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Good morning.
It's Sunday, November 17th, 2024.
In this year's election, voters gave Republicans control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, a Congress which will face major deadlines on the debt limit, taxes, and health care soon after taking office, in addition to President-elect Trump's political agenda.
This morning, our question is, what do you expect from a GOP-controlled Washington?
Our number for Democrats is 202-748-8,000.
Our number for Republicans, 202-748-8001.
For Independents, 202-748-8002.
And if you'd like to text us, that number is 202-748-8003.
Please be sure to include your name and where you're writing in from.
And then if you'd like to reach us on social media, we're at facebook.com slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
Now, there's been quite a bit of analysis of just what it means to have Republican control of Washington, including in The Guardian, where the headline says, how a Republican trifecta makes way for Trump's right-wing agenda.
GOP majority in the House and Senate could give the president-elect ability to extend tax cuts and roll back Biden-era laws.
With the confirmation that Republicans have won a majority in the House of Representatives, Donald Trump and his party will now have a governing trifecta in Washington come January, giving the new president a powerful perch to enact his right-wing agenda.
Even without majorities in both chambers of Congress, Trump's victory in the presidential race already gave him significant control over U.S. foreign policy and the makeup of the federal government, both of which he is seeking to overhaul.
Later in the article, it says, in addition to advancing Trump's platform, Republicans would almost certainly be looking to unravel key portions of Biden's legacy, including the Inflation Reduction Act.
The IRA marked the country's most significant response yet to the climate crisis and has spurred significant energy-related investments in many districts, prompting some Republicans to suggest that Congress should preserve some of the law's provisions while repealing others.
That quandary reflects a potential problem for Republicans in full control of Congress.
What will they do with the Affordable Care Act?
On the Senate floor, current Minority Whip and incoming Majority Leader John Thune spoke about the GOP agenda for next year.
Mr. President, the American people handed President Trump and Senate Republicans a decisive victory.
And now the real work begins, delivering on our agenda.
That starts with ending the Biden-Harris border crisis and deporting illegal immigrants.
Also at the top of the list is strengthening our economic and fiscal future.
The last four years of Democrat inflation have been very difficult for working Americans.
And so Republicans will be focused on doing everything we can to expand economic opportunity and to increase growth.
That starts with taking action via reconciliation to preserve the tax relief Republicans delivered for Americans during the first Trump administration.
It's also time to check the bureaucratic machine here in Washington, D.C.
A key element of making America prosperous again is taking a hatchet to the regulatory apparatus choking our economy, starting with the 1,000 Biden-Harris regulations that have already cost Americans nearly $2 trillion.
And of course, a major focus of both the Trump administration and the Republican Congress will be restoring American strength to promote peace at home and abroad.
That includes restoring American energy dominance for the sake of both economic growth and our national security.
Mr. President, yesterday my colleagues chose me to lead Republicans here in the Senate during the 119th Congress.
I'm honored by the trust they've placed in me and I will work every day here in the Senate to serve my colleagues and to advance President Trump's agenda.
That coming from Republicans in the Senate, Republicans in the House, as reported here in the Washington Examiner, have learned from Trump's first term mistakes to be ready on day one.
House Republican leaders are learning from their mistakes during President-elect Donald Trump's first term to be ready on day one to implement their aggressive agenda plans filled with policy changes during the first 100 days of Trump's presidency.
House leaders have been in conversation with Trump for nearly a year to discuss policy proposals and craft an agenda for once they secured the White House in both chambers of Congress.
Now, Republicans are ready to begin making changes and overturning key Biden administration policies beginning on January 20th when Trump is sworn into office.
House Speaker Mike Johnson was questioned on Fox News about his work with the Senate and the president-elect on passing an agenda.
He made these comments last week.
Do you believe that the House, the Senate, and the President are all going to be on the same page?
Because in my view, in my mind, you have between 18 months and 24 months to get a lot of this agenda through.
You're exactly right.
And the atmosphere here on the Hill is one of euphoria.
I mean, the Republican Party is united and energized like I've never seen it, Sean.
I did.
We had a great time with President Trump this morning.
He came and visited with the House Republican conference, as you saw, and he gave a ringing endorsement of me and our leadership team.
And that was very helpful.
The unity aspect of this is very important because we have to work together.
I did call Leader Thune today and congratulate him on his victory.
We talked for a short period of time about the agenda going forward and how we have to do this in a bicameral fashion.
We need the House Republicans and the Senate Republicans to be in lockstep on exactly the same page, and we will be.
And he's excited about that.
He's committed to the America First Agenda as well.
And we laughed about how our home cities and counties, his county, my parish, voted overwhelmingly for President Trump in a landslide.
And our people and all the American people really desperately want and need and deserve this, and we're going to deliver.
Now, to your calls on what you expect from a GOP-controlled Washington.
We'll start with John in Tampa, Florida on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, John.
Yes, I expect reform, reform, reform.
We finally have a government under President Trump's leadership where the government acts in the interests of its people, ordinary Americans, as well as America as a whole, as opposed to the Democratic Party where they're big money donors who have monopolized ownership of so much mass communication.
Let's face it, 90% of Washington journalists consider themselves Democrats or liberals.
Only 10% have considered themselves Republicans or conservatives.
These billionaires have brainwashed so much of the public to act against their own interests and vote Democrat.
President Trump is simply a reformer.
That's all he is, where government acts in the interests of its people with respect to their financial health, with respect to their freedom from tyranny, from government oppression, and of course with respect to their political power over their politicians that they elect.
Now, John, are there particular reforms in particular areas that you're really looking forward to seeing?
Yeah, like the border, keeping the border secure so we don't have millions of God knows who coming in, which obviously includes a lot of gang members, criminals.
You know, there's some good people, of course, but the problem is you don't know who's coming in.
Things like reducing inflation.
Inflation was 1.4% under Trump.
Biden quickly got it up to 9%.
And you don't get rid of that 9% until you have a negative inflation.
Biden suppressed our energy ability.
We were energy independent under Trump and also cut carbon emissions under Trump.
I don't hear any of the climate change people that.
You know, so many, though, using power With foreign countries and dealing with anything, including trade deals, to act in the interest of the American worker.
And he would threaten foreign people, friends or fellow alike, who wanted to screw us in trade deals or other things with tariffs, terrorists.
John, you mentioned energy in particular.
And Trump over the weekend has announced oil executive Chris Wright as his pick for energy secretary.
Here's reporting from NPR.
President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday he picked oil executive Chris Wright to be the Secretary of Energy, a role in which he's likely to promote fossil fuel development and reverse many Biden-era initiatives.
As Secretary of Energy, Chris will be a key leader, driving innovation, cutting red tape, and ushering in a new golden age of American prosperity and global peace, Trump said in a statement.
All right, let's go to Doug in Ohio on our line for independence.
Good morning, Doug.
Good morning.
I've got to say one thing.
What I expect with the Republicans in complete control is chaos, just like they did four years, just like they did eight years ago when they took over.
First thing they're going to do is try to get rid of Obamacare again, which is horrible because Obamacare, 50 million people depend on it immensely.
And look at who he's nominating for different things.
It's crazy.
Matt Gates, that guy don't even belong in Congress.
Why would he want to be him for Attorney General?
And it's going to be chaos the whole time.
That's all I got to say about the matter.
Thank you.
Susan is in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on our line for Democrats.
Susan, what do you expect from a GOP-controlled Washington?
What I expect is what the previous caller said, it's going to be a clown show.
Donald Trump always talked about draining the swamp, but he nominated Matt Gates as Attorney General.
Seriously, Matt Gates.
And now there's some reporting that Hegset was involved in paying out a settlement for accusations of sexual assault.
And then for a Senate majority leader, Rick Scott was in the running for Senate Majority Leader.
Rick Scott was Donald Trump's pick.
Rick Scott was convicted of running one of the largest Medicare fraud schemes in the state of Florida.
He was convicted, and he had to pay out millions of dollars of restitution.
So he's going to be the Senate majority leader when you talk about wanting to cut down waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicare system.
And the Senate majority leader could possibly be the man that committed one of the largest Medicare fraud schemes in the state of Florida.
That's quite a reform.
He's really draining the swamp.
Thank you.
Susan mentioned the nominee that Trump has put forward for the Secretary of Defense.
And here's a story about this in the Washington Post.
Defense pick Hegseth paid accuser but denies sexual assault.
His attorney says documents obtained by the Post, this is the Washington Post, provide extensive detail about allegations and the response by Trump's defense secretary pick.
Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense, paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault as part of a nondisclosure agreement, though he maintained that their encounter was consensual, according to a statement from his lawyer Saturday and other documents obtained by the Washington Post.
Hegseth's attorney, Timothy Parlatori, said that Hegseth was visibly intoxicated at the time of the incident and maintained that the police, who were contacted a few days after the encounter by the woman, concluded that the complainant had been the aggressor in the encounter.
Police have not confirmed that assertion.
Hegseth agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to the woman because he feared that revelation of the matter would result in his immediate termination from Fox, where he worked as a host, the statement said.
Arthur is in Winter Garden, Florida, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Arthur.
Yes, there are two, there are actually three things I would like for them to concentrate on.
One is defending the Second Amendment right of lawful citizens to own guns.
A second one is to limit our involvement overseas.
You take care of America first before we get involved in everybody else's problems.
And a third one is deadly to cut inflation.
Thank you.
Okay.
Mary is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Mary.
Yes, good morning, C-SPAN.
You know, I expect very little from the GOP-controlled that's in Washington now because they have every apparatus that's been in place since Ronald Reagan.
I worked for the government, and everything that was in place to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse on a government level, which is passed down to developers in this country.
And no one wants to eliminate what's going on because when President Obama was in office, he stated he was going to go line by line with the House, the Republican House.
No one wanted to do this because of the trillions of dollars that are now in place for the American people to pay back.
You know, we've had a Republican senator, he's deceased now, Senator Tom Corbyn.
He used to print publications banking on the poor, how corporate America exploits struggling communities to collect new market tax credits.
You know, this has been going on for decades until we make sure that we prosecute these people under our government accountability office, which is in place, that verifies every contractor that actually milk the American taxpayer and never provided the services that they entered into a contract to do.
So, you know, and we've had for everyone to check under labor and industry under e-Verify, which they hire undocumented people to avoid paying taxes.
So that apparatus is in place.
No one used it.
So, you know, until we hold everyone accountable, even these elected officials that make sure that they get these contracts, these illegal contracts in their cities and states, like a bridge to nowhere.
I've got your idea, Mary.
I want to go to a Facebook comment from Keith Schneider who says: I expect decency for a change.
Closed border, first day.
All that needs to be done is follow immigration laws already on the books.
Meet with Trudeau of Canada and finish the Keystone XL pipeline.
Open the Anwar oil rigs again.
That's just the first day that will bring down the cost of fuel, make transportation of goods cheaper, which will make groceries cheaper.
On the Democratic side, here's what current Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has to say about the incoming Republican majority when they take control next year.
Senate Republicans should continue to prioritize bipartisanship when they enter into the majority next year.
On my first day as majority leader, I pledged to make bipartisanship a key part of how the Senate does its business.
I said then, I've said it many times since, the Senate works best when both sides work together.
Four years later, Democrats have not only kept our promise, but we've proven that bipartisanship can work in very significant ways.
The majority was the most productive majority the Senate has had in decades.
But that could not have happened had we not made the conscious choice to reach across the aisle.
It was bipartisanship that cleared the way for the biggest infrastructure bill in a generation.
It was bipartisanship that got the Chips and Science bill done.
And now jobs, thousands, hundreds of thousands of jobs are returning to the United States, and we're making those chips here.
It was bipartisanship that held the line against Putin and defended Ukraine.
It was bipartisanship that made sure we saw zero government shutdowns under this administration.
The list goes on.
Marriage equality, the first gun safety bill in decades, kids online safety.
All of these accomplishments were possible because Democrats were willing to work with the other side.
We still have to work.
We still have work to do in this chamber before the year is out, but I'm proud of the record we've built over the last four years, one that we accomplished by reaching across the aisle whenever the chance presented itself.
I earnestly hope the next few years are as fruitful and collaborative as the last four.
I earnestly hope bipartisanship continues, because that's the only way we'll be successful in the Senate.
But that will be up to Senate Republicans to decide for themselves.
A comment from Facebook from Matt Willman, who says, less money going to Ukraine, more money staying home, less wars, cheaper gas here at home, more people back to work here at home.
Back to your calls.
Dave is in New York on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Dave.
Hey, good morning.
Thank you for having me on.
I've called in several times over the past year or so as a proponent of President Trump having been to his rally in the Bronx, which I thought was amazing.
I think he did a lot of outreach this time and has garnered the popular vote and has a mandate to rule.
So I'm hoping this time around that all of those folks out there who see him as a freak show or want to make fun of his people will give him a chance.
But it's starting already with Tulsi Gabbert being a Russian spy and all these accusations.
Matt Gates won his district by two-thirds of the vote.
I want to give him a benefit of the doubt.
I want to give the president the benefit of the doubt to start off his policies, be it the border, inflation, the deficit.
These are all important issues that need to be dealt with because the common future of all Americans is for this administration and this president to succeed.
What I most want to see is some kind of legislation around the fairness doctrine where nothing but lies and recriminations were made about this man being a fascist, this man being a Hitler on open media.
And all of that recrimination got him to the presidency.
So the media industrial complex out there, all of the big three-letter networks need to take note.
We're tired of that bashing.
We're tired of being against one another.
We're tired of the elitism and smirking and making fun of the everyday American who goes to work every day and pays taxes.
We're tired of making fun of us.
We want change in this country, and we want a fair and even playing field.
And thank you very much for the opportunity this morning.
Next up is Greg in Champaign, Illinois on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Greg.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
What I expect from the Republicans is chaos and incompetence.
Incompetence being a good thing because most of what they want to do is bad, so it's good that they're bad at doing it.
And I expect the end of the American empire because America first means America alone.
And that's not to our benefit.
And that's all I got.
Thank you.
Okay.
NBC has an article, How Democrats Can Still Flex Power in Trump's Washington and says that here that Republicans have won full control of Washington, but Democrats will retain two key levers of power to shape legislative outcomes in Donald Trump's second term.
