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Dec. 29, 2024 07:00-10:02 - CSPAN

03:01:51

Washington Journal 12/29/2024

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo Source

Participants

Main

peter slen

cspan 46:01

Appearances

brian lamb

cspan 00:42

donald j trump

admin 02:46

hakeem jeffries

rep/d 01:37

joe biden

d 03:00

Clips

barack obama

d 00:02

bill clinton

d 00:02

george h w bush

r 00:06

jimmy carter

d 00:03

ronald reagan

r 00:01

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unidentified		Support C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy.
		Coming up on Washington Journal, after a look at the news and some viewer calls, it's the finale of our special holiday Authors Week series, where we featured a new writer each day.
		Today, we'll talk with writer and rural policy expert Brian Reisinger about his book Land Rich, Cash Poor, My Family's Hope, and The Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer.
		Join the discussion.
		Washington Journal starts now.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, good morning and thanks for joining us on the Washington Journal.
		As always, we'll talk about public policy, what's being discussed in Washington, and most importantly, we're going to hear your views.
		This morning, it's a discussion on what the political parties stand for.
		Both claim to stand for liberty, freedom, and economic prosperity.
		And the Democratic Party is often defined as the party of social services, government programs and spending, and equality.
		So, for this first hour, Democrats only, what does your party stand for?
		What do you think it should stand for?
		You can see the numbers up there on the screen.
		202 is the area code, 748-8000.
		If you're a Democrat and you live in the East and Central time zones, 202-748-8001, if you're a Democrat and you live in the Mountain and Pacific time zones, you can also participate via social media.
		That top number there is a text number, 202-748-8003.
		Send us a text.
		Tell us what your party stands for or should stand for.
		If you do send a text, please include your first name and your city if you would.
		We'll begin taking those in just a few minutes.
		On the front page of the Washington Post is an article that is being discussed a lot in Washington today: Joe Biden's Lonely Battle to Sell His Vision of American Democracy.
		Earlier this year, Representative James Clyburn met President Biden at the White House to deliver a stern message.
		Biden had to find a way to revitalize his flagging campaign.
		Clyburn, who had been pivotal to Biden's 2020 victory, also made a confession about his own long-standing belief that substance is more important than style in politics.
		Quote: I have come to the conclusion in recent days that I'm wrong about that, the South Carolina Democrat 84 years old remembers telling Biden, the new environment that we currently live in, style, seems to carry the day more than substance.
		Your style, he told the president, does not lend itself well to the environment we're currently in.
		Clyburn's conclusions, which was shared by anxious Democrats in the months before the president ended his reelection bid, undermined Biden's theory of presidential leadership.
		After Donald Trump's ascent, Biden believed that he just needed to show Americans that traditional democracy still worked by listening to experts, working with Republicans, passing popular policies, and voters would rally around him.
		He succeeded in phase one of his plan, enacting legislation, much of it bipartisan, to reshape the nation's infrastructure, revive the semiconductor industry, and fight climate change.
		But phase two never happened.
		The truth of Biden's presidency is that he failed in what was, by his own account, his most important mission, making Trump's presidency seem like an aberration.
		Quote, he governed through traditional processes and institutions, said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton.
		It didn't change the picture of where he started, this anger in the electorate towards institutions, this support for a pretty radical conservative vision that Trump embodied.
		It didn't do anything to end the very intense polarization that exists in this country.
		That's a little bit from the Washington Post article this morning.
		We'll come back to that in just a second.
		But again, Democrats only this morning, what does your party stand for and what do you think it should stand for?
		202 is the area code, 748-8000.
		If you're a Democrat and you live in the East and Central time zones, 202-748-8001.
		If you're a Democrat and you live in the Mountain and Pacific time zones, we'll begin taking those calls in just a minute.
		But here's President Biden talking a few weeks ago about his legacy.
joe biden ▲ ● ▼		The one thing I've always believed about public service, and especially about the presidency, is the importance of asking yourself, have we left the country better shape than we found it?
		Today I can say with every fiber of my being, with all my heart, the answer to that question is a resounding yes.
		Yes, because of all of you assembled here, we're going to be proud we're leaving America in a better place today than when we came here four years ago.
		This country was living through the worst pandemic the country had seen in 100 years.
		Our economy was in a tailspin.
		Millions of people were out of work.
		Businesses were being shuttered.
		Schools were closed.
		And there was no plan for going forward.
		Just two weeks before being sworn in, we just witnessed something we thought would never happen in America.
		A violent insurrection encouraged by the man sitting in the White House on January 6th.
		And so much more.
		We've come a long way since then.
		We passed historic legislation.
		Laws that literally are literally building the strongest economy in the world.
		There's not a world leader you can name for me who hadn't told me at these G7 G20 meetings, all these meetings I meet with them.
		They wouldn't trade places with us in a heartbeat.
		Laws that when fully implemented are going to change America for decades to come.
		But we did know that many of the laws we passed were so consequential, they wouldn't be implemented right away.
		It takes time to build those fabs of factories for chips.
		It takes time to get this construction going.
		Over $1.4 trillion in infrastructure.
		$1 trillion so far in private sector investments in America.
		The biggest investment ever in climate in the history of the world.
		And fundamentally transforming our economy to grow from the middle out and the bottom up, not just the top down.
		I fully believe that America is better positioned because of all of you to lead the world today than at any point in the last 50 years of my career.
		That's because of you.
		Again, not hyperbole.
		You lend your reputations, your names to this effort.
		It's not just the contributions you made.
		It's just stepping up, putting yourself on the line.
		You should be so damn proud of the work we've done together.
		You should never forget all you've done for the country.
		I'm also proud that we can say we've done all this with a deep belief in the core values of America.
		Those values we're all creating, you heard me say it 100 times.
		You know, we're the most unique nation in the world.
		Every other nation was based on geography, religion, ethnicity, some common factor.
		But in America, we were building an idea, an idea, an idea, the only country in the world.
		We hold these truths self-evident.
		All men and women are created equal.
		Everyone should have a fair shot.
		They should never have a safe harbor in America.
		That's what we're about.
		We've never fully lived up to all of that, but we stuck with our principles and set a high standard of character and integrity in public life.
		Let me say it's been the honor of my life to serve as your president.
		But the title I'm most proud of is being Jill's husband.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And that was President Biden a few weeks ago talking about his legacy.
		The Democratic Party is often defined as the party of FDR and LBJ, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and now Joe Biden.
		Frank in Savannah, Georgia, a Democrat.
		Frank, what does your party stand for, do you think?
unidentified		We don't stand for what we used to stand for.
		I think the main criticism, which is correct, is we've abandoned our economic base, like the working people, the middle class.
		And we've become interested in all these other sort of marginal issues.
		Not that they're not things people are mainly interested in like trans people.
		There's nothing wrong with trans people or these kind of things, but people really aren't interested in that.
		For a long time, the Republicans were known as the party of business, and they actually still are.
		But now they're masquerading as the party of the working class, and people have just totally bought into it.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		So, Frank, how would you change the Democratic Party?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What would you give as its mission statement, in a sense?
unidentified		Yeah, our mission statement just go back to what we originally were.
		Like, you talk about FDR and go back to, you know, economic well-being, the end of this, you know, growing inequality is going to destroy the nation sooner or later.
		The pitchforks will eventually come out.
		Dedicated to those things.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right, Frank in Savannah, Georgia.
		Thank you.
		Jane is a Democrat in Louisiana.
		Jane, you're on C-SPAN.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Happy New Year.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Happy New Year.
unidentified		I've always thought that the Democratic Party was primarily for doing good for the country, citizenry, and the world.
unidentified		Trying to build up the middle class, raise up the poor and trouble people, and dealing with stability and honor and caring for the citizens of the world.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Seems a little pollyanna-ish right now, but Jane, how would you suggest that the Democrats do that?
unidentified		Actually, possibly just forging ahead with regards to building up the country and the citizenry and maybe taking care of the planet.
		I don't know.
		It's very difficult to state what they have already, always done, and somehow that is just not enough.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, ma'am, for calling in.
		We're going to go back to the Washington Post lead article this morning, Joe Biden's lonely battle to sell his vision of American democracy.
		Here's a little bit more from that.
		Even some of his closest advisors, without faulting Biden, conceded recently that his style of governing did not always mesh with today's politics.
		Quote, the president has been operating on a time horizon measured in decades while the political cycle is measured in four years.
		Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security advisor, said in an interview.
		Sullivan went on to add that Biden's accomplishments, by their nature, will take a long time to bear fruit.
		Quote, how to govern at this moment to set the U.S. up for long-term success has one answer, and how to govern to deal with midterm and presidential elections in the very short term might have a very different answer, he said.
		The president went with doing the things that really put America in a strong position.
		As his presidency and his 50-year political career wind down far faster than he wanted, Biden has taken to acknowledging some strategic mistakes, both big and small.
		Many of his missteps resulted from his determination to restore the age-old rules of the American presidency after Trump's term, a determination that many of his supporters in retrospect considered a politically fatal error.
		Jerome, San Diego, good morning.
		What does your party stand for, Jerome?
unidentified		Well, the Democratic Party used to stand for the middle class, and it was obvious.
		But now, to me, it's obvious that they don't.
		Under Biden, they open the border up, and all these millions of people come in, including murderers and rapists, thieves, and crooks.
		They act like nothing's wrong.
		Look at New York City.
		The man just burned a woman.
		He lit her on fire, and they prosecuting him.
		But in May of 2023, Daniel Penny, a Marine, just out of service, a good man, was trying to protect people on the ground.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Jerome, you sound more like a Republican.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Did you vote for Joe Biden in this cycle?
unidentified		They've lost their way.
unidentified		You know, the fact that Biden has dementia has a lot to do with the fact that they lost their way.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Jerome, do you consider yourself a Democrat?
unidentified		Honest man.
unidentified		He left the office broke.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		We're going to move on and talk to Jeffrey in Greensboro, North Carolina.
		Jeffrey is a Democrat.
		Jeffrey, what does your party stand for?
		What should it stand for?
unidentified		Well, good morning.
		Thank you for taking the call and happy holidays.
		The Democratic Party is definitely about unity.
		It stands for trying to bring togetherness a nation.
		And it's a delicate situation because no matter what the tasks and difficulties ahead, you need both parties to try to come on common ground, to try to come to resolutions where this is a nation of riches to where it should have no problematic situation for the less fortunate to be able to provide,
		be able to have affordable housing, health care.
		And when you have one party just fighting in a direction for that, and you don't have the other side compromising or no type of legislation is going to Congress, it just opens the doors where the problems seem like they're out of control, but then you have another party that's stopping everything from being able to come to the table.
		Very gifted, educated people that know better, see better, understand what's, you know, who's going to have the tip of the scale of making it seem like the Democrats did everything the Republicans didn't do.
		The Republicans making it seem like the Democrats didn't do what they wanted to do.
		It's just sad because this nation is better than that.
		It's dividing us.
		And then realistically, you got callers that want to talk about off the script.
		And if you give me a moment, you can't compare it.
		You can compare it.
		But then the most astonishing matter in America is you have a man that's getting ready to return to presidency and power with convictions and felonies.
		I would never think in a lifetime we'll be saying that because America is better than that by laws and guidance and obedience and doing the right thing.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Jeffrey, what do you think happened as a Democrat?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What do you think happened in the 2024 cycle?
unidentified		I just see it as the messages were not consistent.
		Republicans' information that they were coming out that was pounding the fear of the immigration issues, the immigration issues.
		There is an issue of, let's be realistic, that's one stipulation, but it also was there before Biden was elected when Trump was there too.
		You cannot discuse that.
		It was a problem that was still lingering in America under his administration.
		Now they're definitely going to have the advantage because Trump is absolutely this time going to stand on his legacy to appease all the people that he got in place now.
		He's going to do that.
		You know, and it's unfortunately when you're trying to negotiate with homeless, with problems of health care, high economics, food struggles, and you got just one administration branch trying to resolve it, and you got the other half that's not doing anything to compromise or come to the table, it's going to make us look like we're failing when we're pushing so hard.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		That's Jeffrey in Greensboro, North Carolina.
		By the way, our third hour this morning on the Washington Journal, we're going to have Republicans only talking about what their party stands for.
		Robert's a Democrat in Newfoundland, Newfoundland, Pennsylvania.
		Robert, what does your party stand for?
unidentified		Well, my party stands for independent.
unidentified		North Carolina, by the way.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hey, tell you what.
		Robert, we're going to have put you on hold.
		We just, you got that TV going in the background, and we get that delay.
		And unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.
		If you do happen to get on the air, please turn down your TV.
		You'll hear everything through your phone, I promise.
		Larry Magnolia, Delaware.
		Hi, Larry.
unidentified		Hey, how are you doing?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		How are you?
unidentified		I'm good.
		Oh, like I said, they stand for honor.
		But Democrats is not the ones that have all the blame here because even you guys have a problem with.
		Can you hear me?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		We are listening.
		Just don't look at your TV.
		Just talk in your phone, Larry.
unidentified		Okay.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		We're having a conversation.
unidentified		You guys have a problem with telling the truth now because if you guys say something, it is true.
		Now we have a president that can actually sue you guys.
		And that shouldn't be right.
		But the system is set up where it's a two-party system, and they got to come together.
		Everybody have different ideas.
		They got to come together to help the working people.
		And that don't happen anymore.
		And everything that's going to happen now will be blamed on the Democrats.
		We had a pandemic.
		We came through that pandemic.
		And we came through the pandemic with Joe Biden, but we came through it also with Republican help.
		Right.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Larry, besides just the history here, what do you think the party should stand for?
unidentified		I think they should stand for respect and honoring working people.
unidentified		That's what I think.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Do you think they had that message in 2024?
unidentified		Yes, I did.
		I did.
		There's a lot of things that play in that, but they had it.
		You know, people have short memories when it comes to voting.
		They have it.
		They had it.
		They did a good job, and I don't think they should be beating theirself down.
		And I don't think they should be looking for all this change.
		Because, I mean, the election was built on, you know, one side could say one thing, the other side, you know, they don't dispute it.
		They should dispute a lot of stuff, but they don't.
		Yeah, I think they did.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Thank you, sir, for calling in.
		Peter and West Palm Beach.
		Hi, Peter.
unidentified		Good morning, and I'm thank you for taking my call.
		I'm a 93-year-old Democrat.
		I've been a Democrat all my life.
		I made a good living because I belonged to unions most of my life, and the Democratic Party are for the labor.
		And I see that people are all worried about what the Democrats have done.
		In fact, Biden did more in two years than any other president did in four.
		I said, people forget that the second part of his term, he was taken over by Republicans.
		And they stopped everything he wanted to do the last two years of his presidency.
		I just hope the people don't have to regret Mr. Trump again because he didn't do such a great job the first time.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		So, Peter, what do you think the Democrats going forward should stand for?
unidentified		Stand for the same things they've stand for for 90 years that I've been in labor.
		I think working people need a shot in this country.
		The rich people take over the country right now.
		Do you see who Trump has on his committee?
		All his big people are all rich white people.
		What happened to the Negroes, the minority race?
		We are all Americans.
		We all deserve to make a decent living in this world.
		And all you want to do, if you want to join the Republican Party, you better come up with $25,000 or $50,000 donation.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		So, okay, Peter, you say that, but when you look at the chart of the voting trends, you see that no college degree, those with no college degrees, supported Donald Trump by six more points than they did in 2020.
		And Latino men, 18 points, Latino women, nine points.
		All other races, nine points, up two points with black men, down two with black women.
		But when you look at some of these voting stats, you see that the working class supported Donald Trump.
		So, how does a Democrat, how should the Democrats respond to that?
unidentified		Because what happened, they made him say that the immigrants, the illegals coming here taking their jobs, that's why you're working people.
		That's not true.
		It wasn't for these people coming into this country, we would have a recession because we need more people.
		We don't have enough childbirth from the Americans anymore.
