And to start today's program, we're asking you: should women serve in combat roles?
Here are the lines.
If you say yes, 202-748-8000.
No, 202-748-8001.
And if you're unsure, 202-748-8002.
You can text your comments to 202-748-8003.
Be sure to include your name and city.
You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ.
Good morning, and thank you for being with us today.
President Trump's Defense Secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, has been getting attention for his comments, talking about women and their role in the military, specifically combat positions.
This from the Associated Press.
It says that he has reignited a debate that many thought had long been settled.
Should women be allowed to serve their country by fighting on the front lines.
The former Fox News commentator has made it clear in his own book and in interviews that he believes men and women should not serve together in combat units.
If Hagseth is confirmed by the Senate, he could try to end the Pentagon's nearly decade-old practice of making all combat jobs open to women.
And Pete Hegseth was on the Sean Ryan podcast show podcast earlier this month.
He was talking about his new book, The War on Warriors.
And during that discussion, the issue of women in combat came up.
Here's that clip.
I mean, admission standards, overall standards.
I think a huge one is women in combat and quotas.
I think the way they pushed that under Obama in a way that had nothing, zero to do with efficacy, zero to do with lethality and capability.
You don't like women in combat?
No.
Why not?
I love women service members who contribute amazingly because everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated and complication in combat means casualties are worse.
And when you actually go into the hood, again, and I, you know, I got response, I've got 99% positive response to this, a few, a little bit of pushback, but when you actually break down what they did in the studies to open the door for women in combat, I mean, they just ignored them.
So the Marine Corps was the only service that actually tried to fight back and say, no, obviously I'm exempting special operations, which thus far has held the line fairly well.
Because if they were lowering the standard to become a Navy SEAL just to let women inside the Navy SEALs, that's going to change the capabilities and ethos of the Navy SEALs, except for a very small example of some female super soldier who's capable of doing it.
But because of how Washington works, they're going to change the standards.
They're going to push for quotas.
We have numerous quotes in the book of, no, no, these standards aren't changing.
They're just evolving.
They're just evolving to meet the needs of today.
They're not getting tougher, right?
They're not getting tougher.
No.
So they're getting lower every take someone like Millie.
I mean, he was calling down to individual units to make sure they had female company commanders after they graduated from Ranger School.
Like, what's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs doing pushing company command slots?
It's all an agenda.
It's all to say, oh, we have this first or we have this, that.
For this first hour, we are asking you the question, should women serve in combat roles?
Again, the lines, if you say yes, 202-748-8000.
No, 202-748-8001.
And if you're unsure, 202-748-8002.
It was back in 2015 that women were, it was announced that women would be allowed to serve in combat positions.
This article from the New York Times in a historic transformation of the American military, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said on Thursday that the Pentagon would open all combat jobs to women.
There'll be no exceptions, Mr. Carter said at the news conference.
And it goes on to note that the groundbreaking decision overturns a long-standing rule that has restricted women from combat roles, even though women have found themselves in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 14 years.
From 2015, here is then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter announcing the decision.
We've made important strides over the last three years since then.
We've seen women soldiers graduate from the Army's Ranger School.
We have women serving on submarines.
And we've opened up over 111,000 positions to women across the services.
While that represents real progress, it also means that approximately 10% of positions in the military, that is nearly 220,000, currently remain closed to women, including infantry, armor, reconnaissance, and some special operations units.
Over the last three years, the senior civilian and military leaders across the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command have been studying the integration of women into these positions.
And last month, I received their recommendations, as well as the data, studies, and surveys on which they were based, regarding whether any of those remaining positions warrant a continued exemption from being opened to women.
I reviewed these inputs carefully, and today I'm announcing my decision not to make continued exceptions.
That is, to proceed with opening all these remaining occupations and positions to women.
There will be no exceptions.
This means that as long as they qualify and meet the standards, women will now be able to contribute to our mission in ways they could not before.
They'll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars, and lead infantry soldiers into combat.
They'll be able to serve as Army Rangers in Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force parajumpers, and everything else that was previously open only to men.
And even more importantly, our military will be better able to harness the skills and perspectives that talented women have to offer.
This first hour, we're asking you, should women serve in combat roles?
First up this morning, Roy in Nashville, Tennessee is unsure.
Good morning, Roy.
Hi, good morning.
My name is Roy Dean, calling down here in Nashville.
I'm really not sure what the answer to this question would be, and I do really appreciate the fact that you have a separate phone line set up for people like me who don't feel comfortable making that call.
It's not my place to decide.
I never served.
I truly respect and I'm so thankful for those folks who do serve in our military, keeping us safe.
But like I said, it's not my place to decide.
As someone who has never served, I know a lot of men who I don't think, I know a lot of men who I don't think would be fit to serve in combat.
Having said that, I don't personally know any women personally who I'd say are either.
Frankly, I don't think it's appropriate for anyone who hasn't served in our military to have a strong opinion on that topic.
Now, Pete Hague says he has served our nation honorably, and I will defer to his better judgment.
I think I'm not going to sit here and say I know if he's right or wrong, but I do trust his judgment having served.
That was Roy Harry in Lawrenceville, Virginia says no.
Good morning, Harry.
Good morning, America.
I feel like women should not even be in the military and definitely not in a combat role.
God gave us women.
I mean, they're feminine.
And I think only in America, do any other country have women in combat?
Male.
Say that again, Harry.
It's do any other country have women in combat and in the military?
Isn't this only in the United States?
No, actually, I can show you this article from 2015 when the announcement was made.
The headline is from CNA, CNN, women in combat.
More than a dozen nations are already doing it.
It includes Germany, Canada, France, Israel, all of those countries have women in combat as well.
I actually, you know, I didn't even allow my wife to work.
I mean, I was married and I made enough money.
I didn't even want my wife in the workforce.
Harry, were you in the military?
No, all my brothers were.
One of my brothers served 30 years, other served at the 15.
I did face the draft and Vietnam.
Yeah, I just think women don't need to be in that position.
We love them.
They're feminine.
That was Harry James in Sebring, Florida, says yes.
Good morning, James.
Oh, I definitely believe that the women have an equal part of the military.
I have in both sides of my family, male and female, serving the country.
And one of my cousins is a first lieutenant, and she was dead to storm.
And she was in a combat mode.
And she came back home fine.
And I have plenty of uncles and uncles that serve in the military of World War II to the nephews that serve in the military now.
So the opportunity for equal all, I do.
We're not going to go backward.
We're going to go forward and say that why not have the women where Israel have their women working in the military at 16 years old.
And the same way in Cuba.
Their military is male and female.
So thank you for responding about the different countries that do have females in it.
I do definitely support that.
Rose in Tinley Park, Illinois is unsure.
Good morning, Rose.
Good morning to you, and thank you for what you do.
You're a very attractive young woman on TV.
As regards to my decision, I said unsure, but now I sort of am kind of changing my mind.
You know, you might say this is out of the ballpark.
It really isn't.
We had a partner in charge at our major law firm here in Chicago.
She was a woman.
And you know, I guess the bottom line is for all this is that, you know what, women are too emotional.
Maybe they can get the job done.
Maybe they can use a rifle.
Maybe they can do everything a man can do.
But a man sticks to the job, is consistent, is full of conviction, whereas a woman is temperamental.
Are you still there, Rose?
Yes, I'm here.
And as regards to what Pete has said, I believe he's totally right.
He's been there, he's been fighting, and there's nothing more than distasteful that a woman's trying to act like a man.
Have a wonderful day.
That was Rose Oscar in Spruce Pine, North Carolina says no.
Good morning, Oscar.
Am I on?
Yes, Oscar, you are.
Okay, thank you.
I'm an 87-year-old retired military veteran.
I spent 25 years in service, retired in 1980, so I was in what I guess you'd call the old army.
And women are definitely of use in service, but more or less in medical roles and such like that.
On a combat situation, there are demands that a woman could just not meet.
I mean, physical demands.
And besides that, I'm old enough to have grown up respecting women, more or less putting them on a pedestal.
And I think if you're in a foxhole somewhere on a good cold night and you're on duty with a woman to guard your camp, save your life if it's attacked, I don't know how your feelings are going to be toward that woman there next to you instead of paying attention to what's out there in front of you.
So, no, I don't think women should be in combat, but they definitely are a place for them in service.
So, that's all I got to say.
Oscar, during your time in the military, did you ever come across a woman who was serving but had expressed an interest in serving in a combat role?
Back in those days from 1955 to 1980, I never saw a woman in a combat role.
No.
That was Oscar.
One of the senators, Tammy Duckworth, she's from Illinois.
She was on CNN last week.
She is an Iraq war veteran, and she responded to Pete Hagstet's comments during an interview.
Here is a clip from that interview.
And there are millions of women who have served in the U.S. military, as you know, as someone who has not only served, but you're also someone whose helicopter was hit by an RPG.
You lost your legs and partial use of your right arm because of it.
What did go through your mind as a woman who has served when you heard him saying that women should not be in combat roles?
Well, he's shown that his absolute lack of experience and his lack of suitability for the job, because anybody that truly knows the military knows that we cannot go to war without over 225,000 women who are serving on active duty right now.
Our military cannot go to war without our female service members.
You know, this is not the revolutionary war where there's some sort of a line in the sand and then, you know, combat is on one side and the rest of us can stay behind this line and that's not combat.
I would ask him, you know, where do you think I lost my legs in a bar fight?
I'm pretty sure I was in combat when that happened.
And, you know, it just shows how out of touch he is with the nature of modern warfare.
If he thinks that we can keep women behind some sort of imaginary line, which is not the way War Star Race is, you know, today.
We are hearing from you asking the question: should women serve in combat roles?
We're taking your calls.
You can also send us messages via text and on our social media.
On Facebook, Jim has responded and says, In traditional combat roles, no, women do not belong in the front lines of combat on the ground.
Now, I'm not saying they can't fly attack and support aircraft, just not on the ground.
Pete Hegseth is right.
We need a non-DEI military.
And El C Lynn says, Yes, a woman should be able to do anything she wants, from serving in combat to making the best reproductive choices for her family.
Ray in New York is on the line for yes.
Good morning, Ray.
Good morning.
How you doing?
Doing well.
Good.
I say yes because a woman can do anything that a man can do.
And I believe that a woman is smarter than a man.
I have seen, I was in the military for six years.
And I've seen men over shot, a needle shot, getting their shots in the military.
So, yes, a woman can do just as much damage as a man can do, maybe more.
I agree that a woman is just as good.
And I have, that's my conviction.
Why not?
Why not a woman?
Why?
Why not a woman?
Why not in combat?
This is 2024.
And a woman can do anything that a man can do, sometimes better.
Yes.
That was Ray in New York.
Dennis in Wisconsin is on the line for no.
Good morning, Dennis.
Yes.
You want my comment?
Yes, good morning, Dennis.
Okay, good morning.
I couldn't imagine my way for my daughter or my granddaughters being raped by these wicked men who, if they're caught, is a prisoner of war.
People would be standing on their wrists and on their ankles as other men rape them 20, 30, 40, maybe 50 times one night.
No, I would not want any of my daughters, anyone, I would not want any woman to go through such an evil thing as that.
Lucretia in Florida says, yes.
Good morning, Lucretia.
Yes, good morning.
I am, actually, I'm a disabled Army veteran, but I was in that first group of women that was breaking into support back in the middle 70s.
I missed their Vietnam era by three months.
And I was an expert with the M16.
I qualified with the M60.
I was like in the last of the wax, the beginning of the integration of schooling.
And I could climb a rope not knowing how to use my feet.
I played basketball, softball, and football with the boys.
I played center.
My side always won.
And I don't understand why men want to think for women because if I could have went into combat field, I would have.
Because those guys I was in the service with wasn't quite as good as I was.
So that's, you know, I'm tired of men thinking for women.
I'm a Kennedy kid, but he said, ask not what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your country.
What is wrong with everybody wanting me, me, me, me?
I don't understand that.
Lucretia, how many other women did you serve with during your time?
Oh, God.
Not as many as they probably got today in the barracks.
We had one floor.
And when I was NATO in Germany, we had four barracks, and the women only built two of them on the first floor, which had the least amount of rooms.
That's how few women we had back then.
Do you know if combat roles had been open to you and the other women you served with, would anybody have been interested or wanted to take those positions?
There were a few.
There were a few, darling.
I know I would have.
I still, I mean, I'm 67 now, baby, and I still can climb trees and everything.
Those men don't know that what a woman sets her mind to is just like a man.
They can do anything they want to.
Let me tell you, I go at everything I can to see how good I can get at it.
That was Lucretia in Florida talking about her experience.
And we'll go to Joe in Baker, Louisiana.
It says no.
Good morning, Joe.
Good morning.
How are you doing?
Thanks for taking my call.
Hey, I'm a 10-year Marine combat vet, and I don't believe women should be in line units because women already serve in the military, but I don't think they should be in line units.
I'm an O-351, and that's a ground troop, okay, in the infantry.
No, no female should be in the infantry, but they're already in.
So, yeah, let them serve in support.
They could be pilots, you know, for helicopters and airplanes or, you know, jets.
They probably be in artillery as well because they're behind the lines.
But as far as on the ground, doing the hitting and rolling, no, they shouldn't be there with us.
It's too fast.
It's just carnage.
And, you know, females, I don't want to see that doing the female.
Joe, I'm sorry, did you say you're an active duty Marine?
Actually, yeah, I was active duty, yes, and in the reserves when I went over.
But no, they shouldn't be in combat roles as a ground troop like that.
They could be in support, you know, supply, motor T, you know, like I said, air wing and stuff like that, but not in the grunt units, the infantry units, you know, because they was over there in Iraq with us anyway, but they wasn't doing no patrolling with us and stuff like that, you know.
But yeah, they have it.
I don't mind female serving, but they shouldn't be in the infantry units.
Joe, you were serving in 2015 when the Wind Defense Secretary at the time, Carter, made that announcement?
No, I got out in 2010, so I was done.
That was Joe Stephen in Lynnbrook, New York, is unsure.
Good morning, Stephen.
Yes, good morning.
I want to take just a different take.
I mean, this whole question, I mean, women are serving in combat.
If they can obviously perform the whatever duties without the standards being lowered, I don't see a reason why not.
The biggest thing is, should a felon be the commander-in-chief of the army and the military?
And I say no.
And that's really my take.
That was Stephen in New York.
Wanted to show you more from Pete Hagsey's, Pete Hegseth's appearance on Sean Ryan Show podcast earlier this month talking about women serving in combat roles.
The reason women started getting in combat is because of forward support companies and they were, you know, we were integrating a lot of the rear echelon activities into BCTs, brigade combat teams that were now deploying forward as an entity.
