| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, your calls and comments live. | |
| And then, NBC News congressional reporter Scott Wong previews President Trump's address to Congress on Tuesday. | ||
| And White House correspondent Philip Wegman of Real Clear Politics discusses the week ahead at the White House. | ||
| Also, Gene Dodaro, the U.S. Comptroller General and head of the Government Accountability Office, discusses the GAO's latest report on federal programs that are deemed at high risk for mismanagement, fraud, and waste. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Monday, March 3rd, 2025. | ||
| The House is in at noon Eastern today. | ||
| The Senate returns at 3 p.m. | ||
| And we begin this morning on foreign policy. | ||
| Yesterday, Britain and France promised to form a coalition of the willing to secure a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. | ||
| The move comes two days after the collapse of that economic deal between the U.S. and Ukraine, and two days before President Trump is set to offer a major address to Congress this week. | ||
| So this morning, we begin by asking you this question: What is America's role in the world today? | ||
| Phone lines split as usual by political party. | ||
| Democrats can call it 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also send us a text, that number, 202-748-8003. | ||
| If you do, please include your name and where you're from. | ||
| Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on XITs at C-SPANWJ on Facebook. | ||
| It's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN. | ||
| And a very good Monday morning to you. | ||
| You can go ahead and start calling in now. | ||
| This is the headline, the lead story in today's Washington Times. | ||
| British Prime Minister Kier Starmer calls for U.S. support after pledging planes and troops to Ukraine. | ||
| Britain will lead Europe in the fight for Ukrainian defense, a gathering of 18 European leaders at 10 Downing Street. | ||
| Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky was there as well. | ||
| This is Prime Minister Kier Starmer addressing the British people. | ||
| Because we have to learn from the mistakes of the past. | ||
| We cannot accept a weak deal like Minsk, which Russia can breach with ease. | ||
| Instead, any deal must be backed by strength. | ||
| Every nation must contribute to that in the best way that it can, bringing different capabilities and support to the table, but all taking responsibility to act, all stepping up their own share of the burden. | ||
| So we agreed some important steps today. | ||
| First, we will keep the military aid flowing and keep increasing the economic pressure on Russia to strengthen Ukraine now. | ||
| Second, we agreed that any lasting peace must ensure Ukraine's sovereignty and security. | ||
| And Ukraine must be at the table. | ||
| Third, in the event of a peace deal, we will keep boosting Ukraine's own defensive capabilities to deter any future invasion. | ||
| Fourth, we will go further to develop a coalition of the willing to defend a deal in Ukraine and to guarantee the peace. | ||
| Not every nation will feel able to contribute, but that can't mean that we sit back. | ||
| Instead, those willing will intensify planning now with real urgency. | ||
| The UK is prepared to back this with boots on the ground and planes in the air. | ||
| Together with others, Europe must do the heavy listing. | ||
| But to support peace in our continent and to succeed, this effort must have strong U.S. backing. | ||
| We're working with the U.S. on this point after my meeting with President Trump last week. | ||
| And let me be clear. | ||
| We agree with the President on the urgent need for a durable peace. | ||
| Now we need to deliver together. | ||
| That was British Prime Minister Kier Starmer yesterday. | ||
| We're going to hear a lot more from President Trump this week on Tuesday evening, set to give a joint address from Capitol Hill to a joint session of Congress. | ||
| We'll, of course, be airing that live on C-SPAN for you to watch and listen in. | ||
| Donald Trump, yesterday in one of several Truth Social posts, said this, that we should spend less time worrying about Putin and more time worrying about migrant rape gangs and drug lords, murderers, and people from mental institutions entering our country so that we don't end up like Europe. | ||
| The President yesterday will look for more of his comments on social media. | ||
| And of course, we're going to be talking more about that address to Congress. | ||
| A preview of that coming up in about an hour here on the Washington Journal. | ||
| For this first hour today, though, simply asking you, what is America's role in the world today? | ||
| A foreign policy question for you this morning. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| 2027-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| Independents, it's 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll start in Texas. | ||
| Joe is on that line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Joe, you with us? | ||
| Then we go to Ron in California, Republican line. | ||
| Ron, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| Thank you so much for taking the call. | ||
| You know, this is amazing times, historic times. | ||
| It was just the highlight of my life since the election to watch the meltdown of our MAGA president. | ||
| And it was unbelievable what they did bringing in Mr. Zelensky into the Oval Office there with all those people. | ||
| Why did they need 20 members of the cast there around them along with the press to make a big deal out of it? | ||
| And then when they realized that Zelensky wasn't buying their process and he wasn't going to sell out his country for without security, they melted down. | ||
| And Ron, you say all this as a Republican? | ||
| I'm assuming you're a Republican in your country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
To be honest, now I'll be very honest with you. | |
| I'm a Reagan and a George Laura Republican. | ||
| I'm from that branch of the Republican Party, and I just, I'm beside myself what has happened to our country and what they did in front of the international press. | ||
| So what is America's role in the world today, Ron? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What should it be or should it be? | |
| Well, you're exactly right. | ||
| What the role should be is to be the leader, as we have been for all these years, and bring Mr. Zelensky into the NATO area. | ||
| I would say that would be a good thing. | ||
| I think he should be in the European Union. | ||
| I think that America should join hands with the European Union. | ||
| I'm hopeful that the European Union will step up and fill the void for what we're going through right now. | ||
| And it's just a terrible thing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I'm just going to finish your thoughts. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I would just say this, that we're at a crossroads, that we really need to make a change. | ||
| And, you know, one last thing, John, if you will let me mention this. | ||
| When they put the deal together with the Saudis and the Russians, and they didn't bring in the European Union or they didn't bring in Ukraine as part of the negotiations, you know that Trump made a side deal with Putin for the goods of the rare earth. | ||
| Right now, I just hope I'm very hopeful that Mr. Zelensky never sells rare earths to the United States. | ||
| Thanks so much for your help. | ||
| That's Ronnie, California. | ||
| We will stay in California. | ||
| Dan is in Santa Barbara, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| That last caller was spot on. | ||
| Unfortunately, with this president, the U.S.'s foreign policy is switching from global leadership and consistently siding with the moral countries and the countries that are right. | ||
| And we're spiraling into this infantile neophyte isolationist type of foreign policy, and then maybe at times predatory foreign policy, you know, transactional if it benefits the president and his cronies and what he deems is good for America. | ||
| It's really sad. | ||
| Frid Zakaria, GPS, had a really good monologue yesterday about that. | ||
| You know, how, you know, except for a few mistakes we've made, we've always been on the side of right and just. | ||
| And now it seems like this president wants to make a global alliance with empires like Russia and China and take more of a predatory mindset and just get what we can and prey on countries that we view as weak. | ||
| Dan, when you say except for a few mistakes we've made, what do you think in recent years is one or two of the mistakes that we've made? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, the Iraq war, obviously. | |
| I mean, I think the neocons, you know, on paper, they had a good idea of democracy flourishing through the Middle East, but it was dumb. | ||
| And it kind of led us to where we're at now with isolationists like JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard, who is a tool, Tulsi Gabbard. | ||
| And yeah, they just have this isolationist thing now, like any conflict, don't get involved with it, be extremely anti-NATO, be extremely anti-global order. | ||
| And it's going to hurt us, and I think it's going to hurt a lot of countries in the long run. | ||
| So, you know, things like that. | ||
| So I think it's a sad day for American foreign policy. | ||
| And people like Reagan and John McCain and Barry Goldwater, if we're any Republicans listening, all those guys are spinning in their graves right now. | ||
| And stand in California, Independent line. | ||
| Somebody who very much has an influence on foreign policy is the United States National Security Advisor. | ||
| Mike Waltz was on CNN State of the Union yesterday, going on the Sunday shows in the wake of this blow up in the Oval Office between President Trump and President Zelensky. | ||
| This is Mike Waltz yesterday. | ||
| Let's ask ourselves, what is this war going to look like a year from now? | ||
| The patience of the American people to keep giving billions and billions and billions with no end in sight is not unlimited. | ||
| And we also made that clear to President Zelensky at the end of that meeting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So you're saying he might be. | |
| It's time on his side. | ||
| It's time on the American people's side. | ||
| What I'm saying is this war needs to end, and that's going to take concessions on territory. | ||
| That's going to take Russian concessions on security guarantees. | ||
| That's going to take all sides coming to the table. | ||
| And we are working very hard to drive those negotiations forward. | ||
| We had our engagement in Riyadh with the Russians. | ||
| We are working to have an engagement. | ||
| We thought a deal with the Ukrainians. | ||
| And then we'll bring all sides together. | ||
| That only President Trump did that. | ||
| And I find President City's being criticized for that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You just mentioned a specific concession potentially that you would like Vladimir Putin to make. | |
| Can you elaborate on that? | ||
| Because we haven't heard any specifics before. | ||
| Well, we can't get any specifics from the Ukrainians, but this will clearly be some type of territorial concession for security guarantees going forward. | ||
| I mean, that has been discussed in previous rounds of the USA. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Security guarantees. | |
| Who guarantees that security? | ||
| Well, right now, under so some first principles. | ||
| This needs to be a permanent end, not a temporary end. | ||
| This needs to be European-led security guarantees going forward. | ||
| Part of that is Europe's contribution to its own defense so it has the capability to do so. | ||
| We've had both the United Kingdom and France talking about their troops on the ground going forward. | ||
| And then, you know, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. | ||
| What type of support we provide or not is to be negotiated. | ||
| But one thing is clear: we do not see Ukraine being a member of NATO because that would automatically drag U.S. troops in. | ||
| U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, that was yesterday on CNN. | ||
| This is the front page headline of the Wall Street Journal this morning. | ||
| European allies seek to forge their own Ukrainian peace plan. | ||
| UK France looked to repair diplomatic damage after Trump outburst at Zelensky, the headline and sub-headline from the Wall Street Journal there. | ||
| Speaking of Vladimir Zelensky, this was his tweet yesterday talking about Europe's role and the U.S. role as a result of these days. | ||
| We see a clear support from Europe. | ||
| Zelensky said on the platform formerly known as Twitter X, even more unity, even more willingness to cooperate. | ||
| Everyone is united on the main issue for peace to be real. | ||
| We need real security guarantees. | ||
| And this is the position of all of Europe, the entire continent, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Turkey. | ||
