host: good morning. it's wednesday, november 27. on january 20, donald trump will be sworn in as commander in chief. his pick to lead the defense department, pete hegseth, has

spurred some controversy. around the world, there are wars in the middle east, ukraine. the president-elect has also implied he views the military domestically. this morning we're asking military members and their families only for your priorities for the incoming trump administration. what changes would you like to see at the pentagon? here are how the phone lines are split up. active military, and that includes active guard and reserve, it's 202-748-8000. former and retired military, 202-748-8001. if you have a family member currently or formerly in the military, the line is 202-748-8002. you can also send a text to 202-748-8003. include your first name and your city, state. you can post your comments on social media, it's facebook.com/cspan, and x,

@cspanwj. welcome to "washington journal." before we get start with your calls, there was a news from the middle east about a cease-fire between israel and hezbollah, and here are the front pages of the major national papers, starting with "the washington post." israel-hezbollah reach cease-fire agreement. here is "the washington times," cease-fire deal with hezbollah brings hope to israel, lebanon, biden hails late-term retreat of battered militant groups. "wall street journal," israel-lebanon agree to truce. cease-fire would narrow the fronts in israeli fighting and defuse a broader regional crisis. and finally, the "new york times," israeli ministers approve a truce with hezbollah. deal is for a 60-day halt to lebanon's deadliest conflict in decades. president biden was at the rose garden yesterday, and he made these comments. >> security for the people of israel and lebanon could not be

achieved only on the battlefield. that's why i directed my team to work with the governments of israel and lebanon, to forge a cease-fire, to bring a conflict between israel and hezbollah to a close. under the deal reached today, effective at 4:00 a.m. tomorrow local time, the fighting across the lebanese-israeli border will end, will end. this is designed to be a permanent is he situation of hoss -- cessation of hostilities. what is left of hezbollah and other terrorist organizations will not be allowed, i emphasize will not be allowed to threaten security again. over the next 60 days, the lebanese army and the state security forces will deploy and take control of their own territory once again. hezbollah infrastructure will not be allowed to be rebuilt. and over the next 60 days, israel will gradually withdraw its remaining forces.

civilians on both sides will soon be able to safely return to their communities. and begin to rebuild their homes, their schools, their farms, their businesses, and their very lives. we're determined this conflict will not be just another cycle of violence, and so the united states, with the full support of france and our other allies, has pledged to work with israel and lebanon to ensure that this arrangement is fully implemented, an agreement totally implemented. and there will be no u.s. troops deployed in southern lebanon. this is consistent with my commitment to the american people to not put u.s. troops in combat in this conflict. instead, we along with france and others will provide the necessary assistance to make sure this deal is implemented fully and effectively. let me be clear. if hezbollah or anyone else breaks the deal,&poses a direct

threat to israel and israel retains the right to self-defense consistent with international law. host: we are taking your calls this morning from military, current, former military members and their families on priorities for the incoming trump administration when it comes to the military, the defense department, that changes would you like to see at the pentagon? year taking your calls. and this is an article from responsible state craft that says in 2024, veterans voted for trump, some say harris' attempt to embrace old iraq war hawks, they have had the opposite effect. according to exit polls on election day, 12% of voters in this presidential election had served in the u.s. military. 65% of them said they voted for donald trump, while 34% said they voted for kamala harris. it says we still need a breakdown of age to see if this was generational.

some suggest that younger republicans, especially more recent veterans, are among the biggest resisters to the war party orthodoxies on capitol hill, including now vice president-elect j.d. advance, who served as a marine in iraq, tulsi gabbard, who campaigned for trump and recently turned republican, and also been a fierce critic of biden's ukraine war policy and washington's militarism overall. president-elect trump's nominee for defense secretary pete hegseth appeared on a podcast and was asked about his views on women in combat, and here are his thoughts. this is from earlier this month. >> everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated. implication in combat means casualties are worse.

and when you actually go under the hood, and again, i've got 99% positive response to this, a few, a little bit of pushback, but when you actually break down what they did in the studies to open the door for women in combat, i mean, they just ignored them. so the marine corps was the only service that actually tried to fight back and say, no, obviously i'm exempting special operations, which thus far has held the line fairly well. because if they were lowering the standard to become a navy seal just to let women inside the navy seals, that's going change the capabilities and ethos of the navy seal, except for a very small example of some female super soldier. but because of how washington works, they're going to change the standards, they're going push for quotas. numerous quotes in the book of no, no, these standards aren't changing, they're just evolving. they're just evolving, to meet the needs of today. >> they're not getting tougher. >> they're not getting tougher, no. they're getting lower. take someone like milley. he was calling down to

individual units to make sure they had female company commanders after they graduated. what's the chairman of the joint chiefs could go pushing company command spots? it's all an agenda. it's all to say, oh, we have this first or we have this that. so that's proliferated everywhere. the reason women started getting in combat is because forward support companies and we were integrate ago lot of the rear echelon activities into b.c.t.'s, brigade combat teams, that were deploying forward as an entity. so you had women truck drivers or fuelers, mechanics, on these convoys in iraq and afghanistan, and then they'd be ambushed or hit by i.e. d.'s, and suddenly now you have women in combat. that's maybe a modern reality in a 360 battlefield. that's different than intentionally saying we're going to put women into combat roles so they will do the combat jobs of men, knowing that we've changed the standards in putting them there, which means you've changed the capability of that unit, and if you say you

haven't, you're a liar. because everybody knows, between bone density and lung capacity and muscle strength, men and women are just different. host: and we are taking your calls this morning. this is an article from fox news with the headline, how does pete hegseth's experience compare to previous defense secretaries? it says the nomination of pete hegseth, a fox news host, former captain in the army national guard and president-elect donald trump's stunning choice for defense secretary, has sparked concerns about whether he has the practical experience to manage a large department with an enormous budget. you can see that at livenowfox.com. we'll start with calls in california. good morning. caller: good morning. as for trump and the military,

52, 50 years ago i was in vietnam, and we had a draft. is he going to bring back the draft? and also, will it include women this time? host: what do you think about that, rory? caller: well, i was made to join the army instead of being drafted, because i found too many people were being killed as draftees. and i think it may be necessary, but i sure feel pity for the people that have to do it. and also women this time, maybe not in combat, but i heard talk that at age 39 they may be drafted in what we call combat areas, the&the many men up to age 45 to build up the army. i think it might be a necessary evil. host: all right. and this is dave in clifton, texas, good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. as regards to women in combat,

you know what? i'd like to see him playing in the nfl. i'd like to see ohio state field women on their football team. now, they score points. in the military, you keep score by killing people. how dare you equate diversity, equity and inclusion in the military and not condemn not having it in football, basketball, major league baseball. in my time, you could be drafted or you could enlist or a judge could tell a 17, 18-year-old, hey, you can go to jail or you can join the marine corps. you know that straightened along of young men out. host: so what happened with you, dave? were you drafted or did you join? caller: i enlisted. i served proudly. i was wounded.

and how dare people equate combat to diversity, equity and inclusion. i don't understand it. it doesn't work. host: all right. caller: how can you defend yourself against an enemy when you can't defend yourself from rape by your own -- host: this is dave on facebook. he's an air force veteran. he says quit nominating russian assets for cabinet positions. and this is robert in california. good morning, robert. caller: yes, good morning. my son-in-law right now is in japan. he's a fireman. his priorities are that he will not say the world politics. he will not talk politics. he keeps politics out of it. his problem is women.

being a fireman, he has 65 people under him. he has not one woman. they cannot pick up -- when a plane goes down or something like that. a woman cannot pick up a body. they cannot rescue people. that's a problem. he said the woke thing got to him, i know that. the d.e.i., it doesn't make sense. i wish our priority, really strengthening our country and not strengthening a movement, such as woke, you know, women's rights in the military. you hope people see the same thing i see. that's about all i want to say. host: here's a woman that was in the military. this is illinois democratic senator and former combat veteran, tammy duckworth. she talks about her views on pete hegseth. >> he's a retired major in the army national guard, bronze star

resilient. he served in afghanistan and iraq. he has degrees from princeton and harvard. you say he's deeply unfit and wholly unqualified, despite those credentials. why? >> he never commanded a unit. he never commanded a company, let alone whole armies. he was a platoon leader. he served at a very low level in the military. we're talking about an organization that is three million service men and women and civilians and a budget of over $900 billion. he does not have the experience to run an organization of that size. so just based on those requirements alone, he is unqualified for the position. >> you are, as i mentioned, a combat veteran. 20 years ago last week, you lost both of your legs when your blackhawk helicopter was shot down in iraq. i want you to listen to what pete hegseth said about women in combat. >> i'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. it hasn't made us more

effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated. >> what's your response? >> well, he's wrong, because women have made us more effective. in fact, our military could not go to war without its 223,000 women who served in uniform. we would have an ineffective military that was not capable of deployment if we were to pull out all the women and say you cannot number combat. for those women who are in infantry or navy seals, those women have met the same standards as the men in order to be assigned to those positions. so, again, this shows that mr. hegseth is not qualified, specifically because he doesn't understand, apparently, even after having served that women are actually vitally important to an effective military. host: that was tammy duckworth. we are taking your calls this morning from military members and their families only. so if you are current in the military, you can call us on

202-748-8000. that includes guard and reserve. if you are former or retired, it's 202-748-8001. if you have a family member that is serving or has served, it's 202-748-8002. we'll talk to joel next in arkansas. good morning. caller: good morning, ma'am. how you doing? host: good. caller: well, i would like to say these people that was allowed to come into our country, there will be many of them that would contribute to our country and what we need. the ones that are committing crime and everything, they need to be sent back home. let's face it, we need these people. i have people that i know who think i'm entirely wrong, but that's their opinion. but some of these people coming here for a better life. and like i say, we do need these

people, because we got a lot of lazy people in this country now. and we need to secure our borders. i think he's put the man back in that's going to get it done. the ones that are committing crimes that need to be tried, do their time in a jail, and then sent back home. they came to a good country. but these criminals that's coming here, and that's what these countries do. they led them out to come here. host: the question is, those that are here illegally, who have not committed crimes and vetted and as you said, they're here for a better life or to escape some hardship at home, would you allow them in the u.s. military? caller: well, back when i was in the army, i entered the army in 1960, those that was allowed to come here, they still had

obligation to serve in our military, they had a man that was drafted. he was unhappy about it, he was from another country but he was allowed in our country, and i asked him, why are you so ticked off at our country and the army? he said, well, i had done my time already in my country. i had served my country, and i came here and now i'm in the military again. host: he got drafted. what about the ones that currently, today, joel, that do want to serve, but they're undocumented? caller: well, i don't know. host: ok, that's fair. we'll talk to dale in pennsylvania. good morning. caller: yes, good morning. i'm a marine veteran. the only thing i have to say about this situation, i could never take an order from a

convicted felon. case closed. thank you much. host: dale, what would you do -- oh, dale is gone, ok. virginia in janesville, wisconsin, good morning. caller: good morning. i want to say two things. number one, the military could not have existed in afghanistan without the women who went into the villages to ago the women in the villages. the men could not go in there. i have pictured every pictures of those units, women military standing together. and instead of veils, they wore knit caps over their heads. and they were in danger. just as much as the men. they could have been blown up on the roads. i just wanted to say that.

and the second thing i want to say, what ticks me off is it's only through combat that you get the extra pay and the promotions. you don't have to label it combat. it's just that the women who fight with their units nowadays are always going to be in combat. it's a new way of fighting. they drive the trucks. they are pilots. the war is all around them. and they're coming back with their legs blown off and all this sort of thing. that's the only way you get promoted and you go up the chain and you become generals and all

that sort of thing. so i would like someone to ask, how are women going to be promoted if they're not labeled as combat with the pay and the promotions that go along with that. host: all right. in jacksonville, florida, ed, you're next. caller: yes, ma'am, i think they should leave out the diversity, equity and inclusion. let me explain my experience. i'm a vietnam vet. i'm an iraq vet. and i'm an afghan vet. and i was in a leaders position. saying that, we did have women. and i will tell you, logistically, dealing with that was a nightmare. the issues we had with men and women together does not work.