And so you had women truck drivers or fuel or mechanics on these convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then they'd be ambushed or hit by IEDs and suddenly now you have women in combat.
That's maybe a modern reality in a 360 battlefield.
That's different than intentionally saying we're going to put women into combat roles so they will do the combat jobs of men, knowing that we've changed the standards in putting them there, which means you've changed the capability of that unit.
And if you say you haven't, you're a liar because everybody knows between bone density and lung capacity and muscle strength, men and women are just different.
And so if you want to, I'm okay with the idea that you maintain the standards where they are for everybody.
And if there's some, you know, hard-charging female that meets that standard, great, cool, join the infantry battalion.
But that is not what's happened.
What has happened is the standards have lowered because the general comes by and asks a question.
You know what questions are when generals ask questions.
They're just a command.
Lieutenant or captain or major, why aren't there more women in your unit?
That means get some more women in your unit now.
And that moves all the way through the training pipeline.
And so I'm surprised there hasn't been more blowback on that already in the book because I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles.
It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.
Most of them actually are, a lot of them are pushed, I shouldn't say most, but many are pushed into a combat track because they're so highly capable.
But if they had their first choice, it probably wouldn't be that an 11-series job, you know, armor or infantry.
So, I mean, the Marine Corps did the study and integrated units, meaning male, female, did drastically worse than L-male units.
And Ray Mabus, who was the Secretary of the Navy in time in 2015, said, oh, fuck your study.
We're doing it because that's what the Obama administration wanted.
And everything else changed.
So I'm not saying that was the only point, but that, and I don't know if that'll ever change.
I mean, imagine the demagoguery that would come on in Washington, D.C. if you're actually making the case for, you know, we should scale back women in combat.
And as the disclaimer for everybody out there, and we're not really in the disclaimer business, like we've all served with women and they're great.
It's just our institutions don't have to incentivize that in places where traditionally, not traditionally, over human history, men in those positions are more capable.
A little over 30 minutes left in this first hour asking, should women serve in combat roles?
We are taking your calls and also getting responses on social media and via text.
This coming in from Phil in Florida says, I believe that if women can meet the requirements for combat roles as they were already in existence for male soldiers without lowering the standards or requirements to accommodate female soldiers, then they should be considered for that combat role just the same as a male soldier, male soldiers.
The requirements or standards for a combat soldier should not be lowered to accommodate female soldiers or any other soldier.
And this from Jeff in Massachusetts.
There is a brotherhood that exists on the front lines and in special ops.
It's not easily quantifiable, but it's there.
It's as important as the rifles that are used.
If women can be integrated into the units without adversely affecting that, then so be it.
And this from Amber in Ohio.
My husband is a Marine, and he said there was no female Marine who wasn't as trained and as qualified as he was.
Their boot camp just took place at a different or just took place at a different place.
And back to your calls.
Michael, Babylon, New York says, yes, women should be allowed to have combat roles.
Good morning, Michael.
Yes, good morning.
How are you doing today?
Doing well.
Yes, I would like to say, as far as the women in the combat roles, I have to agree with Mr. Hegseth.
Absolutely, women should be in combat roles.
Something America should try, something that multiple other nations try.
We should have our own female women brigades.
Have them serve where their specialties and where they can qualify and make it in.
Have them, you know, like the people said, the support groups and all that.
As far as the infantry is concerned, if they qualify, if they can do it, yes.
If not, no.
We should never be lowering our military standards.
Pete Hegseth hit that right on the head with that as well.
But yes, there's a lot of positive roles women can use.
Remember, females have different powers that men have, and there's a lot of different brigades and specialties that they could apply to the battlefield that could be effective, especially in a new style of warfare that's going on today.
That's really all I got to say on it.
That was Michael.
Bradley in Texas says no.
Good morning, Bradley.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
I don't agree with the women serving in combat roles, but it's how they're phrasing the question or the topic.
It should be phrased more frontline units compared to the combat role itself.
Because, like the other gentleman said earlier, the former Marine, I was a Marine myself.
I served four deployments as a tank commander and a section leader.
And these deployments are difficult to do because your health is what comes up first to begin with.
And a lot of times people become undeployable because their health isn't up to par.
And with women, it's a lot more stringent because their health, they have far more health issues than men.
As far as combat roles and frontline units, they're two different things.
But the women can serve very effectively in the support units.
You're still going to face the obstacles of war.
But for Tammy Duckworth to say what she said, it wasn't right for her to say it the way she said it.
And I think she was aware of it.
She's making it, in some ways, kind of a sexist topic.
Bradley, are you still in the military?
No, I got out in 93.
I was offered money to get out because there was a lot of things that were going on.
It was becoming, to me, the military is becoming a social experiment.
And it just driving me nuts.
That was Bradley in Texas.
Wanted to show you some statistics about women serving in combat roles.
This is coming from military.com.
An article just a few days ago said that around 3,800 women are currently serving in Army combat roles across infantry, cavalry, armor, and field artillery roles.
That includes active duty, reserve, and National Guard and also encompasses both enlisted and officers.
There are fewer than 10 women serving in the Army's Green Beret unit.
One woman is currently advancing through special forces training, the special forces training pipeline.
151 women have graduated from the Army's Ranger School.
That's a 62-day combat leadership course.
Nearly 700 women currently serve in Marine Corps combat roles, including 112 female infantry riflemen and 15 Marine officers.
And since fiscal 2018, the number of women in Marine combat roles has more than tripled for enlisted and increased six-fold for officers.
Back to your calls.
Brandon in Lancaster, California is unsure.
Good morning, Brandon.
Good morning.
Hi, am I coming in clear?
Hi, Brandon.
Hi, how are you doing?
Am I coming in clear?
Yes, I can hear you.
Hi, yes.
I just wanted to say I served the Army in 2015 and I got out in late 2018, early 2019-ish around the holidays.
But when I was getting out, I saw a lot of my female battle buddies like getting promoted to higher, you know, like higher ranks.
And they were a little bit faster than the men.
And at first, it was whatever.
But then once I got out for my own personal reasons, I was, you know, my background is I'm an African-American male, but I still have Hispanic background.
So I speak a little bit of Spanish, but I don't tell people because of my skin color.
And that got in the way of me trying to get promoted in the military.
It's a different story at a different time.
Long story short, a lot of women started to get in.
And then I like to call them the TikTok generation started to take over.
And then I feel like that's when I started to see maybe the shift of DEI.
But at the same time, as African-American, I was like, well, maybe this is going to benefit me in the end.
But it didn't.
It started as a male.
It didn't at all.
And I'm still unsure, though, because a lot of the women in the combat capacity were actually doing well and advancing.
And if it comes down to us defending our country, and if you're American, you're going to do your job, man, woman, or whatever you want to be.
So at this point, I just want to say I appreciate everyone for still serving.
I appreciate my old combat veterans.
And things get hard when you get out.
You guys got to make sure to be there for your battle buddies.
And I appreciate the call.
Thank you.
Brandon, it sounded like you started serving with the Army right around the time that the announcement was made that combat positions would be opened to women.
What was the response from those that you served with?
Oh, it was really positive because, you know, at the end of the day, and let's all be real, you get a pay increase.
And with that pay increase, you get, you know, people start families, and you start to settle into your role.
And I was in support.
I was in 92 golf.
So as a cook, like, you know, we had long hours in the field.
It'd be awesome when, you know, at the end of the day, the real ones are the ones, the infantry.
And in my unit, 187-4 John, you know, I was only at one duty station.
But at that time, I'm glad I served.
You know, I got out.
I'm almost done with my bachelor's degree, you know, USGI Bill.
And I'm proud that, like, I got to serve my country, but at the same time, I think mentally, if a woman's ready to serve in combat, she should.
But at the same time, I saw a lot of women did wash out and a lot of dudes washed out too.
And it's all on the individual.
I do think one thing though, if we're really about to escalate this war that we're in right now, I think a lot of people need to look at South Americans and ask themselves, are they really, really, really wanting to get into a situation where you have to actually defend your homeland?
Thank you.
That was Brandon in California.
Amanda in Georgia says no.
Good morning, Amanda.
Good morning.
Yeah, I say, I say no because, and I want to make a quick comment.
I think politics should not be in this right now because if you're serving your country, that means you're for your country.
But I do say no because I've seen a lot of women go into battles, such as being in the army or being in the infantry, even policing, that we just don't stand up to it.
But if a woman is made out of that material, then maybe, but no, because we're not going to stand up to it.
I'm a strong woman, but I would never take myself to do a man's job.
I just couldn't, I'm not made for that.
No matter how hard I try or how hard I train, I'm not made for that.
I can stay at home.
I can raise, I can handle a thousand times, at one time at home.
I can raise a family, take care of the husband, cook, clean, do all of that.
But then I'm too emotional to be I am.
And I just feel like women are a different type of being.
We are fillers.
We're intakers.
And men are more stronger.
And they're more stronger than we are.
You know, body-wise and mentally on the battlefield.
And we're not going to think quick as a man would to defend, to defend the country or to defend your family.
A man is just quicker, and we're just not made for it.
That was Amanda John in Virginia.
Is unsure.
Good morning, John.
Hey, good morning, ma'am.
So it's really not unsure or sure.
Actually, this actually started way before 2015 and 14.
So I was actually an instructor at Infantry Officer School in Quantico as a Marine instructor there.
And even back then, since 2012, we started getting the first females trying to go through.
The standards at that time did not drop.
However, once I retired and got out, the standards did drop back in 2015, 14, and 15.
And that is the ultimate fact, not facts, but those are the ultimate factors that ended up leading into more women because it started from there into the other branches as well.
So I think that's the biggest issue right there is not only are women able to pass too as well real easily because at that time none had passed, but there's also a lot of males.
Along with that, there was also a lot of males that should not be in those combat roles because they cannot meet those original standards.
Does that make sense?
John, what happens to those individuals to men who maybe don't meet the qualifications, but are they still put into combat roles?
Negative.
So they do, if so, there's two different options.
So if they drop on request, they are not afforded an opportunity to come back.
However, though, if they get dropped for academic or if they get dropped for, let's say, something, they couldn't meet something physically.
They are afforded that opportunity to come back and retry.
I don't remember the numbers, but some do come back and they end up passing.
Some come back and they get recycled and they do not pass, unfortunately.
And that goes for males and females.
The sad truth and all is that has opened up a can of worms of just not females, but also males that should not be in those roles to this day.
That was John in Virginia talking about his experience.
And the current Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, was asked about President Trump's Defense Secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, and his comments about women serving in combat roles.
Here's his response.
Your proposed successor to run this department, Pete Hagseff, has spoken and written extensively about women in combat, how women should not be in combat, and in his opinion, are a detriment to U.S. combat units.
What is your response to that, and broadly, what is your message to women in the military who feel that their service is being questioned?
Well, you know, I don't know the potential nominee, so I can't comment on and won't comment on anything that he said.
I don't know what his experiences are, but I can tell you about my experiences with women in the military and women in combat, and they're pretty good.
You know, and I was, I told a story earlier today where, you know, I was when I was a one-star, I was a deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Division.
And you remember that 3rd Infantry Division was the major element that conducted the attack or the assault from Kuwait all the way up to Baghdad and was very instrumental in taking the city of Baghdad.
And I was the deputy commander for maneuver, so I was at the front edge of the battle.
My goal was to be in a position where I could see and feel the fight.
And so that meant that I had to be right there, you know, right behind the lead elements.
And I was.
In my headquarters, in my command post, were several very courageous and very proficient women who did amazing things to support our effort and support their colleagues.
So in my three tours, three long tours to Iraq and then one tour in Afghanistan, every place I went, there were women doing incredible things.
And they were adding value to the overall effort, whether they were pilots, whether they were operational experts, whether they were intel experts.
You know, I see things differently, and I see that because of my experience, and that experience is extensive.
And so I think our women add significant value to the United States military.
And we should never change that.
And if I had a message to answer your question to our women, I would say I would tell them that we need you.
We have faith in you.
We are appreciative of your service.
And you add value to the finest and most lethal fighting force on earth.
Other than that, I haven't thought much about it.
Just about 15 minutes left in this first hour asking, should women serve in combat roles?
John in Rochester, New York says yes.
Good morning, John.
Well, good morning to you, and thank you for taking the call.
And most definitely, most definitely, yes, women should serve in combat roles.
Matter of fact, the women should be drafted too.
And, you know, if that's where their motivations lie and that's where their skill sets are trained, you know, come the next big war, a woman can go in my place, you know, if they're that so motivated.
John, did you serve in the military?
No, I was amongst that generation that fell between, you know, born during the early parts of the Vietnam War and then, you know, raised up through the 70s into the 80s and in the wake of the Vietnam, you know, Vietnam War.
You know, recruiters even stopped coming around my high school because no one, you know, no one was interested in anything like that from all the, you know, from everything that had gone on in Vietnam and, you know, that whole situation.
Nobody.
There wasn't, I can't, there was nobody I graduated high school that poked around the military.
I think a couple of people later on, it was always among the generation where the military was the last resort, you know, different than now.
You know, I'm almost 60.
And, you know, the Vietnam weighed a heavy, you know, with that way that weighs heavy.
That was a heavy deal.
And that's why I say, hey, they want to be in combat.
God bless them.
They should be able to be drafted, too.
And, you know, that doesn't get talked about.
Everybody between the age of 18 and 26 should be eligible to be drafted.
So that was John in New York.
Jim, Grand Forks, North Dakota says no.
Good morning, Jim.
Hi.
Are you reading me?
Can you hear me?
Hi, Jim.
Hi.
I'll start off with, let's start off with like a visualizer, a historical hypothetical, a little twist.
There were 22,000 Japanese dug into Iwo Jima, and it took our Marines 30 full days to take them.
And of course, to take that mountain, Saribachi, where the flag raising was.
We killed just about every single one of them.
They fought 22,000 were burned out of those holes with flamethrowers and everything.
If we landed about 20,000 women on that beach, the first wave or two, and maybe a total of 45,000 women, 18 to 25-year-old women, how do you think?
Would they be able to slug up that mountain and take even hand-to-hand combat and burn them alive with their flamethrowers?
We all know they never would have got off the beach.
But the thing is, and you might say, well, that's different.
That was back then.
Well, combat is still the same thing.
It's about you have to have a physical taking of a position.
So we have more high-tech weapons, yes, but it's not a video game.
And I agree with the last caller about the draft.
I walked into my local post office and I still see that big sign.
It says 18-year-old men.
You know, Uncle Sam, you know, wants you.
You must register at selective service when you turn 18.
And we have that debate every couple years, but the women in Congress never move it forward.
Women still are not registering for selective service for the draft.