		We have less childbirth since I was a kid.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Peter, what was your job when you were in the union?
unidentified		Construction boss for New York City, and then I became a manager for Procter Gamble in Staten Island because it was unionized, and they all made good salaries.
		I retired with all I have over a million dollars when I retired, and all I had was a high school education.
		But I made good money working, and I had a good life because working people need unions so they could get support from these rich people.
		All the rich people want to do is get richer.
		Working people all want to make a decent living just to raise a family, buy a home.
		We're not looking for yachts and aeroplanes and all over the world.
		Most of the working people will be, they're going to be sorry they put Trump in there again because he's going to cater to big money again.
		He's going to push all the things that big money could get richer.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Peter in West Palm Beach, we appreciate you calling in and spending a few minutes with us.
		Well, the Democratic leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, had a message for Republicans a few weeks ago.
		Here's what he had to say.
hakeem jeffries ▲ ● ▼		And so we see a very clear pattern.
		The facts speak for themselves.
		Democrats are the party of getting things done and fiscal responsibility.
		Republicans are the party of massive tax cuts for the wealthy, the well-off, and the well-connected, which bring us to this very moment, because this bill is designed to set up the GOP tax scam 2.0, to stick the American people with a bill so you can continue to cut taxes for wealthy donors and well-connected corporations.
		and jam working class Americans.
		That's what this bill today fundamentally is all about.
		That's why Republicans are suspending the debt ceiling for two years, the so-called party of fiscal responsibility.
		And in addition to these massive tax cuts, we know how you want to pay for it.
		Many Republicans have said this in the public domain: that we're going to end Social Security as we know it, in Medicare as we know it, in Medicaid as we know it, in nutritional assistance as we know it.
		Not support our veterans.
		These are all the reasons why Democrats are opposed to this legislation.
		Because you're trying to jam working class Americans again, as you have repeatedly done over and over and over again.
		Those are the facts.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And back to your phone calls and your views on what the Democrats stand for and what they should stand for again.
		Democrats only for this first hour.
		Mimi in Charlotte, North Carolina.
		Good morning to you, Mimi.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Happy New Year.
		Back at you.
		Democrats, I think, stand for what's in the Constitution.
		They stand for the rule of law and they stand for the working class.
		They stand for education.
		But the Democrats don't know how to toot their own horn.
		They never say what good they're doing.
		They let the Republicans take all the oxygen out of the air.
		I think they stand for truth, and that's one thing that we're lacking now.
		And that's going to be our downfall.
		I agree with everything that Peter said from West Palm Beach, the gentleman that was on before me.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Mimi, for calling in.
		Text message from Patrick in Nashville, Tennessee.
		Difficult question, but I do believe the Democratic Party has an edge when it comes to health care for all, fairness and tax policy, equal rights, trickle-up economics, ban on automatic weapons, voting rights for all, less roadblocks, and right versus wrong.
		Jim's calling in from Beverly Hills, California.
		Jim, good morning to you.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Well, I think what it seemed to happen at this election, after this election, was that the Democrats, as we've been talking about, listening here,
		Let the working class people kind of go to the side and started focusing on these extreme left-wing, woke issues like trans issues and uh um, women in sports and things that that the working class wasn't that interested in.
		But I have to stress that how powerful Trump is in terms of distorting what's really going on and the tremendous dependency we've had now on the, on the mainstream people in terms of what they believe in cable news, there's a tremendous distortion, blaming the Democrats for things that they didn't do.
		Uh, so that's a a big part of it.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Jim, moving forward, what would you like the Democrats to stand for and how do they get that message out?
unidentified		Well, I think it's the as, as we said I, I heard that two-thirds of the country is does not have a college education people, the people who have small families and are working to support the families.
		They need to focus on those people and what their needs are and take their focus off.
		You know the extreme left-wing views and, as I sign off, I just want to compliment your program for the extraordinary job that you do.
		I've been listening to this show since Brian Lamb was running it.
		You deserve you deserve 150 Emmys for the service you do to this country.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What do you do in Beverly Hills, Jim?
unidentified		I'm a retired filmmaker.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What kind of films well, I used to produce for Sesame Street.
unidentified		Uh, 30 segments that ran all over the world.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Oh really, all right.
		Well, thanks for calling in.
		We appreciate it, Leroy in Albuquerque.
		Hi Leroy hi, how are you?
unidentified		Excuse my voice, please?
		I'll make it as clear as I can.
		Um, I think it needs to go back to the basics of what our forefathers wrote in the beginning, when there was a dream, and that is to make things going forward in in the normal way, common sense way, not not these extremities that we have.
		And as far as the, the billionaires that we have, they should just pitch in to make our debt uh, our debt zero and start all over again.
		Uh, I don't know if that can ever happen without these laws and stuff going into place but um, I think it goes back to our constitution and our proclamations and stuff that are that were written by our forefathers, to go back to that and and then go forward with the, with those issues that were put on paper by our forefathers, and then go from there and then take it a step at a time, eliminating those things that are very bad and going forward with the things that are good for the world and for our country.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you sir, for calling in back to the Washington Post's article on Joe Biden Biden, which is entitled Joe Biden's Lonely Battle to Sell His Vision of American Democracy.
		Biden's aides in praising his tenure often contend that history will remember him kindly, an assertion that provides little comfort to Democrats now staring at an additional four years of Trump.
		Some Biden allies point to a recent survey of historians that ranked Biden the 14th best president in American history while putting Trump last.
		Yet it is Trump, not Biden, who is preparing for his second inauguration on January 20.
		Quote, he accomplished a hell of a lot in a very difficult situation, according to one aide.
		Coming in after Trump with a bad economy, he still pulled together.
		He did all this stuff on infrastructure and all the stuff he did with a one-vote majority in the Senate.
		Joe Biden did it with one vote.
		Biden and some of his aides still believe he should have stayed in the race despite the rocky debate performance and low poll numbers that prompted Democrats to pressure him to drop out.
		Biden and his aides have told people in recent days that he could have defeated Trump, according to people familiar with their comments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
		Aides say the president has been careful not to place blame on Harris or her campaign.
		Mary, calling in from Alpena, Michigan.
		Mary is a Democrat there.
		Mary, what does your party stand for?
		What should it stand for?
unidentified		I believe it's all-inclusive.
		And I want to say one thing when I listen to this program, since I retired a couple years ago, I'm a retired nurse.
		It's very generational.
		I believe that when I'm talking to my younger, this is mostly nieces and nephews, who all came home to this neck of the woods, northeast lower Michigan.
		And they are more progressive than ever, but they're mostly Democrat.
		And they believe in all-inclusive leaf for everyone.
		Even that 0.01% that's a transgender, they will fight at their colleges and their workplace for the rights of that person.
		They're horrified at what some of the people that are in the mega-Republicans have said about people.
		And they've grown up, you know, in school that has been all-inclusive.
		They believe that the abortion rights, that their family should be, it should be up to the family whether their family grows.
		And the one thing that they really talk a lot about now that they're all having children or whatever is the mental health and the fear that they live with daily sending their children to school.
		Gun rights, gun whatever has transformed this generation.
		And I love C-SPAN, but I would love for you to have programs, maybe on the weekend, now that the election's over, where you have your phone lines by people 20 to 40.
		Because I volunteer at a school every day, and believe me, those parents have a lot to say about what the local, state, and federal government is doing for their families.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a good idea, Mary.
		I appreciate that.
		And I just want to point this out, which kind of is a little different than what you were saying.
		But the New York Times reports that 18 to 29-year-olds went seven more percentage points for Donald Trump than they did in 2020, 30 to 44, another percentage point, 45 to 64 plus 4.
		It was 65 and older.
		That went down two points for Donald Trump in 2024.
unidentified		Raise children and work and whatever.
		When you get right down and talk to younger people, they really don't know what they vote.
		They voted local.
		They really, the presidential, they didn't really, when they tell them things that you see on C-SPAN, they're shocked.
		They really are shocked.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right, Mary and Alpina, thanks for calling in.
		Donna in Clark County, Nevada, which is Las Vegas.
		Hi, Donna.
unidentified		Hi, how are you?
unidentified		Good.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What does your party stand for?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What should it stand for?
unidentified		Well, my party, the Democratic Party, should stand for equality.
		And it should continue to stand for the working class and for the lower classes to work up to the middle class.
		It hasn't always worked.
		It didn't really work in my case, but I understand it.
		The thing is, we have absolutely let the Republican Party change the direction and just change the way that people feel about things like school.
		They've kind of taken on this self, like they are put upon, like they can't be Christians and they can't be this and they can't be that.
		They kind of turned it all around.
		Instead of us saying, hey, you guys really need to start being, you know, start being better toward the lower classes.
		They have taken on this self, like they've been attacked or something.
		And we haven't attacked them.
		We just want to keep our rights.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Donna, from Clark County, Nevada, for calling in.
		Tim in Tampa.
		Hi, Tim.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, Peter.
unidentified		How are you?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		How are you?
unidentified		Yes, when you say what the Democrat Party stands for, my party stands for these days.
		First off, they need to stand.
		The problem with the Democrat Party today is that they allow the Republican Party to just tell a lie.
		And instead of calling it out a lie, they will sit there and say, oh, it's misinformation.
		No, it's a lie.
		Just like when Barack Obama was in presidency and that guy from South Carolina, Joe, whatever his name is, yelled out during the address saying, you lied.
		People know what the word lie means.
		The Democrat Party, just like a lot of the people are saying, is an inclusive party.
		But at the end of the day, instead of they be inclusive, they're too afraid to offend people.
		The Republican Party will call a black individual exactly what they want to call him.
		They'll call a Hispanic exactly what they want to call him.
		But the Democratic Party will sit there and find beautiful words to say.
		And the last thing, they need the Democratic Party need to sit back and let America get exactly what they deserve from electing all these Republicans.
		Trump is putting nothing but billionaires around him.
		Do you think these billionaires care about some individual who voted for Trump and rule America?
		They look at those people and be like, how you're not a billionaire.
		You know, the Democrat Party is too easy, too weak, and they need to grow a backbone and stand up instead of laying down every time the Republicans say something.
		They need to stand up.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Tim, okay, I got two follow-ups for you.
		And they're both based on Politico articles.
		Number one, Politico has an article saying that the 2028 Democratic primaries are already underway.
		Josh Shapiro, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, John Fetterman, Gretchen Whitmer, Pete Buttigieg, Wesmore, some of the names that are being bandied about for 2028.
		Do you have an early, early favorite?
unidentified		For example, for me, they should have let the guy from Pennsylvania.
unidentified		He should be the nominee.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania.
unidentified		Yes, Westmore should be the vice president.
		Now, when two years ago, when Joe Biden passed the infrastructure bill, right then he should have said, okay, America, Democrats, I've done everything I can for the last 50 years.
		I'm going to step back and allow you all to do what you got to do in the next two years to continue to allow the people to keep Democrats in power.
		But because old men are so power hungry, they don't know how to step to the side.
		Just like with AOC, AOC is trying to get on a committee.
		What did the Democrat Party do?
		Who is two steps from passing away, PB?
		I'm not trying to say you're going to pass.
		Instead of they move to the younger people, they are too afraid to give up power.
		And the same thing on the Republican side with Mitch McConnell standing there.
		But there's the American people fought that they continue to vote these people in.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Tim, what do you do down in Tampa?
unidentified		Down there in Tampa, look, I'm retired military, 28 years in the military.
		I retired from the VA.
		All I do now is watch my daughter and take her to school.
		But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the Democrat Party need to stand up.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		That's Tim in Tampa.
		Tim also mentioned communications issues that he thought that the Democrats could improve on.
		Brian Schatz is a Democratic senator from Hawaii.
		He is the incoming deputy whip on the Democratic side.
		He's going to be in leadership on the Democratic side of the Senate.
		And Politico, Jonathan Martin of Politico, did an interview with him.
		And it's quite lengthy.
		In case you're interested, go to Politico and you can read the whole thing.
		But here's one paragraph on language.
		This is Brian Schatz, Senator Schatz, talking.
		But I think this question of language goes pretty deep.
		And it goes to not just being careful not to say things that are egregiously weird sounding, but it's also the way we interact with advocacy groups.
		I remember saying I was for a cessation of hostilities in Israel and Palestine.
		And people said, why don't you say ceasefire?
		I'm thinking that's literally the same thing.
		I remember saying I was for a big, bold climate bill.
		And someone said, why don't you say Green New Deal?
		And this idea that there are magic words that we must be forced to say defines progressivism and political courage by essentially saying whatever a bunch of activists want us to say as opposed to doing this thing.
		And I think there are a bunch of people who see what we're doing as performative for that exact reason, but it's also just alienating.
		This magic word thing has to go away.
		Jim in Columbia, South Carolina, Democrat.
		What does your party stand for, Jim?
unidentified		Hey, Pete.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Who up with a guy just helped for what state?
		I don't remember.
		But he said a lot of things I wanted to say.
		Weakness.
		He said a lot of things I wanted to say.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Are you talking about Tim from Tampa?
unidentified		Yes.
		Weakness is one of the things he said I agree with.
		It's a lot of weakness.
		Man, it's like in the Democratic.
		I voted for Pamela Harris, but I'm really independent.
		But I went that side because of Donald Trump.
		You got me?
		So I'm not really a Democrat.
		If you want to cut me off, that's fine.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, Jim, we'll leave your comments stand right there.
		We appreciate your calling in and identifying yourself.
		Steve is in New York City.
		Steve, good morning to you.
		Oh, are we punching?
		There we go.
		Hi, Steve.
unidentified		Hello.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Please go ahead.
unidentified		Can you hear me?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		We're listening.
unidentified		Yeah, can you hear me?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		We're going to move on to Justine in Akron, Ohio.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Justine, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, sir.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What do you think your party stands for?
unidentified		Well, the way I say the Richard's getting richer and the poor is getting poor.
		Like, I'm kind of like pouring away.
		And why can't the president open their eyes and quit fighting with each other and get things done on this earth?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What would you like to see get done, Justine?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And how do you think the Democrats should do it?
unidentified		I wish everybody straightened up and have peace on earth.
		You know what I'm saying?
		And quit going over fight with all these countries and stuff like it gets people around.
		And the American people is going to suffer for a lot of things.
		Now, the way I understand the rich is getting richer and the poor is getting poorer and stuff like there's going to be a riot.
		And, you know, and I don't like to see that, okay?
		I love the world, but it's the people that's ruining the world.
		They got to wake up and say, okay, this president got to straighten up.
		This president's got to straighten up and stuff like.
		But you know, I think that the world's not going to last long enough that the world don't straighten up.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		That's Justine and Akron, and this is Carolyn in Charlotte.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Carolyn, good morning to you.
unidentified		Good morning to you.
		I think the Democratic Party stands for what it always has stamped for.
		I'm a Kennedy Democrat.
		I believe in, oh, that's not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
		The Democratic Party stands for lifting up the classes from below and the working class and the labor class.
		That's what they stand for, and they should stand for that.
		I think the messaging was the problem.
		It was hard to compete with Vic, Vince McMahon, and a Linda McMahon production.
		It was hard to compete with the Kiblin Bitt president that gave one group this, one group that.
		He gave the Christian nationalists abortion.
		He was railing against the LGBT community.
		It was supposed to be America first, but America cannot function as isolationists.
		The Democratic Party did not push that message hard enough.
		They were not out there showing the things that they have actually done for people or why they wanted to do particular things.
		They have to come down with a hammer because this was a production, a reality show production with tons of pundits out there, echoes, echo chamber, even on the Congress floor.
		The congressmen from the Republican Party were constantly echoing what Donald Trump won, even though it was far from reality.
		But they got what they voted for, and he's down to the wire.
		He cannot blame the Democrats for anything that he decides to do.
		How dare he?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		That's Carolyn and Charlotte.
		Thanks for calling in Dana Milbank's column in the Washington Post opinion section.
		He writes out Trump's campaign pledges in war with Denmark.
