♪ host: this is washington journal for december 18. in her first major address since the election vice president kamala harris encouraged young

people at a community college not to abandon a drive for the country's future. president biden urged his fellow democrats to keep vigilant in the days ahead. for the first half-hour we invite democrats only to call in and tell us what you think is the future of the democratic party. here is how you can let us know your thoughts by phone. eastern and central time zones, (202) 748-8000, mountain and pacific (202) 748-8001. democrats only. if you want to text as your thoughts about the future of the party (202) 748-8003 is how you do that. you can also post on facebook and x. it was about a month ago that pew research did a poll of democrats following the election getting their thoughts on the future of the party and what it felt like at the time for them, saying that while 51 percent of democrats and democratic leaning independents say they are optimistic about the parties future, 49% are pessimistic.

the share of democrats who say they are pessimistic about the parties future is about 20% higher than it was after the midterm election. mixed results on the question for both parties. it is about 10 points higher than after hillary clinton's presidential defeat. pessimism is more pronounced from adults under age 50 and among older people 39%. liberal democrats, 52% of those at the time of the poll are more pessimistic than conservative and moderate democrats. that was about a month ago. following the election, it was the vice president yesterday beginning at a community college in maryland talking about not only the future but amongst young people. the new york times tracks the speech saying kamala harris says

she does not intend to fade into the background after trump's victory and used her first postelection speech to urge young people to stay in the fight before an audience of students and activists and recent graduates. harris called on the crowd to retain their passion and resolve. here is a portion from the vice president yesterday. [video clip] >> i ask you to remember this struggle is not new. it goes back nearly 250 years to lexington and concorde. generation after generation it has been driven by those who love our country, cherish its ideals, and refuse to sit passive while our ideals are under assault. now this fight to keep the light

of america's promise and to ensure it burns bright. this fight continues with you. you are its heirs. we are its heirs. i will end with this. get some rest over the holidays. spend time with the people you love. i believe family comes in many forms. there is family by love. i urge you after you've had some rest -- there is family by blood and family by love. i urge you after you've had some rest to come back ready to chart our path to the future, chin up, shoulders back, forever

inpatient for change. host: the vice president from yesterday. democrats only in this first half-hour. what is the future of the democratic party? (202) 748-8000 for eastern and central time zones. (202) 748-8001 for mountain and pacific time zones. text us at (202) 748-8003 and you can post on our social media sites as well. on our facebook page, from stephen, ng his opinion as far as the future of the party, saying it is very bright. historically parties which every two terms. democrats prepare to clean up the mess in 2020 s -- in 2028. john cole saying all of our best people have ft the party. we need tget rid of our parties platforms of the regressive "progressive" agenda and start over. this is from diane on our facebook page saying young and

eligibleeoe are coming into their political selves with fresh ideas. that'll be the face of the democratic party. out with the old and in with the new. you can give us a call on the phone lines. let's hear from john in st. louis, missouri on the future of the democratic party. caller: i think democrats are going to be doing great because donald trump is committing the crime of the century still. democrats [indiscernible] republicans break the law but i think democrats will help america always. host: you think after the last election democrats have to to do things differently? caller: we got screwed -- we got

manhandled. trump breaks the law. that is all he does. we have to do better. host: that is john in st. louis. this is carolyn in ohio from the democratic party. hello. caller: i think we need to have younger people. i am a senior citizen. this is strange for me to say but i think we have to have younger people in the democratic party. i know kamala harris was out talking to younger people and that is a start. i heard on one of the stations where -- i cannot remember his name -- i want to say his last name is hogg -- host: david hogg, vice chair of

the democratic committee. caller: he is going after a position and i am not sure he has it. i am all for younger people. i am tired and i am a senior citizen and i always want to be active and everything but there comes a point where you need fresh blood and younger people because they have all the energy. i don't know how else to say at. host: you emphasized david hogg. any other names in mind that should be the -- that should be pursuing the top positions? caller: it seems like the people that are trying that are younger are getting beat. i heard aoc got beat by gerry connolly who is going through what my husband died from which is a solvable cancer.

-- wishes -- which is esophagal cancer. she got beat already. she was younger. we have all of these talented young people that are chomping at the bit to bring their energy to the party. that is the only thing i can think of that we need more young people in there and give them a chance because they all seem like they are wonderful people, especially that david hogg. host: this is from the wall street journal talking about the new york democrat alexandria ocasio-cortez -- she made a campaign to be the head of the house oversight committee, defeated by jerry connelly, saying representative connolly

defeated alexandria ocasio-cortez for the top democratic post on the house oversight committee, putting him in a position to be a prominent antagonist of the president-elect during his second term. it also says former house speaker nancy pelosi who has at a chilly relationship with alexandria ocasio-cortez called colleagues urging them to back connelly. she recently underwent hip replacement surgery. democrats only on the future of the democratic party. irving, texas. hello. caller: i am david in texas. the future of the democratic party needs to go to someone like jasmine crockett. that may sound bizarre. when they go, we need to go in the basement. trump got elected because he gave people something they did not have where they felt like they did not have.

that is what i think jasmine crockett has. the difference between trump and crockett is at least crockett will be honest and forthcoming. she will not take any of the krapp from trump and his cronies. the difference between democrats and republicans is that republicans rule on fear. democrats are trying to be honest and do the right thing. when you look at the economy and all that joe biden has done, they just got outspoken and they got outmaneuvered. that is exactly what happened. trump did not back down. he gave people the thought that we have someone that will fight. we need somebody like crockett. crockett will not take that krapp. she will not let them get away with crosstalk. not let them get away with blowing up events. they are eating the pets.

crockett would have called him on that. she would not have done it in a nice way. the vice president try to do and be politically correct. it is -- we need to mudslinging just like they do. when we mudslinging we will get in their faces. i think gavin newsom. gavin newsom is somebody that needs to be looked at as well. he is very well spoken, he is not taking no crap. he is young. host: david in texas. president biden earlier this week at a holiday event for the democratic national committee talking about the future of the party and where he sees the party going from here. here is the president from earlier. [video clip] >> while our term to office is coming to an end, the america of our dreams is calling us to stay engaged. jill and i -- i do not think

kamala and doug are going anywhere. it is more important than ever to keep organizing and keep talking to folks. we all get knocked down. my dad would say when you get knocked down you have to get up. the measure of a person or a party is how fast they get back up and to know what we believe in is worth fighting for. that is what it is, to never give up, to keep the faith, to know that what we are doing matters. i know. i know i will stay engaged. i know kamala and jill and doug lezz well. i know you will. we are the united states of america. host: that is the president from earlier this week. democrats only for now calling in telling us what you think the future of your party is. (202) 748-8000 for those of you

in the eastern and central time zones. (202) 748-8001 in the mountain and pacific time zones. text us at (202) 748-8003 full up we will talk about this -- (202) 748-8003. let you know that the short-term funding built released yesterday to keep the government from going into default as of right. it is a 1500 plus bill posted at 6:00 yesterday saying rank republican committee chairs crumbled at the policy that shows it is not popular with house beazer -- with house speaker mike johnson's right flank. among the winners are farmers. there is an additional $100 billion in disaster relief. when it comes to haiti it says democrats want to get a trade provision extended for duty-free imports and textile and apparel in haiti.

amongst the losers that axios highlights within this bill, pharmacy benefit managers. they lost bake on a provision to redirect spending on prescription drugs. it could get worse for them. the president-elect -- we will talk more about that with our legislators joining us throughout the course of the morning. for now democrats only as far as the future of your party and what you think that is. in florida, this is barney. host: -- caller: just like the other fellow was saying the democrats were playing too soft of a game. all of these bigots and racists should have been called out from jump street. i never thought that america was this racist. hello? host: what you mean as far specifics when it comes to your party? what should they do now? caller: we need to call out

lies. they are liars. they did not start calling trump a liar until two years in. he the man is an out light -- the man is an outright liar. publicans will lie in your face and laugh behind your back. democrats need to be more cutthroat like the republicans are. we have the next four years of lying in thieving. all they will do is steal money and get rich. look at all the people trying to buy him off. they will buy him off. all of these middle-class clowns who voted for him, watch your prices go up. host: this is from lee on facebook. she says change strong policy, wages, health care, and

education, also adding to be true patriots. this is from elizabeth woodbridge saying we need effective politicians at every level. the d&c needs to make -- the dnc needs to make competent choices. this is from mike in iowa. go ahead. caller: the democratic party has to stop whining about a loss and they need to create a new deal 2.0. republicans had their plan 2025, the democrats have nothing except very poor leadership. it takes care of themselves with insider trading and does not lead. i am still waiting for the new deal 2.0 plan that americans can understand. we could all agree on what the program should include, but we have to do it now. host: what program should be

included in this deal? caller: there has to be more effective control of the american capitalism in terms of the concentration of wealth. in 1960 we had well over 8000 public corporations. we now have only 4000. consolidation continues, the consolidation of wealth. we can no longer have real negative interest rates because of wealth will buy everything and consolidate it and that is what obama and others did with these extremely low-interest rates. while people think they are good so they can buy a house, it has done nothing except raise the price of houses, they are no further ahead. they are ridiculous policies and we need to address these types of things to identify with the average american person. we do not do that in the democratic party because we have leadership that with citizens

united has been co-opted by money and the democratic party has to stand up. we need fdr level reform that will change the party and we will not do it with the parental leadership in the senate or the house. it has got to change. i am happy to see that a young man from wisconsin will be probably leader of the democratic party. he has his head screwed on right. he is able to do these things. wisconsin was handled very successfully in their last election. we have to stop whining and start building. host: that is mikey giving me the segue to this newsnation story, looking at the current race for the new chair of the democratic national committee, sing the current chair, jb harrison deciding not to run for the position again. there are currently four candidates running. ken martin, martin o'malley,

former maryland governor, new york state senator, ben wykle or , chair of the democratic party of wisconsin. according to newsnation for a party that self describes as one in disarray there is quite a lot of agreement and overlap among the four candidates the diagnosis of what went wrong in the 2024 election and where the party needs to go. all four acknowledged democrats failed to make a strong economic argument and they are all clear that is important to focus on down ballot races. more from the newsnation piece. one of those folks believe the new york state senator is said to believe us later on in the program to talk about his desire for the democratic national committee. we are talking for democrats only, the larger issue of where you see your party going in the future? phone lines are available. (202) 748-8000 if you live in the eastern and central time zones. (202) 748-8001 if you live in

the mountain and pacific time zones. this is jenny from ohio. you are next up. host: -- caller: good morning. my problem with even the democrats and the republicans is that they do not really -- even though they like who is running -- the people do not really understand the three branches. therefore they just believe they are voting who they are voting for, that is fine. i think everybody should understand the constitution. all three. the house, the senate, the judicial, everything. if you don't know all that then you are just voting for someone you like because of what they are saying and you really don't know if they are telling you the truth anyway, so you will vote

for them. host: if that is the case what changes do you think specifically need to be made to the party if that is the case? caller: they need to know more. even individuals need to learn more about everything, all three branches. i don't think a lot of people understand the constitution and the branches. host: let's hear from randy in michigan. you are next up. caller: i would like to start by thanking you and all of the other men and women it takes to bring us this program and i wish you all a happy and safe holiday with the family. i don't necessarily believe we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

this election was quite unusual. we have some improvements. i think they should get on the radio. i live in rural america. guys are in their tractors planting or breaking ground to get ready to plant. they are in their vehicles more. with what we had facing us with the president, president biden and vice president kamala harris having such a short run, it is one of them ought ones. we have to get together and start talking to the people more in a wider friday of people. host: if that is the case to what degree you think that is a messaging problem overall with the democratic party? caller: i don't think they listened as well as they should

to what was going on in the country as a whole. we have seen what our nation turned to. there has to be a counter argument to that. we had the economics going, we did not have to beat that horse to death, they should have talked more about it. we need the younger ones. it is time to get the communications to everybody. that includes out here where you might not think you have a chance. it is a lot better than you think. host: you mean rural areas or a you talking specifics as far as getting a message out when you say that? what do you mean by that? caller: i would like to see them come after us out here in the rural area a little bit more. i am not saying it is going to make -- you are not going to change a lot of minds but you're

going to start changing. you have to start somewhere. with this we start from the beginning and start talking to people and get them listening to the people on what they are saying and we will work our way up from there. host: that is randy in michigan. let's hear from winter in oregon on the future of the democratic party. democrats calling to tell us what they think. winter, go ahead. caller: thank you. the future of the democratic party has to be a populist party. bernie sanders and alexandria ocasio-cortez. what we saw in november was a complete change. the working class shifted right. the economy was a big issue for most voters along with innovation and also what they poured forth resonated with voters.