I think that's the starting point.
Let's go start with that.
And if we think about conscription, think about what they used to call the draft conscription from Civil War, the World Wars through Vietnam.
Women talk a lot about how they don't have control of their bodies.
They're losing their bodily autonomy.
Men never had bodily autonomy.
Millions of young men were taken against their will by the government, and their bodies used and taken to foreign lands all the way up through unpopular wars into the jungles of Vietnam.
And they died by the mill, about 1.5 million of them died before they were 21.
They had no control over their bodies.
And the government took them.
They drafted millions of men, by the way, over the last 150 years.
So men never have control over their bodies.
They're taken against their will.
They can't even, they're not even old enough to drink a beer at the bar, but they're taken to a foreign land and used by our government in a meat grinder.
So women should think about that.
Think about, have a little bit of gratitude for the 1.5 million men that died in our wars.
And some women have died in our wars.
And we do have a lot of strong, great women.
I see them every day in Grand Forks.
We have several Air Force bases here.
And I know women are great pilots and great things like that.
And our American women are the best, smartest, and most beautiful and toughest women in the world.
But I just don't think combat would be the answer for them.
But then again, they are already involved.
But let's start with selective service and then let's talk about the draft because if there's a next war coming.
That was Jim in North Dakota.
Kathleen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania says yes.
Good morning, Kathleen.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I have more faith in the military than to believe that they would assign somebody to combat that wasn't qualified.
Women should be able to serve in any way that they wish and that they're qualified for.
And thank you very much for the Tammy Duckless segment because I've seen that before.
I saw that interview.
And she was very gracious.
If anybody should be insulted by saying that women shouldn't be in combat, it should be her.
She served and she really gave quite an ultimate sacrifice.
I just can't understand what's up with women these days.
Pete has a real problem with women, I think.
Just remember that we have women police officers that are on the ground every day.
And in some of these cities, do we not think that's combat?
Or firefighters?
Women should be able to do what they're qualified to do.
They don't want to be in the 50s where they can be the secretary but not the lawyer.
I don't understand what's going on, but I really believe women should be able to do what they're qualified to do.
And that was Kathleen in Pennsylvania.
Jay Woodlawn, Tennessee, is on the line for Unsure.
Good morning, Jay.
Good morning.
Kathleen said the most funniest thing I have heard in my 22 years of Army infantry.
Women being cops is nowhere near compared to being in combat infantry.
You have to be able to carry 80 pounds on your back for 25 miles, if not more than that.
Walking at a speed of 5, 10 miles an hour, and that's slow.
The men you serve with, they got to be able to depend on you that you're not going to slack out.
Now, why I say unsure is because, yeah, if a woman can do it, come on, go for it.
But I have yet to see a woman that can do that type of job and hang with it.
And when I say hang with it, I mean not start crying because you're hurt.
Jay, you said that you have been in the is it the Army for 20, how many years?
22 years.
I served in the infantry.
I was with the 101st Airborne.
I was with the 10th Mountains.
I spent time in Germany with 1st Armored Division as mechanized.
What years did you serve?
Was it before 2015?
Yes, I went in in 1987 and I got out at 2019.
I was let out on medical discharge.
And that's another saying, you know, the infantry, it tears your body down.
After serving that long, your body is no longer the same as when you first went in.
Jay, you were serving in a combat role when this announcement was made back in 2015 that women could take combat roles.
What was the reaction with the people you were serving with?
A lot of the guys, most of the men I served with, they shook their heads.
The problem is you have politicians and people who had never served a day at combat in their life.
And they want to sound good to everybody and be politically correct.
Men that are in the infantry today, I don't know.
A lot of them probably are okay with it.
But again, the army today compared to back when I was in is nowhere near the same.
It's changed so much.
That was Jay in Tennessee.
Tim in Michigan is on the no line.
Good morning, Tim.
Hello.
You can hear me, I imagine.
Hi, Tim.
Hi.
Go ahead.
Okay.
I have a book here that called The Amazons, a non-fiction book, believe it or not.
On a fly leaf, it says the lives and legends of warrior women across the ancient world.
This woman and her teams dug up Kurgan's ancient burial sites throughout the steppes of Russia and other countries around there.
And it's plain from her, it's not an exciting book to read because she's describing the weapons and skeleton remains of the women warriors and a lot of times they were allied with their husbands, but sometimes they were special or separate Amazon or barbarian women fighters who fought alone.
The ISBN of this book is 978-0-691-14720-8.
So I'm not going to go on to great detail of this, but I think it's an interesting book that there were women warriors who, before they could become part of these barbarian bands where they could join men to fight, they had to kill a man by themselves before they'd be accepted into the infantry of these barbarian tribes.
Granted, 10,000 years ago, whatever, but the writings about the Greeks engaging with Amazon women were true.
Although I believe it's worthwhile to note that when the Amazon women fought alone with their own groups without combined arms, you could say with the men barbarian tribes, which those were probably mixed, that when they confronted a heavy Greek armor, they got wiped out.
Okay.
But let people review this book on their own and come to some conclusions.
But there were warrior women who were definitely totally into being warriors.
I think it should be noted that this culture and the studies, that's all those people basically did all the time was practice with their bow and arrows, their spears, their horses.
And the women did have a significant equalizer back then.
It was called horses.
And everybody was on a horse.
And that would definitely somewhat equalize the advantage of a man because everybody was on a powerful, fast horse.
That was Tim in Michigan talking about a book that he read on the history of women.
And there's also an article on the U.S. Oates from February of last year, but it talks about over 200 years of service, the history of women in the U.S. military.
This isn't specifically related just to combat, but it does talk about women in U.S. history dating back to the Revolutionary War.
Jean in Ridgewood, New Jersey is on the yes line.
Good morning, Jean.
Hello.
I wanted to contribute one memory from World War II when a Soviet woman sniper came through our town on a national war bond tour.
She was credited with sending 500 kills and saving a Soviet city.
And in terms of standards now, I had the feeling looking at the first war in Iraq that standards were beginning to erode in some ways because of recruitment problems.
There were more young men who preferred the yellow USA at bars than there were to put on uniforms.
Right now, I think the biggest issue is what makes a force ready for the United States in very perilous times.
And women have a lot to contribute, and they should be allowed to be in branches of the service where they can be promoted.
And that means that some of them will be in combat roles.
I think they will do well.
That was Gene in New Jersey.
And Kevin, our last call for this first hour in Connecticut also says yes.
Good morning, Kevin.
Good morning.
Yeah, so women play an important role through the history, particularly in World War II.
You know, they manned the factories when all the men were off the war.
They manned the factories being iron workers, electricians.
And, you know, like that last caller said, you know, the women were snipers too in World War II.
You know, when you had the French underground, when Hitler and Japan declared war on the U.S., you know, that's when everybody pulled together, you know, but the women, they had to go into German towns and get information, you know, like women are in the CIA doing spy work and all that, you know, and like this hedgehog, you know, he was pretty lucky because when he was in war, we had allies, NATO allies.
You know, that might end soon, you know.
So whoever joins the service now, now we have to wonder if we're going to have allies with us when we get any problems now.
But I think that hedge set should just go back to Fox News because he don't have the character or the morals to hold a job like that.
But that's about it.
And happy holidays, everybody.
That was Kevin, our last caller for this first hour.
Up next, Brendan Peterson, financial services reporter for Punch Bowl News, joins us to talk about congressional efforts to increase competition in the credit card market and what it means for consumers.
And later, Joel Berg of Hunger Free America will break down the organization's annual survey on hunger in the U.S. and discuss why food insecurity is rising.
We'll be right back.
All weekend, Book TV will be live with the Miami Book Fair.
Coverage begins at 10 a.m. Eastern on Saturday and 11 a.m. Eastern on Sunday.
Highlights include Stacey Abrams, author of the children's book, Stacey Speaks Up, Kara Swisher and her book, Burn Book, Malcolm Gladwell with Revenge of the Tipping Point, and an author roundtable featuring Dave Barry, Mitch Album, and Stephen King.
And at 8 p.m. Eastern, astrophysicist Mario Livio explains the search for life outside of Earth in his book, Is Earth Exceptional?
Then at 10 p.m. Eastern on Afterwards, Stephanie Gorton shares her book, The Icon and the Idealist, which looks at the lives and rivalry between two key figures in the early movement for birth control and reproductive rights.
She's interviewed by UC Davis School of Law professor Mary Zieger.
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.
Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A, Peggy Noonan, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Wall Street Journal and former speechwriter for President Reagan, talks about her book, A Certain Idea of America, a collection of her columns from over the past quarter century.
She also discusses her time working in the White House and her career in radio after graduating from college.
Walter Cronkite was the anchor of the CBS News.
He had a radio show.
Every day he did a radio commentary.
It was written by a wonderful writer named Dale Minor.
When Dale Minor was off on vacation, I became one of the people who filled in for him.
Once when I was filling in for Dale Minor, who was writing for Cronkite, Cronkite himself took vacation.
And this young guy named Dan Rither came in, so I wound up writing for him.
Then Dan became the anchor at CBS, and I became his daily radio writer of his commentaries, which was a fabulous job and was like doing a column every day.
Peggy Noonan, with her book, A Certain Idea of America, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
The house will be in order.
This year, C-SPAN celebrates 45 years of covering Congress like no other.
Since 1979, we've been your primary source for Capitol Hill, providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government, taking you to where the policy is debated and decided, all with the support of America's cable companies.
C-SPAN, 45 years in counting, powered by cable.
Washington Journal continues.
Joining us now to discuss competition in the credit card market is Brendan Peterson.
He is a financial services reporter for Punch Bowl News.
Brendan, thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for having me.
The Senate Judiciary had a hearing this week.
The topic overall was competition in the credit card market.
Tell us, what was the crux of the meeting and who did they hear from?
Yeah, so Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin has been beating this drum for a while.
He is a proponent of introducing measures in the credit card market to try to bring down swipe fees.
Swipe fees are just the cost of processing a transaction.
They're what the bank makes for making a transaction happen between a person and a company.
Swipe fees in the United States are pretty high relative to the rest of the world.
In the United States, the average swipe fee is around 2%, a little under that.
In Europe, they are capped at 0.3%.
And so when you're looking at retailers in this country, they are paying a lot more to do basic transactions than their counterparts in Europe.
So what Durbin has been trying to do with his judiciary perch is basically bring in members from the credit card industry itself.
We heard from representatives of MasterCard, including President Linda Kirkpatrick, as well as an advisor to the CEO of Visa, as well as some retail advocates to talk about what's going on in credit card markets.
Long story short, it was a bit of a drubbing for the banking industry.
We saw a lot of members come out and say like your swipe fees are too high, including bank advocates like Senator Tom Tillis, who's very close to the industry in North Carolina, and John Kennedy, both of whom serve on the Senate Banking Committee.
So what we're seeing is a world in which more people are willing to admit that the cost of swipe fees, like this, like that 2% figure, is probably too high.
When we hear things like swipe fees, just to help get people on the same page and understand who's who, explain the difference between a credit card network and a credit card lender and what each are responsible for.
Sure.
So basically, Visa and MasterCard are running the rails that payments tend to go down.
Banks themselves are basically like handling the transaction and are the ones who are making money off of each and every swipe fee.
So the two work in tandem.
They are different entities.
Like MasterCard and Visa aren't exactly banks, but banks work very closely with them and are ultimately the main beneficiaries of where those fees are coming from.
And so when you look at the broader credit card market, you basically have the payment sector and the banking sector on the same page who are fighting to retain the status quo to try to make sure that swipe fees stay about where they are or at this point make sure that Congress doesn't make a big intervention in credit card markets.
They've said that they're trying to bring the fees down themselves.
They really don't want Congress to get involved here.
On the other side, you have the retailers.
The retailers are saying, look, we need some kind of relief here.
And there have been efforts in the judicial space to actually resolve this.
There's a class action lawsuit going back to 2005 trying to bring small businesses, Visa and MasterCard together to come to an agreement on lowering swipe fees.
That agreement came out earlier this year and then was rejected by a federal judge.
And so this is like going on 20 years of trying to fix this.
And we heard lawmakers at the Senate Judiciary this week, including bank allies, point to these representatives of Visa and MasterCard and say, look, I don't want to do this.
I don't like what Durbin's trying to do here, but I give you a Congress and a half.
If you don't fix this within a Congress and a half, we may need to intervene.
That's a big difference for banks.
And when we hear swipe fees, who's getting charged for those and how much can be charged?
That's a great question.
For the most part, retailers are eating that cost.
When you swipe your credit card anywhere, you will see like taxes and convenience fees.
You will not see that transaction fee on your receipt.
That's being eaten by the retailers.
Now, they might try to pass that on to you in one way or another, but for the most part, it is sort of an invisible cost for most consumers.
But retailers have been saying for a long time, big and small, that payment fees are becoming a really significant part of their overall expenses.
There are a lot of businesses that will say that, you know, more than like besides labor, credit card processing is the biggest fee that they have.
This is kind of a reflection of how money has changed coming out of the pandemic.
You remember, a lot of places stopped using cash in those first early months of the pandemic.
And those trends have largely held on.
And so we're basically talking about an economic phenomenon that's relatively new and it hasn't really changed.
And those costs are just becoming more and more significant for large and small retailers.
C-SPAN did air and cover that hearing, that Senate judiciary hearing, and during it, Senator Hawley, a Republican of Missouri, he spoke with credit card, he questioned credit card executives about their profit margin when it comes to these swipe fees.
We want to show you a clip and we'll talk about it on the other side.
Just on the point about Visa and MasterCard being successful businesses, I think you figured it out, haven't you?
I mean, what's your profit margin, Mr. Patrick?
It's circa 50%.
Mr. Sheety?
Slightly higher.
Higher than 50% profit margin?
Slightly higher than MasterCard, yes.
Yeah, that's incredible.
50% profit margin.
I mean, that's absolutely unbelievable.
What's the answer to the Walmart question, by the way, that Senator Welch posed to you?
What's Walmart's interchange fee that you negotiate with them?
I don't have it with me today.
You don't have any idea whatsoever?
Is it higher or lower than 2.5%?
Walmart negotiates their rates based on the business that they do with us.
Meaning they're big.
They're really big.
They're gigantic.
So they get a better deal than Mr. Callahan or most small businesses in Missouri.
Is that what you're telling me?
Yes, Senator, we have volume discounts that we offer to some merchants.
I suspect Walmart is one of them.
And I don't believe that it's commercially unreasonable to get an arrangement where, in exchange for more volume, a merchant can qualify for lower rates.
Well, I'm sure it's not commercially unreasonable for Walmart.
