influential political and social commentator bill bennett, the former education secretary is also a best-selling author and the host of his own nationally syndicated radio program. his thoughts tonight on a number of issues including, of course, the race for the white house. we're glad you've joined us. a conversation with former education secretary bill bennett coming up right now. >> every community has the martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place for those to come together with your community, a chance to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪

tavis: a quick look ahead, first what's coming up this week. tomorrow i'll be joined by "good morning america" anchor robin roberts and grammy musician jason mraz. on thursday a pulitzer winner anna quindlen is here. and then a conversation with the pea buddy winning award-winner from the homeland. but tonight we have bill bennett who served as u.s. secretary of education under president ronald reagan, in and out host of a nationally syndicated program "morning in america" and also a perennial new york bestsellers author, "the book of man." readings on the path to manhood. an honor to you have on the program. >> speaking of books, congratulations on yours, you and dr. west, a feature of my son's. tavis: he told me about that. >> he put his arm on me and said

i'm going to wreck your career. tavis: we have run into more people, conservatives in fact, who were -- we were on shawn hannityy's program and george will's student of cornell west. it's funny running into all these people. he's got a great program going. >> he worked with robby george and the two of them teach a course together and that's what you'd want a college course, it's kind of the ying and yang of political philosophy. tavis: i haven't had time to sit on the course but it's one of the most popular courses to have west and george in the same classroom. unbelievable. >> when he met my son, he said your father is conservatisms emanuel kont. you're supposed to know this if you're at princeton.

tavis: i'm glad to have you on. you mentioned the book of poverty. but i love this book, "the book of man." there's so much to talk about tonight. since you mentioned poverty, today "the new york times," you made the front page, a story of paul ryan. you saw the story? >> i did. tavis: the front page story of "the new york times," we'll put it on the screen in a second. front page about paul ryan, the chairman of the house committee on this tour. we were in georgetown last week, one night, two nights later, paul ryan showed up for this major policy speech about poverty and what his views were. he's been pushed back as you know well by the catholic bishops and he is a devout catholics and the bishops pushed back on him with a budget takes not in line with the teachings of the catholic tradition. you in this article think paul ryan may be one of if not the most important republican voice today but let's talk about that first. number one, what do you make of the bishops pushing back on mr. ryan's budget saying it's not

keeping in looking out for the least among us. >> it's not in the idlonl cal church. the catholic church was having a argument a month ago about the president about religious institutions and you remember all that. tavis: about contraception, sure. >> and the bishops, we conservatives tend to be happy with the bishops talking about abortion and sometimes we're not happy with them when they talk about something else. i think the view of most of the bishops is more government, more expansions of government and more programs for the poor, an understandable position. ryan's position is also understandable. we're $16 trillion in the deficit. we've spent a ton, more than a ton, we're not getting great results and if we want to save some of the best programs we're going to have to make adjustments. i think reasonable people can disagree on this. i don't think it's fair to call it a cruel or heartless approach. tavis: this notion of austerity which seems to be gaining ground among some in washington, mr. ryan's party last week of the house agriculture committee passed a bill tightening

restrictions on food stamps when everyone knows food and security in this country is growing. newt gingrich with a bad joke on obama, the food president notwithstanding. one out of two americans are either in or near poverty and tightening food stamps and other austerity measures these republicans are taking, again, are not that -- i'm trying to just pose what ryan says and what his party does. >> i'll have to talk about the ryan plan overall instead of this particular one on agriculture. ryan says if you want to keep a major federal role in addressing issues of poverty and people's circumstances, you're going to have to make adjustments. main adjustments he talks about are the two biggest expenditures of government, medicare, medicaid and social security where he talks about most of the things that have to be changed or the benefits for wealthy people, people on social security like myself, people on medicare like myself are probably going to get less out of those programs. i think that's right.

you and i will have disagreements. i know that. one place you and i might disagree, maybe two, is that what happened now, what you're seeing is a lot of transfers in the federal government from the young to the old, transfers to the relatively poor and sometimes absolutely poor, young, to the relatively affluent old and transfers from those who are truly in need to those who have earned through an entitlement the expectation that they're going to keep getting their government check. and that i think -- ryan's proposals for government shrinkage have been attacked by a lot of people as being insufficient to the task because they're relatively small over time. what we're looking for is an alternative from the administration and we don't have one but this is a fair debate to have. i believe his proposals are sensible in that they put us on a path to prosperity because if we don't do something we'll lose the whole game, the whole government. tavis: you and i agree on that, i think. you wrote the book about mother