this will add up to dead people on the battlefield. host: what was the experience? why didn't it work, ed? what were the problems? caller: well, first of all, you had to logistically find the cleaning -- excuse me, hygiene places for them. and then you had the intermixing of females and males. you cannot separate that. i'm going to leave it at that. host: would you allow gays in the military or would you revoke that? caller: we had a situation in vietnam, we had that. my experience with that would be no. host: what about more current experience? you said you went to iraq as well. caller: i went when they weren't open out telling people they were gay. host: all right. this is rod rick in arizona,

good morning. caller: good morning. couple of quick things. one, former military contractor, military family. one, anyone who is against d.e.i. doesn't understand we're in a global race and we need all resources. they're living in 1987. number two, the military priority should be this. decoupling this country from russia. i grew up, i was born in 1980. if you had any empathy for anyone in the soviet union, kids in bread lines, mothers, everyone questioned your patriotism from the same demographic that's now coupled up with vladimir putin. i ask trump supporters, how can this happen in my lifetime. and in about 25 or 30 years, you go from making the russians and the soviet public enemy number one in everything, and now you just bypass that like that never happened, and you just dismiss that. now they're basically controlling factions of our government. if you have anyone who can call and actually answer that question from a military or

civic overall standpoint, i would greatly appreciate it. thank you. you're doing a good job. goodbye. host: john in florida. caller: last guy must have been in the coast guard. i was in the navy for 20 years, and i can assure you that integrating women into any of our units was a nightmare. it was a lot of fun going on, a lot of hanky-panky going on. guys weren't fulfilling the missions they were supposed to be fulfilling. i've been on l.p.h.'s with marines, with women, been a nightmare. and then when we got into these war zones and we were working 16, 18, 20, 25 hours a day, they just couldn't keep up. they couldn't keep up with us. on one ship i had, they took them off the ship, because it

just was too much. urn, the thing with the women in combat, it's secondary roles, that's fine. truck driver, tammy duckworth, she was a helicopter pilot and got shot down and lost her legs. helicopter pilots, pilots, truck drivers, absolutely. but what pete hegseth was talking about was actual combat, running and gunning. they can't keep up. you know, it's just science. you guys are built different than us, and that's not a bad thing. as far as what i want to see in the military is i want to see the d.e.i. completely taken out. it's destroying the preparedness of the military. the military is supposed to be focused on one thing, to win at all costs, no matter what. host: can you explain the d.e.i. and how it's implemented in the military from what you've seen? caller: well, i've seen guys who have completely not qualified to lead an army of ducks that were leading platoons of men.

i had a captain who was a female who actually got demoted finally because she was just so incompetent in the things she was doing on the ship to everybody. and petty and vindictive. i mean, it's just not a good thing. host: i've got another question while i've got you. as far as hitting recruitment goals, the services have not been hitting their goals. i believe it was just the marines and that's because they lowered their goals. if you were to take out women, what do you do about having enough people signing up? because enough men right now are not signing up. caller: sure. the men aren't signing up because of the d.e.i. policies, i can assure you. all of my family members and my sons are in the military, and they say none of their friends want to sign up. how would i correct it? i would never tell the women they couldn't be in the military.

women have been in the military forever. we're just talking about a combat-capable roles. actual combat. bullets flying over your head, running and gunning. so that shouldn't be a problem. i think the problem was how the military is going soft. if you've seen the commercials where they're talking about equity and inclusion and transgender this and transgender that, that's got to go. when you join the military, you want to join the military because commercials have got to get slicker. not propaganda, but the advertisement and going into the military, what can get out of the military -- host: you're saying it's a marketing problem? caller: yeah, i think so, absolutely, yeah. host: all right, john. here's joey, georgia. hi, joey. caller: good morning. i believe that women can serve in the military. but i also believe that we men should do everything possible to protect them. this means if we can avoid them getting into harm's way, we should do everything in our power to protect them, because they're so precious and special to us.

but they can serve in the military, but they will and i think they should. just like women can wear high heel shoes, but we don't do it. it's just not the right thing to do. we shouldn't put women in harm's way because they are built differently. they are differently from men. i gist believe that god would want us to serve and to protect them as much as we can. they are very special people. we need to love them and cherish them, protect them for that reason only. just because they can, that doesn't mean they should. thank you so much. host: at the pentagon press briefing yesterday, there was a question about elon musk talking to defense department officials. here's a portion of that. >> yesterday elon musk said that he was in a meeting with senior military officers and they discussed sort of pentagon procurement and bureaucrat i can snafus and what have you. is mr. musk holding transition meetings with military

officials? >> i'm not aware of any transition meetings. as you know, the president-elect's transition team has not contacted the department yet to conduct those transitions. so i'm not aware of any official meetings. host: joseph in north carolina, good morning. caller: good morning. when the president-elect was 45, he took out you'll mannee in -- sell mannee in iran, and the supreme court has given him immunity, i don't see why he can't take out any other united states enemies, like little rocket man in north korea. that would save us fighting the war probably. that's what i expect. he likes to fire people.

he likes to get on wwe and talk a big talk. he sounds like mark twain out there pontificating on everything under the sun. why don't he try to win without fighting? then we wouldn't have to worry about d.e.i. or sending troops anywhere. that's all i got to say about it. host: lee in texas. hi, lee. caller: hi. my thoughts is guys talking about females in the military. you go back and look, you can see that when the first war, most men stopped taking their medication because they wanted to try to lead the war because they were scared. i had mens that running from scuds because they hugging and crying saying they going to die. host: was war was this, the

first iraq war? caller: yeah, the first one. they knew more men that injured themselves to get out of the war. females in the military or gays in the military, i served with them, yes. host: ok. caller: my thought is that i don't care if females are there. some females are better than men. host: any changes you would like to see in the military in the armed forces? caller: i'd like to see the military bring back the camaraderie are military. host: between the military and the public, the american people? caller: yes. you got a guy run for president talking about the military, and now they wondering why that no

one is joining them. host: what do you make of the people that are critical of d.e.i. policies in the military? the implication here is that people that are either women or people of color are being promoted in the military just because they are from an underrepresented group and not because of confidence. what do you think of that? caller: my thing is i think it's all wrong. host: all right. here's frank in indiana. what do you think, frank? caller: ier that guy coming on speaking about the military, and i'm going to give you some of my own personal military experience. some things i won't say. i went into the marine corps. served a tour in vietnam. sent back to the states.

spent two years in the states. sent to okinawa, japan. spent a year in okinawa. just before my deployment ended in okinawa, i was informed that i would be going to a base which was the first marine corps vehicle maintenance officer, female. and they asked me if i wanted to be attached. reason being, they called it you have so much resistance from other marines about working with women. i said i have no problem with that. afterwards he informed me i would be with three ought motive mechanics who was in school at that time. everything came true. i returned back home. i served with these young

ladies. one was my transport officer. and three worked under me at ought motive mechanics. host: some people are say it's too disruptive and logistically it's difficult to have women. you got to have different facilities, that kind of thing. caller: i'll tell you about my facility. we only had one, and it was set up for men. we have a sign outside there, when the ladies went in, they put the sign saying, hey, women in. so we knew not to go in. we were smart enough to realize not to go in. my officer, female officer, she was a great officer. she was just as well as any man i served under. what do they do with her? they transfer her out of there and put her in a women's battalion. she got out of the corps. three women stayed, two became pregnant, one stayed.

the other two got out. the only problem is women in the core in that capacity as truck drivers or as mechanics, the fact that we had a commanding officer. he enjoyed running every day. so he got his company, and we ran. the women couldn't keep up with us. host: all right, frank. this is what we've got from ray in aurora, colorado, by text. my father was enlisted in the u.s. army from the philippines. he received all the benefits, including naturalization. at that time fernando marcos ruled with an iron fist under martial law. i don't think it's worst having bases outside of the u.s., especially at the expense of people of other countries. and calling us from irving, texas. good caller: hello. host: hi. caller: my priorities for the trump administration, first and above all, he was a draft dodger, and i think he should

just keep his hands off the military and first things first, he should listen to the general hes has in charge now, milley, etc. i think his choice, the national guardsman who's a captain with zero military experience, in my opinion, because with the fourth infantry edition, and i was in somalia, it really takes a special person to be in charge. if my life has to be under the command of someone, i would like to know they have the experience, tolerance, and patience necessary to command. regarding what needs to be done in order to fill the slots for the people to meet quota, i think the military should lower its standards in terms of height, weight. i think people with the felony, they should be admitted as well, and just made me made a mistake.

i think there are a lot of qualified people who could do very well in the military. d.e.i., the good old boys network in the army, i went in in 1983, got out in 1999. i tell you what, back then it was hard for people of color and asians, etc., to get promoted. they were all caucasian. they're going promote their person and the friend they drink peers with on the weekend. while it shouldn't be that, the fact is it was that way. i think we still have a long way to go in the military. as far as women being admitted into the navy seals or the rangers or green berets, i think that they should be allowed, but i don't think that the standard should be lowered. i think if a female can get

through s.r.t. and can pass seal training, i think that she should be allowed to be a navy seal. but i don't think the standards should be lower. that's my opinion. host: in texas, this time in martin with matt. good morning. caller: yes, ma'am. i think donald trump is going to be doing an excellent job. i also think that the d.e.i. thing, it has to go. that's just ridiculous, liberals wanting men and women's bathrooms, just a bunch of liberal stuff. i do like women pilots, helicopter pilots. all women units, all women units are all right. you don't want to be mixing men

and women together and seeing infantry units and high combat units like that. that's going to create problems. but if you're qualified and you're a good pilot, you know, if you're a woman, i'm all for it. like during world war ii. i think they did an excellent job. but they were all women unit. you don't want to mix them up. that's gist wrong. but the d.e.i. thing has got to do. host: rodney in columbus, ohio, you're next. caller: good morning. thanks for having me. host: you're welcome. go ahead. caller: i am not military, but i do have a child that is military. i raised five children. four went to college, one decided she wanted to go to the navy. my first experience in the navy

with her is during her graduation. and what i saw was that the commander of great lakes, the great lakes region at the time was a woman. i was kind of encouraged with that and watched my daughter as she's still in the navy go up the ranks. to answer the question, what do i expect from this administration is that we can keep the good things going with what's been accomplished regardless of administration. do not look at this d.e.i. issue as a general issue. what i've been hearing from people on here who are military is that they've had bad experiences with one particular person and not people. to say that d.e.i. is a bad thing is to say that all people or one particular group is not worthy.

and i do not agree with that. and we should not agree with that, if we're americans. we're all different. we're men, we're women, we're black, we're white. we all have good things about ourselves, and we have bad things about ourselves. and what i'm hearing now is that there are some very, very almost chauvenistic type people who want to continue to be chauvenistic in the things of military. i'm sure women could find a place in the military to do some things within the military. to not include them in the betterment of our government, the betterment of our military process would be to changing -- totally change the dynamic of where we've come from so far. host: on defense.gov, let's look at how many women there are in the military. the numbers that we have are from 2021. women made up 17.3% of the

active-duty force. and 21% of the national guard and reserves. the year before, women made up 17.2% of the active duty force and 21.1% of the guard. it has since 2017, the percentage of women in active duty and selected reserves have risen 1.1% and 1.8% respectively. steve in webster, massachusetts, you're next. host: good morning, mimi, happy thanksgiving. caller: happy thanksgiving to you. caller: thank you, ma'am. what the trump administration has to do is address asianism. we have always, since i can remember, looked for that soviet split, we fall a russia-china split. in 1979, carter recognized

communists china, severed ties with taiwan. although kissinger, nixon proposed the one-china policy. we pulled troops out of taiwan, hoping they would, the chinese would reciprocate to end the vietnam war, and they didn't. they thought it was a mistake. anyhow, china considered communist china is our largest threat today. world war i -- host: do you suggest we do that? what would you like to see? caller: i can go as far as decoupling. we should not be training with communists. we didn't trade with the soviet union, and the soviet union fell. in regards to the fella from arizona who said russia, russia, all this stuff. world war i, we alienated germany after that and that gave us hitler. after the cold war, again we alienated russia, i feel, at the fall of cold war, and this gave

rise to putin. we have made mistakes with dictators before, and i think it is easier. read jeane kirkpatrick's "dictators and double standards." we stopped supporting, and it gave rise to the communists. we stopped supporting shah of iran and it gave rise to a theocracy. although these people were dictators, at least they were pro-american, and you can deal with a dictator. they have more of a chance going to democracy. one more thing, i know we get goods out of china, but we have proven through covid that we can break that supply chain. india is a large democracy. that is the country that we should be focusing on. the whole thing is complicated, i understand that. host: we're going to talk about the economy in our neck sessionment, at 8:00 a.m. make sure you stick around for that. here's henry in south carolina, good morning.