The first is that they held Republicans to a narrow House majority, which gives the party in charge little room for defections in order to pass major legislation.
That margin is slimming further as Trump plucks House members for administration jobs.
The last two years showed how chaotic and dysfunctional this GOP-controlled House can be, even when those stakes are low.
Now the stakes are high as Republicans will own the outcomes or face the blame for paralysis.
And Democrats say they intend to stay unified.
The second lever for Democrats is a legislative filibuster in the Senate.
Many Republican senators, including their newly elected leader, Senator John Thune, a Republican of South Dakota, promised to preserve the 60-vote threshold for most legislation, even if it hinders Trump's agenda.
Adam is in Jersey City, New Jersey on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Adam.
Yeah, I think it's really interesting.
I've always thought Trump offers three C's.
He offers chaos for the opposition, cruelty for his base, because they want to hurt people.
They don't like certain people in this country.
It's very clear.
They cheer on Trump whenever he talks about migrants.
They cheer on Trump whenever he talks about people they don't like.
Republicans hate a significant amount of people in this country.
So cruelty for them and then corruption for him and his family.
So they're going to just hoover up whatever government resources they want and send it to their own family.
So we got three C's, and that's what it's going to be.
Everybody who voted for Trump that thought he was going to end inflation, good luck for you guys.
You got a great thing coming for you.
So Godspeed, folks.
Recently at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, President-elect Trump made some comments about what he would like to see economically as a result of his incoming administration.
And I watched a liberal commentator say, you know, whether you like them or not, there seems to be a beautiful light shining over our country and even over the world.
I said, this guy didn't say that.
But we're going to have to defeat inflation.
And while inflation's down, the costs are way too high.
And when I went around, I heard something that was very interesting.
The word grocery.
It's sort of such a strange and simple and nice word.
You know, I'm going out for groceries today.
They talked about that more than any other item.
The groceries are too high.
And when you think about it, that's a very bad, bad thing.
And I talked about that a lot in the last couple of weeks, and it resonated.
I tell a story about a woman.
She got three apples, an old woman.
She had three apples, and she brought them up to the cash register.
And she looked at the woman and she said, is that the right price?
And the woman said, yes, ma'am, I'm sorry.
Yes, it is.
And she said, oh, that's okay.
Could you wait one minute?
And she took one of the three apples and she brought it back to the refrigeration.
And she came back gently up to the cash register and she paid for two apples instead of three.
That should not be happening in our country.
That should not be happening here.
It's not going to happen here.
We're going to make it a much different place.
Back to your calls.
Phyllis is in Durango, Colorado, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Phyllis.
Good morning.
I just wanted to call and say, I'm just so happy that a party that took over gets the chance to do what they promised the American people to do because they voted them in to do it.
And it's only four years.
So if we don't like what has been accomplished, you can vote the other way.
But this is the way it should be.
Two-party system really crushes what a party promised the people to do, and so we don't get anything.
So I hope this system that we have now with more one party than the other will get some accomplishments.
Phyllis, are there particular policies in particular you'd like to see the Republicans tackle first?
Yeah, you know what?
I'll cross the border because good people come across the border, but a lot of bad people come across the border.
And what runs through my mind a lot is the homeless on the streets.
I see people in California shows her cities that are just totally trashed because people are on the street.
Why is that?
That was never, when I was growing up, I never saw people living on the street.
That really bothers me because it's heartbreaking to see that.
Thank you.
Townhall.com has a piece by Kurt Schlichter, the columnist, who says, Trump must make America the 1980s again.
The show is the economy.
The show is making American citizens able to support themselves and their families.
If President Trump fails to do that, nothing else matters.
All the great stuff we're going to see, from purging wokeness to school choice, to banning mutilation, to closing the border, to making the military deadly again, can all be undone in a wave of the pen should Democrats take power.
If we don't keep the House and Senate in 2026, it doesn't quite neuter Trump, but it sure limits his possibilities.
Back to your calls.
Chris is in Louisville, Kentucky, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Chris.
Yeah, I'd just like to say that this is a prime example, the Republicans and Democrats arguing about one another.
This is the problem with the United States.
Why are we arguing about any of this?
We need to stay united, a united front from the people and for the people to watch out for our country, to watch these politicians and get them out of there.
They have gotten so comfortable with being so crooked and taking advantage of all of us and what we do and what we're supposed to stand for in this country that they have ruined and put us in a state of shock, basically, when we woke up the environmental things that they put in place.
Look, everybody, be smart.
Take a look at what they're doing with the environmental.
I mean, it costs more to use the bathroom than it does to drink a gallon of fresh water.
Now, think about that.
This is insane.
This stuff has to stop.
Look, there's things that need to be put in place.
There's laws that need to be put in place.
Yeah, we have enough laws.
This stuff needs to stop.
We need to get these people out of our White House, out of our Congress.
I don't care if they're Democrat.
I don't care if they're Republican.
We, the people, need to unite against what's happening with the people on the phone lines right now.
It's got to stop.
That's all I have.
Thank you.
Chuck is in Maryland on our line for Democrats.
Chuck, what are you expecting from a GOP-controlled Washington?
Hey, good morning, America, C-SPAN World.
Good morning.
I don't expect too much.
The guy he mentioned earlier, the three C's, I agree with him.
Donald Trump has no, he has a lot of personality, but no principles.
He ran up the deficit.
He gave tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.
And what he's going to do is he's going to wreck the economy because he did it before.
He doesn't make good decisions.
The decisions he's going to make with Medicare, Social Security, it's not going to be for the people at the bottom.
His track record already proves who he is and what he is.
And all of those people who voted for him that are at the bottom, you're going to feel the pain.
And until America feels enough pain where they want to change and see the light, and I'll say this other thing.
Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, Newsmax, they don't tell you the truth.
They've been lying to you.
They've been sued for their lives.
And a big swath of America listened to that.
And it's propagandaized, and they think the other side is doing it to them.
Joe Biden's Build Back Better program, that's going to last for at least the next 15 years.
Building roads, highways, making your neighborhood safer, the CHIPS Act.
And that's only the name of a few.
He put a whole bunch of stuff in there that Donald Trump could have never did, never got through.
And I just say, God bless America.
We're going to get the government we deserve.
And everybody, buckle up their seat, go hang on.
Ed is in Wichita, Kansas on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Ed.
Good morning.
How do you go ahead?
Well, I don't know.
I kind of like Donald Trump because in 2018, I was doing the same job I'm doing now.
And I got back $1,800 in income tax.
With Joe Biden last year, I got $13.
I don't know what the difference is, but I don't know.
The country seemed to be a lot better under Trump.
I mean, to the previous caller, I don't think he's got a job because under Trump, the world was better for the working man.
And I hope it is again.
Thank you very much.
E.J. is in Miamisburg, Ohio, on our line for independence.
What are you expecting from a GOP-controlled Washington?
Thank you for taking my call.
What I expect is nothing, and I just want to remind people of the grand promise of infrastructure week.
I think it's actually somewhat amusing that they have this agenda that's supposed to take us to the next level.
And I am somewhat skeptical, as I was of the Democrats as well.
So let's not put all our eggs in one basket because this is not going to be, how would I say, the best administration.
And there's so much more out there that is expected by just the little people.
Thank you very much.
Barney is in Zephyr Hills, Florida on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Barney.
And can you turn down the volume on your TV first, Barney?
How about that?
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
One thing I found out about this situation, we are who we vote for.
If we vote for a felon, a bigot, and a racist, that's 75% of Americans.
This man was pushing this garbage from the day he left office about somebody getting somebody's stuff.
It's always the blacks taking somebody's stuff.
So, Barney, what are you expecting in particular once the GOP takes control of the White House, the House, and the Senate?
Racist and bigotry and stealing.
They're going to steal all the money they can in the next four years.
Just like Trump stole all the money he could the last four years.
I expect zero.
I expect a bunch of ball of confusion, a bunch of bigots getting up there talking about somebody taking somebody's stuff.
America is a disgrace to the world.
The New York Times has an article saying Trump signals a seismic shift, shocking the Washington establishment.
The president-elect's early transition moves amount to a generational test of a system as he seeks to rewrite the balance of power and install lieutenants to blow up key parts of government.
And this is by Peter Baker.
Somehow disruption doesn't begin to cover it.
Upheaval may be closer.
Revolution may be.
In less than two weeks since being elected again, Donald J. Trump has embarked on a new campaign to shatter the institutions of Washington as no incoming president has in his lifetime.
He has rolled a giant grenade into the middle of the nation's capital and watched with mischievous glee to see who runs away and who throws themselves on it.
Suffice it to say, so far there have been more of the former than the latter.
Mr. Trump has said that real power is the ability to engender fear, and he seems to have achieved that.
Mr. Trump's early transition moves amount to a generational stress test for the system.
If Republicans bow to his demand to recess the Senate so he can install appointees without confirmation, it would rewrite the balance of power established by the founders more than two centuries ago.
And if he gets his way on selections for some of the most important posts in government, he would put in place loyalists intent on blowing up the very departments they would lead.
Michael is in Virginia on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Michael.
Hi, thank you.
Good morning.
So with the Republicans in the White House and House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, plus the current composition of the U.S. Supreme Court, I expect the end to the humanitarian catastrophe on our southern border, the human trafficking, the drug cartels controlling the border effectively.
You know, I expect us to be further away instead of closer to World War III with the fighting in Europe and the hostilities in the Middle East that's trending towards escalating.
I believe that that will end.
I expect energy to be more affordable.
I expect groceries to be more affordable.
I expect governments to be more accountable, that instead of having economic crisis and crime crisis, you know, being covered up and being told by our corporate media that everything's good, the economy's good and all this stuff, that we'll have a more realistic view of what's going on in the country because the media isn't going to cover up for the Republicans.
They're going to tell it like it is.
And so I'm enthusiastic and looking forward to 2025.
You know, there's a lot of work to do.
It's not going to be easy.
There's going to be resistance all the way.
I was laughing and laughing when you were playing Chuck Schumer talking about reaching across the aisle and being bipartisan, the same person that was threatening the U.S. Supreme Court, the same Senate leader that was, you know, invoking conspiracies and everything else.
He's on his way out.
You know, him, Pelosi, all these old, old people, you know, they're going to go.
And the new wave of leadership is coming in.
Trump has a strong team, a young team.
They're going to do great things.
They're going to get rid of this redundancies and inefficiency and just straight waste.
I expect our military to be more effective.
These old generals, they're going to be bypassed.
And we're going to start reaching out to colonels and people that are actually effective leaders to get what needs to be done accomplished.
So it's going to take work.
It's going to take time, but we're going to be on the right track.
You know, food is unaffordable, buying a home.
The interest rates are insane.
So, you know, I'm very optimistic and looking forward to the future with Republican leadership.
Okay.
Jerry is in Kellyville, Oklahoma on our line for independence.
Good morning, Jerry.
Good morning.
Yeah, I'm a former Democrat.
I was, I think the party left me with the leak socialists like it did Kennedy.
And all I hear from Democrats, especially I watch all the news stations, Fox, Newsmax, CNN, MSNBC, and you don't hear any hatred and vitriol coming out of Republicans, but you're still hearing that coming out of Democrats.
Forget that the majority of the country, I mean, this was the biggest wave of populism in 50 years.
And if you look around the world, everybody is welcoming Trump.
Everybody's reaching out to him.
Iran just announced they're not going to retaliate against Israel.
The Houthis have said they're going to tone down their attacks in the straight there.
And you hear China, Ukraine, Russia, Hamas, Israel, all reaching out to Trump.
And I do think we need to blow up Washington figuratively, of course, get the swamp out, get some new people in there, and just reduce Washington, get it back to a federalist state that supports and let the states run themselves.
Be they Democrat or Republican, let the states decide and not and have a much smaller Washington than we've had for the last 40, 50 years.
So I like everything that's going on.
And I think the only chaos there's going to be is the opposition to change in Washington.
You got guys like Trump and Ramaswamy and Elon Musk who know how to run things efficiently.
The last thing Washington's been in the last 50 years is efficient.
So I like what's happening, and I think there is going to be chaos, but it'll be chaos of resistance, not chaos of change.
Okay.
Jasper is in Memphis, Tennessee, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Jasper.
Good morning.
My thing is, I got a couple things.
The first one is: when you hear these Republicans talking, whether they're poor on the street or rich or even in the gated community, it's always about money and the economy.
Trump inherited a good economy that was going forward under Obama.
Trump was the one that ran this economy in the ground.
They turned around and put him right back in office again with all of that Project 2025 stuff.
Guess what?
Six months, you're going to be right back where you come from.
And when it comes down to the part of this country between women's, the white women walked away and left the black woman alone holding up for women's rights.
So I hope that the black woman understand that they have no ally in fighting for their health rights or even good pay.
And look at these cabinets.
All these black jokers went around here and voted for Trump.
Look at this cabinet.
Do you see anybody in that black?
Everybody in there representing one thing.
Back in 1964, we had to have a civil rights.
I had one guy come out, let the states do it.
If the federal government don't come in, they're going to talk to these states.
You have no civil rights.
And you're going to suffer.
All these people are going to suffer for Trump being in the White House.
Trump is in there for himself.
Trump is nothing but a gold digger and a cun, man.
He ran this country in the ground.
We had food lines.
We had people dying, you know.
And Biden come along and helped this country get to where we at behind that economic, I mean, that pandemic that we had.
And there's no way in the world that this guy knows what he's doing because he don't.
You know, he don't block everything that he has done in life.
And they didn't see that four years ago when we had food lines and people dying.
Man, we just in bad shape.
And that one guy said that people around the world are respecting Trump.
I'm a soldier.
I've been there 22 years.
I got friends all over the world, especially Italy, Germany, name it.
Man, they call me and say, man, y'all has done screwed up again.
What did y'all do?
You know.
So we have a Facebook comment from Larry West, who predicts of GOP control of Washington, a horrible nightmare that will roll back abortion rights, protections for LGBTQ LGBTQ people, dismantle a number of government agencies, and be a rubber stamp for every Trump policy.
Now then, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies spoke last week on how House Democrats are moving forward in the next administration.
He made these comments on Friday.
The former President Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States of America, and House Democrats have fallen a few seats short of reclaiming the majority.