always. >> yes, sir. tavis: i believe budgets are moral documents. >> i agree. tavis: and every time we seem to have a budget, it always seems at least to be balanced on the backs of poor people. so even if you agree with the cuts and the suggestions mr. ryan has made, why is it more broadly that that's always done on the backs of poor people, so corporate welfare never gets addressed. we bail out wall street and they're sitting on a trillion dollars they won't put back in the economy. you've had this debate a thousand times and i won't waste your time going through this. why always is it the poor people making the sacrifice? >> i don't think the poor people should make the sacrifice and i wasn't for some of the things you cite. i think there are obscene things done in this country in the name of encouraging the profit motive. but i do have experience with government programs and i can tell you that always spending isn't necessarily the right thing or the most helpful thing to do. i can tell you about the education programs because that's where i lived and worked. we spent probably $2 trillion in

title 1 which is the single biggest educational program, or it was. i don't think the research suggests it's done much good. i don't think we've done much good for those kids. i think we could have done it smarter and better. i don't mind paying the taxes i pay which is pretty considerable. i'm in that i guess top 2%. tavis: you are the 1%. >> maybe i'm not quite the 1%. i don't mind 1% pays 40% of the tax. i don't mind that if it were well spent. my problem is i've been in the government and seen how the money is spent. if you can take my tax money and assure me it will go to the right purpose, that it will help the poor, fine. i'm not sure a lot of it does. in fact i know a lot of it doesn't. tavis: what is strange about the argument is people complain how it's being spent as if poor people are making the decisions. they're not the ones. >> i understand that. tavis: and they're managed by the lobbyists and i don't understand that argument. >> it's the bureaucrats who often do it, that's exactly

right. when i tried to change title 1, for example, i tried to create a voucher program for kids particularly in the inner cities. i said kids in the cities, they're the ones suffering the most from the schools and they ought to have the opportunity to choose the schools they want to go to, their parents want to go to and i was opposed by teachers' unions. there are interest groups lined up all the way when you talk about the money and often it doesn't get to the poor. and again, i think the fact that a lot of it doesn't get to the poor and get to the poor effective willly -- effectively is one of the major problems. handing out the money -- i saw the first principle that poverty is not about having enough money. i think you're right. but you and i would agree you've got to know something about how to live in order to get out of poverty and stay out of poverty and that's the thing i spent most my time on in this book and other work i've done. tavis: we do agree on that and talk about the fact that poverty is in part about not having enough money but not necessarily

having character flaws as people seem to suggest, you're poor because you made bad choices. >> terrible luck, horrible circumstance. tavis: for millions horrible circumstance. if the new poor are the former middle class, tell that to the middle class person that did everything right, went to college, worked for years and the bottom fell out. >> yep. that's true. it is still true, however, and this was done by rand and bookings and is the thing i find most remarkable in american society and it's still true, if you finish high school, graduate, if you get a job, if you get married, if you don't have children before you get married and before the age of 21, you have a 75% to 80% chance of living in the middle class. if you want an anti-poverty program, that's a great anti-poverty program. tavis: we agree on those numbers. i'm saying the very persons who did all of that are the ones who are making up the greatest -- i mean, the increasing numbers of poor people who did that who are falling out of the middle class.

>> right. hopefully they'll get back in if we get this economy going again. you're right, the new additions are coming from there but there are still millions who never see that opportunity because those conditions aren't satisfied in their lives. tavis: we talked about education a moment ago because you're the former secretary. what's your assessment of the obama program race to the top? >> it's pretty good. i like the idea of incentives, the idea, you should remind the states of the action of the states. it's in the states and then the locale and the closer it is to the child the more important it is. the single most important person in a child's education is his parents. we know that. this is the great mystery of the far east, the asian mystery, they focus on their children's education. they're obsessive about their kid's education. our kid doesn't do good in math in america you say you're in class, you couldn't do well, your grandmother can't do well in math, you can't do well in

math. in china they say work harder. there's that. the performance of american education is not really what it should be. and the race to the top is encouraging the states to have systems of excellence and accountability, and that's where i'll tip my hat to arne duncan and the president to have that accountability and that's the thing that's been missing. i argued for years the worst thing about our education system is it's run for the sake of the producers not the sake of the consumers, the children. tavis: to your point, would you agree, then, that privatizing education, making education more for profit now than ever before is the wrong approach? >> i don't have a problem with for-profit education. i'd like to see the -- i think the real model for elementary and secondary education is what we do in our education which is you can take your pell grant or guaranteed student loan anywhere you want. you can take it to a historically black college university, religious university, anywhere you want. but in the elementary and secondary, you can't.