Certainly it's in their financial interest and in yours, but I doubt it's in Mr. Callahan's financial interest.
And my question to you, Mr. Callahan, is when you've got Walmart and other major competitors getting charged much less than you are, why in the world would you stick with these guys?
I mean, why is it that small businesses continue to use Visa and MasterCard when you're getting charged so much more?
It's, in my opinion, it's a matter of convenience for the customer, and customers matter to our business.
Maybe is it because that Visa and MasterCard are effectively monopolies?
They control 80% of the market?
Certainly part of the 80% of the market.
I'm just having a hard time understanding, Mr. Sheety and Mr. Patrick.
You have a business model.
You're making over 50% profit margin.
You are able to give the shaft to small businesses.
Estimated cost to Missouri businesses from these fees is $1.5 billion.
That's with a B billion dollars a year, a year.
Why aren't all of these businesses running away from this model?
Because they don't have a choice because you control so much of the market.
This is classic, classic, monopolistic behavior.
And yet, your testimony here today is you don't want any competition.
You have 80% of the market, but you don't want any more competition.
I just, I'm having a hard time finding that position defensible, let alone sympathetic.
I mean, it's unbelievable the amount of money that you're making.
It's unbelievable what you're charging small businesses and consumers.
And yet your testimony is, please, we can't possibly have any competition.
And Brendan, you spoke earlier about where some of the key players in this situation come down.
What's your takeaway in terms of where members of Congress stand on the issue?
Yeah, so we just heard from Senator Hawley, and he's been interested in credit card fee reform or even just credit card reform in general for a long time.
Hawley represents what we sometimes call like the new right among Republicans.
That includes like JD Vance as well, the vice president-elects, Roger Marshall, Senator from Kansas, who is a co-sponsor with Dick Durbin on the Credit Card Competition Act.
I think we're in a moment where the banking sector, the financial services sector kind of underestimated these guys to a certain extent.
Not because like they have a ton of clout, because in the Senate they don't.
They're relatively junior members still.
But these guys have made inroads with President-elect Donald Trump.
I actually, I had someone tell me a while ago that before Donald Trump himself went on the campaign trail and talked about credit card fees and saying, oh, we're actually going to bring down the credit card interest rate to, we're going to have a cap of 10%.
He actually, his campaign reached out to Josh Hawley's office to talk about talking points, to like figure out the best way to message on this issue because Hawley's been leading on it for a little bit.
So I think we're in a moment where banks are a little bit flat-footed as to what the Trump campaign might represent once they come into office.
In general, though, I should say the status quo still definitely benefits banks legally in terms of Congress because there's a really high bar for moving financial services legislation anytime it happens.
And this is a particularly ugly fight.
You're talking about, at the end of the day, I've talked a lot about small businesses, but the people who in the retail sector that are pushing for this are the really big guys, Walmart, Amazon, Target.
Retailers would love to save money on their swipe fees, and they say that they can pass on the cost to consumers.
Banks would tell you there's no guarantee that they would pass along those benefits to consumers.
And more importantly, banks have said, like, look, we use these tidy profit margins to make your payments more secure.
Do you want a big hack of Visa MasterCard?
They also have all these credit card points and bonuses and things like that.
People love their credit card rewards.
And they say if you do big moves in the credit card market, Congress, you'll be taking away people's benefits.
I think there is something to that, but it's clear from members both at this committee hearing and in other places that like something's kind of got to give in this space.
We are talking with Brendan Peterson, financial services reporter for Punch Bowl News, about competition in the credit card market.
If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now.
The lines, they're broken down regionally for this segment.
If you're in the Eastern or Central time zone, 206, I'm sorry, 202-748-8000.
If you're in Mountain Pacific, it's 202-748-8001.
And again, you can also send us a comment or question via text, 202-748-8003.
Brendan, something you mentioned is the Credit Card Competition Act that has been introduced.
It was last year that it was introduced, still being considered, wanted to share some provisions of that.
It would require credit card issuers with assets over $100 billion with a B to enable at least two credit card networks to be used on their credit cards instead of just one, at least one of which must be outside of the top two largest networks.
That's Visa and MasterCard.
It prohibits credit card issuers from imposing certain limitations on routing of electronic transitions, such as through penalties for failure to meet a specific threshold of transactions on a particular payment card network.
That's from Senator Dick Durbin's office.
And one of the things that they were talking about with that act is the apologies, is the impact to consumers.
And how would that affect consumers beyond the potential of losing rewards or points?
It's a great question.
I think it's to a certain extent an open question.
Dick Durbin has done this exactly once before.
There's something in the financial services space called the Durbin Amendment, which was something introduced during the final hours of negotiating Dodd-Frank, actually as an amendment on the floor when Democrats briefly lost control of the floor while they were hammering out the final bids of Dodd-Frank.
And Durbin got this amendment in.
It was like two or three in the morning, I want to say, and it capped the interchange, the swipe fees of debit cards, right?
So what happened after that is debit card rewards, which used to be a thing, did kind of go away.
And the economic effects are kind of ambiguous.
I don't think we've ever gotten, there have been a lot of studies trying to assess what exactly happened with the Durbin Amendment.
There have been some places that I've found that retailers did not pass a lot of those costs on, but it's a kind of a hard thing to measure, right?
And we're also in a different moment right now with credit cards because they represent a much larger share of volume today.
And like we talked about before, the way in which payments happen in this country have changed since the pandemic.
So it's all a little different.
At the end of the day, consumers could save some money if retailers choose to pass along the savings.
We will go to our callers, Rod and Amber Ambler, Pennsylvania.
I don't know if I said that right, Rod.
You are up first.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I have a question about some vendors offer a discount for cash payment and others do not.
For years, some vendors commented it would be against the agreement they have with the credit card company to offer a discount.
So my question now is, is that still the case?
And it's against the basic agreement, or are the people that offer discounts breaking the agreement by doing it?
That's a great question.
I do think it probably depends based on the retailer.
But I've seen those signs too.
I was in upstate New York, like maybe a month ago, and there was a sandwich shop in Wasaic, New York that was very mom-and-pop, and they had a big like taped sign on the counter.
They offered like a 6% cash discount if you paid in cash.
I didn't have any cash, so I did not get that discount, which is again a testament to how money has changed.
But yeah, I mean, you see it all over the place.
It's really not uncommon.
I think a lot of the larger retailers have those sort of agreements that you've built in.
I don't have a lot of information about that specifically, but I think it is a testament to just how serious some of these fees are.
Because I was actually just reading one of the releases from the Electronic Payments Coalition, which is one of these groups that is trying to fight the Durbin-Marshall Credit Corpetition Act.
And they said, like, look, retailers actually do save money when they use credit cards by the convenience.
We process the payments so much more quickly than you can process with cash.
Processing cash takes labor and hours.
And there is like some validity to that.
But when you zoom out at a more macro global level, I think when you have businesses offering 6% cash discounts, it's evidence of a larger problem.
Joe in Iowa.
Good morning, Joe.
Good morning.
Thanks for having this conversation on.
I am a farmer in Iowa.
We have similar things that we see because of our input cost, fertilizer, fuel, and those kinds of things.
But my question to Brendan is, how long has this type of legislation been trying to be formulated to fix the problem if there is in fact a monopoly, which I believe there is?
Also, when Hawley talks, Senator Hawley talks, he has always got to spend somewhere.
And from him, I would imagine he didn't want to create problems to these credit card folks that are in front of you that are getting those billion dollars of fees.
I would imagine that he's probably gotten money for his campaigns from those people that have big money.
So this problem not being solved.
Now, this thing that Durbin's bringing forward, I have read it.
I don't know about it.
So please explain more about exactly what it would solve and why it's not happening and why is it not being grabbed onto?
Because if it stops the monopoly or the big fees for small businesses, why isn't everybody happy about it?
Yeah.
Thank you.
I appreciate the conversation on the subject.
Absolutely.
So I'll say this at the onset.
Visa and MasterCard together own a really big share of the market.
These are separate companies.
It's important to remember.
So it's like people in the space, if they're calling it anything, they usually call it a duopoly.
But there's also a difference in kind here.
Visa owns about 52% market share of credit card payments in the United States.
MasterCard has closer to 22%, which is still significant.
They're still the second largest player in this space.
But there is like a bit of a gap between the two.
And actually, we saw this play out in the Senate Judiciary hearing, which I thought was fascinating.
Linda Kirpatrick, the president of MasterCard, actually made a point in some of her remarks of saying like, look, the Department of Justice has said that we're not an antitrust concern and we're a smaller guy than, you know, this one point.
She didn't actually point at the Visa CEO or his advisor.
But like there is more scrutiny on Visa, but MasterCard has also brought it on by working often in tandem with Visa.
They often raise their prices around the same time, which strikes some people as duopolistic behavior.
Now, to talk about Durbin Marshall, the Credit Card Competition Act, like Tammy said earlier, that was introduced in 2022.
Dick Durbin has been kicking around this idea for a little bit longer.
I'm not as familiar with previous versions of the bill, but I'll just say this.
Right now, in most credit card transactions, merchants have options of who ultimately pays or who processes the transaction, which have different fees.
But most of the time, the credit cards in most cases that are offered in this country, the option is either Visa or MasterCard.
So that's not really much of a choice for the most part, which is why people believe that fee has gotten so high.
What Durbin and Marshall are trying to do is say, okay, we got these two big guys, fine.
We're going to mandate that for credit card operators of a certain, like over $100 billion, like you said, we're going to just make you offer a third choice of payment, one of these smaller companies, which will have lower fees.
The idea being that we'll bring a lot of competition into the market.
I've said before, there's some skepticism around economists about how exactly it would work and how the savings would pass along to customers.
But that's where we're headed.
I think there's a lot, I shouldn't say that that's where we're headed because the obstacles to Durbin Marshall in Congress are basically the same obstacles that exist for any other meaningful piece of legislation.
It doesn't exactly break down along partisan lines.
Like we saw, Dick Durbin and Josh Hawley don't agree on a lot, but they do agree on credit card fees.
In other cases, this is a bill that banks are trying to keep from the floor in general because we've never actually made this particular class of lawmakers choose between the banking industry and the retailing industry.
You have to remember, those are two of the most powerful and oldest lobbies in this country, and they have been throwing billions of dollars.
No, you shouldn't say that.
They've been throwing a lot of money at this as a messaging war, and that's where we are.
And the Credit Card Competition Act, it has been hanging out there for a while.
It's been introduced.
There's only a few weeks left in the current legislative session.
What's the expectation for what could happen between now and then, and what could happen in the future if it doesn't pass?
Great question.
I'll say this.
We're in the lame duck session of Congress right now.
We're having conversations about what legislation might make it into a year-end package.
And the Credit Card Competition Act often gets talked about at this time of year.
I'm still relatively skeptical that it's going to happen.
It's a very controversial piece of legislation.
But I've heard Dick Durbin say that he's going to try to offer it as an amendment.
I believe that amendment will have a 60-vote threshold to even be considered.
And so it's highly unlikely that it will happen.
But it really depends on what Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wants to do in the Senate.
There's an important wrinkle here, which is there's other financial services legislation in the mix, including legislation to regulate crypto, for example.
If there's a relevant bill offered on the floor, financial services, they could, in theory, lower the voting threshold for it to be considered as an amendment due to just Senate procedural rules.
So if we are talking about, for example, crypto at the end of the year, we might also start having a very intense conversation about credit cards.
So we'll keep you posted.
Otherwise, it's probably going to get punted to the next Congress.
Lucas in Pearl City, Hawaii.
Good morning, Lucas.
Hi, good morning, Tammy, Brandon.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
It's early here in Hawaii.
I can't sleep.
One of the things keeping me up at night is, unfortunately, my credit card debt.
Excuse me.
I have about $10,000 on three different cards, all around 27% APR.
I get paid.
I make more than the minimum payments on all of them, but I find myself stuck in a never-ending cycle.
So, for example, I get paid once a month, so I'll put $1,000 on one, $500 on another, $750,000 on another.
But I find myself each month just using the credit cards instead of my income.
And it's a never-ending cycle.
So my question for you this morning is: do you foresee anything?
And this might be wishful thinking on my part and the part of many, many, many Americans who are dealing with the same issue as me, because I know I'm not alone.
Do you foresee any impactful action coming from the incoming administration to help people like me who are stuck in this, not poverty, not bankruptcy, but just stuck in this kind of hamster wheel of credit card debt?
Thank you.
Like I said before, the president-elect Donald Trump on the campaign trail did say that they were going to cap credit card interest rates at 10%.
There's a reason that you may not have heard about that, and it's because there wasn't a lot of hand-wringing in the press about it, even the business press, because there's not a lot of expectation that Trump will make a real meaningful run at that, which would almost certainly take legislation.
Okay.
But let me say this.
We are in a pretty unsettled, uncertain economic moment, especially as far as Democrats are concerned after they got trounced in this election.
It was pretty clear that Dem's economic messaging did not work all that well this time around.
I've been having conversations with lawmakers in the Senate for a while about credit cards in general.
And someone that I talk to a lot is Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is actually now on track to be the next top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee because Sherrod Brown in Ohio, the current chair, got knocked out of his race in Ohio.
Elizabeth Warren is going to be in the minority, but she's very influential in financial policy.
And just this week, she told me and other reporters that she supports a 10% cap on credit card interest rates.
It was a little bit of a troll, I'm going to be honest, because she was saying about Trump, like, he said it on the campaign trail.
I'm so excited to work with him.
I think her exact quote was, I can't believe that Donald Trump would say anything he didn't mean on the campaign trail.
And so, on the one hand, a little bit of a troll, but there's also something happening among progressives in Congress.
Bernie Sanders has also said he wants to work with Trump on a 10% credit card interest rate cap.
That's not to say that it's a serious effort yet, but progressives and I think Democrats in general are thinking about economic issues in a different way.
And credit card debt is a real problem in this country.
It's very, very expensive.
There have been proposals out there for a very long time to introduce some kind of cap.
And for military veterans, there actually is a credit card cap of about 36% for veterans under a Military Lending Act.
Can we apply that to more consumers?
Could we do something even lower?
I think it's certainly possible and something that we are going to be talking about in the weeks and years ahead.
But I think the fact that you have someone like Elizabeth Warren who understands financial policy really, really well, taking it seriously, that is a sea change in how we talk about this.
A question coming in on text from Dave in New York.
Something you touched on earlier.
Please mention the impacts of reward programs on swipe fees.
And this is something that Senator Durbin also brought up during the hearing this week.
That's exactly it.
Yes.
So it's sort of the banking sector's trump card in this fight.
People love their credit card rewards.
They really do.
And they are also a pretty significant part of the economy at this point.