House Democrats in the new Congress will work to find bipartisan common ground whenever and wherever possible with the incoming administration in a manner consistent with our values, but at the same time always push back whenever necessary against far-right extremism that will hurt the American people.
We will continue to exercise common sense.
We will always try to find common ground, but we will also vigorously defend the common good.
We need to focus on the issues that matter, beginning, of course, with addressing the economic challenges facing everyday Americans who, for far too long in this country, not simply for years, but for decades, have been struggling paycheck to paycheck.
We look forward to leaning into that work in a very narrowly divided Congress next year.
And we extend the hand of bipartisanship in that effort while also making clear that we're going to defend Social Security.
We're going to defend Medicare.
We're going to defend the Affordable Care Act.
We're going to defend voting rights.
And we will continue to defend a woman's freedom to make her own reproductive health care decisions at all times.
Couple of comments from social media.
Kay Cosklea says on Facebook, Great news is that Doge, which is Trump's coming Department of Government Efficiency, is going to be investigating all the stock trade transactions of members of Congress.
This will be epic.
Bryce Kemmerer says, people left the Democratic Party pushed out to join Trump specifically to put America first.
That's my expectation of what the Republicans will do with their total control of D.C. Strong border, strong military, peace through strength, ending of wars, strengthening our election security, accountability for those who have abused their office over the past four years at a minimum.
Rob is in St. Paul, Minnesota, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Rob.
Hi, I'd just like to remind all the Democrats that gas prices were cheapest under Donald Trump over the last 24 years.
Under Bush, the gas prices peaked at $4.29.
Under Obama, we peaked at $4.39 per gallon for regular in Minnesota, I'm talking about.
And under Build Back Better, we peaked at.
Oh, Rob, it looks like we've lost you.
So let's now go to Robert.
Do we have you back?
Here.
Oh, go ahead.
We lost your line for a moment.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I am talking about the gas prices in Minnesota.
We peaked at $4.89 under Biden.
And under Trump, the highest gas price in Minnesota for a regular was $279.
So we are far better off with Donald Trump and gas prices and food prices than any other politician in the last 24 years.
So people that are not Trump are not facing reality.
They're listening to the news media way too much, I think.
And that's why they come up to the conclusion that Trump is a Hitler or a terrible man when really he was actually the best politician we've had, probably in our lifetime.
But they can't see that with the media calling him names.
They can't see that.
All they see is he's a Hitler because the media says he's a Hitler.
He's had two assassination attempts on his life and they call him a Hitler?
I don't think so.
Okay.
Catherine is in North Conway, New Hampshire on our line for independence.
Good morning, Catherine.
Good morning.
I would like our government to fund and research and cure autism.
Why are our children getting autism?
How do we prevent children from getting autism?
If a child has autism, what is the cure?
So that's what I'd like to see them all busy on.
So, Catherine, are you expecting that the incoming Trump administration or Republican control of Congress is going to prioritize that issue?
I think Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might.
He might try to find what's a cure for autism.
It's all over the world, and something's going on with those children.
And we adults have to speak up.
And I thank you, and have a good day.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., being Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Cheyenne is in Salem, Oregon, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Cheyenne.
Hello.
Thank you for taking my call.
I think that we have bigger problems.
And I do mean bigger problems than Donald Trump and all this white noise that he's creating with cabinet appointments.
It's distraction.
Our bigger problems is we need to keep our eyes on the skies.
And Donald Trump needs to have the military explain to him why our radars on our airports and our military are not picking up starships that are coming in to our skies.
I saw one myself.
Let's go to Tony in Alaska on our line for independence.
Good morning, Tony.
Hello.
Hi there, Tony.
Go ahead.
Yes.
So the main change that I see that I've already seen before he's even actually in office is as far as other countries having respect, more respect for our country.
Now, me not being on either side, like I kind of, I'm iffy on both sides.
I feel as though it's the same bird, just two different wings.
But under Kamala, I kind of don't see that happening.
And she seems kind of unserious with her role of leadership.
So Tony, then what are you expecting from GOP control of Washington come January?
I'm seeing better relationships with foreign countries.
I'm seeing Trump start to deal with the issues starting from the top of the ladder.
So it might take some time for the bottom of the ladder to feel the full gist of what I think he has plans for.
And he's cracking down on stuff like the Pentagon failed the seventh audit in a row just recently.
Like that's something that needs to be addressed.
We're basically paying people to rob us.
So we need to get our finances in line and just keep it moving from there.
Now we have RSK and he's attacking the food industry.
Like he's full on.
Like we're getting stuff banned and we're trying to have better food for us and our kids and everything.
So I see that becoming a big change.
And yeah, that's pretty much all.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot for answering.
Maxwell's in Culpeper, Virginia on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Maxwell.
Hey, how are you doing, Kimberly?
It's good.
I don't see.
I don't see nothing being done.
I don't know where these people have been at for the last four years.
When Trump was in office, I don't see where they've been at.
First of all, we pump more gas now than we ever have before.
They keep talking that crazy stuff about gas prices.
They keep talking that crazy stuff about the economy and the money and everything.
Like Maria Collis called in, and he was little treating me now.
And he was talking about how everybody across the country is like, man, what do y'all do this again?
We're in trouble.
I mean, we are in trouble.
And people, look at his pick.
Like the guys who just got to say talking about Robert F. Kennedy talking about him going to do something about the food industry.
The Republicans, that's what they do.
There ain't no way in the world they let that man do anything about something about doing that with food prices.
And as far as gas prices, people seem to forget January 6th, they forget.
They forgot about that the reason that gas prices went down so low is because of COVID.
This guy is a joke, and he's going to get a lot more American skill.
Thank you, Kimberly.
Chris is in Portland, Oregon, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Chris.
Good morning.
What are you expecting from GOP-controlled Washington?
I'm excited about a GOP-controlled Washington after the last four years of dismal performance by President Biden.
And I'm really excited about all of the picks that Trump is making for his cabinet.
I like how he's got Tulsi Gabbard in there.
I know people are worried about him making recess appointments, but I think that might be required to drain the swamp of some of the more corrupt components that we have in Washington.
I used to be a lifelong Democrat, but I've...
Chris, just a moment.
Before you move on, you mentioned that you think that those recess appointments might be necessary to drain the swamp.
Several commentators have expressed, and even members of Congress have expressed concern that that could impact sort of the balance of power.
Are you at all concerned about that?
No, I'm actually excited about impacting the balance of power.
I think the balance of power has been non-responsive to the constituents for way too long.
We have Man at competing in women's sports.
We have all kinds of woke philosophies that have really are so far left of what the average American really cares about.
And so I am extremely excited to see a new administration come in and have a clean sweep of some of the swamp in Washington, get it removed.
That's all, really.
Okay.
Tommy is in Belcher, Kentucky on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Tommy.
Yes, ma'am.
When it comes to a choice of having men playing women in sports, which I don't believe to start with, I don't believe that's going to happen.
And having a man that's already said he wants to be dictator, I just don't see how you can even compare the two.
And how he even got elected with all them felonies against him and all the things that he's done.
I don't understand.
But I say this: when the people start getting their Social Security cut, the old people and their health care, then you're going to see a change in things because these younger people depend on them.
They depend on their grandparents.
They depend on their parents to help them with the job problems that Trump will create by taking care of the rich and not worrying about the people at work and are poor.
When they find out all this, they're going to find out what fear is.
Nobody fears.
I don't fear Trump.
I don't fear none of his administration.
He is a weak man and weak-minded, and that is true.
And anybody that don't believe it, just watch his rally talking about getting lexecuted on a boat or jumping out with the sharks.
All this crazy stuff, Wayne Mills calls and cancer, all that.
He's just as bad off as poor Biden was.
And I'm a Democrat, and I know Biden had the bench, and I know Trump has got something wrong with him.
But when the real bad times hit for all the poor people and all the working people, for he's taken the taxes and taken everything away to give to the rich, like little Elon Musk up there, getting $75 million back through government projects.
He's getting paid to pay for getting Trump in there.
And people are to see he bought votes.
And there'll be a stop put to it, I'll guarantee you.
So, Tommy, we're just about out of time a little bit.
Alia is in San Diego, California on our line for Republicans.
Go ahead, Alia.
Hi, my name is Ali, and I am very proud to be in this country.
This is the most beautiful country.
It makes me sad that this is happening.
Our president, Mr. Trump, our elected president, he's going to be helping to everybody, especially to elderly who live under Social Security.
And they have to worry about their rent, their grocery, and all the things an old person needs.
We have worked, and I'm so proud of working in this country.
I was a legal, wonderful immigrant who came to this country.
And I love this country.
And I hope Mr. Trump would be able to help all the forgotten ones, which are elderly like me.
And we always have to worry about our rent, our grocery, and How could we?
How could you survive?
How could we survive?
I hope he would help us.
I believe in him and I trust in him.
All right.
We're going to have to end it there.
Coming up, we'll hear from Oren Cass, founder and chief economist for American Compass.
He'll be joining us to discuss President-elect Donald Trump's economic policy proposals and how he can deliver a pro-worker agenda.
And later, Progressive Talk Show host Tom Hartman will join us to discuss President-elect Donald Trump's electoral victory and the future of the Democratic Party.
We'll be right back.
This week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and Senate are in.
House Democrats will hold their leadership elections for the 119th Congress, and orientation continues for the newly elected House members.
The House will revote on legislation that ends the tax-exempt status of terrorists-supporting organizations, which failed last week.
And the Senate will vote on more of President Biden's remaining judicial nominations.
On Tuesday, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell testifies before a House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Disaster Readiness and Response.
Then, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkis, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Brett Holmgren, the acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, testify on worldwide threats to the U.S. First on Wednesday before the House Homeland Security Committee, then Thursday before the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
Watch this week live on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app.
Also, head over to c-span.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime.
C-SPAN, your unfiltered view of government.
Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, investigative journalist Maureen Callahan talks about the physical and psychological abuse that she says was experienced by women and girls connected to the Kennedy family.
Going back to Joe Kennedy Sr. in her book, Ask Not.
Bobby moves his new girlfriend, the actress Cheryl Hines, into a home just a few yards away, maybe a few hundred yards away.
They're flaunting their relationship all over the place.
He's threatening like he's going to get the kid.
You know, it became this whole thing, and she felt hopeless and that she had nothing to live for.
And this culminates in her suicide in May 2012.
She hung herself in their barn on their property up in Westchester.
And almost immediately, Bobby and Kerry talk to the New York Times and they talk about what a mess Mary was and how amazing it was that Bobby survived his marriage to her.
This is the mother of his four children.
Investigative journalist Maureen Callahan with her book Ask Not tonight at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
You can listen to QA and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We're joined now by Oren Cass, who's the founder and chief economist at American Compass.
Welcome to Washington Journal.
Well, thanks for having me.
Can you tell us a little bit about your mission at American Compass and how your organization is funded?
Sure.
Our mission directly is to restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation's liberty and prosperity.
And so what that means in practice is really focusing a lot on economic policy, trying to get away from this model that just says all growth is equally good and we'll somehow make it up to everybody who gets left behind, making sure it's a much more broad-based growth.
And as a result, we're funded by a really interesting set of sub-individuals, some corporations, and a lot of foundations all the way across the political spectrum.
Speaking of the political spectrum, where would you say that your group sits in terms of ideology in politics as well as economics?
Well, we're definitely on the right of center.
I think we're clearly identified as a very conservative group.
But at the same time, it's interesting.
We spend most of our time on arguments within the right of center, really working on a lot of these fights that are going on among conservatives about how to move forward.
Obviously, the Republican Party today is not the same one of John McCain and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
And so we work a lot with folks like now Vice President-elect JD Vance, now nominee for Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, on trying to shape the future direction of the conservative movement.
You had an op-ed in the New York Times or a guest essay, I should say.
Trump is about to face the choice that dooms many presidency.
What is that choice and why did you need to write this now?
Well, I think it's an especially interesting situation for Mr. Trump because it's been 100, almost 150 years since we've had a president who was out of office and then coming back into office.
So he kind of gets a second chance at doing a first term.
And typically what we see when a new president is coming in, they've just spent all of this time campaigning, making commitments to voters, trying to win their support.
And all of a sudden, everything flips.
Now you're the president-elect.
Now all of those special interest groups, all of those donors, everybody's trying to get your support for their own priorities.
And I think it's a place where, you know, right at the beginning, we typically see administrations really struggle, where they do a lot of the stuff that the activists really want, that the donors really want.
And the voters kind of look around and say, wait a minute, this isn't what we were expecting at all.
And typically then in the next midterm election, you see the president's party get wiped out.
And so, you know, I think the point of the piece that I wrote and what is such an important moment right now is to see, can Mr. Trump remember why it is he was actually elected, what he's going to have to do to be a successful president, or does all of the attention, you know, focus to what people are talking about at the bar at Mar-a-Lago, which isn't the stuff that's going to get it done.
Now, when it comes to Trump's first administration, how close do you think he got to some of these pro-worker economic policies that you support?
And in general, what did you think of his economic record?
Well, I think his first term was a really interesting situation where, you know, I like the metaphor of the dog that caught the car.
Obviously, people were very surprised that he won.
And it was a situation where there hadn't been a lot of work done to develop the kinds of policy ideas, to develop the bench of talent that you could bring into an administration that was going to do that kind of work.
And so what I think you really saw in his first term was, you know, he gets to the White House, who's in Congress?
Well, Paul Ryan is the Speaker of the House.
And so what are the big legislative priorities?
It was a big corporate tax cut, and it was trying to repeal Obamacare.
And I think those probably weren't the right places to focus.
On the other hand, in places where a lot of thinking and work had already had been done in terms of stronger immigration enforcement, in terms of much more aggressive trade policy and confronting China, that's where you saw him get more done.
And I think especially on trade, you know, Ambassador Bob Lighthizer, who was U.S. Trade Representative, who's a candidate for Treasury Secretary now, he knew exactly what needed to be done.
Trump gave him the power and the space to go do it.
And so I think we made a tremendous amount of progress on the trade issue with China.
Now, you mentioned earlier that you're working with Vice President-elect JD Vance.
I want to play a portion of his speech accepting the vice presidential nomination in July.
Never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I'd be standing here tonight.
I grew up in Middletown, Ohio.
A small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands, and loved their God, their family, their community, and their country with their whole hearts.