		That's the header on his column today, but we're going to read this part of it.
		Democrats have been in a sloth of Democrats have been in a sloth of despond in the weeks since the election.
		Trump has been enjoying the sort of honeymoon that he didn't have in 2016.
		Foreign leaders and business titans have been flocking to Mar-a-Lago where Trump marveled that everybody wants to be my friend.
		Polls show Trump's favorability improving and a majority approving of his handling of the transition.
		Goes on to say this.
		Doug Soznick, a veteran Democratic strategist, has a word of advice for his demoralized comrades.
		Relax.
		The transformation of the Democratic Party will happen organically.
		It's not going to be a bunch of elite elected officials and operatives sitting around a conference table in Washington figuring out how to get these people in America to like us.
		Rather, Soznick sees the party developing into an outsider populist party from the grassroots.
		That's just a little bit of Dana Milbank's column this morning in the Washington Post.
		Let's hear from Scott in Roseville, California.
		Or we're going to hear from Jerry in Tarhill, North Carolina.
		Hi, Jerry.
unidentified		Yeah, I would just like to say that, you know, the Democratic Party is their own worst enemy.
		Just like when Obama clear, you know, Pig Claire, that's ferros and them.
		They still in the way.
		Did you want to help the people?
		And them big weeds.
		And you're like the new media, MSNBC and CNN.
		They talk about what the Democrat didn't do.
		They didn't help the Democratic Party during the campaigning.
		It was a lot of that they were promoting.
		I mean, like, things come back to basic, man.
		I mean, they come out to reality to regular people like us.
		I mean, like, they're the ones worst enemy, man.
		You say one thing.
		They just obey, they tell their lies to us.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right, Jerry in North Carolina.
		Thank you.
		Scott in Roseville, California.
		What are your thoughts?
unidentified		I figured you'd get to me eventually.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for waiting.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		I just need to punch the right button sometime.
unidentified		Now, I believe that my point, my call for the Democratic Party, I'm a staunch Democrat.
		It stands for the lesser of two evils.
		But currently, and unfortunately, the Democratic Party stands for exactly the same thing the Republican Party does.
		In it's like two little kids running to their parents to tell the other first.
		Like, mommy, they did that.
		Mommy, they did this, you know, that kind of thing.
		We sit in a position where we are not the lesser of two evils, except for we've got a lot more dirt on what all the Republicans are doing.
		Like, oh my God, Trump is a felon and all that stuff.
		But oh, the Republicans fire back and tell mommy that, well, they're letting all these illegal immigrants in that are committing all these horrible crimes.
		You know, the little, the lesser people that have nothing that are committing these crimes are being compared to Donald Trump, who's in power and going to be president.
		And he comes off like, I don't know who made the quote, but it was speak softly, which Joe Biden obviously does, but carry a big stick.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Theodore Roosevelt, 1901.
unidentified		Thank you for the colors, my civics class.
		I didn't remember.
		But anyway, Trump comes off like holler all the time and carry a big stick, like Bam Bam from the Flintstones.
		Mind you, he very much looks like an elderly Bam Bam, but that's the appeal.
		And me saying that, and likely all the calls in the third hour are going to reflect the same thing.
		Each one of your colors is going to have something bad to say about the other party and know nothing about their own party.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hey, that's what we're trying to do this morning.
		Thanks for recognizing that, Scott, and thank you for calling in.
		We're trying to get you to say why you're a Democrat essentially, what the Democratic Party stands for, and what you think they should stand for.
		You mentioned the election, and this is a New York Times 10 charts that will help you understand 2024.
		Just want to show this one, and this is on election spending.
		Right now, the 24-cycle election cost nearly $16 billion.
		If you go across here, that's $16 billion right there.
		And the 2020 was more expensive, as you can see.
		But the increase in the last two election cycles is pretty striking over the previous cycles.
		Again, this is in the New York Times.
		Washington Times this morning, on Friday, this is from Friday's paper, ex-presidential candidate and self-help guru, Marianne Williamson, wants to run the DNC, former Democratic presidential candidate Mary Ann Williamson, said she's launching a bid for chair of the DNC, the Democratic National Committee, entering a crowded field, calling for a seismic change to the organization.
		Self-help guru who ran twice for president said she could bring expertise to the role.
		She conceded she understood why we lost it, that voters didn't feel that Democratic candidates had their backs on key issues like health care and the economy, and that many were depressed because of bad public policy.
		Quote, we need to transform in a way.
		We need to reinvent the Democratic Party in order to counter what MAGA is bringing to the table, Ms. Williamson said.
		There's a collective adrenaline rush in all of that, and we have to create our own massive psychological and emotional appeal for the American people.
		Kip, Arlington, Washington, good morning, Kip.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My feelings are that the Democrats are for equality and equal access to everything.
		As Comar Harris said, you know, we want to lift people up, not bring them down.
		I feel that there actually is three parties.
		There is the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and then the MAGA Party.
		The Democrats are constantly trying to stay political.
		They don't kick back and fight when things are going misrepresented as much as they should.
		I feel that the Democrats should be more like Jasmine Crockett, you know, speak out for the wrong and call the truth the truth and a lie lie.
		Don't sugarcoat it.
		Democrats are so afraid to hurt the feelings or to look bad.
		I think that's the biggest problem for them.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Kip, thank you.
		And in fact, here's an article about Jasmine Crockett, a Democratic representative from Texas.
		Crockett slams Democrats for choosing seniority over those who are best equipped.
		She took aim at Democrats for choosing Representative Jerry Connolly over Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee in the upcoming Congress.
		Crockett, a member of the committee, added that while she doesn't necessarily think Connolly isn't equipped to lead the committee at this time, she believes that Democratic voters are looking for leaders in Congress to be open to new moves.
		Quote, I think they are saying we are looking towards y'all to show us that you're willing to shake it up if it means we can move this country forward.
		Next call is Rob in Phoenix.
		Hi, Rob.
unidentified		Good morning, Peter.
unidentified		Nice to see you on Washington Journal again.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Peter, I've been wanting to drop this into a conversation for a long time.
		Some prophetic words from a song in the 1970s, Steely Dan.
		They got a name for the winners in the world, and I want to name when I lose.
		Call me, they call Alabama the crimson tide.
		Call me Deacon Blues.
		That always tells me something about where we are with leadership.
		I've been active in the local scene for 25 years here in Phoenix.
		I can look back and think of all the meetings and all the times that somebody took over the meetings, somebody like Kristen Sinema, I remember 25 years ago in the Green Party.
		Dozens of others who come and dear meetings and activism and such, and they really steal the thunder from the people.
		So I want to name when I lose, call me Deacon Blues.
		That's what I think about the Democratic Party today.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		That's Rob in Phoenix.
		Cutler is in New Hampshire.
		Cutler, good morning.
		What does your party stand for?
		What should they stand for?
unidentified		My party basically stands for the working man, inclusivity, I guess that's the word.
		I'm not sure about fiscal restraint.
		I've always been a Democrat because I felt they cared more about people than Republicans, but I also admire the Republican Party for used to be fiscal constraint and a strong military.
		So there is no middle ground for me, and that is a problem.
		Both parties have let the extremes take over.
		Our government was not created to take care of people.
		It was created to protect them.
		And, you know, as the Bible says, take care of the poor.
		The poor will always be among you.
		But it seems like everybody's poor.
		What could they do?
		I have a suggestion you make the Capitol a museum or you tear it down because it was built by slaves and it has a Native American on the top.
		Double insult.
		Rebuild it with union labor and make it a museum.
		That could be one thing.
		The Supreme Court, you don't expand it.
		It's totally skewed right now.
		And I don't know how you'd accomplish this, but let's just get rid of them and elect our Supreme Court judges based on their qualifications and give them an eight-year term.
		Who gets a life term except the convicted murderers?
		And as far as money, they can get the money out of politics.
		Too much money, too many congressmen making a career out of something.
		They all retire as millionaires and get the lobbyists out of there.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Cutler, thank you so much.
		Carolyn in Lake St. Louis, Missouri.
		Hi, Carolyn.
unidentified		How are you doing, Pete?
		I'm glad to call.
		I'm a Democrat.
		And I would like to talk about the Democrat not having as much knowledge on what's happening to the people that is voting for them.
		I'm a victim of a mortgage fraud.
		And it's taken me so long to get an attorney here in Missouri to represent us.
		I'm a black gay woman.
		My property was stolen by someone that lives in Arizona.
		Ran through certain banks.
		I can't get anyone to help on this case.
		I have written to the DOJ.
		I have sent my paperwork to the FBI.
		I still have not gotten any response.
		But yet they tell me there's a statute of limitation that it's about to run out.
		How do you get help when you don't have any help for the people?
		That's Carolyn.
		All right.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Carolyn, thank you for calling in and sharing your experience with us.
		Mike is in Woodbridge, Virginia.
		Mike, what does your party stand for?
		What do you think it should stand for?
unidentified		My party stands for the ordinary people, the union, and then this election, they corrupted the platform with lesbian, with LGBTQ, and then abortion, which does not bring anything to the economy.
		They forget to talk much about the ordinary people.
		And then one other thing, too, they should soften their stand on illegal immigrants by asking too much, asking for a pathway to citizens, which would not be allowed by Republicans.
		At least the illegal immigrant needs something to move around and be able to work with it.
		So, and then they allow Israel to let them loose.
		They couldn't stand their feet on Israel to stop the bombing of Gaza and other places.
		That infuriated the Muslims.
		So most of the Muslims did not vote presidentia.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Mike and Woodbridge, we're going to leave it there.
		Thanks, everybody, for calling in.
		Reminder that in about an hour, we're going to turn to the Republicans.
		We're going to find out what they think their party stands for and what it should stand for.
		But in the meantime, it's Authors Week here on the Washington Journal.
		Every holiday season, we feature authors talking about some of the big public policy issues facing our nation.
		Coming up in just a minute, author Brian Reisinger.
		His book is called Land Rich, Cash Poor.
		It's about the challenges facing our nation's farmers.
unidentified		Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, Don Scott, Virginia's newly elected Democratic Speaker of the House of Delegates and the state's first black speaker in 405 years, talks about his life, including spending almost eight years in prison.
		I had never been in trouble before.
		I had served my country, and I was hoping that I would get a little more grace and maybe getting the judge has some latitude to go before.
		And he probably could have gave me even more time than he did.
		But I remember hearing my mother, when he said 10 years, you know, she couldn't believe it.
		And that yelp of pain.
		It always stays with me.
		And it's always motivated.
		And it always lets me know how fragile our freedom is and how perilous it is.
		And if you make one wrong move sometimes, it could be literally the end of your life as you know it.
		Virginia's Democratic House Speaker, Don Scott, tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Democracy is always an unfinished creation.
ronald reagan ▲ ● ▼		Democracy is worth dying for.
george h w bush ▲ ● ▼		Democracy belongs to us all.
bill clinton ▲ ● ▼		We are here in the sanctuary of democracy.
george h w bush ▲ ● ▼		Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼		American democracy is bigger than any one person.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected.
joe biden ▲ ● ▼		We are still at our core a democracy.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
unidentified		Washington Journal continues.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Brian Reisinger is the author of this book, Land Rich, Cash Poor, My Family's Hope and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer.
		Mr. Reisinger joins us from Moraga, California.
		Mr. Reisinger, what was your goal in writing this book?
unidentified		Yeah, well, good morning, and thank you so much for having me.
		You know, my goal was to answer a question that I've been carrying around for most of my childhood.
		I grew up working with my dad from the time I could walk on our family farm.
		And as long as I can remember, there were people driving into the yard, you know, talking about this farm going under, that farm selling.
		And I never understood why.
		I knew I was lucky to grow up in a special place, a place of hard work and of beauty, but I never understood why our farms are disappearing.
		And as I pursued my career off the farm in writing, first in journalism, then in public policy and consulting, I began to see the way that our economic system had been leaving our farmers behind.
		So I wanted to answer the question, why that was?
		How did that happen?
		And that's what led to this book that really marries the hidden history of those issues with my family's four-generation story from the Depression to today.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What kind of farm is your family?
unidentified		Yeah, we're a small family farm in the hills of southern Wisconsin.
		For more than 100 years, we were a traditional dairy farm milking cows.
		There's about 50 cows, which was at one time a medium-sized farm, became a very small farm.
		We have since diversified.
		My dad is still farming.
		My sister is working to take it over from him.
		And the way they've diversified is they've sold the dairy herd because we would have either needed to get far bigger, which some families do, or we would have needed to sell the herd.
		So we sold the herd and diversified.
		They're still raising cows for other dairy herds, so heifers that become milk cows on other farms.
		They're raising beef for consumers and they're also cash cropping.
		And so we're, as we speak, working through as a family the right path forward for the farm.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		When you talk about farms disappearing, what do you mean?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What's happening to them?
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
		There's a wide variety of things that have happened to them.
		The long and short of it is fewer farms, and the farms that have been hit the hardest are our family farms all across the country.
		Many of them have disappeared during economic crises, meaning they have gone under bankruptcy, things like that.
		Others have been bought up by other farms as economic pressures have made it harder and harder for farms to continue to make it.
		And others have gone away and that farmland has turned into urban development and other things.
		There's no one specific villain necessarily.
		There are a wide range of factors that have simply created pressure year after year to make it harder for our farms to make it, that make it harder to grind out that living.
		And so they're forced to sell their land for development, sell it to other farms, or they simply go under.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, according to the American Farm Bureau, 1.9, there are 1.9 million farms and ranches in the U.S. that 95% of them are family operated.
		Farmers and ranchers equal about 2% of the U.S. population, and that farmers and ranchers receive about 15 cents on each food dollar spent.
		95% still family operated, Mr. Eisinger.
unidentified		Yeah, that's absolutely right.
		So the broader context on those numbers are that we once had 6.5 million farms in this country.
		That was the height.
		And it's gone down to less than 2 million.
		So that's a loss of about 70% of our farms.
		It's a loss of 45,000 farms per year on average for the past century.
		I actually spoke to the Farm Bureau for the book as well as critics of modern farming.
		I wanted to talk to people on all angles of things, and they talked about the ongoing resilience of our farms, but also the cost of that massive disappearance.
		Now, those nearly 2 million farms that are left, not only are 96% of them family-owned, but 88% of them are small farms.
		And people are shocked to hear that because everyone envisions the great big farm that has replaced our kind of idyllic vision of farms of years past.
		Here's the reality: of those nearly 2 million farms, most of them are small farms, but most of them are not making a full-time living.
		So the farms that are making a full-time living are the much larger farms that are producing the bulk of our food.
		And the smaller farms, the 88% of those farms that are small, those are farms where the families are working two to three jobs to make it.
		People are pulling factory shifts, they're working construction sites, they're pouring concrete in addition to trying to operate their farm, which is right now only supplemental income.
		And so what happens is more and more of those small family farms disappear each year because people are trying to grind out a living, working two to three jobs, and many times they simply can't make it anymore.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, a few more facts before we continue our conversation about farms.
		Again, the Farm Bureau is the source for this.
		Farming equals about 1% of the U.S. gross domestic product.
		Farm exports were about $175 billion in 2023.
		That's 20% of the total farm product.
		Now, an average farm feeds 169 people annually.
		One acre can bring 50,000 pounds of strawberries or 2784 pounds of wheat and one cow daily.
		You spoke about your dairy farm.
		Five pounds of butter a day, nine gallons of ice cream, and 10 pounds of cheese.
		And that is on a daily basis from one cow.
		When you say your farm was 50 head of cow, why is that small now?
		And what are the economics of that?
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
		Well, one of the things that we have to understand is that there's a natural market consolidation.
		This happens with any industry.
		And in an industry like farming or logging or ranching, where there's a limited resource, only so much land after the country was settled, there was always going to be some industry consolidation.
		One farm doing better than another, buying that farm.
		You know, that's natural market forces.
		What we have in America is not only those natural market forces, but massive additional forces that were unexpected and that were mishandled.
		We had economic crises from the Great Depression to the farm crisis in the 1980s where we had policymakers and much of our country not understand what was going on on the ground with our farmers.
		And so the economic crisis that occurred ended up hitting farms in a unique way and in a way that was worse than it needed to be.
		This happens over and over through economic crises.
		We also have a wide variety of governmental and political decisions that have been made by both parties over the past century that have one way or another led to farmers being missed and the impacts of our policy decisions wiping out more farmers, whether we knew it or not.
		And then there are also technological forces.
		Technology has been a great advancement, allowing farmers to take on more animals and more acres with fewer people breaking their backs to do it.
		It has made food a lower share of the household budgets.
