host: we're talking with kathy kiely of the sunlight foundation. has covered every presidential election since 1980. o2 dirt on the independent line -- we will go to burt on the independent line. caller: i think that soft money is important, but in the grand scheme, not having equal time provisions in our broadcast is probably just as detrimental as not allowing certain opinions to appear. also, media conglomerates aggregate debt even more dart -- and aggravate that even more so. guest: i think what the caller is referring to is cable television, which does not have the same rules and regulations. i am not an expert on the legal ramifications of equal time, but i think that is what he is talking about. as to media conglomerate, there are a lot of them, but certainly in this age, there are alternatives, too. host: laura riding on twitter, -- in everything there is a point of diminishing returns. a road on advertising may do more harm than good. we go out to tempe, ariz. on the democratic line. good morning, lynette. caller: i have not been watching

we are joined by kathy kiely. later, a discussion about tax rates and which tax cuts are expected to expire at the end of the year. lindy paul is our guest. "washington journal" host: [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> our guest is grover norquist. president of americans for tax reform. plans. our panel of journalists, steven sloan from "politico" and russell berman from "the hill." >> thank you for being here. i want to talk about your interpretation of the election and what it means for the direction of tax policy. >> we had a split decision appeared the president won by two points. he won by 7.2 years ago against a war hero. he had 9 million fewer votes. he is a lame duck now. he said he was interested in raising taxes a year from now on anyone. his physician from four years -- position from four years ago was that they would not raise taxes on anyone. he was very clear and no taxes if you made less than $250,000. this year august

of campaign finance with kathy kiely of the sunlight foundation. this was the first presidential election that was shaped by the supreme court citizens-united decision. how big of a difference did that make in the election? guest: it made a big difference. this was spending that was facilitated by the supreme court decision. there were a series of rulings in 2010 and what i would call in decisions by the federal election commission which is deadlocked on a partisan basis. the door was open for outside groups to spend money in on limited amounts. we saw an enormous jump in this. it was exponential in 2010. nearly $1.4 billion in spending by outside groups. host: week will show you a chart about the campaign spending numbers this cycle. the parties themselves about $254 million. that is not including the candidates themselves. guest: it also doesn't include about $300 million for electioneering. host: how the citizens united changed the tone of this election? guest: it made it a much more negative campaign. we looked at how the groups characterized t

we're joined by managing editor kathy kiely. what tax cuts are expected to expire at the end of the year. lindy paull is our guest. "washington journal" live at 7:00 eastern on c-span. next former george w. bush national security adviser stephen hadley said getting america's house in order should be the country's top priority. he also spoke about the wars in iraq and afghanistan and how president obama may be forced to deal with iran. mr. hadley was part of the national security conference hosted by the world affairs council of america. it's about 35 minutes. >> thank you so much. good morning, everyone. welcome, steve. it's a real, real pleasure to have you here this morning. we're going to dive right in. i want to begin first by giving you credit for speaking to the world affairs council, i believe it wasn't only last year but the year before, when steve hadley challenged all of us to come up for a focus, set of issues, in fact, that the councils across the united states should be honing in on. as well as you know, this year's

we are joined by kathy kiely. later, a discussion about tax rates and which are scheduled to expire at the end of the year. "washington journal" live at 7:00 eastern on c-span. on friday, president obama talked about tax increases and budget cuts known as the fiscal cliff. he spoke to reporters in the white house room for about 10 minutes. >> ladies and gentlemen, the president and the vice president of the united states. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you, everybody. thank you. thank you very much. thank you. thank you very much. everybody, please have a seat. thank you. good afternoon, everybody. now that those of us on the campaign trail have had a chance to get a little sleep, it is time to get back to work, and there's plenty of work to do. as i said on tuesday night, the american people voted for action, not politics as usual. you elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours. in that spirit, i have invited leaders of both parties to the white house next week so we can start to build conse