People frequently lean on their credit card rewards to pay for vacations and flights and meals, all sorts of things, right?
It's a pretty meaningful part of how people interact with the economy.
I was listening to a random comedy podcast last night in which they talked, like someone said they would rather have a free, they would rather go to a concert.
Sorry, I'm they would rather retain their credit card points than go to a free concert, right?
Which is such a interesting little like wrinkle in terms of how people talk about this.
Would they go away if Dick Durbin got his way and passed the Credit Card Competition Act?
I think it's fair to assume that they would change because again, credit cards can't offer, like credit cards can't offer these kind of rewards unless they are making bonkers' profits, right?
But those profits are coming at the expense of retailers.
And so like we as a society kind of have to make a decision between one of the two things.
But the potency of the rewards question is a testament to just how incredibly enmeshed rewards are in this economy.
The other thing I'll say is the airline companies are some of the biggest opponents of Credit Card Competition Act right now because airline companies make so much money off of their affiliate relationships with banks and credit cards.
A lot of major airline companies actually make more money through their reward programs with banks and credit cards than they do for flying planes.
There's a joke in this space that airlines are just banks or credit card companies that have planes.
And so it is a fair question and I think it is the one thing that banks have at their backs that has a meaningful connection to consumers.
But we also can't ignore the effect that these fees are having on retailers.
So we'll see.
Jason in Pennsylvania.
Good morning, Jason.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I'm really enjoying this.
Brennan, one question, a little bit of a different angle on the credit card points, talking about a lot of consumers who love their credit card points.
But one of the things I think about, and I'm guilty of this too, of using my points, is when I go to like the American Express Centurion Lounge at the airport or use miles to upgrade to first class or whatever it is, that's a real damaging direct damage, I think, to the poor people who literally have to pay higher credit card fees and it becomes this vicious cycle, right?
Where we have people who don't get these larger points and it's almost benefiting.
It's like a rich get richer, poor get poorer problems.
So like I hear what you're saying about like consumers maybe not liking the fact that these points might go away, but I feel like there's an inherent social problem and social cost beyond just the money that we're seeing with the way points and reward systems have grown so popular in our culture.
Yeah, I think that is a fair point.
I mean, I think in a lot of ways, I keep talking about the pandemic because the pandemic keeps coloring everything, right?
And I think in a lot of ways, the pandemic has sort of forced a reckoning in how we think about equality and money and all these things.
And I think credit cards are like, you know, they're not like at the center of a lot of people's lives in terms of how we think about the economy.
But the fact that there is a war happening in Congress right now over their future, I think it sort of underscores just how significant the stakes are for a lot of people and also the industries that are fighting over it in the first place.
And so, yeah, I think just to reiterate what I said about Liz Warren, progressives are thinking about this in a different way than they have before.
I think people have sort of taken for granted the status quo of how credit cards work in this country and the costs that are imbibed within them.
I think it's important to say, however, that credit cards are oftentimes the only form of credit that folks of a lower social strata have access to.
We talk a lot in this space about access to credit and something as simple as a credit card, being able to front a $400 payment that you don't have right now to pay for a broken down car is the example we always hear about.
That's a real phenomenon.
I mean, we do not necessarily want to lock out the poor from accessing credit at all.
And there are people who genuinely believe that if Durbin got his way, and not just points, right?
But if we had these really significant interventions in the credit card market, the ability for lower income folks or people with bad credit scores to access basic credit instruments would deteriorate, right?
But on the other hand, there are others who would say, look, why do we have banks in the business of exacting 30% interest off of these folks when there's a social need here?
If we need, if we want our society to be able to afford that $400 payment to the car rental or the car repair place, why not have the government do that?
Have you ever heard of postal banking?
Postal banking is this idea that let's let the U.S. Postal Service and all of its locations offer small cost loans.
The government doesn't need to make money off this.
They can sort of offer it as a service, right?
Now, banks despise this idea because the post office is huge and represents a lot of retail competition.
But those are the sort of interventions that we're talking about.
Like, who should be doing this?
Like, do we want credit cards doing this work or should the government?
That is a fair and open question right now.
Jim in Tucker, Georgia.
Good morning, Jim.
Hi.
Good morning, Tammy.
Good morning, Mr. Stevenson?
Peter said.
We'll take it.
So I have three questions.
One is, do you think that with the increasing prevalence of credit card processing, paper money will become a lost art?
Printing paper money will become a lost art by the government.
Second question is, what would these smaller credit card companies look like?
How would that play out?
Third question is regarding customer loyalty programs.
Do you think these points will be in competition with customer loyalty programs?
I used to work at a place where they would give you points if you bought, you get a 1% point, you get one point for every dollar you spent.
And if you, you know, after a while, you could redeem those points at a, and it was just at that retail location.
It wasn't anywhere else.
So those are my three questions.
Cool.
We'll take them one at a time.
I don't think that cash is going away anytime soon.
You know, people like cash.
It is nice.
It's convenient.
PayPal and Venmo and Zelle are also convenient, right?
I've paid for a lot of furniture in the last couple of years with PayPal and Zelle, but there are some things that people will just prefer cash to use on.
I don't see that going away.
I think there's always a little bit of backlash whenever a store tries to tell people like no more cash because again, it does tend to lean on the poorest among us.
There's just not as much, there is more cash usage in that strata.
And so I don't see that going away, but certainly it's changing and we're going to see how that goes.
And your second question, the smaller companies, it's sort of hard to say because there are a number of smaller payments processors out there.
It's sort of hard to know who would leap into the lurch once this bill came through.
Also important to remember, there's a major credit card merger happening right now between Discover Financial and Capital One.
They will overnight become a pretty big credit card player.
I think maybe the biggest if this deal goes through, which has not been approved yet.
So it's kind of hard to generalize about how this all would shake out until we know what that merger looks like.
Last question, customer loyalty.
I think it's a fair question.
I think customer loyalty tends to be so localized, and the fact that credit card reward points tend to be more, I don't know, they're a little bit like easier to use generally for different things, like chase travel or whatever, that it's kind of hard for me to say.
I don't think customer loyalty points would be affected by this legislation.
We have just a few minutes left with our guest, Brendan Peterson, talking about competition in the credit card market.
It was the topic of a hearing, a Senate hearing this week.
You can find the hearing online at c-span.org.
Up next, Gilbert in Birmingham, Alabama.
Good morning, Gilbert.
Yes, good morning to the guests and C-SPAN audience.
I like to echo the sentiment from the guy from Hawaii.
But on another note, this credit card interest reduction act that Senator Harlow has proposed and the president talking about reducing the interest rate on credit cards.
You know, the American taxpayers and voters bailed out these big mega banks back during the financial crisis.
But what do we get?
Usury and highway robbery.
These interest rates from 22 to 36% is no less than a threat to the national economy.
And they given all the American public needs relief.
And I'm not so naive to think that there can't be bipartisan legislation passed in Congress and that they wouldn't do this for the American people.
Without this, these banks go public and our economy down.
Do you support the Credit Card Reduction Interest Rate Act as an amendment to the Truth in Lending Act?
That doesn't that sound pretty good to you.
You know, it's good to think about the swipe fees, but it's the absorbing interest rates that's killing the American public.
Yeah, I think it's a fair question, honestly.
And we're going to see how the next few years shake out.
I've said this for a number of years now.
I think like the last 15 or so years of like financial services news, lobbying, policy regulation have all revolved around like the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009.
The Dodd-Frank Act made a lot of changes, and we've sort of been fighting about the applications of that ever since.
I think we're entering a new era.
I've been saying this for a while.
It's sort of uncertain what the fault lines and the battle lines are going to be.
As a rule, though, I will say it's really rare to get financial services legislation done in this Congress and in general outside of a crisis of some kind.
And so like the, you know, retailers being squeezed by swipe fees or consumers being squeezed by debt, those are like problems, absolutely, but they're like slow burn crises, right?
It takes like these dramatic intervention, not interventions, dramatic episodes to really draw that lawmaker attention, get them to lock in and do anything about anything.
And then it also requires sort of concerted pressure to get any legislation along the finish line.
We've seen the pressure.
Retailers want this.
Banks are, I think, getting a little nervous about this.
But I think it will take a bit more dramatic of a something to get us to a point where we're going to be thinking about this more sincerely.
And that is unfortunately just how Congress works.
Keith in Peterstown, West Virginia.
Good morning, Keith.
Yes, I was just calling in.
Thank you for taking my call.
I was just calling in, as former business owners, we were in the building supply business, and our credit card fees were, as a business, were 3.5% or a 4%.
And so you get folks coming in paying with a credit card after they have beat you down on the price of something that you're not making much on anyway, and then they whip out a card.
And so you see, uh-oh, there goes 3.5% or 4% of that.
And so we had enacted a convenience fee, basically trying to cover some of our cost.
And we noticed things after the COVID, as you say, a lot of young people don't carry cash, so you're automatically hooding the bill.
So I would just pass that along as a business owner.
I mean, you can't absorb so much cost.
So I thank you for taking my comment.
Yeah, I mean, you hear these stories a lot.
And that's not to say that these anecdotes are perfectly flattenable across the United States.
But suffice to say, you hear these stories a lot.
People see those convenience fees.
And this kind of dovetails into something the Biden administration has been fighting in a different arena, but related is this like crusade against junk fees, you know, which takes on a lot of different forms.
That's something that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been working on.
That's something that the Federal Trade Commission has been working on under Lena Kahn.
And so, like, they want to make it harder for businesses to charge like random fees at the end of transactions.
But in your case, as you said, like a convenience fee might not be so junky, right?
That might be a way of you trying to protect your bottom line or just make this business work when you're being squeezed from a bunch of different angles.
So, it kind of gets into just how hard some of these market interventions are when it comes to lowering costs.
The government can do a lot, but like there are always weird downstream consequences.
And so, we just have to sort of go in with our eyes open and hope for the best.
Time for one last call, Rick in Salina, Texas.
Good morning, Rick.
Yeah, I was calling, first off, with the credit cards.
In the old days, the kind of interest they charge, they basically called that loan shark.
So, it just amazes me they charge this much.
But, me, I take advantage of the credit card system with the 0% interest.
I've been doing it for 30 years.
I'll get a credit card for zero, I'll use it.
In the last six months, I get another card at zero and I pay that off.
So, to be honest, I take advantage of the system.
I've been, like I said, for 30 years, I buy stuff on 0% interest, but I have my card paid off by the time the interest kicks in.
But when I look at the interest rate people paying, it's like, you know, in the old days, you go to a mofficer, they charge that kind of interest.
It was, you know, called loan sharking.
But, like I said, there is an advantage.
The loophole is the 0% interest, and you can take advantage of it as long as your card's paid off.
And I do it consistently, but I got a good line of credit.
I think my credit score is like 858 or something.
But anyway, that's it.
I can appreciate that.
I think there's always ways to wiggle around on the margins here.
And again, like there's a lot of people who can use credit card balances responsibly, right?
And that's one of the arguments you hear from industry a lot: look, why are we penalizing the many, many people who use their credit card balances, who get those points, who cash them to go to Boca Raton or whatever?
And look, fees, interest rates, that's banks' way of trying to make sure that people are paying.
You have to remember that credit cards are unsecured lines of credit.
These are, you're not like putting up a bunch of collateral like your house to get that credit card.
So the bank is taking on a certain amount of interest and yes, or sorry, a certain amount of risk.
And those higher rates are sometimes a reflection of those higher risks.
But again, when you're talking about, you know, over 30% interest, which is not common, but it's not unusual or it's not unheard of.
That is what some people, including Bernie Sanders, would call usury.
And it's gotten their attention.
Our guest, Brendan Peterson, he's a financial services reporter for Punch Bowl News.
You can find his work online at punchbullnews.com.
Brendan, thank you so much for being with us.
Thank you.
Next, we will be joined by Joel Berg of Hunger Free America.
He's going to break down his organization's annual survey on hunger in the U.S. and discuss why food insecurity is rising.
We'll be right back.
All weekend, Book TV brings you live to the Miami Book Fair.
Highlights include Stacey Abrams, author of the children's book, Stacy Speaks Up, Kara Swisher, and her book, Burn Book, Malcolm Gladwell with Revenge of the Tipping Point, and an author roundtable featuring Dave Barry, Mitch Album, and Stephen King.
Astrophysicist Mario Liddio explains the search for life outside of Earth in his book, Is Earth Exceptional?
And then on afterwards.
Stephanie Gorton shares her book, The Icon and the Idealist, which looks at the lives of rivalry between two key figures in the early movement for birth control and reproductive rights.
She's interviewed by UC Davis School of Law professor Mary Ziegler.
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.
Talmadge Boston considers himself a full-time lawyer and a full-time historian.
His latest book is called How the Best Did It: Leadership Lessons from Our Top Presidents.
He chose the first four of eight off the face of Mount Rushmore: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
In addition, Mr. Boston chose 24 distinct leadership traits he says were exhibited by these presidents.
The other four presidents, by the way, included in his best leadership category, are FDR, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.
71-year-old Talmage Boston lives in Dallas, Texas.
Lawyer and historian Talmage Boston with his book, How the Best Did It: Leadership Lessons for Our Top Presidents.
On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts.
The house will be in order.
This year, C-SPAN celebrates 45 years of covering Congress like no other.
Since 1979, we've been your primary source for Capitol Hill, providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government, taking you to where the policy is debated and decided, all with the support of America's cable companies.
C-SPAN, 45 years in counting, powered by cable.
Washington Journal continues.
Joining us now to discuss food insecurity in the U.S. is Joel Berg.
He is the CEO of Hunger Free America.
Joel, welcome to the program.
Good morning.
Thank you for joining us.
Can you start by telling us about your organization, the mission, and who you work with?
Hunger Free America is a nonpartisan national nonprofit organization that works to enact the programs and policies necessary not just to ameliorate the problem, but to end hunger in America once and for all.
Our motto is, ending hunger lifts us all, because ending hunger would lift us spiritually, ethically as a nation, but would also dramatically help our economy because hungry workers are more economically productive.
Hungry students do less well in school.
I'm sorry, less hungry workers, well-nourished workers are more economically productive.
Nurse students do better in school.
To be schooled, you must be fueled.
To be well-read, you must be well-fed.
So we run the National Hunger Hotline on behalf of USDA.
Any American can call us at 1-866-3-Hungry, 1-866-3-Hungry to get help, to be connected with a private or government source of food.
We help people access government assistance programs like SNAP, WIC, and school meals.
We better utilize volunteers in the fight against hunger using their professional skills to make a bigger impact.
We have an AmeriCorps VISTA program that's basically a domestic peace corps, helping organizations around the country build their capacities to fight hunger.