But it was also a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America's ruling class in Washington.
When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico.
When I was a sophomore in high school, that same career politician named Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal that destroyed even more good American middle-class manufacturing jobs.
When I was a senior in high school, that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq.
And at each step of the way, in small towns like mine in Ohio or next door in Pennsylvania or Michigan, in states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas and our children were sent to war.
Oren Cass, what is your assessment thus far of President-elect Trump's picks for his cabinet, as well as what you're hoping to see from Vice President-elect JD Vance when it comes to economic policy?
Well, I think something really interesting that you notice in that clip from JD Vance is that he's actually pairing together two different issues where the Republican Party has really shifted on free trade and economic policy.
The Republican Party, and for that matter, the Democratic Party, as he noticed with Joe Biden, was overwhelmingly focused on just embracing free trade and ignoring places like Ohio that were going to be hurt by it.
And also then on foreign policy, it was sort of a parallel process.
You had both Democrats and Republicans just kind of going around looking for wars to start and not thinking about the people who were going to have to fight in those wars.
And so what I think what you see with Trump and Vance and in the picks they've started to make is obviously a different way of thinking about that.
So far, the picks have been more on the foreign policy and military side.
And so, you know, I think somebody like Senator Rubio at the State Department is a really excellent pick.
You know, he has been really at the forefront over the last decade of making the case that we need to rethink all of this.
We need to recognize that our main adversary is China, that our economic and foreign policies are entangled.
What we do on economics has a huge effect on what we can do in foreign policy, what it means for our national security.
And so I think he's going to bring much needed change and leadership to the State Department.
On the economic side, it's interesting to see those are the picks that haven't really been made yet, right?
There's still a debate about Treasury Secretary, you know, who's going to be somebody who actually will carry forward President Trump's vision and not just kind of, you know, be another Wall Street banker, which we tend to see, especially in Republican Treasury departments.
And then likewise, picks like commerce, labor.
These are now the issues that are at the heart of our economic policy.
And I think, you know, as someone like JD Vance has spoken about a lot, having a labor policy that is much more focused on the interests of workers.
Having a Commerce Department, for instance, is in charge of the CHIPS Act, which is all of the investment that we're doing to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to this country.
So those are the kinds of things I think we still are kind of waiting to see on, but hopefully that we get right because that's what's going to determine the direction of our economic growth.
We'll be taking your calls with questions for Mr. Cass.
Democrats can call in at 202-748-8000.
Republicans at 202-748-8001.
Independents at 202-748-8002.
Now, we've talked a lot about what's happening in the White House, but Republicans have also gained control of Congress.
And a big thing on their agenda when they come into office is going to be taxes with the expiration of some provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
And you actually have something on your sub stack about this.
The coming tax fight will not be what you're expecting.
So what do you think most people are expecting and what should we expect instead?
Yeah, I just, I wrote about this week at the substax called Understanding America because that's what it's about is in all of these dimensions, trying to really understand what's going on that a lot of times I think is different from what people are expecting.
And so this tax fight is a great example.
You know, if you think back to 2017, the Republicans pushed very hard on a large tax cut that wasn't paid for at all.
It just went straight into a bigger deficit.
And the argument was somehow that you've heard the phrase, this, it will pay for itself somehow.
And the reality is that it didn't.
I think there isn't really any dispute at this point that it added significantly to our deficit.
And as did certainly many of the things on the spending side that the Biden administration has since done.
And so now we have just a much worse fiscal picture.
We're looking at deficits of almost $2 trillion a year.
Even just the interest payments on our debt at this point are that we are spending more on interest payments than we spend on our military.
And that just can't go on.
People have been predicting a fiscal crisis for a long time.
We're now in the fiscal crisis.
And I think the really interesting thing is that a lot of Republicans know this, especially in the House of Representatives.
There are a lot of Republicans who have already said, if anything, we actually need to be raising some more revenue to address our deficit problem.
And so the idea that even with Republican control, we're just going to take the tax cuts from 2017 and just extend them all, just do it all again and not worry about the cost, I think that's totally unrealistic and does not have the votes that it would need.
And so, frankly, that's a very good thing.
It means there's going to be a much more serious look at what can we afford, how do we pay for it.
And as a result, we're not going to be able to extend everything.
There's going to have to be a much bigger fight about which parts of these tax cuts really were valuable and we want to keep them because there were some very good things in there.
The child tax credit that helps a lot of working families, some very good incentives to encourage businesses to invest more.
So there are things we want to keep, but there's going to be a lot more work and a lot more fighting to be done about what this looks like going forward.
It's not just going to be a blank check to spend the money and not worry about the deficit.
President-elect Trump has suggested tariffs as one way to raise revenue.
What do you think of this policy, particularly in terms of maybe 60% tariffs on goods coming from China, 20% across the board?
I think it's a very good policy.
This is one that we do a lot of work on at American Compass.
And really focusing on where we started with this question of what does pro-worker policy look like?
How do we build a model of economic growth that actually creates good jobs in America for American workers and doesn't just sort of promise everybody cheap stuff that somebody else will pay for?
And in reality, we've just kind of been putting on the national credit card.
So I think that kind of policy is very much needed, especially when it comes to China.
The fight that we're now going to have goes all the way back to a fight that we had back in 2000.
And this is saying you heard JD Vance mention in that speech at the convention.
There was a huge fight over should we essentially grant free trade to China, what's called permanent normal trade relations.
And all of the economists said, yes, absolutely, this is going to be great.
It's going to be great for us.
It's going to be great for China.
And obviously, it has been a disaster for us.
And so what people are now finally starting to think about, you know, it's actually, it's interesting, it was a bipartisan recommendation of the House of Representatives China Committee.
It's in the Republican national platform, is saying, no, we are not going to have normal trade relations with China.
We are going to treat them like the adversary and the bad actor in the economic system that they are.
And if China is trying to send a lot of cheap stuff that it makes in, you know, in some cases using slave labor with heavy subsidies from the Chinese Communist Party, there are going to be high tariffs on that because that's not where we want to be buying stuff from.
It's certainly not something we want to be dependent on.
And the good news, to go back to your question a moment ago, about taxes, is that tariffs also generate revenue.
And so as we're thinking about how do we pay for the kinds of tax cuts that we want to have that do benefit families, that do encourage economic growth, tariffs can help do that.
Let's go to your calls for Oren Cass, the founder and chief economist of American Compass, starting with Richard in Augusta, Georgia, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Richard.
Good morning.
The economists' conservative paper and also the Nobel Prize economists have all said that Trump's agenda again will be doom and gloom.
Now, I've seen the charts that Steve Ratner have shown and that they have shown how the deficit went up on Trump and came down with Biden.
How can you guys continue to believe that Trump is going to provide a good cost of living wages for American people, support a good cost-of-living wages, and that now you guys want to go back to the doom and gloom of tariffs that stop the farmer from selling their products to China, which would have made more money, such as the pork prices,
the soybeans and corn, and other agricultural products.
And then you want to eliminate the people who pick the fruits and vegetables for this country that keeps the prices down, whereas they're going to go up once he starts.
So, Richard, you've raised a bunch of points there.
I want to let Oren respond.
I mean, Richard's talking there about immigration, retaliatory tariffs, lots of things.
Yeah, well, I guess I would just start with a couple of factual points.
You know, one is it's certainly not the case that the deficit went up under Trump and then down under Biden.
It went up under both.
The problem of too much deficit spending and irresponsible budgeting has been an entirely bipartisan one that we certainly need to address.
And on the flip side, it's important to say that at this point, the tariff policy is an entirely bipartisan one.
I mean, as much as people complained when Trump put tariffs on China into effect, the Biden administration kept essentially all of those tariffs and, in fact, put on even more in some cases.
So, you know, this is a place where nobody wants to admit it, but President Trump has been proved entirely correct.
And people are in general very encouraged by and supportive of what he did there.
On the question of what it means on the immigration front, I think it's a really interesting topic because, you know, as the questioner put it, we have this sort of mindset in this country that all that matters is cheap labor, that we actually want to be paying workers as little as possible because then it means we get cheaper stuff.
And it's funny that that has sort of become a progressive talking point, right?
We now hear Democrats and people on the left saying, oh, you know, we need to have these workers earning as little money as possible when obviously that can't be right at all.
That's no way to run an economy.
And if we actually want broad-based prosperity, we need to have a real commitment to saying that the jobs in America are going to be good jobs that pay well and allow Americans to support their families.
And so in an industry like agriculture, that means we need a lot more technology.
We need automation.
We need machinery.
And if you tell farms, actually, we're not going to just have an endless supply of illegal labor, you're actually going to need to find a way to pick crops with American workers.
We've seen this in the past and we'll see it again.
They will very quickly invest in much better equipment that allows workers to do their jobs and support their families.
And so I think there will be an adjustment period.
I don't think any of this will happen overnight.
But I do think people on, you know, both Republicans and Democrats need to get away from this idea that we just want labor to be as cheap as possible, whether it's Chinese slave labor or illegal migrant labor.
And remember that actually labor, workers, jobs that pay a living wage for people here in America are the foundation of our nation.
This is actually on the front page of the New York Times today, how a broken border keeps our shopping carts full, among the statements in here.
This year, America's southern border was once again a flashpoint in the presidential election with President-elect Donald J. Trump pledging to deport millions of people who he said were poisoning the blood of the country.
Within days of his reelection, he announced his intention to appoint hardliners on immigration.
But despite the tough talk, the broken border has been a lifeline for America's on-demand economy under both Democratic and Republican administrations, including Mr. Trump's first term in an investigation by the New York Times found.
So this has been an ongoing issue, as you mentioned.
I want to go to a question we received via text from Kathy in Detroit, who asks that you explain how tariffs raise revenue.
Sure.
You know, a tariff at the end of the day is a form of tax.
It is something that is charged to a business or even an individual when something is imported into the country.
And so, you know, let's say you want to bring a giant shipment of televisions from China.
If there's a tariff on those televisions, then you have to pay to the United States government some amount of money relative to how much those televisions are worth.
And so in that respect, it generates revenue directly to the government.
It's funny, for most of American history, tariffs were actually the main way that we funded our government.
The very first law signed by the very first Congress, or well, by George Washington back at the founding of the country was a tariff bill because that was how we were going to raise money to fund the government.
So, you know, I think everybody recognizes that tariffs can be one source of revenue.
They're not going to fund the government themselves.
But one of the problems with the way a lot of economists talk about tariffs today and do their models is they just treat the money like it's set on fire, as if we've made things more expensive and the money is gone.
And that's not true.
The money is going into the Treasury, and we can use that to cut other taxes to offset the cost.
We can use it to reduce our deficit.
And we can also use it to make investments in new factories, in new equipment, in infrastructure, in things that benefit workers and families here in America.
Peter is in Valley Cottage, New York, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Peter.
Yeah, good morning.
Mr. Cass.
In 2017, when they passed the Tax and Jobs Act, the federal government was taking in $3.13 trillion.
In 2023, the government was taking in $4.8 trillion.
The American Rescue Plan, which was passed in 2021, Larry Summers, who was Obama's Treasury Secretary, said that it would be inflationary.
The Inflation Reduction Act was $1.2 trillion.
They're spending now $7 trillion and taking in approximately $5 trillion.
So we have a spending problem.
We don't have a revenue problem.
Under the 2017 tax policy, the average American family was $6,000 a year wealthier than they were before.
Now they're $2,000 poorer.
So Peter, I want to let Mr. Cass respond to your main point, which is this idea that it's a spending issue rather than a revenue issue.
Go ahead.
Yeah, well, I half agree.
It absolutely is a spending issue.
And I think, as the caller said, we saw an explosion in spending during the Biden administration.
You know, some part of that was related to COVID, and it went up and it went back down again.
The problem is that it didn't all go back down again, that even though the emergency is long over, a lot of the spending is still there.
And Democrats who are refusing to bring spending back down to a more manageable level, I think, are creating an enormous problem for our budget and so for our country.
On the flip side, though, on the revenue or the taxes, what the caller said just isn't correct.
It is true that in absolute dollar terms, we are taking in more this year than we took in, say, seven years ago.
But of course, you have to remember that the economy has grown and there has been an enormous amount of inflation.
And so the way to understand our tax revenue and to see, you know, have taxes gone up or down, or are we collecting enough money, is to look at how much we're collecting in taxes relative to the size of the economy.
And what you see if you look at that is that because of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, we are now bringing in less revenue relative to the size of the economy.
Before that passed, it was between 17 and 17.5%.
Now it's between 16 and 16.5%.
And obviously, if you're bringing in 16.5% of the economy as tax revenue and then spending is you're spending something like 24% of the economy is government spending, that's a huge gap and it has to be closed.
But it is going to have to be closed from both sides.
There is simply no way to bring our spending all the way down to what our tax revenue is today.
There is no serious Republican budget proposal that would do it.
And to even get close, you have to do things like cut Medicare in half that nobody is interested in doing and would not be good.
And so if you look at the sensible budget models that both Republicans and Democrats put out, if you even go back to what Paul Ryan put out as his proposal for a sensible budget, what you see is that at the end of the day, you need to get spending and you need to get revenue around 19 to 20% of the economy.
That's where virtually every model ends up landing.
If you think back to the days of Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton, when we had a balanced budget, that's what we were taking in and what we were spending.
And so from where we are today to get there, yes, absolutely, we are going to have to do a lot about bringing down spending, but we are also going to have to find a way to raise more revenue.
And the kind of old Republican talking point that we will never ever consider raising revenue, we will only cut taxes, you just have to recognize that that's not responsible.
That has not been getting the job done.
And at the end of the day, that just leads to a bigger and bigger fiscal problem.
And I'll point out for folks who want to hear more about that 1920 solution, as you call it related to spending and revenue.
It's more on your substack understanding America than 1920 solution.
There's another question that we received via text from Dell in Destin, Florida.
Mr. Cass, what is your opinion of the Laffler curve, claiming if you charge too much in taxes, you will get less revenue?
Will the very rich move out of the country if taxes are too high?
So the funny thing about the Laffer curve, and worth spending a moment on what it is, so the Laffer curve is a famous, frankly, it's a picture that was drawn on a napkin by a guy named Art Laffer, who was an advisor to Ronald Reagan.
