the provision of additional humanitarian assistance t alleviate the suffering of innocent palestinian families. in gaza. i look forward to speaking to each of these leaders and staying in close contact as we work to ensure this deal is carried through in its entirety. it iimportant that all aspects of this deal will fully implemented. today's deal should bring home

additional american hostages, and i will not stop until they are all released. that is a statement from president biden on the release of hostages or the deal, i should say. they have not been released yet. the earliest they could be released as a starting tomorrow, and we are taking your calls for this first hour, getting your reaction. democrats, (202)-748-8000. republicans, (202)-748-8001. independents, (202)-748-8002. let's talk to tim in wisconsin, democrat. caller: good morning. you know, i am definitely not an expert on military tactics or hostage negotiations or any of that sort of thing, but i do know when terrorists, when you appease them even a little, they

take advantage of this, and i fear hamas and hezbollah will regroup to buy some other terrorist activities. i hope they all get out, and i hope everyone of them gets free, but i am just saying, right now, they cannot do it. i hate to say that because i know those people are waiting for their families to get out of there, but hamas has to be destroyed before any of this can happen because they are going to take advantage. they are not going to cease fire. they are just going to move stuff around. they're going to move bombs here and there, and devise new terrorist plans somewhere else. thank you. host: here is michael on x that says, getting hostage prisoners released and stopping the slaughter, even temporarily are positive steps.

tami says, thank you to israel for fighting terrorism. no cease fire until all the hostages are released. and we take a look at the front page of "the washington pos." . it says israel-hamas which hostage deal. a four day pause and exchange of people. allies hope this leads to more negotiations. i want to show you appease from jon ossoff's, the first millennial and jewish member of the senate from georgia, on the senate floor last week, speaking about the israel-hamas war. [video clip] >> hamas embeds its military capabilities within gaza's civilian infrastructure. it hides the hind and beneath gaza's civilian population. but the depraved tactics of

hamas do not relieve israeli leaders of their obligations to protect innocent life, nor should they harden our hearts against the innocent people who live under their rule. in five weeks, relentless airstrikes and the continuous use of massive munitions in dense urban areas have killed thousands of civilians and seriously wounded many thousands more, including many children. in a territory half the size of dekalb county, georgia, tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed or damaged beyond use, and more than 1.5 million people have been displaced. clean water, food, and medicine are scarce, and the continued obstruction of aid necessary for sanitation and health care will

worsen the suffering disease and death. small children are wasting from malnutrition and falling ill and overcrowded shelters and makeshift camps. imagine the desperation of families with young children just trying to survive. and this, too, mr. president, requires more clarity. the extent of civilian death and suffering in gaza is unnecessary . it is a moral failure, and it should be unacceptable to the united states. [end video clip] host: that was senator ossoff talking about the israel-hamas war. we are taking your calls on the reaction to the hostage deal reached between israel and hamas to release 50 hostages being held in gaza in exchange for 150 palestinian prisoners.

peter is a republican in portland, oregon. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: i have seen this before, in israel. and the interesting thing is israel has usually given even more palestinian hostages for this kind of a grouping problem, and it has never worked. and this is actually pretty small, the usual tap for tap for palestinians and israeli held hostages, which is really strange because we should give lives one 41, and nobody in the world has ever done that which

is really, really weird. host: so, you are saying that the three for one deal is strange and not typically what happens? is that what you are saying? caller: it is completely improper. it is saying that a life is worth less than another life. it is what the palestinians have always done with israel. this is really, really old news. host: there is also the cease fire, peter or we should call it , "a positive fighting." -- "a pause in fighting." caller: the pause is good because everybody gets killed, but nobody cares in this area of the government in israel versus the palestinians since 1947 when

they said that they were giving the palestinians their own state. so the murder going on between the two states does not make any sense. host: you have got it. grover, democrat in virginia. caller: hi. [indiscernible] president biden and his people need to be congratulated for the effort they are putting forth in order to get the people free. you know the people talking like a gentleman before me, he talked about it should be 1 for 1. i mean, have faith that let them try to do the best they can. because they can talk because they are not there, if they were

there, they would not be worried for one for one. they would just consider getting everyone, every life saved and is important. so things are going to get better. host: also in virginia, this time in broadway, virginia, republican, jerry. caller: good morning. whatever happened to the adage of we do not negotiate with terrorists? that is all joe biden and barack obama did. look what barack obama did. he traded 15 high-level terrorists for one traitor. joe biden should let israel do what they need to do and keep his nose out. we do not negotiate with terrorists. you are just empowering them. we always wind up with the short stick in these negotiations. host: all right, jerry.

let's talk to abdul in woodhaven, new york, good morning. caller: good morning, how are you? host: good. caller: listen. some of your callers, i listen to the guy from florida. he was an old timer. this war started october 7, you should know that. when this war started, it was around the same time, 1946-1947. you know, the president should be using the war funds instead of congress ones. i am so stick -- sick [indiscernible] these people that had a little nothing, nothing at all, they don't have nothing. thank you. host: abdul mentioned president

biden. there is an nbc news poll that came out the last few days, talking about this issue. it says biden standing his new load amid israel-hamas war, and young voters are breaking from biden, helping give trump a narrow lead for the first time an nbc news pulling, although the gap is within the margin of error. you can see majority disapproves of biden's handling of the israel-hamas war. and democrats are sharply divided. sodalite color approves -- so the light color approves, the colors disapprove. 51% approve, 41% disapprove, and among independents, 31% approve, 59% disapprove, among

republicans, 22% in the approval category, 69% disapproval. moses is in florida, independent. caller: good morning. how are you? host: good. caller: excellent. i had a couple of questions. do you agree iran is responsible for the terrorist attacks in israel? host: is that what you think, moses? caller: absolutely. personally, hamas, hezbollah and the houthi, they will do anything without iran's approval. another question, do you believe that biden's refusal to enforce sanctions of the previous administration have enriched

iran's oil sales to finance terror across the world? host: is that what you think, moses? caller: well, i am asking, do you believe if biden's refusal to enforce sanctions that were placed by the previous demonstration has enriched iran and enabled them to finance? host: what do you think, moses? caller: i think so. first of all, the actions biden took, with happened -- what happened in afghanistan, the botched withdrawal, afghanistan started the whole thing, and then he turns around and tells russia he would not mind a small incursion? that was a green light. host: what do you think of the hostage deal? caller: what i think about the

hostage deal? i think that, you know, the fact that they come to the tables to discuss, you know -- i am all for freeing hostages. nobody wants to see people in captivity. it would be nice if they could work something out, but the bottom line is that this all could have been avoided if biden would have enforced the sanctions on iran that would have had them finance these terrorist groups. host: here's an article from reuters last month. it says that trump pledges to ban muslims from the u.s., it says that donald trump promised that its elected president will

bar immigrants who support hamas from entering the u.s. and sent officers to pro-hamas protest terrorist and deport immigrants who publicly support palestinian militant groups. let's take a look at what he said recently about that. this is from an event in iowa from saturday. [video clip] >> i will immediately expand the trump for travel ban on entry from terror play countries, and i will implement strong ideological screening on all immigrants. i had a trump travel ban on numerous countries, which are horrible in terms of what is taking place within those countries, and countries that hate us. i do not want them in our country. they hate our country. i do not want them in our country. if you hate america and wanted to abolish israel, if you sympathize with jihadists and we

don't do exactly what you want, if you do all of these bad things and you have bad thoughts in your mind, you're not getting into the united states of america. you were not coming in. [end video clip] host: former president trump from saturday. we are taking your calls about the israel-hamas hostage deal. chris out of michigan, democrat. caller: good morning. my question is, the keep going on and on, and there are a couple of hostages, and they continue to use those as employee to keep on killing all these innocent people. how many people does it take to say one hostage? -- save one hostage? it is like a snowball. it is not going to stop.

they cannot seem to get their act in order. anyway, thank you. host: bill in orange park, florida, republican. . the morning caller:-- good morning. caller: yeah, i think israel, the parliament or whatever it is, the group of lawmakers over there, they were against the prime minister early. they wanted him out of office. this makes him look bad. this country should never give them another penny to israel. no money at all. they are dumb enough to go along with this stuff because they're just going to give them a break to build up all the stuff. host: you are against any deal for the hostages? caller: you better believe it.

they should just blow them off the map and do not stop them now. do not stop the israel people now because it is going to come back in about six months, and they are going to do another massive killing of israel's. host: israelis are saying they are not ending the war. they are just pausing the fighting. caller: that is all they are doing, giving them time to put more missiles together and iran can get more money. those people in the white house ought to have more brains than that. they have not been in an overseas project for 50 years. his own guys back when he was running for office told him that. host: told him what? caller: for the last 40 years, that anything overseas requires being knowing something to do with the military or anything else with the government. host: all right. let's talk to ft. pierce, for

the, independent, steve. caller: good morning. good to talk to you. i think we need to put the whole thing into context. this war is over a lot of laces. there was a young boy named mohammed who drove into a cave and busted something called the dead sea scrolls. the foundation of the village is that the jewish religion has perverted the old testament of their scriptures, and mohammed was supposed to correct this. but there they have the dead sea scrolls that were there before

palestine existed in all of this stuff, but when he found those dead sea scrolls, it proved that the jewish scriptures has not changed before the time of christ. mohammed lived 600 years after christ, so this whole war is based on a philosophy about our religious profit that has been proven false -- prophet that has been proven false. because we do not address that, this war will continue. this is a sad situation for the world because the muslim religion believes he was the last prophet. and the scrolls proves the basic premise. so what do we do about that, keep sacrificing people?