| He goes on to say, of course, we understand the importance of America, and we are grateful for all the support we've received from the United States. | ||
| There has not been a day when we haven't felt gratitude. | ||
| It's gratitude for the preservation of our independence. | ||
| Our resilience in Ukraine is based on what our partners are doing for us and for their own security. | ||
| What we need is peace, he said, not endless war. | ||
| And that's why we say security guarantees are the key to this. | ||
| Vladimir Zelensky on his ex page yesterday. | ||
| Taking your phone calls this morning, the question we're asking is: what is America's role in the world today? | ||
| How do you see it? | ||
| Eric, New York Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Good day. | ||
| I'm also Ukrainian and I'm a veteran. | ||
| I think everybody's been making some great points about Ukraine, but the question is about America's role. | ||
| So my problem is to define America. | ||
| It's supposed to be the people's choice. | ||
| And I think the latest numbers were that 80-some percent of Americans don't trust Putin. | ||
| So this doesn't look like America's role in the world. | ||
| It looks like Putin's, or Putin and Freudian slip, Trump. | ||
| It looks like it's Trump and Putin's world. | ||
| You know, I think they're going to be heading into an oligarchy. | ||
| And of course that fits with Russia's vision. | ||
| They've been saying that the stance from that meeting on Friday works that way. | ||
| Anyways, Eric, which should be anybody's listen to Americans. | ||
| What should be the vision for America? | ||
| What should we be doing in the world? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, number one, we shouldn't be anybody's enemy for starters. | |
| I mean, you know, I'm a Vietnam vet, and I watch that happen. | ||
| You know, I watch people get fed right into the meat grinder, not unlike the Ukrainian war. | ||
| But America's got it, you know, America's got to be firm around their policy and react to what Americans want. | ||
| Americans want it. | ||
| I didn't vote for Putin. | ||
| They really were clear. | ||
| I didn't vote for Putin. | ||
| Do you think Americans want American troops in Ukraine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, no, I don't think so. | |
| I don't think so. | ||
| You know, the peace is the right ideal, but how does America do it? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's very complicated, and we have a lot of people on both sides that, you know, it's the yin and yang of it, you know, and I don't see any balance. | ||
| Do you think Americans want billions of dollars more in American money to Ukraine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that's a good price to pay. | |
| I think that's a really good price to pay. | ||
| They're willing to fight the war and have their young men. | ||
| And let's face it, you know, both sides, there's a lot of young Russian men dying. | ||
| That shouldn't be like that. | ||
| But, you know, I watched America's role in Vietnam. | ||
| I don't want it to be like that, that's for sure. | ||
| I know what I don't want. | ||
| And I don't think Americans like it either. | ||
| Everybody I'm talking to is just really upset about this Putin thing. | ||
| It's just he's given in way too quick, our traditions. | ||
| My uncles, I had two uncles at the beach in Normandy, and they're rolling over in their grave. | ||
| I just, you know, and Trump's disdain for the military is just, I don't know what to do. | ||
| I think that, you know, we should always strive for peace, obviously, you know, but we couldn't do it in Vietnam. | ||
| We really couldn't do it in Iraq, certainly not Afghanistan. | ||
| And so, you know, I certainly don't like the role of being a policeman. | ||
| I mean, that doesn't work out. | ||
| There's still people who die for that cause. | ||
| But I would like to see Americans represented in the world stage. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| That's Eric in New York. | ||
| This is Arthur in Florida. | ||
| Republican line. | ||
| Good morning to you, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, America first. | |
| Anything else you want to add, Arthur? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I would like to add something else. | ||
| We are spending so much money with Ukraine that could be spent there in the United States instead of us thinking that we can spend millions and millions of dollars and it magically reappear. | ||
| There's got to be a part of this war stops. | ||
| And that's all I've got to say. | ||
| To Arthur in Florida, this is Lynn, Independent in the Tar Hill State. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I am still disappointed with what's going on right now. | ||
| We're like, this is the same paybook for World War I. You're talking about nationalism, militarism, militarialism, money. | ||
| All this has been for what? | ||
| I mean, for what? | ||
| Imagine this. | ||
| Imagine Putin coming over here telling us what to do with this country. | ||
| I mean, this is crazy. | ||
| This has got to stop. | ||
| Did you say this is like World War I? | ||
| Is that what you said? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| It's like the same paybook as World War I. Explain what you mean. | ||
| World War I was started over nationalism, being militarized, those type of things. | ||
| This is the exact same thing. | ||
| It's almost the exact same paper. | ||
| We get involved in something that happened. | ||
| We have nothing to do with what's going on. | ||
| We're helping Ukraine fight the same thing that Putin did, that Russia did back in World War I. | ||
| The same exact thing. | ||
| We're going to be involved in another war. | ||
| We can't let Putin do this. | ||
| On learning the lessons of the past, this is the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, the conservative pages of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| This is what they write. | ||
| With his first weeks back in office, and especially after Friday's Oval Office brawling with Ukrainian President Vlodymir Zelensky, it's clear President Trump has designs for a new world order. | ||
| Perhaps he could share his vision with the country when he addresses Congress on Tuesday. | ||
| He says while he solicits Moscow, Mr. Trump is hammering traditional U.S. friends. | ||
| He plans 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico in violation of his own U.S.-MCA trade deal. | ||
| And his defense secretary has threatened to invade Mexico to pursue drug cartels. | ||
| He wants to hit Western Europe with heavy tariffs on its autos and slap reciprocal tariffs on the rest of the trading world. | ||
| He says it's a return to the world of great power competition and balance of power that prevailed before World War II. | ||
| It's less a brave new world than a reversion to a dangerous old one. | ||
| He says Tuesday night would be a great moment to make his ambitions clear, talking about President Trump explaining his vision for the world to the American people. | ||
| That's again the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal in today's edition. | ||
| This is Brian here in Washington, D.C. Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I think people need to check their history. | ||
| The reason that this war is occurring is not because of the United States and Western Europe. | ||
| When the Soviet Union broke up and what we call now Ukraine came aboard, they had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the planet. | ||
| That is a big, big ACE card, as Trump's talking about the five ACEs, forget four, against Russia or anybody else that chose it. | ||
| And in return for giving up their nuclear stockpile, the West and especially the United States, which ended up taking these nuclear weapons and disarming them, agreed to protect and ensure Ukraine's borders at their then current state. | ||
| That was in the early 90s. | ||
| Brian, you're talking about the Minsk agreement. | ||
| Take me to today and what America's role in the world should be. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It all leads up to today. | |
| Because the United States, they all say they're going to agree with it. | ||
| They didn't. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Then they had the one that Kelzinski talks about himself and they made the agreement with Russia and then Russia remigged again. | ||
| Why should Ukraine agree to anything unless they put boots on the ground and let them have something to lose? | ||
| Right now, only people losing is Ukraine. | ||
| When you say United States, they debate all they think the West is doing is making lipsticks. | ||
| Brian, when you say they should have boots on the ground, who's they? | ||
| Who are you referring to? | ||
| The United States? | ||
| Are you referring to the United States? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really, truly, and I know that's not going to happen. | |
| Everybody who was part of that Minsk agreement, who agreed to protect Ukraine and their then borders, and then sat quietly, including Obama. | ||
| And I'm a black man in D.C., so you know who I voted for. | ||
| And they all just clutched their pearls as Russia did everything against them. | ||
| Trump's talking about a card. | ||
| They gave up their cards. | ||
| They had an inside flush. | ||
| Everybody held that big card is royal flush. | ||
| And at the urging of the United States and other countries, they gave up their cards and folded. | ||
| That's Brian here in D.C. | ||
| This is Robin in Maryland, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| So I think everybody needs to think back a couple years ago when Biden went to Saudi Arabia. | ||
| He had called the Prince of Saudi Arabia, I think a terrorist or whatever. | ||
| He wouldn't shake his hand, and he left with nothing. | ||
| I think Trump is a phenomenal negotiator, and he knows you get more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. | ||
| I don't think he likes Putin. | ||
| I think he realizes Putin's a horrible dictator. | ||
| But he's not going to get into a fight with them trying to get a peace deal. | ||
| I think he is totally saying, I'm going to take care of you. | ||
| It is critical that Ukraine stay free, but he's not going to do it by having a public fight. | ||
| I watched the entire news conference three times, and Trump said at least six times, I'm not talking about security right now. | ||
| Security is easy. | ||
| We'll take care of security. | ||
| And now you got all of Europe saying, we're going to take care of you. | ||
| So obviously, Ukraine has security. | ||
| Nobody's throwing Ukraine under the bus. | ||
| You just have to trust Trump. | ||
| And it scares me how many people are thrilled that Trump looks bad now because they don't realize if Trump looks bad, the U.S. looks bad. | ||
| Do you think Trump looks bad right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think to a lot of people, he does. | |
| To me, he looks great. | ||
| I think he handled it beautifully. | ||
| I think Zelensky had been warned, be nice to Trump. | ||
| Trump's holding all the cards. | ||
| And I think Zelensky was terrible. | ||
| But there are, listen to your callers. | ||
| Oh, I am so embarrassed about Trump. | ||
| I, you know, I'm loving seeing how Trump has fought. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| If Trump looks good, the United States looks good. | ||
| If Trump looks bad, the United States looks bad. | ||
| How could somebody want to see Trump fail? | ||
| And I think he did a great thing saying, you know, you're not ready for peace. | ||
| I want peace. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I love this show. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You're in Maryland. | ||
| You may want to read Mark Thiessen's piece in today's Washington Post if you want to pick it up, making some of the points that you're making here. | ||
| Mark Thiessen writing that the blowup in the Oval Office on Friday was Zielinski's fault and saying afterwards, Zielensky should have stayed in Washington until the rift was mended. | ||
| Trump gave him a way out in that Truth Social post. | ||
| He said Zelensky can come back when he's ready for peace. | ||
| Zelensky should have seized that opening and sent Trump a handwritten note expressing his sorrow that the meeting had gone off the rails, regretting the role that he played in its demise and declaring his intention to work with Trump for peace. | ||
| Instead, he refused the off-ramp that Trump had offered him and got on his plane and left. | ||
| His stubbornness was an asset in February of 2022 when he refused to flee Kyiv in the face of the advancing Russian forces, but today it is his liability. | ||
| Zelensky's greatest virtue becomes his worst vice is the headline of Mark Thiessen's piece, if you want to read it today. | ||
| Taking your phone calls this morning, simply asking you, what is America's role in the world today? | ||
| Questions amid these discussions about the future of Ukraine about Zelensky's role in Ukraine and in the future of Ukraine. | ||