		But also, we have failed to see the way that our technology has left so many farms needlessly behind.
		We haven't had enough scale-neutral technology that can be adopted by large as well as medium and small farms.
		And so many of our small farms have been left behind by our technological advances, even if they were perfectly competitive in every other way.
		So those economic crises, those governmental decisions, and those technological issues, all of those things mixed together have made this a far sharper crisis than it needed to be.
		We were always going to have some farms going by the wayside as the industry evolved.
		It did not need to be this stark and it did not need to endanger our food supply the way it has.
		We now have food prices through the roof, as I don't need to remind anybody across this country.
		We also have a strange situation where although we're wiping out 70% of our farms, we are importing more food than ever.
		$45.2 billion ag trade deficit, meaning we're importing that much more than we're exporting.
		So we're wiping out our domestic food supply while becoming more and more dependent on food from foreign countries.
		And so although there's a strong industry and a lot of resilience in our farm families, we tell those stories in the book.
		The reality is that we have a situation where our food supply policy really needs to change if we're going to not only stop wiping out these farms, but make sure that we have a secure food supply and don't cause further economic problems for people all across the country, regardless of whether they've ever set foot in a barn.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		In USA Today, a while back, you wrote an op-ed entitled Democrats and Republicans Have Failed American Farmers and Your Dinner Table.
		Mr. Reisinger, what were you saying in this op-ed?
		And is farming a free enterprise institute anymore?
unidentified		That's a great question.
		I'll take it backward to forward.
		Farming has a lot of market forces in it, but also there's a lot of government intervention.
		And some of it has worked and some of it has not.
		And we have a very tangled up industry here where farmers are so subject to prices and market forces, but they aren't necessarily in a position to be able to capitalize on the good while they try to deal with the bad.
		And the farm programs that we have have in some cases helped, but have in many cases been piled on top of one another.
		We haven't necessarily done what we need to do to reform them and make sure that they're working the way that they were intended.
		Now, the issue of governmental policy and the way that both parties have felt, maybe the best way is for me to give you just a brief example.
		We tell, as I said, we talk about these economic forces.
		We also tell the personal stories of our family's survival over four generations.
		When my parents were married in 1976, there was a drought that year, and they had to figure out a way to try to survive a drought when their crops weren't coming up from the ground to be able to help feed their animals.
		They managed to do that without taking on a massive amount of debt, and it was very close.
		And if they hadn't been able to do that without taking out debt, they would have sailed into the farm crisis.
		And the farm crisis was a time when tens of thousands of farms were wiped out, often because they had too much debt.
		Now, that gets at the government issue because the government under both parties had been encouraging farms for decades by then to get bigger a get out.
		And one of the ways they've been doing that was through programs that were encouraging debt, were encouraging farmers to take out more debt.
		Not long after that, the federal government increased interest rates, as was happening more recently, to try to tame inflation, and that made that debt more expensive.
		Now, you could argue for or against any of those decisions.
		You could say, well, they needed to do each of those things.
		But when you combine them together and when you fail to account for how it affects our farm families, what you had is the government encouraging farmers to take out more debt and then suddenly making that debt more expensive.
		It kicked off a crisis that lasted for the better part of a decade, wiped out tens of thousands of farms, destroyed many of our rural communities, and affected a food system that now has higher food prices and a less secure food supply for every other American dinner table.
		And so these are very large decisions that have been made by both parties without our policymakers necessarily understanding how it affects those farm families on the ground and therefore how it affects our food supply.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		So Mr. Reisinger, as a family farmer, do you follow the debates in Congress over the five-year farm bill, which is just one year in this last Congress?
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
		You know, we all follow that very closely.
		And as my dad and my sister are working to chart the path forward, one of the things that I do in addition to telling our stories is I help out on the business side in my free time.
		And of course, they throw me in a tractor on my day off.
		And we talk a lot about how this is affecting the family farm that my dad is working to keep going and that my sister is working to take over.
		And the reality is this, the farm bill has so many programs that what we really need to be doing is we need to be rolling up our sleeves and having Congress figure out ways to figure out which programs are working, which aren't, reform those that aren't or get rid of those that aren't, and find a way to make sure that we know that our farm programs are functioning the way they should.
		We're not doing that.
		The gridlock is keeping that hard work from happening.
		And so they're continuing to simply punt old programs year after year without us ever really assessing what's working and what isn't.
		And that comes on top of the fact that because the government is involved in agriculture, many agricultural lenders, they need to have that farm bill passed in order for them to be able to know what's going on in the industry and to be able to take the risk to lend to farmers.
		And so we need to be passing a five-year farm bill so that we can actually do the hard work of seeing what's working.
		But when the passage of farm bills continues to get delayed, what happens is that makes it very hard for farmers to be able to go to the bank and get a loan that they might need to be able to do spring planting.
		Now, with this most recent patch that they passed, they got it done just in time for farmers to be able to go out and get that lending.
		But it was very, very close.
		And there are a lot of farmers that were delayed in doing that.
		So in the short term, there's a harm in terms of farmers being able to go out and borrow the money that they need to borrow because of the uncertainty in the agriculture industry when the farm bill doesn't pass.
		And then long term, there's harm because we aren't doing the work to roll up our sleeves and make sure that our government programs are functioning in a way that have their intended impact.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		We are talking with Brian Reisinger, author of Land Rich, Cash Poor, My Family's Hope in the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer.
		We're going to put the phone numbers up on the screen in case you'd like to participate.
		202 is the area code for all of our numbers.
		You can see them listed there.
		Fourth number this morning is set aside for farmers only.
		Go ahead and start dialing in.
		Bronson is a farmer in Pueblo, Colorado.
		First, Bronson, before we get to your question, tell us about your farm or your ranch.
unidentified		Good morning, America.
		I am a disabled veteran served during the Vietnam War.
		Graduated from San Diego State University from the School of Social Work.
		Turned activist.
		I've spoken in two radio stations in Denver.
		And I've also spoken to Cispan before.
		I was a farm worker during my high school years.
		And this is what I encounter.
		In the wintertime, the watermelons are planted.
		And to protect the watermelon, the seedlings, to protect the seedlings, you have to carve a groove around the dirt.
		And then you put a stick, a bending stick, a stick that bent, and then you push it in the ground, and then you put a wax paper, and then you push it in.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Bronson, can you get to your question here?
unidentified		Oh, I didn't have a question.
		I have some.
		I wanted to share my experiences as a farm worker.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And where were you planting watermelons, Bronson?
unidentified		In Southern California, in the desert.
unidentified		And, you know, your fingers, at the end of the day, your fingers get raw from digging up the groove around the watermelon city.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Bronson, do you think you were paid a fair wage?
unidentified		Well, you know, I don't think so.
		You know, I don't think so.
		You know, and another occasion, a plane was cut.
		We were working on a great plantation in southern, around close to Palm Springs.
		And, you know, the plane keeps treating us spraying poisons.
		We ran.
		We saw the plane coming and spraying poisons.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What era was this, Bronson?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Can you tell us the years?
unidentified		Well, during my high school years, I graduated in 65.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Great.
		Thank you, sir.
		We appreciate your experience.
		Sharing your experience with us, Brian Reisinger.
		Bronson brought up issues of labor and pesticides and immigration.
		All these national issues are playing on a family farm, aren't they?
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
		And we talk about many of those issues in the book.
		And I want to thank him for sharing your experience, Bronson, but also for your service to our country and the military and so much of what you've done over your life.
		I really appreciate you calling in.
		The reality is that our family farms, all types and sizes and kinds, have had stories of immigration, women's rights, addiction, labor, economic upheaval, national security, all of these things play out in one form or another on a farm.
		With Land Rich Cash Poor, we really focused on those farms that are owned and operated by the families that live on them.
		And that was not meant to limit necessarily the discussion, but just to focus on the types of farms that had that entrepreneurial opportunity from the beginning for individual families.
		There are also many types of farms that employ large amounts of migrant labor.
		There are entirely different stories of tenant farms in the South.
		And so there are many different types of farms and stories.
		The reality is that all of them in one form or another deal with these issues of economic hardship and the difficulty that comes with living close to land, along with the beauty of it, some of the physical hardship of it.
		We tell stories in the book of my family, of family members who were injured in the fields.
		My great uncle, my grandpa's brother, was crippled as a young boy.
		We talk about drought.
		As I mentioned, my parents, we talk about surviving decades of poverty to climb into the middle class.
		And, you know, it's really an incredibly rich and harrowing story when you look at all of the things that Americans have lived through on the farms that feed us.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Let's take another call, and this is from Kyle in Reno, Nevada.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Kyle, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I have a question for Mr. Reisenberger.
		I have a bachelor's of degree in agricultural economics.
		I did my internship on the USDA chicken farm at the University of Arkansas.
		I wanted to ask him, since you guys spoke about the farm bill, I believe the biggest plague to the local family farmer is the fact that the farm bill is loaded with port that only helps corporate farming, which changed the model from family-owned farms to corporations owning and leasing their property and then them having to subdue to their wishes and whims.
		And I feel like in the end, that hurts small farmers as far as their ability to compete.
		If the farm bill is less corporate in its construction, maybe subsidies would become more fair and maybe access to lower cost inputs would become more competitive.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Kyle.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Reisinger?
unidentified		You know, it's such a great point, and it speaks to what happens when our policymakers, because of congressional gridlock, are not in a position to make sure we're fully reforming our programs.
		As I mentioned earlier, I'm really glad that this was brought up.
		The reality is that there are so many programs and so much of our tax dollars that go toward farming that don't have the impact that they're supposed to have.
		What happens is you have program after program that is passed and piled one on top of another.
		They're at times contradictory for one thing.
		But then in addition to that, over time, government programs become prone to abuse and favoritism.
		That's not a statement for or against those things.
		It just happens over time.
		And the reality is that the largest operators have the army of lobbyists and accountants and lawyers to help them navigate the programs also in the first place.
		So for all of those reasons for the continued piling of these programs, the way that they can become prone to abuse and favoritism over time, and the fact that larger organizations are in a better position to take advantage of them, many times our tax dollars are not going the place that they are intended to go.
		And so you have this dilemma where family farmers are on the ground legitimately saying that the economics don't work and that they aren't getting the assistance that is necessarily intended.
		And that taxpayers are saying, where are our tax dollars going?
		What's happening to all this money?
		And so the reality is that what the caller is talking about is a very real problem, that our policy isn't necessarily geared to making sure that it's helping farmers of all sizes.
		Now, there are all farms of all kinds and all sizes.
		Some of them are corporate.
		Some of our larger farms are family-owned that got larger, simply trying to survive the economic forces that make it so hard for family farms.
		They're still family-owned.
		They're supporting maybe multiple generations.
		And then many of our farms are mid-sized and small farms that, as I mentioned, simply are not able to make a full-time living and are not able to help supply the bulk of our food.
		There are ways that we could change government policy to gear it so that it is more even keel and something that is more catered to farms of all sizes and allow medium and small size farms to be able to better compete and be able to, one, be able to make a full-time living for their families, but also be able to supply more of our food supply to the American people at a time when Americans care more than ever about where their food comes from.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Tom in Dubuque, Iowa.
		Tom, you're on with Brian Reisinger.
		Please go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, yes.
		Good morning.
		I just wanted to say my mother was raised on a farm in Minnesota that was homesteaded in 1843.
		It was a small dairy farm, 300 acres.
		And my uncle raised nine children off that small dairy farm.
		That's all I want to say.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And what's your point?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What's your point in emphasizing that, Tom?
unidentified		And it's still in the family.
unidentified		It's still operating, but it's a beef farm now.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Tom, thank you for sharing your experience with us.
		Brian Reisinger, we talked about a little bit about migrant labor earlier.
		We know that in Iowa and Arkansas with the chicken processing plants, there is some migrant labor working there.
		Have you experienced that in Wisconsin?
unidentified		You know, there is migrant labor that helps with dairy farms in Wisconsin, just as occurs in many states across the country.
		I will say that the kind of farm I grew up on really didn't experience that as much.
		The reason is it's many of the larger operations and organizations where the operational needs go beyond what the family can do.
		And so they're hiring labor, and that is increasingly, in many cases, migrant labor across a bunch of farm country.
		But as we've mentioned, there are still so many small family farms that simply aren't making a full-time living for their families.
		And the kind that I grew up on was one that provided a middle-class living as I was growing up, but that living was slipping away.
		I was fortunate enough that my parents were able to help me go to college.
		But as we get further and further along, our farm is becoming the kind that increasingly can't make the kind of full-time living that it would have a generation ago.
		And so that's what our experience has been.
		You know, I want to say that what the caller was talking about is a really notable thing.
		You know, earlier in our farm history in this country, it was very common to have incredibly large families.
		And that is emblematic of the fact that our farms, although farming has always been hard, and although it has always involved great economic hardship and toil and vulnerability to the weather, there was a time when our family farms were able to provide for large families like that.
		And in fact, they did it in the depths of the Great Depression.
		And that is as compared to today when families are much smaller and finding that the farms cannot make it anymore.
		And that's actually part of the family history that we trace that's much like the caller's history.
		My grandpa grew up in a family of 14 kids in the depths of the Great Depression.
		He grew up in great poverty, but the farm also was economically strong enough and resilient enough to make it through the Depression, feed 14 children, and be something that my grandfather could purchase from my great-grandfather and use it to climb into the middle class.
		And so even in the depths of the Great Depression, supplying food and sustenance for 14 kids, family farms were once able to plow a path toward the middle class.
		And today in modern America, they're past due and often not making it.
		And so I think the caller's story really shows the sweep of what has happened to American farms.
		And it certainly follows the personal elements of the story that I found as I was exploring our family's history and how that lined up with the issues that have driven the disappearance of our farms.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		But Mr. Reisinger, aren't larger farms more efficient and able to feed more people than the smaller family operated farms?
unidentified		It's a great question.
		And there's certain truth to that, but it has its limits.
		And what I mean by that is larger farms do have the ability to purchase goods in bulk, spread their costs over their operations.
		And for that reason, there are ways in which the economics do favor the larger farms.
		The reality is that we have gotten to a place where this food system more broadly, not just the farms, but the food system more broadly, is both a modern miracle and deeply vulnerable to crisis.
		And what I mean by that is industries all across our economy are dominated by large, largely integrated industries with large players.
		And so it's not really the fault of the food industry or the eg industry.
		They're chasing all these other industries in the American economy.
		The reality is that now our food system is so integrated that there are very few paths from the farm gate to the dinner table.
		And so we saw this in COVID when the supply chain was disrupted by plants being shut down.
		If you have one large distribution center go down, it can affect our entire food supply chain.
		That's one of the reasons that food prices have spiked far beyond the rate of inflation.
		It's not simply inflation.
		It has gone at a far higher rate than inflation.
		One of the reasons is the vulnerability to our food supply chain.
		We saw that during COVID where consumers couldn't get the food they needed, or if they could, it was far more expensive.
		At the same time, that farmers couldn't sell their goods, or if they could, it was for far lower prices.
		The reason is the supply chain was locked up.
		And this happens all the time.
		Whether it is bird flu affecting the price of chicken or the availability of eggs, you're probably having a hard time getting eggs in many parts of the country right now over the holiday season.
		Whether it is weather events, whether it is an invasive pest.
		This happens over and over.
		And as we have such an integrated food system that is dominated by such large organizations, it's very easy for our food supply chain to be disrupted.
		Now, many of our family farms are perfectly efficient and able to operate and compete as well if they didn't have government policies and the direction of our technology and other things tipping the scales against them.