once the truth is disguised, we have no way to deal with it. host: let's talk to gary next, missouri, democrat. caller: good morning, ma'am. let me say [indiscernible] it is not necessary. when him and obama [indiscernible] he is doing this is so-called unnecessary. if i was active, biden would not

compare. host: wichita, kansas, republican. good morning. re: there? -- are you here? crenford? caller: i heard another voice coming over the phone and it threw me off. the whole situation back to its grassroots, picture that is really parties. would we put up with a country that had such a political party as what is in those eastern countries today, especially iran? when it started in saudi arabia? we would not have tolerated that. host: we would not have tolerated what? caller: we would not have tolerated that if we still had our war of war spirits. host: what to think of the

hostage deal? caller: the hostage deal is terrible. it is a shame it always ends up like that. i am so angry at israel -- and i love that country -- but i am angry at them for not having more people in arms. there was one israeli that had a gun, and he saw all of the bad guys. we are allowed to have weapons in the united states. the hostage deal, we have got to get those people loose, but it is a shame it happened to begin with. this trigger was a war that has needed to happen. both people are slaves under crooked governments, no different than russia's. host: charles in colorado, independent. caller: good morning. hopefully have some time to

articulate this, but in 1947, written -- britain broke up the ottoman empire and gave israel a state. at that time, israel had 24% of the population. since then, the dirty secret that nobody in america uses reporting as the over 2000 settlements that the israelite have gone full dose palestinian homes, putting them basically in concentration camps, and confiscated their land. that is the bottom line of all of this, and that is what israel is trying to do. they just took 1000 hectors last year, and these palestinians now are living in these concentration camps, so everyone is calling hamas terrorists, and they are, but this is a reaction to a problem. if you look at gaza, it has been

under a lucky for decades, and they have been striving the people out, and the people cannot even get food, water, basic needs. it is basically a prison, open air prison. everybody is saying oh, poor israel, but if you have looked at the history of this. right now in the west bank, for instance, they are at this. they are attacking settlers, palestinians, kids, babies, they are killing them. what really irks me about all of this, too, is that all these bombs, all these planes, all these guns say made in america. and joe biden, bless his soul, but their tail is wagging the dog here, and we will never go

against israel and say, we are not going to give you any more until you agree to a two state solution, and the israelites never want to do that because if they did, and we went back somewhere near the 1967 lines, they would not be able to expand settlements anymore. netanyahu has even said they want to occupy gaza? look at hamas. they are 20% of the population, and look what they are doing to gaza. they are not going after hamas. they are just wiping out the people there. they are done. they are just bombing randomly, taking it out. so when americans start thinking, you know, oh, this is hamas. i will tell you this much, this is the fifth time. this could end, but it will not go away.

you might try to kill hamas, which will not be able to do because they will rise up again because of the horrid conditions in gaza and how the israelites are still taking over settlements. you can kill a man but not an ideal.that is a problem here . host: let's take a look at the pole that i mentioned earlier from nbc news. this is regarding israel's actions since october 7 attack. here what it says. among them aquatic voters, 51% -- among democratic voters, 51% believe israel has gone too far, versus 50% who say their actions are justified. a majority of all voters, 55% support u.s. military aid to israel, but almost half of democrats, 49%, oppose it, and that is from a poll from earlier this week from nbc news.

tanya from las vegas, democrat. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: first of all, i am calling from nevada. i have family in lebanon. what nobody is realizing is that this is not a holy war. this goes beyond bombs, missiles, hostages, and the collateral damage in the end, and nobody is taking into consideration that all the points people are making are trivial because when it comes down to it, it is a holy war. no one is emphasizing their rights or their beliefs in doing so. i am sorry for the hostages and all the people that are suffering because everybody is fanatical over there. i have to be middle eastern, as

well, and i was raised to where this is about god, allah versus god, and it astounds me nobody is taking the verses of the bible into consideration with what is happening. host: richard in north carolina, republican. caller: yeah. like the girl just said, you know, use their religion against them. load up 200 of those razorbacks, a fly them over there, and drop these boys and their titles, and as you come running out, we are going shoot you, and when we kill you, we will wrap you in a pigskin and dario. once we are -- and we will bury you. i bet you they will throw down their weapons and stop. thank you. host: henry in macedonia, ohio, independent. caller: good morning.

host: good morning. caller: i would like to say that [indiscernible] host: henry, we are having trouble hearing you. try that again. caller: can you hear me now? host: a little better. caller: i believe joe biden is doing a terrible job. from my knowledge, seems like we are going into a recession. food is so expensive. you go to the grocery store, it is like chicken is five or six dollars. what i am confused about is, you know, how is it they have money for wars but barely see they can feed the poor. they cut our schools off and everything. they send money to israel every year, $5 billion, they have free health care in israel. we don't got nothing over here. we have homeless people sleeping on the ground every single day.

on top of that, it is kind of funny how they was kind of trying to condemn russia, saying basically, putin is wrong for dropping bombs on ukraine, but they turn around and do it to another country. we have not seen no pictures coming out of ukraine of people dying. it is just kind of fake about money, politics, and last but not least, i just believe that it is just here to confuse the masses as a people. i believe joe biden is doing a horrible job, especially when it comes to this country. all the immigrants. how can you get immigrants places to stay, free rent, you have homeless people living on the street. and the first thing the u.s.

says, and his it is the best choice for those who are homeless. host: democrat in north hellenic, good morning. caller: good morning -- in north carolina, good morning. caller: good morning. that is a complicated situation. i think biden is doing the best he can do with the resources he has got. thank god we don't have no person like donald trump will try to mess up because there is no solution to it is going on over there. it will take a lot of negotiations. thank you for letting me speak my mind. host: robert, indiana, republican. caller: good morning. just have a short comment. i used to be against israel with all the money we were getting them, the $6 billion a year.

i used to complain about wire getting israel all this money? then you look around nclb's enemies they are surrounded with and you have incidents like what happened on the seventh, and you have babies being murdered in their cribs. kind of changes the perspective. my son said, you don't really believe they were doing that to the children, do you? absolutely. these fanatics have been going at it for 2000 years. it is just crazy. for them to do the tit for tat trade, no way. i don't agree with that at all. they need to release all the hostages, get them all back home, and just settle the palestinians someplace far away so this issue will go away. if not, it is never going to end. that is all i have to say. host: neal, boca raton, sort, independent.

-- florida, independent. caller: on social media, all they are doing is showing what is going on in isa. they refuse to show the video of what happened on october 7. show the video. that everybody see the atrocities that happened so they understand why israel went after hamas. that is all i am saying. you have got to show the atrocities so people understand in this world, if you do not see it on video, nobody believes it. so it is 24/7, show the video. i also believe israel is pounding gaza at this point, maybe it created the hostages cities, but it is just [indiscernible] as illustrating, if you take 1400 of ours, we will take 14,000 of yours. what was hamas thinking? what do they think the result would be going into israel,

creating these atrocities? full disclosure -- go ahead. host: i was curious what you think the answer to that is? why do you think hamas did that? caller: that is the big question. maybe this is what they wanted to create. ab they knew israel was going to come back hard, and this is exactly what they wanted to create. can anybody else come up with an answer? i have children. you always teach them, what are the results you are looking for when you do this? there has got to be an answer. i don't see an answer here, do you? you deflected. host: you think they wanted israel to overreact and inflame the rest of the world and essentially turned the world against israel? caller: honestly, it sounds diabolical, all right, but i cannot come up with any other answer. i really cannot. and i have racked my brain.

they knew israel would come back and hit hard. they had to have known it. had to. i guess that is the result they were looking for. i guess they succeeded. you know, a question to be pondered. that is all i wanted to put out there. thank you for your time. host: alex in d.c., democrat. caller: good morning. i think neil beat me to it. he hit it on the head. there is no other explanation. i have a lot of jewish friends, and on october 7, and the days and weeks after, there is a lot of pain. anybody who is listening, please check in on your jewish friends and palestinian friends because at the end of the day, you know, the human toll is the worst, you know what i mean? politics politics, we can speculate all we want, but what we can do is be there for each other. the hostage deal -- i don't know if you already or said this

earlier in the program, but the majority of the palestinians that israel is going to release our teenagers. they are mostly male teenagers between 16 and 18 and women as young as 14. what he said before, well, if you take one, i will take 100, that is the basic rule of war of commencement reaction or whatever it is called. that is the one thing i wanted to say. the other is that, you know, i am a democrat and voted for biden. i probably will vote for him again -- well, i am not going to look for trump. that is the bottom line -- going to vote for trump. that is the bottom line. i am sick of the u.s. having this moral ambiguity and saying we are going to let other countries their own decisions but also say here is six point dollars or however many billion dollars. you are forcing -- endorsing bad

behavior and those actions by saying, here is the money but do whatever you want with it. we cannot play both sides here. i think that is -- when people call in and say biden is a weak president, that is where i agree. he is morally weak, especially in this situation where he is taking the side of a country that is committing more crimes, you know, and, like i said, i have -- i feel the pain and those comparisons to 9/11 and what hamas did is so brutal and horrible, and, not but, and what israel was doing before the attack with the settlements and everything, and what they are doing now by what, 11,000 civilians killed? we cannot endorse either of those things. we cannot justify either of those things. yeah, that is all i have to say. host: all right, alex. let's talk to lori in maryland,

republican, next. caller: good morning. i wanted to know, what is the difference in the ku klux klan and hamas? because the klan hung black women by their feet, and stopped their babies. -- stomped their babies. white people would type black people to trees and beat them to death, we have said to black people on fire, and some people now are yelling here in america, we don't like men, and we would kill some of the jews here. we have terrorists here in the united states. we cannot talk about anybody. we are just as bad. host: can sam in san diego,

california, independent. caller: good morning. i think this is a really just very complicated situation that i think needed to be investigated further before rushing into conclusion and action. i think the timing is like, you know, the netanyahu government was basically at the verge of war with the changing of the judiciary there, to serve his personal needs, and there is evidence surfacing online that the foot soldiers turned a blind eye and allowed it to happen. i am not justifying the action but they could have prevented it

to have the most sophisticated surveillance, security we paid for with $350 billion of aid through multiple administrations, and then they reacted without strategically thinking. step one, let's deal with the hostages. step two, let's prevent a humanitarian crisis we don't look more savage than the savages he committed these terrorists attack. step three, let's strategically take out the hamas terrorists. that would have been a more strategic response. and i just don't think it is good for american interest because then we are viewed as just being so biased and giving unconditional support and the situation where we have already

deemed the settlements illegal. and this has just created potentially escalatory environment, and no the time -- the chinese and iranians, and the russians, and this audis all getting together so it is, like, you know, it is putting us in danger, and then notice the response at home. the hate crimes are up and everything. i think this is not dealt with rationally or it was dealt with emotionally, but i do think -- i am hopeful that maybe this pause, this cease-fire will address the underlying circumstances that fermented is event to occur, and when the former prime minister -- in any

normal country, the prime minister would resign the next day on cnn, and he is still running the show. i just think we need to be a lot more objective about this, and a lot more fact-based about this and not let this be an emotional issue with generalizations that make one party right and one party wrong because reality is not that simple. host: let's talk to terry in california, democrat. caller: good morning. when i look at this, i am deeply conflicted. i say this because i am going to say this and probably get a lot of hate, but there is enough blame on both sides of this. people forget there is an oppression of the palestinians for a long time.