And the point that he made, which is true, is that, look, if you charge 0% taxes, you're going to collect zero revenue.
If you charge 100% taxes, if you tell people you're going to take every dollar they earn, you're also going to collect zero revenue because who would earn anything?
Who would do any work or try to earn anything if they knew it was all just going to be taken by the government?
And so the right tax rate, the one that actually encourages a productive economy that also collects enough money to fund the government, it has to be somewhere between 0 and 100.
You can't just keep raising taxes forever and think you're going to keep getting more money.
That still leaves the question, of course, of where are we on that curve?
Are we at a point where more taxes bring in more revenue, or are we at a point where more taxes actually start to scare people away, discourage them from earning money, and therefore leave us worse off?
And the reality is that literally every economic study that has ever been done on the question, certainly for individual taxes, shows that we are still on the what I would call the short side of the laughter curve, meaning if you do raise taxes on people, you will collect more tax revenue.
The corporate side is a little bit trickier.
Back in Reagan's days when taxes on investment, on corporate profits were like 40, 50%.
And for that matter, individual taxes were 70% at the top.
I think you could make a case that bringing those down was actually a way to collect more revenue.
But given where the tax code is today after 40 years of tax cuts, that's just not true anymore.
And so that's not an argument for raising taxes, right?
We should want to have taxes as low as they can be.
We should want people to keep as much of their own money as they can.
We should want to be encouraging as much investment and work and growth as we can.
And we should want to be limiting the size of government.
But at the same time, we should want to be paying for the size of our government.
We should want to be paying for what we spend and not running up a debt and leaving it to our kids.
And so that's where we have to actually have some hard conversations about where can we cut spending, where do we want to spend less than we are.
But then we have to remember that whatever level of spending we do want to do, we do have to pay the taxes to fund it.
That's just reality.
Jeff is in North Carolina on our line for independence.
Good morning, Jeff.
Good morning.
I have a question about the new department that President-elect Trump has established, and that's the Department of Government Efficiency, I think.
Is that what it's called?
Yep.
Hello?
Yes, that's the proposal.
Yeah, it seems like whenever there's, we have talk about raising money, trying to find more money for the government, it just seems like there's just a lot of talk about cutting programs that actually help some of the most vulnerable people in America, women and children and disabled people, people that are sick and need help.
My question, sir, I'd like for your guests just to comment on looking at salaries of people in Congress and the pensions that they receive, is it necessary for these people to receive pensions?
They go, they come to Washington and they stay forever, which I think we should have term limits.
I don't think it should be.
I don't think serving in Congress or the Senate should be a career where you come and receive a pension.
Could you just talk about the possibility of the pensions being removed from government officials that serve in Congress and also decrease their salary?
How would that work?
And what would it look like?
Or could it help with the deficit or trying to find more monies for to operate the government?
Thank you very much.
Yeah, it's an interesting question.
I guess I would say that's probably not the place to look for savings for two reasons.
One is it's a very, very, very small amount of money.
You know, you can actually see in the budget there's a line item for the cost of Congress, because of course that is a budget item for the federal government.
And the cost of the whole thing is, you know, it's like the cost of one fighter jet.
It's a minuscule amount when you think about, you know, we have 530 some odd people in Congress and the Senate.
Even, you know, for the most part, they earn between $100,000 and $200,000 a year.
It's an amount in the millions.
It's not even an amount in the billions.
And so there just isn't a lot of savings there at all, even if you told them they all had to volunteer and you weren't going to pay anybody anything.
On the flip side, I think I would actually look at it the other way and say we have a problem of probably not funding our lawmakers and Congress as well as we should because it's such a small amount of money and because the decisions they make have such enormous consequences.
I mean, if you think about, you know, a few of them sitting around in a room debating one sentence in one law is going to change our spending more than the entire amount that we spend on them.
And we're at a point now where, you know, somebody graduating from a top law school and going to work in New York City, they're going to earn more in their first year than the Speaker of the House earns.
And so it's very hard, obviously, to attract, you know, smart, dedicated, talented people to work in these very important jobs in Congress, both as elected officials and as their staff, the people who advise them, if we say, we're just not going to pay you almost anything relative to what you could go earn in a different kind of job.
So, you know, my advice would be to say, let's really focus on making sure we can hire and keep really talented people in Congress.
I do agree with term limits.
Let's not let them stay forever.
But that's not where I would try to cut spending to save money.
Diana is in Arizona and is on a line for Democrats.
Good morning, Diana.
Hi, everybody.
I'm surrounded by Trump supporters, and they all tell me Trump is going to do something great like rent control, go after corporations for food prices, gouging.
They don't care about Trump going after the FBI and those things.
They want to see some real relief.
But they all tell me there's something deep inside Trump about some cruelty and the Republicans voting no every time it's supposed to help the poor middle class.
Republicans always vote no.
But like Trump throwing paper towels to those people in Puerto Rico and releasing 5,000 Taliban people, is he going to do something for the poor in these food prices?
Is he going to build something this time?
Well, I think that is a great question, very well put.
And it goes back to where we started at the top of the hour.
Kim really mentioned the piece that I'd recently written looking at this decision that Trump has.
I think a lot of the things he ran on and committed to in the campaign, a lot of the things some of the other political figures around him, like JD Vance, like Margo Rubio, are focused on really are policies that would help workers, families, retirees, and make the economy much stronger.
There's also obviously a side of him and some of the advisors around him, his supporters, who focus on doing some other things that I think would be much less productive.
And so we are at this moment right now where that is kind of being determined, who he chooses to lead his various departments, what kinds of policies they choose to focus on in the first 100 days.
That will determine the shape of his administration.
And I think realistically, it's not going to be all good.
It's not going to be all bad.
But where it lands in between is going to determine how successful he is, how popular he is, whether his party does well in the next elections.
And so hopefully the way this is supposed to work is that he and his team think about these things and realize that they have to deliver on these promises for their voters.
And so I think we will certainly see some of it, but I hope, and we will have to wait to see if we see a lot of it.
Jim is in Winter Park, Florida, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Jim.
Good morning, Mr. Cass.
My question is, does anybody ever take a look at the bloat of government as far as like we one of the things that Biden talked about during his administration was that he's gotten so many people jobs.
Hundreds of thousands of those jobs are federal employees.
And we just keep adding people and adding people and adding people to work.
And if their salary is $100,000 a year and there's 200,000 of them, that's a lot of money.
And we never stop funding programs that are failures.
We spend money over and over again at failing policies that if we stopped it, we would be a lot better off.
And then we have so many people that aren't going into offices anymore.
I walked around Washington, D.C. a couple of years ago, and there's OSHA building on top of OSHA building, on top of OSHA building, and nobody is working in them.
Why do we have to keep funding either if your people are going to work from home, then get rid of the buildings?
If the people aren't going to work from home and go back to work, then get back to work.
But somebody's got to look at the amount of money that is wasted in Washington, D.C. on policies and on people that haven't been able to do it.
So, Jim, we're just about out of time.
I want to make sure that we give Mr. Cass time to respond.
Yeah.
No, it's a great list of the kinds of things I think that we need the government to look at more carefully.
And, you know, when you think about like the previous caller mentioned, this Department of Government Efficiency, figuring out just as you would in the private sector, what are we not doing anymore?
What do we not need?
What are we wasting?
Those are all really, really great questions.
There's actually a report done within the government on a regular basis that identifies all of the biggest opportunities to find those kinds of savings and then goes back and sees how many of them did we actually take advantage of.
You will be unsurprised to know the government does not take advantage of all the opportunities it should.
The flip side, though, and I think the most important point the caller made is on the programs that don't work.
Because the reality is that we're not actually adding to the federal workforce.
We're not hiring lots of additional federal workers right now.
Could we save on the buildings?
Probably a little bit, but all of that savings is going to come in in terms of the billions of dollars.
And the deficits that we have at this point are in terms of the trillions of dollars.
What is driving the deficits are these huge programs that spend money not on workers sitting in buildings, but on sending money out to places, paying for health care, providing various benefits.
And those are things that we want to do in the sense that we still want to help people who need help.
But a lot of the ways we try to help people are just wildly inefficient in terms of wasting hundreds of billions of dollars.
And yet, whenever we see that a program isn't working, we don't ever consider getting rid of it.
We just add another one on top of it.
And so, you know, when you think about our safety net, for instance, our anti-poverty programs, at this point, you know, there's more than 100 of them spread across virtually every agency spending, you know, especially if you include healthcare spending, spending more than a trillion dollars a year.
And that's where I think we have to take a very hard look and say, okay, what are the actual programs that are working and serving people and helping them when they need help?
And what are the ones that maybe somebody set up 50 years ago that we just keep spending on and that we're already doing better somewhere else and that aren't accomplishing anything?
And those are the ways where we're actually going to start to get our deficit back under control, recognizing that we do still want to have a strong safety net.
We do need to have ways to help people, but we need to do that in a much, much more efficient and cost-effective way and be willing to agree: look, this program just isn't working, so we're going to get rid of it.
And making that decision doesn't mean we don't care about people.
In fact, it means we do care about people.
And we recognize that the only way to actually help people and have a strong safety net is if we are willing to cut away the pieces that aren't working and aren't doing what they're supposed to.
Well, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us this morning.
That's Oren Cass, who is the founder and chief economist of American Compass.
Thank you so much.
Well, thank you.
This is great.
Later on, Washington Journal, Progressive Talk Show host Tom Hartman will join us to discuss President-elect Donald Trump's victory and the future of the Democratic Party.
But up next, we'll have more of your calls and comments in open forum.
Dial in now.
And while we wait for your calls, we're going to show you a bit from yesterday when President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered remarks before holding a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Lima, Peru.
Biden met with Xi for about two hours at a hotel where the Chinese leader was staying, and it will be their final meeting before Donald Trump takes over the presidency in January.
Take a listen.
China's goal of a stable, healthy, sustainable China-U.S. relationship remains unchanged.
Our commitment to mutual respect, peaceful cooperation as principles for handling China-U.S. relations remains unchanged.
Aggressively safeguarding security and development interests remains unchanged.
Our desire to carry forward the traditional friendship between the Chinese and American peoples remains unchanged.
To work with the new U.S. administration to maintain communication, expand cooperation, and manage differences.
We need to strive for a steady transition of the China-U.S. relationship for the benefit of the two peoples.
I look forward to an in-depth exchange of views with you on China-U.S. relations and on issues of mutual interest.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. President.
It's good to see you and see all of you again.
One year ago, we met in the Woodside Summit in San Francisco, and I'm very proud of the progress we both made together.
Our military communication at multiple levels, our leaders are now regularly talking to one another on a regular basis.
On AI, we have brought together our nation's experts together to discuss risks and safety.
Our counter-narcotics, on that issue, we resume cooperation.
And I want to note, in my country, Mr. President, overdose deaths are coming down for the first time in five years.
We have a lot to discuss, but let me close with this.
For over a decade, you and I have spent many hours together, both here and in China and in between.
And, you know, I think we spent a long time dealing with these issues.
Let me close with this.
I think I once had to count up the number of hours you and I spent alone together.
I remember being on the Tibetan plateau with you, and I remember being a Beijing member all over the world, and both as my, first as vice president, then as president.
We haven't always agreed, but our conversations have always been candid and always been frank.
We have never kid at one another.
We've been level with one another.
I think that's vital.
These conversations prevent miscalculations, and they ensure the competition between our two countries will not veer into conflict, be competition, not conflict.
That's our responsibility to our people, and as you indicated, to the people around the world.
We are the most important alliance or most important relationship in the entire world.
And how we get along together is going to impact the rest of the world.
Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We're an open forum ready for your comments.
Democrats can call in at 202-748-8000.
Republicans at 202-748-8001.
And Independents at 202-748-8002.
We'll start with Mike in Youngstown, Ohio, who's on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Mike.
Yeah, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
What concerns me so much is the hatred between the two parties, which does absolutely none of us any good.
It just causes more problems and gives these leaders, these so-called leaders, that we have things to divide us more on.
What we need to do is to unite and help each other.
And thank you for taking my call.
Okay.
Michael is in Massachusetts on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Michael.
Good man.
What I expect from Trump is I expect him to do the same job he tried to do the first time, but have the Democrats leave the guy alone.
Let the guy try to do his job.
Okay.
Naomi is in Baltimore, Maryland on our line for independence.
Good morning, Naomi.
Good morning.
I am so distraught.
I've been inconsolable since November 5th.
From what I just heard out of the mouth of your previous guests, what they intend to do is cut Obamacare, cut Social Security, cut Medicare, cut all the programs that are helping people because they say, oh, they're not helping people.
Yes, they are helping people.
This is ridiculous.
I can't believe that the American citizens have been duped, have just believed lie after lie after lie and installed this completely narcissistic man who only cares for himself,
who only ran to keep himself out of prison into leading our country when all he did his last term was increase the deficit, stoke divisions to the point that we have, since the Civil War, never been so divided.
And this is who we've, this is who this selling is who we want to run our country and all of his people who agree to do whatever he says no matter what.
This is just treachery.
It is horrific.
The American people who have been duped will see within the next two years what a terrible, terrible error they have made.
Okay, let's hear from David in Michigan on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, David.
Yes, good morning.
About Trump's wife and their protection of Secret Service, that has increased, or will that increase if his family does not join him in the White House and also about the costs of in medical or Medicaid or Medicare,
the facilities that help the people with Alzheimer or dementia or in the hospitals.
Would there be any cut in payment out to those programs, those programs, you know, the physicians out there also that when they have patients, they're charges for the costs of their services throughout this country.
I imagine that's something we'll find out once the new administration takes over.
Let's go to Donald in Raleigh, North Carolina on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Donald.
Good morning.
I'm a 67-year-old African-American, retired military guy, and I'm going to just lay back and see what happens with Trump in round two.
I don't understand this love for this guy.
I think he's a very dishonest guy.
I think he's a very pathetic human being.
But it'll all come out in the wash.
And that's all I have to say.
Thank you.
Okay.
Dean is in Florida on our line for independence.
Good morning, Dean.
Hi, how are you doing?
Doing well, thank you.
I've been listening to a lot of people talking, but they don't seem to understand a lot of things.
Donald Trump went after the economy.
He also went after immigration.