We have a new workforce development program funded generously by the Albertsons Company's foundations to help people access jobs and social services so they have a better living, so they don't need food support for the long term.
And finally, we are an advocacy organization and a policy organization because ultimately the way to end hunger in America is ensure that we have economic opportunity for all and people have a living wage and can afford the cost of living and food.
Anyone who wants more information can go to our website at hungerfreeamerica.org.
And Joel, you have a new report coming out and you'll hear the phrase food insecure.
Explain what that means and how many people fall under that category.
Food insecure is a totally wonkish term coined by the federal government.
I could never even explain it to my late mother what it meant, but in pure English, it means people struggling against hunger.
It means people choosing between food and medicine and rent.
It means people rationing food.
It means parents going without food to feed their children.
It means people buying less healthy food because it's more affordable than healthier food.
So we generally don't have starvation in the United States, like you might see in the Sudan or parts of Central America with people literally dying in the streets.
We used to have that in the Depression and before we had a safety net, but the level of hunger we do have in the United States is appalling for a nation with this much economic wealth and this much agricultural abundance.
And so according to USGA, the number of Americans living in food insecure households, and we crunch these numbers ourselves based on raw data, increased from 34 million in 2021 to 47 million in 2023.
That's a 40% hike.
We can go into why that is, we believe.
There's a different way of the federal government counting hunger.
And the Census Bureau just plainly asked, do you have enough food?
And between 2021 and 2024, there's a 55% increase in the number of Americans who just didn't have enough food.
So whether you measure whether they have enough food or whether you have food insecure households, you can see a really sharp rise in hunger over the last few years in America.
And just to put this in perspective, what does 47 million food insecure Americans even mean?
That's more than the combined total populations of the states of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, and Virginia.
So unfortunately, we are suffering a food insecurity crisis in the nation.
And Joel, your organization will be releasing its annual report next week.
Your office shared some of the new numbers from it, and it found that Americans who didn't have enough to eat over two one-week periods increased by more than 55% between August, September, August, and September of 2021 and August and September of this year.
You touched on it.
What are some of the factors for that increase, that sharp increase?
Let me say, many Americans sort of assume that if you're hungry, you're homeless.
And their mental picture of who is hungry in America is the person with the sign, I will work for food by the highway off-ramp, or if you're in a city, someone panhandling on a subway or by a street corner.
But 90, 95% of the people in America who aren't hungry or food insecure aren't homeless.
They just don't earn enough to feed their families.
Today in America, one in six children, one in 10 employed adults, and one in 12 older Americans struggled against hunger in 2021 to 2023.
Really, one in five U.S. children.
So the stereotypes of who's hungry are really a misperception by most Americans.
We think the cause of the increasing hunger is a number of factors.
First and foremost, the expiration of pandemic era benefits.
There was a sharp increase in cash going to low and middle income Americans through the child tax credit.
That expanded child tax credit was ended.
There was a expansion of the SNAP program that used to be called the Food Stamps Program.
That expansion ended.
There were universal school meals that particularly helped rural and suburban communities, and those universal school meals ended.
And when you combine that with the cost of inflation, not just food inflation, but housing inflation, healthcare inflation, as your last guest was talking about, credit card fees, that all adds to an affordability crisis in America.
And the growing hunger in America isn't just this little niche issue.
It's really a marker of the decline of the middle class more broadly.
We're talking tens of millions of Americans.
And beyond the people struggling to put food on the table, we have countless Americans who can no longer afford a down payment on a first home, can no longer afford to start a small business, can no longer afford to save for retirement, can no longer afford to send their kids to higher education.
So hunger and food insecurity are really the canaries in the hall mine that really help us understand a broader problem with the U.S. economy and our social services and a broader decline of what was the strong American middle class.
We are talking with Joel Berg.
He's CEO of Hunger Free America.
If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now.
The lines for this segment, they are regional.
So if you are in the Eastern or Central time zone, it's 202-748-8000.
Mountain Pacific's 202-748-8001.
And if you are experiencing food insecurity, there's a line for you.
It's 202-748-8002.
And a reminder, you can also send us text messages at 202-748-8003.
Joel, something that you mentioned, the number of children who are considered hungry, food insecure in the U.S., this headline from the Ohio Capital Journal, majority of Ohians are in favor of universal free school meal programs, according to a poll.
You mentioned that they were, some of them were put in place and are no longer because the pandemic has ended.
But how could programs like that, universal school lunches, impact food insecurity?
Well, let me say first, hunger used to be a bipartisan issue, and we desperately need it to become a bipartisan issue again.
People like Richard Nixon, the late, great Senator Bob Dole, and Thad Cochran, a conservative Republican from Mississippi, all were great champions of anti-hunger programs.
And we need to go back to a time when all parties embrace a robust set of programs to end hunger in America.
When Thad Cochran was head of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee, he said that he believed that enacting universal school meals would actually save the federal government money over time because you'd eliminate this massive paperwork that teachers need to collect, that schools need to collect, that school districts need to collect, that state education departments need to collect, and then USDA needs to collect.
And I point out, we have many universal programs in public schools.
I grew up in a suburb of New York City and frankly played pretty mediocre JV soccer.
I was better on the debate team than I was on the soccer team.
But my school district gave me a free jersey.
Many students get a free ride to school on a school bus.
Many get free use of lab equipment, get free use of textbooks.
And arguably, nutritious breakfasts and lunches are more important part of the educational experience, more important to ensuring educational excellence than all those other things are.
So it makes good anti-hunger sense.
It makes good educational sense.
And that's why a number of states have moved to universal school meals.
That's why we have the community eligibility provision in federal law that makes it easier for states to enact and counties and school districts and cities to enact universal school meals.
We are concerned because Project 2025 did propose cutting back free school meals for kids.
We hope the new Republican Congress and the new Trump administration does not embrace that proposal.
It would be extraordinarily counterproductive.
Free school meals are one of the most cost-effective ways we can improve public education and really reduce child's hunger in America.
Now, they're not an end-all because schools are only in session generally 180 days out of the year.
And even if you have a breakfast and a lunch at school, a child would still get at least two-thirds of their meals at home.
And that's why we need other child nutrition programs to be robust, like SNAP, that used to be called food stamps, WIC for pregnant women and children under five.
And that's why we need higher wages across America.
Most importantly, so people can move beyond relying on these programs to be able to support their own families with the wages they earn.
We have callers waiting to talk with you.
We'll start with James Akron, Ohio.
Good morning, James.
It's a lot to understand with this.
You were talking about seniors, the majority of the seniors.
In other words, the income that you get at their own Social Security, they're already at the poverty level and in most cases, not eligible for food stamps.
And that concerns me that we look at the United States out of the 38 industrialized countries, we're number 38 as far as taking care of our seniors on their Social Security or whatever type of income.
And then I look at health care.
We're also number 38.
We're at the bottom of everything in most wealthiest countries, supposedly.
But our seniors are really, really getting screwed around.
And we just had a vote, and we voted for the very people that are against seniors, keeping seniors hungry, keeping the middle class down.
We just had a vote.
So evidently, the country accepts this.
Mississippi, one of the poorest states of all, they voted totally against it.
I just don't understand it.
Maybe you can explain to me why do people continue to want everybody else to suffer?
Thank you.
Well, Hunger Free America is studiously a nonpartisan organization, so we don't take sides in elections.
That being said, I think a lot of people, even in poverty, were frustrated by the lack of progress on these issues.
Right or wrong, they thought the Democrats were the incumbents.
They weren't necessarily aware of the nuances of public policy, of what the Democrats may have done to improve the situation and how the other side conservatives may have called for cutting these programs.
So people voted for change.
It is true, the hungriest states in the United States, the most food insecure states in the United States, are Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
Those are all red states.
And we hope that the elected officials representing those states understand just how much their constituencies need these programs.
Now, you mentioned seniors.
And obviously, as an anti-hunger advocate, I think it's unacceptable that anyone in America ever goes hungry.
But the fact that millions of seniors can't afford enough food, the people who fought our wars, the people who built our economy, the people who raised our children, now in the golden years that older Americans can't afford enough food, that's appalling.
Now, I will say, senior hunger is actually at a smaller percentage than child hunger.
Why?
Because we still do have Social Security benefits.
We still do have Medicaid and Medicare benefits, and those have dramatically reduced senior poverty.
But it's still appalling that we do have this level of senior hunger in America.
Now, I will say, sir, you said that seniors aren't eligible for food stamps generally.
That's not exactly true.
And food stamps are now called the SNAP program.
In fact, older Americans are one of the populations in America most likely to be eligible for SNAP food stamps, but not getting them.
So again, if any people have any questions about whether they may be eligible, they can call the National Hunger Hotline at 1-863-Hungry, 1-8663-Hungry, or go to our website at hungerfreeamerica.org, and we'll provide you the help you'll need.
And, you know, an unfortunate number of older Americans now are raising grandchildren.
And that's a whole nother issue.
The parents may have died.
The parents may be incarcerated.
Parents may suffer from mental illness or occasionally substance abuse.
That's relatively rare.
But a fair amount of children in America are being raised by grandparents.
And those grandparents can often get snapped, not only for themselves, but for their grandchildren.
So I urge them to go to their county or state social service office or call our hotline.
Shabeem in Woodbridge, Virginia.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How are you?
We're doing well.
Good.
I have a question because my question is, America is one of the wealthiest countries on the face of the earth.
I'm from Africa originally.
I migrated here almost 25 years ago.
I have never imagined in America there is a poor, homeless, and some people on the street.
America spends a lot of money overseas for so many other worst things like in this year only the appropriators in Senate and House appropriate almost $190 billion for foreign, but they don't spend a penny or they argue for the money which is spending domestically for the poor, the needy, the homeless.
Why the politicians always lie and they come up for us to vote for them, but the next day they vote something else which is not worth for American population.
I don't understand why in America even one person is hungry for food.
We spend $100 billion a year for something else.
Thank you very much.
That's a great question, Caller.
I think it's important to differentiate between food and development aid to the rest of the World and military aid.
The vast majority of our funding overseas is military aid.
And the amount of American tax dollars that go to foreign food aid is pretty darn small.
And as a domestic anti-hunger advocate, I would say we have more than enough money to join with the rest of the developed world to end hunger worldwide and end hunger in the United States.
By cutting corporate welfare here in the United States, by making sure everyone pays their fair share of taxes, by cutting truly unnecessary government programs to fund really vital programs like food support, we can indeed ensure that there's enough support to feed all Americans and do our part to make sure the world doesn't go hungry.
And I will just say, occasionally, when we give weapons to either what we call at the time freedom fighters or allies, even if they're undemocratic allies overseas, sometimes those weapons are eventually used against the United States.
But never in all of American history has our food aid, to my knowledge, ever been used against the United States.
So my view is we have enough resources to help feed the world, which also is great for American farmers and food companies, and to make sure no American goes hungry.
Joel, something you mentioned earlier is inflation as one of the reasons the number of people who are food insecure has increased.
I wanted to show you this headline.
Last week from NerdWallet, food prices rose 28% in five years.
How exactly does that do those two connect?
And what can be done to help those who have, as the caller mentioned earlier, maybe a limited budget?
So I'd say a few things.
Number one is we absolutely need to deal with inflation.
It is true that it's an international problem.
Virtually all Western developed democracies have been suffering from inflation, some far more extreme rates of inflation than the United States.
And incumbent parties in many of those nations have suffered electoral defeats or setbacks because of this inflation.
And sometimes there's been too much economic happy talk in America.
Oh, you know, the GDP is going up.
Well, people can't eat the GDP.
And the bottom line is we have to, in ensuring, number one, that there's a reduction on price gouging.
There is a lot of consolidation in the food industry, and there's a long economic debate how much of the increase in prices is based on price gouging versus other factors.
I think it's a combination of factors, but we do need to deal with companies who might be unfairly raising prices.
And we need to make sure there are ways that these companies can be more competitive, and particularly by helping small and medium-sized farmers grow healthier food and changing the way we subsidize food in America could eventually make healthier food more affordable because that's a real problem in America.
And assuming RFK Jr. is confirmed as HHS secretary, I do hope he follows the lead of his late great father, the great Robert Kennedy Sr., who was one of the great champions of anti-hunger programs in all American history.
So I hope RFK Jr. champions the safety nets, but also works with USGA to reduce USGA corporate welfare, going to produce very unhealthy food.
We spend a lot of money producing corn syrup and animal feed.
And I'm certainly a carnivore myself, so I'm not saying we should eliminate meat consumption in America, but we need to balance that with subsidies for fruits and vegetables.
And if we make sure that American fruit and vegetable producers and people who own orchards and produce nuts are able to survive economically, they can reduce prices for those healthier foods.
And we also need to increase the food processing capabilities regionally.
A lot of food grown in the Northeast, for instance, is transported to the Midwest to be processed and then sent back.
Not only does that increase prices, that increases the carbon footprint.
We saw during the pandemic, there was a lot of food waste on the farm, on dairies.
We were actually dumping out milk when Americans were going hungry.
So I think another solution is smart government private industry partnerships to increase regional food processing so there's less transportation costs, less cost for the farmer, the rancher, the producer, and easier to get to middle and low-income Americans.
Sylvia and Virginia.
Good morning, Sylvia.
Yes, good morning.
When Michelle Obama, when the Obamas were in the administration, she made sure that the children had salads at school, beautiful buffets, and they were, they said they were dumping it.
I didn't see that when I was volunteering in the school.
They would eat the salads.
And then the Trump administration came in and got rid of all that, and the food isn't worth two cents.
How do you see it coming back to where we're having garden foods in the schools again?
Thank you.
Great, great question.
There were significant improvements during the Obama administration on healthy school foods, and significant numbers of Republicans in Congress supported that.
I would say that the Trump administration, the first Trump administration, did make some marginal changes in the food requirements for schools.
But in general, most of them were actually maintained.
And most of the improvements in the Obama administration were maintained in a nonpartisan, bipartisan manner.
It is very difficult for schools to serve meals that are both healthy and the kids will eat.
The truth is, some in the food industry exaggerated.
Some in the junk food industry exaggerated how much food waste the healthier meals resulted in.
But it's also true I have seen for my own self food waste in school meals, and it's really tough for these big school districts, particularly to create school meals that are both healthy and the kids will eat.
New York City public schools alone serve close to a million meals per day, more meals than any entity in America other than the Pentagon.
And so this is a challenge.
We do need adequate school meals reimbursements.
And I would say, you know, the National School Lunch Program was started by conservatives in Congress originally as a defense program because our young men at the time after World War II were too malnourished to fight.
So I hope there's strong conservative and progressive support to strengthen school meals to make sure there's adequate reimbursement for school districts to make sure they're universal so we can serve healthy and tasty meals that kids will actually eat.
