there is a great book by jude wineski, it is true that >> what he shows is that every time the bill moving through congress reject there is no question about it, it was the trigger point. on health care -- read the book. on the health care bill, i think the president has a big problem. the american people have made it very clear they do not want a government takeover of health care. i think the problem is we have had with this president so many massive big government spending programs, starting with the

stimulus and the bailout to the auto industry, and the cap and trade bill. urday, people are so angry about the massive expansion of government, people are not in the mood for this bill right now. they do want to see reform, they do not know how to do it. host: mason, republican line. good morning. caller: hello. i was just thinking, like, does cost make any difference? looking at cost as a whole, would we not have to add it up as cost for the nation? looking at it in a completely different way? say that an illegal mexican comes over here, why not treat him and sent him back to mexico

if he catches the flu? that is all i got. host: kevin baker? guest: there is a problem with excluding illegal immigrants from all of this, which obama is doing. i know that that is a big issue with the astroturf protesters. health problems do not stop at an individual. in new york city, this is a city where four years the wealthy would be dying of the diseases of the poor. cholera, typhus, eventually people got the idea. these things spread, we need have decent health care for everybody. the latest version is that the legal immigrants will not even be able to buy, with their own money, into an american health

care plan. that is ridiculous. guest: first of all, it was not astroturf. there were a quarter of a million people. capitol police said it was the biggest protests since the vietnam war. guest: not really, no. guest: that is what the capital corp. -- capital police said. the problem with this issue is that the president is going to create this massive entitlement for folks without health insurance. it is a laughable preposition. how are you going to cover 40 million more people? the biggest health care crisis we have in this country is medicare. we are $30 trillion in debt over the next five years how are we

going to make this -- five years. how are we going to make this work over the next decade? guest: those people without health care insurance, they have to go to the emergency room every time they have an illness, which greatly drives up the cost. medicare, for whatever problems it has, runs at a much smaller deficit than these private health insurance policies, in which huge amounts are taken out for profit, huge amounts are spent trying to deny claims. host: apple valley, minn.. independent line. caller: how are you? i am a little disturbed about the press ought -- about the

press and what they have been saying about racism and everything. it was the white people that voted for robaracko halfin. i am from a by racial family. that hit me really hard when they said that theory got i have so many white friends, black, american, vietnamese, i have lived in japan and saudi arabia, if it is not like i have not been out of the united states or anything. a person is a person in this racial thing that is being stirred up, it would not be hard for braracko to come out to

say that it was the white voters had voted me in. no, there is no comment coming from the white house to stop this. you know what i am saying? op-e host: thank you for the call. guess how the president has said that he did nothing to there is racism. there is a racial component to this. when you have protesters holding signs about africans in the white house, let's face it, there is a racial component. host: is there a racial component? guest: by m aid -- at -- i am at a disadvantage against kevin, i have met these folks.

covering these town hall meetings. the idea that these are manufactured or trumped up by industry, that is crazy. the american people are extremely angry and the polls show this. they are angry about the out of control government in washington. on the issue of race, i am a conservative. i have spoken to many conservatives. we are proud of the fact we have a black president. it is a great moment for america. i was on chris matthews a few weeks ago, the idea that conservatives do not want a black president to succeed, that is insulting. jimmy carter was a bigger dingbat and the people in the white house now, and he was white. how can this be racial issue?

guest: i think that there is something well beyond race going on here. something more disturbing, the refusal of the right in this country to accept the legitimacy of any elected democratic president. that is a very disturbing thing. constant, well funded attempts, well documented by industry and various lobbying groups. attempts to take away the legitimacy of this president by insisting he was not born in this country, etc., etc. guest: because a democrat would never claim that a republican president was not legally voted in. you made my point.

[laughter] guest: let's identify some of that mob in miami and talk about grassroots, 2001, people that broke up the ballot recount. it was decided by the republican dominated supreme court, democrats went ahead and accepted that george w. bush was the president. there were no disputes as to who won the last election, republicans have refused to accept the legitimacy of this president. guest: it is more the ideas. there are some people on the fringe that believe that barack obama was not born in the united states, i do not believe that. a vast majority of conservatives do not believe that. this is a policy dispute.

do we want the government to run out of control as it has under george bush and barack obama? bush economic policies have been a disaster for this country, $9 trillion we cannot pay back. host: the jimmy carter speech will be running tonight on c- span. eleanor, democratic line. caller: i am a dentist here in tennessee. thank you for this program, it has been very interesting. one of the issues we are facing in this state and across the country, there has been a great deal of talk about medical issues in this country, but very little talk of the dental care costs in this country. i am the founder of the dental aid society in chattanooga. one of the reasons why this

organization was founded was because there has been a great deal of staff in the united states -- death in the united states due to lack of coverage for dental. when will we be talking about these issues? we have invited the president to come to chattanooga to address the issue of access to care in the area of dental. all over the country we have seen deplorable health [no audio] host: are you still there? we got the point. comments? guest: if you look at the condition of america's dental health, there is no question that we have much improved over the last century, but to the greater point, do you want health insurance? what is insurance?