Well, if you look back to 2022, DeSantis, Governor Abbott, and Governor Ducey started sending migrants to the Midwest just to fill in that whole area to make it look like we're being overranned.
He blamed Kamala Harris for it, the Biden administration.
It was the Republicans that moved all of those immigrants from the border up there into the Midwest.
And now that's what he used to get elected, telling everyone we're being overran.
I wish somebody would check the manifest and see if the guy that killed Lake and Riley was one of the ones on the manifest that they sent up there.
That would make the Republicans responsible for Lake and Riley's death, not the Biden administration.
These people are dubious.
I don't know what is wrong with the Republican Party, that they do things that I would call illegal.
DeSantis, the only way he was able to take those migrants from Florida and send them to Massachusetts, and that was the Haitians.
And usually the Republicans don't even go into Massachusetts to even campaign because they know that that is a Democratic stronghold.
But yet they sent all of those Haitians up there, and then they went to campaign there to see if they could get Massachusetts on their side because of the Haitians that were sent up there.
Everywhere that these migrants were sent destabilized all of these areas, and that's how Donald Trump got to be elected.
I think it's a disgrace.
And this guy is, he's going to do some more illegal things throughout his presidency, and we're going to pay for it.
Great.
Lou is in Portland, Oregon, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Lou.
Good morning.
Can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Hi.
So it sounds like the tenor of most of the comments are on national elections.
But I'm in Portland, Oregon.
And if feasible, I wanted to talk briefly about ranked choice voting, which in Portland, Oregon, the biggest city, was used in our election November 5th.
And most of us who are organizers with groups like Portland Gray Panthers, GRIY, and progressive groups, we're very happy with the results of ranked choice voting.
This included election of a mayor, Keith Wilson, who's an outsider, not elected in the past, ran for city council but didn't get elected.
He's going to focus on housing, a gigantic issue in Portland.
And some other people who ran for city council.
I know it's local.
Let me know if I need to stop on this one.
But for ranked choice voting, the city council for 100 years, over 100 years in Portland, has had five people, mostly from the wealthy west side.
So hardly any minorities, hardly any women.
But there is a ballot measure that was approved, which created ranked choice voting, but also expanded the city council from five seats to 12 seats.
So folks like Ann Helita Murillo, who's 28, got elected to city council, and Tiffany Lane, a teacher, Mitch Green, a progressive.
I think three candidates from DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, were elected out of the 12 seats on city council.
So all in all, using ranked choice voting helped quite a bit.
I don't know if you're familiar with it, and it's okay if you're not.
Do you want us to also comment about national elections, or should I stop?
Actually, I'll give a bit more information on ranked choice voting.
That was actually on the ballot here in Washington, D.C. as well.
And fairvote.org has more on the results from Election Day when it comes to ranked choice voting.
More than 3 million voters across the nation voted for better elections with ranked choice voting on Election Day 2024 as of current returns.
Ranked choice voting is poised to win majority support in all five cities where it was on the ballot, most notably with an overwhelming win in Washington, D.C., 73% to 27%.
For state ballot measures, the status quo won the day with ballot measures to implement ranked choice voting losing in Oregon and ballot measures to implement open primaries and ranked choice voting failing in Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada.
A ballot measure to keep ranked choice voting in Alaska was neck and neck at the time and may take several days to call, with absentee ballots continuing to arrive for 15 days.
Tavares is in Athens, Georgia, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Tavares.
Good morning, Kimberly.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Kimberly, how much do I love C-SPAN, ma'am?
I love C-SPAN immensely.
And congratulations to President-elect Donald Trump.
We're glad to have you back, sir.
Let's make freedom, liberty, and independence a staple for the American people.
Kimberly, I want to talk about our beloved former leader, co-founder, Brian Lamb.
He retired.
I'm urging everyone to support us having a proper farewell ceremony presentation to our dear leader, founder, Brian Lamb.
Kimberly, Mr. Brian Lamb has done a wonderful job for the United States of America, the public in general, and myself.
I couldn't be so informed and so glad to be an American without Mr. Brian Lamb and the C-SPAN networks.
So congratulations to Donald Trump and thank you guys for doing the wonderful work that you do, Kimberly.
And we look forward to seeing you next time.
Robert is in Caspian, Michigan on our line for independence.
Good morning, Robert.
Good morning.
This is Robert Cohen from the fascist town of Caspian, Michigan.
I am now considering America a kingdom.
It is a kingdom with a king in charge.
He is no longer a president.
I consider him a king that can do no wrong.
He has tons of lawyers and tons of money, so he can't be convicted.
And that last person that was talking about, not the last person, but the person was talking about DeSantis sending people up to Midwest and New York.
I watched all that happen, and he's right.
I can't explain myself too much like he can, but the guy is right, 100% right.
Amen to what he was saying.
They did all this on purpose and just to make, you know, what he was talking about right.
I mean, it is, I consider this a kingdom now.
I really do.
We have a king that's in charge.
He's totally out of control.
And we're just going to have to watch what happens and see what happens.
And I thank you for one more question.
This is open forum, correct?
Yes, it is.
That's what I figured.
Okay, thank you very much.
And you have a marvelous day, darling.
You as well.
Rock is in Missouri on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Rock.
There's a couple questions that bugged me as far as Donald Trump is concerned.
When he left office the first time, he had an approval rating of 30-something percent.
It amazes me that you want him back.
Number two, what did he actually do during his first term?
Other than the famous tax cut, the only thing I remember is Operation where he came up with the vaccine, which any president would do.
It's called Operation Work Speed, which any president would do.
But he wouldn't brag on that because the Republican Party and these other MAGAs are anti-vaccination.
So, what did he exactly do that so great?
And this notion that Democrats have lost touch with the working people.
All Democratic policies are for working people.
All the people that have blood sugar problems need help with medications.
All these things are Democratic proposals.
And this notion that they're elite, Donald Trump went to an Ivy League school.
Most of his cabinet did.
Most of the people on Fox News.
So, this notion that Democrats are out of touch and this notion, and I think a lot of it is biased.
This notion that we put in a black president, no white by Obama did not win the white vote.
No Democrat has since LBJ other than Bill Clinton twice.
So let's keep things in a little better perspective.
And also, Kamala Harris made one minor mistake by saying she would not separate from Joe Biden policies.
One mistake.
And Donald Trump, he just gets the pass to say anything.
And you, Hispanics that voted for him, we're going to see how you feel about it.
There's still 1,000 children that have not been matched up with their parents that were deported, and the children are left here.
I want to follow up on the point that you mentioned about this narrative that Democrats are out of touch with the working class.
This is something that's been a narrative pushed forward by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who argued last Sunday in an interview with Meet the Press that that was the exact issue.
In the Senate, in the last two years, we have not even brought forth legislation to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, despite the fact that some 20 million people in this country are working for less than $15 an hour.
In America today, we have not brought, in the Senate, we have not brought to the floor the PRO Act to make it easier for workers to join unions.
We're not talking about the fine-benefit pension plans so that our elderly can retire with security.
We're not talking about lifting the cap on Social Security so that we can extend the solvency of Social Security and raise benefits.
Bottom line, if you're an average working person out there, do you really think that the Democratic Party is going to the mats, taking on powerful special interests and fighting for you?
I think the overwhelming answer is no.
And that is what has got to change.
Back to your calls.
Hank is in Chira, South Carolina, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Hank.
Thank you.
I just been sitting here listening to all these people.
The election's over.
The election's over.
Get over it.
Over it.
And let's get behind President Trump.
Kimley, can you do me a favor and show last night at Madison Square Garden that heavyweight fight, show the reaction of the crowd and show the reaction of John Jones when he won what he did with his interaction with President Trump?
Well, I don't think we have that video just ready, but Hank, do you want to describe what you saw when you were watching?
I saw, yeah, I saw John Jones, the heavyweight champion, a black man, go over there and bow down to President Trump and give him his heavyweight belt.
And the crowd went crazy.
Okay.
I don't think we have that video handy, but I'm sure that folks can find that online.
Let's go now to James in Youngstown, Ohio on our line for independence.
Good morning, James.
Good morning.
I'm just looking at your facial expressions every time someone says something that's off the wall.
We're the most disenfranchised country to be the most organized group of people I've ever seen since my dad would explain politics to me as a child and through his reign of being a councilman, which is a very big deal in Youngstown, Ohio, back in the day.
And, you know, we worked about Republicans.
We worked with anyone who was in the opportunity that wanted to be on our campaign.
And we had white people, we had black people.
And the problem is that we, the guy said that you had on about if we made those jobs volunteer jobs from the Congress and all of that, the money's not as much.
If we keep thinking about how we're paying these big name people and how we're wasting government money, Trump seems like a nice guy.
But he's not.
And I'm not going to go and take the time to say what I feel because it's about people.
It's not about what I think about Trump.
And the people need to stop belly aching about what's going on with him.
I don't stand behind Trump, but I learned as a young child, excuse me, you know, to grab my friends when I was a teenager and have them help my father pass our literature.
We went door to door.
We knocked on people's doors for my father.
We did things which brought people together and they would say, wow, I like Jim Fortune.
He's a nice guy.
He has kids working for him.
He's doing all this.
We don't have a brassroots nothing.
I felt Kamala Harris failed.
He was in Youngstown, Ohio.
I mean, Obama was in Youngstown, Ohio at least two or three times, knowing that this, it was a big area to cover, but it was a lot of Democrat votes.
James, I hope you'll stay tuned to our next segment because we are going to be discussing a bit about what grassroots organizing might look like for the Democrats moving forward.
But now, since we're still in open forum, let's hear from Tom Cena in New Jersey on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Tom Cena.
Good morning.
So I have so much to say.
First of all, I noticed that it's mostly men that are calling in to C-SPAN.
And that's problematic for me.
I want to address people that think that we should just support Trump because he's our president.
I have no intention of doing that.
He does not represent what's good for the country.
President Trump is a convicted felon of rape.
Everyone listening right now, do you even know?
I don't believe his felonies were related to the sexual assault charges.
The civil case was absolutely a rape case in New York City.
The judge even stated it.
Okay?
He was civilly charged, but it was due to defamation of A rape victim.
He raped E.J. Carroll.
He raped her.
He stuck his finger in Crawfordsville, Indiana on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Rick.
Hello, how are you today, Kimberly?
Fine, thank you.
Well, I'll tell you, it's a good thing God said on the book that man is supposed to rule the house.
I was a woman to just do the cleaning.
But anyway, on the side point, you know, ever since Abraham Lincoln got shot and killed, boy, chaos went the heck right along with the Democrats.
And what gets me is, Kimberly, is these colored people is always saying that Trump's so bad.
Trump is so bad.
Can't they fake back in their ancestry times when British and stuff was coming over to them?
Rick, your line is breaking up a bit.
It's a bit hard to hear you.
Can you hear me now?
A little bit better.
Go ahead.
All right.
What I don't understand is why the colored people about the Republicans.
Heck, they're the ones that set them free.
Democrats had them in there for slavery.
I just don't understand.
If it wasn't for Abraham Lincoln, them guys want to have a basketball game and football game.
But anyway, just watch out for the weather.
And seriously, on the weather, it's going to get bad in the South.
So all the people, Democrats in the South, better repent now because the storm's coming your way.
Well, I got to say, thank you, and God bless you all.
Henry is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Henry.
Yes, I appreciate the open forum.
I've learned a lot.
I shouldn't say I learned a lot.
I'm now keenly aware that Trump represents a significant number of people.
Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we can hear you just fine.
Okay.
He represents a significant number of people who are not critical thinkers.
He represents those who are ruled by impulse, who are whimsical, gullible, just, you know, void of structure and discipline.
You know, I spent my life as a Marine, as a police officer, you know, the oldest of 10 children.
And so there's a value system that for those who voted for Trump is obvious that they have not tuned in.
I appreciate the young lady calling me in and speaking about his character and his offenses.
I mean, at some point in the history of politics, I can't imagine it happening soon that politicians will develop some code that comes close to representing one of my favorite Republicans, John McCain.
I just think many individuals who voted for Trump voted because their values dictate trying to rescue a man who I think they have a sense that he's helpless.
You ever heard of the concept of TA transactional analysis?
I haven't, but go ahead, Henry.
Okay, it goes way back.
Thomas and time.
Can you make your final point so we can get one more caller in before we go?
My final point is the fact that at some point, we as a nation, the majority of us, we really truly believe that integrity was appropriate if you're going to be president of the United States, being honest, being open, being conservative.
And Trump lacks all of those skills.
Okay.
Let's hear from Gary in Connorsville, Indiana on our line for independence.
Go ahead, Gary.
Yeah, I'll make this quick because I know you run out of time, but I just want to say I know Trump may have had his issues too, but I know between 17 and 2020, it was a lot better than the four years thereafter.
And so I'm looking forward to better things here.
I'm willing to take, I voted for him, so I took that chance.
And I think it's cool.
But I just want to say, Camela would have been worse.
And, you know, the Democratic Party, it's not even Democrat anymore.
It's just extreme progressive.
And it's nothing like the Democrats that I grew up with back in the day, like Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, and all them.
I tell you, like, the 80s would have been a better decade with Carter and Mondale, in my opinion.
But they didn't allow freaks in here.
They didn't allow an overzealous influx of immigrants and all that kind of stuff.
So declining.
That one guy was talking about values on the previous call.
You look at the Democratic Party.
The values are in stark decline, man.
All right.
Well, that's all the time that we've got for Open Forum today.
Thanks to everyone who called in.
Coming up, we're going to have Progressive Talk Show host Tom Hartman joining us to discuss the outcome of the presidential election and what that means for the future of the Democratic Party.
We'll be right back.
Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, investigative journalist Maureen Callahan talks about the physical and psychological abuse that she says was experienced by women and girls connected to the Kennedy family, going back to Joe Kennedy Sr. in her book, Ask Not.
Bobby moves his new girlfriend, the actress Cheryl Hines, into a home just a few yards away, maybe a few hundred yards away.
They're flaunting their relationship all over the place.
He's threatening like he's going to get the kid.
You know, it became this whole thing, and she felt hopeless and that she had nothing to live for.
And this culminates in her suicide in May 2012.
She hung herself in their barn on their property up in Westchester.
And almost immediately, Bobby and Kerry talk to the New York Times and they talk about what a mess Mary was and how amazing it was that Bobby survived his marriage to her.