democrats also had the chance for a strong message yesterday and the oversight committee -- by not putting alexandria ocasio-cortez inside of the oversight committee. the democrats do not learn from their mistake. they deserve to lose in 2028. host: how receptive do you think the party as a whole would be to a more populist message? caller: until the leadership changes and until the base themselves actually change, whether it is the primary or the 2028 primary, they are not going to be receptive. it will be the voters that will have to change themselves. there has to be a working-class movement to the democratic party left. host: that is winter. similar thoughts from group

known as third way, a moderate group. they say what voters told ats in 2024 is the recent piece. the last push to the middle w sufficient to counter the weight of the party brandpite the messages she touted being popular. democrats have longer runways to execute campaigns ce on moderation and policies fared better because they created their own brand and down ballot repus cannot match trump strength. trump will ever be on the ballot again democrats don't need a long-term plan to rebrand the party is one of sensible ideas that could be trusted to stay on the voters highest priority issues, particular economic and safety concerns. if the party has any hope of defeating the maga forces at the helm of government in the midterms and biot it needs to swiftly execute a shift to the center. that is a group known as third way. [video clip] >> i think the future for

democrats can be bright and we will continue being the party that delivers more freedom to america, that delivers civil rights and improvements in health care and all of the things we have a proud legacy of doing for this country but we have to start by looking ourselves in the mirror and admitting we need to change. we cannot make excuses, we have to diagnose the problem and make changes. first of all, we have to stop the too much preaching and not enough listening. i want to see leaders of our party and people like me go out and genuinely hold town halls, do not do it by zoom come and listen to americans and their concerns and show we are willing to take their ideas, not just shove our ideas down their throats. one person who can set a great precedent for this is a new leader of the dnc. another thing we have to do is elect a change agent at the dnc, not someone who will be in the background but someone who will be a bull in the china shop and

say we need to make some changes. host: that is seth moulton on cbs. andrew from texas saying the pay needs to move more towards left-wing populism. fdr's economic new deal from the enemies are the ultra-wealthy and corporations and the democrats need to lay that out for the american people, adding that kamala failed to do that. benrom facebook with the mment to embrace the bernie brose when it comes to the parties future. audrey in philly saying i was a democrat. the party began its decline when ll clintected the legacy of fdr andmbced corporatism. instead of blamingrogressives they ran with billionaires and the chinese defendin genocide. they need to champion the working class again. -- and the cheneys and

defending genocide. they need to champion the working class again. people need help. caller: i think with the democratic party needs to do is to look at the platform. the platform is currently based on the fact that we are somehow upholding or saving democracy. of course we all know we live in an oligarchy. it has been that way since the 1800s that the rich have the most power. they have lobbyists. on one hand it is good for america. it built america in terms of its industrial base and all of the rest. -- but at the same time, it shifts the money from the many to the few. those people have a lot more power. we see that with bezos, mosque, and all the rest who vowed to pay their way into certain positions within the government.

this will only benefit them in the long run. the platform that we ran on is that we are saving democracy. democracy that we live in, it's an ideal, it's trapping the reality. people suffer in the process, whether prices are overinflated or they are overwhelmed with poverty or fighting for two or three jobs per day to make it in america. the democratic party didn't listen to that. host: thank you for those who participated. up next, we hear from california republican tom mcclintock, talking about the new cr that came out and whether there are other issues he will join us on next in the program and then democrat sean casten, and the

efforts to release an ethics report on matt gaetz. that and more, coming up when "washington journal use. -- continues. ♪ ♪ >> since 1979, in partnership with the cable industry, c-span has provided complete coverage within the halls of congress from the house and senate floors to congressional hearings, party briefings, and committee hearings. c-span gives you a front row seat to have issues are debated and decided with no commentary, no interruptions, and completely unfiltered. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. ♪ >> admin thomas discusses his

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tom mcclintock, member of the budget committee and chair of the judiciary subcommittee of integrity and enforcement. good morning. guest: good morning. host: short-term spending package on the table, what do you think? guest: i don't like it. there is no serious work on a long-term budget. i would support a strict cr if we were engaged in the budget process, if we were in negotiations and needed a few more days or weeks. but we haven't pending -- but we haven't been engaged in a serious budget process in years, so we continue to go by cr and cr down a fiscal road to ruin. host: you say strict? guest: they have added so much to it. yesterday the mike johnson report was 1400 pages. now it's 1500. one hundred pages magically

appeared in the last 24 hours. i'm looking at these numbers and they are eye-popping. 100 billion dollars for disaster relief? no one begrudge his disaster relief? that's $800 from every family in america. to me that sounds excessive and i would want to go through it with a fine tooth comb. host: do you think that there will be an attempt by the speaker to just take it to the house floor? guest: i can't read minds and i can't tell fortunes, i don't know his plan. host: how would you vote? guest: no serious budget discussion going on, cr just kicks the can down the road. host: what would you have liked to see in its place? host: a process. we have a perfect process to bring spending in line with revenues. the budget act has been in place

for 50 years but is rarely used as it is intended. both houses should agree to a budget resolution by april 15, setting the spending limits on both the discretionary and mandatory side. the appropriators are bound by the limits within the budget resolution. that's on the discretionary side. on the mandatory side, reconciliation is supposed to be sent to each committee with a mandate that within 60 days they report out those legislative changes that are necessary to bring mandatory spending in line with the limits. that hasn't been used in years. it has been misused. when it has been used, it was instrumental in reducing the deficit and in producing the balanced budgets that we saw in the 1990's. host: if it passes into the next congress, how much more difficult will it be to resolve

the issue of funding with a new congress and a new administration in place? guest: that depends on if they are serious about bringing spending and mine. we have a budget process that can do that. it's difficult and it requires pronouncing the word no, something very rare in washington these days. that's why we are calling the deficit historic from 2 trillion per year. host: our guest is with us and if you want to ask them questions about these budget related matters or other things, here is how you can call us. republicans, (202) 748-8000. -- republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. do you think that president trump will call on republicans to say no? do you think that is his thinking? guest: even though it won't be an official body i think they

will be exhorting -- exerting out a lot of enormous pressure to say no. it's got to be done. because otherwise market conditions are going to intervene and we will see a sovereign debt crisis. that's an ugly thing that few nations actually survive. history is screaming a warning at us. the country, bankrupting itself if your you can provide for the general defense and welfare, you have to be able to pay for it and the ability of our country to do so is coming into doubt. host: it will be up to you and fellow republicans in the house and senate to follow through on these recommendations. what is your got around whether they are willing to do it. guest: that's the big question. so far, they haven't been. with the moral persuasion that i think they will be able to muster, is to change the equation. host: as a budget person, what

specifics would you like to see come out of this? a reduction in employees or an elimination of agencies? guest: do all of that and more. we should be saying no to grants. hundreds of billions per year going out one stop project that offense, it should be paid for exclusively by the local community should stop throwing money at the good causes. the federal government, if it needs something it can't produce itself, it should award a contract for the lowest responsible bidder and hold of that contractor responsible results not by itself is hundreds of billions of dollars in when you look at the subsidies that we spend every year to distort the natural flow

of capital inflate the prices of what we are subsidizing, that's another huge one. host: how much does this compare total spending? guest: the estimates for grants exclusive of medicaid is 900 billion per year. subsidies, about the same. you are talking about an awful lot of money and a lot of it is in producing very much. host: 2023, if you take a look at that big number, is that a drop in the bucket? guest: no, you are talking to trillion in total grants and subsidies. host: first of all, tell us what your subcommittee does and what your role is in it. guest: jurisdiction over all

immigration law. we don't do the enforcement side, that's homeland security. it's for most hr to, subcommittee on immigration. guest: when you hear about the plans for mass deportation, what do you think of the reality of that actually happening. guest: it's high. if you don't enforce the laws come you don't have them. if you don't have a border, you don't have a country. it's integral as one of the principal issues of the campaign that returned trump to the white house. it can be done very effectively. i would advise the president to go on the air and say that if you are here illegally, you have 90 days to leave. we will pay for your ticket and forget that you broke our laws and if you want to return you can come through the legal process. if you have to come -- if we

have to come to get you, you will never get back into this country in that would do a lot to reduce the number of illegal migrants in america. and then you can go after the worst of the worst first. the half a million criminals who are here illegally in this country. and then you go after the 1.3 million deportation orders of the people who have already been ordered by a court of law to leave and have refused to do so. it will keep them busy for quite a while. guest: is there an economic costs to mass deportation as far as the united states is concerned? guest: it's going to costs. -- cost. 7.6 million in elite -- illegal immigrants have entered the country.

finding and deporting them will be costly. building the border wall will be much more costly because of the biden administration and what they have done in the past few weeks to sell the material at pennies on the dollar. we will have to buy all of the material back. that's going to be a big expense. compare that to the estimated $160 billion per year being spent right now to support these illegal migrants, most of them are destitute, most of them require public support and the costs are enormous. explain to me how we improve the school system by hacking the classrooms with non-english-speaking students. how do we expand hospital access with the demanding care? explain how we improve the security of our neighborhoods by introducing the most violent criminal gangs in the world into

our communities and making it difficult if not impossible to remove them from our communities even after they have served their sentences. these are all enormous costs of illegal immigration. what will be required is a fraction of the costs. host: democrats put out their estimation of what would happen with mass dost deportation. they say that the supply of workers for key industry could be reduced, prices could go up 10%, with the cos of 44,000 u.s.-born workers being removed from the labor force. are those numbers a reality for you as far as the economics are concerned? guest: i'm skeptical of those numbers. they are coming from and

ideologically motivated source. more to the point, when you flood the labor market with cheap, illegal labor, you depress the wages for americans. if you want to know why american real wages have gone down during this administration, that is one of the principal reasons. guest: ed joins us from ohio, republican lied, tom mcclintock. you areur guest. good morning. caller: good morning, all y'all, safe one on the holidays. right on the money. i feel sorry for him. he's the best one i seen for years. i'm from ohio. 30 year vet, still work in the phone business. unfortunately, he's in california. i mean here's a book i've had since 1993 and it is just as relevant today. it amazes me, everyone should have this as a manual, i've

memorized it, had the book since 1993 from my father, my whole family, whatever. it's a call for a revolution. how to stop it. made in 1593. we are 30 $7 trillion in debt. voters in this country, until they get it, we need to -- we can cut this down. we have to make cuts across the board. it's not about these grants and stuff. there's no reason we can't cut down on at least $1 million in waste per year. we are 40% purging power now and still in high inflation. it's not going to go down. what's that going on your side of that from california, a super train for 40 years? billions in extensions because it's never completed? that's not a great state.