and that does not, in any way, justify what they did of coming over and doing those atrocities. however, when you look at both sides of this, there is enough blame to go around. the settlements, the fact that -- look at the fact that palestine, you could cut them off without any fuel, electricity, whatever. and you have got all of this, and i do not know how to fix this. i honestly and truly do not. maybe there is a two state solution, but i think with what israel has done, it is like, ok, i have -- 1500 people have died, i am going to kill everybody in the room. that is one step too far. and i agree with what one caller

said, this is just an emotional attack. i am angry, i am going obliterate everything. and now that you have done this because we don't know how many people are dead because when you bombed buildings and they follow-up on people, you don't know how many people are in there. they don't know. i am quite sure there are just as many babies dead and people did over there. but how are you going to rebuild all of this? and then who has got the money? again, we are going to go in and pay. this part i think we need to stop. we just need to stop. that is my thought. host: john in mansfield, ohio, republican. caller: hello. i will just make a couple quick points. earlier caller, it was robert gates, defense secretary under four presidents, republican and

democrats, who said that in 40 years, joe biden was never correct on any foreign policy. and we had abraham pete's working, and two years ago, biden went to saudi arabia, which made them start talking to china, but, recently, saudi arabia and israel have been talking about it. that is like iran should visit israel to break up that camp. as far as the deaths, hamas is reporting numbers but until this is over and we can get more accurate counts, i would not take anything at face value. i just want [indiscernible] after that, they can settle it anyway they want. host: debbie in buford, georgia, independent line.

debbie, can you hear me? no. maybe somebody can help me with that line. let's try brookshire -- there is debbie. caller: debbie -- caller: yes, i wanted to call because i watched a speech given to the un by a man who was the son of the hamas architect, and he explains the mindset of the palestinian people in gaza are the actual arabs in gaza from birth, how they are indoctrinated into the hatred and the whole life. the only ambition is to kill jews -- they're only ambition is to kill jews. he explained it to the u.n.

nobody has put it on television. i watched it on the internet. and he has written "son of hamas," is claiming how as a child, he was raised from infancy to hate jews, and how even their cartoon characters show cartoons of jews killing their little puppets and they have a mickey mouse, and they have their little heroes, and they have these jewish soldiers attacking them and killing them. they indoctrinate the children from birth to hate and kill jews . that is their entire ambition in life, and he explained it all in his speech to the united nations, and you do not see that on television. you only get to see that in the internet. i wanted to introduce him to

you, and maybe you will take time to put him on your show so people can understand the mindset of the gazan arabs. host: i have heard of him, and we appreciate the suggestion, debbie. let's talk in brookshire, texas, republican line, tiny? uh -- there you are, good morning. caller: good morning. on the israel and hamas cease-fire. i am not in agreement with that. my feeling on the situation, no. they need to just bomb them out. they are not going to change their mind. there goal is to destroy israel. they do not want a two state solution or anything like that.

if you want to blame anything on israel, it is the palestinians that voted hamas and as their leader. they are just as bad as china and russia. and the united states because we have hamas people sitting in our congress, in this united states. we have people here to -- who want to see israel destroyed. israel will never be destroyed because god will not allow it. pray for israel and you will be blessed. you will be cursed by trying to destroy israel. israel will never be destroyed. and we just have to understand that. hamas is a terrorist organization and they are able to kill anyone. they are raping the women and then they turn them loose. host: that is a time that we

have got for this segment. thank you for everybody that called in and participated in this segment. you will have more time to weigh in on this during open forum. coming up, michael tanner of the foundation for research on equal opportunity talks about efforts to fight poverty in the united states and why the federal government's approach needs to be revamped. and then lisa davis from share our strength discusses their no kid hungry campaign to end childhood hunger and food insecurity in the u.s.. we will be right back. ♪ host: booktv every sunday on c-span2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. 8:00 p.m. eastern, harry dunn

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happens." find a full schedule online any on c-span.org/history. >> a healthy democracy does not just look like this, it looks like this, where americans can see democracy at work and where citizens are truly informed a republic thrives. get informed straight from the source from c-span, unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. from the nation's capital to wherever you are. because the opinion that matters the most is your own. this is what democracy looks like, c-span, powered by cable. >> washington journal continues. host: welcome back. we are joined by michael tanner, the senior fellows foundation for research on equal opportunity. we are talking about opportunities to combat poverty.

tell us about the foundation for research on equal opportunity, and who funds you and any ideally -- ideological bent. guest: we are a research organization and we have a unique perspective. we are a free market, classically liberal organization. we believe in individual liberty and rights and free markets. we also devote our efforts to dealing with people in the lower half of the income scale. everything we undertake is designed to try and raise people up and improve their standard of living. the people of the bottom who have the least right now. host: you have a paper out called "time to rethink the meaning of poverty." before we talk about that, talk about how the u.s. government defines and measures poverty? guest: there are several different measures. the official census bureau number is based on a 1950's

methodology, three times the agricultural department -- department's low-cost food plan so someone the official poverty line is about $13,590 for a single individual. a bit under $24,000 for a family of three -- of three. and then there is a supplemental measure that takes into account the cost of living and benefits people receive. under the official measure, if you get medicaid, or housing benefits or food stamps, those do not count as income. under the supplemental measure they do. but it also measures things like the cost-of-living. so if you live in california, the poverty rate -- the level is higher than in a low-cost state like west virginia. host: let me show this from the information from the u.s. census bureau. this shows the u.s. poverty rate

jumps up as covid era tax credits expire. but here are the two lines for the measures you are talking about. you talked about the official poverty rate, here in red and the supplemental rate which went down dramatically because of covid era tax rates. and now they are backup. even slightly higher than the official rate. why two measures, and historically, where did they come from? guest: it was used for most of the time we have been measuring poverty since the 60's, at least. it is still the official positive -- poverty measure that comes out from the census bureau. one thing that everybody agrees on is that it is a lousy measure and they have not found a better one. the supplemental measure was designed to solve some the problems of the official measure, but it has its own issues as well.

nobody landed on a perfect measure. you do point out one of the problems with any of these measures is that they are obsessed with dollar amounts. what happens is with provided benefits, particularly the expansion of the child tax credit during the covid era in the -- and a number of benefits, that lower the poverty measure as far as the numbers went. but as soon as those ended people went right back into poverty. i would suggest those people were in poverty the entire time and we just disguised it. host: i would invite viewers to join the conversation. the lines this time will be a bit different. they are going to be by income level. if you have income under 30,000 a year, you can call on 202-748-8000. if you are between 30,000 and $75,000 per year, call on 202-748-8001.

and those over $75,000 a year can call us on 202-748-8002. you can also text us at 202-748-8003. and we are also going to be watching our social media feeds. so, you call for "larger and more holistic measures" to measure poverty. explain that and how would that work? guest: certainly we need dollar amounts to determine eligibility for certain programs. but the official dollar amounts provides a weird situation in which someone is earning $13,589 as poor, but someone earning 13,591 dollars is not. what we need to be looking at the broader question of whether people have opportunity to rise, if they think their children could be in better circumstances. whether they as individuals can

flourish. if they are confined by a holistic group of circumstances that is housing, education and the criminal justice system and other circumstances that prevent them from rising, they are living in poverty regardless of what the income level states. host: you talked about the difference in locations. geographical across the u.s.. i just wanted to show this from "time," a map of the united states showing that the u.s. poverty rate just had the largest increase in history but some regions struggle more. and you can see the red areas are higher percentage of people living in poverty. blue is less so. and you can see it is concentrated in the south of the country. can you talk about that a little bit, not just how that is measured but why certain areas struggle more than others as

part of the united states? guest: rural areas, particular rural areas tend to do worse than urban areas because of the way that cost-of-living is measured. if you actually went into the supplemental poverty measure is california and new york have the highest poverty rates than the south because you are trying to live on $13,000 in california is different than rural mississippi. host: so talk about the noncash benefits such as wic, snapping, -- snap, medicaid and housing assistance. how is that involved in the poverty rate, and also what those are doing and how they are measured as far as how effective they are. guest: we have 130 or 140 different anti-poverty programs. about 70 or 80 of them go to individuals and the rest to communities. there is a whole system.

most of them do not provide cash to individuals and that is one of the ironic things that resulted from welfare reform that temporary assistance to needy families went down and was largely replaced by these other programs that do not pay the poor person to put cash in their pocket, but it would pay providers like landlords, doctors and stores, training programs and such. basically, the official poverty measure does not count those. the supplemental measure tries to but still misses some. basically we spend a lot more income to people -- we send a lot more income to people who are poor than they in -- then they receive. host: what is the impact of inflation on people living in poverty and how is it measured? guest: people living in poverty suffer the most because they have to buy services that are highly volatile. they have to buy food and gasoline.

they are not as able to substitute them for other things that might be lower-cost as wealthier people can do. they can shop around in different ways. inflation falls the heaviest on people with low income. host: let us talk to callers. let us start in san diego california who is higher than 75 k. good morning. go right ahead. caller: i just have a question for mr. tanner. the new speaker of the house and the republicans in the house are writing bills that are going to get rid of wic, the women and children's health. what is going to happen to these people when the house republicans stop helping them? guest: half of all children in the united states receive wake which is higher than what most people understand. it goes far up income scale. one of the questions we have is why do we have so many different food programs? we have snap and wic, and 25 or

so different food programs. what we should be doing is combining them and instead of providing them with individual bits of food but with cash so they can shop themselves. host: kim in iowa, under 30 k. good morning. caller: good morning. i have a question about this. maybe if we stop giving the tax cuts to the rich we can combat poverty. most of moneys come from subsidized places. new york is subsidized. so when we subsidize and the money goes to the government like in iowa or kentucky, what do the governors do with that money? because once the money comes from the federal to give to the

governors, it is really the governors that is not giving out the money correctly to all the places that needs them and all of the infrastructures like dhs and food stamps or wic. it is the government which is cutting this program because i know in the democratic states, they help subsidize the poor states because people are giving tax cuts to the rich. host: let us get a response. guest: you have to be careful because you cannot redistribute wealth that does not exist. if you tax businesses or entrepreneurs too heavily, they do not create the wealth that we can give to leo -- to the low income people. it is not a case where you can tax the rich and give to the poor. you also simply do not have enough rich people to make that difference. if you confiscated every penny

that everyone who is a millionaire or billionaire had which you can only do once, you still would not pay all of the unfunded obligations of the federal government or federal debt. basically you have to do action on the spending side. host: i will just put on the screen the u.s. poverty rate so people can see it by year. this is from the census and this is the rate from the supplemental poverty measure and that looks at government programs and tax credits. you can see the numbers between 2019 and the big dip in 2021 to 7.8% and then back up in 2022 to 12.4%. you mentioned that before about once the covid era assistance ended that people went right back into poverty. is there a way that that government funding could help pull people out of poverty so

they do not continue. guest: the question is whether or not they are being pulled out of poverty. we take care of their material needs. we do a good job of taking care of their material needs. if you look at the benefits that individuals receive when they are on various social where pharaoh programs, the real poverty rate can drop as low as 3% because if you count all the income that people receive in the programs. i would suggest those people are still poor because they are now -- they are not self-sufficient and they are not able to rise, they do not have hope for their children. we have to go beyond that and said we should not be working about poverty less miserable but worried about ending poverty altogether. host: let us talk to coco, charles city, virginia. over 70 5k. caller: first of all, i am very lucky to be making over 70 5k --