Because the truth of the matter is providing healthy foods to kids and Americans overall will dramatically boost the health of Americans.
And not only is that the right thing to do morally, it would significantly decrease health care spending over time, would increase life expectancy.
So healthier school meals for all, healthier meals for all is just smart economics.
Liz in New Jersey.
Good morning, Liz.
Good morning.
I believe that the crisis with food costs, but also the low wages that have been paid since basically the administration of Ronald Reagan, Reaganomics.
It's made it difficult for people earning low wages to keep a roof over their head and food in their household.
I'm a retired teacher and I think that one of the best programs we have for children is the free lunch and the free breakfast programs where they exist.
But all the record keeping that goes into that, we could feed all the children and not lose any money in this arrangement.
And for people living in New Jersey, if you believe in that, there is a bill floating around the state house somewhere that proposes free lunch and free breakfast for all New Jersey school children.
I think the elderly are another issue that is going to be a problem because we did away with the idea of a defined benefit pension.
So more of them are retiring in poverty.
We have a system set up for married couples to retire.
But like myself and millions of others, most of us in the baby doom generation are going to be retiring often alone with one set of Social Security.
So I don't think America has prepared adequately for either situation.
Thank you.
I agree, Caller.
The fact that children are going hungry and older Americans are going hungry is unacceptable.
Let me say this about the politics of the situation.
Some people say hunger isn't a political issue.
And I say, well, the truth is it has become a political issue.
It shouldn't be a political issue.
And again, Hunger Free America is an entirely nonpartisan organization by law and practice.
We work collaboratively with people on any side who are going to advance policies that reduce hunger or address the root causes of poverty and lack of economic opportunity that increase hunger.
We also, on the other hand, do hold elected officials accountable when they seek to cut these programs that would increase poverty, increase, and hunger.
In recent years, we've criticized both Republicans in Washington who've sought to cut these programs, and we've criticized Democrats who have cut these programs as well.
And so going forward, we hope, we hope the new administration will do something positively about these issues.
President-elect Trump won more votes from low-income people than previous Republican candidates for president have in recent decades.
So I hope he honors that and helps those populations advance economically and reduce their hunger.
But if he doesn't, and if the new Congress doesn't, we will hold them accountable as well.
And let me just also say, you know, what we really need is broader economic opportunity in the long run, not just more redistribution of programs, but helping people enter and stay in the middle class.
The biggest difference between people in poverty and not in poverty isn't income.
It's wealth.
Wealthier people, upper middle class people own things and earn interest or accumulate assets in their homes.
Low-income people owe debt and pay interest.
So, if we really want to reduce hunger in the long term, we need a broad bipartisan commitment to what I call an assets empowerment agenda to help people move from owing to owning, to help low-income people enter the middle class by buying the first home, by starting a small business, by saving for retirement, by putting money away to help their kids go to college.
And again, these are, I'm not naive.
I've been in and around this work for many decades now.
I'm not naive about our divided political system.
But for goodness sakes, if we can agree on one thing, if the one thing that ultra-liberal George McGovern and the Senate agreed on with ultra-conserv Bob Dole, it was the need to fight hunger in America.
I'm hoping we can go back to that time in the next few years and have a serious national commitment to address this problem.
Yes, we need more donations to charities, and I'd be remiss in my role as also the chief fundraiser for my organization.
If I'd encourage anyone watching who can afford to do so to go to hungerfreeamerica.org and donate to us.
That's hungerfreeamerica.org.
You can also volunteer at that website where you can find food help if you need food help.
That being said, and I greatly appreciate every penny anyone can donate to us.
The real answer to this problem is ensuring that our economy works and our social programs work.
Kurt in Mount Union, Pennsylvania, calling on the line for food insecure.
Good morning, Kurt.
Yes, good morning.
I'd like to address Mr. Berg.
I feel that his political bias somewhat blinds him to being hunger-free America.
He wants to be in charge, or whoever he represents, wants to be in charge of the choices that somebody that's hungry is going to make.
If somebody's hungry, you should make all choices available to them, not worry about them, worry about whether it's healthy or whatever.
If they're hungry, they need to eat.
So, what is your true drive, your true political bias, which I can see?
Well, that's a great question, sir.
And perhaps I gave you the false impression.
We adamantly, fervently, forcefully oppose any attempts to micromanage what low-income people eat.
There have been various proposals over the years to say that if you get this program or that program, you can't get this food or that food.
We forcefully oppose that.
We do think families themselves are the ones best able to make those decisions for themselves.
Now, we just do support healthier school meals because that's children and the parents don't get a choice over that.
But for adults and for adults buying for their families, we strongly support choice and strongly oppose the imposition of restrictions on what people eat.
That being said, when we ask the people who we represent, when we ask low-income people, well, do you think we should focus on just ending hunger or do you think we should focus on making healthier food more available?
Low-income people tell us overwhelmingly they want both.
They want more adequate food and they want more healthier food.
We know to paraphrase Field of Dreams: if you build it, they will come.
If you make healthier food affordable and available and convenient, low-income people will voluntarily consume more healthy food.
So, we don't want to force anyone to do anything, but we want to give people the freedom to be able to afford the healthier food they want and need.
Gail in North Carolina.
Good morning, Gail.
Good morning.
I'm originally from upstate New York, but I've been living in the South for the past 30 years in Southern Virginia and in North Carolina.
And right now I'm near, I live near to Appalachia.
And I know for a fact that the kids that are in school, sometimes that's their only food that they get, especially in Southern Virginia.
And so I had heard that there were programs that did some kind of provision of food for children on the weekends when there wasn't school because their parents, you know, just didn't have the resources.
And I would like to know more about those programs and whether they exist and whether they're a practical thing to do.
Well, thank you for that question.
And I hope any policymakers watching now or maybe watching videos of this later, if they don't happen to be watching C-SPAN on an early Saturday morning, if they hear nothing I've said, I hope they really focus on these callers.
As you know, C-SPAN callers are independents, Republicans, and Democrats.
And it's just startling how many people across the board from throughout the country tell stories of how in their local communities there is this problem.
Sometimes there are people who want to deny that hunger in America even exists.
And having quoted Field of Dreams, I'll now quote Chico Marx.
Who are you going to believe?
Me or your own eyes?
So the truth is, all the callers really demonstrate the validity of our report that shows soaring hunger nationwide.
Now, weekend meals are a challenge.
We have seen some programs where schools provide extra meals for kids to bring home.
Sometimes they're called back pack programs, and those are better than nothing, but those are sometimes pretty inefficient ways to provide meals to the kids.
So we think a more effective way is to raise SNAP benefits, raise WIC benefits, and raise wages so that families have other means of getting meals over weekends and nights and vacations for kids.
I will say, in the northern part of the United States, there are snow days.
And the only kids in America who vote against snow days are hungry kids because they know they will be missing what's often their only true meal of the day, their school lunch.
David in Louisville, Kentucky.
Good morning, David.
Hey, good morning.
I think your guest is kind of leans Democratic than he leans neutral on all of this because he brings up points like you brought up Project 2025 again, which Trump has denied.
So there is no Project 2025, but you guys keep on spending it.
Then he talks about the billionaires or the corporations not paying their fair share, which they actually do.
That's a Democratic talking point because if you go look up Elon Musk, he paid like over $15 billion in taxes.
You go look them all up, which I have, and they all do pay their fair share in taxes.
That money that school, that kids eat in the school, or even people on low income and not eating, you might want to check with people that are on welfare that are receiving food stamps or they're receiving money from the government and what they're actually doing with that money that they're getting from the taxpayers because it's not being spent.
A lot of it's not being spent on what it should be spent on because they're trading their food stamps in for cash or they're trading them for drugs or they're all monopoly.
And everywhere I go today and I use my debit card, you want to donate, you want to donate, you want to donate, you want to donate, but you still see commercials for the same people on TV that are asking for donations where you go to swipe your cart for donations.
And it's like, where's all this money actually going?
And then you had companies over the years like feed the children or feed this or feed that.
It's like, this is like an ongoing thing that just never stops and never stops and never stops.
I think that someone's laying their pockets or they're making a lot of money off of this and they're scamming the people instead of the money going where it should go.
And California right now can't find where $28 billion in California went.
They don't have no clue where the money went.
They have no paper trial.
They have nothing.
All they know is there's $28 billion that was spent and they don't even know where it went.
All right, David, we'll get a response from our guest.
Well, I thank you for that.
I always love people who challenge me.
In terms of how Hunger-Free America spends our money, we transparently post our independent audits and our tax forms online.
And you can see my salary and you can see that I earn adjusted for inflation about 30% less than when I left the federal government 24 years ago.
So we practice what we preach and are very frugal with leadership salaries to make sure our money goes into fighting hunger.
Number one.
Number two, I have mentioned Project 2025.
And the truth is that Donald Trump, President-elect Trump, has appointed a number of the architects of Project 2025 to high roles in his administration.
So I've said it is an open book of whether the Trump administration pursues those policies.
And I hope they don't.
And if they don't, and if they support a robust safety net and they support higher wages for low-income people, we will support them wholeheartedly.
We have a Republican on our board of directors who was the Under Secretary of Agriculture, Eric Boss, during the George W. Bush's administration.
So we will work with anyone who is trying to fight this problem.
And I would say in terms of the SNAP program, what people call the food stamps program, according to the independent office of inspector general of USDA, the fraud rate in that program is about 1%.
Now that's 1% too much.
But compare that to Pentagon spending, compare that to fraud in some large businesses or other entities.
And you'll see fraud in the federal nutrition assistance programs is really, really, really small.
Again, it needs to be reduced, and we support reducing it.
And lastly, in terms of taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans, just a few facts.
When Dwight D. Eisenhower, a World War II hero and a Republican, was president of the United States, the top marginal tax rate on the wealthiest was more than 90%.
Now it's 37%, and many of the wealthiest use loopholes to get away with not paying even their 37%.
So I'm not saying that taxes should be over 90% again, but I am saying I think it's just a factual matter that we have, in terms of the last 100 years, or at least 80 years, the lowest level of taxation on the wealthiest that we have ever had.
We have time for one last call.
Robin in Dallas, Texas.
Good morning, Robin.
Good morning.
Yes, I just wanted to ask Mr. Burke, how come all the processed food is GMO?
It's not healthy for the kids.
It's not healthy for adults.
But you go to the store and all that food is genetically modified organisms.
It's not healthy food.
It causes ulcers and all kinds of tumors.
And I want to know why you don't go to all natural and you don't fight for that.
And that's all I got to say.
Thank you for the call.
We fight for the right of everyone to have enough money and to have enough benefits to buy whatever food they want, whether it has GMOs or non-GMOs, whether it's organic or non-organic.
That being said, having said some things here that perhaps some conservatives disagreed with, I'll say something that perhaps some progressives disagree with, and that's that there's no proof that GMOs are actually bad for human health.
They are probably bad for small farmers worldwide.
They may be bad for the environment, but there's been no serious scientific evidence that GMOs are bad for human health.
So I think people should have the choice.
They should have the knowledge of which foods are healthy and which foods are unhealthy.
And they should have enough benefits and most importantly, enough in wages to be able to choose which foods they want for their own families.
Our guest, Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, you can find the organization online at hungerfreeamerica.org.
And that's all the information that Joel was talking about today, including the USDA National Hunger Hotline information on that website.
Joel, thank you so much for being with us today.
Thank you so much.
And for all your viewers tired of the news, just turn on C-SPAN and you'll see reality.
We appreciate that.
Up next, we are wrapping up the show with more of your calls during open form.
You can start calling in now.
Here are those lines.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
We'll be right back.
Attention middle and high school students across America.
It's time to make your voice heard.
C-SPAN Student Cam Documentary Contest 2025 is here.
This is your chance to create a documentary that can inspire change, raise awareness, and make an impact.
Your documentary should answer this year's question, your message to the president.
What issue is most important to you or your community?
Whether you're passionate about politics, the environment, or community stories, StudentCam is your platform to share your message with the world.
With $100,000 in prizes, including a grand prize of $5,000, this is your opportunity not only to make an impact, but also be rewarded for your creativity and hard work.
Enter your submissions today.
Scan the code or visit studentcam.org for all the details on how to enter.
The deadline is January 20th, 2025.
All weekend, Book TV will be live with the Miami Book Fair.
Coverage begins at 10 a.m. Eastern on Saturday and 11 a.m. Eastern on Sunday.
Highlights include Stacey Abrams, author of the children's book, Stacy Speaks Up, Kara Swisher and her book, Burn Book, Malcolm Gladwell with Revenge of the Tipping Point, and an author roundtable featuring Dave Barry, Mitch Album, and Stephen King.
And at 8 p.m. Eastern, astrophysicist Mario Lithio explains the search for life outside of Earth in his book, Is Earth Exceptional?
Then at 10 p.m. Eastern on Afterwards, Stephanie Gorton shares her book, The Icon and the Idealist, which looks at the lives and rivalry between two key figures in the early movement for birth control and reproductive rights.
She's interviewed by UC Davis School of Law professor Mary Ziegler.
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.
C-SPAN shop.org is C-SPAN's online store.
Browse through our latest collection of C-SPAN products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories.
There's something for every C-SPAN fan, and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations.
Shop now or anytime at c-spanshop.org.
Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We are in open form until 10 o'clock, so just about 25 minutes or so.
We'll start with Julia and Baberton, Ohio, Line for Democrats.
Good morning, Julia.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you for taking the call.
I was shocked that the phone was answered.
I'm sorry, but I would very much like to respond to the points that the gentleman just made.
I am disabled.
I have a broken back, and I receive assistance.
I eat on my food stamps.
But I would say 40% of the people that I know that receive stamps do not eat with them.
They trade them, they sell them.
That's the first thing.
It's also very untrue that we are given plenty to eat on.
Oh, no, we're not.
I eat peanut butter and jelly and noodles on a regular basis.
And the fact that I could buy real butter from my fridge, I think, is astonishing when I do it.
So that's not true.
And in all the years, this is just so important that I definitely want to ask this.
In all the years, I have never once heard a government official make a recommendation that someone who has been convicted of a felony, especially a gun felony, why are they still getting food stamps?
Because I know a number of people that fall into that category.
So that's what I call for, and thank you so much for taking my call.
And that was Julia John in Minnesota.
I'm sorry, New Mexico, Line for Republicans.
Good morning, John.
Yes.
I just wanted to tell the people that are talking about going in and taking all the illegal immigrants and shipping them back to the countries that they came from.
And the people that run the big cities, Minnesota, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco.
I would suggest that Tom Holman skip those cities for right now, just get the flyover states, clean them up, and let all of the cities that are sanctuary cities get their dose.