This is the mother of his four children.
Investigative journalist Maureen Callahan with her book, Ask Not, tonight at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
Weekends bring you Book TV, featuring leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books.
Here's a look at what's coming up.
All weekend, Book TV takes you live to the Texas Book Festival in Austin with author discussions on abortion, gun violence, infrastructure, and more.
The Association of the U.S. Army hosts an authors forum where members discuss their books on military leadership and adapting to the battlefield.
And then on afterwards.
Journalist Vince Beiser shares his book, Power Metal, that looks at how the race to mine metals needed in technology and renewable energy is impacting geopolitics and the environment.
He's interviewed by Wall Street Journal global metals and mining reporter Julie Steinberg.
Watch Book TV every weekend on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We're joined now by Tom Hartman, who is the host of the Tom Hartman Program, which is a live nationwide daily that airs Monday through Friday on Sirius XM Radio.
Welcome to Washington Journal.
Oh, good morning, Kimberly.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for getting up early for us in Portland, Oregon.
What was your take on the outcome of the election?
My concern is that we are essentially sliding into oligarchy.
Seven, eight years ago on my program, President Carter pointing to Citizens United, you know, when the Supreme Court basically said that bribery of politicians is now legal because money is the same thing as free speech and corporations are the same thing as people, that it would be possible for very, very wealthy people to basically buy elections and buy politicians.
And now we have a billionaire coming in as president.
We have the richest man in the world coming in, kind of like his number two.
And both of them have spent the last couple of years, apparently, regularly speaking with Vladimir Putin and Victor Orban.
I mean, you know, Victor Orban, the kind of semi-dictator of Hungary, even came over to speak at CPAC in Dallas a couple of years ago, two years ago, and laid out what he had done in Hungary.
Within a year of his second election, his reelection, he had basically destroyed all the independent media.
I mean, people post on Facebook against him and they go to jail.
And I'm very concerned that that's the direction we're heading now.
When you get people like Kash Patel, who, you know, a Trump surrogate saying, we're coming for you in the media.
I'm very concerned that Jimmy Carter's essentially prophecy is coming true.
We're going to have a government of by and for the very, very rich.
And yet Republicans and Donald Trump in particular showed a lot of gains in this election, including among people across demographic groups.
He gained with Latino voters and with white women.
How do you explain some of those gains?
You know, I used to work in advertising back, you know, 40 years ago.
I owned an advertising agency in Atlanta.
And if you beat people over the head with a message often enough with enough money and enough saturation, you can largely convince them of anything.
Kamala Harris never once mentioned trans people during the campaign and has never really been a champion of trans people.
I mean, she had that one interview many years ago where she talked about trans people getting surgery in jail.
That's certainly not her position now.
She walked that back years ago.
But the Trump campaign and mostly the very, very large super PACs that are funded, were funded to the tune of literally over $100 million each by multiple right-wing billionaires,
poured so much advertising into, in particular, into the swing states, arguing that that was her entire agenda basically was, you know, hey, let's elevate trans people that, you know, a lot of people bought it, I mean, you know, which is perfectly understandable.
Advertising works.
You know, it's the it's the reason why most commercial television networks and newspapers still exist.
If it didn't work, you know, they wouldn't be around.
So I think that the narrative was taken by this, you know, I understand that there's roughly about 150 billionaire families who threw most of the money that was behind Trump into this campaign.
And of course, they're looking for tax cuts and those who are in business in a big way, particularly in the polluting industries like the fossil fuel industry, they're looking for deregulation and more subsidies.
I mean, we subsidize the fossil fuel industry to the tune of billions of dollars a year.
They want more.
And it certainly looks, I mean, you know, putting a fossil fuel lobbyist in charge of the Interior Department, for example, which Trump just announced, it certainly looks like they're going to get their investment is going to pay back.
My big concern is that this Department of Government Efficiency that Musk and Ramaswamy are supposed to run, you know, there's talk that they want to carefully evaluate our entitlements programs, you know, which of course is Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid.
I don't think that average Americans realize how bad it could get.
I don't know that it will, but, you know, there are some probably some practical political limits to what they can do.
But I'm just very concerned.
So I want to pull up a chart looking at some of these areas where Trump gained voters, including, as we just talked about, 46% of Latino voters backed Trump, up from, that's up seven points in 2020.
Trump won Latino men 55% to 43%, won among white women, 53% to 45%.
But in particular, I want to look at these last two.
Non-college graduates, 56% of them voted for Trump, and 64% of rural Americans supported Trump.
Why do Democrats struggle with these groups in particular, non-college graduates and rural America?
I think, you know, again, to go back to the massive advertising that wasn't limited to television and radio, by the way.
There was also the social media presence and, of course, Elon Musk tweaking his algorithms to promote right-wing messages, suggesting that because the Democrats have traditionally been the party that defended the average working person, Joe Biden was the first president in the history of America to walk a picket line.
It was Democrats who brought us the five-day work week, the 40-hour work week, the weekend, unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all those things.
But also, Democrats have, since the 60s, been the party that has defended racial minorities and since really the 80s defended gender minorities, that a caricature of Democrats and the Democratic Party,
which I mentioned a minute ago about, you know, going after Kamala Harris, has been created, that this just absolutely massive right-wing ecosphere that has emerged since the 80s.
You've got three television networks funded by right-wing billionaires, one of them, a foreign billionaire, Fox News.
You've got 1,500 right-wing radio stations.
We now have 300 right-wing radio stations that broadcast in Spanish.
This is new.
This came up just in the last four years.
You've got seven or eight hundred Christian stations that have very, in many cases, kind of abandoned talking about Jesus and started talking about politics.
You've got churches where they're ignoring the IRS law and preaching politics from the pulpit.
It's this massive cumulative effort, and there's nothing like that on the left.
Excuse me, we've never developed a strong, you know, we had Air America for about five years, and I was on Air America.
And in 2008, there was kind of a broad consensus, actually, that Air America helped Barack Obama get elected.
Well, while you, I don't know if you want to grab a drink of water or something, but I do want to read something here.
Well, actually, I'll go back to something you mentioned earlier.
You mentioned that since the 1960s, the Democrats have been the party that supports racial minorities, according to your assessment.
But also, I want to look at this chart here about the distribution of white voters in particular.
The Democrats have not won the vote amongst white Americans since 1964.
Overwhelmingly, over the years, white voters have voted Republicans.
And Democrats have lost support among white voters even since Barack Obama in 2008.
And what do you think that means for the future of the party and the party's dynamics?
Well, I think what that reflects is the deep racism that is still extant among white people in America.
You know, certainly the Trump presidency and even his successful campaign in 2016, frankly, shocked me.
I'm a white guy.
I grew up with white people, and I knew that white racism is out there.
And I heard the jokes and slurs as a kid and all that kind of thing.
But I never realized how broad and how deep it is.
1964 was the year that Lyndon Johnson put forward the Civil Rights Act, and it actually passed Congress.
It was the end of apartheid in the United States.
I'm old enough that I remember as a little kid, seven, eight years old, my parents taking me to the Jack Tar.
I grew up in Lansing, Michigan.
The Jack Tar was the fanciest hotel in town, and it had a really nice restaurant.
And for their anniversary, when I was seven or eight years old, they took us to my brothers and I, to dinner there.
And I remember the sign on the side of the building that pointed to the colored entrance.
This was in the 1950s.
That all ended in 1964.
And that was when, and over the next five years, you saw all these Southern Democrats, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, all these guys, flip and become Republicans because the Republican Party was not, you know, in a big way taking a position on this.
Barry Goldwater, who ran for president in 1964, actually opposed the Civil Rights Act.
His argument was that this is the job of the states, not the federal government, the old states' rights argument.
When Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980, the first speech he gave as an official candidate of the party was in Philadelphia, Mississippi, which is the site of the murder of three civil rights workers, Schwermer, Cheney, and Goodman.
And his entire speech to an all-white audience was about states' rights, which was code back then for we never should have passed that damn Civil Rights Act and we should go back to apartheid in the United States.
And it's been pretty much that way ever since.
And Trump has tripled down on it.
So I don't have an explanation beyond, you know, for this very, very clear racial divide that has existed since 1964, beyond just the shocking reality that at least half of white America, and arguably a little more than that, is just deeply racist.
We're going to be taking your calls with questions for our guests.
Democrats can call in at 202-748-8000.
Republicans at 202-748-8001.
And Independents at 202-748-8002.
Now, Tom, we've talked about the areas where Democrats have lost votes.
And I want to talk a bit about what kind of coalition Democrats could potentially create moving forward given what they've learned.
Pete Davis, co-founder of the Democracy Policy Network, wrote in the nation after the election that Democrats have focused less on real relationships with fellow neighbors and local chapter leaders and emphasize fundraising and celebrities.
I'll read a bit more of that.
Instead of funding itself primarily through membership dues, the Democratic Party offers fancy events for the wealthy and ceaseless disrespectful texts for the rest of us.
Parasocial relationships with celebrities and famous politicians are emphasized over real relationships with fellow neighbors and local chapter leaders.
When you go to Democrats.org, clicking take action does not direct you to a page with your local Democratic committee's meeting times and locations.
The bolded call to action button on the party homepage is donate, not join.
What do you see as the future for how Democrats can create a new coalition for themselves?
I think that's a very legitimate critique, and it echoes one that I've made many times over the years.
What happened was in 1978, Lewis Powell, Richard Nixon had put him on the Supreme Court in 72.
Lewis Powell authored a Supreme Court decision, First National Bank versus Bilatti, in which the Supreme Court ruled for the first time in a big way that money is, that because corporations don't have a mouth, if they want to speak, they have to use money.
So money is the same thing as free speech and is protected by the First Amendment, and that corporations are persons, and so they're entitled to rights under the Constitution, under the First Amendment.
And that kind of floated Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980 on an ocean of oil money by and large.
But it also confronted the Democratic Party with a real crisis.
You know, how do we do fundraising?
How can we win elections if elections going forward are going to be about money?
And so in 92, the Clinton campaign largely embraced Reagan's neoliberal positions and started going for wealthy people, wealthy funders, and embracing hotshot bankers and things like that.
And that continued right up until the election of Joe Biden.
Biden, excuse me, just pardon me.
I'm so sorry.
Joe Biden really is the first Democrat since 92 to have repudiated neoliberalism, this idea of reducing the size of unions, cutting taxes on wealthy people, and free trade, allowing corporations to go anywhere they want to get the cheapest labor.
But both Clinton and Obama did, and the Democratic Party is still largely a neoliberal party.
It's still largely embracing that.
Although the Progressive Caucus in Congress, it's about 100 members, have all said, we're not going to take corporate money.
We're not begging rich people for money.
We're going to be here just for the people.
But I think that's a very legitimate critique of the Democratic Party, and they really need to get their grassroots act together, and they need to become the party of the bottom 90% and stop with the movie stars and the billionaires.
I think that probably Kamala Harris campaigning with Beyoncé and Mark Cuban, a billionaire, and Liz Cheney, a Republican.
I don't think any of those things helped her, frankly.
All right, let's get to your calls.
John is in Norfolk, Virginia on our line for independence.
Good morning, John.
Morning, John.
Yes.
Hey, how are you doing this morning?
I just want to ask you a quick question, sir.
If the vote's supposed to be unanimous, how do all the polls come up with the percentage of people who voted for who?
Like 53% of white people voted for Donald Trump.
How do you all come up with those numbers if the vote's supposed to be unanimous?
What do you mean unanimous?
It's supposed to be like a, I'm sorry, a secret ballot.
Nobody's supposed to know who you voted for.
How do you all come up with these numbers, like percentage of people who voted for who?
Yeah, well, they do it with what are called exit polls, which is where you stand outside polling places, and as people are coming out, you ask them who they voted for.
And the people who are willing to answer more questions, they'll ask them, you know, how much do you make and where do you work and things like that?
And, you know, exit polls are actually surprisingly accurate.
They're used all around the world.
So that's principally how they came up with those numbers.
Okay.
Carl is in Messick, Michigan on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Carl.
Hey, good morning.
Good to talk with you, Tom.
I'm a fan of your show and a few of your books that I've read.
As far as the rich people and celebrities, I just want to call everybody out.
Both.
But what I wanted to throw out there for the audience, Tom, to talk about a little bit, just a few things I jotted down.
Freedom will destroy America.
Freedom of speech, the cesspool known as social media.
Freedom to bear arms.
What is there?
An average of three guns per adult in this country.
We're killing each other every day.
Freedom of slash freedom from religion.
Inching closer to theocracy.
Government establishing religion.
Congress and the Supreme Court.
Forcing religion into public schools and curriculum and book bans.
Public religious schools.
Your line is.
Freedom to assemble.
Money is speech.
Dark big money manipulating elections and legislation from both sides.
I'll only be a minute.
Freedom of markets, plutocracy eliminates pensions, busting unions, pushing back regulations, protecting workers and consumers, shipping labor overseas to increase stock prices, buybacks, CEO salaries and profits.
Last one, freedom of press slash media to lie to us, divide us, manipulate us, and insult us.
All right.
Tom, do you have any response to those ideas that were just laid out?
Yeah.
Back in 1936, Franklin Roosevelt famously said, necessitous men are not free men.
You're not free if you're hungry.
You're not free if you don't have a job.
You're not free if you don't have a place to live.
You're not free if you're capable of getting an education and can't.
And that's been a mantra, essentially, for the Democratic Party ever since, that opportunity and freedom are interchangeable.
Republicans, on the other hand, have been saying that you're not free if you don't have a gun.
You're not free if you have to pay taxes, particularly if you're very, very rich.
And This word freedom, which has a deep, almost DNA resonance for Americans, has been used by both parties, I think, in very different ways.
I think your caller's points are cogent, are important.
And we, and Kamala Harris, to her credit, like I said, she wasn't campaigning on surgeries for trans people.
She was campaigning on the idea that freedom to is as important as freedom from and freedom to have a decent retirement with a well-funded social security system, freedom to have good health care from a national health care system that provides for everybody.
You know, those kinds of freedom to get a good education, freedom to get good housing, things like that.
And, you know, sadly, that message just got drowned out by literally billions of dollars.
We've never seen so much money spent in a political campaign in the history of America.
But I think it's a very important point he made.