| Some suggestions that a peace negotiation could include Zelensky stepping down as president of Ukraine. | ||
| Bernie Sanders was on Meet the Press yesterday and specifically responded to that suggestion. | ||
| This is Bernie Sanders from yesterday. | ||
| Zelensky is leading a country trying to defend democracy against an authoritarian dictator, Putin, who invaded his country. | ||
| And I think millions of Americans are embarrassed or ashamed that you have a president of the United States who says that Ukraine started the war, that Zelensky is a dictator. | ||
| He's got it exactly backwards. | ||
| The people of Ukraine have lost tens of thousands of soldiers. | ||
| Their cities are being bombed as we speak. | ||
| And our job is to defend the 250-year tradition that we have. | ||
| of being the democratic leader of the world, not turn our backs on a struggling country that is trying to do the right thing. | ||
| Senator Bernie Sanders on Meet the Press yesterday, also on Meet the Press, Republican James Lankford, also giving his view about the implications of what's happening today in Ukraine for what it means for the United States in the world going forward. | ||
| James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma. | ||
| Are you concerned that what happened in the Oval Office, the fact that the United States sided with Russia and North Korea in that UN vote, for example, the fact that President Trump accused Zelensky of starting this war, could that be sending a signal to China that it has a green light to invade Taiwan? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, it sure should not. | |
| And that if China somehow receives that, they're receiving the exact wrong message that the United States stands with our ally, Taiwan. | ||
| And we, like the rest of the world, want to see peace in that region and to continue to be able to have relationships all across that region. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But China should not misread this at all. | |
| What President Trump is trying to do is trying to get both sides to the table. | ||
| This is the interesting challenge that has not been done now through this entire war in the last three years to be able to get both sides and then figure out how to be able to get a stop to the fighting and then to be able to keep the fighting stopped. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the next part that's the biggest next challenge. | |
| Senator James Lankford, the Senate is in today at 3 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| The House returns at noon. | ||
| And we are expecting a busy week here on Capitol Hill, including a joint address to Congress and the American people by President Trump from the House of Representatives. | ||
| It's what in other years would be called a State of the Union address. | ||
| It's simply referred to a joint address in the president's first year after an election. | ||
| That's happening on Tuesday night. | ||
| We're covering it here on C-SPAN. | ||
| And we, of course, hope you join in. | ||
| 7.30 Eastern Time asking this question, what's America's role in the world today? | ||
| This is Michael in Florida, Independent. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I enjoy the program. | ||
| I've got three points. | ||
| And as far as the United States role, supposedly after World War II, we are the leader of the free world. | ||
| We are a safe haven, protection for the world. | ||
| And we also patrol and we try to fight evil, which would be someone taking over another country. | ||
| This is the three points, and I have not watched any senator in the last seven days even talk about this, about Russia. | ||
| This is what I think. | ||
| I looked at that. | ||
| I just think that was a terrible thing that would have happened in the Oval Office the other day. | ||
| It was just a – I mean, I really agree with Trump. | ||
| I think nations should pay if they're able to for our military, what it costs. | ||
| But no one asked, we forget. | ||
| Three years ago, we come home every day from work for six months in a row. | ||
| We sit down. | ||
| We're watching these cities being bombed out on our TV sets. | ||
| That's the first time other than Israel that bombed a regular country with a military went in and bombed civilians, apartment buildings. | ||
| I mean, we could have ended Afghanistan. | ||
| We were here for 20 years. | ||
| We could end that in three weeks, but we don't do that. | ||
| We can't do that. | ||
| So, first of all, Russia is organizing outside Ukraine's borders for three four weeks, maybe even a month and a half. | ||
| They're setting up, they come in, but no one asks this question, not one senator, not one congressman. | ||
| What does Russia want before they invaded, and what do they want now? | ||
| And no one talks about that. | ||
| I mean, how do you make a deal when you don't even know what they're defending? | ||
| What do they want? | ||
| Michael, when you're my opinion, I'm sorry, go ahead. | ||
| What do you think they want? | ||
| Sorry, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think they want the waterfront. | |
| I think they want that seaport. | ||
| If you look at the map, because I mean, hey, whoever studies Ukraine and the actual geographic, but when you look at it, Russia has a tiny sliver of waterfront. | ||
| I think they want that. | ||
| I think they probably want minerals. | ||
| But what do they want? | ||
| I mean, no one even talks about that. | ||
| How are you supposed to make a deal when you don't know why they invaded, what do they want, and what do they want now? | ||
| And as far as what I would do, they're talking NATO. | ||
| What is France, Poland, Germany? | ||
| What are they going to take on Russia? | ||
| Are they going to take on China? | ||
| And without the United States, they're not going to be able to take, they don't have the equipment. | ||
| They don't have the military to fight a big war like that. | ||
| And as far as you know, well, Michael, on that last point on the coalition of the willing, as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer talked about it yesterday, he also talked about the role of the United States in a European-led effort to ensure a peace deal in Ukraine. | ||
| This is again from 10 Downing Street yesterday, the Prime Minister. | ||
| Watching President Trump berate a wartime president and defender of European freedom in the Avlos office, said to many people what you've already said in a way that everything has changed. | ||
| Given that the U.S. has become an unreliable ally, did you, as European leaders, discuss the prospect of actually going it alone and actually what the reality of a US pulling out of this, all of this would mean? | ||
| Do you think you really do need the US? | ||
| And if you do, do you think the coalition of the willing will be enough to bring President Trump back around? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, first, in relation to last Friday, nobody wanted to see what happened last Friday. | ||
| But I do not accept that the US is an unreliable ally. | ||
| The U.S. has been a reliable ally to the UK for many, many decades and continues to be. | ||
| There are no two countries as closely aligned as our two countries. | ||
| And our defense, our security, and intelligence is intertwined in a way no two other countries are. | ||
| So it's an important and reliable ally for us. | ||
| The discussions we've had today, particularly the coalition of the willing, is on the basis that this is a plan that we will work with with the US and that it will have US backing. | ||
| So that is the purpose of the plan, and that is why I spoke to President Trump last night before we developed the work on this plan. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Kier Starmer there yesterday taking questions from the press after that meeting of some 18 European leaders. | ||
| Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky was in attendance as well and it sparked this question this morning for our viewers on the Washington Journal. | ||
| What is America's role in the world today? | ||
| That's what we've been asking. | ||
| This is Harold, Tennessee, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| People, we need to get out of their mind what's going to happen when Russia does take Ukraine over. | ||
| It's going to be mass rapes of women, it's going to be slaughter of little children. | ||
| And we're a godly nation, or we claim to be. | ||
| We need to stand up and stop this Putin before he gets any further. | ||
| Bless his heart. | ||
| I do not know what he holds over President Trump, but look at all the effort that Ronald Reagan, President Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and now even Joe Biden made to put in to keep Putin under control. | ||
| And now we're going to turn him loose. | ||
| But think of the onslaught that's going to happen to these women, little children, and stuff. | ||
| And, you know, they want to live free. | ||
| We don't want to live under Russia's rule, and nobody else does either. | ||
| But if Russia takes Ukraine, then it's going to keep on going. | ||
| And the other thing, too, we're right now this thing, Friday. | ||
| I blame JD Vance for most of this. | ||
| I think President was trying to get something done. | ||
| Advance started this or whatever you want to call it. | ||
| But right now, we're just looking bad to the rest of the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And as Ronald Reagan said, we are the shining light on the hill, or we were. | |
| And I don't know after Friday if we still are or not because people say that they can't trust us. | ||
| Ronald Reagan put a lot of his effort into putting Russia under control. | ||
| And now this administration is sacrificing all of that. | ||
| But the main thing is to keep the women and children, what's going to happen to them in that country over there, Ukraine, that Russia's going to do to them. | ||
| Keep that in mind. | ||
| And if we're a godly nation, we will stand with Rat. | ||
| Thank you much. | ||
| That's Harold in Tennessee. | ||
| This is Tom in North Carolina. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The issue I have is: I don't mind us helping other countries, but why do we have to spend so much more in these other countries than our allies do? | ||
| I mean, we've given Ukraine, what, $350 billion. | ||
| I think the number's a little south of $200 billion, but we can, but go ahead, Tom, to your point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. | |
| But look at our deficit. | ||
| We could use some of that money here. | ||
| We don't have a problem giving money to these other countries. | ||
| We need to keep some of that money here. | ||
| And I didn't have a problem with what President Trump did on Friday. | ||
| He stood up. | ||
| He didn't back down, and he's got my support 100%. | ||
| That's Tom in the Tar Hill States to the Garden State. | ||
| This is John Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I think you can't ask him a lot of questions about what the U.S. ought to be doing with respect to Ukraine. | ||
| It's actually pretty clear what Vladimir Putin wants to do with respect to Ukraine. | ||
| He wrote a master's thesis on the subject, and it was an analysis of a political scientist from like 1864, a guy named Donalewski, who said that Russia should not be a second-class nation with respect to Europe. | ||
| Russia should be calling the shots in Europe. | ||
| Russia's culture, Russia's strength should dominate Europe. | ||
| And that was Donalevsky's thesis. | ||
| And that's pretty much what I think motivates Putin. | ||
| So whatever you might think about what the U.S. ought to do or what Europe ought to do, I think it's pretty clear what Putin wants to do. | ||
| So, John, with that in mind, what should the U.S. do? | ||
| What should be our role vis-a-vis Russia? | ||
| And in general, in the world today, there's other hotspots in the world. | ||
| There's Taiwan. | ||
| There's a U.S. aircraft carrier that arrived over the weekend in South Korea as a direct response to recent actions by North Korea. | ||
| Here's a picture of the USS Carl Vinson escorted into Busan, South Korea on Sunday. | ||
| Its presence meant to show the alliance in the face of the North Korean threats, as the Washington Times puts it. | ||
| So if you know what you're saying, if you know what's in the mind of Vladimir Putin, what should be our role then in the world? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think, okay, now I'm getting out of my, now I'm getting out of my range of opinions. | |
| I don't know how much the United States could afford to support a counterforce to Putin's ambitions. | ||
| And I think it is true that Europe ought to have been spending a bit more money? | ||
| Significantly more money. | ||
| Is that counter force NATO? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Counterforce is NATO, except NATO is basically a treaty to go to war. | |
| So that's what gets invoked when we go to war in Europe. | ||
| And I think it would be nice to avoid that. | ||
| I think we have to somehow create a deterrent that Putin will recognize to expanding Russian influence in Europe and keeping Europe friendly to the United States. | ||