All the criminals will rush to them if he leaves them alone to last.
And that would be my suggestion.
Thank you.
Roger in Virginia, Line for Democrats.
Good morning, Roger.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
I lived mostly under Republican control.
Can you hear me?
Yes, I can, Roger.
I lived mostly under Republican control, and I'm a disabled co-miner.
And I have black lung, but they say it's not thick enough to collect on it.
And I've been trying for years to get my black lung, but I'm unsuccessful.
I missed out on my rock dust.
I have rock list by one day's work, even though I doubled back many times during that time I was working.
Never got credit for it.
Now, Donald Trump says he doesn't like to pay overtime.
He'll go out and hire somebody else to keep him paying overtime.
But there's another thing about him that really bothers me.
He took and surrendered to the Taliban and never brought Afghanistan people in on the surrender when he surrendered to the Taliban.
And that's why Biden had a hard time getting those people out there because he surrendered.
I don't know if people know that or not, but I'd like to see something done on the black log in the federal government.
They could do something to lower the threshold or whatever it is so people like myself who have worked his life in coal mines be able to receive the benefits that they're due.
I know people running around with oxygen tanks on, and they can't collect their black loan.
Now, I don't have an oxygen tank on me, but it won't be much longer until I have one.
So that's another thing that bothered me.
And I just want to say thank you, Biden, for all your hard work over the last four years.
Even though the Republican House had two years and they did nothing, even the members got over the floor and said, what do we run?
Well, you run on height is what they did.
That was Roger in Virginia.
This headline in this morning's Wall Street Journal, Trump selects Besant to lead Treasury.
Donald Trump has selected hedge fund manager Scott Besant to lead the Treasury Department.
Besant in recent months has become a key economic advisor to Trump and his team.
He has defended Trump's economic proposals in the midst of opposition from some of Wall Street who worry that the president-elect's pledge to impose sweeping tariffs will trigger trade wars and ultimately lead to higher prices for American consumers.
If confirmed, Besant would be tasked with turning Trump's campaign trail promises into policy and he would help determine whether the president-elect follows through on some of his most eye-catching economic policy proposals from eliminating taxes on tips to slapping across-the-board tariffs on U.S. imports.
Up next, Skip in Pennsylvania, line for independents.
Good morning, Skip.
Yeah, good morning.
I'm just calling.
I'm just wondering about the price gouging that's going on.
And I go to the local food bank, and I've got an older vehicle, but yet I see folks with brand new vehicles going and getting food stamps and stuff and getting help.
I'm 70 years old, and I was just wondering about that.
Thank you.
Charlotte in London, Kentucky, line for Republicans.
Good morning, Charlotte.
Yes, good morning.
I believe that the government is underestimating the inflation, especially on food, because I'm an avid shopper and I go shopping, and I mean, prices have doubled on many, many items.
And I think the president does have the authority to put a price freeze on groceries.
I'm not sure about that.
My other comment would be about the hundreds and thousands of acres that China owns of our property.
They're growing vegetables and they're sending them back to China.
And I would really like to know what the United States is going to do about keeping China out of America.
Thank you.
Tom in St. Paul, Minnesota, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Tom.
Hey, good morning.
I appreciate you taking my call.
I just first want to push back on the ridiculous notion that Donald Trump somehow won a mandate from the country.
He did not.
And it's clear already that his vote total will be less than 50%.
And clearly, also, the House of Representatives look for that over the next several months to actually flip the control of Democrats.
There's a real potential that for periods of time, Democrats, Takeime Jeffries, will be Speaker of the House.
So that's something to look forward to.
But again, there was no mandate at all.
With respect to his cabinet picks, it's a cabinet full of sex pests.
Republicans, I hope you're very proud of the clowns and buffoons that are being tapped for service.
It's all a smokescreen.
It's just a message to government, people working in government actually doing the work.
Trump is in charge.
I can put any person, you know, I can put anybody in charge of this agency.
It doesn't matter.
I'm the one who's going to run it.
Just don't you forget it.
So that's the message.
But mostly just pushing back against this false narrative that's developed about a mandate.
There isn't.
And for all the whiny Republicans who are going to complain about all the names we call Trump and all the things that are going to be said about him, I just ask you to get used to it.
Remember Brandon and associated things.
And I'll just look forward to hearing from the Republicans.
Thanks so much.
Brenda in Fort Lee, New Jersey, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Brenda.
Good morning, America.
I'm calling in regards to, I hope in the future, when President elect Donald Trump sin, that things get better for the part that the last couple years wasn't good.
I couldn't believe being a Democrat on how things got out of hand.
I really feel bad for the president right now, but let him just like do his thing till the end and Donald Trump take over.
And hopefully things will get better.
I know that they'll get better.
He's picking a cabinet that different people that I read up on are going to really help America be good for the next three to four years when he's in office.
I just really am hoping for change, good change, and I know Donald Trump will do it.
Thank you for listening.
That was Brenda in New Jersey.
In a couple callers talking about President-elect Trump's cabinet nominations, we talked about Scott Besser being nominated for Treasury Secretary.
This from today's Washington Post, the article says that President-elect has also shown no sign of shrinking from his choice of former Fox News host Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense or any of his other picks facing tough confirmation fights.
Still, his team is taking a more cooperative approach to the upper chamber after initially demanding a bypass confirmation hearings and votes.
Quote, President Trump appreciates the advice and consent of senators on Capitol Hill, but ultimately, this is his administration, said Stephen Chung, Trump's choice for White House Communications Director.
Voters gave Trump a mandate to choose cabinet nominees that will reflect the will of the American people, and he will continue to do so.
He goes on to say that he has also brought back for his upcoming cabinet and team his first term budget director, Russ Vogt.
He's a key author of Project 2025 Policy Blueprint, who advocated for unilaterally rejecting spending that Congress authorized, firing federal workers, and taking control of independent regulators.
Trump also announced plans to bring back controversial foreign policy aide Sebastian Gorka, who left Trump's first White House under then Chief of Staff John F. Kelly.
Alex Wong, a former representative for North Korea and a State Department advisor, was named to return as the principal deputy to national security advisor, a position Trump has asked Congressman Michael Walls, a Republican of Florida, to fill.
Trump's choice for labor secretary is Representative Lori Chavez Dreamer, a Republican of Oregon.
She flipped the usual Republican pattern because of organized labor, lobbied for her while business leaders objected.
He named Jeanette Neshawat, a medical contributor to Fox News, as his pick for Surgeon General, former Congressman Dave Weldon to lead the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, John Hopkins surgeon and public health expert Marty McCary is Food and Drug Administration Commissioner and retired football player and former Texas State Representative Scott Turner for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
About 15 minutes left.
Edward in Rochester, New York, line for Republicans.
Good morning, Edward.
Yes, I'm African American, and my name is Edward.
And people are entitled to their own opinion, but they're not entitled to the facts.
You know, ICE just arrested three people in Massachusetts.
I think it was yesterday or Thursday.
These illegals that they arrested are accused of sexually assaulting children.
So for all those who are advocating that illegals should be in this country, illegal, no background check, and that they should be here.
And you get these governors, Democrat governors, who the oath of office is to protect American citizens and obey the law.
Yet they allow these people to come in here and give them sanctuary.
And FBI Director Ray said there's about 20,000 people that he believe is on the terrorist list that want to destroy America.
This is a Democratic FBI director, Ray, saying this.
And I sit here and I see this right here from the leaks who are so open doors for these illegals to come here.
But when they send the illegals to Martha Vineyard, okay, they got rid of these illegals.
What was it?
Within 24 hours they got rid of them.
They didn't want the illegals in Martha's Vineyard, but we're going to put them in the inner city.
And now in Chicago, where my brother lives at, black people are angry and frustrated by these illegals.
They're living in the schools, so black people cannot go to school.
They're living in the rec centers.
My tax dollars are funding it.
You know, I don't want my tax dollars.
Do I have the right as an American?
Okay, because it's we the people.
Do I have a right as an African American to say where I want my tax dollars spun?
And I don't want my tax dollars spunk to people in here who have not been vetted.
Most of them are criminals.
The member report just came out that the Kansas City chief quarterbacks a couple football players' house was invaded and they believe the FBI believes they were done by illegals.
I don't understand why we put illegals ahead of American citizens.
James in Kingston, New Hampshire, line for Independence.
Good morning, James.
Yeah, welcome.
Welcome from the great state of New York.
Live free or die.
Yeah, I hit the C-SPAN lottery, but anyhow, there's so many things to talk about so little time.
I'll try to make it brief, dear.
You know, a country is measured by how they treat their children and how they treat their elderly.
And I'll tell you, I've been looking around, and we're not really doing a very good job of either one.
300-something children that are that we don't know where they are, even though they come from another country.
It doesn't matter, the people.
I don't know what to say.
And Brian Lamb, hats off to you.
I've been watching this show for years and years.
We need to get these cameras in the courtrooms as well, the Supreme Court.
We really do.
We don't want anything swept under the rug.
And the government, another thing with the government.
It seems as though they tend to try to pin people against people to keep them in power or what have you.
I don't know what it is.
I don't have the answers.
But it seems like black, white, yellow, green.
I don't understand it.
I really, really don't.
But please, America, we got a cold now.
Let's not turn it into an ammonia.
Let's get together.
And let's look forward to the holidays and so forth.
But once again, thank you, Brian Lamb, so much for this great show.
The American people are so smart and so intelligent.
They call and I learn so much every day.
Thank you so much and have a great holiday.
Bye now.
Tom in San Jose, California, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Tom.
Hi, thank you for taking my call.
And to get back to your appointments that you just read, he just appointed, I think, Pam, Department of Justice, who is an election denier.
And just like most of the Trump supporters, they don't believe that Biden and the Democrats.
They believe that Biden and Democrats cheated to steal the last election.
They only believe in justice if they win.
Trump and his followers were ready to spread the same lies if Kamala had won.
Now they're silent.
That's called hypocrisy.
We are all hypocrites for sure, but no one on the Republican side will stand up against Donald Trump.
They laugh when Trump mocks the disabled and belittles others that he doesn't like.
I'm not really sure that God has chosen Trump to deliver us into the promised land.
And for all you Christians out there that support Trump, by their fruits you shall know them.
What are those fruits listed in the Bible?
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, humbleness, humility, not anger, selfishness, not pride, confusion, sexual sins, hating, making trouble, spreading lies.
I mean, do you see your hypocrisy, Christians, out there that are supporting this man who is totally anti-what Christ stood for?
So anyway, thank you for taking my call.
That was Tom in California.
Greg in Virginia, line for Republicans.
Good morning, Greg.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
Boy, I have to say, you know, what I see from the Democrat side right now is there is no, they don't base anything on policy or outcomes.
It's all emotion.
I do not understand how so many people could support Joe Biden's presidency.
Looking back, he has failed in every area.
Economically, fail.
Border, fail.
Geopolitical, fail.
This transgender stuff, men playing in women's sports and transgender sex changes on minors without parental consent.
This is what your party believes in, Democrats.
I know you don't want to believe that, but all you have to do is listen to what they say.
Open your eyes.
You got to get your emotion out of it and apply some logic and figure out what are the best policies for the United States of America for us to succeed.
And right now, it is on the Republican side.
And I'm sorry that these people just can't get it together and keep emotion out of it.
Thank you.
John in Alabama, line for Democrats.
Good morning, John.
Good morning.
I would like to make a comment about the African-American man from New York who says that illegal aliens are taking the jobs he can't get houses and everything.
He needs to check the history because before the illegal aliens even came here, he could not get a job.
The housing was discriminated against, jobs were discriminated against, schools were discriminated against.
So illegal aliens don't have anything to do with that.
And going back to Donald Trump and whatever you're talking about, when he came to office, there was the COVID.
People forget that they were waiting in line for miles in cars trying to get a box of food or some water.
This was what's going on, and that created the inflation.
That's what created the inflation.
And then Biden did everything he could to keep the prices low, but that was created the inflation.
The other thing is that Trump right now, if anybody thinks that Trump is going to make things better, he's going to cut federal jobs, cut social jobs, entitlements, cut Medicare, Medicaid, and all these people who are Trump supporters, they're going to be the ones suffering and feeling these notorious cuts that Elon Musk and Rasa Swami is in control of because Trump is not controlling the economy.
He's putting tariffs on it and everything.
But Musk is the one that's really calling a lot of the shots that's going on.
So get back in line for your foods and trying to make a living.
Thank you for taking my call.
Just a few minutes left.
Carol in Pennsylvania, line for Republicans.
Good morning, Carol.
Good morning.
We all get frustrated about one issue or the other.
But one issue that has kind of gone under the radar in all of this election stuff and the cutting of the government workers is the huge cybersecurity issue, cyber criminals from around the world.
And watching the C-SPAN hearings with the senators and the House of Representatives, you realize that we need every man on board that we have every good worker in the government to protect us from cybersecurity issues.
The other thing I would like to say is that people may not realize this, but all of the policies, the housing policies, the rental properties with private residential rental owners that drive people to court to spend a lot of money and everything like this is causing more homelessness.
Thank you.
And our last call in today's program, Chris in Alabama, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Chris.
Hi, Chris.
Am I on?
Yes, you are.
Okay, sorry.
What am I to ask you more of an economic question, but I'll make it real quick.
Are the bubbles that are created now and again, and then they pop, and everybody always buy a lot more money?
Are those artificially or just missed?
That was our last call in today's program.
Thank you to everyone who joined us and everyone who called in and participated in the conversation.
We'll be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific with another Washington Journal.
Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.
Here's what's ahead.
Up next, a look back at the developments in the nomination of former Congressman Matt Gates to be the next Attorney General that led to his withdrawal.
And then Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigeg leads a briefing on upcoming holiday travel.
And after that, a congressional hearing looking into missing and murdered Indigenous women.
President-elect Trump has chosen Alex Wong to be his deputy national security advisor and Sebastian Gorka to be senior director for counterterrorism.
Mr. Wong previously worked in the State Department in negotiations with North Korea, while Mr. Gorka served in the first Trump White House.
Who decides what content is harmful and on what basis?
And I think that sort of where we're at as a country reveals that there is not much agreement over what is harmful content.
And that's also been true for most of U.S. history.
We are a country that disagrees with each other quite a lot.
And so the idea that we can have some type of regime that says this content over here is uniformly considered harmful and therefore we are going to limit its distribution to children or adults, what have you.
I just don't see that working.
Monday, legal analysts debate the outcome of Anderson v. TikTok, which found that TikTok had some liability for content recommended to users on its algorithm.
Watch that Federalist Society discussion on the case and its implications for social media companies starting at 9 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org.