i guess you could call me and john spratt fan up to a point.owever, i cannot square your vote for tarp and the vote for the stimulus with the imperative you are preaching this morning. which john spratt am i looking at this morning? the fiscal conservative for the democrat? guest: if we're going to deal with the the debt of this magnitude, the financial institutions and the mortgages, we need to deal with that and it is very difficult to balance the budget period. it is almost impossible to do when you have an economy that is running on three cylinders. in order to get the economy up and running, the simple best way to get the deficit down is to get the economy up and running and we had to make these decisions. as for tarp, remember that it was a recommendation to president bush and widely supported by ben bernanke. when you get people like that saying that we have to do this or we are facing these major financial institutions in worse situations, and the failure of the financial institutions is the worst object task and that is why i voted for

we bring you douglas hotlz- eakin and later in the program, commission member john spratt. we will look at the one-year anniversary of the spill in mexico. frances beinecke. we are live on c-span radio and on c-span television at 7:00 a.m. eastern, 4:00 a.m. on the west coast. they give for joining us on this palm sunday. hope you enjoy the rest of your week. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> next, "newsmakers." then president obama will talk about the deficit followed by senators mitch mcconnell and rand paul. rand paul. >> rick mays is the congressional letter. frank, we will start with you. >> good to see you again. you talk about your concerns about cutting the defense budget and saying that you did not think it should be cut. a few months ago we spoke about this. yesterday, now you said you are talking about cutting some things from the budget in fiscal year 2012. can you talk about what kind of cut to would like to do. if you cannot give specifics, can you speak generally? >> i do not kn

host: our guest, john spratt. he is a member of the national commission on fiscal responsibility and reform. thank you for being here. he helped us kick off the series we are doing this week looking at the commission's recommendations. tomorrow we will look restructuring medicare and medicaid. wednesday, defense spending cuts and what those would mean. thursday we will look reforming tax policy. friday we will focus on social security changes. that is all for "washington journal: today. -- "washington journal" today. we will see you tomorrow morning at 7:00. >> good morning. welcome to the woodrow -- woodrow wilson center. the show is being broadcast live around the world. permit me to say a word about the wilson center. it is the official memorial to woodrow wilson, our 28 president. we tried to serve as a bridge between the world of scholars and the world of public officials appeared and in other words, to commemorate the scholar of public debt and public policy concerns of president wilson, who have a long, dis

a discussion of the impact of the 2011 budget cuts on the epa, and former congressman john spratt talksut the commission's proposals for capping discretionary spending through 2020 and cutting security and non security discretionary spending equally. "washington journal," live >> said the c-span congressional directory is now available. new and returning the house and senate members, district maps, and committee assignments, and information on the white house, supreme court justices, and

and john spratt talks about the commission's proposals for capping discretion -- discretionary spending 2020 and cutting security and 2020 and cutting security and