many conservatives believe that insurance should cover catastrophic events. cancer, you break your leg, and expensive procedure. one of the problems with the direction we're going is that we are covering things that are not expensive. things like going for a dental checkup, that should be paid out of pocket. if you do that you could cover a huge number of people and we could reduce by half the number of people without insurance coverage. host: kevin baker, from your piece you write "every instinct that the president uses in washington, every inclination of the political culture urges the liberation. if any significant change is to be brought about, we are at a rare moment in history where the radicals have become pragmatic.

these emergencies have not been confronted more than a handful of times in our history." guest: change is incremental. lasting change comes incrementally and is done through compromise, worked out over a certain length of time. however, there are times where you are headed towards a cliff and you have got to dramatically turn the wheel. that is what he has failed to do here. mr. obama and his aides seem to have felt that the hundred days scenario was a kind of fetish of the media and in this case it was not. it was a very good time in which to do things in any administration, particularly at the moment of crisis that he was blessed with when he came in. trying to get done as much as you possibly can with your narrative, he made a major mistake in not doing that. guest: my goodness, out of the

gate he passed the biggest spending bill in this country. we have the bailout of the car companies, a bailout for people that cannot buy their homes. what is going on right now for the left, there is a massive movement against big government. there is a gallup poll from last week asking americans how much of every dollar that you spend to what -- that you send to washington is wasted? the average answer was 50 out of every dollar. people do not want this agenda. that is the problem they're having, in revolt against the government. guest of you keep mentioning these bailouts, you never mentioned the bailout of wall street, something lots of people were very upset about. somehow the right wing was not really that opposed to it.

letting it go where it would, allowing things to fall apart. if you think that that would have been a good idea, letting the world financial market go down without intervening, i suggest you all should have spoken up louder the time. guest: i did. many conservatives did. you remember the vot@ the republicans in the house voted that down. guest: knowing it was going to go through anyway, they took a political posture. guest: it was democrats and bush that passed the bailout. it was conservatives who were against it.

how can you say that you are against wall street bailout, when you just said you thought it was the right thing to do? you keep not mentioning it. guest: i was against it. guest: the total irresponsibility of your party goes on and on. same thing with health care. an attempt to block something that every other western country has, half the idea that everything would be all right this kind of amazing. guest: kevin, the american people do not want a government takeover of the health-care system. they do not want a system like france or canada because it does not work. guest: that is not what the president is proposing. >> yes, he is. >>guest: and, by the way, it wos

pretty well. this is something that a lot of businesses are laboring under, this burden. host: we want to get some more calls in. we have about half an hour left with our guests. "harper's" magazine, kevin baker, a bit more on this hoover comparison. stephen moore, herbert hoover, you wrote about him as a protectionist president. speak to him about trade policy -- speak to the issue of trade policy. .

this is the kind of thing that leads to that tit-for-tat that reduces living standards in both countries, china and the u.s.. host: do you see other comparisons to hoover? guest: i think the fact that what hoover did when he got into office, he raised tax rates, that is something that barack obama wants to do in 2011, which will have a very negative

effect on stocks and the economy. he started to build up government, which led to the new deal after fdr. so i think probably the better comparison is obama is more like jimmy carter, who was trying to move the country way to the left at a time when the country does not want to. i think he has misread his mandate from the american public. guest: i think it's funny, trying to distance himself from presidents who does seem to be rather conservative at heart and quite incremental. yes, jimmy carter, that terrible radical who passed all those socialist policies. this is ridiculous. and as far as all the terrible things hoover did with protectionism, it was overwhelmingly the policy of the united states for decades throughout the 19th century. and under it, we used it to build up quite a few of our

industries at home and quite effectively. as for the tire dispute, this is called negotiating. you try to get the best deal for us in the world. that's one of the things you try to do. you rattle sabers. other countries do it as well. to pretend that say china doesn't have a nationalist economic policy or that france doesn't or anybody doesn't is kind of ridiculous. host: next call, florida. the republican line. hi, tom. caller: good morning. i was going to ask a question earlier but these guys got me interested in another question. the trade issue is very, very interesting. we've got three trade agreements that obama has squellched with colombia and a few others. poland. he stabbed them in the back. they won't return hillary's calls. you know, people tend to forget, the real war in world war ii with japan started out with a trade war.

there was protectionism, and it did nobody any good. and when it turned into a hot war we lost a lot of people defending our interesting. and i see the same weaks in. in jimmy carter. what a loser. and i see the same mistakes that hoover made and jimmy carter made. host: for the last roughly 40 years, we've had a pretty free trade policy in the united states and we haven't had dramatic trade protectionism. we've opened up trade in north america and with europe. and it is true that we are more free trade than other countries like china and especially like europe. what's interesting is that over the last 30 years as we've moved toward free trade, the united states created 46 million new jobs. europe, which is much more trade protectionist than we are, they keep out imported goods, they created 1/6th as many jobs as we did.