| I don't think that's a good idea. | ||
| John, a lot of people will say that Article 5, the guarantee that an attack on a NATO partner is an attack on all, and the guarantee of response from NATO partners, that that is the deterrent, that that is often cited as the deterrent that you're talking about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe that's a solid deterrent. | |
| Question is, what will the price be if NATO calls upon the United States to defend Europe? | ||
| That'll be a heavy price. | ||
| That's John in New Jersey. | ||
| This is another John. | ||
| John Bolton served as White House National Security Advisor in the first Trump administration back in 2018 and 2019. | ||
| He's got a piece in today's Wall Street Journal, How to Protect NATO from his old boss, Donald Trump. | ||
| He writes this: NATO isn't America's only alliance in jeopardy. | ||
| In his first term, Mr. Trump's assault on NATO arrived alongside his criticism of other allies, albeit not as publicly as today. | ||
| The Five Eyes Intelligence Sharing Network, the Australian UK-U.S. Consortium to build nuclear-powered submarines for Australia, and the export control rules designed to keep rogue states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. | ||
| They're all at risk, he says. | ||
| Even bilateral ties with Japan and South Korea are in question. | ||
| Taiwan should be very worried today. | ||
| He writes, Mr. Trump never appreciated Winston Churchill's insight that there is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without our allies. | ||
| John Bolton, writing in today's Wall Street Journal, if you want to read more. | ||
| Debbie, Michigan, Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Come on, Juan. | |
| Debbie from Flint. | ||
| I haven't called in a couple years. | ||
| I used to call every month. | ||
| I set my watch. | ||
| Good to hear from you again, Debbie. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
| What do you think America's role should be? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe it should be the same as it's always been, that we are the brightest star for democracy. | |
| And when it comes to affording to help Ukraine, we can afford it better than anybody can. | ||
| And I understand the price of age makes everybody mad, but I just thought Friday was just so sad. | ||
| I think that Trump has been, like Bolton just said, dismantling these things at every turn. | ||
| And for Putin guy to come out and say that now our security vision is the same as theirs. | ||
| How sad is that? | ||
| That just turns my stomach. | ||
| But I think that something was said before they even gathered in that room. | ||
| And nobody wants to talk about what the actual agreement was. | ||
| Because when he sent Besent over there, Vesent wanted him to sign something that Ukraine had to give us $500 billion. | ||
| We haven't given them anywhere near $500 billion to help, but we were supposed to give them $5 billion in the rare earth trade, and then we in nothing going forward. | ||
| That was just going to pay for everything we'd given them. | ||
| Well, if we didn't give them $500, why would they expect Zelensky to sign something like that? | ||
| And I just think it looked like a trap. | ||
| I think that he was set up. | ||
| I think that they got him all emotional in the back room and then brought him out. | ||
| He kind of had a look on his face. | ||
| But you know what? | ||
| I think he's a hero. | ||
| He's a hero because, yes, he's at war, but he's not a sycophant like the rest of these Republicans are. | ||
| And I'm talking to you, Republican senators. | ||
| Had you impeached him, voted for his impeachment the first time, we wouldn't be having this problem. | ||
| So you have a good day, John, and I appreciate you taking my call. | ||
| That's Debbie in Michigan. | ||
| This is Joanne in Connecticut. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just want to say this was supposed to be a ceremonial signing. | ||
| Zelensky was disrespectful. | ||
| We've given Ukraine an awful lot of money that we don't get it back. | ||
| But Europe, they have to pay back Europe. | ||
| We don't have the money. | ||
| Does anyone know what a mediator is? | ||
| You try not to take sides. | ||
| Don't you think our country knows? | ||
| We have war ships, planes close to our shores by Russia. | ||
| We don't want another war. | ||
| Zelensky, to me, looks like a shakedown artist. | ||
| They said it's been reported that the Democrats talked to Zelensky before this meeting. | ||
| We're not getting anything back. | ||
| Does he realize that his people are not going to win this war? | ||
| They were great fighters, but the reality is they can't beat Russia. | ||
| Joanne, you said we're the mediators here. | ||
| Is that our role in the world today in 2025? | ||
| Should we be the world's mediators? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, this deal, that's what it is. | |
| Trump's trying to mediate between two people that hate each other, and rightfully so. | ||
| But does anyone think Ukraine's going to win? | ||
| Do the American people want to send more money to Ukraine? | ||
| Do they want to put our soldiers in Ukraine? | ||
| I don't understand it. | ||
| And you're not going to beat Russia. | ||
| Unfortunately, there's nobody else left basically to fight this war. | ||
| That's Joanne in Connecticut. | ||
| This is Jimmy in Shreveport, Louisiana, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't agree with a lot of what these people say. | |
| I think that we shouldn't be focusing on Putin as much as we need to focus on the maniac that we have in the White House. | ||
| I saw two bullies Friday night. | ||
| I didn't see Zelensky doing anything wrong other than try to, you know, sit there and be graceful while he was having people bullying him. | ||
| I'm so angry. | ||
| So, Jude, what do you want to see as an American? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm an American. | |
| What do you want to see as an American? | ||
| America's role in the world today. | ||
| What should our role be? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think we need to keep our friends. | |
| We need to keep our allies. | ||
| We need to come up with, we need a leader who will lead and not act like a child in the White House. | ||
| I get more angry. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Anyway, the money that's being spent in Ukraine is for a good reason. | ||
| We're trying to help save democracy. | ||
| And I see myself. | ||
| That's so question. | ||
| Anyway, I think. | ||
| Jimmy, we'll take your point. | ||
| This is Regina in Hyattsville, Maryland. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| It is really a very difficult question to answer as to what America's role is in the world today, because I've always understood that to much is given. | ||
| If much is given to you, much is expected. | ||
| The United States has been a blessing to the world. | ||
| But now, unfortunately, we do not have a leader who understands that perspective. | ||
| He is someone who is the most selfish, immature, narcissistic person I have ever met. | ||
| And it's unfortunate because our country is going to be isolated. | ||
| And as Zelensky said, our shores will not protect us from the enemy that is going to come and attack the United States. | ||
| And when it does, who are we going to turn to? | ||
| Donald Trump? | ||
| Because we're not going to have any allies anymore. | ||
| All of the European allies came to our aid after 9-11. | ||
| But who are we going to turn to now? | ||
| I don't know how to answer the question, to be honest with you, because we don't have a leader in the White House. | ||
| We don't have an administration who understands what it takes for democracy. | ||
| All of the cabinet members don't understand it. | ||
| He has people he loves. | ||
| So, what is our role, unfortunately? | ||
| Sir, I wish I could answer that question. | ||
| And it really saddens me and it frightens me. | ||
| It really frightens me as to where our country, you said it, because we have no leader. | ||
| So I don't think the United States has a role because we don't have anyone who understands what leadership is about. | ||
| That's Regina in Hyattsville, Maryland. | ||
| Here is President Trump this morning tweeting out, or I guess I should say, truth social posts from the president from 10 minutes ago and seven minutes ago. | ||
| From seven minutes ago, it was previewing tomorrow's speech in that building behind me at the United States Capitol. | ||
| Tomorrow night will be big. | ||
| I will tell it like it is. | ||
| And just a few minutes before that, he made his post about Ukraine saying the only president who gave none of Ukraine's land to Putin's Russia is President Donald J. Trump. | ||
| Remember that? | ||
| He said when the weak and ineffective Democrats criticize and the fake news gladly puts out anything that they say. | ||
| President Trump this morning up and on Truth Social. | ||
| This is Jamie in Garden City, Missouri, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have so many thoughts, so bear with me. | ||
| I watched Tucker Carlson and he interviewed someone that was running for president or wanted to in Ukraine. | ||
| And what I understand is that this is nothing more than the military-industrial complex making a lot of money from the lobbyists in our government to fund a perpetual war and launder money as people die. | ||
| President Trump is trying to create peace. | ||
| That's what leaders do. | ||
| And I am so hurt that the meeting. | ||
| I watched 60 Minutes last night, and that was nothing but a snare campaign. | ||
| I can't afford groceries. | ||
| I'm not going to spend a billion dollars a month for Ukraine's pensions and for people to die. | ||
| There is no end to the war but peace. | ||
| Boots on the ground to create peace would allow President Trump's plan to come in to kind of secure that area over there, get a little policing going, but we're not going to do this NATO nonsense military industrial complex paid for by our tax dollars. | ||
| So, Jamie, who can't afford it? | ||
| Who does the policing that you say would do a little bit of policing and ensure the security? | ||
| Who does that, Jamie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, as I understood, President Trump's plan to go and mine some minerals in Ukraine would put some American presence in there to maintain the peace agreement. | |
| Now, I don't know the just of it all between President Trump and President Putin or President Zelensky, but I do know just like he's trying to do in Gaza, it's like you guys don't get along. | ||
| We can build something good here. | ||
| We can make something good here, and everybody benefits and everybody gets along. | ||
| And if America, did you guys not learn anything from Vietnam or the Korean wars? | ||
| No one wins. | ||
| We just got out of Afghanistan. | ||
| So he's trying to create a peaceful, profitable solution. | ||
| And America has been through enough. | ||
| Peace is what leaders do, funding war. | ||
| And to my Democrat people over there that talk about President Trump, what is the end game? | ||
| We can throw all the money in the world at Ukraine. | ||
| It's not going to stop. | ||
| We will be at World War III if we do something stupid, like get into NATO. | ||
| And that's just the just of it. | ||
| And I'm a military mother. | ||
| I love my country. | ||
| I support what is good. | ||
| Afghanistan ended badly. | ||
| We can't do that. | ||
| I mean, Jamie, is your son or daughter still serving? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He deployed under President Trump. | |
| He's lieutenant colonel. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| But he made it home safely. | ||
| So, yeah, it's kind of personal to me. | ||
| And I don't want to see people dying. | ||
| I don't want anybody to die. | ||
| I don't think Putin's this great guy, but I don't think Zelensky is either. | ||
| He controls the media. | ||
| He goes after political opponents. | ||
| There hasn't been an election. | ||
| He's kind of acting like a dictator. | ||
| And Christians are being persecuted over there, guys. | ||
| That's not good. | ||
| That's just my opinion. | ||
| That's Jamie in Missouri. | ||
| This is Rich in Hickory Hills, Illinois, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| You know, the role of America, you know, has changed. | ||
| That's what I'm seeing here. | ||
| You know, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, you know, there was a coalition. | ||
| And, you know, that's what NATO is about. | ||
| And that's where the United States took that lead to, you know, to stand up and say, hey, listen, this is a weaker country. | ||
| There's investments there. | ||
| This is a world economy that's at stake here. | ||
| And The leadership that I'm seeing is sort of like it's changing to where it's not a, you know, let's try to get along. | ||
| It's a matter of, you know, what's in it for me. | ||
| And, you know, we should have, you know, there's a balance there. | ||
