c-span now by going to c-spanshop.org, or scan the qr code on the right. >> after more than 40 days but between -- of fighting between israel and hamas, applause has been ordered to trade hostages. the president expressed relief that hostages will be reunited with their families and praise the leaders of qatar and egypt, and thanked israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu for supporting the measure. utah republican celeste malloy defeated her democratic opponent. with a special election, all 435 seats in congress are now filled. washington journal continues. 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 >> dr. sarah ogilvy has spent eight years as a doctorate of the oxford dictionary. she studied over 3,000 original cribbers to the -- contributors of the dictionary. her comments is "i was thrilled to discover not one, but three murders, pornographic collector, karl marx's daughter, a president of yale, the inventor