a lot of my friends in california have left. your businesses are still going. it's not your fault. this guy, he's right on the money. what the voters there, the democrats, until they realize enough is enough, this book should be mandatory. host: got your point. thank you. guest: he's absolutely right. the socialist left has destroyed the prosperity of california with the same policies they have used in recent years to destroy the prosperity of america. that's what socialism produces wherever they take control. sky high taxes. failing schools. uc chronic shortages of basic necessities like fuel, water, electricity. sky high prices for housing. you see rampant crime, rampant homelessness, failing

businesses. you are seeing that and our greatest cities. san francisco, detroit. new york city, chicago. seeing it in what were once the greatest states, like california. if things get bad enough in california, there are 49 other states we can move to. if we allow these policies to destroy the country, where will we all go? that was the underlying theme of the 2024 election. guest: from amelia, democratic line, good morning. caller: good morning, congressman. why is it that the republicans when they get into office, they think about cuts, and of the main cuts you want to do is social security and medicare? it's all of the entitlement programs. you don't ever think about cutting the subsidies that you give to oil companies and elon

musk. he's getting a whole lot of subsidies from the government. i wonder if he is going to try to cut his subsidies? it's always -- bernie sanders had a hearing on social security about two years ago. tax social security the right year -- right way and have the millionaires and billionaires pay the proper amount of taxes, social security will survive for 75 more years, but you guys refuse. every time you talk about these cuts and watch the american people and what they are going to do -- they want to privatize social security? they want to privatize the post office? the post office are self-funded. they don't get taxpayer dollars. they have to pay a 75 year pension and they want to privatize it because they want to put their hands on that money like they want to put their hands on social security. host: ok, we will let the guest

respond. guest: first, if we do nothing, social security will see a 17 percent cut across the board in the mid-2000 30's. so, action has got to be taken and time is not our friend. the longer that we wait to take action, the more draconian the actions will be, higher taxes, lower benefits or what i would prefer to see, an extension in the age qualification. that is how we fix social security during the early years of the reagan administration. something has to be done. you are right on the others, that is it is not just entitlement spending, it's also the corporate welfare that is being handed out. hundreds of billions of dollars of grants to green energy companies, for example.

that by itself is eye-popping. yes, we should stop all of the corporate welfare that we are doling out. the beauty of a free market system is it's the most democratic possible way to organize an economy. think about it, in a free market every day every consumer votes with every dollar that they spend on what the economy will produce, who will produce it, and the price they are willing to pay. subsidies replace the preferences of consumers with the preferences of politicians, diverting the flow of capital for their highest and best use for consumers to the highest and best political advantage for competition. get rid of the subsidies and people get the accurate price signals that they need and how they will spend their dollars. and then producers get accurate price signals on the needs that

they most need to fulfill. subsidies destroy that and costs hundreds of billions in the process. host: when callers like that say that social security want to cut medicare and medicaid, what how is that true in your mind? guest: medicare will go bankrupt very shortly. there are better ways of organizing it that would assure its long-term stability, the premium support proposal that has been around for years now that is essentially modeled on the medicare advantage plans, which many millions of americans already prefer. i'm a medicare advantage patient myself. i'm with kaiser. that system would then allow us to subsidize those costs based upon how rich and poor you are, how sick you are, how old you are. when i say subsidize, i basically mean underwrite the

costs. host: roger in milwaukee, independent line, hello. caller: let's take two areas where it seems the republicans seem to stay away from. the first is our wonderful military budget. are you aware that our military budget is larger than the top 17 countries in the world? it's bigger than those 17 countries. yet we are paying $600 for hammers, 33 hundred dollars for toilet seats. this is all well documented. there is one area that i think you could cut without question and you could use those savings and put it into medicare and medicaid and social security. the other thing is, why don't you republicans want to tax the rich? i am just floored that you let them get away with everything.

we have got all of these billionaires right now being asked to be a part of a cabinet. as we listened, before they even got into office, with donald trump and everything going one way, these guys are getting rich, hand over fist. they are not really lifting a finger. i don't understand. guest: what would you say is a fair rate of taxation for the rich? host: apologies. guest: i'll make it rhetorical, then, and put it this way, the top 1% make about 20% of the income in this country. they pay 40% of the income taxes. when the people say that they should be paying their fair share what they are saying is we should cut taxes in half. we already have one of the most progressive tax systems in the world. the dirty little secret is that

there are not enough rich people in the country to make a dent in the numbers that we are talking about in terms of federal spending. that's the middle class that ultimately ends up bearing those burdens. i think it is important to note that every trillion dollars that we talk about in washington, think about it as $8,000 from an average family. it comes to about $8,000 per family. eight dollars per family. every time that you see these prices in washington being thrown around so loosely, ask yourself it is -- if it is worth eight dollars. is that trillion dollar program worth 8000 dollars for my family? i have found that to be an important reality check. host: two pieces of reporting i want to ask you about. within the cr, it would allow

for cost-of-living raises for members of congress to resume. would you support that? guest: members of congress have an obvious conflict of interest and even addressing the question. it should have been left at the -- well, when i came in we were receiving $174,000 per year, that was 2008. we are still receiving $174,000 16, 17 years later. i think that the fair thing to do is to simply set it at the rate it was at in 2008 and then provide an automatic cost-of-living adjustment beyond the control of the congress to increase or decrease and then just let it be. members of congress should not be setting their own salaries. that should go without saying. put it in a pile and leave it alone. host: if passed, it would allow members of congress to opt out of obamacare and rejoin the

federal health program? guest: i don't give that any thought or another. i'm a kaiser patient, that is where my attention is. what other members do is up to them. host: the standout feature of the attempts to release the ethics report on matt gaetz, you are the only report -- republican to vote for that to happen? guest: it was a public report prepared with public funds regarding the public conduct of a public official. of course the public has a right to see that report. host: do you think it will happen? and does it matter? guest: as brandeis said, sunlight is the best disinfectant. the truth will out. people already have a general idea of what's in the report simply from the public reporting, but ultimately i think the public has the right to see it and chips will fall where they may. host: have you seen elements of the report? guest: no. host: tim, wisconsin, democratic

line. caller: the representative seems like a straight shooter. i would like to ask him a couple of questions. in a lot of ways, there is a lot of hypocrisy from the republican nine out of 10 states in the country are red states and are heavily subsidized. the simple fact is that people make really low wages, they don't pay much into the federal government per capita compared to a lot of states. for instance, arkansas gave one back. two or three came back. do you see anyway of any add-ons? it's not my fault, living in wisconsin, i should have to subsidize these states. do you see anyway of getting parity on that?

every two dollars to the government you get two dollars back? guest: i think that's a very good point. i would dispute that the red states are the poorest states, quite the contrary. the fastest economic growth we are seeing is in the red states and people are moving there in droves, leaving blue states. we are seeing that and california right now, the most popular destination for californians are places like nevada and arizona and i cannot imagine the act of god that would turn california into a less desirable place to livethau are right. we should not be paying for sidewalks in poughkeepsie, new york. local projects should exclusively benefit local taxpayers and paid for by local taxpayers. that gives them the freeze --

freedom to set their own priorities. what i have noticed in this huge amounts of local project grants everything from transportation to homeless centers to sidewalks from -- to local schools, those are all projects that benefit the local taxpayers. but when they come to washington for grants, what they are telling us our these particular projects do not make the cut or make sense for us to pay for them with our own revenues and they are lower priority. we do not mind if we can stick somebody else with the tab, so we end up finding more priority projects with other people's money. it is not fair and it distorts the priorities that we should be setting at the local level for projects that exclusively benefit our local community is. host: one more call from florida. independent line. caller: good morning. you had made a comment earlier about you being a medicare

advantage patient. you say you have kaiser. you are using kaiser medicare, correct? guest: yes. caller: that is the advantage plan. guest: right. caller: the rumor i have heard is and you indicated that this might happen, was to revamp medicare i turning everything into an advantage plan, is that correct? guest: that is a proposal that i am getting support for. caller: ok, what safeguards will you put in for the public. the current advantage plans do not me -- need everything. it is very unfortunate. i am a federal employee health benefit. my advantage plan is with etna, and it has strict things that they have to meet. what sort of protections are you going to put in for people that

you are going to force to use medicare advantage? host: thank you. guest: they asked the question what makes for the good car, chevrolet, competition. the idea behind the plan is that medicare negotiates a wide range of plans meaning -- meeting a wide range of needs, and then allows individual consumers to choose among hundreds of competing plans for the one that best meets their own needs and circumstances. and then the federal government through medicare would underwrite the costs based upon how old, sick, and poor they are. to me that makes perfect sense and it restores to individuals the freedom to select their own plans according to their own needs and ensures -- assures them of a wide range of choices with which to exercise their

judgment. host: one more time, what are you expecting as far as passing? guest: i was born without the power of prophecy and i cannot predict. i will tell you what my vote will be and that is no based on the fact that we are not in serious budget negotiations. i sat on the past year and we have not been discussing the budget and we have been discussing about ways to pass it onto other bipartisan commissions to handle the budget. the only bipartisan commission is a congress of the united states and there is no substitute for us doing our job. we hold the purse strings and that is a responsibility that cannot be dodged or doged. it starts in the house of representatives and we have to take responsibility and we are not. another cr and kicking it of another few months down the road without another serious attempt to engage in real budget process

i think is a travesty and it is a path that is becoming shorter and shorter as time goes on. host: tom mcclintock, thank you for my taught -- thank you for your time. in a little while we will hear from the democrat of illinois. first before that open forum. if you want to comment on issues of politics and policy, 202-748-8000 for republicans. 202-748-8000 for democrats. 202-748-8002 for independents. we will take those calls is washington journal continues. >> attention middle and high school students across america, it is time to make your voice firm. -- heard. the studentcam did documentary contest is here. this is your chance to make an impact. the documentary should answer the question your message to the president, what issue is the most important to you or your

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tax-deductible contribution today. together we can ensure that c-span remains a trusted source for you and future generations. >> washington journal continues. host: this is open forum and how you participate is if you have called in the last 30 sit days or so hold off but then call on the line that best represents you. republicans, 202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, 202-748-8002. ken starts us off in, republican line. go ahead. caller: good morning. i just came in on the end of the conversation with mcclintock about medicare advantage plans. did he say that they were trying to move all medicare to medicare advantage plans? host: i do not know if he spoke that definitively but i invite

you to listen so go ahead. caller: so i do not know if people realize it or not, medicare advantage plan you are not on medicare, they just let them use the name back in 1991 when the plan started and therefore, -- and they are for-profit companies. it sounds good at first, but if you have something that they turn you down on, which normal medicare would probably would not do, you are just out of luck because they are a for-profit company, they aren't there to make money and not to take care of you. so if you have no choice but to be on medicare advantage plans. that say -- that is doing away with medicare. host: that his cabin in new york. this is jill. democrat line. caller: hello and good morning.

i had a question for the congressman. he was stating about this whole issue of deportation. i would like to know since this is a bottom up issue so what about top-down? all of the companies where people are hiring illegal american -- illegal aliens to do the work, what is happening with them and there seems to be no process or anything they have to go through to pay back money or taxes that they are not paying for the workers that they are hiring. i would really like someone to stop vogue -- to start focusing on that. what happened in the meatpacking industry and things like that. thank you. host: the federal reserve according to the associated press and others today will likely signal a slower pace of interest rate cuts in the last -- in the next year compared with the last few cuts meaning

that americans might have only summer lee from high-cost payments on mortgages, credit cards and auto loans. "the latest move would follow the larger than usual half-point rate cut in september and a quarter point reduction in november. today's meeting could mark a shift to a new phase instead of a rate cut shed each meeting, the fed is more likely to cut at every other meeting at most. the central bank's policymakers may signal that they expect to reduce their key rates just two or three times since 2025 -- in 2025." watch our website for anything that occurs including the short term funding pac with federal funding set to run out this week and we will see what happens when it comes to the short-term's package introduced yesterday and you can also follow along and see the text on c-span.org.