| And to me, the scales are tipping in the wrong direction. | ||
| If our sole response to go in to help Ukraine was, you know, first off, let's see what I'm going to get out of it before I'm going to help you, you know, or, you know, we're here with our allies to protect and save, you know, this aggression. | ||
| That was wrong, that Russia invaded Ukraine. | ||
| And just because Ukraine did not put up a substantial front before the invasion, you know, didn't mean they wanted to be invaded. | ||
| You know, and so this narrative that's coming out of it just seems to me, it doesn't sound like that's the role we're taking. | ||
| And the role we're taking is what's in it for me. | ||
| And if there's nothing that's not enough for me, then screw you. | ||
| I don't get that. | ||
| But if that's the way they want to do it, if that's what they think is what's best for America. | ||
| But it seems to me that's how Biden got elected because he was there to repair the damage that this guy had did to our allies in the first thing. | ||
| And that's what his main goal was. | ||
| And again, that wasn't good for us to take that stance. | ||
| We should be running our country and not having to repair the damage of the past administration. | ||
| Rich, what was your, you talk about the Biden administration. | ||
| What was your view of, and it wasn't just the Biden administration, 20 years of involvement in Afghanistan? | ||
| What's the lesson there for America's role in the world? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, to me, our role in the world, what we went into Afghanistan for was because of the aggression that came out to the outside world. | |
| That's why we went in, and especially for our interests when we were attacked by bin Laden, you know, with his attack on the American soil, 9-11. | ||
| I mean, that's why we went in there. | ||
| And again, what we were doing, and you just can't go in and obliterate the country. | ||
| It just, you know, should we have stayed for 20 years? | ||
| I'm sorry? | ||
| Should we have stayed for 20 years? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, the policy of the military, you know, when you can't use the military as like some kind of a police. | |
| They're not there to conquer. | ||
| They're there to win. | ||
| That's their job. | ||
| But to sit there and say, we want to do this, but we want to do it in a real nice way and to go in there and knock on doors and go door to door and do all of that stuff. | ||
| That's not the military's way. | ||
| We drop big bombs and big bombs make big destruction. | ||
| That's part of the package. | ||
| Rich in Illinois is not our last caller, time for maybe one more. | ||
| This is David Cherry Hill, New Jersey. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nobody has said anything about the five bullet points in regards to the assets of Ukraine. | |
| One, they have a vast salt mine there. | ||
| Two, 50% of Eurasia's grain is there. | ||
| Three, they have the rare earth minerals. | ||
| Four, the fission materials. | ||
| Five, Russia had a radiation cloud when Chernobyl went off and floated towards Moscow. | ||
| They had to seed the clouds to get the radiation away. | ||
| Well, it's regarding Russia's breadbasket that Russia wants back. | ||
| We should get that breadbasket and keep it. | ||
| That's David in New Jersey, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal. | ||
| Stick around, though, plenty more to talk about today, including up next, we'll be joined by Scott Wong of NBC News. | ||
| We'll preview the week ahead in Congress and that joint address to Congress tomorrow night. | ||
| And later, U.S. Comptroller General and head of the GAO Gene Dodaro discusses the agency's latest report on federal programs deemed at high risk for waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| Stick around for that conversation. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and Senate are in session. | |
| The House will vote on legislation to repeal Biden administration energy and environmental rules. | ||
| The Senate continues voting on President Trump's cabinet nominations, including secretaries of education and labor. | ||
| Both chambers are facing a March 14th government funding deadline. | ||
| The House could begin voting on legislation to extend funding to the end of September to avert a shutdown. | ||
| On Tuesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee considers a nomination of Matthew Whitaker, former acting attorney general during President Trump's first administration, as U.S. Ambassador to NATO. | ||
| And Tuesday evening, President Trump delivers an address before a joint session of Congress. | ||
| Wednesday, the mayors of Boston, Chicago, Denver, and New York City testify before the House Oversight Committee on the policies of sanctuary cities. | ||
| And C-SPAN continues our comprehensive coverage of confirmation hearings for President Trump's leadership nominees. | ||
| The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will hold hearings for two nominees. | ||
| On Wednesday, Stanford University professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health. | ||
| And on Thursday, Johns Hopkins surgical oncologist Martin McCarry as Commissioner of the FDA. | ||
| Watch live this week on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app. | ||
| Also, head over to c-span.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| c-span democracy unfiltered if you ever miss any of c-span's coverage you can find it anytime online at c-span.org Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. | ||
| These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. | ||
| This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington. | ||
| Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| On Mondays, when Congress is in session, we'd like to take a look at the week ahead in Washington. | ||
| And to do that, we're joined once again by NBC News senior congressional reporter Scott Wong. | ||
| And Mr. Wong, of course, President Trump, set to address members of Congress and the nation tomorrow night, Tuesday night from Capitol Hill. | ||
| That joint address, as it's being called, is not officially a state of the union. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| What are we expecting? | ||
| Well, this is going to be a big speech by President Trump because it is his first major address to the United States Congress since taking office, and especially since implementing all of these Doge cuts that have been so controversial and widespread across the country. | ||
| We have seen the Democrats protest these cuts at the federal agencies. | ||
| We have seen the reaction from town halls around the country protesting Republicans who have been supportive of Elon Musk and this Doge department. | ||
| And so we will hear directly from the President. | ||
| I think it will be a victory lap of sorts looking back at President Trump's first month in office saying, look, I campaigned on these promises and I have carried out and fulfilled a lot of these promises to scale back the size and scope of government to really go after spending. | ||
| We didn't really know that he was going to do these mass firings, but we're going to hear from the president about how he thinks these mass firings have gone so far. | ||
| How much do you think that Friday night's blow up in the Oval Office is changing the speech right now? | ||
| How much he's going to focus now on Ukraine and peace and minerals deal? | ||
| What are your thoughts? | ||
| I think it will be a big, major part of this address simply because it is in the news. | ||
| It is the biggest story at the moment. | ||
| I think everyone at this point, several days out, has now seen the blowup in the Oval Office between Zelensky, President Trump, and Vice President JD Vance. | ||
| This is an important deal in the eyes of the president, this mineral deal. | ||
| He thinks that this is the path to peace between Ukraine and Russia. | ||
| Clearly, Zelensky wanted more. | ||
| He wanted security assurances from the United States, which the President Trump was unwilling to give him in that moment. | ||
| They walked away from the deal. | ||
| Zelensky returned to Europe and Ukraine, where he was received well in the European community and did receive some additional support, financial support, as well as verbal support from European leaders there. | ||
| But to go back to my original point, this is an important deal for Trump to get done. | ||
| He sees himself as a deal maker, and so a lot is riding on this mineral rights deal, and I think we will expect to hear from the president on that point. | ||
| We mentioned it's not officially a State of the Union address, but all that pageantry will be there. | ||
| Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States and the guests, we're expecting President Trump to have guests, and members of Congress always have their own guests to try to make their points. | ||
| What do you know about any of those things that the guests in the audience who might be referenced or guests that members of Congress are bringing? | ||
| Well, we do know that Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, sent out to his rank-and-file Democrats to say, look, invite guests who can demonstrate being impacted by some of President Trump's policies, who have been hurt by some of President Trump's policies. | ||
| People like VA workers who are supporting veterans and veterans with disabilities, USDA workers, NOAA workers, federal government workers who sort of do the work of the country that is oftentimes unseen, | ||
| as well as people who are impacted by potential Medicaid cuts that we have heard so much about from Democrats as the Republicans try to advance their agenda, including tax cuts, and also figuring out how to pay for that agenda. | ||
| What Democrats say will come out of the pockets of people who are recipients of Medicaid. | ||
| That obviously has been disputed by Republicans. | ||
| We'll see when the rubber hits the road what actually happens on that front. | ||
| And the other thing I would also mention, John, is that we're going to see a lot of the cabinet members, very likely key members of Trump's cabinet, who just had very bruising confirmation hearings before the United States Senate. | ||
| So you'll see some of the senators sitting there with some of the cabinet members who have recently had rough goings. | ||
| But so far, everyone has made it through and gotten through and been confirmed to the President Trump's cabinet. | ||
| And so that'll be an interesting dynamic as well. | ||
| 9 p.m. Eastern is when this all gets underway. | ||
| Of course, that pageantry starts in the half hour or so beforehand. | ||
| Members start arriving hours beforehand to get those prime seats on the aisle. | ||
| One thing afterwards, of course, is always the response to the president's speech this year. | ||
| It's Senator Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan, the Democrat, to deliver the response to the joint address. | ||
| What do viewers need to know about her and how important this is for her? | ||
| She has served in the House of Representatives for several years. | ||
| She is now a freshman Democratic senator from Michigan. | ||
| What's important to know about Slotkin is that she outperformed Trump in the 2024 election in the state of Michigan. | ||
| Trump won Michigan. | ||
| She, as the Democrat, won the Senate race in that state and outperformed by quite a bit. | ||
| Meaning many people who marked Donald Trump for president had to also mark her for senator. | ||
| So she has some cross-party appeal. | ||
| Also, she has a national security background. | ||
| She is a former CIA analyst. | ||
| And she was instrumental. | ||
| Interestingly, she has a history with Trump. | ||
| She was instrumental. | ||
| She was one of the handful of National Security Democrats in the House who had been resistant to pursuing impeachment. | ||
| We're talking about the first Trump impeachment back in 2019, early 2020. | ||
| But at one point, they all came together and wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post. | ||
| These are the National Security Democrats. | ||
| Alyssa Slotkin was one of them, said that we now believe it's in the national interest to pursue impeachment against Donald Trump. | ||
| Remember, this was the issue pertaining to Ukraine and Russia. | ||
| This was the famous phone call between President Trump and Zelensky where there are allegations that President Trump was withholding Ukraine funding. | ||
| It's kind of a full circle moment now that we're once again dealing with Zelensky and Ukraine. | ||
| But that's sort of Alyssa Slotkin's background. | ||
| She's an interesting choice, and I think people should tune in. | ||
| What makes for a good response? | ||
| How high or low is the bar here? | ||
| Well, that's a funny question because there's an ongoing joke on Capitol Hill that delivering the response to the State of the Union is oftentimes the worst possible job because there's so much potential to flub it. | ||
| You know, people often remember the times when people have whiffed at those responses. | ||