henry? caller: yes. good morning, america. happy thanksgiving to everyone. i'm a former african-american, well, i'm a veteran of the u.s. air force. just wanted to say concerning this terminology d.e.i. and woke and everything, how it's all just a smoke screen to divide the american public. i would urge each and every one of you to go back and look at some of the foot annal from world war i, world war ii and other wars that african-americans fall in. though they were qualified and did their jobs exceptionally well, look at how they were treated. even in world war ii, when our

german troops were captured, they were put on the train and fed up ahead of the african-american soldiers. television all depends on how you look at this. i also would like to say that as far as what i expect out of the trump administration concerning the military, i hear this word weaponization all the time, too, whether it's in the justice department or whatever. and i don't want the military to be weaponized. when i fought, i fought for the freedom of america to defend this constitution, and the most abhorrent thing that i have experienced was january 6. i cried that day. because that is what we were supposed to be defending and everything, and to see it almost

come to our nation capital, not from outside, but from domestic sources. so i don't want this administration to weaponize the military, which i already see happening. generals that are up for promotions are being, you know, are scrutinized to the point to anything that's in the military, anyone that's in the military now have to be concerned about the political influence of it. my main thing is i don't want this administration to come in and weaponize the military against its citizens and allowing cronyism and everything, because it will not only affect us domestically, but what are our allies thinking about america now? host: all right, henry. the nominee to lead the defense department, pete hegseth, who accused of sexual assault. he denies any wrongdoing.

here's oklahoma republican markwayne mullin, who serve every serves on the armed services committee, if he believes those accusations against hegseth. >> he wasn't charged. he wasn't even kind of charged. there was no crime committed. the police dropped everything. what's unfortunate in today's world, you can be accused of anything, especially if it's something like this, you're automatically assumed to be guilty. if you read the police report from cover to cover, which i have, and i know every reporter has too, it is clear there is nothing there. it was clear that there was no crime committed. so that doesn't prevent pete from moving forward in this. the american people gave president trump a mandate, a mandate because they want to change the way government has been working. government has been working for a party, not for the people. and president trump is putting people there that's going to make changes, and unfortunately the establishment is trying to hold that back and trying to find every little piece of detail they can to say this

person just qualifies. pete is qualified to be the sec def. >> what makes him qualified? >> because he's a civilian. >> well, i'm a civilian. i'm not qualified. >> exactly. no, no, let me get to it. he's a civilian, which that first is the only qualification he has. if you want to go more than that, he also served in the service for 20 years as a decorative combat veteran. he retired as a major. he's had a successful career since then. he can articulate what needs to be done, and he knows the system. outside of that, what other qualification degree it say that a sec def has to have? host: we're taking your calls for another 10 minutes. this is politico with the headline, trump's pentagon overhaul. eight policy changes he's expected to make. the first one they list is troops on the home front. trump critics, even some former

officials who worked in his administration, are warning the former president would wield the military for his own lil wayne after he called for the military to be used against "the enemy from within" the united states. indeed, trump contemplated using the insurrection act to deploy active duty troops against protesters late in his term. and if he continues his rhetoric, there will likely be attempts to re-examine the insurrection act to rein in trump's authority to use the military domestically. two senators have floated possible legislation, but effort to limit trump are unlikely to gain steam without republican support. wonder what you think about that and other issues related to defense policy and the second term of president-elect trump. this is john in charleston,

south carolina, good morning. caller: good morning, mimi. alwaysen joy when you're on. you do such a great, fair job. i want to say that when the guy was talking about the old military, it reminded me of stories back in the 1960's and stuff, world war ii, world war i and stuff, they would talk about black guys over there as having tails. their tails would come out at night. that was one of the big running things. it was basically been told by guys who really were on the same exact ladder as the black guys are and stuff and everything. my one thing i want to do is make sure when guys voluntary to come in to the military to make sure that they didn't have to be

owe welfare, food stamps at the same time when they come in to volunteer. they shouldn't be qualifying to serve their country and then qualifying to be on food stamps and stuff like that at the same time. host: yeah, that is an issue that there are active duty military members that are food insecure. caller: yes. and that's a big thing. all this stuff is just politics. politics talk, d.e.i., you know, black people in the military, we always going to be seen as, well, i don't think they're quite good enough for this and that. i'm a black guy, i was the first guy he ever supervised, and he was caucasian guy, this guy was smart. and he wanted to make sure i was smart, he wanted to make sure i was protected. the way he protected me is by

making sure i had knowledge, and that knowledge that he gave me was the knowledge that no matter who tried to talk, talk about me, whatever, i always knew that i had the knowledge and nobody could touch me, because i had the knowledge. knowledge is everything in the military. thanks, mimi. host: this is florida, shawnee, good morning. caller: good morning, c-span. good morning, america. good morning, vero. i'm military mother. also was a spouse for over 21 years. i have a very big problem with the d. open. i. i don't think people really understand the terminology and what it means. it won't only affect minorities, it will also affect women. there are very smart, brilliant, bright women. i believe we have pilots in the military that are women. i think people should go back in

history and realize that if it wasn't for the tuskegee airmen and other black companies, that we wouldn't have won the wars that we did. also when the black people got out of the military, then eligible for their g.i. bill to help found them to go to school. they weren't able to get disability. so we have a lot of damage, retired or disabled black people in this country that are not receiving any funding. i don't think hegseth should be running anything for the military. he has no knowledge. he was not in the military. i do not believe that -- host: pete hegseth has served in the military. caller: well, he served, but he wasn't a leader per se. host: he got to major, yes. no higher than that, yeah.

caller: right, correct. i don't think he retired either, if i'm not mistaken. i'm very upset, because d.e.i. means a whole lot of things, and putting them in the military will just mean that more division. everyone in the military who's ever served in the military, whatever branch, we all come together as a family. there's no division when it comes to the military, whether you're in the navy, the army, the marines, the air force, the coast guard. we all consider each other family. and when you put d.e.i. into that, you make a division. the last thing i want to say is, if you were a felon, you could not join the military. if you are a felony or have bad credit, you cannot get a

clearance. i want to know how the president of the united states is able to be the president of the united states, president-elect, will be president of the united states, and he has a felony charges. host: here atampa, florida, michael, you're next. caller: how do you do? as you say, how do you do, america? yes, i was born in washington, d.c. my father is buried out in arlington cemetery. his brother, a colonel, is buried there. my father was at 18 years old in the invasion d-day, fighting the germans. his three older brothers were wounded by the same japanese shrapnel. my priority, what i would like to see, is protecting this country around our borders, our parameter, like the national guard protects the parameter

around the united states. that's what i want to see done. just being that i had been in show business as an actor in the screen actors guild, i can't help but remember what frank sinatra sang, what is america? america is my home, the neighbor next door. he also said in a recording, he said let me tell you, as bad as you people have it in this country, let me tell you how bad it is behind the iron curtain, when russia was the iron curtain, or the bamboo curtain, like china. i'm for protecting this parameter. i've listened to many of these people, and agree with what they say about blacks in the military. i think it makes sense. i believe in it. i think they're correct. host: all right. this is another michael in roanoke, virginia, good morning. caller: good morning. i spent 20 years in the air force.

i have a great time. now, this is one thing i can say. anybody that's in general society has one way or another made their way into the military, i don't care what anybody say. you have gang members. you have races. you have all kind. but at the end of the day, what i saw after 20 years and two deployment overseas in combat is that when it was time to come together, men and women, we did it. and we did it, and we served our country. so what i would like to see the trump administration do is go back and find out with all these veterans who were not eligible for disability and try to get them disability and keep his hands off the disability system with this project 25, 2025, and all those people in his administration that were worth of the 2025 that he claimed that he didn't know about. so at the end of the day, we are all one nation. we are all -- we're not all one

people. we're all kinds of people. but at the end of the day, we should all come together. i don't care about all that d.e.i. and woke and all the other kind of stuff. that's not what i'm here to talk about. what i talk about is the military and the military that the country was designed to be around and should support 24/7. host: and to louisville, kentucky, robert, you're next. caller: hello. i'm calling for my priority for trump is fix the immigration issue. either deport or track down the ones who are not here, i mean, who are here and not supposed to be here. and don't just focus on the ones committing crimes. that's a very low number as far as immigration. as far as the women in military, we always need women in the military. we wouldn't be able to perform

without them. there's been women nurses. when you say front lines, front lines don't mean anything. we don't have a direct line as far as a hard line between us and the enemy. mash units in korea, they served as units, and they were getting artillery and other things thrown at them, and they still performed.i am not sure about wr ii. host: where did you serve. you are former military? caller: i was in for eight years and i was in ranger school and i was actually a distinguished honor graduate. i hear a lot of people calling and talking about the standards being lowered. ranger school has always changed.

things that our class did, we did not do things that other classes went through. and we did not -- there used to be four different phases, phases have changed. i think we were the first group in our class to use the proving grounds in utah as a desert phase. and we jumped into that. when other classes used for dashboard blitz and other did not use a desert phase. host: we are out of time for this segment but there is more to come because we have a conversation with mark zandi from moody's analytics to talk about current economic conditions and the potential impact of president trump's economic plans. and on this busy thanksgiving travel day, a focus on the $1 trillion infrastructure law signed into law three years ago.

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c-span now is available at the apple store store or google play. scan the qr code to download it for free or visit c-span.org/c-span now. c-span now, your front row seat to washington anytime, anywhere. >> washington journal continues. host: welcome back. we are joined to talk about the economic outlook with mike sandy , the chief economist from moody's analytics. mark zandi, welcome. so you said this earlier this fall that the economy right now is "among the best performing economies in my 35 years as an economist" explain that. guest: you can see by my hairline i have been at this for a long time. i am hard-pressed to come up with a time when the economy has been performing better. look at the statistics. we are creating a lot of jobs

across a lot of different industries and we have been doing that since the pandemic. unemployment is low just under 4% and it is low across every demographic group from age, ethnicity, educational, you pick it. and coast-to-coast everywhere in the country. inflation, and the rate of growth for prices it does for prices of goods and services but that has moderated. the stock market is at a record high and it seems like it is hitting one almost every day. if you are one of the two thirds of americans who own your own home you are enjoying record high housing values. the economy is a big elephant and i am talking about the entirety of the elephant. depending on which part of the elephant you touch you get a different picture and i do think that higher income households are doing fabulously well and

they are doing about as well as they ever have. middle income households are doing ok. not fantastic, great or bad but typical. folks in the bottom third are struggling with the previously high inflation and they do not have much savings or much in their cap -- much in their checking account. there are distinctions but broadly the economy is doing well. host: the economy is doing fabulously well i want to show you exit polls from the election and this is from cbs news. 67% of voters describe the state of economy as bad. 45% said their own financial situation is worse than four years ago. 30% say it was the same and 24% say it was better. 53% said that inflation was a moderate hardship and 22% said it was severe. how do you explain that especially that top line number

with 67% saying the economy is bad. guest: there is a district -- a disconnect between the happy talk and these surveys. there is a bunch of stuff but i think it is top of the list of the things is the previously high inflation. if you go back to three years ago prices were rising for groceries, rent, gasoline and it was a direct result of the disruptions created by the pandemic and the russian war on ukraine. even though those prices are no longer rising, gas pricing is down and rents have not moved and grocery prices are flat, they are still up 20 to 25% on where they were two or three years ago. a lot of people in my work and asked the same question how are you doing financially and i am getting the same answer. it turns out at least for my anecdotes that everyone has one food item that they buy on a regular basis that they use as a litmus test.