from eric in new jersey. republican line. hello. caller: good morning. i lived in the congressional district of the ranking member of the house committee -- health subcommittee. and i asked him, he is a democrat, and i asked him if you are pro-choice on abortion, you think that anyone who wants to get an abortion should be able to do that in a safe way. and there are places across the country where people who use heroin would like to use in a supervised injection site. and there are cities from boston to portland oregon and all in between. new york city has open them. they are not covered under the pro-choice assurances that the democrats say that they support.

so, you started off the washington journal this morning talking about the democratic party. how is it that the democrats are not for allowing states to do what they want with these scheduled substances in the case of supervised injection sites as well as psychedelics like magic mushroom therapy for people with addictions, depression, and anxiety in oregon. it is a huge question. if you are pro-choice on abortion, why aren't you pro-choice on using drugs? host: eric in new jersey. vivianin tennessee on the democrats line. caller: please do not cut me off i will keep it quick. number one i think that this was a rigged election. i know that a lot of machines went out in black areas. a lot of machines went out at

certain times. back to what i am saying. they put a man who has 34 convictions and attempted rape and money to pay back for those like webb -- black workers that he owes them for a them and threatening georgia. what kind of country as this when they do not want him to make america great again. i know what that means. i lived in the jim crow era when i had to sit in the back of the bus and restaurant. people go around and tennessee where the police officers have black men who go out of jail and rob and they started the riots downtown. they do not want the young people to know this but this is something i lived through. as far of his -- as far as abortion, that is a woman's body and if they are dying and

suffering for what they are doing. host: we got you. just to clarify the president-elect was not charged with sexual abuse as far as that concern. let us hear from the independent line. this is debbie. in new york. hello. caller: i always hear everyone talking about cutting social security and they never talk about cutting welfare. my thing is how about we create a program that pays people who work, it would create new jobs and businesses. i feel like there are so many able-bodied people who can work working under the counter just to get the benefits and subsidies. and i know people that have balances on snap of $8,000 and $17,000. to me these people are not needy. i always want to help people, but there are tons of people

just sucking off the taxpayers and i am tired of working and paying for everyone else to work under the counter and hide their income and that is what i have to say. i think we should create a program that pays people that are actually working that would get the economy growing and create jobs and businesses. host: ok. debbie in new york. "the washington post" saying that the electoral college convened in all 50 states to elect donald trump over vice president harris. that vote by 312-to 26. they gathering unfolded uneventfully like four years ago when alternate electors and drum convened in seven states that he had lost where governors had certified the states -- the results for joe biden. although many of the 20 alternate electors said they meant to only preserve republican legal option some trouble allies use our votes to

try to persuade congress decide the election for him during the joint section on january 6, 2021. that effort became the focus of congressional hearings as well as criminal cases. although trump won the electoral college comfortably by -- this time, a share the popular vote with third-party candidates included would fall slightly below the majority at 49.9% according to data. eileen in new jersey. republican line. hello. caller: mary to you. i -- merry christmas to you. i would like to know do the demo kit -- to the democrats and republicans get paid -- host: could you repeat that. caller: do the democrats and republicans get paid offer their jobs? host: what do you mean by that? caller: congress and the

senators, do they get paid after they leave? host: i think there are a variety of things when it comes to compensation after they leave but i am not an expert and that is something you would have to check out yourself. i would go to the website to find out more. as far the -- as far as a question, why do you ask? caller: i'm thinking they could cut it out and pay for their own like we do. host: this is charles, democrat line. hello. caller: good morning, how are you? host: fine. caller: i have two things i want to say. every man or woman that has been to jail and has gotten out of jail should clean their racket up like they did trump so they could get a good job. you would have most social security than you could have. and you would be able to go to work. and get a decent job. not only that. the politicians in washington

took money and repaid it back. money from social security, are you going to pay that back? thank you. host: charles in new jersey. yesterday on capitol hill one of the top republicans mike mccall of texas spoke about the news of late particularly out of new jersey and other states when it comes to drone sightings and also gave this take on what he thought about the sightings particularly around the terry basis. here are some of his comments. [video clip] ms. samarasinghe: we -- >> we want answers and the response that i am getting is we do not know whose drones these are. i was with the nasa administrator who said that these drones have been over military sites and bases. i would not think those are friendly but adversarial. and, in fact, nasa is picking up

more than our military is with respect to the drones. i think congress is going to pursue this and i know the house intelligence committee is having a hearing on this. we need to identify who is behind the drones. my judgment based on my experience is that those over our military sites are adversarial and most likely coming from the people's republic of china. >> do you think you will be satisfied with what you here today? >> probably not. i think they will say they do not know, and that is a concern in and of itself. if we have drones flying around military bases and we cannot identify where they came from or who is responsible. i know there are a lot of commercial jones and secretary may organize talked about this.

the ones flying over military bases i would say by definition are adversarial. we need to know who is behind that and i believe they are spy drones and the p.r.c., the chinese communist china is very good at this stuff. we know they bought land around military bases. this would be consistent with their policy over the last couple of years. host: joanne from fredericksburg, virginia. independent line. caller: hello, i have a proposal for representatives and senators doing their job. way back under the roosevelt administration, you had a senator called george north.

he became governor of nebraska. when he did that, he formed a legislation where they could have their election parties when they came to vote their candidates but when they came to work on what they needed to do, they were not allowed to separate into parties. they were required to work as a unit. and as far as i know, that still exists in nebraska and maybe a couple of other states. i think the same thing should happen on the hill. i mean, it is enough to get out there and say you have six

weeks, give the information and electric candidate. but once they get on the hill to do their job there should be no democrat or republican. t they should be -- they should be there as workers for the people, all people. host: ok. joann in federick's berg, virginia. caller: i have a question, why do we give our jobs to china? as a country we produce our own steel, glass, and clothing, many products that we produced ourselves and we had jobs for people to work at other than mcdonald's. and we have become a country

that just has these little fast food jobs. there are other jobs, of course, but so many of the products that we purchase and pay our money for our products -- are products that are produced in china. everything. that is my question. why is that, and why has this happened? how has this happened? i know that money talks. host: phyllis in illinois. "the new york times" highlights elon musk over the line musk faces review saying that "he and spacex have failed to comply with federal reporting protocol aimed at protecting state secrets, including by not providing some details of his meetings with foreign leaders according to people with knowledge about the company and turned. -- an internal document.

concerns about the reporting practices and particularly about mr. musk have triggered at least three federal reviews. the air force and the pentagon's office of undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security secretary -- separately issued reviews last month." if you go to the pages of ", the washington times" liz cheney is the focus. it is part of a 120 age page report released thursday by house republicans on the panel of the january 6 riots which " accuses ms. cheney of witness tampering and calls for an fbi investigation of her regarding the testimony of cassidy hutchinson. "it is unusual and potentially unethical for a member of congress conducting an investigation to contact a witness if an individual knows -- if the member knows that the individual is represented by legal counsel."

she was advised by her first lord or to tell of the panel she did not know much about the day's events but later doing about-face when she was -- when she switched lawyers. she blasted the call for an fbi investigation is a flimsy stretch. "no rep ebola lawyer, legislator or a judge would take this seriously." going to teresa from pennsylvania. go ahead. caller: good morning, the reason i am calling, your previous guest about social security and cuts. and he had several different reforms, so he said. the best way to fund social security forever is to remove the fica tax, remove the income cap or significantly raise it and social security and medicare would be good forever. and republicans never bring that

up. and i would like to know why they would want to cut it on those of us who have to pay into it all of our working lives and they constantly cut us but never do that. host: why do you think that would provide enough revenue? caller: how could it not. think about it, seriously? think about where the cap is and think about just removing it and everybody pays the same percentage into it. think about that for a minute. host: eric in philadelphia. independent line. last call, go ahead. caller: yes, i think -- i do not think the republicans will touch social security and medicare because they know if they do that they will lose the house and senate come two years. and i think where they really need to cut is the federal government and pentagon. there is too much waste, fraud

and abuse and that is the purpose of doge and getting people back to work. that really is what needs to be done. host: why do you think that would change things? caller: well, there are too many federal ploy ease whose roles overlap -- employees whose roles overlap and they do not work and they are collecting hundred thousand dollars in salary. half of them they keep their computer on and they are not even by the computer, you know. and a lot of them do not really work, to be honest with you. and the work is shared with the ones who do work. so i think they need to cut the fat and really not go after people's benefits. that will not change anything. host: ok. eric in philadelphia. from "the associated press" with president biden in the next go

-- outgoing and the next couple of weeks yesterday "endorsing a band o -- ban on congressional stock trading. belatedly weighing in on an issue that has been around. nobody in congress should be able to make money on the stock market while they are in the congress according to mr. biden. it was conducted by the political advisor for senator bernie sanders and published by a more perfect union, a pro-labor advocacy and journalism organization. it is unclear what mr. biden's statement could have coming up only a month before his term ends." two guests joining us to finish off this morning. another representative, the democratic representative from illinois talking about spending deadlines that are being faced this week and other congressional news. and that -- and then later on with questions from -- with

questions about drones, we will hear from michael robbins who represents drone operators and manufacturers, those coming up on washington journal. ♪ >> since 1979, a partnership with the cable industry. c-span has provided coverage in the house of congress from the house and senate floors to congressional hearings, party briefings and committee meetings. c-span gives you a front row seat to how issues are debated and decided with no commentary, no interruptions and completely unfiltered. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. c-span now is a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of what is happening in washington, live and on-demand, keep up with the biggest events

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that value transparent and no spin political coverage and your support keeps our mission alive. we are asking to stand with us, your gifts no matter the size goes 100% toward supporting c-span's work to ensure that longform, in-depth and independent coverage thrives in an era where it is needed more than ever. visit c-span.org/donate or scan the code to make your tax-deductible contribution today. today we can ensure that c-span remains a trusted resource for you and future generations. >> washington journal continues. host: the next guest of the warning is representative sean casten who serves on the financial services committee and science space and technology committee. welcome to the program. guest: nice to be here. host: now that there is a text of the short-term funding bill, what do you think about the next

steps in the process particularly? guest: we have 1500 pages release last night i think about 7:00 at night and this is no way to run a country. and we are all furiously going to try and figure this out right now. none of us on the democratic side want to shut down the government. this has been such a strange congress, and it is important for viewers to understand how unusual this is. we are talking about a continuing resolution. this is a normal function of when you have worked and figured out the funding for the state department, the defense department, education department and maybe there are a few little i's and t's you pass that keeps -- and you pass the continuing resolution and you just iron out a few of the details. republican house this term has yet to pass a funding bill in two years.

we are basically agreeing on a continuing resolution that is consistent with the funding levels set when the democrats last controlled the house and those were my own funding priorities and so i suppose in some small way that is a win, but the world was different two years ago. we were coming out of covid with high inflation. we had the situation in ukraine, and before the situation in gaza. we should be funding the government to the needs of today not two years ago. instead, because the republican party has been at war with itself, they have not been able to bring bills to the floor. they are funding acr with a lot of other things and it that are not related to the cr that they are trying to get done. but, one of the primary primer -- powers of congress is setting funding levels and to go two years with this leadership bringing bills to the floor to do that is disrespectful to the

institution and the american people. host: those other things you talk about, some of it is describing a christmas tree of sorts, does it make it complicated when you look at the add-ons versus what should be done to get the government functioning? guest: on any given line item we might have done it differently. on balance a part of the challenge that speaker johnson has is that he has a block of 60 to 70 republicans who will vote against anything. so he cannot pass a bill without democratic support. broadly speaking the should not be partisan but broadly speaking in order for this to get the floor needs to be something attractive to the majority of the democrats because he does not have a way to do this otherwise. structurally i do not anticipate a lot of those items will be dealbreakers for a lot of our colleagues but that is not the way we should fund government. host: do you think that

democrats in return for support, if that is the case, should they be asking as -- asking for things as well for the speak -- from the speaker? guest: we could play the game, i prefer not to. as we view this as an inside washington game where the only thing that matters is the letter hanging off your name and i need something from your team, we can do that. at the end of the day if we do not fund government shutdown. the national parks are not open, and veterans who need health care cannot get the support checks. seniors who depend on social security, people who want to travel, tsa is not paid in the military is not getting paid. these are not things that are good to do regardless of party. the question is the alternative to keeping the government open palatable or not. and that is the way we need to think about this. host: our guest is with us until 9:00.