| Marco Rubio's infamous grabbing the glass of water off camera and then coming back on camera is one of the more memorable ones. | ||
| Of course, things turn out okay for Marco Rubio. | ||
| He's now Secretary of State. | ||
| But oftentimes these are not very memorable speeches unless you have a major flub like the Marco Rubio incident. | ||
| The week ahead in Congress is our topic. | ||
| And again, that joint address, a major component of the week ahead here on Capitol Hill, all eyes on Washington on Tuesday night. | ||
| Scott Wong with us for this conversation this morning. | ||
| Phone numbers for you to join the conversation. | ||
| 202748-8000 for Democrats, Republicans, 202748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202748-8002. | ||
| As folks are calling in, give us an update on where we are on funding the government past March 14th. | ||
| We saw Speaker of the House Mike Johnson appear on our network, Meet the Press at NBC over the weekend. | ||
| He said that Republicans want to push forward on a full-year CR that would carry the government, fund the government through at current funding levels through the fiscal year, which would bring us to September 30th. | ||
| The deadline is less than two weeks away, March 14th. | ||
| And so government funding will run out. | ||
| We are at a risk of a shutdown. | ||
| The two sides, Democrats and Republicans, are still far apart on any sort of top-line numbers. | ||
| Democrats' line in the last many days has been, well, Republicans, you control the entirety of the federal government. | ||
| You guys should figure out how to fund the government. | ||
| Obviously, given what we know about the breakdown of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson can only afford one, maybe two defections at most on any vote. | ||
| We know that there are at least two Republicans who oppose any sort of short-term stopgap funding that we call a CR. | ||
| And so the math becomes very difficult. | ||
| Mike Johnson will almost certainly need Democrats to come to the table and help him pass any sort of funding bill to avert a shutdown on March 14th. | ||
| And so we're in this very tricky, precarious situation. | ||
| Once again, staring down a potential shutdown in just a couple weeks. | ||
| Should the idea of a full year resolution really be that hard? | ||
| I mean, we're only talking about seven months. | ||
| We're five months into the fiscal year now. | ||
| So when we say full year, we're only talking about a seven months. | ||
| No, it's not a full year. | ||
| You know, Congress is notorious for kicking the can down the road with the short-term funding resolutions that we call CRs. | ||
| And this case is no different. | ||
| And so what Johnson has said over the weekend is that, look, we will, this is what he said last year as well. | ||
| We're not going to do any more CRs. | ||
| You know, CRs are horrible for the country. | ||
| It doesn't allow the country to plan ahead. | ||
| And yet we're in this exact same situation, more CRs. | ||
| And then explain what Democrats will be looking for here in the next couple weeks as we come up to this government funding deadline. | ||
| And so what leverage do they have for what they're looking for? | ||
| How can they get something out of this? | ||
| What some of them want is a promise written into this resolution saying that the money that Congress appropriates, remember Congress has the power of the purse, will be spent by the executive branch, by the Trump administration. | ||
| Normally, that's not a big issue. | ||
| Normally, that's the way it does work. | ||
| But in this case, Congress appropriated money, and Trump has said that, you know, we're trying to scale back the size of government. | ||
| I've created this Doge department with Elon Musk at its head. | ||
| And we are cutting spending even though Congress has appropriated this money. | ||
| This is where you're seeing a clash of separation of powers, except for the fact that Republicans control the United States Congress, the legislative branch, and the Congress, the GOP-controlled Congress, so far has said we're okay with what we've seen the Trump administration do and the Doge department do. | ||
| I want to get to this week in Doge, but let me give you some callers first. | ||
| There's several waiting. | ||
| Brad, Fayetteville, Arkansas, Independent. | ||
| Good morning to you, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| It's funny how Trump has fired hundreds of thousands of government employees who are just trying to put food on the table and feed their panels and pay the bills. | ||
| Meanwhile, the CIA, the DEA, and the DOD have no cuts whatsoever. | ||
| This is nothing but protection for the oligarchs and the plutocrats and the billionaires. | ||
| Trump should be ashamed of himself, and the Republican Party should be ashamed of themselves. | ||
| This is nothing but a class war of the wealthy against average Americans trying to make it to another day. | ||
| That's Brad in Arkansas. | ||
| On some of the cuts that he's talking about, DOD in particular, he mentioned, has Doge reached the DOD or will they? | ||
| They definitely will. | ||
| I don't know the specifics of, in large part, because Doge is largely has operated in secret. | ||
| It has not, it is a strange, it's not even technically a department, even though they've called it a department. | ||
| It was not created by Congress. | ||
| It was created by President Trump. | ||
| And Elon Musk is not an elected official. | ||
| He was appointed by Trump. | ||
| And it's been interesting to watch how this so-called department has operated largely in secret behind the scenes with not many of its members known to the public, although people are slowly figuring out who these individuals are. | ||
| The caller is exactly right that DOD represents the largest portion of federal funding. | ||
| And Elon Musk has said that he will, if he hasn't already, that he will be targeting every federal agency, really, including the Department of Defense. | ||
| And those DOD workers have also been subject to that email saying, justify what you did last week. | ||
| Tell me five things that you did last week. | ||
| A story from Fox that just came out earlier this morning, might have been last night. | ||
| Pete Hegset directing the Department of Defense civilian workers to comply with Elon Musk's Doge productivity email. | ||
| So the DOD being impacted there, we'll see what happens this week. | ||
| This is Douglas in Colorado. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Just want to say one thing. | ||
| With this budget that supposedly is coming out with big cuts to billionaires, and also it includes the corporate tax reduction from 34 to 21 percent. | ||
| Instead of cutting, why don't we increase the taxes on these people so the balance the budget is balanced? | ||
| Balanced budgets. | ||
| I'm not sure I have any comment on that one. | ||
| I will just say that you're going to hear a lot about this fight over Medicaid in the coming months. | ||
| And so what has happened in this reconciliation process and what we mean by reconciliation, just to revisit, I'm sure your callers and viewers have heard a lot about this term. | ||
| Always helpful to remind us. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And, you know, as I think about it, I always think, okay, how can I explain this process to my 12-year-old daughter who's in middle school and learning about government? | ||
| And so what has happened is the Senate has passed their budget framework. | ||
| The House just last week passed their budget framework. | ||
| We thought it could fail, but it passed by just one vote to spare. | ||
| And basically, this is an outline. | ||
| It doesn't provide many details. | ||
| It provides some details, but not many. | ||
| And it directs the committees to then sort of fill out the details. | ||
| But we're not even at that step. | ||
| Mike Johnson, the speaker, has referred to this as the opening kick or the kickoff of a football game as he loves his football analogies. | ||
| And so what's happened now is that you have these two competing budget resolutions that have passed. | ||
| Trump has sided with the House one. | ||
| The House has quite a bit more in it. | ||
| It includes a debt ceiling increase as well as the extension of his 2017 Trump tax cuts, which is critically important for the President and his administration and Republicans. | ||
| They don't want to see taxes go up at the end of this year. | ||
| And so the two chambers now have to reconcile these competing frameworks. | ||
| And that will take place in the coming weeks. | ||
| At that point, once they figure out, okay, maybe the Senate makes some tweaks to the House one and they're both able to pass the same budget resolution, they have to pass the same one. | ||
| It has to look like, they have to be basically mirror images. | ||
| Then the committees will go ahead and start filling out the details of that framework. | ||
| And that's sort of where the rubber hits the road that we were talking about earlier. | ||
| You know, that's where we're going to start to see some major internal fights happening within the Republican Party over things like cuts to Medicaid, potentially other entitlements. | ||
| How long does that process take? | ||
| I mean, are we going to be watching this play out all spring, summer, fall? | ||
| The answer is likely yes, at least all spring and potentially into the summer. | ||
| These things do take quite a while. | ||
| The challenge, of course, for the president and for Republicans who control Congress is the later that this seeps into the year, the harder it becomes, in part because you start thinking about reelection. | ||
| 2026 is around the corner. | ||
| People that are in tough elections start to get a little skeptical, a little worried about their seat. | ||
| We're seeing these town halls. | ||
| Now, these are town halls in sort of ruby red, deep red areas. | ||
| And you're seeing resistance to what's played out with these Doge cuts and also concerns about cuts to things like Medicaid and Medicare. | ||
| And so as that pressure intensifies on Republicans, you potentially could see Republicans start to get a little wary and not want to vote for this reconciliation package because they think it could cost them their reelection in 2026. | ||
| Lorette is waiting in Spring Hill, Florida. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're on with Scott Wong. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm just wondering why the American people should let our government do the tax cuts of 2017 that Trump put in the first time again. | ||
| Why on each side of the side of every party? | ||
| Independents, Republicans, Democrats, why is that acceptable to give the ultra-rich more tax breaks? | ||
| People need to stand up. | ||
| Tax cuts in Congress. | ||
| Trump and congressional leaders and the Republican Party would argue that they campaigned on renewing these tax cuts. | ||
| And this is a central message that you've heard every time there has been pushback to a Trump policy. | ||
| You have heard Republicans and the White House say, Well, we campaigned on this. | ||
| We were very transparent with the American public. | ||
| We let them know what we were running on and what we would do if you put us into power in Washington. | ||
| And so they would argue that this was a central tenet of their political campaign in 2024, renewing these 2017 tax cuts. | ||
| If nothing is done, if this reconciliation package fails, taxes will go up for Americans, including for the wealthiest Americans. | ||
| And so Republicans who are anti-tax don't want to see that happen. | ||
| They feel like they have a mandate to get this done because they ran on this very issue. | ||
| The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in 2017. | ||
| Why are they up in 2025? | ||
| Well, they were only guaranteed for a certain number of years. | ||
| And so that very likely, if my memory serves correct, I mean, we should step back and go back to 2017 because this is the last time that we were in this exact situation. | ||
| President Trump had been elected in 2016. | ||
| Republicans had won the House and the Senate. | ||
| They owned the trifecta. | ||
| We're in a similar situation here in 2025 where Republicans control the entire government. | ||
| They're in a situation now where they can push through on a partisan basis their agenda through this reconciliation process that happened in early 2017 when they tried to repeal Obamacare. | ||
| You'll remember, John, because you were around, that that failed and by one vote, essentially it passed the House. | ||
| John McCain killed it with his thumbs down. | ||
| Later that year, they made another run through reconciliation and were successful in passing the Trump tax cuts. | ||
| They only went for a certain number of years. | ||
| That's why they are going to expire at the end of this year. | ||
| And so Republicans are once again dealing with this tax issue in reconciliation. | ||
| If we're walking down memory lane here, then remind viewers what happened in the 2018 election. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, there was backlash to efforts to repeal Obamacare. | ||