		So size is one element of efficiency, but so is having robust competition among many different types of players.
		And I think that most people on farming, whether they're on a large farm or a small farm, would agree that having a landscape where farms of more types and sizes can compete would be better for all of us.
		And I think that people who are looking at their grocery bills would find that their prices wouldn't be skyrocketing quite so much because we wouldn't have the disruptions to our supply chain that we're currently vulnerable to.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Reisinger, can you walk us through a product from your family's Wisconsin farm to a dinner table?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Can you walk us through that supply chain?
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
		Probably the best example is milk, although our farm has shifted in more recent years and diversified milk is the best example of this.
		So what happens is on a farm like ours and from our 100 years, we would milk cows morning and night.
		And there were machines in the later eras, but originally it was by hand.
		And as there were machines, we were able to take on more and more cows, but it was still very physical labor for a farm like ours.
		So you're hauling the machines, you're bringing the cows into the barn from the pasture, you're hauling the machines, you're putting the machines on the cows, you're doing all kinds of physical labor, carrying feed and different things to and from the cows, in addition to field work and everything that it takes to be able to get that feed for the cows.
		And each morning, that milk goes into a cooling tank on our farm.
		It's then picked up, and in our case, it was shipped to a small cheese factory that would use that milk to make specialty cheeses.
		But what happened to a good amount of milk, so much milk, is that increasingly it was going toward not necessarily small cheese factories, but large dairy processors.
		And they might be creating milk for drinking, but they might also be creating different types of cheese.
		They might be creating other dairy products.
		And it is taken by that milk processor, turned into some other kind of product that is often sold to another food company, often sold to another food company.
		It often goes through the hands of many different food companies that take a product and process it in one form or another.
		And then it is sold to distributors who then turn around and sell it to grocery stores or to restaurants.
		So oftentimes, there might be as many as half a dozen or more transactions between the farm gate and the dinner table by the time something gets to the American people.
		That's an example with milk.
		And one of the things that we had in Wisconsin and the reasons that so many family farms continued to survive for longer as we were wiping them out at the rate of 45,000 a year in this country is because there were options like my dad had, which was to sell our milk to a local small cheese factory that used it to make specialty cheeses that were purchased by people all over the country.
		So he had choices more so than many of our farms that over time have just become locked into only being able to sell one type of product in one direction or one part of a market.
		And so many times farmers are facing those constrained choices increasingly.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And again, the Farm Bureau reports that one cow daily can produce five pounds of butter, nine gallons of ice cream, and 10 pounds of cheese.
		That's per cow.
		How long between the milking of the cow and a product on the table?
unidentified		Now, that's a great question.
		It really depends upon the product.
		If it's milk, if it's being sold, it simply needs to be pasteurized.
		And that can be a matter of days.
		When cheese is made, that's something that can take days upon days.
		And then it is sold.
		It's a much more resilient product that can be sold over time.
		So it can be days, it can be weeks.
		It really depends upon the type of production.
		But irregardless, one of the things I think is really important and that relates to something you're talking about is the idea of higher prices and whether farmers make more money in those instances.
		The reality is that they don't.
		Because of all of those transactions, the food being bought and sold between the farm gate to the dinner table, by the time that higher price that you're seeing in the grocery store gets back to the farmer, there's a very small share of it left.
		And the farmer has been dealing also with increased prices, right?
		So as consumers' prices are going up, farmers are facing higher cost of seed, fertilizer, energy.
		And so when the food price is higher, they don't really see much of that money.
		And anything that they do see is really eaten up by increasing costs.
		And so farmers really are in league with consumers.
		They're facing the same kind of economic crunch that families all across the country have been facing in recent years.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Now, we're talking about your family farm in Wisconsin, but you're in Moraga, California.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What do you do for a living?
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
		Thank you for asking.
		So I actually split my time between Northern California and my wife's family.
		We live in a small town here in Northern California and the family farm in Wisconsin.
		I'm back in Wisconsin for a good part of my time as well.
		And I, during my, in addition to my writing projects of the book, I'm a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal, Sentinel, and USA Today Network.
		And I also am a public affairs consultant.
		So I found as I was growing up that my talent was less in cattle and crops than it was for my dad and sister.
		And so I pursued a writing career.
		And it was first in business journalism for 10 years.
		I then worked in public policy.
		And now I work for a public affairs consulting firm where we help work on bipartisan and nonpartisan private sector issues that are affecting all kinds of industries.
		And so what I do is really go back and forth and work on my writing and work on these issues of how to solve problems in our public affairs arena.
		As I mentioned, I'm honored to be able to tell our family's story and to still be involved in the farm, although I don't work there day to day.
		I help out on the business side.
		And as I mentioned, any farm kid on your day off, they throw you in a tractor and I still help out and harvest and plant and harvest when I'm home as well.
		And so, you know, that's something that I struggle with in the book also.
		I talk a lot about that.
		I was the first eldest son in four generations not to farm.
		I was also the first son of my dad's family to go to college.
		And so I was very grateful to be able to grow up where I did.
		I love my roots and I'm grateful to be able to tell our story.
		But I struggled also with not taking over the family farm after my great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my father had done.
		And that weight of tradition and the pressure that it puts on farm families is also a very real thing.
		It's something we explore in the book generation after generation as well.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Tyrone in Mendon, Illinois.
		Thanks for holding.
		You're on with author Brian Reisinger.
unidentified		Brian, it's great to talk to you.
		My background is actually retail.
		I own a small craft store.
		My cousins all farmed, and I actually help a farmer where I'm at because my grandparents farmed.
		I really enjoy it.
		I just want to talk about a few of the myths that people don't understand out there.
		And one is the fact that a big part of that farm bill goes for WIC and food stamps.
		And people seem to understand that they see that big total of that farm bill, and they think that's going to all the farmers.
		Well, it's not.
		I think that needs to be emphasized a little bit.
		The other thing is, is we always, I hear people blaming farmers for chemicals on their property.
		But, you know, the biggest abuser of chemicals in the United States is our golf courses.
		They use 10 times the chemical that any farmer does.
		People have to also realize that as a farmer, their prices are set by the board, not by them.
		So when you're looking at $4 a corn right now, a little over $4 something, that price is about the same price it was in the 80s.
		That's not feasible for a farmer.
		Our government has to work harder to open up more avenues so that our farmers can get a better price.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, sir.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Brian Reisinger.
unidentified		Those are such good observations, and I'm sure there are a lot of people in farm country who are cheering those observations.
		You know, I think that one of the key things that was said was how there need to be more avenues for our farmers, and that is so true.
		We have so many farms that are really locked into growing one type of crop or product.
		Now, it might be corn, it might be, you know, some other type of field crop.
		And the reason they're growing it is because there's some level of a market for it.
		They know how to do it.
		There are government programs that support it.
		So there's some level of ability to do it.
		But each year, the living that can be made on that is getting worse and worse.
		And the reason is, just as the caller said, the prices aren't necessarily going up.
		If they are going up, they certainly aren't keeping pace with costs.
		And we don't have enough new possibilities for farmers in this country.
		So they're locked into, they wouldn't have a place to take specialty wheat or artisan tomatoes if they were trying to grow it, but they know where to take corn.
		They've got a local grain buyer who will take that.
		And so we don't have a market infrastructure or a government policy that allows our farmers to really just branch out and start doing new things and finding new entrepreneurial opportunities.
		One of the things we talk about in the book is how can we transition from this food system that pumps out a large amount of overly processed foods, has farmers producing a very few types of crops that go into this food system.
		How can we shift from that toward one that has more entrepreneurial opportunity, more avenues, as the caller says, for farmers to be able to make money, new crops they can experiment with?
		That is something that could create new opportunity and it could also meet what I think is a growing demand amongst the American public to know where their food comes from.
		So if we have farms producing more local and regionally produced food or more food that goes into specialty markets like happens with Wisconsin cheese, if we have more of that happening, farmers are able to find more economic opportunity.
		Consumers are able to find more types of food in more places, including more fresh and local and specialty, the type of food that they want to increasingly have.
		But right now, we have a situation where there is still a mismatch.
		There isn't enough consumer demand to completely overhaul the industry.
		And so many farmers are left growing crops and producing products that only have certain limited economic value.
		That gets into the issue of chemicals and other things.
		There are many farms that are working to transition off of chemicals, but they don't necessarily have those new crops where they can transition and do something new and different.
		If you want to grow field corn in this country and you want it to be resilient and you want it to be able to be competitive, you have to do some amount of that.
		So many of our farmers want to be able to shift off of those chemicals and want to be able to pursue new types of economic opportunity, but they're locked in and it costs money to make changes, especially when margins are so tight.
		So there's a lot of really good observations there that speak to sort of the limited options that farmers have in this country.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Larry in Milford, Michigan tweets in or puts on X. How is the price and availability of fertilizer affected farms?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Severely.
unidentified		It's a very good observation.
		The reality is that the price of fertilizer has gone up in recent years and it is one of the most expensive what they call inputs, input costs that you have to put into producing our food.
		Now that is subject to many things.
		There are all kinds of global forces that affect that.
		But the reality is that that is one of the costs that has increased exponentially.
		And along with other increasing costs, while the prices that farmers receive, that is part of the economic squeeze.
		And the previous caller also mentioned that farmers don't set their prices.
		That is true, whether it's corn or any other kind of commodity crop.
		You're getting whatever you can get based off of what the commodity markets dictate.
		And so that's another reason that we need to try to find new entrepreneur opportunities because as they're dealing with increasing costs, if they have the ability to, if farmers have the ability to sell new types of crops and products where they can say, here's what I think I need to charge for this, that is a way to be able to break out of this situation where the commodity prices dictate what the farmer receives.
		And increasing costs like fertilizer and seed and energy dictate what the cost for the farmer is.
		So it's a business where you don't really set your own prices, but you do have prices dictated to you.
		And so it's a very difficult economic situation that we need to try to break out of.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		The R Street Institute here in Washington, D.C., which is a so-called middle-of-the-road think tank, writes this, and this is from April: federal farm subsidies increase land prices, which benefits wealthy landowners at the expense of the many farmers who rent.
		Agriculture subsidies and the expectation of more in the future are capitalized, further elevating prices and making farmland a good bet for hedge funds, wealthy investors, or better established nearby farmers.
		Do you agree with that, Mr. Eisinger?
unidentified		I do.
		And it actually gets to the dilemma that the book's title speaks to what it means to be land-rich, cash-poor.
		The cash-poor part of that is that it's getting harder and harder for your average family farm to make a living on a farm for all the reasons that we've talked about.
		It gets harder to grind out that living each year.
		At the same time, the land they're living on is increasingly valuable, but only if you sell it.
		So you have farm families where the dads and moms are looking around trying to figure out whether they're heading toward the day where they have to tell their kids, we can't make it anymore.
		We can't continue to make a living here.
		And if they wanted to turn around and sell it, well, then they lose everything else because for a farm family, the land and the farm is not just your mom or dad's job.
		It's your home.
		It's your community.
		It's your heritage.
		In our case, four generations.
		And so that land-rich, cash-poor dilemma is very real: that the land is valuable, but only if it's sold to an investor, a speculator, someone who wants to develop it, a large corporation.
		And if you're trying to hold on to it, it's getting harder and harder each year to make a living.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Something we've heard about in the news, and Teresa in Little Rock, Arkansas, Tech Sin, is China or other countries purchasing farmland in your area?
unidentified		Yeah, that's a great question.
		I have not seen it as immediately in our area as it has been in some other places, although all of our farmland is at risk.
		One of the reasons it's happened a little bit less in Wisconsin is because there is still somewhat of a base of small family farms, small landowners that hold on to that land.
		But as we lose our farms, again, at the rate of $45,000 a year on average for the past century, it becomes easier and easier for foreign adversaries to buy our farmland.
		So that is happening in many parts of the country.
		The reason it becomes easier is because that farmland is owned by one entity.
		So it's easier to come in and make a deal with one landowner.
		And as it gets further and further away from our family farms, that land may be held in less careful hands, hands that care only about investors and being able to get a return for their investors.
		And so it's easier for a foreign adversary like China or a company that is a front for a foreign adversary to come in and purchase that land.
		It is happening more at an alarming rate.
		It increased 15%, the amount of foreign farm ownership increased 15% in just two years.
		Now, some of that investment is by friendly countries, and there are some farmers who welcome investment from investors from friendly countries where it can help capitalize that industry.
		There are other farmers who would never dream of it.
		But the reality is that a growing chunk of that is also foreign adversaries.
		And there's a lot of concern about China, North Korea, Russia, Iran.
		China in particular has been purchasing farmland in a way that not only endangers our food supply, our hold on the land that supplies us, but also endangers our national security because they've been purchasing farmland near military installations as well, which I don't think we can count as a coincidence.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Paul is a farmer in New Park, Pennsylvania.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Paul.
unidentified		Hello.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Please go ahead.
unidentified		Okay, so first, thanks for calling attention to the reality of American agriculture.
		Second, I am 80.
		I'm fourth generation.
		My son is fifth generation on the farm.
		We have a fruit and grain operation in the last two decades.
		My son has gotten us very heavily into agricultural entertainment.
		So my question is: where do we go from here?
		We're already selling carbon credits through Landa Lakes and Trutera.
		It appears as though the future may not be food.
		The future may be energy, ethanol, sustainable aviation fuel, biodiesel, or something like that.
		So the question is: where do we go from here?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Paul, before you leave, did you say that your farm is getting into agriculture entertainment?
unidentified		Yes.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What is that?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What does that mean?
unidentified		Well, I think your guest will know quite well.
		So we are having guests come out to the farm.
		My son has a corn maze.
		That started with a corn maze.
		It's now diversified a little more into other things that families can come out, be on the farm, pick their own fruit, have a day for good family entertainment on our farm.
		Okay.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		You also mentioned that you're selling carbon credits.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Can you just briefly tell us how you do that and what you're selling and to whom you're selling them?
unidentified		I wish I could give you a really good explanation, but we are adapting the way we farm so that we capture carbon in the soil.
		We are increasing the organic matter or the carbon content of the soil by the way we farm.
		We're working with Trutera, who is the middleman who certifies that we are doing what we say we are doing.
		And they then sell those carbon credits to businesses, whether it's Pepsi-Cola or Delta Airlines or someone else who wants to offset their carbon footprint.
		So it is complicated.
		It's a pain in the neck sometimes, but we think maybe that's the direction that we need to go in the future.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Final question.
		You mentioned the large agricultural concern, Landa Lakes.
		Do you work directly with the company with Landa Lakes?
unidentified		Landa Lakes owns Trutera.
unidentified		Truterra is the business that certifies carbon that we are, in fact, capturing carbon in the soil, certifies that, does the tests, and then markets the carbon credits that we have captured.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Got it.
		Appreciate your time, Paul.
		Thanks for sharing your expertise.
		Let's hear from our guest, Brian Reisinger.
		Mr. Reisinger.
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
		You know, what Paul is talking about there is a great example of a family farm that is working to diversify in as many ways as you can.
		They're still growing certain types of crops and products and selling those, but they're also pursuing agritourism where they're trying to capitalize on the idea that people care where their food comes from and want to be able to come out and experience the farm lifestyle.
		And they're participating in the carbon offset, which is really just an entire industry.
		And so there are all kinds of avenues that farms are trying to evolve towards try to figure out where the revenue streams come from.