if you want to ask questions, 202-748-8001 for republicans. 202-748-8000 for democrats. independents, 202-748-8002. you can text us at 202-748-8003. you serve on the science, space and technology committee. with the incoming administration and republicans controlling the house and senate, what is going to be the difference going forward next year when it comes to science and technology fronts? guest: in my time it has been my privilege for six years and it has always been robustly bipartisan weather under democratic or republican leadership. frank lucas is a wonderful gentleman from oklahoma. brian babbitt given the district he represents in texas, i would be focused on space issues because he oversees a lot of the space programs. i am looking forward to that work. the things we are most concerned

about with the incoming administration on the scientific front is certainly a lot of outright science denialism from rfk jr. and what does that mean for nih funding to make sure we are prepared for future pandemics and diseases. this is important stuff and we need to fund scientific research even if it violates things that me -- that we might one of believe politically. there has been talk about defunding noaa and privatizing the national weather service with our ability to monitor hurricanes and monitor floods will be problematic. it is a concern that we have to see -- to be sensitive to. and we have an oversight function and elon musk is not a member of the, -- cabinet and has not been proposed as member of the cabinet and not elected by anybody but has a massive financial interest in a company with a lot of cut -- contracts

with our companies with spacex and contacts with foreign nationals. and for us to be a coequal branch we need to be vigorous and not presume guilt but make sure we are asking the hard questions to make sure that we are protecting our space resources and national secrets from foreign adversaries where that might always be in elon musk's financial interest. host: this administration has spent a lot of time talking about green energy in making those investments. do you see clawbacks on that front? guest: i am proud of the work we did in the inflation reduction act. as are my constituents. i have never met anyone who wanted to pay more for energy. and if you have a home with solar panels on the roof and you do not have to pay an electric bill you are generally happy about that. with a house with an electric -- electric vehicle charging you

are happy about that. happy in the sense that there is no scenario where you say i'm going to shut down the solar panel because the power from the grid is cheaper. on the other hand you have a coal plant and a lot of days you will say i will shut that down because it is cheaper. what we did was to provide incentives so that people who cannot afford the upfront payment to buy the solar panel that became affordable so all americans can have access and we were intentional about trying to make sure we prioritize the investments for the manufacturing and areas that have historically depended on fossil energy to create jobs in the local economy. as a result, a lot of those investments have gone to very red parts of the country politically, not because we were targeting that but if you live on an area that depends on extractive industries and easier to permit you are in a more republican community. if you live in an area that is harder to permit things you are

probably more likely represented by a democrat. i am hopeful that there will be broad-based support to maintain those because there are a lot of constituents who wants cheap energy and want to have the jobs that those investments are creating. i think there will be a tension because the incoming white house i think in a lot of cases puts the interest and energy producers over consumers. there are no -- there are more consumers than producers and we need to remind them of the fact. host: our first call comes from colorado independent line. this is matt, on with our guest. caller: good morning. so, i want to push back a bit on when you made a comment about how a continuing resolution is normal. from my understanding that his plan b from when you do not have the ability to make that budget.

my background is that i worked for the dod for 20 years and every time there is a cr coming through that puts up a question of how much money we are going to get to spend and when the money is coming in, are we going to shut down the government, that should not be normal. i tell you what, every year about this time it causes about 25 to 30% of inefficiency in our department. i see it. and people have to talk about it and plan on it. the problem is you guys not being able to do a budget. where were you last summer when you could have been talking about a budget. you talk about a cr like it is normal. stop it, pass a budget. host: that is met in colorado. guest: i agree. if you heard me say a cr is normal. i was saying in the event that

you have done all the work and you need another week that is when a cr is used. running for two years on cr's is abnormal and i agree with you. any agency should not have that uncertainty anymore than was someone who works in the private sector. you do not know whether you will be able to continue a project you are working on, it is bad government. when we as democrats were in the majority we made a habit of always getting not just the budget but the appropriations done by july because we run into september at the fiscal year so we would have those off to the senate where the senate could work them and get them back and get it done in time. that is the way we are supposed to work. we has democrats do not have the gavels and over the past two years is that in exchange for mccarthy getting the speakership he granted positions on the rules committee that controls what comes to the floor to the nihilists to be blunt about it

and they have not allowed any bill to come to the floor under regular order with having -- without having a bunch of poison pills that do not work. we should not be running this way and i'm sorry if you heard me say that differently, but it is where we are because of the completely unusual situation created by the leadership on the republican side of the aisle in this congress. host: richard in georgia on the republican line. caller: all of that money that we are sending to ukraine without congress acting, why can't we take that same money and send it to the americans first and give that money to north carolina? put americans first and set up some foreign country. thank you. guest: so there is no reason we cannot do both. let me talk about the consequences of failing to do both. we have $100 billion of aid for

all of the communities in north carolina and georgia hit by the hurricanes. we should have gotten it done before now but it is one of the additional line items in the continuing resolution. if we did not do that we are leaving americans behind. that is the right thing to do. as a separate matter what ukraine has done is nothing short of heroic. i would remind you that three years ago we thought that russia was the second most pallet -- powerful military in the world. they have proven to be the second most powerful military in ukraine. we have not put a single american troop in harm's way at the ukrainians have held them at bay and have decimated their army and reminded europe that we are here to defend the post-world war ii order. if we were to allow russia to go ahead and take ukraine, a couple things happen. if you go beyond ukraine you are into europe where we have treaty agreements with all of our partners in nato that an attack

on one is an attack on all of us and we would be putting troops in harm's way if they were to come into poland, germany or beyond. it is important for us to provide military assistance to make sure that we do not hurt our allies and put american troops in harm's way. the other thing that happens is you have autocrats who would love to take territory from other people. i would point you to china's eyes on taiwan. if the united states does not oppose russia taking ukraine, much in the way that george h w bush opposed a rack's -- iraq's efforts to take a wait, you have -- kuwait, that would destabilize the entire were world. i am proud to maintain that title. host: this is the headline that appeared in many fronts two weeks ago saying that you

introduce the privilege revolution to force the ethics committee to release the matt gaetz report. what came about of that? guest: what we tried to do was to remind our colleagues that there had been four times over the last 40 years were members of congress resigned under ethics investigations and all four of those times the ethics committee completed their work in three of the four times they were released to the public and you should not be allowed to say you can resign to get away from investigation. and what we wanted to do was to remind the colleagues that we continue that precedent. our colleagues unfortunately did not vote to compel the ethics committee to release the report. the ethics committee, there are a few days left in congress and the ethics community can still do what past committees have done and vote to release the report which is my understanding that the report is completely finished. if it exonerates him then it is in his interest to have it out

there. if it does not, it is in the interest of all future potential employers of mr. gatez and the public at large and he did as alleged accepted bribes and had sex with a minor child. you would want to know that before you -- before that came out. we will continue to push that and i hope that the ethics committee will use our power to do what is right and what is necessary before the end of the term. host: what is a possibility you are making another resolution like the one you made two weeks ago? guest: we are keeping all options open. we do not need to bang our head on the door and have the same solution as last time. host: what other options would there be? guest: bring it to the floor again. and the conversations i've been having with other folks what we are trying to do is to push the ethics committee to do their job and bring it forward because that is the better way to bring

it -- to get it done. we should not have to go to the floor to do this and i am personally concerned that if we end up in a situation where this is intentionally and inadvertently leaked we know that a lot of women testified anonymously and under the assumption that they would remain anonymous. we want to make sure that that information comes out in a way that is consistent with the expectations of everyone who provided information and that is harder to do if you lose control. host: steve in maryland. democrats live -- line. caller: the legislative branch is a disgrace. 24 years, no budget past, continuing resolutions and omnibuses. the mda bill that is going to take place while we are all asleep the 24th or 25th when we are in bed waiting for santa, i hope to god you guys are not

giving yourselves a raise. in fact, your approval rating is always 13 or 14% which is what you should be deducting from your salary. you guys should be bringing your salaries down because who gets a raise when you are not doing your job? the disgrace for selling off this border wall for pennies on the dollar is unheard of. one final thing. everyone wonders what the problem with america, the legislative branch under bill clinton with the senators and house of representatives decided that outsourcing and off shoring would be a brilliant idea. as you can see 40 years later, we do not have any jobs left in america. and when you do not make anything you do not contribute to the economy and you have shortfalls. we have a -- we do not have a revenue problem but a spending problem. host: that is a lot. there is a provision reportedly in the cr, that would allow for

cost-of-living adjustments to be resumed in a legislator salary. what do you think the proposal? guest: let me give you a little bit of personal background. i came to congress after 20 years in the private sector i built and ran a number of clean energy companies. i had the good fortune to make a little bit of money, sold a company and had a degree of freedom personally that allowed our family for me to not work for a year to run for office and then take a job where i cut my salary by 50% and i did it because i am trout -- i am proud of this institution in government. it is not always perfect but i felt the call to public service. if you have never given members of congress a raise. for 14 years they have not had a raise. you can only attract people like me who made enough money in a prior line of work to afford to come here.

174,000 dollars a year is a lot of money to a lot of americans and i am not dismissing that. you have to maintain a house in two different cities and travel back and forth. i look at colleagues of mine like katie porter who had two young kids in school and is a single mom. run those budgets going back and forth to california. that is tough. if congress is made up of people with the financial flexibility to do the job because of something they did before or could never earn this much money in any other line of work but all of a sudden they get the biggest race i will have, that does not make congress work. in my private-sector life whenever we went through and did compensation analysis we did not ask how much we could afford to given a raise and we said for someone of these talents and abilities how much could they make at another job and pay them enough that we keep the best and brightest. i have seen too many good people leave congress because they have said i have to put some money aside so i can that my kids

through college and retirement and i am not doing that here. that does not make congress better. we saw that there is a wonderful case study in singapore about 15 to 20 years ago where singapore did a fairly significant raise to all of the parliamentarians. every measure of corruption collapsed afterwards because all of a sudden you did not have people making other choices. i am not justifying corruption that i am saying the problems raised about low congressional favorability in congress not only -- always doing the things they want to do, you get what you pay for. the failure to provide raises and make this a place not where people get rich but they know they do not double the salary the minute they leave the job retains quality people and it is important to fight for. host: mark in massachusetts, independent line. caller: with regards to the spending and budget, representative, i have two areas

that a lot can be saved. first of all, space force which was started by trump, i think it is $80 billion and it was part of the u.s. air force space command. and second is guantanamo bay. i do not know how much it cost to keep that open that i was reading that there is only 25 prisoners. thank you. guest: so, yes, the space force is not a huge line item. this was inside the air force and moved into a separate division. we need that group overseeing the near earth orbit and overseeing china which is rumored to be targeting other satellites, we need to make sure we have a military presence in space. it is more a shift of where it is spent than additional resource. i agree with you ethically about guantanamo and we never should have gotten in there. not a huge line item relative to

a $6 trillion federal budget. but from an ethical perspective we should be shutting it down. the big muscle movements in the budget are social security, medicare and defense. if you are not touching those three things you are not doing much about the spending side. the other piece which is really important and notwithstanding the prior caller is that the revenue side does matter. the huge tax cuts provided the last time trump was in office essentially cut our growing deficits by true trillion dollars -- $2 trillion. that stuff really matters. the reason why in the last term we included in the in fate -- inflation reduction act to fund the arnett -- the irs because the gap between taxes due and collected is almost $1 trillion. that is not saying we need to raise tax rates but we do not actually fund the white collar

police well enough to go through and make sure we collect the taxes. what the irs told us is when they do not have the resources the people they do not audit our rich people because they have complicated taxes that are expensive to audit. it disproportionately benefits the people who could most give. let us fund the irs and have a consistent tax code and then once that is done, if we need to have a hard conversation about social security, daycare, and defense let's do it. let us not start there because we created this through the trump tax cuts and the failure to fully fund the white collar police. host: two questions amongst the committees. you serve on science, space and technology, so concerns that some have expressed about the drone and unmanned vehicle sightings? guest: i think this is a place where there is a lot more smoke than fire from everything that i have seen.