Jeff is in Cleveland, Ohio, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Jeff.
Morning, Jeff.
Good morning, Mary.
Good day, sir.
I'm from Cleveland.
And my dad and my mom are FDR and JFK Democrats.
I'm a Republican, mainly because I'm not racist.
Okay.
One of my daughters is married to somebody that's black.
When you say those types of things, you inflame a lot of Americans.
Some of the other things that you're stating about, you know, you going into a hotel in Michigan in 64 and seeing a sign you know perfectly well in 64 that was legal in Michigan.
So you're inflaming the topic.
And it's really sad that you're completely biased for the left.
And I see nothing in your conversation that's more centric that can pull us together.
Please comment.
Well, I'm not sure what I've said that is the left.
I think I've been presenting American values that most of us agree with.
I don't think that I'm inflaming anything when I say that there are a lot of white racists out there.
I think you would have to agree with me there are a lot of white racists out there.
And, you know, and when you've got a presidential candidate saying that, you know, talking about ass-hole countries and, you know, referring to people of color as rapists and murderers, that's pretty inflammatory.
I'll give you that.
But please name one position I've taken or one thing that I've argued that is radical left.
We've already let go of that caller, but if you had any further thoughts.
Yeah, no, that's, I think, you know, when you look at we used to get, we, the American people, all of us, the Democrats, Republicans, Independents, whatever, we used to get what we wanted out of government.
Between 1933 and the mid-1980s, you know, we got Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance, the right to unionize, housing supports, free college functionally up until the mid-1980s, high-quality new schools.
Used to be that insurance companies and hospitals were required to be nonprofits.
Basically, the stuff that Americans wanted, we used to get.
Since the 1980s, since basically money was interpreted as speech by five corrupt members of the Supreme Court, and money came to dominate our political environment and wealthy people, right-wing billionaires in large part, came to control at least one of our political parties and arguably both to some extent with the Democrats.
We're not getting what we want.
You know, when you poll Americans and say, do you think rich people should pay their fair share of taxes?
You know, your average billionaire in America right now is paying 3% in income taxes.
I'm paying a hell of a lot more than that.
I'll bet everybody listening right now is.
Why aren't those taxes going up?
They could fund a lot of really good stuff.
Well, because the billionaires basically own things.
You've got a billionaire who's going to be president.
You've got the world's richest man who's right beside him.
His entire campaign was funded majority by billionaires, whereas the Harris campaign was funded majority with $200 contributions from average people.
So when you look at the things that people want, people would like a national health care system where everybody's in, where there's, you know, right now we've got millions of people who have no health insurance at all.
We're the only developed country in the world where that's the case.
A half a million people a year in all of the developed democracies in the world, the 34 OECD countries, all of the developed democracies in the world.
A half a million people a year declare bankruptcy because somebody in their family got sick.
100% of those are here in the United States.
No other country has that.
We're the only country, we're the only developed country in the world that has a student debt crisis.
We've got $2 trillion worth of student debt.
Again, you poll people, 70, 80% of people say, yeah, college should be free.
Yes, everybody should have health care and it should be a reasonable cost.
These things are not happening because the billionaires don't want to pay their damn taxes.
And so what do they do?
They throw out this stuff like, oh, you know, the Mexicans are coming to rape your wife and murder your daughter.
And, you know, let me show you the example of one that happened.
And, you know, and Kamala Harris wants to do trans surgery.
And people are, kids are going to school and coming home with their genitals chopped off.
I mean, Trump literally said that over and over and over again.
These things, you know, not only are not true, but they're designed to be distractions from the fact that the GOP, in large part, with the help of a handful of Democrats, have basically been robbing us blind for the better part of 20 or 30 years.
We want to get to a few more callers.
Let's hear from James in Atlanta, Georgia, on our line for independence.
Good morning, James.
Yeah, I hope I get to say at least some of what I call to say.
Mr. Hartman, I used to tune into your show when I was, but I moved away.
And now the people who own this building think I need to hear that political, I can't think of the name of the show, Newsmax.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mr. Harmon, don't you agree that this three hours every day on C-SPAN is a very important opportunity for people in America to hear about important issues?
Like, why is it, sir, that we never hear anything, hardly ever, about the outrages going on to women in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world?
But let me tell you what my opinion is.
We don't get to hear about stuff because Kimberly prefers that we all get to hear everybody say good morning back to her.
Did you hear how many times she thanked the caller for asking her how she's doing today?
We don't need to hear that, sir.
We need to hear people who know something like you, sir, to say something about racism and all this other outrage that's going on in the world.
Don't you agree with me, sir, that people ought to be invited to go ahead, please, and say what you call to say.
You shouldn't have to stop everything in the world so that we can all hear somebody else say good morning back to Kimberly or to hear John McCordle thank somebody for getting up early.
James, I just do you want to make sure that we take advantage of your time to get your opinion on this topic or a question for Tom Hartman.
Yeah, I would like to respond to that if I may, Kimberly.
Sure, go ahead.
James, I think Kimberly does a marvelous job.
And I'm a huge fan of C-SPAN and have been my whole life or as long as C-SPAN has been around.
I've been around longer.
And I think it's important that we hear all these voices.
And I think it's important that we hear people calling in and expressing their raw racism on the one hand and people calling in and objecting to that on the other.
I believe that's what America is.
And we need more of this.
We need people talking with each other and to each other rather than across each other.
So I have no objections to that.
And I think Kimberly's doing a marvelous job and C-SPAN hosts in general do a marvelous job of exhibiting good manners.
I mean just being decent human beings.
That's important role model stuff for particularly young people who are watching the program.
January is in Bellevue, Washington on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, January.
Good January.
It's so good to see you.
I used to listen to Air America all the time.
I really missed it.
And if it's okay with C-SPAN, if you could say where we could hear you now on the air, I would love that.
I called about the Electoral College.
I live in Washington State, and it's obviously not one of the swing states.
And sometimes it's, you know, when you hear by and for the people, it's like for the swing states.
It's like, and it's true, we do tend to always vote for the Democratic Party.
But it's still, I think we should be involved, all of the states that aren't swing states.
We all want to be involved in the process to elect our leaders.
And I know it's a pipe dream to think that that eleven, but except for, I think, in the late 80s, early 90s, maybe the Republican candidate was Pat Robertson, which in our state, which really woke a lot of people up, I guess.
Other than that, you know, everything's been very predictable.
I'm 78, and I always, always vote, but it feels like we're just kind of stuck on the outside.
Like, it doesn't, we don't really matter, you know.
So, January, let's let Tom respond.
First of all, would you let people know where they can find your show and your programming and then maybe speak a bit about the Electoral College?
Sure.
At tomharbin.com or tom.thom.tv, there's a list.
We're on SiriusXM every day from noon to 3 Eastern Time, weekdays, Monday through Friday.
It's carried simultaneously as television by FreeSpeech TV, Freespeech.org, which is carried on Dish and Direct.
If you use either of those carriers, you can find it.
It's also on a bunch of other cable systems.
We're on, I don't know, maybe 150, 200 radio stations around the country.
You have to find it on your, well, on tomharbin.com.
And you also have a podcast.
Yeah, yeah.
We chop the show up and turn it into a podcast, and that's available too.
And we've got an app, just like C-SPAN does.
I have the C-SPAN app on my phone.
There's also a Tom Harbin app.
With regard to the, and thanks.
With regard to the Electoral College, it's fascinating.
You know, you go back and read James Madison's notes on the Constitutional Convention.
And what was clear back then was that it would take four days for news to get from Washington, D.C. to southern Georgia, for example.
And it would be very, very hard for someone in Georgia to know who's running for president if the candidates were all up in D.C. or New York, actually, was the capital of the United States up until around 1800.
And so the idea of the Electoral College was that each state would elect some wise men who would evaluate the candidates and then go to Washington, D.C. and cast their votes for those candidates.
And Alexander Hamilton in Federalists 68, 69, 70, and 71 talks about this at some length, how this is going to prevent a knave, a man of low moral character from ever becoming president.
And you could argue that for the first 50 years of the United States, there was some value in that, although it largely protected the southern states.
It also biased toward the southern states.
But it's an anachronism now.
It's no longer necessary.
There is an effort to do away with the Electoral College.
It's an interstate compact where states sign on and say, whoever gets the most national votes, we will give all of our Electoral College votes to that person because individual states can decide how their electoral votes are cast.
Most of them right now say whoever wins our state gets all of our electoral votes.
Nebraska and Maine are the exception.
They have two regions where they do that, but same kind of thing.
Right now, there are, I think, 200 and roughly 220 electoral votes represented by states that have signed on to this interstate compact.
And when they hit 270 votes, then that will be the end of the Electoral College.
We have, however, exhausted all the blue states and a few of the purple states that might sign up for this.
So now what's left are red states.
And the red states, since the Electoral College is the only reason that George Bush became president or Donald Trump became president, they both lost the popular vote.
So now the red states and the Republicans are very hostile to this.
Back in 1971, we came within one vote in the Senate of ending the Electoral College.
It wasn't that big a deal back then because the Electoral College hadn't decided an election since the 1830s.
But it's become politicized now.
But still, if you live in a state that has not signed the interstate compact, you might want to talk to your state representative, your state senators.
Bob is in Norwalk, Connecticut on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Bob.
Morning, Bob.
Hi, good morning.
Tom, earlier, I think I heard you say that the billionaires pay a 3% tax rate.
That's grossly misrepresenting what the billionaires pay.
I don't know if you recall, but during President Biden's State of the Union speech, he said that he was compared what the billionaires paid to the firefighters and the teachers.
And he said, at that time, he said it was 8% that they paid.
And that's grossly incorrect, too, because it was based upon a White House study of the White House budget and management study that included unrealized capital gains for the billionaires, including on stocks, on business valuations, on real estate.
And so there's no credible study that comes up with any numbers like that.
I'm a CPA.
I stay, I know this stuff inside out, upside down.
The billionaires are included in the top 1% of taxpayers and all the numbers that you see at IRS.gov.
And that 1% pays 45% of the taxes.
And let me just put it in perspective.
That 1% amount that the billionaire, the top 1% sent to the IRS exceeds the bottom 90% of all taxpayers.
In other words, the taxpayers in the 11% category to the 100% category, 90%.
1% of the taxpayers pay more than 90% of the citizens of this country.
And they're said to pay, they didn't pay their fair share.
And you also probably know, Tom, that nearly 50% of the bottom 50%, which is okay, they pay nothing.
They pay zero income taxes.
As Nick Romney famously pointed out.
You know, you're right.
And it also kind of highlights the old saying that, you know, figures don't lie, but liars can figure.
When you say the top 1%, you're talking about basically everybody who makes over $350,000 or $400,000 a year.
And that, you know, yeah, surgeons, lawyers, professional people who make hundreds of thousands, you know, $3,000, $4,000, $5,060, $700,000 a year, they're getting whacked.
They're paying, you know, in some cases, almost half of their income in income taxes.
Donald Trump never paid more than $700 a year in income taxes, if my recollection is correct.
The New York Times tracked this down for decades.
Many wealthy people, I believe the same thing was done with looking at the taxes of Jeff Bezos.
I could be wrong, but several other billionaires.
Basically, instead of taking a paycheck, which is taxable as income, what they do is they borrow against their own assets for their living expenses, and they borrow at 3%, 4%, 5%.
And so functionally, they're paying 3%, 4%, 5% income taxes.
And that's not even money that's going to the government.
That's money that they're paying to the bank that they're borrowing the money from.
And in some cases, they own the bank, and so they make the profit on that.
Billionaires, by and large, don't take paychecks and don't need to take paychecks.
So of course, they've got, if you make your money by investing, you've got an entirely different tax category, as you mentioned, capital gains.
And if you're in the hedge fund business, you've got pass-through income that's taxed at an even lower rate than capital gains.
So instead of talking about the top 1%, which is all the people who are doing very well, who are really getting tax whacked, we really should be talking about the 100th of 1% or arguably the 110th of 1%, people making over $1 million a year.
Because when you start getting into those categories, there's a hundred different ways, as any CPA can tell you, to basically avoid paying income taxes or pay very, very little.
Let's try to get one more caller in before we have to let you go.
Kathleen is in Illinois on our line for independence.
Good morning, Kathleen.
Hi, John.
I listen to your show almost every day, and I recommend it highly to everyone.
I just have a quick question.
What do you think the impact of Elon Musk with his support of the Republican Party?
What impact do you think he's going to have on the Democrats and how they govern?
Well, he's already taken the largest social media site in the world, or maybe the second largest.
I'm not sure how Twitter compares to Facebook, but it's really a different kind of, you know, or X, excuse me, different kind of media.
He's already taken that and swung it hard to the right and turned it into basically a massive propaganda operation.
That can't help but influence both Republicans and Democrats.
So I'm concerned about it.
Like I said, Jimmy Carter said we're sliding into oligarchy, and I'd say we've, as of January, we will have officially arrived.
The morbidly rich, the extraordinarily rich are running our country now.
And typically, the thing that concerns me the most, I wrote a book about this, The Hidden History of American Oligarchy.
Oligarchy is almost always a transitional political system when the rich basically run the country.
It very rarely lasts even a half a generation.
And typically, one of two things happens.
Either oligarchies flip back into democracies as a result of popular revolt.
We saw this in Brazil, for example, throwing out Bolsonaro.
Or they flip into tyranny.
We saw that in Russia.
There was an oligarchic period of four or five years there in Russia where the rich people basically took over the government, Putin at the head of them.
And then Putin just started clamping down and saying, that's it, no more political conversations.
You know, anybody who speaks up goes to jail.
And I'm very concerned that we're at the cusp of making a decision which way we're going to go because oligarchy won't last.
Well, we're going to have to end it there.
Thank you very much, Tom Hartman, who is the host of the Tom Hartman program and also author of the book that you just mentioned.
And I want to thank everyone who called in today on Washington Journal.
Thank you very much, Tom.
Thank you, Kimberly.
And coming up later today at 1:30, President Biden will be in Manas, Brazil today to visit the Amazon rainforest and learn about preservation efforts there.
He will deliver remarks to the press as well.
And you can watch that live at 1:30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org.
Thank you to everyone who called in on Washington Journal today.
We'll be back with another edition tomorrow at 7 a.m. Eastern.
Have a great day.
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