$75,000, i am extremely lucky. i am also supporting two other people in the household. and we are spinning $130 billion on israel, can you answer this question how much -- after i talk, how much it would take to end poverty in the united states? also if we invest more in education and not 13% in defense and on wars, maybe we could have all of these people. i'm about to leave education because i am tired of being -- there is a lot going on. one thing about the map, could you pull it up again because it is very familiar to the map of 1850 with the missouri compromise and i am curious about that. host: here is the map, cocoa, that i showed before of and this

is on time.com, u.s. poverty rate had the largest increase but some regions still struggle far more. that is that. she asked how much would it take to end poverty in the united states? guest: we do not know. we spend $1.1 trillion at the federal level fighting poverty and $700 billion at the state level so $1.8 trillion. if you want to go back since lyndon johnson declared poverty -- a war on poverty we spent close to $40 trillion fighting poverty and we have not ended it. so the question is whether simply spending money is the best way to do that. she points out education and i think education is clearly a route out of poverty. if you drop out of school you are more likely to be poor if you -- then if you do not go to harvard -- to college.

what your education is whether your job prospects are and the crime rate has a lot to do with your zip code and yet we have exclusionary zoning laws that keep people out of certain labor hoods and we need to d -- we need to deal with that. we need to deal with the labor justice system -- the criminal justice system that prevents them from getting jobs i can move up in. there are a lot of areas that we need to take action that is not simply a matter of money to individuals. host: we have a question who says "we saw temporary measures implemented for the pandemic work extremely well in reducing poverty. our decision to eliminate them defies logic. it is working. if it is working why do we have to end yet. it does not make sense." guest: my question is whether or not it worked. it helped raise material income level but it did not necessary help them rise to where they could be become -- where they could become self-sufficient.

the second part is that we saw all of that spending doing -- during the covid era that led to the inflation that we feel today under trump and biden administration's. we spent a lot of money that we do not have and that is inflationary. host: stephen from illinois under $30,000. caller: yes. back in april of 2022i herniated on the way to the hospital and my heart stopped. they amputated part of my leg. in order to stay in the nursing home that provided me excellent care, which took eight months i had to max out all of my credit cards. now i am $40,000 in debt.

and i am on social security. that is a big problem that i have today. i am barely living on $600 a month. i have doctors appointments, and so forth. and i would like to find out a better way for me. host: what do you think? guest: i am sorry to hear about your illness and the suffering you are going through. second, the disability system we have does not work particularly well. the social security disability system provides low benefits and provides benefits without necessarily targeting the people most in need for it. it operates like a light switch, you are disabled or not. we do not deal with people who can work part-time well.

we have a lot of problems with the disability system and that needs to be revised. host: let us go to nevada, on our line for between $30,000 and $70,000. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. i appreciate getting on. i do not want to be the elephant in the room and terrifying. i make $30,000 to $70,000 and i'm pretty much maxed out at my job. i do not have a prospect for homeownership anymore. most people under $75,000 do not. i think that is a terrible situation. and that really ties into poverty. because people who are forced into low income rent do not like where they live and the landlord and tenant situation is a painful thing. we need to remember "its a wonderful life" and we need more jimmy stewarts in the world.

poverty is related to pop -- the property taking and capitalism. when you capitalize on their rent and their wages do not grow, $20 an hour does not do it anymore. all of this stuff is ids. the economy is suffering and the young people are suffering. i heard somebody that said he argued with his son. i think the gentleman said $40 trillion to combat poverty. while we are $40 trillion in debt. i got a hundred trillion dollar bank note from the bank of zimbabwe so i would like to pay the debt of my entire -- of the entire country. host: i hope you are not responding to those emails. guest: i think the housing question is important. the fact is that where you live makes a big difference. we tend to push the port together where all of the pathology -- pathologies that go

with poverty tends to magnify themselves. they show that your zip code really impacts the future and the future of your kid as far as education. a lot of that has to do a course with we have had high interest rates to combat the inflation caused by overspending. a lot of it has to do with zoning laws that can add 10 to 15% of the cost of housing depending on where you are. the minimum lot sizes and the fact that you can only have single-family housing and not multiple family housing and a minimum lot size, parking requirements. all of these add to the cost of housing. we should be looking at how we reduce, not subsidize. host: steve is asking to explain how state policies led to a lack of competition and the baby formula market and the formula shortage that we saw in 2021 and 2022. guest: i cannot comment.

i do not know how the state which impacted the shortage. a lot of the shortage had to do with the fact that we would not allow imports from overseas. we basically used protectionism to prevent the import of baby formulas that would have been perfectly safe from other countries and we finally broke that down and it did help. but initially it helps drive the shortages. host: marcus, chicago, illinois. over $75,000. good morning. caller: how are you? host: good. caller: i wanted to put this to you from my perspective. every penny of wealth that is owned collectively across the united states and all of the trillions of dollars floating around in the stock market, all of the ill begotten gains belong to the workers through the underpaying of wages.

every company, every corporation, and the boss and all of the landlords that hold the property, and everything that is owned collectively in smaller and fewer hands is a reason we have a high poverty rate. i think if workers owned and controlled every business and every place of work across the country we would not have a poverty rate if they were able to determine what rages -- what wages should be instead of profits provisioned. instead of a few owners investing land and wealth stealing it from the workers who created it in the first place, we would not be in the situation. there is a book by karl marx i think everybody should read. guest: historically, i think free-market capitalism has done more to decrease poverty and increase wealth societally than any other subject. if you look at history and you go back through most of history

what you find was that man was desperately and miserably poor. and we were ruled over by a handful of people who are less desperately and miserably poor. 300 years ago the wealth in the world increased dramatically and poverty rates declined. that was the advent of modern three -- modern free-market capitalism. while anything can be abused and capitalism has become crony capitalism, i think we need to generate the wealth if we are raising people out of poverty. if we have a better standard of living we need a wealthier planet. host: this is lisa who says i have lived in a poor state my entire life. we also have a very low labor participation rate. if you get able-bodied people money for not working, they will choose to live in squalor versus working on improving their conditions. the cycle of poverty continues. guest: i do not think anybody chooses to live in squalor.

i should -- i think we should not look at poverty as a moral fair -- failing. the highest marginal taxpayers is the moment you leave welfare for work. payroll taxes you start paying right away. you start losing your benefits more than a dollar per dollar and some cases you can lose several thousand dollars in benefits. and then you incur the expenses of going to work, transportation and childcare and all those type of expenses. you could end up worse off financially if you take a job than remaining on welfare. that is a situation we have to rectify. that is a real disincentive for people to take the long-term approach of getting a job and working their way up, which is definitely the route out of poverty. host: washington, d.c., under $30,000. caller: i am following up on what you just said. i think most people have the

conception about poverty is that most people in poverty do not work, and that is not the case. most people in poverty do work and there are a lot of hard-working people who do not earn enough income. and the child tax credit, what would be your solution? i am interested in who backs your organization? what kind of people back your organization? what would be the solution for working poor people that work 40 to 60 hours a week and are still in poverty to get more out of what they do? guest: yes. i certainly think we need to provide people -- i would change the earned income tax credit to be more of a wage supplement and right now it is more of a supplement for how any kids you have. i think single adults should be more eligible and we should

provide it on a regular biweekly or monthly basis or even quarterly rather than waiting until the end of the year so you have to file and it is 18 months before you get it back. the things that we can do to improve in the short term, but we also need to think about the long-term and how to ensure that the children will be better off and that has to do with things like education and other reforms that i've talked about. host: i want to show you earlier this year the brookings institution, wendy atul berg joined us and she talked about the rise in last year's poverty rate and the expiration of federal pandemic era relief programs. i will show it and get your response. [video clip] >> sadly this increase was not surprising. let us review how we got here. as a pandemic hit i was enormously concerned about what would happen to poverty rates in poverty rates for children, more particularly.

as it turns out we ran a very successful experiment in this country. we put in place really significant fiscal policies that temporarily reduce poverty rates. even in the midst of a pandemic. unfortunately those policies were temporary. and so now we have erased all of the gains we have made in 2020 and 2021. and now poverty rates are back to where they were before the pandemic. [end video clip] host: what do you think of that? guest: i-8 think we did not really reduce the poverty rates. we did prove that if you give people money they have more money. as long as you keep giving them more money they will have more money. but we did not do anything during that period, and it was during a pandemic so there were limits about what we could do. we did not improve their situation over the long run. what we really want is people not getting government benefits

because they are making enough money on their own that they do not have to rely on that support. host: randy, southwest virginia. between 30000 and 75,000. caller: so the thing about people working and not getting benefits on low income, i think they should kill the people -- i think they should give the low income people there benefits. and the corporate inflation needs to go away. that is where the inflation is coming from, the corporate. thank you very much. guest: inflation is driven by several things, regulatory inflation. there are the trade barriers that we put up because the tariffs are a tax on goods that we consume. but it is also largely a monetary phenomenon driven by the fact that we put more money

in circulation and have less the demand cannot keep up with it. we tend to debase the value of the currency. host: there is a question here on -- from sheila in massachusetts. "what is the effect of 10 million illegal immigrants having on the poverty rate?" guest: a lot of the immigrants that come here are poor, by definition. they are refugees and living in poverty in their own countries and they come here with almost nothing. to the degree that we count them, it does increase the poverty rate because by definition they are poor. if you look in terms of what happens to them as they are here, they actually do well in rising out of poverty and having their children rise out of poverty. host: tim in wisconsin. under $30,000. caller: i am retired, so i do

ok. i have everything paid for so i cannot complain. i would like to look at the overall map in this country and it directly correlates to the poverty rate. i mean a lot of the southern states and god bless them, they are all americans, the american -- the wages have been so suppressed for 40 years. i talked to people from oklahoma and louisiana and they make 50% more in wisconsin and we are a mid wage state. i am a retired union man. the unions are nonexistent. they used to pay $25 an hour in auditor plants in detroit -- in the auto plants in detroit. no wonder the poverty rate is going up. it also correlates to the deficit. a lot of the states, the average worker does not pay anything under the federal income tax because they come below or at

the poverty rate. unless you started raising these problems, it is not going to go away. guest: i think we do need to increase productivity. we need to increase wages. we need to increase economic growth. we should be pursuing progrowth policies. you cannot redistribute money that does not exist so you have to increase the wealth of the society as a whole and then worry about who gets it. host: john in stephenville, texas. between 70 -- between $30,000 and $75,000. caller: thank you for allowing me to speak. being around $40,000 a year between my wife and i, we are on social security. i feel like the entitlement system works well for some people but if fraud and corruption could be eliminated from the system that i feel like we could increase the amount of those benefits to people.