when you see people say that there is unidentified aircraft in the sky and you can only k -- only see them at night and they look like a blurry picture with an airplane in the distance but it closed her distance it is a drone you should have your skeptical spidey sense tingling. navy there is something else going on. but i think ockham's razor suggests that people are seeing things that they are assuming is something else and if we get information to the contrary, of course we will be open minded. this feels to me like i said a lot of smoke and not very much fire. host: from your background in the financial services committee, what do you think about another cut from the federal reserve? guest: it is important for the federal reserve to remain independent of political pressure so i want to be careful about what i say. the -- we have done i think -- the fed has done a good job of

engineering a soft landing. we have had historic rates of job creation, really for the first time may be in forever. we have seen a surge in job creation and declining inflation. those things usually do not happen. when job is it -- with job creation people usually negotiate for upper wages. that has been a careful dance and the fed will be looking at inflation closely. one of the challenges and i have talked with jay powell and others about this, is that in the 80's we took housing out of the basket of goods that the fed looks at. and so now we have a situation where if the price of rent goes up then we say that things are inflationary. if the price of homes goes up the fed says that is not inflationary. one of the real challenges we have is a country as a lack of housing, affordable housing that people can buy.

if we push rates down to make houses more affordable but then houses get more expensive and people should not afford housing we should be looking at that as well and the fed can do it but historically they have not taken that. it is going to be tense as we think about those pressures. host: tom on the republican line, oklahoma, running short on time. jump in with your question or comment. caller: there is something that says president joe biden two days after president trump is elected that he waved to billion dollars worth of sanctions to iran. why would he do that? i will take my answer off-line? guest: so, this was not an issue of sanctions per se, although you are close on it. there was a bunch of money tied up. we had the jcpoa, it was an agreement that said the iranian government would agree to a

lifting of sanctions in exchange for very invasive monitoring of their nuclear programs. trump pulled out and you might recall that trump and mike pompeo said that they would have a maximum pressure campaign. maximum pressure did not work. their ability has gotten much closer. and so what biden did was he came back and said there in and said there's a large amount of iranian money that was money paid to the iranians for oil revenue being held by a number of other countries, i think qatar was one of the custodians. what biden said was that money being held in escrow by those other countries could be spent under the supervision of those countries purely for humanitarian issues in iran to try and create some better communication and undo the down side affects of that maximum pressure campaign. it was not a lifting of sanctions. i appreciate the question. sometimes the sound bytes confuse the truth.

host: joining us for this conversation on washington journal thank you for your time today sir. guest: thank you very much. host: to those legislative questions about drones and those sightings, our next guest represents the association that deals directly with unmanned vehicles, mike robbins of the association for un-crude vehicle systems per joining us to talk about concern over drones citing. we will have that conversation when washington journal continues. ♪ >> in an earlier conversation in this series, evan thomas discussed 1986 book wisemen. acheson, bolin, harriman and cannon. in this episode we ask edward ted aldrich to discuss his book titled the partnership. towards marshall, henry stimson

and the extraordinary collaboration that won world war ii. mr. aldrich writes fdr and stimson as secretary of war, in the summer of 1940 in anticipation for the global war into which all of these men knew the united states would surely be drawn. >> edward with his book the partnership, george marsh henry simpson and the extraordinary collaboration that won world war ionhis episode of book notes plus with their host brian lamb. look notes plus is available on the free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> the c-span bookshelf podcast feed makes it easy for you to listen to all of c-span's podcasts feature nonfiction books in one place so you can discover new authors and ideas. each week we are making it convenient for you to listen to multiple episodes with critically acclaimed authors discussing history, current events and culture.

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on capitol hill or the faa, the administration the pentagon advocating on their behalf for sensible enabling regulations and for policy. >> it's ok to call them drones i suppose. so when you hear about this or the last couple of weeks about drone sightings in the united states first and foremost what the actual news, what went through your mind and what do you think legislators are saying versus what your folks are saying. guest: west view there is an opportunity to talk about the american people and have a conversation about the beneficial uses of drones of which there are many. drones are an awesome tool for public safety, precision agriculture, medical delivery, there are many use cases that are being employed including the new jersey with a lot of infrastructure happening, roads and bridges, pipelines and power lines drones are doing inspections of all those things. on a regular basis so there's a lot of positive use cases for drones.

at the same time there are some pretty serious gaps in both drone enabling policy as well as the policies that enable you a aft detection and mitigation. we have that conversation or continue that conversation we've been having with both the american people and lawmakers at all levels of government. we are hopeful that coming back in 2025 the administration a new congress there'll be action on some of these issues that been pending for many years. >> what you think of the concern not only about the vehicles themselves but the origin of the vehicles. where is the truth in what's being said? guest: we take the federal government at its word when they are saying for multiple agencies fcc, faa, dod that there is no threat to the american people, the people in new jersey and there is not any kind of imminent concern. that said, there is every right for americans to have their

opinions on what is happening. i think there has been a lot of misinformation. some of an intentional, some of it unintentional. i think what we are seeing is a lot of people are maybe looking up for the first time in paying closer attention to what's in the sky at night and miss identifying what is maybe a crude aircraft, maybe it's a star, maybe it's a satellite and sort of thinking that's there at night it looks a little different. it's not really moving that fast. often that's not the case. it's not suggest there aren't some legitimate compliant drones operating along the eastern seaboard at night. there are. a lot of drones undertaken compliantly and within the wall -- law. what we have seen from the videos posted online the overwhelming majority are either a hoax or just people miss identifying aircraft including some very legitimate officials, numbers of congress and others who think they saw something

that they misidentified as a drone. there's definitely been people like with anything that happens in the news where people try to take advantage of the situation suggesting that whether it's the government is controlling these drones or i'm knocking to repeat all of the hoaxes that stefan been a lot of misinformation. that comes with any situation. when we have dramatic hurricanes earlier this year people suggested that government was controlling the weather. there's been an online hoax that birds aren't real. so there's all kinds of things that occur in the news and we are trying to stick to the facts and have a positive conversation about drones. >> michael joining us for this conversation. if you want to ask a question about drones and their use, 202-748-8000 in the eastern and central time zones. 202-748-8001 if you live in the mountain and pacific time zones. you can text us at 202-748-8003

if you want -- and you can also post your questions on facebook and on x. when it comes to oversight of how drones are operated how much comes from the federal government? guest: all airspace is federal. all aircraft whether it's a drone or a commercial aviation aircraft or general aviation only federal authorities are regulating those aircraft once they take off. local state officials do have some say around when it takes off and lands with zone permitting and things of that nature but once it's airborne it's entirely federal authority. >> what branches of the government deal with that regulation or their oversight. >> it's primarily the department of transportation and more specifically the federal aviation administration on the safety and operation side and on the security side there was also a role for the department of homeland security. >> this is from the faa saying

792,000 registered drones in the united states as of october. among some commercial drones, three under 97,000. 380 recreational drones. he on from there. is there enough being done or enough manpower to make sure proper oversight with how these drones are used. >> when it comes to drone policy having we look at two different ways. there is sort of enabling regulation. that's allowing them to fly in the airspace right now. i was just the policies in place right now are not enough to allow your own operations particular on the commercial side to scale so that people start seeing on a more regular basis all the benefits that come with drones whether that's for public safety missions, search and rescue or providing law-enforcement tactical intelligence, cortical infrastructure, using thermal or electrical optical cameras to inspect power lines and pipelines and such. some any great use cases.

a lot of this is limited because the rules for enabling drones to operate at scale are not yet in place. i think that's part of what this challenge is people are seeing drones and thinking should that be there. because they are not used to seeing them all the time and when drones become more commonplace and more rules are in place to allow drones, i need an onion for dinner i'm just going to order one of my phone. instead of having to get in my car and get on the roads, when things like the start occurring more regularly, people won't have the same sort of reaction that they have now particularly at night. because it is still somewhat new despite the number of drones in the airspace. on the others congress hasn't updated the federal authorities or you a aft detection mitigation since 2018. so a long time has passed more than six years since congress last addressed federal authorities for ua as protection and mitigation and right now there is no authority for state,

local, tribal territorial companies -- at all. even that authority is extremely limited, the department of energy, justice and homeland security and defense are the only agencies without authority. it is not a standing authority. in order to use that authority they need to get approval at a fairly high level of those different agencies. with the exception really of d.o.e. protecting some critical infrastructure as well as the department of defense sort of having airspace awareness around their military bases. there has been a national action plan released by the biden administration in april 2022 that has not been acted upon by congress. there is a bill in the senate that has strong support in the homeland security committee. a bill passed the house homeland security but they did not come together to reconcile those bills. they are leaving town in the next 24 to 48 hours or so and so

it looks like it will be at least january of 2025 before we have an up -- opportunity to address expanding the authorities for detection mitigation and potentially delegating some of that authority to state and local government that they can have better airspace awareness. when you have better awareness of what's in the sky, that is a drone or commercial aircraft or helicopter. you give people a degree of comfort. >> this is michael robbins of the association for unaccrued vehicle systems serves as a president and ceo paid our first calls from susan. good morning you are on with our guest. >> thank you for taking my call. i have a call for mr. robbins. a question. if you are having dinner with your family outside, your kids and grandparents and a person literally sitting on a drone or a drone who you don't know came and hovered right next to your table how would you feel?

i see that coming and right now i found out under u.s. law that is totally allowed and the police would not even be able to make that drone leave because in 2016 the faa took control over all airspace including the air just above your back yard grass and there is nothing to stop drones from flying over there and i live in new jersey. i spent a lot of time outdoors, i watch the birds and the stars and you know i understand the companies you represent are working on dedicated drone corridors for delivery routes. we all like delivery convenience but will those routes be over my house? you know europe has already figured this out. they have geo-zones in countries worked out where industry local governments real people, they have an organized system and drones can fly over your house unless they get permission. and we don't have that yet. i think people need to think about do i want drones over my back yard, and to speak out

because right now i think big tech is leading the charge international government is right alongside them especially with the muska mobile coming to the air near you. so what do you feel about that. host: we will leave it there. >> great question. certainly respect the perspective you're bringing to this conversation at a very thoughtful question. currently whether it is a drone taking pictures of you or someone using binoculars or a cell phone camera or telephonic test lens. all of those have privacy violations. drone is just a tool no different than a camera phone in my pocket. or binoculars that you have. and someone is spying on you and evading your privacy the same privacy protections a protector home from a cell phone camera are applied to the drones as well so a little bit of misinformation about what is said about law enforcement not

having any ability to address someone's spying on you with a drone pre-that's not quite right. with respect to drone delivery. when a drone is operating for delivery purposes, that drone does not have the same type of cameras that a drone would be taking a high-resolution photos would have. the drone is typically operating autonomously or with the remote operator that is sending that drone, any kind of cameras it has its put broader airspace awareness and very limited not storing that video. so when our members going into the service they go out of their way to meet with the community and so to dispel myths and concerns the community may have. and certainly at times there is a little but of trepidation because this is new and people don't necessarily understand what these drones do and don't do.

we have found overwhelmingly once drones start working in the community and whether it's for delivery or public safety. they are very much welcome and in fact in certain areas of the country like an north texas were drone delivery has really taken off communities are competing with each other to see who will get drone delivery next because it's such a great convenience to people who live there. it does take some public education and some awareness which is why am happy to join c-span today, this is democracy in action. having a conversation with folks about what is and what drones do and don't do. thank you for that question. >> do you have a certain amount of privacy that weighs far as the airspace over your house. >> all airspace is federally regulated. but again in the same way that if someone was invading your privacy with a cell phone camera, of those same privacy protections would extend to someone using a drone in your debt invading your privacy as well. >> go ahead.