		And despite the good work by Paul and his son to figure out the future and try to figure out how the farm needs to evolve, you hear him asking the question, what's next?
		Where do we go from here?
		The reason for that is that farms still operate on incredibly tight margins.
		And despite amazing creativity, like you're hearing from that farm family, the economics are still incredibly difficult.
		Some of the places that I think we can go can be dictated by what we talk about in the book as an R D revolution.
		Research and development in this country is not what it once was decades ago.
		Government R D is at its lowest level since the 1970s.
		We still have a lot of private sector R D, but any of our R D, whether it's government or private, is not necessarily doing what we need to do from the standpoint of scale-neutral technology that I mentioned earlier.
		So much of our technology has been focused on how can farms get bigger and bigger and more and more efficient in terms of size.
		But scale-neutral technology would be the type of technology that can work for not only large farms, but also medium and small.
		It needs to do what my dad or what Paul might call penciling out, where you sit down and say, okay, I purchased this piece of technology.
		It's going to pay for itself in five years or 10 years.
		You know, what's the horizon on which that efficiency is going to help pay for the technology?
		If you can't see that on a short enough time horizon for a small farm, they can't afford it.
		And so we need technology that's practical and also affordable for farms of all sizes.
		And there are good examples of this.
		One example that's being explored is called gene editing.
		And that it's not scary like science fictiony or cloning dolly the sheep sort of thing.
		It's small adjustments to the genetics of a seed that don't have to be artificial or don't have to be dangerous.
		They can be very basic, more kind of on the order of what we did when we discovered hybrid corn.
		And the gene editing can make it so that more types of crops and products can be grown in more types of soils, more parts of the country, more climates, more times of the year.
		That could widely, dramatically open up all of the different entrepreneur opportunities that might be there for farmers to be able to grow more types of crops and products that currently are only available from one corner of the globe.
		That's the kind of thing that can create new opportunity, new avenues where there are crops that have meaningful profit margins for farmers to be able to pursue.
		So we need to be opening up the possibilities for families like Paul's and families like the one that I grew up in to be able to have our farms be able to persist and to reverse this trend.
		If we don't do that, by the way, we are on pace.
		If we continue to lose our farms at the pace we did for the past century, we're on pace to lose most of our family farms within the next generation, which is a pretty scary prospect.
		And that's why people like Paul, despite their hard work and the good things they're doing, are concerned about this.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Brian Reisinger, in the year 2024, is there anything that's really a non-GMO product on our American farms?
unidentified		Well, there are on the farms.
		Most of the food that's produced in this country is produced by larger farms.
		And many of those seeds and the genetics of those seeds have been, you know, in one way or another changed or reformulated, etc.
		Some of that is the sort of thing that people are validly concerned about.
		Some of it is very routine and normal and doesn't alter the fundamental health of the food.
		It really depends upon the science, scientific process that you're talking about.
		But we have farms all across the country that are working to supply food to the American consumer.
		There simply is a mismatch between those farms and the market.
		There are many farms that are growing and would love to grow more of fresh fruits and vegetables, food and fiber, products like hemp.
		The reality is there are small niche markets for those things, but they aren't robust enough for enough of our farms to be able to fully make the transition.
		And so you have many farms that therefore have part-time income and have their families working many jobs off the farm in addition to the farm.
		But that's where if we can get consumer demand to continue to grow, it's been growing.
		People are caring about where their food comes from more than ever.
		If we can get all of our consumers to take a bit more of a step toward buying crops and products that come directly from the farm or that they know where it comes from and that they're patronizing these local, regional, and specialty food markets, we can begin to create more market demand that can help farmers make that transition into more types of crops and products where people can feel good about what they're putting into their bodies.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Timothy is in East Berkshire, Vermont.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, gentlemen.
		I live about three miles away from the largest farm in the state of Vermont.
		The way this farm became the largest is due to the fact that the smaller farmers, which was mostly milk, you know, their 100-weight costs were down to nothing, but yet, of course, the retail costs keep going up.
		But this farm, collectively, and the farm has farms in New York as well as Vermont, probably milks about 200,000 cows a day.
		Now, what's funny is that this farm is part of a cooperative.
		And due to the fact that milk prices have been so low for so long, what this farm did was made a huge methane digester.
		So what happens is the co-op comes in, they get the milk out of the parlor, then they go around back.
		Of course, the farmer gets paid, but then they go around back and they just empty that tank or truck right into the methane digester.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		So hey, Brian, can you put a question mark or a period on what you're trying to tell us?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry, Timothy, Timothy.
unidentified		No, okay.
		Well, all I'm saying is that the small farmer has so many hurdles against it.
		When it comes to organic milk because of the bird flu, guess what?
		There's another nail in the coffin.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I think we're getting the gist here, Timothy, of what you're talking about.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Brian Reisinger, any response for that caller?
unidentified		Yeah, you know, the caller is talking about those broad economic forces that have pushed agriculture in this direction.
		As we tell the story in the book from the early 1900s when my great-grandparents came here to dig a living out of the dirt and on up through today, the reality is that farms have been pushed more and more in the direction of getting bigger, getting out.
		And so you have farms that have gotten much larger to try to survive those economic forces.
		And you have other farms that haven't been able to do that and have been squeezed out.
		Reality is that the situation with milk and dairy is much like so many other crops and products across the country, where what you have to be able to do is provide economic scale to be able to make a living on the low milk price when you compare that low milk price to the cost of production.
		And so this is why we need to make so many of the changes we've been talking about here in terms of an RD revolution, in terms of changing government policy and programs to make sure they're functioning the way they're intended to also shift so that we have more competitive domestic and international markets that have a fair shake for our farmers.
		All of these things are the kinds of things that are hurdles to small family farms trying to make it, just as the caller is saying.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Why are most farmers Republicans today?
unidentified		Well, you know, I think that one of the things that has driven sentiment in rural America and among farmers in general is this feeling of being left behind.
		And, you know, people can decide that they agree or disagree with the reasons and the direction of politics in rural America.
		But the reality is that what has happened in this country is that we've had our farms disappearing for the better part of a century.
		And that has affected the small communities that were built by the farms.
		Many of those communities have been shrinking.
		That's on top of the fact that manufacturing jobs and other things have disappeared from rural America that once helped fill some of those gaps in some of our small towns and rural communities.
		And so when you have that level of economic devastation, there are really two economies in this country.
		There's the economy that affects kind of everyone, and then there's the rural economy that has been on a downward slope for a very long time, regardless of the ups and downs of the rest of the economy.
		So I think there's an incredible amount of economic frustration in rural America.
		And that is something that the Republican Party at Current has been able to tap into.
		There are times in our history where Democrats have been able to tap into that.
		But the reality is that we need new entrepreneur opportunity, new economic opportunity for farmers in rural America.
		That's what we need to solve the real problems that farm families are facing.
		Currently, that frustration is playing out in the direction of the Republicans.
		It's been, you know, in different directions in other eras, but that's the way it's playing out now.
		I think the important thing about that is that it speaks to the economic frustration.
		And by the way, it took both parties to get our farm families and therefore our food supply into this predicament.
		It's going to take both parties and everyone in between to help solve it over the long haul.
		This is a long-term problem that is much bigger and broader than any one recent political trend.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Tom's in Birmingham, Michigan.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Please go ahead, Tom.
unidentified		Good morning, and thank you, C-SPAN, for having Mr. Reisinger.
		I'm very proud of what you're doing, Mr. Reisinger.
		You're right where you should be.
		I understand you're lamenting leaving the family, but your purpose is definitely being served.
		And as a past national president of the National Board of Physician Nutrition Specialists, and nutrition and food are two separate things, even if intimately related, I'd love to get your further perspectives on what you've already been touching on.
		A picture.
		I'm sitting in Metro Detroit, and at one end of the parking lot, it takes me $6 to buy a pint of raspberries.
		And the other end, there's a McDonald's selling for $5 a value meal.
		You've already discussed some of this in terms of inertia in the market and then the subsidies and so forth that happened with the farm bill.
		Can you comment a little further on the impression, the general impression people have that we are over-subsidizing commodity crops at 220 million acres in the United States?
		30% of it is corn.
		And the modest, if any, subsidies that go to so-called specialty crops where we would find fruits and vegetables and the mismatch, if every American tried to eat the optimal amount of fruits and vegetables tomorrow, it wouldn't be possible.
		There wouldn't be enough.
		Prices would skyrocket, et cetera.
		To your point, I really appreciated further deeper thought into that.
		And I hope we can get you to speak at the American College of Lifestyle Medicine at some point.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Tom.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Reisinger.
unidentified		Well, thank you so much for your kind words.
		I appreciate that.
		And I love these discussions.
		I'd love to do that.
		You know, you touch on something that is so important to understand, which is that we have this large food system creating overly processed foods, but also making it possible for us to have food all across the country and traditionally for it to be affordable.
		And the alternative to that has been local food that in many cases has been more expensive.
		I think that we're seeing some of the inertia in the direction you're talking about to change that.
		Unfortunately, as Americans have experienced such incredibly high food prices, we're seeing that our modern food system, although it remains a modern miracle, is deep in vulnerability.
		And also, the cost of food is going up within that system.
		And so the food system that was once the affordable, kind of mainstream way to get our food is not as affordable as it once was.
		And the reality is that we have, as we have more farms working to shift toward providing local and regional and specialty foods, there is an ability for economics to bring that price down as more and more farms are able to make that transition.
		So this is going to be a gradual transition.
		It is going to take time.
		It also takes farms, as you probably well know because you seem informed on the issues, it takes farms money and time to make a transition like that for them to say, I'm going to put a few acres in this other crop to see if I can experiment with that.
		There's a risk to that.
		It also costs money and they're operating on very small margins.
		And so we do need to move in the direction of what the caller is talking about.
		And I think that more consumers caring about where their food comes from and acting upon that can help with that.
		But we also, to the caller's point, need to change the way that our government programs work.
		Right now, you do have so many subsidies that go towards certain types of crops and products and other types of crops and products.
		For example, blueberries and asparagus in our neighboring Michigan, those farmers don't have any even basic crop insurance.
		And so we do need to figure out a way to diversify the way that our government handles its programs so that that basic safety net that is there originally in part to help with uncontrollable weather and other factors that nobody could help with, a basic safety net is something that can be there for farmers more generally.
		But we're doing a bit less of picking of winners and losers through our government programs.
		That is one of the things, along with some of the other solutions we've been talking about, that can allow farms to pursue more of what consumers want.
		And if we can have more opportunities for farmers to pursue that new economic opportunity and they have government policy that isn't standing in the way of that, and we address some of these other factors, we can also have more choices for consumers where they don't have to pick between cheap food that they don't know where it comes from or they're frustrated with the system and more expensive food that they know where it comes from, they can feel good about.
		The reality is that that system is getting more expensive and that alternative is becoming more viable.
		We need to move our government policy and other things that are barriers to get out of the way of that.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		USA Today, another column that you pinned.
		Rural America faces a silent mental health crisis.
		My dad fought to survive it.
		What happened?
unidentified		Yeah, thank you for asking about that.
		You know, one of the stories that we tell in the book, we tell it in the opening pages, and it's a theme throughout the book, is the mental health burden that exists in rural America.
		And in the case of, we have a mental health crisis, I believe, all across the country and many walks of life.
		But in rural America, it's a bit of a silent crisis in the sense that it's not talked about.
		There are not as many resources.
		Farm families are raised generation after generation to keep your head down and get the work done.
		And the reality is that facing that pressure of losing the farm, not being able to make a living, or turning around and selling it and losing everything else, that is an untenable pressure, especially when you go generation after generation.
		You know, great grandpa escaped pre-World War I Europe to make a living.
		Grandpa survived the Depression.
		Mom and Dad survived the farm crisis.
		Why can't I make it?
		That's the kind of pressure that farm families feel.
		My dad, in our case, when we made the decision to sell the cows to try to turn around and be able to diversify our farm and make a living in a new way, the reality is that we had reasons for hope.
		We still had our land.
		We hadn't lost everything.
		But my dad was dealing with the fact that he was the first in four generations in more than 100 years to sell the cows and to not get up in the morning and have the same purpose that his father and his grandfather had had.
		And that led to depression.
		That is something that my dad struggled with.
		We tell the story of standing on the porch of our cabin out back of the farmhouse talking.
		And I remember the sun was shining and I remember wondering if he was thinking about harming himself.
		And in the course of reporting the book and interviewing my family, I learned from my dad that he had been thinking that.
		And farmer suicide is a very serious issue.
		And that's one of the reasons that farming is one of the top in this country for suicide.
		And my dad was able to come through it in part because we were talking as a family because we knew about the issue.
		And, you know, he thought about his grandchildren.
		And we tell that story in the book.
		He began to say to himself, I've got grandkids here.
		I've got to teach them.
		And it's an emotional topic.
		But he thought of the next generation.
		And that's what has sustained our farm families for decades in this country.
		And I'm grateful that he's still here.
		And I hope that anybody who's struggling with that understands that there's strength, not shame, in speaking up and asking for help.
		And so we decided to tell that story in the book.
		I talked to my dad long and hard about it.
		And we decided to share that story because we wanted to make sure that people knew they weren't alone in that struggle.
		And so I hope anybody who's experiencing that, whether they're a farm family or any other type of family in this country, I hope they seek help, not only if you're in crisis, but just if you're dealing with the day-to-day struggles of life, dealing with it early and talking about it can help it from becoming a crisis.
		And if you are in crisis, there are people who have gotten through that.
		And I hope that you're able to do the same.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		1.9 million farms and ranches in the U.S., 95% of them family operated.
		Farmers and ranchers make up about 2% of the U.S. population and receive about 15 cents for each food dollar spent.
		Farming equals about 1% of the U.S. gross domestic product.
		Farm exports last year, $175 billion, which is 20% of the total farm product.
		Brian Reisinger is the author of this book, Land Rich, Cash Poor, My Family's Hope, and the Untold Story of the Disappearing American Farmer.
		Mr. Reisinger, thank you for being with us here on the Washington Journal.
unidentified		Thank you very much for having me.
unidentified		I appreciate it.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, one more hour to go this morning on our program.
		The first hour we devoted to Democrats and what they think their party should and does stand for.
		This last hour, we're devoting to Republicans.
		What do you think your party should stand for, and what do you think it does stand for?
		202 is the area code.
		748-8000, if you live in the East and Central and are a Republican.
		2-0-2-7-4-8-8-thousand-1 for those of you who are Republicans in the Mountain and Pacific time zones.
		We'll be right back.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		In his latest book, LBJ and McNamara, Peter Asnos' dedication reads this way.
		To those on the Vietnam wall, on them all, and their countless Vietnamese counterparts, it did not have to happen.
		Unquote.
		In his role as publisher at Public Affairs Books, Osnos spent numerous hours working with former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara for his 1995 book, In Retrospect, The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam.
		Osnos writes, this book describes what happened in the years between 1963 and McNamara's last day as Secretary of Defense in February of 1968.
		Robert McNamara died in 2009 at the age of 93.
unidentified		Peter Osnos with his book, LBJ and McNamara, The Vietnam Partnership Destined to Fail on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host Brian Lamb.
		BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts.
		Are you a nonfiction book lover looking for a new podcast?
		This holiday season, try listening to one of the many podcasts C-SPAN has to offer.
		On QA, you'll listen to interesting interviews with people and authors writing books on history and subjects that matter.
		Learn something new on BookNotes Plus through conversations with nonfiction authors and historians.
		Afterwards brings together best-selling nonfiction authors with influential interviewers for wide-ranging hour-long conversations.