and it would be more apt to affect them and keep them on a level plane and the poverty could fall off based on those criteria and the fraud and corruption being removed. guest: i would say, we obviously have too much this payments and a lot of what we would cause -- call fraud is ms. payment -- misspayment is just because of bad reppert -- record-keeping. we have 130 government programs with contradictory availability rules. if you get program a you do not get program b unless you have program c and then you lose program d. different people receive different benefits because of how well they have navigated the system. we really need to consolidate

the programs, simplify them and move to cash and then find a way to determine how much and how effective the programs are being. how much waste and fraud there is, things of that nature. host: paul in connecticut. over $75,000. caller: we spoke about a month ago, a little over a month ago. the thing that riles me up most is the interpretation of income levels. i might have been off. i told the screener that i would have to consult my accountant for an exact number. we know that people's fortunes are lost and won in this highly risky economy that we have. it is the excessive of capital bank. we heard it from one caller previous to mine.

what about the computation of added value. you know, there are a lot of people in society that can fix anything. they work on their cars. they live low rents. they drive a you go 40 years ago or a renault. why haven't i heard anything on this talk so far in this program about how applications vary for government assistance, how they trade off, the agency's trade-off on the care of an individual? funding wars within agencies? people out on the street? i have not heard too much about that one and i would like to hear him comment on some of the things i said. guest: in terms to the way the agency's is that people run them in washington and they are people like everyone else. they compete for power and

influence. many of them are trying to do good but there is a tendency to believe that my program is the best program. when you have 130 or 100 40 different programs dealing with property, you are having this competition for funds. you also have every committee and program has the defenders in congress and special interest offenders. we create entire industries of people who lobby for the poor and foodstamp levels are determined by urban democrats who have constituencies receiving food stamps but also rural republicans who represent farmers who want to have foodstamp so people can buy food. there are special interest dynamics at play. host: michael is in lexington, north carolina. under $30,000. good morning. cory in louisiana. caller: that is me.

yes. good morning. you know, i think what i am hearing a lot of, and i do not make very much annually. but, what i see and hear, to be honest i think we all got used to living a certain lifestyle and now that things get harder it -- we want to continue living in these lifestyles. a previous caller talked about marks. i think he is not the answer, milton freeman or thomas soul are the types of economists that we should be looking at to try to fix the issues that we have. i think that sometimes, when it comes to these programs like many of the people have called in before and said we get used to the paychecks. we get used to the handouts, and we have to change our lifestyles a little bit more in order to accommodate the times. and some people are begging to

continue to get the paycheck from the senator and the government. but the government should be not -- should not be the one providing for us. and i think essentializing capitalism is the best way to tackle this. the more we centralize and socialize the more dependent everybody gets. like i said, i do not make a whole lot each year. but, i am able to manage my family decent enough. and there are things that i can take care of on my own to make my life a little bit better for my kids and wife. host: we will get a response. guest: decentralization is a good point. many of the reforms and programs that we saw came from waivers and state programs. i think what we need to do is have more experimentation. the states are supposed to be the laboratories. we can see what states can do.

but poverty is different in different states. you are in the mississippi delta, you are dealing with one set of problems and in san francisco another. i think we need to allow the states to sort of have more leeway in terms of what we are doing in terms of experimentation. host: david and texas. over $75,000. good morning. caller: good morning. first i would like to say i was very pleasantly surprised listening to this discussion. the gentleman seems to come up with his use of the word sustainability, talk about the fact that you cannot tax everybody to death and etc.. it makes me feel like he takes a lot more into account then how to take money from one place and put it into another without any consequence to where the money is coming from. the word sustainability which you have used more than once is a huge issue if not the issue because like you said to get

more people to money they will have more money but when you run out of that money you have a problem. in the united states we have a sustainability issue, and this one type of sustainability issue. have you heard of the millennial project that took place between 2005 and 2015. it is a really interesting book about it and i cannot remember the author's name. he was convinced that he could eliminate poverty in africa and some of the worst places if they could just have the right amount of money and put the program together and it would complete -- and it was a complete disaster. the five-year plan became ten-year plan and i came back to the state of -- to the idea of sustainability. one of the issues of sustainability right now is we have just let in 12 minutes in -- 12 million immigrants from south of the border and look

what is happening in new york city where they will be cutting back on police and school buses and all of these budgets because they do not have the money to support all of these people. you have a welfare system without anything to keep extra people out. juergen have more people taking advantage of the welfare system. guest: i will push back a little bit on the immigration issue. most come here to work and most are not eligible for most social welfare programs. immigrants actually use welfare at a lower rate, with legal and undocumented use welfare at a lower weight -- rate then nativeborn americans. there is a larger issue involved in people have talked about moving to person a and person b. this french economist talked about the broken window fallacy like a boy throws a rock through the window of the restaurant

restaurant tours how to hire a glaze year to fix the window. he could then buy food at the restaurant and everybody was better off so what we really should do is have more boys throw rocks at windows. the reality is that they have not created new wealth. that restaurant tour might have gone and bought books with it are sent his kids to school. by fixing the broken window we do not take that into account. host: michael tanner, senior fellow for a foundation of research for equal opportunities. thank you so much for joining us. guest: real pleasure. great calls. host: in about 30 minutes, lisa davis from the group share our strength discusses the no kid hungry campaign to end childhood hunger and food insecurity but first it is open for them. you can start coming -- calling you now. democrats, 202-748-8000. republicans, 202-748-8001.

independents, 202-748-8002. and you can also text us at 202-748-8003. we will be right back. ♪ >> dr. sarah ogilvie has spent eight years studying the creation of the oxford english dictionary. her book is called "the dictionary people." she has a phd in luke -- in linguistics from oxford and studies the 3000 original contributors. her comment is "i was thrilled to discover not one but three murderers, a pornographic collector, karl marx's daughter, a president of yale, the inventor of the tennis net adjusters, a pair of lesbian writers who wrote under a male panel -- pen name and a cocaine addict found dead in a rail

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a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/history. ♪ >> this year booktv remarks 25 years of sunshine a sparklight desha spotlight on reading nonfiction authors in their books. nearly 900 cities and festivals visited and 16,000 events. booktv has provided viewers with 92,000 hours of programming on the latest literary discussions on history, politics, and biographies. you can watch booktv every sunday on c-span2 or online at tipi.org. booktv, 25 years of television for serious readers. >> washington journal continues. host: welcome back.

it is open forum so you set the agenda for the next half hour on the program, anything you want to talk about, public affairs, politics, anything happening in washington, d.c.. i wanted to make sure you were aware of this news from bloomberg, in case you are following the ai industry. sam altman returns as open i -- openai ceo. this follows intense pressure from open it -- openai's investors. he agreed to a investigation around his dismissal five days ago and so he has back at the helm of openai. also, this on "usa today" the voting rights act takes a new low. a ruling could gut enforcement. "a federal appeals court issued a ruling under who consume under the voting rights act. if allowed to hand -- to stand

it would undermined enforcement of the landmark 1965 law. we will go straight to your calls. butler in fort smith, --portsmouth, virginia. caller: virginia has a law called donation of professional services, this is a tax credit not deduction. this is for doctors, dentists, and lawyers who help indigent people. i am wondering whether the extension of this law not only to the other states and commonwealth, but also to the congress for federal taxation would improve access to medical care for everyone in our country? host: ok. and anderson in new york city. did -- independent line. good morning. caller: good morning, how are

you? host: good. caller: you are absolutely the best host that i have seen on c-span and i have watched this for a long time. you are fair, you can engage with the callers, and you are really the best. it is my hope that the c-span producers will give you your own three-hour open forum because you are that good. host: thank you. caller: you are welcome. now what i wanted to speak about was what was happening in gaza because, i'm sorry i was a little winded because i was driving. but i wanted to speak on what is happening in gaza. there is no moral equivalent. i notice this in the media, there is this balance, for example we call it the

israeli-hamas war. it is actually israel's war on terror. hamas is not a nation. not from what i understand. it is israel's war on terror. the final point i wanted to make was what happened to those hostages on october 7 and beyond, that was humiliation. it was not for example, they just went in and they went up against another nation. this was humiliation. women were raped repeatedly. repeatedly. they were humiliated. that little boy that lost his father. they mocked him for it. they said look what happened to his dad. they mocked him. when somebody -- i have no idea how much because it was not

really an issue for me. i had no idea how much anti-semitism came out. i -- there were about 48 hours of sympathy for the people in what happened to the hostages and one final point i wanted to make and please let me make it. it is important. we are getting numbers from the u.s. media and they do not give you a straight count. they say 13000 and any loss of life is horrible. they are saying 13,000 palestinians. we do not know the numbers. we also do not know the condition of the hostages. now, if a woman went through such a nightmare, repeatedly, do we know what state these people are going to come back in, living in a tunnel?

you go to a party and then you go into a tunnel for a month? we do not know what is happening or what condition those hostages are in and we do not know how many hostages there are? they are saying 240. we do not know. that is the most important point i want to make. there is no moral equivalent. and i wish our media would be more fair. the media is obviously on the side of the palestinians. we see it and we know it. host: we got your point. i wanted to bring this up. this is new york state today. and it says that musk faces backlash for social media post. "elon musk flirted with white mash -- with white nationalism and amplified claims that south africa is an antiwhite apartheid

state. his recent post accusing jews of pushing hatred against whites has set off a firestorm and prompted a public rebuke from the white house. advertisers including apple, disney, ibm and lions gate retainment pulled ads from x, which did not respond to a request from, -- for comment." michael from and a soda. democrat. good morning. caller: good morning, how are you doing? host: good. caller: i was calling in retrospect to your last guest. my concern of equal opportunity is how are we supposed to be ready for equal opportunity when we have not had chances to even afford those opportunities, and retrospective. we live in one area and we want to move into another area, we have to come up with those resources.