>> i don't know how many classes they send these people to to learn how to answer these questions but 850,000 drones and it's just funny that we haven't seen any of them or any reports forever. now all of a sudden there's thousands of them in the skies and understand radioactive materials missing in new jersey and they could be looking for those. why all of a sudden are all these reports of drones flying. people ordering packages from amazon for christmas? >> thank you for the question for wayne from pennsylvania. according to faa data from about 2023. on a daily basis in new jersey for example there are about 14 to 1500 flights per day. that's a lot of drone flights and you're right maybe people didn't really pay attention to them anymore. drones are very small typically. and when they are operating at day or night most of the time

people don't even notice that they are there. so now i think what we are seeing in new jersey is may be a few drones were spotted particularly at night, the drones that have been identified as actual drones certainly were operating compliantly. they had lighting on them indicating they are not seeking to be there secretly. if you are seeking to do some sort of nefarious mission you would not have navigation lights and strobe lights on your drones. i think people to my point earlier are starting to maybe look up and pay attention a little bit more and then clearly there's been a lot of misidentification of other aircraft or stars or satellites as -- when in fact they are not drones. >> a story in usa today, a 5000 tips on those sightings. what does that number tell you about the number. >> i had some conversations with federal officials. they take in 5000 tips and nail that down to about 100 or so actual leads. i think that tells you that an

overwhelming majority of those sightings were not actually drones and they've narrowed it down to a much smaller set of actual incidents they are seeking to investigate and i think again that speaks to the fact that while there certainly have been some drones and will continue to be drones flying at night, the overwhelming majority of what people think our drones are actually something else. >> in those conversations what you asking and what are they saying. guest: the very same questions a lot of your callers are asking. what is happening, is it as it seems which to me that there are a few compliant drones may be some on compliant drones, or there is something larger going on here and by and large the overwhelming response has been no sightings of any un-compliant drones, there has been a few compliant drones obviously

operating in doing their missions in overwhelmingly things identified as drones that are not drones. >> what about other countries are they flying these drones. i have not heard anything on that front. we are certainly aware of other forms of intrusions into our nation whether you have individuals seeking to break into military bases, we certainly have a very serious cyber problem that's been well reported in the news. foreign adversaries are particularly probing our networks into telecommunications into our infrastructure. those are proms we can verify right now. is there potential that foreign adversaries, foreign nations are using drones or other technologies to attempt to probe our military bases and others, that is possible of course, but there is no verification of that

right now. host: let's hear from michael in florida, go ahead. caller: good morning. i enjoy the program. either couple of statements and a few questions. my first statement is i feel it's an insult to the american public to say in general you look up you really don't know it's a drone, you were not used to looking up in the sky. i don't buy that. i think within a day that the federal government could find what these drones are and where they originated from and what are they doing. that's my statement. the question is i hear that they may be looking for radiation exposure, that may be true or not. i just feel that in general question and a general statement saying the american public doesn't really know what a drone is, a drone flies so low or

doesn't have a lot of space when it's going over a certain neighborhood and the size of these drones. i just feel is such a downplay to the intelligence of the american population to say that they don't really usually the public does not look in the sky, they don't really know what they are seeing. i feel it's a little bit more just because of the actual quantity and the actual size of these drones, what do you think about that and one more thing? how many deliveries are you doing at 9:00, 10:00 at night. do we have deliveries going on at that time. >> great questions. i'll address your last question first. there's not a lot happening on the drone delivery side. certainly there are a lot of other missions that are occurring at night whether it's public safety, most crime occurs at night so a lot of local law enforcement use drones. tactical first response, drones

for search and other missions as well as infrastructure using cameras to inspect various infrastructure to ensure that that remains safe or to get things that have crashed back online. with respect to your concern around the american people and what they are or are not seeing. let me give you two examples preyed the governor of maryland certainly a well-informed individual took videos of what he reported to be drones in his back yard. the next day he had to walk back those videos and what he was actually taking videos of was the constellation orion. he was looking at stars. the congressman from new jersey i believe his name is andy kim, senator elect he took videos of again what he thought were drones, what he was actually viewing were aircraft on approach and landing. there is something in the night

sky called the parallax effect when you're looking at a light it's very hard to tell how far away it is, how fast it is moving or not moving at all. there optical illusions at night. so when you have that parallax effect occurring, things that could be mistaken as drones are clearly now being mistaken as drones when they're actually something very different from drones. take those two examples from two very well respected elected officials and extrapolate that many times over throughout the american public and i think that's what's leading to this sort of media frenzy that we are having right now. >> shannon also new jersey, good morning. >> thank you so much. i really appreciate this segment. i was actually just wondering, there's been obviously a lot of video circulating online, there's videos of potential like drones or ufos over the capital.

i wanted to see if you have any tips or special things for citizens to remain literate around as more of these videos circulate like can they be generated by ai or are there real videos, any suggestions about that? >> thank you so much. i know some social media sites do designate a video, it's clearly been used generated with ai so that folks can make informed decisions. i've seen a few videos myself that are very clearly altered or fake, sometimes you can tell by watching what else is in the background and see it as maybe on a loop or images are distorted. just by and large, i don't have any great tips for cutting through what is real and what's not real, i have the same problem as ever but sometimes trying to distinguish fact from fiction, just try to think through the issues, listen and trust in authorities and

understand everything should be looked at with a certain degree of skepticism when it's posted online. >> if the authority for drone operation ultima becomes the congress what should congress offer to clarify what's going on currently as a result on the issues. >> there is a, will things congress should do. visual the faa accountable for reinstituting the rules that will normalize drone operations so that we can get past this sort of this is rare and unique. as drones become part of a regular everyday lives like many other forms of technology and transportation so we don't have the skepticism of drones in the future. congress needs to update detection mitigation and policy. since those rules have been updated a lot has changed. and that is leaving a lot of state, local, tribal territorial law enforcement leaders really without any kind of pull it all

and relying on the federal agencies which have very limited budgets, very limited authority as it stands right now so those rules need to be updated and lastly this is not unique to drones but we are under investing in some cases in the wrong things with our national airspace. whether it's our air traffic control towers or our air traffic controllers using paper strips to control air traffic the way they did in the 1960's. 90% are still using paper strips. in 2024. that is wild. it's indicative of the fact we are spending a lot of money on our air traffic organization keeping technology that's decades past its intended use and lifespan still online instead of investing in new moderate technology that would give us much better airspace awareness and help to provide information. information is often the key to comfort and understanding and right now we lack a lot of information because we haven't

invested in our air traffic system the way we should be. host: from wyoming, hello. caller: enjoying the show. so my questions, i'm part 107 license holder and part of my curriculum highlighted that in order to operate a drone over traffic, over public spaces where people were present, you had to file a flight plan with the air traffic control request an exemption for flying over traffic or over the public and where the public is involved you would have to notify the public that they are entering that operation area. so i am baffled by the notion that we don't know where these drones are coming from because if the flight plan isn't with air traffic control, the

exemption granted by the faa, then the drones indeed are flying illegally and letting the population at risk. i will take your response off the air, good morning. host: thank you don. guest: congratulations on getting your part 107 certificate. for those that don't know that is essentially the license to be able to operate a drone in the united states beyond just the recreational flying you're really doing a service for commercial drone operation so congratulations to you. you are absolutely right in that there are certain segment of the airspace where you do need to have faa approval to fly and that approval is very easy to get, typically done online. you get approval from the local tower in relatively short time span. i think that actually speaks to the fact that because we have some rules and regulations in place we certainly need more.

but compliant operators like yourselves are following the rules and they are doing things the right way which is giving federal authorities the ability to fully abstain within the air and have airspace awareness. where there's a shortcoming is when you do have people that are not operating under 107 or not seeking authorization and their flying and airspace or maybe they shouldn't. that happens very rarely it's not something we are happening on a regular basis despite some of this current sort of speculation the drones are doing more than what they really are. in those cases you do need to have the you af detection mitigation technology to give all levels of government better airspace awareness. >> the website for the association for unaccrued vehicle systems. michael robin serving as the president and ceo. thanks for your time. finishing the program with open

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for republicans. 202-748-8000 democrats. independents 202-748-8002 speaker johnson yesterday talking about that short-term spending deal that congress would like to see back before the deadline this week. talking about some of those details of the proposal. [video clip] >> we work hard to achieve consensus on a bill that funds them into march of next year. and that day was chosen because it coincides with the calendars of the house and senate and make sense for us to get the appropriations done, but our aim is to do it early in the year not wait until march and all of the appropriators and people on the committees of jurisdiction are already working to do that. we've been working around the clock to get this done. it was intended to be and it was in recent days a very clean cr

stopgap funding measure and we have -- when we have unified governments under the public and party. but couple of intervening things have occurred. we had as we say some acts of god pray these massive hurricanes. in the late fall. hurricane helene and milton and other disasters. we have to make sure americans devastated by these hurricanes get the relief they need so we are adding to this disaster relief package and that's critically important. also important is the devastation of this being faced by our farming community. the agriculture sector is really struggling. they had effectively three lost years and commodity prices are a bit of a mass input costs skyrocketing. you put all of those factors together throughout and all the other conditions and you have small family farms and ranches and people who supply the food for the country in dire straits right now. congress recognizes that need and so we have had to add a

little bit to that as well. what would have been a very skinny very simple clean cr has been added these other pieces and a couple of things related to that. host: axios reporting elon musk has come out today against that cr bill for funding the federal government. the bill has days to pass until the 20th of december deadline. some are public and lawmakers have rallied against it and saying this bill should not pass. the richest men of the world, he wrote to his followers and then adding ever seen a bigger piece of pork? -- he questioned in a second post. all 1547 of those pages available if you want to go to them yourself going to our website c-span.org. watch that play out as the house tries to pass a short-term funding bill. c-span.org, from denise on this

open forum in ohio republican line good morning. caller: yes i'm calling about a place in texas called liberty county texas. there is a big housing development put in there, they have sold 30,000 land things to illegal aliens. there are two guys they grew up in that area it's a small, quaint town, about 50,000 spanish people suddenly showed up in these two guys are trying to started development. and i can -- and what they are doing down there is they are loaning money to illegal immigrants to buy property like one acre lots. they are filling it all up with

trailers side by sides and what they are doing is they are charging these people 13% interest and if they miss for payments, they lose their home. the school has went from 4000 kids to 10,000 children. host: did you say this took place in texas? >> this is in liberty county texas. host: the reason i ask is you are in ohio, why are you concerned? >> because what i'm concerned about is we are trying to move the illegals out of our country but if you've got illegals in here that are owning land, that is going to give them an anchor also and make it harder for them to get out of here by letting them buy property. and these guys, there's a couple of brothers that grew up in that area. >> you said that and i'll leave it there. it's your from jay in maryland,

democrats line. caller: trump like -- the first public and go to china. reagan with gorbachev almost a limited all the nuclear weapons in iceland. that almost happened so trump could do the same thing as a republican he can get away with it. if you say to the treaty on the prohibition, then under 500 for the world makes it a lot safer. item two is for the department of government efficiency, elon musk and those guys what they need to do is go after the thousands and tens of thousands may be more people that keep their money in offshore places, they hide their money from the irs and don't pay taxes on it. the isle of man, places like that. check the panama papers from a few years back. they should not cut irs people

they should increase the staff so they can go after the rich million and billionaires that are doing this and some of them -- it would be great if elon musk testified and said i've been doing that i will stop doing that now. that's not an allegation may it's not true, it's just a guesstimate. host: that's jay in maryland speaking of the president-elect, the des moines register reporting this morning that the president-elect to sue the des moines register and its parent company over the publication of a poll before the election that called fraud and election interference for saying that he trailed his democratic rival, the vice president kamala harris in iowa. the district court asked for unspecified damages under the state consumer fraud act. accountability for brazen election interference committed by "the newspaper over the pole

that was published november the second three days before the voting was completed. the short hairs leading trump i three percentage points in iowa. trump won the state by 13 percentage points. let's hear from curtis in wisconsin, independent line. >> high, how are you doing. i listen on c-span radio so i don't know what anybody looks like. i wanted to talk to the drone guy but i got into late. national public radio a couple weeks ago did a story on drones in gaza that are loaded with weapons that are shooting just civilians like on the streets and stuff. and nobody is following this story and i am kind of flabbergasted by all of this happening.