robin -- ramen noodles or kombucha tea, baby formula or sugar. it is really the high inflation. the other thing i will call out quickly as i think that politics are fractured. people are very heated about their political perspective, and they are looking at the economy through the political prism. the university of michigan runs a survey every month, a how you are feeling. they release the most recent results and right after the election, the republicans responded to the survey went from being very pessimistic to the economy to being more optimistic and the democrats to the opposite. we are looking at the world through our political prism and that is influencing how we think about rings. [coughing] host: sorry, my voice. i want to ask you about the causes of inflation regarding

increased spending during the pandemic. guest: right. i'll let you get a glass of water and i will riff here a little bit. the thing you are referring to, the american rescue plan, that was the covid relief plan past early on in the biden administration and there has been a lot of conversation and debate about how important that has been to the inflation that ensued. i do think if you go back to 2021 and it was passed in march of 2021 and you go back to that summer and fall, inflation picked up because of the demand created by the benefits that were provided through the american rescue fund, the stimulus checks and unemployment insurance. we were coming out of the pandemic and there was a lot of uncertainty. and that relief plan was designed to be big to help in case things turned out to be

worse than they turned out to be. i have to say, the inflation at that time and it was hard to remember back, but that was deemed good inflation because we had been through a period and a decade of inflation below the federal reserve target and the fed was uncomfortable about how low the inflation was. they wanted inflation or higher to compensate and they got it. the real problem came a little bit later when russia invaded the ukraine at the start of 2022 when oil and natural gas prices moved and that is what inflation became a real problem. the american rescue plan and that spending tax bill that help the economy resulted -- did not result in inflation that at that time it was deemed good inflation and desirable. host: what do you think of the handling of the interest rates. do you think that they lowered

them too much. do you think they are easing up on the interest rates has been to slow. how would you rate that? guest: it is hard to be critical and think about the things they are responding to. the russian war and fiscal policy and a lot of stuff, it is hard to calibrate monetary policy to get that right. in hindsight, the fed was certainly too slow to begin normalizing out of the pandemic. they kept the federal funds rate at zero all the way into 2022. and that was in hindsight, a mistake. i was a bit fearful and they jacked up interest rates in 2022 and 2023 to cool things off. and they succeeded. if i had this conversation before they started interest rates, i think they were maybe waiting too long and they are running the risk to push the economy into recession but i do

not feel that way. they are cutting and normalizing rates and i think they are on track. host: i want to ask about tariffs because the president has announced -- the president-elect has announced that he would impose tariffs and bbc news says that china and mexico are warding about a trade war after trump vows to hike the tariffs. what is your reaction to that? this has been talked about allowed -- a lot about tariffs and their impact on the economy. guest: i am not a fan of broad-based tariffs. i understand targeted specific countries and specific products to make a point and to further the trade negotiations and get everyone to play fair, so i get that. i do not get broad-based tariffs across the board. that is what president trump was talking about on the campaign trail and what he announced that

he would do yesterday or the night before yesterday about the big tariffs on imports from mexico, canada and china. those are the three biggest sources of imports. the fundamental reason is that this raises the cost of living. we have to pay more for the stuff that is being imported. everything from food. we import a lot of groceries to furniture to cars to clothing. a lot of stuff, it is a tax increase and it is hard on lower and middle income households because they devote a larger share of their budget on those items. i am very skeptical that the tariffs and the threat of tariffs, and there is a lot of talk about what president-elect trump was talking about was a negotiating ploy. i find that somewhat disconcerting as well. at the end of the day i do not think it works.

it will not achieve the goals he is setting out to achieve. and it creates a lot of drama and chaos and tumbled -- tumult around the globe and it is difficult to do business and that is bad for business. i think bottom line, that is not an economic policy that winds us up in a good place. host: if you would like to join our conversation and you have a question about the economy you can go ahead and call us. the numbers are on your screen. here is president-elect trump from october talking about tariffs. [video clip] >> the higher the tariff, the more likely it is to have them come. >> the more you're going to put on the value of those goods, the higher people are going to pay in the shops. >> ready. the higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the united states

and build a factory in the united states so it does not have to pay the tariff. [applause] >> that would take many years. >> i will tell you. there is another theory that the tariff you make it so high and so horrible and obnoxious that they will come right away. when i do the 10%. 10% israeli, first of all, when you collect it is hundreds of billions of dollars. all reducing our deficit. but really, there are two ways of looking at a tariff. you can do it as a moneymaking instrument or as something to get the companies. if you want the company is to come in, the tariff has to be higher than 10% because that is not enough. they are not doing it for 10%. you make a 50% tariff and they will come in. [end video clip] host: your reaction to that as far as keeping manufacturing jobs in the united states as a result of tariffs?

guest: i remember that interview. that was with the bloomberg editor-in-chief in the economic club of chicago. i recommend folks to look at -- to listen to that you can youtube that or find it on the web. a really fascinating interview because the printer -- the president-elect name called who he would raise tariffs on. but in that he only mentioned mexico and china. i think that is not is what is going to happen. i do think that you know businesses do not make big investment decisions and move factories and other activity into the united states because of tariffs, even if they are large because they do not believe in think those will remain in place in the future and they do not know what they will be. are they going to be 10, 20 or 60%. the president elect talked about 100 or 2000%. i am an economist but i also run a business and i know that if i am making an investment decision i have to put it down in a

spreadsheet and calculate a return on investment. and i have to put numbers in the spreadsheet. and if i do not know what those numbers are because of all of the uncertainty and i cannot put the mom -- the number in the spreadsheet i do not invest in i will not do it. i do not think that will happen. the other thing is that other countries will not stand still and just go back to the tariffs imposed in the first term. china responded and most of the tariff war was put on the chinese so they spotted in kind. that did a lot of damage. remember the u.s. farmers got crushed because china stopped buying agricultural products produced in the united states and farmers were flat on their back and president trump had to cut direct checks to the farmers to help them through to compensate for that.

no, i do not think we will see any significant investment. global investment will be lower because of the uncertainty created by the drama and the chaos created by all of this. so, i do not think you will see a meaningful increase in investment in the united states because of broad-based high tariffs. host: bruce in indiana on the independent line. hello. caller: hello. host: go ahead. caller: i have a question on the tariffs. mark is saying that the tariffs are going to cause reaction from other countries. and, tariffs have been put on our products for years and years. that is the only way to me that

the japanese were able to bring in all of their cars and got such a foothold in the united states. also, china, the companies that go in there from what i have read, they are required to give up information on manufacturing and stuff like that. so, i do not think that happens in the united states. if everybody else is doing it to us, how come it is such a bad idea? host: go-ahead. guest: they are not. i mean obviously the world is a big place. a lot of countries and a lot of trade policies. if you go to europe, for example, the europeans have no tariffs. their effective tariff rate is close to zero and has been for

quite some time now. now, in the case of china, i agree with you that that is a very problematic relationship. i do not think the chinese have placed -- have played fair in trade and other economic relationships. and so that goes back to my point about what we would call strategic tariffs, tariffs that are targeted. for example president biden imposed tariffs on $18 billion of tariffs from china like ev's solar panels and other products and that is $18 billion. so in the grand scheme of things it is small but it is sending a strong signal to the chinese that look, you have to play by the rules. i am not saying there is not a role for tariffs. i do not think there is a role for broad-based tariffs across the board. here's the other thing. canada and mexico do not impose tariffs on our goods.

we have a free-trade agreement, the usmca which was renegotiated by president trump in the first term. and that creates a free-trade zone. so there are no tariffs. those are our two biggest sources of trade. so, some countries impose tariffs and some countries do not play fair and the strategic tariffs make sense. most countries do and our biggest trading partners absolutely do not charge tariffs and we are in a free-trade zone. i do not think we should be pushing them with the threat of 25% tariffs, which is what is happening in the last couple of days. host: audrey from south carolina. democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. my concern is the ukraine war with russia.

ukraine is the red basket of the world, they say. how is their economy going to affect our economy if russia will retain them or conquer them and how will that affect our economy? guest: thank you for the question. the russian invasion of ukraine back in 2022 did a lot of economic damage and it hurt us badly. it caused prices for oil, natural gas and you mentioned agricultural prices, they all jumped because those commodities are produced in russia and ukraine. of course, ukraine's economy has been highly disrupted and russia has been impacted by sanctions. if you go back in june of 2022, the cost of a gallon of regular

unleaded hit an all-time high of five dollars nationwide because of the russian war. a big part of the surge in agricultural prices and the higher grocery prices we are paying is because of the disruption to agriculture in ukraine and russia. it turns out and this is something that i learned as a result of the invasion, russia produces a lot of fertilizer that goes around the world and is important to growing crops and many other parts of the world. because of the war that caused fertilizer prices to rise and the cost of crops and that raised the prices of groceries that we are buying in our stories. the ward ukraine had a significant impact. -- the war in ukraine had a sniff can impact. i will call that out because of the jumping inflation and the invasion of ukraine. that with the inflation caused with the supply chain

disruptions in the disruptions to the supply market that cause expectations of future inflation to jump which got into demands of wages and prices. you might have heard of the wage-price spiral which is something that is very disconcerting to the federal reserve and the key reason why they jacked up inflation rates. that is a lot to digest but the bottom line is that the comment to your point, the russian you great -- invasion of ukraine and the ongoing conflict is a significant contributor to the higher inflation we have suffered since the invasion occurred. host: we have a question on x on about what about the debt? the stock market keeps hitting records what we hear about the debt destroying the country. i will hear -- i will show you the u.s. debt clock showing the u.s. natural debt at just over $36 trillion. guest: i view this as a

significant problem, you know the deficit which is the difference between what the government takes in and -- in revenue, tax or tariff revenue and all sources of revenue and what the government spends on everything from social security, medicare and medicaid to nasa is almost $2 trillion a year, which adds up to about 6% of the nation's gdp. and that is in an economy that is about as good as it gets. it is an exceptional economy. 6% is out of bounds in a well-functioning and good economy you do not want to

deficit to gdp of over 2%. 6% is crazy. and it is adding to the amount of debt outstanding which is rising rapidly. you know, i give you this is a serious problem. anything about raising taxes has to be married with other tax increases elsewhere or spending or something to make it all add up otherwise the deficit and debt will continue to rise and that will be a weight on the economy that is difficult to bear. we will see higher interest rates and mortgage rates will be higher. credit card interest rates will be higher and difficult for the typical american to buy a car or two buy a home. so i think this is an issue that is front and center and we need to take that on board when thinking about tax and spending cut policies going forward. host: michael on the line for independents in illinois. caller: keep your finger off of

the button so i can develop my two questions. now, as an economist, i understand that 70% of our economy, at least 70% is based on consumer spending relating to the inflation. i disagree totally with urinalysis. unemployment insurance only replaces about 30% of your income. even with the added payments they were giving. it never came up to the level for most people of their income. so and it is $1800 or so that they gave us in three payments during the covid. how could that possibly fuel the level of inflation that we have? it is impossible and it does not make sense. it is the tax cuts that put money in the rich. and secondly regarding medicare

and medicaid and all of this. it is the price gouging on the part of the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies in the hospitals and the doctors that get us to a situation where we pay 2.5 times what the next country does for covering the health care costs. it is just all bogus. i do not think you are doing any service to us by telling the propaganda lines. host: let us give him a chance to respond. guest: i appreciate the question. it sounds like you are taking umbrage with the pointed out the american rescue plan and the impact that had on inflation back when it was in 2021. let me just say, i do not think the american rescue plan and the

impact on demand that resulted because of the stimulus checks and the rental assistance and all the other support is contributing to the inflation we are experiencing now or it was really only about the inflation back in 2021. by 2022, it goes right back to the russian war in ukraine and the ongoing effects of the pandemic. i am not sure we are disagreeing to any significant degree. i do not think that that was a big deal. i do, there are many causes of high inflation and i do not mean to sound like or to say dogmatic and say it is this one and that one, there is a long list of factors. i would just put at the top of the list the disruptions caused by the pandemic. towards the bottom i would put the american rescue plan. and all the way to the bottom of the list is the idea price gouging.