| There were town hall protests. | ||
| There was backlash to the Trump tax cuts. | ||
| Democrats position this as a tax cut for the wealthy. | ||
| They're doing the same thing here with the renewal of these tax cuts saying that Republicans are only looking out for the special interests of the wealthiest Americans in our country and therefore want to raise, you know, cut taxes on the backs of working class Americans. | ||
| The Republicans' challenge here is that they will have to figure out how to pay for this massive tax cut. | ||
| Basically, the reconciliation budget that the House has passed states that they need to find cuts worth $1.5 trillion, John. | ||
| And the biggest portion of those cuts will have to come from the Energy and Commerce Committee. | ||
| What's interesting about Energy and Commerce is that Energy and Commerce oversees Medicaid and Medicare. | ||
| And so to have this number, $880 billion, that the budget lays out and says ENC has to find cuts from, the House has to find cuts from the ENC committee, that is why you're seeing Democrats say, okay, if you're going to cut that much out of ENC, where is that going to come from? | ||
| It very likely will come from Medicaid, potentially Medicare. | ||
| President Trump and the Republicans have said, no, we're not touching your benefits at all. | ||
| What we're going to target is waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| And so, what does waste, fraud, and abuse mean? | ||
| That's really sort of this gray area of what does waste, fraud, and abuse mean? | ||
| Where will those cuts come from? | ||
| Who will be impacted by those cuts? | ||
| And I was just going back to the numbers in the House in the 2018 House Democrats gained 40 seats in the 2018 election and took control of the House of Representatives. | ||
| Just a walk back to not too long ago. | ||
| This is Sydney in Washington State Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm calling about the meeting with Ukraine and Trump in the Oval Office. | ||
| And, you know, Zelensky and Trump had an agreement, and Zelensky flew here to sign the agreement. | ||
| Zelensky met with Senator Chris Murphy just prior to the meeting with Trump. | ||
| He sabotaged the signing of that agreement, then set out to say Trump and JD ambushed Zelensky. | ||
| Zelensky and Murphy ambushed Trump. | ||
| Scott Wong. | ||
| Thoughts? | ||
| Well, I think that that meeting is in the eye of the beholder. | ||
| If you are a fervent supporter of President Trump, you find blame with Zelensky, that he blew up the deal. | ||
| Clearly, Zelensky had intentions of making a deal, flying all the way from Kyiv to Washington to meet with the President of the United States and the Vice President, as well as a number of senators in the run-up to that Oval Office meeting. | ||
| And so Democrats and critics of President Trump would say that President Trump and JD attacked Zelensky in the middle of that meeting and in front of all of those television cameras. | ||
| I think most members of Congress were either home or on their way home on Friday when that all went down in the Oval Office. | ||
| So you're going to get senators back today at 3 p.m. | ||
| The House is back at noon. | ||
| You're up there talking to these members all the time. | ||
| Who are you most interested in going up and asking a question about what happened on Friday to what member of Congress? | ||
| I think certainly the Republicans who have in the past been supportive of Zelensky and Ukraine in this war against Russia. | ||
| You know, I think the loyal Republican supporters of President Trump, we sort of know what they're going to say. | ||
| Certainly there are Democrats up there who have taken a real interest in this Ukraine-Russian war. | ||
| And I do want to hear from them. | ||
| People like Mark Kelly of Arizona, who said over the weekend that he was actually in one of those meetings with Zelensky just hours before the now infamous Oval Office meeting. | ||
| What Mark Kelly said over the weekend was that this was America at its lowest point, that it showed that America is, it showed American weakness, that it really undermined America's standing in the world. | ||
| And he called it, quote, a dumpster fire of diplomacy. | ||
| And so that's sort of the thinking from the Democrats. | ||
| But I want to know from some of the more, you know, anti-Russia, anti-Russia Republicans on Capitol Hill how they view how they view this meeting. | ||
| Mark, the last caller here from Silver Spring, Maryland. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Democrat, good morning. | |
| Excuse me. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Elon Musk is known as an AI guru. | ||
| So what I decided to do is go online, access ChatGPT, and ask it to balance the budget or reduce the deficit. | ||
| In this case, what I asked was, how do you decrease the deficit by $2 trillion over 10 years while minimizing disruptions, including minimize federal job losses, maximize maintenance of services, and audit those avoiding taxes? | ||
| Anybody can do this. | ||
| Senators, congressmen, unions, you can do this. | ||
| And the answer was eye-opening. | ||
| The answer was, for one, voluntary retirement incentives. | ||
| Don't use massive layoffs. | ||
| Use voluntary retirement packages. | ||
| Secondly, what else can you do? | ||
| Expand IRS audits for high-income earners, which includes targeting high-income individuals, corporate tax avoidance, invest in technology, use federal services, charge them for fees for the services. | ||
| And you could streamline the government, for example, by merging similar functions, let's say, in labor and in education that deal with job training. | ||
| There is so much you can get done at zero cost, everybody. | ||
| Mark, you're going to access chat GPT. | ||
| You're behind the CHAT GPT plan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it minimizes all this angst that we're seeing. | |
| It's awful. | ||
| Mark, thanks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It minimizes massive hurt and suffering and deaths in Africa by the millions. | |
| Mark, thanks for the call from Silver Spring. | ||
| Scott Wong. | ||
| Well, that's an interesting exercise to use ChatBT to find savings, and maybe I'll try that later today. | ||
| You know, the interesting argument from Democrats about some of these Republican plans is that they actually will increase the deficit. | ||
| If you look at the reconciliation plan, it is not fully paid for. | ||
| It actually will increase the deficit. | ||
| There are efforts underway by Republicans to try to fudge some of the numbers to change the way that that package is scored. | ||
| We'll see if they are successful in trying to do that. | ||
| To the caller's point about the IRS, what's interesting is that Democrats have argued that cuts to the IRS by Doge and Trump's efforts to target the IRS and target those IRS workers and really reduce that workforce actually could increase the deficit as well because you would have less IRS enforcement, | ||
| less people, IRS workers going after people that are cheating on their taxes or trying to get around the tax rules somehow. | ||
| And so while Republicans really are hammering home this idea of we need to cut government spending, we need to get our debts and deficits under control, Democrats would argue that a lot of these policies that Republicans are pursuing actually will hike the deficit. | ||
| As usual, we've gone over time with you. | ||
| But what didn't we get to? | ||
| What else are you watching for this week? | ||
| Or is this enough for a congressional reporter? | ||
| This is quite a bit. | ||
| The Senate later today will hold a procedural vote on what they call the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. | ||
| This is a legislation. | ||
| This is legislation by Tommy Tubberville of Alabama. | ||
| This would ban transgender women in sports. | ||
| Clearly, Republicans think this is a winning issue for them, but it has to pass a 60-vote threshold, which means they need a number of Democrats on board to advance that. | ||
| It's likely going to be blocked and filibustered by Democrats in the Senate. | ||
| It did pass the House, but it looks like Democrats will hold firm and block that legislation in the Senate. | ||
| Scott Wong has long been a force in congressional reporting. | ||
| I highly recommend you follow him on X, check out his reporting at NBC News, and we always appreciate your time and especially starting your week with us. | ||
| Thank you, John. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Coming up in about 40 minutes this morning, it's a conversation with Gene Dodaro of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. | ||
| We're going to talk about the high-risk list programs at risk for waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| But until then, it's our open forum. | ||
| Time for you to lead the discussion. | ||
| Any public policy issue that you want to talk about, the numbers are on the screen. | ||
| Go ahead and start calling in, and we will get to your calls right after the break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Discover the heartbeat of democracy with C-SPAN's Voices. | |
| As we hear from you ahead of President Trump's address to Congress, we're asking what you'd like to hear from the president during his speech. | ||
| I'm Clay. | ||
| I'm from Silver Spring, Maryland, and I hope President Trump talks about two things. | ||
| The first and biggest one, in my opinion, is our relationship with Russia. | ||
| I hope that he takes a stronger stance against Russia, especially given the recent meeting with Zelensky that turned into more of a shouting match. | ||
| And then I'd also like him to address the concerns of the American people who have been laid off recently, seemingly by an unelected person who they claim isn't running the Department of Government Efficiency, but very clearly is. | ||
| My name is Arnett McClure from Abilene, Texas. | ||
| I'd like to hear the president talk about what he's going to do to attack the deficit. | ||
| Hi, my name is Peyton, and I'm from Fulsa, Oklahoma. | ||
| And I would like the president to address what's going on with the Ukraine-Russia war and how it's going and when it will be resolved. | ||
| My name is Marcel Bowden, and I would love to hear the president talk about finances, business, the economy. | ||
| I would like to talk about the economy, the state that our nation's ends at this moment, the border, his future, objections that he has as far as the war in Ukraine. | ||
| I think he's got a deal he's cut with them, where he sees the next six or eight months as far as the economy, where it's going, the tariff address, just things that he has and the plans he has in motion. | ||
| I know he says he has a lot of things going on and he's cutting deals. | ||
| Just tell us what deals he's got cutting and where he sees the future, or at least the next six or eight months, as far as the United States and the direction he has going. | ||
| C-SPAN's Voices. | ||
| Delivering democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Be part of the conversation. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| It's just after 8:30 on the East Coast. | ||
| Here's where we are today on Capitol Hill. | ||
| At noon, the House returns for legislative business at 3 p.m. | ||
| The Senate returns today, and there's also plenty going on around Washington today at 9 a.m. in about 25 minutes this morning. | ||
| It's a discussion on local and state matters. | ||
| It's the National Association of Counties Legislative Conference, federal and state and local leaders meeting to discuss taxes, budget issues, disaster prep, and the impact of Trump administration policies at the local level. | ||
| If that's your thing, you can go over and watch that on C-SPAN 2 again in about 20 minutes, also on c-span.org and the free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| And then, of course, this week it is the joint address to Congress, President Trump, his first big prime time address since his inaugural address. | ||
| Our coverage beginning at 8 p.m. tomorrow night here on C-SPAN, the address itself expected to start at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| Busy week here in Washington. | ||
| We'll let you kick it off with our open forum. | ||
| Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, now is your time to call in and lead this program. | ||
| This is Jeff in Royal Oak, Michigan, Republican. | ||
| Jeff, what's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was just watching your guest, Scott Wong. | |
| And first of all, thank you for having me on. | ||
| His Democratic senior congressional reporting is absurd, and some of the comments that he made were absurd. | ||
| He was all over the place talking about how transgender cuts, et cetera, et cetera, are not going to make it through the Democratic Party. | ||
| And it just, it was so one-sided that I really can't believe that you let him get away with not hitting them a little harder with some tougher questions. | ||
| Jeff, did you try to call in last segment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just called in just now. | |