previously before moving, we cannot have opportunities if we are not ready for those opportunities. and in certain cases there are individuals who live paycheck-to-paycheck. how are they supposed to move from one area in the same state to another area? you live in the southern part of the state which was rural and you pay $500 a month. if you want to have a great opportunity like you have to move into one of the other cities you move from 1500 to $5,000 a month. host: what do you see as a solution or a way to alleviate poverty in the u.s.? caller: first of all we need an even playing field. host: how do you even the playing field? caller: we have to start paying more. we cannot have people working three jobs just because he wants to make a better life for his children. fortunately, my children are attending medical institutions,

so they are going to have a greater life than i have had. up until this time it has been a struggle. i am a professional. i work for the local school district, but it is still a struggle even living in the rural community, and a homeowner. host: let us go to wayne in west columbia, texas. independent. caller: is this still the open forum? host: it is. caller: i wanted to comment on the events 60 years ago, november 22, 1963 on the day that president kennedy was visiting dallas. i was a high school student in dallas on that day, and i left my high school to go downtown to see the parade with president kennedy. and i remember the very -- that very few of my classmates were

interested in going. but, if you were you were allowed four hours to leave school to see the parade. on that day i did see president kennedy and -- in the motorcade. five minutes before he continued on down the parade route to where the shots were fired that death. it was a great memory to get to see the president. a few cars behind the president was vice president johnson in another car. so i got to see both of those. after the parade, after the president had passed by my friends and i went back to our high school and were driving back towards our high school when we heard the news of what had happened. we returned to our high school and went back to class and our

principal came on the pa system and announced the president had died. it is one of those events i will always remember. i remember the sorrow of my fellow classmates. i was in biology class when i returned to the school and the events were very start like. that was on a friday, it was a nice day in dallas. it rained earlier in the morning. around 12:30 is when the president's car drove by where i was standing on main street with thousands of other people that had come out of the office buildings and it was lunchtime so they had come down out of the office buildings to see the parade. the crowd was very friendly along the way.

dallas was a republican stronghold at that time in a democratic state. that was one of the reasons president kennedy and vice president johnson and senator ralph yarborough was in the car with lbj. host: you did not see anything or hear any of the shots? you were too far away? caller: i was too far away. we were right in the center of downtown and the shots came at the school book depository where lee harvey oswald was near what they call the triple underpass and you are leaving the main center of the city when you are at that point and you're going out onto a freeway and that is where the president was going to a luncheon scheduled. we were driving home, back to

school, when we saw all the police cars traveling towards the city and that is when we turned on our radio. we had been talking and excited about what we had seen. something must have happened. we turned on our radio and started hearing the news step went ahead and continued back to school. host: i am so glad you called and shared that with us. i have this article from npr.org if you would like to take a look. it says 60 years after jfk's assassination the agent that tried to save him open stop and this is the secret service agent who was riding in the back of the presidential limousine moments after president john f. kennedy was shot. november 22, 1963.

bob in illinois. republican. good morning. caller: good morning. love c-span. the definition of insurrection, the first hearing after january 6 the fbi director wray was asked if there was an insurrection and says it was just a riot. every democrat that refers to this as an insurrection, they are misinforming the populace. when it comes to no one is above the law, the first thing president biden is supposed to do is protect our citizens, and by allowing open borders he is violating the law. now he is changing gas stoves, gas furnaces, you cannot have a

leaf blower. anything trump did he reversed. trump kept spies out of the colleges. the chinese making bacterial labs in california. there are so many crazy things going on. i hope the country comes out to vote in big numbers and we get trump back into save our country. thanks, mimi. host: you mentioned fbi director christopher wray. here is from pbs newshour, christopher wray because january 6 domestic terrorism. you can watch any testimony of christopher wray on our website, c-span.org. sam in hillsdale, michigan, democrat. good morning.

host: i wanted to remind -- caller: i wanted to remind everyone of donald trump's snake story. it is the snake that is doing the warning. if you could play that i would appreciate it if the producers can do that. it is the snake that is warning people. thank you. host: newmarket, alabama. independent. caller: thanks to you and everone else on c-span for taking our call. i watched a presentation yesterday on c-span2 of mark levine discussing his latest book, the democrat party hates america. he was hosted by the ronald reagan presidential library. he argued that the democratic party, which he refers to as the democratic party because it is not democratic, but he argues

the democratic party has a marxist agenda and wants to destroy freedom. he said the democratic party should be crushed. i am a moderate conservative. i am not a fan of democratic party policy, but mark levine sounded like a nazi. i was gob smacked in the audience cheered him. it made my skin crawl. i do not challenge his right to speak his mind, i challenges content. i see the program will be aired tomorrow on c-span2 and i encourage everyone to tune in lynn listen to this guy. i found him chilling. -- everyone to tune in and listen to this guy. i found him chilling. caller: i want to talk a little bit about what the last guest had on about the poverty level. it does not change when you give a four-person $10,000 and i know

firsthand because i have several sub $30,000 earners that i rent a lot of section eight property. i get to see firsthand how they spend the money they get, they just squander that money. that is why they are poor again within a few days after they get their checks. then they are back to living on what they had. the reason most people are poor, what is the solution, it is education? most people are poor because they are not properly educated and how to manage their money. that is what i've seen in the people i've dealt with individually. they have children too early, they moved out of the house, they do not save money. this builds on one problem after the other. they make too little money. i made too little money when i started out. i stayed home and invested in real estate that is how i ended up renting in -- renting to section eight tenants.

in 45 years i've never had a section eight tenant get off of section eight because the government make sure you stay on it. they look at your wages to see how much you are making. if you make more you have to pay them more in rent so they can ever get off of it. they deliberately do that. if you want them to get off at you let them keep the extra money this is the problem with the system. it is designed to hold them back. if you get a fish they can eat for a day but if you give them a fishing pole they can eat for the rest of their lives. i never made above $45,000 but i was able to acquire a lot of real estate and i am well-off now because of it, because i saved everything. i did not buy nike sneakers, i do not smoke or drink or have kids out of wedlock. i stayed home and every time i had the opportunity i would buy another house. it is all still relative.

host: you said you stayed home, you had a stable home, i guess you are able to live with your parents? not everybody has that opportunity? caller: i moved out when i was 21. i worked the whole timer was in the house so i save that money to buy the first house, i had a house when i was 19. it does require somebody to have at least a mother and a father that you are staying at their house. i have a family member that stays in with their parents, she is 30 years old, and i have two of them that have stayed home with her parents, not in my house, and both of them are broke, they both worked for the 10 or 12 years they've been working and they have squandered all of their money. they should move have paid off houses for the event of money they went through. plus they have debt on top of that. host: let's move on to madison,

wisconsin. democrat. go ahead. caller: first off, i find it weird when people want to interchange with you, it is kind of bizarre. people always complain about the expense of gas. gas is expensive. the number one, two, and three vehicles in the united states are all pickup trucks. which is bizarre because -- they have a 20 gallon tank. of course gas is expensive. five people in the government in the u.n. security council manufacturer weapons. the thing is with hamas and

israel, the weapons manufacturers are very happy. it will not keep peace in that region because of the fact that we support all kinds of stuff. host: i guess we lost him? in any case, that is the time we've got for open forum. up next, lisa davis from the group share our strength discusses their no kid hungry campaign to end childhood hunger and food insecurity in the u.s. stay with us. >> c-span's campaign 2024 coverage continues with the presidential primaries and caucuses. watch live on the c-span network as the first boats are cast in the upcoming presidential election along with candidate

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i am joined by lisa davis of share our strength, the senior vp of the no kid hungry campaign. welcome to the program. let's talk about the organization called share our strength. guest: we are a national nonprofit that brings people together to share their strength and help make sure all families and children can have what they need to thrive. share our strength leads the no kid hungry campaign which is focused on ending childhood hunger in the united states. host: when we say going hungry or food insecure, how is that defined? guest: food insecurity is the measure of the u.s. government uses to help to find how many people do not have consistent access to enough food because of their economic situation. host: the usda has said that a lot more people were food insecure for 2022 than they were

in 2021. can you explain why that happened? guest: the first thing to know is child hunger is a very solvable problem and we know what the solutions are. during the pandemic when schools shut down their physical buildings and kids were not getting those free meals everyone sprang into action. elected officials, nutrition officials, community organizations. as a result of the smart policies enacted and the tremendous effort we saw food insecurity declined to the lowest level since the usda started tracking it in 1998. host: you would like to see those policies come back and become permanent? guest: exactly. we sought filed hungry declined 46%. -- we saw child hungry declined

46%. as those policies have timed out at a time families are facing hardship we have seen all of that progress reverse. it is unacceptable and entirely avoidable. host: i want to show an article from the associated press with a headline school kids in eight states can now eat free school meals. advocates verge congress for nationwide policy in those states are minnesota, new mexico, colorado, vermont, michigan, california, massachusetts and maine. those are the students -- those of the states were students regardless of income will get free lunches. do you agree with those? guest: i do. other states have illuminated reduced prices which can be really burdensome on families and they have expanded a technical provision called the community eligibility provision which let schools in high poverty areas provide free meals.