that i am skeptical of. i just do not see it. maybe when certain industries like food processing and meatpacking and certain companies. you always can. but in broad-based meaning that business is took advantage and jacked up prices when supply was constrained by the pandemic in the russia war. host: he made the point of price gouging for entitlement spending so medicare and medicaid that hospitals and doctors are just price gouging the patients. guest: what i look at to try engage that is the profitability of the margins of the businesses in those industries. they are doing well, but not to the point where you say these guys are taking advantage. the other thing is having said that, i do think there is a lot of reforms we need to make to make the medical care system more cost-efficient and to get

price increases down. and some things in the biden administration do that. as part of the inflation reduction act, it did provide the federal government the ability to negotiate drug prices for certain drugs. and that has seemingly worked and brought those prices back in line and back down. i agree with that but broad-based price gouging and i am hard-pressed to see that. host: on the republican line nate in franklin, indiana. caller: yes. i have a couple of questions. first of all, with these tariffs , you are giving a lot of power to one person to create winners and losers in the largest economy in the world. not only do you have in the whole world, it seems that that would lend itself to corruption

with creating winners and losers based on whatever favors you might get. and also my second question is who decides who gets exemptions and is that done by the president? and i will wait on your answers on that. thank you. guest: you make a good point. i think it is not well understood. implementing tariffs and really the broad-based tariffs is incredibly messy. take a look at the list of products that have tariffs on them, it is a blizzard of different products in different countries and you are right. if you go back to the tariffs imposed in president trump's first term there was a lot of pushback saying that if you put tariffs on this it is a national security issue or if you impose tariffs on that it will severely

disrupt my business. so, exemptions were provided. we -- they were adjudicated by a group of government officials in the administration and they took a look at what the petitioner said and what the business said about the tariffs and how much damage they are going to do and made decisions around that. you can lower the tariff or eliminate the tariff with this country or this period. a very complicated process and generally not transparent and very opaque. to your point that does open up the possibility that you are picking winners and losers. and i do not think that is where we want to be. that is not consistent with a well-functioning market economy. certainly not over an extended period of time. that is a real issue and problem and adds to the uncertainty that i was describing earlier.

again, a business person need certainty and to be able to calculate a number and calculate the return on investment. if you have all of the exemptions and it is not transparent you cannot just put the number in a spreadsheet. this is a serious insignificant problem and will likely be a problem if we do this with broad-based terms going forward. host: hot springs national park, arkansas. line for democrats. j.b. are you on vacation? caller: i live here. host: go ahead. caller: i was going to ask market you know you cannot turn on a financial program without hearing about bitcoin. i do not pretend to understand it. i tried to ask jane that it was a -- explained that it was a law chain or something. i noticed it was hovering over $92,000 a coin. i was just wondering not that i would buy one, that if you did,

where would the money go when you buy bitcoin. who gets the money for that? that is my question. caller: you are -- guest: you are buying it from someone who owns it. bitcoins are manufactured and there is an algorithm in process and you have miners that are running the algorithms and creating the bitcoin and then you get it in and they buy and then it is traded. it is just like any other i hesitate to use the word asset but a stock or bond. so you have the owner and the buyer and they transact. you can go on an exchange and there are different exchanges. if you want to buy a stock you can just go to schwab or td & up for an account and you can put cash in the account and they can use that to buy a stock. there are exchanges that do that for crypto, it being one of them.

i will mention coin base for example because that is the one i know. same principle, same general process. host: mickey in los angeles, california. you are on. caller: thank you for taking your call. i enjoy it when mr. zandi is on your show. i have two things, the tariffs that donald trump has proposed he negotiated nafta to usmca and i do not understand the issue with the trade agreement that he himself negotiated. the other thing is that in all all of -- a lot of these illegal migrants into the u.s. over the last four years have been mainly from el salvador guatemala and venezuela where there is economic hardship. many illegal margaret -- migrants living in the u.s. who are mexican have actually ended up going back to mexico because

the economy in mexico is good and the u.s. factories have set up there for decades. so they are going back. so this will have a negative impact. you will cause those same mexicans who want to come to the u.s. for mexican -- for opportunities. this does not make sense to me. i am in the import business and i was hurt a lot when china imposed -- when trump imposed tariffs on china. i import area rugs. the area rug tariff went from zero to 35% and it was impossible for me to continue so i had to shift production to another country. i was not taking any jobs away from the u.s. country and i have friends who have done extremely well in the last four years and they are very wealthy and they voted for trump and i know some of my employees who did not do

too well the last four years and they voted for trump. so i do not understand this disconnect and why did the democrats not have a message about the good economy of the last four years. thanks you for taking my call. guest: thank you for all of that and there is a lot to unpack. back to the usmca that is a free deal that president trump need -- renegotiated that was originally nafta and it became the usmca under president trump. and i do not know that president trump has an issue with that. there are some tweaks that need to be done. it was going to have a refresh in 2026. so some things on the edges might be adjusted. i think generally, i do not know that president trump is regarding tariffs with regard to create leverage around the usmca, maybe on the margin. i do not know if that is a big reason. he called out reasons for the

tariffs on canada and mexico being the illegal drug trade and immigration and obviously addressing those issues is critically important to the nation. those are laudable goals. i just do not think that we will make any progress on achieving those goals through tariffs. i do not think that that means that canada and mexico will try any harder to address these issues. you make some good points about what problem are we actually trying to solve. we have seen a very significant decline in illegal immigration across the southern border over the past year in part because of the executive order that president biden put in around the summer around asylum-seekers but also in part because the mexicans have tried to control the number of immigrants coming through mexico into the u.s.. it is not really mexicans coming into the u.s. but other latin and south american countries

where the immigrants are coming from. i am hard-pressed to see what role candidacy -- lays in -- canada plays in illegal immigration. and immigrants across the northern border or illegal drug trade. using trade policy or the threat of tariffs to achieve these other goals, while they are good goals, i do not think they will be as effective and they will create other problems that are counterproductive. host: regarding plans for a mass deportation, how reliant is the u.s. economy on undocumented immigrant labor? guest: very. host: how do we know that if they are undocumented and this is under the table? guest: well, we can see it in the employment statistics that are surveys to try and gauge how

many folks are foreign-born or nativeborn and we have some sense of how many of those are legal or illegal. it is not easy and it is difficult. you know, what we do know is this, the economy is at full employment and the employment rate is at 4%. the federal reserve has been working hard to get it at 4%. that is with all of those immigrants on the job and working. and that full employment economy and that full employment economy in u.s. those workers to leave or even make life so difficult that they self deport, the economy is not going to have enough workers or people in those jobs that are in right now, and we know that those workers and either way the numbers are quite large. the undocumented and unauthorized last estimate was 11 million and so it was -- so it is higher than that today.

they working instruction trade. so we have a very severe shortage of affordable housing both for rent and homeownership. we need to build more homes at about one third of all of the workers in the construction trade are foreign-born. not all illegal but some are. if we asked them to leave, we will not build those homes to address that shortage which means we have to pay more to rent and the house prices will be higher and more unaffordable and it will make it harder for first-time homebuyers to get into a home. agriculture is another obvious area because -- and then manufacturing, transportation, leisure, hospitality, child and elder care. health care. all of these industries rely heavily on immigration. now, i do not think there is any way to run a railroad. i think our immigration system really needs reform, and by the way we got close to a good

reform bill last summer and got it kaboshed any product -- in the process. we need immigrants but we need to make sure that those coming into the country have the skills we need. we need skills across the board, all of the above but we need to make that rational. i am not arguing that. i am saying it will be very counter reductive, inflationary if at this point of time we ask a lot of immigrants to leave the country. host: on the republican line, gerald in new jersey. good morning. caller: i am wondering what mark zandi, what policies he would implement to bring in -- to bring industry back to the united states. obviously we will need heavy industry to build infrastructure and such and the like. i am not hearing anything about how he would build our industry. thank you. guest: is a great question, i

liked the tax subsidies provided in the chips act and the inflation reduction act for in the case of the chips act for the name makes it clear that the chip industry and the semi conductor industry, that piece of legislation provides tax breaks for global chip companies to come into the united states. that is working fabulously well. look at the number of chip facilities going up and they are coming to fruition and going online. tsmc, which is a major taiwanese to produce just opened up a plant, one of the most sophisticated chip producing production facilities in the world in phoenix. so that has been highly successful. in the inflation reduction act a tremendous amount of tax subsidies to help the transition from moving from fossil fuel to

clean energy both in terms of investment and production and that is working beautifully. the bipartisan infrastructure law that was passed three years ago provides tremendous amounts of money and support to build out the up a structure which if you bring a real -- build a road or a bridge or an election brit -- electric grid or broadband requires a ton of product and a lot of it is not produced here. we have been fortunate that we could use tariff and tax subsidies to get manufacturers to come here to the united states and start to produce. i will give you 1% -- i will give you one statistic. if you go back before the infrastructure law was passed in 20, the 10 years prior to that the amount spent by manufacturers in facilities was about $75 billion per annum, give or take.

the last i looked in the month of september, the spending on facilities, manufacturing facilities, $230 billion. so, we are seeing a massive amount of investment and a lot of that is coming from the taxes. the one thing that is driving all of this is ai and data centers. data centers are basically large facilities to hold the computers that do all the calculations for artificial intelligence. they are going up everywhere and that is driving a lot of economic activity. manufacturing is coming back and it is coming back in a very significant way and we made a lot of progress in the last several years. host: we are fitting in robert in lake jackson, texas. independent. caller: good morning to my fellow americans.

are you ok, because you had us worried for a moment? host: i was, and thank you for your concern. caller: my question then. that is a relief. what would slapping prohibitive tariffs on imported goods do when these guys have 3d printers and have one put in every home so everyone can become their own manufacturer and just give americans universal based income to offset the costs of the tariffs? guest: that is an interesting idea. there is great technology and i am sure and i am already sure it is having an enormous benefit. i do not know if that is viable at this point in time. when i was a young economist there is this fellow who wrote a book about the future and

technology. i highly recommend it and it is a very cool book and it got a lot of it right and he talked about 3d printing 20 or 30 years ago and having a 3d printer and everyone's home. i do not know how far-fetched it is but it would be a benefit to americans and it might solve a lot of economic issues. that is the other thing i might say. i think the american economy is an amazing thing if we just let it go and do not impede it. it is an incredible success story in a large part because we invent new technologies to solve problems and it makes our lives better. we can argue and debate the merits of this and that and everything else but as long as we remember to let the american economy operate we will be fine. host: that is mark zandi and you can find his work at economy.com. thank you for being on the program. guest: thank you.

host: it is the busiest day of the year, the day before thanksgiving. you can take a look at d.c.'s's reagan national airport. the crowds are building up as we speak. we will be focusing on the $1 trillion infrastructure law that was signed into law three years ago. we will get a progress report from corrigan salerno later in the program. coming up after the break is more if your phone calls for open forums. you can start calling you now. democrats, 202-748-8000. republicans, 202-748-8001. and independents, 202-748-8002. we'll be right back. >> sunday on q&a, the author of "my two lives" talks about

surviving the -- surviving nazi germany of a half jewish youth, the ability -- the steps taken to conceal his identity. >> we get out of the subway which is right around the corner where my mother lived and where we lived with my mother, i saw all kinds of gestapo and ss in front of the building. this was a large building and there were many families in there. and my brother and i decided that rather than going in and going there with all of these ss and gestapo people. we waited on the corner and watched it from there. and we decided to ask our mother as to why these people were there and what they were doing their once they were leaving. and then we would go home and ask our mother. well, after a while to our

surprise it was our mother. they were bringing her out of the building and put her in one of the cars. and they took her away. host: with his book "my two lives." sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on q&a. you can listen to that end all of our podcasts on our free c-span now app. >> attention middle and high school students across america, it is time to make your voice heard. c-span's studentcam documentary contest is here. it is your chance to present a documentary that can inspire change, raise awareness and make an impact. your documentaries should answer the question your message to the president, but issue is the most important to you or your community whether you are passionate about politics, the environment or community stories. it is your platform to share your message with the world with