		And on About Books, we talk about the business of books with news and interviews about the publishing industry and nonfiction authors.
		Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts.
		Washington Journal continues.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, the modern Republican Party often talks about Ronald Reagan as its model.
		Limited government, strong defense, low taxes.
		Those were kind of his mantras.
		And now it's the party of Donald Trump, which includes elements of populism, including tariffs and strong borders, etc.
		What is a Republican today?
		What do they stand for?
		And if you're a Republican, we want to hear what you think a Republican is today and what it stands for, and in your view, what it should stand for.
		Republicans only.
		What does your party stand for?
		202 is the area code.
		7488,000 if you live in the East and Central time zones.
		7488001 if you live in the Mountain and Pacific time zones.
		Reminder, we did the Democrats in the first hour of this show, and now we're devoting this hour to the Republicans.
		I want to point out here that the National Review in their end-of-year issue has this cover.
		It's a national review with a picture of Bill Buckley.
		William F. Buckley, the founder of the magazine, it's his centennial of his birth.
		And they're doing a very special tribute to him in the magazine.
		But here's the article that we're going to pull out from that National Review issue.
		Why Bill Buckley's Ideas Still Matter.
		Ramesh Panuru writes that for a long time, conservatives had a pat story about their political inheritance.
		The right was formless, fractured, a collection of irritable mental gestures.
		And then William F. Buckley founded this journal, the National Review, bringing the various respectable strands of conservatism together and discarding the others.
		The resulting synthesis came to be known as fusionism, which combined elements of classical liberalism and classical conservatism, or in another common formulation, of traditionalism and libertarianism.
		That was true until the last decade.
		And in taking over the Republican Party, Donald Trump shattered the old Buckley-right, Buckley-ite consensus.
		He has neglected its themes.
		He rarely speaks of limited government or the Constitution and rejected some of its associated policies.
		And a subset of his biggest fans reject fusionism as impotent, counterproductive, and worst, passe.
		Where fusionism's previous enemies on the right chiefly complained about its social conservatism, its Trump-era foes reject its support for free markets, or at least reject the vehemence of that support.
		Trump's victories have encouraged them in their political project, not unreasonably.
		Some speaking of fusionism and occasionally even Buckley himself as part of the ash heap of history.
		It goes on to write that the major accomplishments of the first Trump administration fit comfortably in the Buckley-Reagan tradition.
		The tax reform he signed, largely written by then Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and like-minded colleagues, cut tax rates for individuals and corporations.
		Along then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, he stocked the federal judiciary with conservatives.
		His appointees, working with those of previous Republican appointees such as Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, have applied the law to scale back race-based affirmative action, expand religious liberty, and allow restrictions on abortion.
		So that's just a little bit from Ramesh Pernuru's look at why Bill Buckley's ideas still matter 100, well, you know, 60 years later, that's in the National Review in case you're interested in seeing the whole thing.
		But as Republicans, we want to know why you are, well, basically why you are a Republican, what the party stands for, and what you think it should stand for.
		We'll begin with Tavares in Athens, Georgia.
		Hi, Tavares.
unidentified		Good morning, Peter Slane.
		Merry Christmas.
		Happy New Year.
		How much do I love FIFAN Peter?
		Listen, Peter, I'm going to answer your question, but I've got to address something.
		Eight years ago, summer of 2016, I called you while you were at one of the conventions.
		I'm not sure if it was Democrat or Republican.
		And we had a great conversation.
		And that started something.
		What that started that's going to end this morning with this call, Peter, is Tavares from Athens.
		Two administrations, two presidents, one monthly call.
		That book will be published in the next two to three months.
		Dedicate that to our beloved founder and recently resigned, Mr. Brian Lamb.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		So to answer your question, hey, will you make sure I get a copy of that book?
unidentified		Listen, I'd love nothing more than to have me and you and Brian Lamb sit out.
		Wonderful work.
		But to answer your question.
		Yes.
		I didn't know the value of Republicanism.
		Why?
		Because the American society, the American culture has been conditioned, programmed, brainwashed to believe that Republicanism is not important.
		We are a nation of shopkeepers that have been undermined and sold out by the globalists, i.e., the old world order, who want what they've been missing.
		Republicanism, Republicanism, Republicanism.
		Medica, Make America Great again, and America first.
		That's border country language.
		Language, border, culture.
		Listen, Peter, thank you so much, sir.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right, Tavares.
		Good luck to you.
		Good to hear your voice, and Happy New Year to you.
		Thanks for calling in.
		Gary is in Mount Juliet, Tennessee.
		Hi, Gary.
		What does the Republican Party stand for?
unidentified		Hi, Peter.
		Thank you.
		Well, it stands for getting out of the government getting out of the way.
		Allow the businesses to thrive.
		They pay the bills.
		I can't believe what I hear coming from the Democrats that these evil billionaires are not paying taxes.
		Well, you have no idea how much.
		I'm not a billionaire.
		I want to get that really clear.
		Nowhere close.
		But they paid the taxes.
		They produced things.
		The tax breaks are when they are developing jobs for people.
		The government, first of all, the big difference in a Democrat and Republican is the knowledge.
		You cannot borrow yourself out of debt.
		If you could, I would be a billionaire.
		It's impossible.
		We just want them to get out of the way, get rid of the regulations, give people jobs, let them prosper.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let me ask you a question, Gary.
		The Republicans in the past have talked about deficits and debts.
		Hasn't been a topic of conversation in the last couple of election cycles.
		$1.83 trillion was the deficit this year in 2024, and the U.S. is about $35 trillion, has a debt of about $35 trillion, debts and obligations.
		What do you think of those figures?
unidentified		Well, it's insane.
		Now, give Trump his due.
		Everybody talks about his debt.
		It all happened when the COVID hit.
		None of his doing.
		I don't know when we'll find out who started that, but it almost broke the country.
		He had to do things to keep us going, and I think everybody agrees with that.
		They might not want to admit it.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Appreciate you calling in.
		Let's hear from Harry, who's in Charleston, West Virginia.
		Hi, Harry.
		What does the Republican Party stand for?
unidentified		The Republican Party stands for Grand Old Party.
		That's the party of business.
		Calvin Coolidge said that the business of government is business and that he's a highly underrated president.
		I would recommend two books that Americans should add, The Revolutionary Adventures of Joseph Plum Martin and Plain Speaking by Harry S. Truman.
		Great historical perspective of America from its founding.
		And these were not highly educated people.
		Truman wasn't.
		I think he's the only president, or the last president that didn't have a high school education.
		But based on the historians that I've read, he's ranked as near great as a president.
		So thank you very much for taking my call.
		Those two books I leave you with.
		And Happy Fitness New Year.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Harry, Joe Martin, he was a Republican Speaker of the House, wasn't he?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		The first book that you listed?
unidentified		No, that's Joseph Plum.
unidentified		He is the only soldier that served from the first day of the Revolutionary War throughout the entire, I believe it's 1782.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Great.
unidentified		Okay.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Harry, for clarifying that.
		We appreciate it.
		Ross, Las Cruces, New Mexico.
		Ross, why are you a Republican?
		What does the party stand for?
unidentified		The party stands for, for me, a liberated government that is controlled by the reasons that request democracy to continue on with the nation's foundation to support the future of all that we do and all that we succeed in for our prosperity and our posterity.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		That's Ross in Las Cruces, and this is Aaron in Greenville, South Carolina.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Aaron.
unidentified		Aaron here.
		Thanks for having me on.
		Republican Party.
		Debt under control.
		That's what it stands for.
		Duck.
		All right?
		There's all sorts of problems, and a first step Republicans could try to get away with is a budget amendment.
		No, I didn't say balanced budget amendment.
		I said budget amendment, which would just be simply you're going to have a budget every year.
		No more of this continuing resolution stuff, okay?
		All right, so that way, I mean, you can add more to it if you want.
		I know what I'd like to add to it, but you got to get it passed.
		And the Republicans could stain the Democrats by saying, you don't want to have a budget amendment?
		What kind of people are you?
		You know, that's what I think.
		That's what they.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		That's Aaron in South Carolina, Wall Street Journal.
		This is an article.
		The progressive moment in global politics is over, at least for now, they write.
		This past year showed that the progressive politics that dominated most industrialized countries over the past two decades or more is shifting to the right, fueled by working-class anxieties over the economy and immigration and growing fatigue with issues from climate change to identity politics.
		The return of Donald Trump to the White House is the most dramatic and important example, but it is far from the only one.
		Across Europe, where economic growth is largely stalled, conservatives and populist right-wing parties are making unprecedented gains.
		Three-quarters of governments in the European Union are either led by a right-of-center party or are ruled by a coalition that includes at least one.
		The shift is set to continue.
		Canada appears poised to kick out a deeply unpopular progressive prime minister, and Germany is expected to dump its center-left government.
		Polls show the top two parties in Germany represent the center-right and the far-right.
		Part of the shift is the normal pendulum of politics swinging back and forth between established parties on the left and right.
		The difference this time is a strong strain of populism and a growing rejection of traditional parties.
		In country after country, many working-class voters, especially those outside the biggest cities, are signaling the same thing.
		They mistrust the establishment from academics to bankers to traditional politicians and feel these elites are out of touch and don't care about people like them.
		Years of increased migration and trade, coupled with low economic growth, have led to a backlash and a rise in nationalism where people want more of a sense of control, political analysts say.
		The rise of social media has exacerbated divisions and led to an upsurge in anti-establishment parties.
		It's a broad shift that goes across countries, said Rui Tehera, a lifelong Democrat who now works for the center-right American Enterprise Institute think tank.
		Working-class people are just PO'd about immigration, about all the culture war stuff, and the relatively poor economic performance that has shaped the working-class experience in the 21st century.
		Again, this is in the Wall Street Journal.
		Art is in Seattle.
		Art, what does the Republican Party stand for, and what do you think it should stand for?
unidentified		Well, as a lifelong Michigan person and I moved to Seattle, I've never been in favor of the Republican Party.
		But I've got to tell you, after watching the interviews and the way they treated people on camera when they said they were doing interviews, made me disgusted.
		How these people acted toward other people, Nancy Pelosi ripping up a speech, made me want to slap her in the head.
		This was the worst group of people that's ever been in.
		When I was young, the president once said, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
		Now they say, what can I get from you?
		That's what I see in their performance.
		Not what can we do for you, but what can we get from you?
		And so I think the idea of saying that you have to accept everybody at all times for everything is, and the DEI are fine examples of poor management.
		We need diversity.
		We need differences.
		We need arguments.
		We need complaints.
		We need people to not agree on everything so that we can have those things.
		If everybody says everything's okay, then there is no diversity anymore.
		If everybody says, I don't care what you think, which is what the Republican Party seems to be doing lately, then that's what they're going to get.
		They walked away without caring what other people think.
		People would send for years, people said, term limits and no investment in the stock market.
		Pulowski stayed in there for a lifetime and made a freaking fortune.
		That's an example of the modern Republican.
		I don't care for that.
		As a Democrat for life, I can't vote Republican, really.
		So I've gone independent.
		I think Donald Trump should be recognized as having started out as a Republican, and Nancy Pelosi drove him out of the Republican Party.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Or vice versa.
		Again, this hour is dedicated to Republicans, just like we dedicated the first hour of the show to Democrats, Republicans only.
		What does your party stand for?
		What do you think it should stand for?
		Bob is in Tyler, Texas.
		Bob, good morning to you.
unidentified		Good morning.
		This is really pretty simple.
		And what the Republican Party stands for is not what I think it stands for or what you think it stands for, or anyone else thinks it stands for.
		It stands for what is written.
		At our founding in 1776, we only had two laws that our founders stood for.
		Those were good enough laws to get us to defeat the entirety, the baddest military on earth.
		In Texas, what is written is our Texas platform with its preamble and its print and its principles that are written.
		And the first of those principles that are written in the Texas platform today are the same thing that was written in our founders' first law in 1776.
		Which was Well, it's on page one of U.S. code.
		If you go to your courthouse and look on the first page, I don't want to make it too easy for anybody because if I spill the beans, you know, it'll be too easy.
		All right.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Page one, U.S. Code, Bob and Tyler, Texas recommends.
		Marie is in Oceanside, New York.
		Marie, why are you a Republican?
		What does the party stand for?
unidentified		Hi, yes.
		Good morning.
		Thank you for having me.
		As a Republican, we need to come.
		Me, I was an immigrant.
		I came to this country legally, and then I work.
		I did not come here to live of the government.
		I came here to give my skills.
		I'm a nurse for profession, and I'm so proud of that.
		And also, speaking of working, as a Republican, we need to unite to lower the taxes because it just keeps on going up.
		By doing so, individual accountability, each person should be held liable for what they do with their money.
		We want smaller government ruling and also fiscal responsibility.
		We need to really get our national debt down because as also a financial person, we are learning how to control our money so that we don't work and just go broke.
		We need to work and have some money for us because this is America.
		We need our people to be first.
		And I believe in making America great again.
		I am a proud Republican because I used to be Democrat, and I realized that it's not, their program is not good.
		That's why now I believe in Trump, and we want more person like Trump to lead our country.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right, that's Marie in Oceanside, New York.
		The Hill reports this.
		Carrie Lake says she will not seek office again in Arizona.
		Marie, I'm sorry, we'll move on to.
		Do you know what?
		I guess I should really look at what numbers I'm punching up here.
		I think this is Ian in Orlando.
		I apologize.
		Ian, please go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning and happy new year.
		Yes, I wasn't really sure how to approach this topic.
		I'm definitely much younger than the majority of people that call into the Washington Journal.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		How old are you, Ian?
unidentified		I just turned 32 in September.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		So are you a Republican?
unidentified		I've been a Republican since I first started voting.
		My first vote legally was for Mitt Romney.
		Why?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Why are you a Republican?
unidentified		My father, mostly.
		I suppose he influenced me heavily as a younger kid.
		I haven't always been from Orlando.
		I'm originally from New York.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What do you think the party stands for, and what do you think it should stand for?
unidentified		That's the problem.
		I don't know anymore because you have so many people these days where if you share your actual conservative opinions, if anything is not related to the MAGA opinion, then you're a rhino.
		And also, I'd like to say it's the same thing on the left.
		If you don't have that far-left opinion, then you're not a Democrat anymore.
		And I think that's really damaging to our country, politically speaking.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Have you bitten your tongue from time to time because of what you just said?
unidentified		You know, but I don't mind doing that.
		You know, I will say that I think my Republican friends are far more open-minded about talking about politics than my left-wing friends.
		And that's also another thing that's kind of driven me further and further right over the years.
		I hate to say that, but that's how it is.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What do you do in Orlando, Ian?
unidentified		I am loss prevention for CBS, the pharmaceutical retailer.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What have the last couple of years been like in that job?
unidentified		A lot of theft going on in various departments.
		Specifically, we really have a hard time dealing with makeup.
		Makeup is a big, big theft, big loss for us.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Do you have to lock it up?
unidentified		Lately, yes, actually.
		And not just makeup.
		It's other things.
		It's very basic things.
		Like sometimes certain parts of our stores in Orlando are having to lock up milk or cereal or basic things.
		It's kind of ridiculous.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Ian, thanks for watching.
		Thanks for calling in, sharing a little bit about yourself with us.
		Well, Donald Trump talked about his plans recently in the last couple of weeks.
		Here's just a little bit of what he had to say.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		And we're going to build American.
		We're going to buy American.
		And we will hire American.
		I will end the war in Ukraine.
		I will stop the chaos in the Middle East.
		And I will prevent, I promise, World War III.
		And we're very close to World War III.
		We will crush violent crime.
		We're going to stop violent crime.
		We're going to have to be tough.
		Please get ready.
		You're going to have to be tough.
		We can't let this happen.
		Our cities are crumbling.
		And give our police the support, protection, resources, and respect they so dearly deserve.
		And I rebuilt our entire military at a level that it had never been.
		Unfortunately, we gave a big chunk of it to Afghanistan.
unidentified		You believe that one?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		What a terrible thing.
		But we will, again, rebuild those sections of our military that have been so badly hurt.
		Plus, we give so much of it away.
		You know, when I came in the last time, we had no ammunition.
		Can you believe it?
		I was greeted with a general, sir, we're very low, almost no ammunition.
		He said, keep it quiet.
		Let's not let the enemy know that.
		That doesn't sound too good.
		Steve Bannon would say, that's not a good thing.
		No ammunition is not good, Red Steve.
		And I built so much ammunition so fast.