there are a lot of steps that are happening and we know there is so much evidence that when kids get the nutrition they are need their physical health is better. they develop better. they are more able to learn. they perform better at tests and are more likely to graduate from high school. these programs are so important. host: we will invite our callers to call in if you have a question for our guest lisa davis please give us a call by region. if you are in the eastern or central time zones the number is (202) 748-8000. mountain or pacific (202) 748-8001. we do have a special line set aside for those that are experiencing any kind of food insecurity. you can call the line (202) 748-8002. we would like to hear about your

experience. i want to show you a pie chart from the usda. this shows food insecure households. this is the amount. adults only is 8.5%. low food security among children is 7.8%. very low food security among children at 1%. if you could give us the difference between low food security and very low? where is that line? guest: on in five children in united states lives at risk of hunger. what that means is they are in a household that does not consistently have access to enough food for everyone in the household to lead an active and healthy life. those are parents having to make the impossible choice between whether they pay the rent or

fill the pantry. the very low food security number are the families with kids that are actually missing meals. they are experiencing the most acute form of food insecurity. both low food security and very low food security have a well documented impact on children and families. their health, their education, even their graduation rates and lifetime earnings. in washington we get so caught up in thinking about how do we write policies that are fiscally responsible, but when you look at the effort of feeding her kids and have the ability to thrive and succeed, the return on that investment is second to none. we cannot afford not to nourish our children. host: this is an article from

politico that says food aid for low income mothers becoming spending flashpoints. advocates fear they may have to begin putting people on wait lists to receive benefits if congress does not increase funding in january. where do things stand in congress? guest: congress averted a shut down. it is only temporary. they have to come back and do it again in january and february. host: what does a shut down mean to people who are on food stamps and wic and things like that? guest: for some families that has catastrophic consequences. during and after the pandemic there were smart bipartisan investments in wic that made it more accessible to many more mothers and babies and children that need that program. this congress does not maintain those investments. they will have to start turning

away these moms and babies. they will not get the nutrition they need. wic is such an important program. it helps parents make ends meet and has such a well documented impact on the health of the babies and children that participate. looking at how wealthy our nation is, i think there should be strong bipartisan support to make sure we are giving babies the healthy food need to thrive. host: rachel is in houston, texas. good morning. caller: i want to wish everybody a happy thanksgiving. speaking of thanksgiving it is appropriate to be discussing food insecurity since the holiday is centered around food. i would like to mention something that affects children and adults of all ages. that is having food for people who are not able to swallow food

well. i have family members who use the meals on wheels program but unfortunately some people cannot chew the food where they might not have the ability to cut up the food and if they cannot afford caregivers to help prepare the food for them they cannot beat that. -- they cannot eat that. i'm not sure if there is something that can be done to ensure people with medical conditions who need the feud -- you need the food are able to get food properly prepared for them. guest: you raise a number of really important points. it is critical to make sure that our nutrition programs are making food available that meets people where they are. i do not have a lot of knowledge

on that particular issue, but i appreciate you raising it. you also raise the issue of making sure we have an adequate caregiving workforce that is accessible to families whose loved ones need care and that is also important. thank you very much for raising those critical issues. host: will is in canyon country, california. good morning. caller: thanks for taking my call. i have some issues with the whole food stamp program. i think they should make it more like a wic program where you get vouchers and the food that you need. am i still on? host: yes you are. you're saying vouchers for the food stamps? caller: yes. i have some friends on food

stamps, i know a lot of people on food stamps. when they go out and they buy groceries they are getting steak and all of this fish and expensive namebrand food and i make under $30,000. i do own a property with one rental but even with that i make under 30,000. i cannot afford to buy this luxury. i get the storebrand food and i barely ever buy a stake. it is sad that the working class does not quite get the benefits that the poor would get. here in california, anybody can get food stamps. if they make under $1000 or $2000, almost half of california's on food stamps. it is hard. i know my brother works really hard and he has a family of five and he is above the limit and he can barely afford his health insurance he has to pay for. he cannot get food stamps.

my older brother is struggling. with a lower income it seems likely get a lot of stuff. they get a lot of freebies. host: let's get a response. guest: i am sorry about the challenges your brother is facing. we hear every day from families across the country who because of really high housing costs, high childcare costs are struggling to make ends meet. that is not ok. on the issue of snap or food stamps it is important to acknowledge that benefits averaged out to about two dollars per person per meal and families have to make pretty hard to balance that out to buy the food they need. there may be isolated instances of people buying steak but what we know from the data is that the most commonly purchased items are things like milk, bananas, grapes, pasta, some of

the basic staples. for families those benefits are so important. we know even with snap a lot of families are running out of money for food are the end of the month because food costs can be high. one of the challenges about being limited in what people can buy is it adds a lot of extra costs in bureaucracy and red tape and makes the program harder to operate. one of the benefits of snap is its administrative fees are so low that the vast majority of money is going not to pay for program administration but to pay for benefits to the families that need them. host: you talked about qualifying for food stamps. how does that work? guest: you have to have a relatively low income. the federal limit is 130% of poverty, which is about $30,000

a year for a family of four. states have some flexibility to align that limit with other anti-poverty programs. this is important in states like new york or california where the cost of living is so high. in those states you can have an income of up to 200% of the poverty level. host: let's talk to james ingredient, mississippi. you are food insecure? caller: as a police officer i was going to tell ms. davis that down here when i was a cop in alabama, the mothers would take the food stamps and sell them, take the money to the casino, and the kids would have nothing. i've have seen on other occasions where a lady would go to sam's, stock up on meat come and go back to the housing project and sell the meat out of

her house. i have seen that when i was a police officer. this fraud -- there is fraud in the food stamps, big time down in alabama and mississippi. that is all i have to say. guest: thank you for sharing your perspective. obviously committing fraud in any government program is not ok. we know that from the evidence the usda has the rate of fraud in the snap program is less than 1%. we want to address it where it is happening. it is not ok. those are dollars that should be used for their intended purpose. the vast majority of families on snap are hard-working, some working two jobs and struggling to make ends meet and the benefits are so important to their ability to give the kids the best start in life. host: we have a post on x from

theo who says shuttering the schools and making kids stay home with their parents reduced food insecurity 46% in your conclusion is to funnel more money into schools? please explain. guest: i am glad you asked that question because it is important to clarify. even though schools were closed and kids were not eating meals in the cafeteria congress came together in a bipartisan way to enact policies that provided families with a grocery benefit that was the value of those meals so they could continue to feed their kids at home. that was tremendously impactful. it also provided community organizations and schools with the flexibility to get meals to kids and families in ways that were convenient. families could pickup up to two weeks worth of school breakfast and school lunch for their kids. many school districts in rural areas delivered meals to kids. food banks stepped up.

snap benefits were temporarily increased. it was these investments and an expansion of the child tax credit which put additional dollars in the pockets of low income families for food that allowed us to drive down the rate of child food insecurity. the challenges that most of these investments have stopped and families are starting to face hunger in greater numbers. one in five children in the united states this year. host: ivanka in virginia. good morning -- yvonne in virginia. good morning. caller: i have more of a statement than a question. i am starting to believe, after having worked with people over the years and seeing how communities work, it is that

programs that tend to foster a lack of responsibility and a reliance on handouts being able to hold out your hand and get something for nothing are a fallacy. they do not work. they will continue to grow. there is no end to it. food insecurity and childhood hungry in this country is one of those problems. we do not look to the parents as to why their children are hungry. why does your child come to school hungry?

your responsibility is to feed your child. those questions should be answered. we should not be having this issue in this country on the large-scale we have. funneling money into programs and funneling food into the top of the issue and not solving it at the base of the issue is just going to continue to have the issue grow and it will continue to funnel one more problem into a system that is built on a system of keeping certain segments of our population down. host: any comment, lisa? guest: i agree with you that we should not be having this problem. it is entirely solvable.

i've spent a lot of time going across the states and i've talked to a lot of parents. i have not met one parent that is not doing everything they can to feed their children. what i have heard is the challenges of unaffordable childcare in many states. childcare for infant costs more than in-state tuition at a college. i have heard about how i -- i've heard about high housing costs. where i am from housing costs are soaring. i have heard about the lack of transportation the fact that many of the jobs are low-paying and all of us would agree we want families to have an opportunity and a good paying job and not have to rely on government programs and we should all be working towards that.

answer to getting kids the nutrition they need is to address underlying issues that mean so many families are struggling. the majority of families in america, an unexpected expense of just $400 can tip them from getting by into facing food insecurity and not having a way forward. host: tony is in anniston, alabama on our line for food insecurity. good morning. caller: good morning and happy thanksgiving to both of you. i was born so far we did not even have christmas, i have known people on welfare the whole time. my mom, we were on welfare for three years. my dad did not do nothing. my mom went back to school and got her masters to work in the

welfare system. she had her arm broken twice because people said give me my money. people will not give up the benefits. i had a brother on social security who would not go off it for nothing because it is $400. it is a government program that keeps them poor. i started cutting grass when i was 10 years old. i have watched the fraud with the government. it is to keep the people poor ended line and begging for more. there is a guy i worked with who had a giant lunch bucket and i said how can you afford that, that was the supervisor. he said i go to the store and people buy my groceries for me, i pay 25 to $.50 on the dollars and people fade for it and they give him cash. others sell it to drug dealers. in wisconsin walker ended it

because people were calling up saying i lost my card. the government never checks. when we were going up we had one part, they came to our house to check to make sure we were not extracting. the people now days, if you see them in the store, the full parts are the people with food stamps. i saw a couple two weeks ago she was crying with her kid and her husband they cannot afford any meat. the people working cannot get ahead and they are paying for all of the other people. these programs are good. i believe in helping people out. this is america. the need to put a limit on it. a year on welfare or your on public housing. they live their whole lives on it. they need to have their share. if they keep saying how the american people are so generous, then have a gofundme page for food for housing and see how

much the people really can afford. they take all of our money and give it away to people who never want to work. this is crazy. thank you. host: go ahead, lisa. guest: i appreciate your perspective and it sounds like you and your mom are pretty amazing people. one thing that is misunderstood about families on snap is the vast majority of them are working. many of them are working more than one job. their wages are low, the work is seasonal, but they are working. it is easy to focus on a case of bad actors. that is not the reality for the families that are on snap. i agree with you. every person on snap i have talked to agree with you that people want to work. they want to be able to feed their kids without having to

rely on government programs. if we want to address moving people from poverty and food insecurity out of it we have to look at making sure jobs are available and people have transportation, that they can access childcare if their kids are young, that housing costs are not such an impediment they have to choose between filling up the tank to get their job or paying their rent. you also raise an important point. there are so many families struggling to get by that or just a little bit over the threshold for these programs. as we think about all of the families facing hardship in this country we need to think about having bipartisan policies that make it easier to get by. we know what some of those are. there is lot of evidence and research that shows the impact of expanding the child tax credit, the importance of snap

benefits and school meals. snap benefits equate to just two dollars per person per meal. many of the families are still struggling to get by on those benefits. host: we have a question on x that says supermarkets know what people buy with their snap benefit cards. does the government ask them to share that information so we know what type of food is being purchased? guest: guest: this probably goes a little bit beyond my expertise. i know the retail sector has expressed different concerns about releasing a lot of data for a competitive edge. there has been some data released and we know from that that the things people on snap are buying are similar to what other americans are purchasing. the fda tracks the healthy eating index and it shows that

the diets of snap consumers, what they are consuming, are very similar to the non-snap consumers. host: bob in maryland. good morning. caller: caller: good morning. i've been listening to the last few callers and the comments they been talking about, and i think with the minimal amount of administration that is overseeing these programs, i realize it is a small percentage but i think they need to increase it and get auditors out here because i have worked in low poverty, low income housing areas for years in the washington metro area. i am telling you, there is so much fraud going on with snap. they are buying steaks and redbull drinks and the kids are

crying. i think there is no auditing going on it it is a program -- host: we don't have a good connection anymore but i think we got your point about the types of food being bought with food stamps and if there are any classes or education on nutrition? guest: that is a great point. food stamps does have a pretty thorough quality control process. people have to verify their income. there been recent investments in the last 10 years on improving that focus on quality control. one part of snap that does not get a lot of attention is snap nutrition ed and that helps classes that help families shop for and prepare food to purchase

food on a budget. there a lot of private programs as well. making sure that families have the resources they need to make sure their kids are well-nourished is important. it is also important to make sure they have access to skills and training to make the dollars go as far as possible. host: mike is in huntington beach, california. good morning. caller: good morning. what about the expiration date on food? i used to work in a grocery store and i cannot believe the expiration dates. the food is still good if it is packaged or canned, then you go out to the dumpster and there is hundreds of dollars of still good food in the dumpster. that food can be given to the children, it can be given to poor people. i do not understand why there cannot be any use for the expiration date food.