so this idea that trade loses jobs in america, it just isn't proven. guest: during that same period, we've had that going back to 1980, we've had serious stag nation and reduction in buying power and wages in this country. so the question in part is what kind of jobs. just to speak to the caller. our war with japan didn't start over a trade war. it started over the fact that we were boycotting certain goods to japan in protest of their imperialist policy attacking nations like china and trying to expand their territory. the japanese took exception to this. so just to put that right. guest: consumer protection, that was the topic of the president's weekly address yesterday. here's a short piece. >> central to these reforms is a new consumer financial protection agency. part of what led to this crisis were not just decisions made on

wall street but also unsustainable mortgage loans made across the country. while many folks took on more than they knew they could afford, too often foiks signed  contracts they didn't understand. that's why we need clear rules, clearly enforced. and that's what this agency will do. consumers shouldn't have to worry about loan contracts written to confuse, hidden fees attached to their mortgages and financial penalties whether through a credit card or debt card that appear without a warning on their statements. and responsible lenders like community banks trying to do the right thing shouldn't have to worry about ruinous competition by unregulated competitors. not surprisingly lobbyists are for big ranks are trying to keep thing it is way they are. but we can't let politics as usual triumph of so business as usual can rein. host: even more the politico writes those comments as part

of in advance of the g-20. what are your thoughts? guest: well, look, i'm certainly for a lot of the thing that is barack obama talked about. more transparency so you demow what you're signing up for is pro consumer and it will lead to less defaults. but what's interesting is when the president went to wall street this week, i think monday or tuesday, he gave a lot about a return to financial responsibility on wall street. there were some snickers in the audience, and the reason for that is, my goodness, who in the world is washington to tell wall street to be financially responsible? folks, we have a $6 trillion national debt that the president wants to take the national debt up another $9 trillion. we're going to see the bankrupting of this country if we stay on this path. we can't do this. we have to start slashing government so that we can pay our bills. and so i just thought it was

ironic when the president said wall street should be financially responsible when washington isn't. guest: well, i think it's telling wall street is one of the foundations of our prosperity in the 20th century. before the 1930s, before the new deal reforms, most people did not invest in wall street. they stayed far away from it even if they had the money because it was considered an inherently unsafe place full of bucket shops, et cetera. one of the things that was done by regulating this is to make wall street a place that a lot of people wanted to invest in. and i think that's something that's got to be address ds now. i think wall street doesn't quite understand how much they've endangered their brand here. if you have another one of these debalkles as we did last fall, you're going to have it be the thing with with where for generations people will be afraid to put their money there. guest: i agree with that.

host: there was this story in the "new york times," leading senator pushing nuss plan to oversee banks. guest: it's interesting. i just heard about this. but it is true that we have unbelievable numbers of agencies that oversee wall street and banks. we have the fdic, the s.e.c., the federal reserve bank, the federal home loan bank. so we have all these multiple agencies that are supposed to be guarding wall street against these financial crisis and to some extent they fell asleep at the switch. i have some skepticism as to whether new financial regulation is going to prohibit

the kind of thing from happening again. i think share holders need to be more vigilant about how they're investing their money. and i think that we saw with the sarbanes oxley bill, remember that one that passed in the wake of the scandals, the accounting scandals we had with enron. that was supposed to be the end of scandals and then we had another one. so i'm not entirely convince that had more regulation is the solution. host: gregory on the independent line. caller: well, you know, first tonight say to them, i generally support our president. but i do have concerns about the cap and trade legislation for congress. it's my understanding that that's going to cost like each taxpayer, american taxpayer like $1,700. so i would like to see that our government goes a lot slower on that. also, on the health care issue, i think that going and making

health care available to every american is going to make this country more competitive in the end. my understanding of economics is that through the circle of spending and expenditure, we will get an expansion in the general economy. host: why don't you take the cap and trade part of that, the climate change legislation. as you said up in new york, we're reading about the largest pending meeting ever on this topic in new york, and some of the headlines suggest somebody from somewhere in the world has to step forward and lead this charge. what are you anticipating up in the u.n. and elsewhere this week? guest: what i'm anticipating is nobody will step forward and lead the charge. but, again, i think it's one of these issues that has to be addressed because it won't go away. i don't know if cap and trade is necessarily the best way to deal with it. some people think a straight carbon tax will be better. but i think this is a problem and it's going to be a costly

problem. here in new york, you'll look at how much of the land here is quite low. to keep that from going underwater as sea levels rise in the next 20, 30, 40 years you're going to have to build about the world's biggest complex of locks and dikes and levies. this is going to have to happen around the united states. you're going to have huge problems created in other countries. so this is nothing that's going to go away. and the cost down the road will be beyond anything that's being contemplated through cap and trade. but i think also things like cap and trade and addressing the issue present an opportunity. this is an opportunity for us to get ahead of things and to push right into the technology of the 20th century. i think green technology presents all kinds of opportunities and i think we opportunities and i think we should look at