they call them quad copters and they are getting actual stories from people who have seen this happen and nobody is following it. it is kind of disturbing because it could be happening here from what i read, they are built in florida and then sent to israel. so we are building these weapons here and sending them to israel. just wanted to say that. and maybe somebody else has read that or heard this someplace. host: curtis there in wisconsin. the pages of the wall street journal a story about candidates efforts when it comes to border security, canned unveiling the border plan to avert the trumpcare of threat, saying the administration of the prime minister justin trudeau said they would spend 1.3 billion

canadian dollars or the equivalent of 900 million over six years for border security, the additional cash would be used to acquire dogs, drones, helicopters and deploy hundreds of new border agents according to the most recent document canada's government spends about .2 billion canadian dollars a year on border enforcement and management. more there in the wall street journal if you want to read that. we will hear from angela next in oklahoma, republican line. >> i was just calling about the possible government shutdown or potential resolution. if you look at most scheduled employees i would like to know the amount of employees that are under the six figures not like our constituents who are in d.c.. i would like to remind you that we do have family and we have expenses that we have to pay that we depend on our income

just like anyone in the private sector and most of us do not have extra funds to be shut down or without a paycheck especially in the organizations that do not get repaid if we get a government shutdown. >> do you work for the federal government? caller: i do. host: have you been through this before as far as shutdowns and how has that impacted you and i guess it's informing what you're saying right now. caller: if you have a family to take care of or mortgages or expenses it impacts you if you don't get a paycheck. i know they get reimbursed. in franchise we don't. >> there's angela giving her perspective on that possible shutdown. legislation released yesterday to try to avoid that. let's hear from illinois, republic -- democrats line. >> good morning per advice

statement for today is with trump trying to sue this newspaper lady in iola is it going to get down and he's wanting to shut down you know news agencies. that's in the first amendment the freedom of the press and i find it quite worrisome that he's already trying to be a dictator and following other dictators supporters. it seems like the last person he talks to is that's a good idea and he goes with that. this is kind of frightening and that's all i wanted to say today. thank you and everybody have a happy holiday. host: the president-elect said tuesday he would nominate the former nfl player in onetime georgia senate candidate herschel walker to serve as ambassador to the bahamas saying

herschel has spent decades as ambassador to our nation's youth, men and women in the military and athletes at home and abroad. he noted that walker previously served as the cochair for the white house counsel on the fitness and nutrition during his first term. open forum, massachusetts, independent line. caller: good morning. i wanted to bounce back off of the subject about the drones. and i truly believe that a lot of the american people, a lot of loyal patriots are concerned about what those drones are and where they are coming from and i believe we deserve 100% full transparency on what they are, where they are coming from and what they are doing every single drone. and i believe we should know why they are up there in real time. the reason i believe that we are worried is because what is to say that those very drones can be used against the very people if the people don't 100% agree

with the powers that be and can be labeled terrorists especially people that are currently american patriots what's to say that we won't do any harm to them. i'm just worried about everybody and everything and i believe that full disclosure is important. > thank you. doris in massachusetts paid cnn reporting the house ethics committee secretly voted to release its report for the conduct of former representative matt gaetz before the end of this congress according to multiple sources with knowledge on the matter they report is now expected to be made public after the final day of votes this year as lawmakers leave washington for the holidays. the vote which has not been previously reported announced to us -- announcer stark reversal effort voted along party lines in late november not to release the results of the investigation. the decision to release the report suggest summer republicans ultimately decided to side with democrats on the matter and it's unclear if the committee will once again change course now that it has voted

again. look for that reporting, look for that to possibly happen in the days ahead as congress finishes out. let's hear from eileen in florida. democrats line. >> good morning. two topics, the first one is the defamation lawsuit the trump is brought against abc and i guess the polar, she predicted the polls. if anybody had a right to sue trump for defamation, it would be obama. because trump claimed he had proof that obama wasn't born in america, he also called obama the leader of isis. so if anybody had a right to sue trump it would be obama and i wish he had and maybe he still can. the second thing regarding drones, we have almost one million weapons in our country floating around the streets.

i'm a lot more worried about weapons in everyone's hands and the gun laws that are getting easier and easier and now the mager republican legislature wants to pass a law to make open carry legal, that will change everything in the state of florida. i think instead of drones i'm more worried about the weapons on the streets not the drones in the sky. happy holidays everybody. host: paul is next in california, independent line. caller: i'm worried about elon musk and spacex, the satellites that he setting up we don't know what they are doing. we do know they have to meet occasions. we have to be careful elon musk doesn't own the skies whenever they want. that concerns me. thank you. >> charles joins us from new york, republican line. >> i'm sick and tired of hearing

this about there in a cut social security and medicaid. they were preaching this stuff for years the democrats why don't they put -- once they put the tax on it who was joe biden. he was the one to put the tax on your freegan social security so i don't understand these people. they are just ignorant. thank you. host: one of the things that took place on the house floor yesterday was that speech of democratic representative jennifer wexton of virginia. she is a three term congresswoman representing northern virginia delivering her final speech on tuesday as she steps away from congress due to severe illness pretty decided to leave politics after she was diagnosed with progressive nuclear palsy, and aggressive neurological disorder, little parkinson's disease that impacts many aspects but the speech that she gave yesterday was made by a computer in which he

communicates through because it has an artificial intelligence program replicates her voice. here's a portion of that speech from yesterday. [video clip] >> it has been quite the unprecedented six years in congress. facing the longest government shut down in history not one but two impeachments, a pandemic, and insurrection. and in the midst of it all i begin facing the greatest challenge of the mall, my battle with psp. one of the first questions i asked about the diagnosis was good i still run for reelection. his response, why would you want to. it was a very serious and sobering moment but in truth i had plenty of answers for him. above all i did and still do believe in the possibility to bring hope and make change in the lives of those we serve here. as i battle this disease which robbed me of my ability to move and speak i wanted to make the most of my platform to bring some good out of this terrible situation. as i mentioned my best ideas for legislation often come from personal stories constituent share with me.

now it was my own struggles that i hope to help turn into a meaningful change in policy. one of my proudest moments in congress has been successfully helping lead the bipartisan plant and parkinson's act to become law. the most consequential legislation ever passed to tackle parkinson's and related conditions. it will go a long way towards improving and saving lives. this has been a journey which has been so challenging yet one which i'm proud to stand strong in and done my part to give hope and comfort to others facing similar battles. our disabilities and health struggles do not define who we are and i feel more strongly than ever that it is important to share that truth with the world. >> represented jennifer wexton from yesterday. let's hear from ron in pennsylvania, democrats line go ahead. >> i just wanted to say i would never stand for the american flag as long as donald trump as an office praise convicted felon. we have hhs guy that on the

roof. we have w to be woman that's going to the education we've got fox news guy that's going to be head of defense. this is going to hell. that's all i've got to say. >> you heard about the finals -- final events of the president, his wife also being highlighted in the washington post this morning about the end of her tenure teaching community college here in northern virginia, this is from the post saying jill biden has taught her last class at the college which she joined as a professor in 2009 while second lady and later as first lady. she announced she was stepping away from nova during a virtual thank you event. it goes on to say biden who is known to her students as dr. b taught english and writing while

serving as first lady, the first to fully maintain a professional career while in the white house. education advocates have seen her as an ally who can make your teachers and students were top of the president's mind. that's in the washington post, let's go to florida, that's where james is republican line. >> good morning. i just want to make a comment on your previous guest the congressman from illinois on space and technology. i want to make a comment that compare and contrast the incredible success elon musk has had with spacex with the launches he's had with technology and growth, the once great nasa which has now been overcome under a new administrator -- current administrator and i used

interact with him when he was a senator. at the altar of de i. and how an incredible organization like spacex can do the things they've done and nasa is now all about important -- promoting incompetent people because of the color of their skin and their sex. the best book ever written about spacex -- nasa was by the late writer the great brilliant writer -- who -- we went to the moon and beat the russians and had 50 years ago with white straight heterosexual um males. pilots. and they had the right stuff. if we go back to that and backtrack -- back on track in our society. host: let me stop you there. john in new york, democrats

line. caller: i've called this show several times. leading up to the election and i told the listening audience open borders is going to cost the democrats the election. and they hung their hat on abortion which is a winning issue for them, but i said all along, you can have open borders. you had -- they have caravans of these thousands of people evading this country and the democrats thought that's fine. they blew it when they opened the borders, they've got to take a stance on immigration that the american people supports and they do not support open borders, that's how they blew it. >> rita is in kansas, independent line. caller: american seem to have an awfully short term memory

process when trump was president , gas was almost a giveaway due to covid then he writes checks out to americans. i donated half of my checks to covid supplies. he is a poor leader, he is going to be worse this time around, four more years i don't think that can be done without a support group. he will never be my president. i wish people would think about that when they think he is so good on the economy. host: this was rita in kansas. tina joins us next from north carolina. democrats line. caller: my concern is letting all those veterans -- letting all of those immigrants out the cause -- i was hoping president biden

could put a stop to them. trump already getting away with murder and convictions of bad things that he's done and never been charged with anything. and another thing, president biden had the right to let his son be free because trump has been picking at that family. as a president we don't need that, we don't need someone to pick at others, we need someone to get guns off the street killing these children and we also need to -- the people who don't belong here get them away but they are buying up everything. and another thing. host: before you we go this is andy in kentucky, or a publican line, less than a minute go ahead. caller: i can't believe you cut callers off. how did we get here to this

point where that fella was saying he wanted white men to be the leaders and not just -- not trust women in there. women in other societies got to speak in order to get to where we are now. we see the error of our ways now and you cut them off and he pays for your show. you say you are not government-funded but this fella pays for the tax break that those cable stations get from that fellow there that pays taxes. host: you are correct we are not government-funded. that's it for our program today. another edition of washington journal, away tomorrow morning again we can expect the house looking to try to prevent a shutdown of government due to a lack of funds, the release of that 1500 plus page cr bill as it's known to continue funding into next year into a new congress with the senate control and a new administration as well. all that and more for you this week.