$100,000 in prizes including a grand prize of thousand -- $5,000. this is your opportunity not only to make an impact but to be rewarded with your creativity and hard work. enter your submissions today. scan the code or visit studtcam.org for all of the details on how to enter. the deadline is january 20, 2025. >> according to the brown university professor, the following presidents in history threatened democracy and here are words from the introductions of his book "the president said the people." "john adams waged war of the national press prosecuting 120 six who dared to criticize him. james buchanan colluded with the supreme court to deny constitutional personhood to african-americans. andrew johnson urged violence against his political opponents.

woodrow wilson nationalized jim crow by segregating the federal government and richard nixon committed criminal acts and ordered the watergate break-in. he teaches constitutional law at his brown university. >> cory brettschneider with the book "the presence of the people" on this episodes of book notes+ which is available on the c-span now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> washington journal continues. host: welcome back to open forum on washington journal. and you are looking at union station right in front of the studio at c-span and it is the busiest day of the year. so people are starting to, you can see, reagan national airport with people starting to leave

and come into town and celebrate the thanksgiving holiday. and we are taking your calls for open forum. we will start on the line for democrats in indianapolis. dana, good morning. caller: i want to under one -- to understand one thing, americans. how is it that when we have an economy that is gaining and wall street is closing at record numbers and unemployment is down and we still have to this day 1.5 million jobs available for -- that employers need to be filled? ok? you are making more money than the minimum wage. right now, you guys are making excellent money, 20 to 18 or 15

or whatever per hour. there are plenty of work and plenty of open jobs and you are making money. the economy is booming. look at what she just said about union station. people have that money to spend put into the economy. and you are supposed to be a leader, our leader, tell me one thing that is going to be good about imposing tariffs on our people that import and export into our country? tell me how that is going to be good for anyone to do those tariffs. and keep in mind, minimum wage is still at $7.75. the minimum wage has not been hiked up mandatorily. if we start going into a

recession and job start going off, when you come back you will still be making minimum wages $7.75. tell me you are not doing better on the money you are making now. host: regarding tariffs axios says mexico's president would impose rotella torrey. -- tariffs. "on tuesday she would impose tariffs in retaliation to those proposed president-elect trump. and it says that the leaders from mexico, china and canada have all argued that the u.s. in their countries mutually benefit from cooperative trade agreements. trump on monday said that he would impose new tariffs to stop the flow of drugs and migrants." gene in denver, colorado. good morning. caller: this is gene in colorado.

host: you are on the air. go ahead. caller: i have a little bit to say. you watch the news and you can see that the democrats are beating up on themselves trying to figure out why they lost the election. it was not anything that they did, it is just the nature of this country. when you look at it on paper, if you had those two people, harris and trump apply for a job and they gave you their resume and for whatever reason you choose trump it shows that there is something wrong with the employer. in this case, it is the american public. why would you choose someone like trump to run the most powerful country on the planet at a time like this? at any time with the record that he has got? it is the public that has a problem. there is a sickness, a racial

issue, a financial issue, but it is mostly race. there is nowhere in the world where trump should be able to hold this position under normal conditions. there are problems in this country and it is deep-seated and has been there for decades and it is not going away. thank you for letting me call. host: vice president harris had a message to supporters that she just released. this is her speaking to reporters -- to her supporters that might have been discouraged by the election loss. here she has. [video clip] >> i just have to remind you, don't you ever let anyone take your power from you. you have the same power that you did before november 5. and you have the same purpose that you did. and you have the same ability to

engage and inspire. so, to not let anybody or any circumstance take your power from you. look, this mission that we have takes hard work. but, as you have heard me say many times, we like hard work. hard work is good work. hard work can be joyful work. and in doing our work, we will remain committed and intentional about building community, building coalitions, reminding people that we all have so much more in common than what separates us. we will be armed with the faith and fuel that tells us what is possible and drives us to achieve it. so, let us continue to organize, mobilize, and stay engaged. i thank you all, we are all in

this together, all right? we are all in this together. and on this practical eve of thanksgiving, i wish everyone a happy thanksgiving with the ability to find the ability of the moment to just remember there is so much to be thankful for. host: that was the vice president yesterday wishing everyone a happy thanksgiving. our crews aright reagan national airport to check out the crowds for the busy holiday season. we will have a segment about transportation coming up in a few minutes. janette in portland, oregon. democrat. caller: i had a couple of points to touch on. i agree with the guy from colorado. we should have never given the job to him. being a 34 time felon, a sexual

abuser, a fraudster, he would never be able to even get a job packaging french fries at mcdonald's. they would not even let him in the door when it was open. no mcdonald's -- potus, that's fine. that really gets to me. the other thing i want to talk about is, everybody knows he made the economy the best in the world. everybody is suffering because of the pandemic but he really got us out of it. it really drives me crazy that kamala harris did not really talk about it as much as she should have. she had great -- a great economic record to run on. the seniors in this country. they are not getting enough social security. one problem is the rich don't

pay their fair share. they only pay a social security tax on the first $169,000 they make. they don't pay anymore social security tax after that. they should pay it on everything and they should not get any tax breaks because they made aliens of dollars -- billions of dollars on our stock market. seniors are becoming homeless. they need a raise. i think after all the years they got nothing. they live on a poppers wage. they can get a 50% wage and still not have enough money to live. they don't want you to pay the take care of them. i heard kamala harris say we will send people to their house. give us money to take care of ourselves. jesus. it is not enough. i know seniors who are becoming homeless or having to go to two or three singles and a house to

survive in this country when all these rich people are making so much money. they can give a little more to the social security beneficiaries who were not surviving, not having fun, not able to buy christmas presents, she got lucky and had a big stock market or wealth in your family, you are out of luck. host: this is a republican line in texas. renee, good morning. caller: thank you. good morning. i'm so sorry most of america is dreading thanksgiving with their family because of politics this year. personally, we can't wait. most of us are republicans. we are celebrating the results. we have so much to talk about and everything to be thankful for. this will be the best thanksgiving ever. praise god, hallelujah. thank you lord. host: kendra in nashville.

independent. caller: hopefully you won't cut me off. you did let other people go on for a minute. there are a few things -- a few different things or to a few different ways to look at the meaning. i want to point out two dei hires hunter biden. the first is -- under biden. the first is kamala harris. joe biden said he pick a black woman as vp, meaning the role was not open for a white woman, a latina woman or any other woman unless they were black. in addition, the role was not open for any man regardless of race. the second one is ketanji brown jackson. yes, she is qualified to be in the position she's in. what makes her a dei hire is the role was not open to anyone else but a black woman. i am black as well so i'm happy

to see ketanji brown and her role. i'm pointing out that she is a dei hire. let me point out other people i consider to be dei hires. the first is joe biden as vp for obama. he needed an older white man on the ticket. the second is tim kaine for hillary clinton. the third is tim walz for kamala harris. i say this because even though it was not specified, they actually did need a white man to be on the ticket as a second person. mimi, one more thing i would like to ask the viewers. if you had a brand-new business and you needed someone to run it, when you hire someone like kamala harris to run your business? no. there is your answer as to why trump won the election. i hope everyone has a happy

thanksgiving. host: patricia in maryville, tennessee. caller: good morning. i want to say that they voted trump in. i will -- in the poorhouse along with the rest of us poor people. so many in the house and senate are nothing but rush oligarchs. -- russian oligarchs. i see it every day. people are so blinded makes me mad. deafblind -- are so blind it makes me mad. god bless kamala harris. host: dalton in texas. caller: i would ask a question in reference to the north carolina hurricane people . we are a great nation and we

always help other countries and things like that. most of the time people with any kind of devastation. are any of the mobile homes, car dealers, grocery stores, furniture stores, people like that, clothing stores, any of those voluntarily surrendering x amount of numbers of mobile homes to help these people get ready for the winter and the cold climate that's coming? any of the automobile dealers, used cars, new cars, manufacturers, are they surrendering any type of a car as a gift just to say let us help you out and get you some transportation so you can get to the doctor, get the food and stuff you need,? any you need -- stuff you need? any grocery stores giving food?

are the teachers and schools and colleges doing things to help the children maintain or get back into school and the families get back up on their feet? we live in texas. i am from north carolina. they always pitched in to help each other around their. i have not seen anything in the news where people that have the quality -- the quantities of stuff like mobile homes, cars and clothing and furniture. furniture stores are making good money off of everybody and they are high on everything. they can take a little cut back and surrender some stuff for free to help those people get out of the tents, something warm to sleep in, stay inside their house or wherever their accommodations are. is there anybody doing anything like that to help these people out? doctors going out to visit them and check on people to see who

needs what medication? i have not seen no doctors in the doorways. i haven't seen none of the democrat politicians darkened the doorways in asheville, north carolina. blumenthal, elizabeth warren, nancy pelosi, joe biden. they have not even been there. host: in henderson, north carolina. joseph, democrat. caller: good morning. can you hear me? host: go right ahead. caller: i wanted to talk about the plan the republican party had as far as getting donald trump in the office. they started out with gerrymandering. i'm sure everyone is familiar with it. they go in and redo the maps. they redistrict a lot of people. they came up with the voter ids.

they know there is a lot of elderly people they don't have ids that want to vote. there's a lot of people that have different addresses. they have to have a change of address. it was confusing to the voter out there when they came up with that, the voter id thing before you can vote. it really disenfranchised a lot of voters out there that took away from this election right here. this is a thing that has been generated for a long time. the people have -- the people have been on the other side. they have a case of amnesia. they forget about stuff. they forgot about covid. there was not a big thing about it. millions of people lost their lives from covid. they forgot about 9/11 where thousands of people died in the

world trade centers in new york. they forgot about it. they don't care. there are people that don't care because donald trump has broken every rule in the book in america. he is still sitting up there as a convicted felon in the office. host: something for your schedule for 12:00 noon today here on c-span, state officials will discuss expanding internet access as part of the broader digital equity act initiative. from bob and practiced -- broadband breakfast, watch it live on c-span, on c-span now and online at c-span.org. johnny in georgia, democrat. caller: how are you doing? i am calling.

a felon can become president. [indiscernible] that will change the election. none of that happened this time. we have a guy who's been married three times. he's done some cricket stuff. the wreck and people still want to back him. i don't understand this. the american christian folk want to back him. it doesn't make sense to -- you have three parties now. the american party, the republican party, the credit party. thank you. host: ronald in florida, republican. caller: i was thinking about the people that call in. it is hard times for people that are living on social security. with the high prices in our country. it is all understandable. think about why there is not

money for these people. it is given away to these illegal immigrants that come across. they are housed, fed, given money. they are given everything. medical care. all the things our citizens should be receiving. they are taking from our citizens. this is a result of having kamala harris and biden. i think in a few years we will look back. these people that are going off on trump will see he's done a great job in trying to revive this country. they are down on him so much. they talk about the rich paying their fair share. i think the rich pay their fair share. i know i do. a lot of people pay taxes. there are too many takers. too many people that are being given this money.