i think lot of kids we have now in lousy schools would do a lot better if they were able to go to a religious school or private school, a school in a church basement or be homeschooled. tavis: you and i agree on many things but disagree on others. i don't disagree with that but think the approach ought not be school choice but making all schools choice and when you start picking and choosing the better version of the worst, we know the department of education right now, you ran it so you know this. they know where the 2,000 worst schools are in the country. they have them on a map on a big wall in arne duncan's office. they know where the schools are, why make kids compete and have their name in a lottery. did your h -- does your lucky number -- >> a opposed to superman. full scale choice and my critics call me full moon bennett. absolutely. totally and completely, you saw that movie "waiting for superman." heartbreaking. these parents waiting to get a chance and this could be the child's best chance at life.

in the meantime we're spending $600 billion on this enterprise and we should be doing a whole lot better. i had a revelation, when i was secretary of agriculture and they found an e-boli virus in some food stands out in portland, oregon. he got on a plane and went out there and shut down that restaurant and all the food distributors, all the chain -- all the parts of the restaurant chain that were from that distributor. why? because of a loten hamburger. we went to a school -- rotten hamburger. we went to a school in baltimore, i like to visit schools, my wife works in the city as an educator. there was a school in baltimore where not one kid was reading at grade level. shut it down. shut it down the same way you shut down the hamburger stand that's serving up rotten hamburger. if they can't teach one child grade level at reading, that's not a school, that's something else. tavis: let's go to the campaign.

romney seems to be the presumptive nominee. let me start by asking whether or not you're ok with that, you personally and more broadly, are conservatives getting ok with this? >> oh, i think so. i think so. it was a rough and bloody primary for republicans. but it was -- i think it toughened them, don't they say what doesn't destroy me makes me stronger. he had to be pretty tough and i think he's about as ready as he can be. but there are people -- or people call my radio show who won't have it, they won't have it because they don't think he's really conservative. they won't have it because some people are bothered by the mormon business. there are other reasons but the party better unite because it's a very tough fight and it's uphill for republicans to win this election. tavis: for those who call your program, i am glad you told me that. for those who call your program "wanting in america" and won't have it what do they do on the

election day in november? >> they say they'll sit out. i don't know if they will or not. most republicans are pretty loyal the end of the day. they'll go. they may not campaign or stuff envelopes but they'll go. there's a thing that unites a lot of republicans, that is they do not like barack obama and just are not happy with barack obama and we'll see how it figures. tavis: what is your sense, a greater problem with the core of his base, obama has a bigger problem with aggressives or romney has a bigger problem with conservatives? >> i think they both have a problem. i've been listening to people. and one of my question is what's going to happen to the president's base with the college students? he's gone to 130 colleges and i see this student loan thing going on -- by the way, there's another example. tavis: i was going to ask you what you thought about that. >> i think it's a bad idea. i'm goingo have congressman klein. tavis: is that the president's bad idea? >> the president's bad idea seconded by romney. they have a student loan and

finance that by saying when it got to this point they'd double it to 6.8% for your loan and now are going to leave it at 3.4%. those loans mostly go to middle class kids. i'm all for helping middle class kids but the kids who are really getting clobbered here are the poor kids and those are the pell grants. i would subsidize more the pell grants for the poorer kids who are not able to go to college and i would then let the middle class kids take the higher interest rate. it's still economically a great deal to go to college. you've seen the differences between your life income if you graduate from college as opposed to just graduating from high school. this subsidy again of the middle class, some of the figures, somebody at cornell did the figures the other day on inequality, growth of inequality. i know it's a favorite thing of yours in your book. one of the reasons we're seeing this growth in inequality is because more and more of the subsidies have been going to the middle class from the real poor. and again, i think that's a mistake.

tavis: two things. we make that case in our book because politicians love playing to the angst of the future of the middle class but that's the question we raise if the middle class is disappearing as we know it, if the middle class make up the new poor, who are we going to talk to on the campaign and every time there's a program that plays to the middle class as opposed to poor people, talking student loans versus pell grants, every politician, romney or obama, they want to focus their attention on the voting class because they're the largest voting block but they're slipping into the poor now. >> i understand. i divide it up a little differently when i think, when i write and that's the older folks and the children. we've been very generous with our older folks. i'm an old guy now, hard to believe, but i'm an old guy. and i listen to old people sometimes sitting around telling people ways to get more money from the federal government while the kids are not getting what they need either in terms

of very basic basics of nutrition and other things and i think that's a real problem. again, back to my -- i'm for an efficient government. i'm also for addressing this problem of the deficit. but there is so much waste, so much money that we are putting out there to placate the middle class and i think this is a classic example. i told chairman klein, the education chairman and i'm going to argue with him about this tomorrow because i don't think it's the right thing to do. tavis: this is just because i'm curious. fox news and others have been beating up on the president, speaking of going to those colleges for campaigning on the taxpayers' dime. i suspect every president does some of that. is that much to do about nothing? >> much to do about nothing. where the president goes, the president goes and arguably it's legitimate business everywhere he goes. whether it's north carolina or wherever. part of it is getting out and talking to the people.