		Nobody's ever seen anything like it.
		We give a lot of our ammunition away, as you know.
		And we have to take care of ourselves.
		We have to protect ourselves.
		And we have to make our country great.
		We just can't keep doing what we're doing.
		Especially when these wars never had to start.
		They never had to start.
		We will rebuild our once great cities, including our capital in Washington, D.C., making them safe, clean, and beautiful again.
		And we'll do it quickly.
		We'll teach our children to love our country, to honor our history, and to always respect our great American flag.
		We will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools and we're going to get it out of our schools very fast.
		I will defend religious liberty.
		I will restore free speech and I will defend the right to keep and bear arms.
		And after years of building up foreign nations, defending foreign borders and protecting foreign lands, we are finally going to build up our country, defend our borders, and protect our citizens.
		We're going to protect our citizens.
		And we will stop illegal immigration once and for all.
		It's going to stop.
		You're not going to have an invasion of our country any longer.
		That will stop in just a few very short weeks.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And that was President Trump a week or so back talking about his agenda going into his next term, which kicks off January 20th.
		Prior to that, though, we have the return of Congress.
		That comes in January 3rd, this coming Friday, brand new Congress, 119th Congress.
		We will be live again all day on the Washington Journal and then throughout the day as they vote on potential speakers and how that plays out.
		We know how that played out last Congress in 2023, I think it was.
		So you can be with us all day then as well.
		The Washington Journal will be on from 7 to noon.
		Noon will keep going and as the Congress comes in and convenes, we'll stick with it until there is a speaker, until they adjourn, of course.
		And then on January 6th is the certification of the election, and we will be live with that as well.
		Kamala Harris to certify Trump's win on January 6th.
		This is from the Gateway Pundit.
		There will be no issue about potentially pulling that.
		Kamala Harris will certify Trump's win on January 6th.
		The Hill publication set the internet ablaze after an insurrection plan to keep Trump out of office was published.
		Harris's aide said the vice president intends to carry out her duties and certify the 2024 presidential election on January 6th.
		So you got January 3rd coming up.
		You got January 6th coming up.
		You got January 20th coming up.
		And as you all well know, those will all be live, unfiltered events on C-SPAN.
		This will be the place, best place to watch all those types of events.
		All right, back to your calls.
		Again, Republicans only.
		What does the party stand for?
		What do you think it should stand for?
		Robin is in Ironsville, Maryland.
		Hi, Robin.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		I think Lee Greenwell's song says it all.
		Our party stands for patriotism and freedom.
		The Republicans that I know are all proud to be Americans, and we appreciate our freedom, our freedom to buy the cars we want, our freedom to wear masks or not wear masks, to make decisions about our life, whether whatever it is.
		We've won our freedom.
		I think that strong borders are important, safe cities are important.
		And I think another really important thing is being able to trust our leaders.
		And I think Donald Trump has proven to be so much more honest than the Democrats who said Joe Biden was mentally hit, that he wasn't going to pardon his son.
		I mean, their lives don't want anyone.
		So I think that the truth is important, but it's patriotism and freedom.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Robin, what's it like to be a Republican in Maryland?
unidentified		Okay, so I'm out in the country.
		I'm about 40 miles northwest of D.C.
		And so I occasionally see some Trump signs, and I can have people in my area that are Republicans.
		I grew up a Democrat, but Hillary Clinton turned me into a Republican.
		But if I go downtown to where my friends are, I would never wear a Trump shirt or a Trump hat.
		In Montgomery County, it's like you're evil if you are a Republican.
		And I have several friends that stopped being my friend because I vote for Trump.
		And I don't think he's perfect, but I certainly think he cares about me and he cares about you.
		And he's a patriot.
		He loves his country.
		He never said I've never been proud of my country.
		I mean, he makes it clear he loves us all.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		That's Robin in Maryland.
		Lawrence is next.
		Lawrence is in Illinois, Lake Grove Village, Illinois.
		Hi, Lawrence.
		What do you think your Republican Party stands for?
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm from Elk Grove Village, Illinois.
		To get right to the point, I guess in a generalization, it's still on our money and God we trust and E pluribuscunum out of many won.
		Unfortunately, the Democrat Party for sure is no longer.
		It's not out of many one.
		It's out of many, you know, separate, basically, which is kind of sad.
		My parents, I'm an older guy in my 70s.
		My father was a World War II veteran who marched under General Patton, but he grew up a Democrat because when he got out of the war, he was a teamster.
		He used to deliver fuel oil and heating oil.
		And my mother was a practicing Catholic, so she was a Democrat, too.
		I have never been a Democrat.
		I voted Democrat once.
		I voted for Jimmy Carter one time because he was a moral man and he actually made a living before he got into politics, before he became a governor and all that.
		Didn't turn out well for him as a president, but I voted for him because he was a moral man.
		And one thing I like about the Republican Party is most of them made their money and their wealth, if you want to call it wealth, before they got into politics, as opposed to these lifelong Democrats who have made all their money getting into politics.
		It's sad.
		You know, growing up in Illinois, but I'd lived in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area for 15 years.
		I lived in Texas for a little while, traveled to Bolivia.
		My wife is actually from South America, a woman of color.
		She loved Donald Trump the first time she saw him speak, and I wasn't a big fan of him at first, but she recognized what a good guy he was.
		It took me a while.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right, Lawrence in Illinois, thanks for calling in.
		Article in Breitbart.
		David Brooks, I'm thrilled by the decline in viewership for political news.
		This was on PBS's NewsHour Friday night.
		David Brooks told host Lisa Jardin that the country was over-politicized.
		He said that while many claimed the word for 2024 was exhausted because of the political cycle, he believed it should be chastened, citing Trump's win on November 5, the failures of European socialism, and Israel's triumphs.
		I have to say, I'm thrilled by the decline in viewership for political news.
		We're over-politicized.
		People go to politics for a sense of belonging, for a sense of righteousness.
		You should go to your friends for those things.
		You're asking more of politics than politics can bear.
		Mary, Pikiune, Mississippi.
		Good morning, Mary.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Well, I would like to say that I first became a member of the GOP when Clinton did his nasty in the Oval Office.
		I was young, a lot younger then, and it just really, really burnt me up that he would have the nerve to disgrace that almost sacred place in our nation.
		That I'm a total patriot.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		But what do you think the Republicans should stand for?
unidentified		Well, common sense, morals, mostly, especially in this last 10 years, you know, just common sense.
unidentified		And I would like to say to all the rhino Republicans: if you don't stick behind our president, that we, that your party, that our party voted for, then you need to be out because it only proves one thing is that you're crooked and you don't want your evilness exposed.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Mary, do you think some people might say, you know, Donald Trump has had some issues with women that much like Bill Clinton did?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that's a fair comparison?
unidentified		Of course I do, but Donald Trump is not perfect.
		Let me just say this to all you Democrats.
		We are not stupid.
		He is a man.
		He is human.
		And I can promise you there is nobody in Washington, D.C. that is perfect and has not done the same thing.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		That's Mary in Picayune, Mississippi.
		Thank you, ma'am.
		Lynn is out in Oregon.
		Hi, Lynn.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		I voted for policies that I think the Republican Party stands for more than the Democrats.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Which is name one.
unidentified		And that is, some of them are mostly social.
		I voted for a more stringent stand on abortion.
		I believe in life.
		I don't believe in having life taken up until the moment of birth in partial birth.
		And I think there's two states that have put Perry into their natal, into their bylaws, which means that even after the infant is born, it can be allowed to die without intervention at all.
		And then the transgendered issue, which I believe is mainly made up of by the media and by indoctrination.
		Obviously, I believe that God created male and female, and the science will tell you there's only X and Y chromosomes.
		There's not a bazillion other things that they make up.
		I also believe the Republican Party stands for hiring and being the best you can be and not hiring because you're black, yellow, white, or red, or because you're Believe in a certain way, but you should be the best person for the job.
		So, well, a lot of other callers have said things I stand for, which I believe, like the last lady said, is common sense.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Lynn, what area of Oregon do you live in?
unidentified		Well, Gresham is a community that really you couldn't tell the difference between boundaries with Portland.
unidentified		Okay.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Is it lonely being a Republican in Portland, Oregon?
unidentified		Well, you have to realize that when you vote on state issues and state people running for office, your person is probably not going to be the winner.
		Let's put it that way.
		So there are, it is a very blue state.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		That's Lynn in Oregon.
		We appreciate your time this morning.
		And Mary Beth, Newport Beach, California.
		Hi, Mary Beth.
unidentified		Hi.
		I changed my party so many times I can't tell you.
		I live in California on the coast, but now the only thing I really like about the Republican Party is they are pro-life.
		I can't find another place to be.
		I'm a total environmentalist, like all of us on the coast.
		There's some Republicans that are that way.
		I mean, I think I base myself on President Nixon.
		I was in the Berkeley march against with Ronald Reagan bringing out the National Guard.
		So I guess I don't know what kind of philosophy I have.
		I think I follow the Pope because he's an environmentalist.
		He's pro-life.
		He's for people of being peaceful, for people getting together, not judgment against anyone else.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Now, Mary Beth, were you living in Orange County during the Reagan years?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Because that was a Reagan stronghold.
unidentified		You know, I don't, I can't remember because it was so far back.
		I just remember some of my friends were going to Berkeley, and I went with them, and a lot of them were smoking pot.
		But when I saw how badly treated, I was a federal employee for 27 years, so I saw how bad he was to people.
		So he's not a fan of mine at all.
		I'm really looking for the moral man.
		I don't get this women and, you know, transgender and all that.
		I just want a moral person who I can have faith in.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Mary Beth, who did you vote for in 24?
unidentified		I didn't vote for either one of them because I thought they were both disgusting.
		But I did vote for Steve Garvey.
		And the reason I voted for him is he had, he was not for Trump.
		He had moral character.
		He had women that got pregnant.
		He supported them, took care of them.
		He is a really traditional moral person.
		And we don't have hardly any of those anymore.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, Mary Beth in Newport Beach, California.
		Appreciate your time.
		Mark is calling from Indiana.
		Where in Indiana are you, Mark?
unidentified		It's right across the river from Louisville, Kentucky, in a town called Jefferson.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Jeffersonville, sure.
		All right.
		Why are you a Republican?
		What does the party stand for?
		And what should it stand for?
unidentified		Well, I'm a Republican because I believe in a lot of the old school conservative issues, you know, making sure, you know, John Q. Public has the chance to work a good job, send his kids to school, and maintain a safe environment while remaining fiscally responsible across the nation and, you know, helping the people.
		And that's what it means to me.
		Now, since Donald Trump has become president and basically the leader of the Republican Party, I've seen a divisiveness that I've never seen before.
		And, you know, I have a lot of friends that are pro-Trump MAGA people.
		And I just, you know, I really lost faith in the party when I saw what happened on January 6th.
		And I don't care what anybody says.
		If that guy isn't there making that speech, the Capitol doesn't get, you know, assaulted and people don't die.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		For whom did you vote in 24?
unidentified		I did not vote, okay, because it was just I couldn't vote Republican and I didn't feel comfortable with Biden, or excuse me, Kamala Harris.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		So in a sense, do you consider yourself a traditional Republican and some would say a rhino?
unidentified		Yeah, I would consider myself a traditional Republican.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What kind of work do you do down there, Mark?
unidentified		I'm a projects manager and HR manager.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, sir, for watching and for calling in.
		We appreciate your time.
		Stephen is in Columbus, Ohio.
		Stephen, what does the Republican Party stand for in your view?
unidentified		In my view, very simplistic, there is supposedly $50 trillion in gas and oil under government-owned land.
		I'd like to cash that in and pay our 35 and get back to zero and start from there and go forward.
		I can see no other means to ever get out of this horrible mess.
		Thank you.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		National Review, Chuck DeFeo writes that Republicans should think much bigger on tax cuts.
		That's the headline in his piece.
		Such is the reality as the GOP debates when and how to cut taxes next year.
		Republicans have been blessed with the White House in both chambers in Congress, and Donald Trump's decisive victory has given them a mandate.
		But instead of thinking about big and bold tax cut ideas, they're talking about tweaks that are minor in the scheme of things.
		Don't get me wrong, Mr. DeFeo writes.
		The main Republican priority, extending Trump's 2017 tax cuts, is worth doing.
		The incoming president's signature economic policy spurred a remarkable era of wage growth, job creation, and opportunity, especially for the least fortunate.
		Making them permanent would do a world of good for decades to come, but that's not transformative because the tax cuts are already in place.
		Nor are Trump's new calls to cut corporate taxes further while also ending taxation on tipped wages and Social Security benefits.
		While those ideas are valuable, there's still variations on an old theme.
		Republicans should offer a new theme altogether.
		In fact, they should take a page out of the Democrats' book, Mr. DeFeo writes.
		The last two times the left has controlled the White House in Congress, they passed sweeping policies with far-reaching consequences.
		In Obama's first two years, they enacted Obamacare and Dodd-Frank.
		Similarly, Biden's first two years saw an Unprecedented explosion in federal spending, mainly on corporate welfare masquerading as climate change and job creation.
		Democrats get it.
		When you control the levers of power, you should use them.
		Yet, while Democrats have acted in ways that harm Americans and hold back the economy, Republicans can use their newfound power to deliver game-changing tax policies that make all Americans' lives better.
		What would be a truly transformative tax cut vision?
		Here's an idea that already has support from conservative economists.
		Ditch income taxes altogether and tax people exclusively on how much they buy.
		It's called a consumption tax, and its benefits to Americans would be enormous.
		Chuck DeFeo writing in the National Review.
		Don is in Henderson, Nevada.
		Don, what does the Republican Party stand for?
unidentified		Income taxes all the time.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Don, you've got to turn down your volume, flip off that TV and just start talking through your phone.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we're going to move on.
		Weston in Mount Vernon, New York, is your telephone, is your television down?
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, yes, it certainly is.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I am very excited for this next four years.
		I think right now that what the Republican Party stands for is, you know, peace, prosperity.
		And I share the same sentiment as the previous caller, just good old common sense.
		And we need that, especially now in these time of, you know, all the things we have been through the last four years.
		This has just been really, really unbelievable.
		And I think common sense right now will go a very, very long way.
		I think we should give our President Donald Trump a chance for this four years and let's see how things work out.
		I think he really, really, truly, genuinely wants prosperity for the American people.
		And thank you.
		That's all I have to say.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		That's Weston in Mount Vernon, New York.
		New York Times.
		Migrants and end of COVID restrictions fuel jump in homelessness.
		Homelessness soared to the highest level on record this year, driven by forces that included a surge in migrants seeking asylum, a national housing crisis, and the end of pandemic era measures to protect the needy.
		That's according to the federal government.
		The number of people experiencing homelessness topped 770,000, an increase of more than 18% over last year and the largest annual increase since the count began in 2007.
		Sam, Syracuse, New York, good morning to you.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for C-SPAN and all the work that you do.
		I watch it quite often.
		So let's start out with the Democratic Party, which was started with the election of Andrew Jackson.
		One of their first planks, one of their first legislative acts, was the Trail of Tears, the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
		Another one of their planks was the continuation of slavery.
		It wasn't until the Republican Party came into existence in 1854 and with the election of Republican President Abraham Lincoln that put an end to slavery.
		The Democratic Party was also responsible for the KKK.
		Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Democrat.
		People don't study their history.
		Also, the Republican Party stepped in with Grant and tried to roll back a lot of the Jim Crow laws in the South.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		So, Sam, bring us up to date to 2024.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What does the Republican Party stand for today?
unidentified		Border policies.
		Republicans are creators.
		I see the Democrats as takers.
		The border policy, hopefully they can border policy.
		Sensible policies, less regulations, and they are believers of the American dream.
		They see the United States as a good place to be.
		That's why I'm a Republican.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Sam, what do you do up in Syracuse?
unidentified		I'm a retired teacher and a real estate broker.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, sir.
		Appreciate your time.
		Thank you to everybody who called in, listened, participated this morning.
		We appreciate it.
		We will see you tomorrow morning.
unidentified		C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy.
		From Washington to across the country.
		Coming up Monday morning, President of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Naveen Nayak, talks about the Democratic Party's future and strategies to counter GOP control of the White House and Congress.

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