our government has given it away to other countries before they even worry about the american people. host: jack in arlington, virginia. democrat. caller: good morning. i agree with the last caller. i am a devoted, well brought up democrat. i voted for donald trump. i take offense at a lot of my democratic colors and fellow democrats who have this view that somehow my eyes were shut or we forget about our history. i'm a pro black black man. i'm a veteran. father of daughters. people bring up different reasons why it makes no sense. i'm sorry. host: you faded out. we can hear you. caller: one of the key issues --

kamala harris -- to me the world is on fire. i am a pro community democrat. just like the last caller said, watching the democrats re-globalize. i served in iraq and afghanistan. it was this globalized view. people are not focused on what is relevant, at least to my community inside the united states. harris, i'm watching the world on fire like this, she is pitching joy. are you kidding me? you are pitching joy? i could not take her seriously. in her recent newscast she was like -- my daughters were in the car. we were listening this morning. get together. love each other. come on, man. i'm a democrat and i voted for donald trump. host: robert in tuscaloosa,

alabama. democrat. caller: i voted for the vice president. only three democrats could have won this election. gretchen whitmer, the governor of michigan, michelle obama or the governor of california. host: gavin newsom. the governor of california is gavin newsom. caller: gavin newsom. those three could have won. being an 80-year-old man in this country, the most white people will vote against a person who most african americans vote for. that is just a fact. it will not change soon. host: all right. that is it for today's open forum. more to come on this busy thanksgiving travel day. today before thanksgiving -- the

day before thanksgiving. we will focus on the if or structure law that was signed three years ago. we will get a progress report from corrigan salerno from transportation for america. stay with us. ♪ >> american history tv, saturdays on c-span2, exploring the people and events that tell the american story. this we at 2:00 p.m. eastern, conversations with veterans at historians on world war ii. hear from merchant marines, the last rosie the riveter, buffalo soldiers of the korean war, holocaust survivors and more. at 9:30 p.m. eastern on the presidency, dennis quaid portrays ronald reagan in the film "reagan," at headlines -- and headlines a discussion about the movie. the story told of the eyes of a kgb agent and is based on the

soviet union's real-life surveillance of ronald reagan. event features several clips from the film. exploring the american story. watch american history tv saturdays on c-span2, and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/history. >> listing the programs -- listening to programs on c-span radio is. easy listen to washington journal daily at 7:00 a.m. eastern. weekdays catch washington today. listen to c-span anytime. tell your smart speaker to play c-span radio. c-span, powered by cable. >> the c-span bookshelf podcast makes it easy for you to listen to all of c-span's podcasted future nonfiction books in one

place so you can discover new authors and ideas. each week we make it convenient for you to multiple episodes with critically claimed authors discussing history, biographies, current events and culture. signature programs about books, afterwards, book notes plus and q&a. listen to c-span's bookshelf podcast feed today. you can find the feed and our podcast on the free c-span now app and on our website, c-span.org/podcasts. >> washington journal continues. host: welcome back. we are talking about the state of the nation's infrastructure and investments with corrigan salerno, policy manager for transportation for america. welcome to the program. guest: how are you doing? host: tell us about the organization transportation for america and how you are funded. guest: transportation for

america is a nonpartisan advocacy organization made up of members from local communities, including regional governments. on top of that we are funded through philanthropic sources, government grants and service work through a technical assistant work. we would be helping with the deployment of anything from the southern rail commission that will be running from new orleans to mobile, alabama, to helping marilyn d.o.t. analyze -- maryland dot analyze grants for funding. host: your funding? guest: both philanthropic sources and service work. we have members that pay for our analyses and insights on federal transportation and development. host: let's talk about the

infrastructure lot that had his three year anniversary this month. it was $1.2 trillion. the if or structure investment and jobs act -- infrastructure investment and jobs act. from is how we got that bill and how significant it is. guest: winding back to the trump administration, the previous transportation reauthorization bill, the fast act, it expired and had been going on an extension for several years at that point while the house and senate were developing new policies to create surface transportation reauthorization bills to determine how things like roads, bridges and transit systems operate in the country and funded from the federal level. after a couple of years of infrastructure, the trump administration and intervened by

covid, we were able to see the development of infrastructure investment and jobs act. that initially started with different bills competing about the house and senate. on the house side we have the invest in america act, our organization identified as something that would be more transformative and take on a path towards our priorities which are fixing things first, prioritizing safety over and addressing access via all modes of transportation for everyone. after the passage of the invest in america act, we saw the bipartisan negotiations go on in the senate with the support of the biden administration. really skewing the priorities towards that of the senate version which would essentially continue the structure and policy of the pre-existing transportation program as it

existed in a very roughly unchanged form for decades. through that the house afterwards passed the senate version and joe biden signed on november 15, leading us to where we are. we have implement inc. it ever since. -- implementing it ever since. host: how much of that $1.2 trillion has been awarded? guest: that is a fun question. you can get a lot of different answers out of that depending on how you consider funds to be awarded. i believe the at ministries and announced over half the funding had been allocated. there's a difference and that you can announce grants such as for a project rebuilding the longbridge and washington, d.c., but some funding my not be obligated by the federal government.

all the grant agreement with the recipients and also contractors are signed. in that case, the number of funding is a little lower than that. of the surface transportation portion of the infrastructure law, our analysis shows about $150 billion has been obligated as of june. projecting that to today it should be not be too much higher than 206 $2 billion. -- $260 billion. host: that is not a lot compared to $1.2 trillion. guest: it's important to consider how these projects are going to take a very long time as well. host: what is the hold up? is this before they actually break ground on these projects? is that how it is measured? guest: in some cases yes. in others, these are projects that have already been under

construction or on plans from states. state plans and regional plans will have projects listed out as far as several decades. the first tranche of infrastructure law funding we have seen go out has gone towards those. the more transformative projects we are going to expect to come out of the bill are still in the works. the average road projects completion time is about 2027 for those under $100 million. for the projects that take more than $100 million, expect those projects to be finished about 2029 or later. as for transit or rail projects, those go out to the 20 30's. it depends on the -- 2030's. it depends on the projects causing the delay. it is just going to take some time with infrastructure broadly. host: can you tell us more about the process of awarding the grants and the role of the

federal government plays as opposed to the role that states play? guest: what makes up the majority of funding in the infrastructure lot is formula funding, grants given out to states annually in several different programs that are supposed to address different priorities. for instance, the national highway performance program which is around $150 billion over five years. those funds go out to states on a regular basis and pay for things like expanding roads and road maintenance, as well as safety projects. the discretionary grant part of the bill is a bit smaller. it represents about 10% to 15% of the funding in the highway portion. those are designed by congress. the initial goals of the program and then following that the

executive administration and the u.s. department of transportation led by pete buttigieg created criteria for the grants. meaning how the grants are scored by projects and their applicants and how well they do on those measures. those measures could be anything from how well people are connected to jobs and services, how will underserved communities might be served, and how well the project is accomplishing its goals for the cost. host: that was corrigan salerno. if you have a question about the ever structure law, about ground transportation, give us a call by party. democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. i want to show you a portion of president biden speaking at the white house just after the election this month about the legacy of that infrastructure built.

[video] >> much of the work we have done is already being felt by the american people. the vast majority will not be -- it will be felt over the next 10 years. we have legislation we passed. it is only now kicking in. we will see over a trillion dollars worth of infrastructure work done. changing people's lives in rural communities. communities that are in difficulty. it takes time to get it done. so much more is going to take time. but it is there. the road ahead is clear. there is so much we can get done and will get done based on the way the legislation was passed. it is truly historic. host: corrigan salerno, he said assuming we can sustain it. is there anything that the next administration can do to either

slow down the infrastructure build out or redirect the money? guest: there's a lot of uncertainty with how the next iteration of the trump white house my treat infrastructure projects. it's important to keep in context that the infrastructure law was passed on a bipartisan basis. a bit unlike the inflation reduction act which had much more present and focused priorities on things like climate and electric vehicles that president trump be more apt to attempt to claw away. with the infrastructure lot there are fundings that are essentially approved by congress for the next two years. beyond that there is funding from the highway trust fund for the larger formula fund projects that will continue going through at least 2027. of those projects that trump

might be interested in clawing back, know there was a discussion on x.com on the national electric vehicle infrastructure program between donald trump, jr. and pete buttigieg. in that discussion you saw how the program works. it is a formula program that goes to states and states administer it from there, which leads to a slower rollout. you have to take money from states for these priorities that they have planned for for years and how they plan to use. it is difficult to see how they would treat things like the formula programs. as for discretionary grant programs and potentially also for the transit program broadly there could be changes. in the last administration we saw a slow walking of grants that occurred in the first few years of the federal transit administration under trump where grants were slow to get out,

potentially costing agencies. for discretionary grant programs i mentioned where states and localities apply for the funding for the federal government, you see different criteria of being uplifted by the trump administration. we anticipate things to focus less on equity or climate or climate resilience and more on things like economic development. host: speaking of climate, we have a question from sally on x. there's been criticism over the slow rollout of government-funded electric vehicle chargers. can you explain why it is taking so long? guest: i can. there has actually been around 700 or more announced charger sites. each site has at minimum four ports that will be deployed. you are seeing the slow rollout because we are seeing over 50 different programs being developed. with the national electric vehicle infrastructure program states are in the lead on this.

they are working to build that electric vehicle chargers every 50 miles. putting one charger one mile from an exit every 50 miles. that takes a lot of planning and coordination. it is also requiring partnership with folks in communities and with private partners who would be host to the gas stations. there are some requirements in the infrastructure law and also from federal rulemaking that may have slowed it down such as that one mile requirement, which might be limiting potential to deploy sites in small businesses around small businesses rather than gas stations. beyond that it really is just a matter of having to go through the processes of setting up a sustainable program 50 different times across 50 different contects so they can have a path forward.

host: wayne in harrisburg, pennsylvania. republican. caller: how are you doing today? i have a simple question. i'm a black man. i am in most of what you would call the hood. i'm a carpenter from new jersey. i worked 30 years in the carpenter field. i had a good job. good money. but today i see how do we keep the black man on the job? that is the number one problem. keeping the black man on the job. i have four sons. host: let's take it up as far as what we expect as far as jobs go on the infrastructure projects. guest: with one $.2 trillion

going to infrastructure someone has to build it. with the amount of jobs we have seen thousands created pronouncements from the biden administration. if we take a look at the transit programs, you can see the creation of jobs from folks that are operating the systems and building them out. we can inspect thousands of jobs to be created over the course of the deployment of the infrastructure law. host: a question from marcus. what are the chances of the chesapeake bay bridge replacement in maryland getting funded? you know about that, corrigan salerno? guest: i don't know the odds of that specific project being approved on the federal basis. if unfamiliar the context might overall -- revolve around congress' appetite to help. host: anna in de soto, texas.

caller: how are you doing? do you ever come through texas? we are one of the third-largest infrastructure money that was given in the states. first of all, southwest airlines redid the runways there. we have roads and bridges coming everywhere from el paso up into -- did you know that? last new year's i drove with my son, a truck driver, all the southern states there. i don't know if they are lying to you or what but south carolina, north carolina, georgia, alabama, florida, all of those states have gotten the infrastructure money. i don't know what they are doing with it.

you need to come down and see texas. you need to look at all of the infrastructure that is being done. with senator cornyn, all those people, they don't tell you anything. they have tons of money. housing. we are building houses like it is unbelievable. there was a lady yesterday who talked about florida. that they don't see the snow babies coming down to florida. no, they are in texas. in de soto, we have a turbine company and a solar panel company. that is along going to say to you. texas -- host: let's talk about texas. guest: in texas, it's been one of the larger recipients of funding under the infrastructure law, particularly under the highway program.

you are seeing with texas they are building a lot of new infrastructure compared to other states. in our analysis texas has spent about more funds on infrastructure expansion than any other state in the country. while that might be good in terms of the jobs created, they will be a climate impact from that construction as we outlined in our new report on a website. we really get into the consequences of that expansion of infrastructure. broadly speaking with the states, as you mentioned when you were driving to the south, it really is confusing almost what the states are spending their funds on, especially considering many of the repair priorities are being ignored by states to focus on what might be politically expedient wins to

expand infrastructure. i hear what you are saying. host: we have a question on x, or a comment about replanting -- replacing the francis scott key bridge. it is supposed to cost $500 billion and that does not include the cost of clearing the channel of the collapsed bridge and salvaging. money is being sucked down by one catastrophe after another with left-wingers and control. can you speak about infrastructure catastrophes? the $1.2 trillion able to be used for that? guest: there are funds available that can go to that but because of the nature of the issue i'm not as familiar with the emergency funding setups that we have on the federal highway emergency funds that we passed. for this project specifically

this is something that congress would have to work with on determining how much money they want to approve. divide administration said they wanted to fully fund it with federal file -- the biden administration said they wanted to fully fund it with federal dollars. it is determined by congress to pay for these emergency things. there are emergency funds set aside and appropriated and transportation programs broadly. we saw a lot of them go to the i-95 bridge collapse that happened not too long ago in pennsylvania. there has been a lot of natural disasters recently in the united states. that shores of the reason why we need to be building our infrastructure to be more resilient to climate and natural disasters that may or not be increasing in frequency. host: the poster had seen $500 billion.