if they choose those states that's most advantageous, but he's done it more. it run as risk. i think is it prudent for them to do this and have people draw the conclusion it's being done for political reasons. as a famous republican advisor said once, i saw them on tv, they said what's the president doing? he's out trying to appear to be presidential. well, he is the president, you know. this is the illusion, the tv, the whole media thing. tavis: to your point about tv and media. one last question about the politics. the money. romney is going to raise apparently $600 million and obama raised $700 million and that's not including the money the super-p.a.c.'s are going to spend. what do you make of all of this? a $2 billion campaign. >> i know it's a $2 billion campaign and i told you $2 billion is just wasted in title 1. give me a refresher and i'll go

to the federal government and get you the $2 billion. you think of some of the stuff we spend money on in this country as private citizens but we can afford our political campaign. tavis: the "book of man" readings on the path for manhood. what prompted this one? >> the condition of men. i was doing research, some studies, and then interestingly, talking to, or listening to a lot of young women saying where are the men? they're very upset about the condition of men, not necessarily your condition, my condition, but you talk to young women and they'll tell you men are, you know, 50 or 60, maybe the new 40 but they think 25 is the new 15. the childish, the adolescence, the jufe nilization of males. -- jufe nile -- juvenilization of males.

65% say a career, an important job is -- a great job is very important to them more than men say, 52%. the gap between graduation is no -- you probably know this. it used to be about 60/40, male to female, it's now 62/38. tavis: worse than that in black america. >> historically black colleges and universities it's about 70/30. my wife said you said you go, girl and the girls went and what happened to the boys? they've been left behind and they're not putting it together. they're not working. they're not acting like men. like they're supposed to act and like we think women want them to act. so this is an encouragement to boys to be the kind of men that i think they want to be and that women want them to be. tavis: if i took the conservative line of thinking or the concern of argument on these kinds of issues what they typically say the problem with black america is there aren't fathers in the household and i hear that over and over again

and there is some truth to that obviously but you're talking about women across the board. >> there are more poor white guys not meeting their responsibilities than there are african-americans. this is something in the americans' head where they think of poverty, they think it's black but it's mostly white. it's 3 to 1, isn't it, 30 million of white americans in poverty and about 12 million hispanic americans, the last numbers i saw. look, charles murray's last book talks about this class divide and i think that's the way to look at it. the upper classes have stayed with these traditional values. they've stayed with the values of marriage and work and faith and law-abidingness and we're not talking race here but conditions for success no matter what color you are and where you come from and the decline in these things has been in those border communities and poorer communities which is the worst possible thing to happen because

it keeps people from going to the next level. tavis: is there a way to arrest this development? >> i think, yeah, education, largely, leadership. i think there's opportunities in this country for people to step forward who care about poverty and to step up and say we need to talk about family. we need to talk about work. we need to talk about faith. we need to talk about virtues that you used to describe the aspirations of most americans. and i think that is an inducement and encouragement to men is what we need to do. you may one of these guys with this book. you've got a platform with this book if i can just say that to you and i think someone who understands poverty, unders all the dimensions to it, will talk candidly to people, maybe the single most important thing we can do. tavis: if this book does anywhere near as well as your books have done, we know they

have and it's called "the book of man, readings on the path to man hood" by william bennett, former education secretary during the reagan administration, secretary bennett, good to you have back on this program. i brought you a book, i'll sign that for you if you sign this for me. >> thank you very much. tavis: that's our show for tonight, download our new app at the i tunes apps store. good night from l.a. thanks for watching. and as always, keep the faith. ♪ >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley on pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley, join me next time with good morning america anchor robin roberts and jason mraz. that's next time. see you then. >> every community has the martin luther king boulevard. the cornerstone we all know.

it's not just a street or boulevard but a place for wal-mart to band together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪

- he was appointed to avoid a congressional showdown. - but now we have this nominee, ahem, who is applauding-- applauding a decision--