that is all my comment is about. guest: you bring up a really important point. expiration dates can be confusing. sometimes we see best buy, freshest by. a lot of times those are not the real expiration dates. i think our food retailers want to make sure they are being safe. a lot of the food as it gets close to the expiration date gets donated to local food banks and programs which is great. there are steps congress can take to clarify this issue and make it easier for consumers to understand so that more of that food is not going to the landfill and being wasted but going into the hands of the folks that need at. host: lonnie in north carolina. good morning. caller: good morning in happy thanksgiving. give me a little bit of time. i don't know how people talk about fraudulent food stamps and

people buying steaks. these are some jealous people. in my neighborhood you have a redline. they redline for me to fail. then they flood my neighborhood with all types of drugs. i'm not a racist person but it has to be a white man that has something to do with it. then they flood my neighborhood with weapons with easy access to my children. then they call and say your eating steaks. are they auditing people with food stamps but so afraid of auditing people with a lot of money. this is where we find the fraud. we have people in congress killing unemployment benefits and what in the courts right now for fraudulent real estate. tell me what we go get the irs and that we do not have to worry about those snap programs or food stamps when we get the

people who are doing it. this is ridiculous. auditing people. the policeman who said he saw selling stakes, he did not tell us if they were convicted were not for fraudulent activity, or did he buy himself some. thank you so much c-span. host: any comments on that? guest: there were a lot of issues raised there. one thing i want to make sure we focus on is lack of access to healthy nutritious food and a lot of neighborhoods. i have been in a lot of urban communities that have been the victim of redlining and a loss of investment and you can go to the corner minimart and it is hard to find the food people need and you can end up paying triple or quadruple for a banana. those of us that have access to other supermarkets had. that is also something to be addressed.

it is impossible to look at the issue of food insecurity for kids without looking at the issues that drive it. many times those issues are rooted in systemic underinvestment in neighborhoods and racist policies, a lack of affordable housing, of transportation, childcare. if we want to end food insecurity we need to be investing in addressing underlying issues and helping families get back on their feet. there were really important points that collar raised. host: teresa in cambridge, maryland. food insecure line. good morning. caller: good morning. my comments are similar to many of the others that have been set. i do not know where the usda is getting their numbers from, because the amount of fraud with food stamps is ridiculous. drug dealers have people's

foodstamp cards and the kids have no food. parents post on facebook and other places they have food stamps to sell. host: you are on the food insecure line. are you facing food insecurity? caller: now. -- no. but i know people who get food stamps and their children are hungry every day. host: we address that. anything you would like to add on that? guest: i feel like we have talked about that issue. host: we have. caller: did -- host: kathy in philadelphia. caller: i want to make a comment about this government. they can find money for war.

we spend about $120 billion. how does that help your program? it is sickening to me that we are feeding illegal immigrants, we are feeding them food than they tell me it is not culturally appropriate so they throw it in the trash. this has got to stop. america has to start helping the people of america before we help other people of the world. i have had enough as a taxpayer. host: what do you think? how much food of the food programs in the united states is going to illegal immigrants? guest: programs like snap are not available to illegal immigrants. there are many charitable programs that serve anybody it is important for everyone to be nourished. we do not want anyone to go hungry. host: as far as taxpayer money going to illegal immigrants? guest: they are not eligible for

the programs so they should not be getting benefits. i think there's a lot of attention and a lot of misperception about where food is coming from and who is benefiting from programs. the point that sticks out for me is that the united states does have the resources to prioritize feeding our kids and making sure every child has a chance to grow up healthy and strong and thrive and succeed. those investments are not just important at filling that child's belly, but they are important to our nation. if we have a well educated workforce we can be more globally competitive. our businesses need that. we know that making sure that kids and families are getting the food they need lowers health care costs. it means that schools are less focused on discipline and kids are not leaving class because

they are in the nurses office. they graduate and they succeed. i cannot think of any investment with a stronger return and this is so important. host: and your website is nokidhungry.org. if someone wants to help, what can they do? guest: there are a variety of ways you can engage and we list them on our website. people can donate. we also hope people can use their voice to raise awareness about the significance of childhood hunger as well as the solution. there are opportunities to weigh in with congress on policies. one of the things about this issue that is also important to realize is there is not a single member of congress that thinks childhood hunger is a good thing. we see democrats and republicans come together to make critical

investments to address food insecurity. we need to continue to create that environment, especially when they come back and have to tackle keeping the government open and funded again. it is important to make sure that every wic almond baby that needs the program can access it. host: mike is in brooklyn, maryland on our food insecure line. caller: a couple of comments. i wanted to comment on the snap program and how there is been an effort by certain republicans to totally abolish the food stamp program. there is an ulterior motive behind that because i do not think people know that the food stamp budget comes from the department of agriculture budget. if those representatives who represent the corn belt, if they can abolish the food stamp

program money goes towards the farm bill to subsidize their constituency. in regards to foodstamp fraud, although it is a problem, when i was in my program, i wrote a proposal to governor corbett on away i thought would abolish foodstamp fraud. just like they have report with states that suspend your license come issue a photo id foodstamp card. in the case of a handicapped person, one to the beneficiary at one to its proxy. foodstamp fraud benefits big business. they benefit the supermarket chains that know it exists stop they are not concerned with foodstamp fraud because that is

a lion share of their profit margin. they get a reciprocal reporting agency, a reciprocal database that holds those photo ids and report state-by-state. you would eliminate welfare fraud in general. host: are you facing food insecurity? caller: i've experienced food insecurity. i'm a disabled veteran. i have resources available to me that most common persons does not have. president obama had a federal mandate to end homelessness and food insecurity among veterans. i can go to any v-8 in the world and tell -- i can go to any va in the world and they will see that my pantry is stocked. guest: thank you for your service to our nation.

i think there is a lot in your comments. one thing i want to emphasize is the rate of fraud in food stamps is very low and the usda and federal government have been making bipartisan investments and taking more steps to improve quality control and to lower it. i think sometimes getting focused on a story that someone hears or sees in the paper about fraud takes us away from the more important point, which is that one in five kids in america is facing hunger. that is just unacceptable. programs like snap, like school meals, the child tax credit, have long been studied. they have evidence that proves the reduce food insecurity for kids and also helps reduce child poverty. no matter our political leanings, and i know your callers run the spectrum. it is something we can all agree

on. we need to come together as a nation and make sure we are ending childhood hunger. we have driven the rates down significantly through some of the snap problems -- these snap policies and we need to get the job done. it is not ok that kids are facing hunger. host: one more call. ted in new hampshire. caller: i have a problem. i notice at a lot of times at shopping centers if we have a power outage they get rid of all of this food, they throw it in the dumpsters. they should have some kind of station where all of this food can go to where they have generators to preserve it and save it. this country has become a nation of dependency like south america or china to grow our food. i know we have weather conditions here like trout and

all of this. we need to be more self-reliant stop my father worked for an academy and what the students do not eat they throughout stuff that was not even touched and i said why don't you bring those to senior centers and let them have it in their answer was they could be allergic. how much of an allergy is there if you are starving or hungry and your fridge is empty? host: last comment? guest: i don't know the supermarket policies on dealing with food in a power outage, but i know that in schools a lot of them have focused on reducing that waste you mentioned and so they have put it in sharing tables where kids that do not want the banana can put it in

kids that need that food can take it. what we want to do is make sure that as much of the food that is currently going to waste that is safe and healthy and can be used to nourish kids and seniors and families is recovered and directed to that purpose. that alone is not going to end hunger. we also need to make sure we have the right policies in place and also that we are designing these programs in a way the pron a way that give communities flexibility to meet kids where they are. so one bright light after this heavy conversation is that one policy that worked well in the pandemic is the flexibility to not make kids come to a site every day to eat their meal in the summer, helped in rural areas, and it is only because of strong bipartisanship, led by

the representatives from arkansas into michigan. if we create the public will, we have the solutions, whether it is policy or program implementation. we need to rally to implement and expand those solutions so we can reach all the kids who really need help. who need three healthy meals a day. host: ok, lisa davis, thank you for joining us. guest: thank you for having me. host: that is our time for the show. thanks to everyone who joined us. we will see you tomorrow morning right here on c-span. have a great thanksgiving, everybody. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] ♪ ♪

announcer: take a look at what to watch on c-span this thanksgiving. at 1:00 p.m., president biden takes part in the turkey pardoning ceremony from the white house south lawn. followed by george w. bush at 1:15 p.m., marking the 20th anniversary of the emergency plan for aids relief. >> a lot of people have skepticism about government programs. you cannot have skepticism about this one. immeasurable results. and 25 million people living who would've died his extraordinary. is that international interest? absolutely. we are a great nation and a moral nation. announcer: then the u.s. postal service unveils a forever stamp in honor of ruth bader ginsburg. at 6:40 p.m., the utah senator

reflects on his career. >> our capacity to rationalize what is in our own bissinger's is in norma's. -- is enormous. eating a chocolate bar when we know we have had enough already is well, we know that. but it happens in congress. if i vote this way, it will hurt my reelection prospects. so we can convince ourselves we are doing the right thing. and that is the experience. you have to recognize your tendencies. and try to figure out really the right thing to do as opposed to what is in my own personal self-interest. announcer: at 8:00 p.m., a discussion on the importance of d classifying documents for the purpose of historical context and educating the public. >> they need to understand why decision-makers do what they do. tell us why they think they do

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