here's the washington post that says rebuilding baltimore's key bridge will cost to 1.9 $1.9 billion. cable cost between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion. you can see the full article on the washington post. robbie in florida, democrat. caller: good morning. how are you guys doing? i want to talk about -- this has nothing to do to the gentleman on the show right now. i'm sorry if i pronounced your numeral. -- name wrong. your explaining every thing correctly. you are doing your job as far as explaining the process of where we are at, how we spend the money. i think all these callers and future colors are going to be

complaining about why are we having jobs. -- aren't we having jobs. the democrats did a bad job of explaining. right now the $150 billion is to the business to build the plans and get every thing ready, get the equipment ready, figure out what they need. it is a small amount of workforce. the people making $150,000, $200,000 year. in another two or three years is when the jobs start. that is when you get the construction, you break ground. you get the people's jobs going. they are complaining about where the jobs. that is when it's going to start. the democrats were bad at messaging that part and saying we got joe biden here to build the infrastructure, to work with democrats and republicans to get to where we are.

to save business first and then work as far as getting the people jobs and this and that. we had to work on inflation. i have a little bit of a cold. that is what the democrats failed. they should have say we had to work on inflation first, build this, get america's economy set and then work on the jobs part. they also failed -- i don't know if it was part of build back better or infrastructure, paid family leave, a raise in the minimum wage. host: go ahead, corrigan salerno . guest: it is very tough to message on infrastructure. people expect a direct input. you put money in, you get jobs out. it does take time. the timeline for these projects is for completion we are still several years out from seeing

finalization of the projects. even then i think it's important to consider this is not going to be nor could it be a full transformation of the economy by the nature of this bill. at the end of the day this is a program that does very well at taking money and creating new road assets. it is not really designed to connect people with jobs and services as a default. our system in the invested america version of the bill would have made sure people were connecting to jobs and services thanks to infrastructure investments. we are still building things. rather than making the connection between the construction job and the money we could be doing -- using funds from the construction to the completion and then thereafter connecting people to jobs.

as we see it rollout we will see more construction projects be funded and more visibly funded by the bill, especially in larger discretionary grant projects. a lot of these programs that have been funded by the infrastructure law so far being deployed by state department of transportation -- departments of transportation in terms of infrastructure, expansions, resurfacing, those projects that happen on a very frequent basis but also relatively underreported since they are day-to-day projects. it will take time for the transformative project such as the opening of the gulf coast rail from new orleans to mobile, that will be happening in 2025 at the soonest under the trump administration. host: corrigan salerno, i want to ask about pennsylvania. the governor josh shapiro taps

federal highway aid to help the city system. is that typical and states that you can use funding that was allocated for highways and use it for the public transit system? guest: absolutely. that has been an eligibility and the federal trance rotation program for several decades now. with its states are able to take their transportation highway dollars from the federal aid highway program and transfer those to the federal transferred -- transit administration program to fund transit capital costs, meaning the placement of buses, maintenance work, that sort of thing. using federal aid highway dollars but so far over the last decade based on research states are not really using this eligibility and flexibility to a great extent to fund transit.

ec and states like new jersey -- you see states like new jersey using those funds in flexing it. on average they are only flexing 2% to 3% of the highway dollars to transit. flexing highway dollars to transit is a great way to shore up funding and ensure that programs we have are well-funded and allow for state dollars which can find things like operations costs which would lead to increased bus frequency and coverage. given allow you to ship capital dollars from states to operations so you can deliver more service. considering that many highway dollars have been used to expand highways that have not really historically done a great job at relieving congestion, an alternative strategy that has shown promise is transferring highway funds to transit so you can actually have alternative

means to get to your destination for more people. host: let's talk to al virus in birmingham, alabama. --elvira. caller: i have a question regarding the rail system in the united states. i see containers on flatbeds on trains locally. however, i see a lot more containers on the backs of 18 wheelers clogging up the interstates. there is nothing more terrifying to me than having an 18 wheeler pulled up behind me loaded with cars or trucks. i know if that vehicle hit my car it would kill me. just the impact of that much weight heading my car. those should be, could be on the

backs of trains. also, our governor and alabama has signed a bill -- in alabama has signed a bill which will allow for water transports from our north alabama down to the mobile coast. i think we need more water transportation in this country. we have wonderful rivers that are navigable. they are not being used for transportation. host: go ahead, corrigan. guest: absolutely. the infrastructure law made strong investments, historically high in rail. mostly around passenger rail and fixing of the lines passenger rail could run. that goes hand-in-hand with freight rail and the railroad companies in this country. amtrak shares a lot of track with these freights. we have seen a lot of news about

the freight rail companies considering the disaster in east palestine a year or two ago now. with those investments in the infrastructure law there are funds allocated to intermodal transportation, taking in the waterways. those are expanding but it will take time. those are coming out of discretionary grant programs, often about inland ports. as those take time we will see the extent of the investment. as the deal was structured, the majority of the funding has gone to highways and widening highways in ways that would keep those 18 wheelers on the road rather than transferring them over at a large-scale the things like rail, large ships, those sorts of things. host: a question from joe in

califoia about the electrical grid. he says, ev charging stations are useless if there is no electricity to power them. infrastructure spending on the grid should be orders of magnitude greater than it is. every ai hub uses enough power to operate a million charging stations. the way things are going out we would go back to the 1940's and ration stamps for individual transportation capability. what you think of that? guest: i am no expert on electrical grids. a lot of our work is interfaced with electric vehicles. as for projecting the usage of electric vehicles, multiple studies found that ev's are capable of deploying to the grid. we are going to absolutely need more investment in electrical infrastructure. the infrastructure law and inflation reduction act did make investments in that and we are seeing those roll out. as they do deploy, especially on

the power generation side from the inflation reduction act, we will likely see increases in capacity of the grid. i cannot speak too thoroughly into rejecting what might happen in the future. i doubt we would be going to rationing for transportation usage. host: charlie in denison, texas. caller: good morning. i have a question regarding the highway construction in north texas. it's been tremendous the last couple of years, going from dallas to oklahoma on a couple of interstates and other areas. is some of that $1.2 trillion you were talking about spent on the heavy construction we are seeing on a daily basis going from north of dallas and fort worth oklahoma? -- to oklahoma? guest: a lot of those funds have

come from the federal highway administration's formula grants. texas is a recipient of over $1 billion per year in those programs, if not $2 billion actually. also texas has a fairly robust state gas tax that funds much of that construction. host: let's talk to colin in columbus, ohio. the line for democrats. caller: good morning. i am back home for thanksgiving in columbus visiting family. with the train derailment in east palestine in the last two years, i'm curious to know more information about what infrastructure is being built, updated or otherwise issues resolved here in the ohio general area. guest: on that i am not quite sure what has been done with

regards to the infrastructure work to address that specific problem. the infrastructure law did come with billions of dollars for safety and restoration of existing infrastructure in the federal rail program. it's going to be deployed now and into the future. as for the issue with east palestine, i believe the federal railroad has been investigating that with the owner of the companies responsible and working on that. host: earl on the line for democrats from georgia. caller:caller: i'm calling about the rial in -- rail in georgia. not just in atlanta but around atlanta. they spent all this money on roads and they will continue with the roads. the whole thing i found out is

that there are averaged three road deaths per day in georgia with a population of 10 million people. i went to new york state. an average of 1.5 roadway deaths per day in new york state with 20 million people. why can't they get it in their head here -- these republicans that run the state for the last three or four decades that we need to this rail? all they did was promote it in atlanta. it should have been 50 miles outside of atlanta and every direction by now. i live 40 months from atlanta. they came appear 30 years ago and the mayor told him we are not ready for marta. they offered them six months of lustrous rotation to the lindbergh station -- bus transportation to the lindbergh station.

that is the biggest thing, the crime. every time there is a crime in atlanta, they say it is right around the corner or down the street from the marta station, scaring her buddy to death. that everybody to death -- scaring everybody to death. the republicans will have to answer for that. guest: it is not just georgia that is under investing -- underinvesting in transit. it is orders of magnitude safer than the roadway travel. when we continue to spend money on things like roads, we are essentially increasing the surface area that we could hurt yourselves on. for every new lane, that's a new lane of high-speed travel where a collision could occur. with transit, there is greater safety on a bus for never on a road or a train that on roads. this is not just a republican

issue. it's an issue that comes out of state departments of transportation cultures in that practices in this country around transportation from the fundamental text of the discipline, prioritizing vehicles over people. what we do is advocate for a move towards prioritizing people and how we get around -- in how we get around. that ensures we have used the funds in the infrastructure law to invest in things like walkable communities. your ability to get to just down the street. there's a sidewalk or having bus service connecting you to things like your job or grocery store. host: francis in laurel, montana. republican. caller: good morning. has your organization dealt with

the major crisis in the country, the $36 trillion of debt? did order to address that in my opinion the elite practical way is to significantly build gmp and that will take a tremendous increase in electricity capacity. that infrastructure is much more important than almost everything else discussed this morning. guest: could you clarify what you said? gmp? host: he's possibly talking about gdp. guest: for gdp, with the infrastructure law they will be a connection -- they will be a connection with gdp -- there will be a connection with gdp of the deficit. with regards to the proportion

for structure law -- the infrastructure law there is not as much of an impact compared to larger federal entitlement programs. with infrastructure there is a need to take a look at what we are getting on returns from our investments. for instance, highway investments. we need to ensure we are getting our bang for our buck and hitting the metrics stating we should hit in terms of congestion relief and making sure what investments we do make are sustainable in the long term on a physical level and environmental level -- fiscal level and have, to level. that incorporates -- environment to level. that incorporates selection of the best alternative. with the current policy that came out of the infrastructure law, that was not part of the agenda. going forward in the next two

years we will see an opportunity to wright new paul -- write new policy that will succeed the infrastructure investment and jobs act or bipartisan infrastructure law. we will have to evaluate what policies we care about, whether it is fiscal responsibility and the climate and balancing those in the future. host: al in d.c. on the line for democrats. caller: 1980, we had a huge glut of coal in west virginia. now we have it in kentucky. also over in pennsylvania. of course, the oklahoma-texas thing you were talking about earlier. what i want to know about

is, we held a port of portsmouth, virginia and the tidewater area hostage. there was a 30 day waiting list of people trying to get that infrastructure of coal. we held the whole world hostage. they are talking about drill, baby, drill. i'm wondering if there is something we can do with that now to guarantee building the infrastructure. host: ok. guest: unfortunately not super familiar with the energy policy side of the argument with regards to how that might change. as the biden administration has worked on permitting, we will definitely see a change under trump with regards to that.

host: policy manager for transportation for america. you can find their work at t4 america.org. happy thanksgiving, everybody. we are back tomorrow morning. have a great day. ♪ today, state officials discuss internet access as front of the water didn't act the act initiative. watch it live at noon eastern on c-span, c-span now, or c-span.org.

book tv every sunday on these bantu features leading authors cussing their latest nonfiction books. here's a look at what is coming up this weekend. at 8:30 a.m. eastern, former california republican congressman christopher cox takes a critical look at the life and presidency of woodrow wilson in his book woodrow wilson: the life withdrawn. and at 7:30 p.m. eastern, the book "gather me" about the books that inspired and shaker in her book club turn-nonprofit. and at 8:00 p.m. eastern, book present members of the 75th annual national book awards hosted by the national book foundation. the word celebrates literature published in the united states, author and were given to the best works of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, translated literature and young people literature.

watch tv every sunday on c-span two and find the full schedule on your c-span diet or watch online anytime on perfect -- the.org attention middle and high school students across america. it is time to make your voice heard. the studentcam documentary contest 2025 is here. this is your chance to create a documentary that can either change, raise awareness and make an impact your documentary should end the question your message to the president, what issue is most important to you or your community? whether you're passionate about politics, the environment or community stories. studentcam is your platform to share your message with world. with $100,000 in prizes including a grand prize of $5,000. this is your opportunity not only to make an impact, but also to be rewarded for your

creativity and hard work. enter your submissions today. scan the code or visit studentcam.org for all the details on how to enter. the deadline is january 20, 2025. c-span is your unfiltered view of government, funded by these television companies and more, including buckeye broadband. ♪ >> buckeye broadband supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> 2024 democrat nominees for the presidential ticket vice president kamala harris and minnesota gove