| The great thing about this program is: if there's, whether it's a reporter or a member of Congress or any guests that we have, when we have open, when we have phone calls during segments, you can call in and ask them their questions about their reporting. | ||
| And I've known Scott Wong for a long time. | ||
| He's very open in explaining why he believes what he believes in his reporting, who he's talked to about. | ||
| He's very open with his work, as it were, to explain the conclusions that he's come to. | ||
| So if you feel that way about him or anybody else, call in and talk to him yourself. | ||
| Does that work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It works for me. | |
| I didn't realize I could call him while he was talking. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was listening to his comments and making a few notes and just think that at the point where he started getting off track about the budget plan, et cetera, and it won't get through the Democratic House. | |
| I just thought it was a little bit off. | ||
| Well, Jeff, call in next time. | ||
| Appreciate the call from Michigan this morning. | ||
| This is Brenda in Gwyn Oak, Maryland, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mine is easy. | |
| We keep saying we want to cut the budget. | ||
| We're looking at people because I live around the corner from Social Security. | ||
| But what about the defense spending, Elon Musk contracts with the American government? | ||
| And he's running this, but he's not talking about cutting anything that he's involved in. | ||
| I got this is a conflict of interest for me. | ||
| And anybody else that believes in America, because we want them to cut, but we want them to cut on the right way. | ||
| Go after the bigger contracts we own. | ||
| Make some real decisions. | ||
| You're taking people's jobs away and saying that they're not doing their job in five bullet points. | ||
| There is no way five bullet points on any given day is the same. | ||
| Not in the government. | ||
| And cut some of the senators and our Congress, their paychecks. | ||
| Let's do that. | ||
| Let's start at the top and work our way to the bottom. | ||
| Not start at the bottom and work your way up while they're still making money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's just that simple. | |
| All this other stuff is outrageous. | ||
| And Friday was a disgrace to America. | ||
| That's Brenda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was a disgrace. | |
| That's Brenda in Maryland. | ||
| According to U.S. debt clock, the total amount of money being spent this year on defense is about $884 billion. | ||
| With Social Security, it's $1.5 trillion. | ||
| By the way, Medicare and Medicaid is about $1.7 trillion in current spending for total spent on member of Congress salaries. | ||
| I don't have that number off the top of my head, but they make about $172,000 a year, and there's 535 members of Congress. | ||
| So you can do the math there if you want to know what that comes out to. | ||
| U.S. national debt right now, $36.5 trillion and counting. | ||
| This is John in Illinois, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thanks for taking my call. | |
| Thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| What a great show. | ||
| You know, one of the most incredible things that's happened in the last couple of years is, like him or not, when Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X and free speech actually indicated that a lot of people that thought conspiracy theories were actually real. | ||
| And there are so many people that call into this show. | ||
| Do you have any understanding of how serious it is that the government was conspiring with big tech to shut down the free discussion of anything from COVID to Ukraine to anything else? | ||
| I tried to get in yesterday when you had Alexander Zinman on your show. | ||
| Of course, I couldn't get in. | ||
| I just want to talk about Ukraine for one minute. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| When has our government ever told us the truth about any war since World War II? | ||
| They lied to us about Vietnam. | ||
| They lied to us about Iraq. | ||
| They lied to us about Afghanistan. | ||
| A government that's going to lie to you about war, where you might lose your children, is going to lie to you about anything else because there's nothing more serious. | ||
| C-SPAN has really failed in one way, and I love your channel, and all you guys are great. | ||
| You have failed to bring on the opposing side that actually could tell you a lot of facts. | ||
| You know, Victoria Newland and our government, including the CIA, pushed Ukraine. | ||
| They got rid of an elected leader in Ukraine in 2014 to force us and NATO encroaching more into towards Russia, which has been a red line for Russia for decades. | ||
| You can Google this stuff. | ||
| You don't need to believe me. | ||
| There's UN speeches that were given where Russia said, please stop these people. | ||
| University speeches. | ||
| How about John Mearsheimer? | ||
| Why don't you get Professor John Mearsheimer on your show? | ||
| We instigated this because our military, industrial, and corporations want to steal Russia's natural resources. | ||
| And I'm sorry. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| On the free speech issue that you talk about, have you read Jonathan Turley's book, The Indispensable Right, Free Speech in the Age of Rage? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've read some of it. | |
| I do not have the book, but I've read some excerpts. | ||
| I really like Turley. | ||
| He has a good take on things. | ||
| Why do you ask? | ||
| I tell you what. | ||
| So he's going to be at the Tucson Festival of Books on March 15th. | ||
| We're going to be live. | ||
| Book TV on C-SPAN 2 is going to be live out there. | ||
| We're covering a panel that he's on, and he's also going to come and take calls from book TV viewers. | ||
| So if you haven't made it through that book, maybe listen into that. | ||
| And you could even call in when he's on the program and talk to him about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| You guys are all great. | ||
| Please, Americans, do some research and don't believe on the mainstream media. | ||
| They're not, I'm glad trust in the mainstream media is reduced. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's John in Illinois. | ||
| This is Billy in the Lone Star State. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| The only thing I had to say was we need to kind of take a step back. | ||
| We've only had here a little over a month. | ||
| Let's get to 100 days and then start talking about things that, you know, why isn't this getting done? | ||
| Why isn't that getting done? | ||
| And as far as, you know, five bullet points, I could have done that when I was in the Marine Corps. | ||
| You know, I mean, what did you do yesterday? | ||
| More than five, I guarantee you. | ||
| But I'd just like everybody just kind of step back and, you know, give them the first hundred days and then the year. | ||
| And we'll be in a lot better shape. | ||
| And, you know, that's about all I got to say, except simplify. | ||
| Billy, if you're interested in First Hundred Days, there's an ongoing series right now on C-SPAN's American History TV called Historic First Hundred Days, where we're looking at the first 100 days of presidents throughout the years from George Washington to Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, Franklin Roosevelt. | ||
| It is on C-SPAN too on American History TV if you want some of that historical perspective. | ||
| This is Jackie on our line for Democrats, New Jersey. | ||
| It's Point Pleasant Beach. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I wanted to express concern about how the administration is not coupling anything with respect to democratic institutions, territorial sovereignty, human rights, in terms of its efforts in securing a peace deal. | ||
| I feel that the administration is making a lot of the public uncomfortable by merely talking about the economic prosperity that could result from it. | ||
| And I think that is really bifurcating how people feel about, you know, who's to blame here. | ||
| Is it that this was provoked by NATO, this war, or is it that it was, you know, a fight for democracy? | ||
| And I think that that is something that's necessary to make people comfortable regarding this, you know, peace deal that's going to be signed. | ||
| I also think that people have to understand the past of the president in terms of business, in terms of who has financed many of his development projects, who came to his rescue when his businesses were failing. | ||
| All of this is relative in terms of what's being touted to the public by the administration. | ||
| That's Jackie, New Jersey. | ||
| Robert is in Naples, Florida, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| I'm trying to figure out how Musk and President Trump are getting around the 1974 Impondment Act because it specifically states, you know, the business of the House of Representatives and Congress is to make the budget and to authorize payments to stuff. | ||
| How are these guys going around that and not adhering to the 1974 Impondment Act? | ||
| And Robert, a lot of Democrats bringing up that issue on Capitol Hill and wondering if it's the courts that will be having the final word on this. | ||
| Certainly something that if you watch C-SPAN, you start to hear about the Impoundment Act more and more these days. | ||
| This is Margaret in Dayton, Nevada. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for having me on. | ||
| I would just like to say I'd like to see President Trump focus more on healing our nation, the risk in our nation, instead of the risk between Ukraine and Russia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have a big problem with everybody complaining about everybody else and the Democrats and the Republicans. | |
| We are all United States citizens, and our country is suffering. | ||
| I'd also like to see him address what's going to be happening to all the people that they have laid off or let go, how he expects them to survive. | ||
| I'm a Republican. | ||
| I'm not really happy with how things have been going. | ||
| I do believe there should be checks and balances for everything. | ||
| There should always be a balanced government in the United States of America. | ||
| And another point, America includes Canada and Mexico and South America. | ||
| It's a continent. | ||
| The United States is a nation. | ||
| I'd like Dr. Ferry. | ||
| Margaret, what's one thing that the president could do to do what you want him to do, heal the divide, as you say, in America? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, he's the one who says he makes great deals. | |
| He's a deal maker and a great negotiator. | ||
| He should be able to figure that out with all of his cabinet members and all the expertise that he has at his event. | ||
| You know, he's able to get behind him. | ||
| That's Margaret in Nevada. | ||
| This is Alan in the natural state in our independent line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, John. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Well, I'm sure you recognize my voice. | ||
| I tell you, I'm not sure why I do this. | ||
| My heart rate goes up to probably 200. | ||
| I can feel it going up as I'm waiting. | ||
| And it takes me about 10 minutes after the call to get a pulse down to normal. | ||
| But good morning again. | ||
| And of course, guess what? | ||
| Guess why I'm calling? | ||
| Forgive me for bringing this up again, but I am bringing it up again because C-SPAN has helped this in Ukraine for the listeners, the viewers have helped, I think. | ||
| And I wanted to say how this has happened. | ||
| You know, for six months in a row last year, I would call while you were on mostly talking about Ana from Ukraine. | ||
| And finally, you kind of got a little exasperated with me about saying, you know, Alan, how about talking about something else? | ||
| I know you've called so many times. | ||
| And Alan, explain who that is for viewers who may not have heard your calls before. | ||
| This is a podcaster. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, yes. | |
| A YouTuber, podcaster. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, her name is actually Anna Danielchek. | |
| And she caught my attention two years ago because I was searching for some voice in Ukraine that was explaining what was going on. | ||
| And I tell you now, when I first called mentioning this is how C-SPAN viewers have helped, I think. | ||
| We'll see after today. | ||
| You can prove it today, after today. | ||
| When I first started calling, she had about 80,000, 90,000 subscribers. | ||
| But over the last few months, as I've been calling and C-SPAN listeners have been going on, I think, and clicking followers, she's now over 300,000. | ||
| So I think C-SPAN viewers have done that. | ||
| But people that are listening could sure prove it over the next month by watching this. | ||
| And Alan, explain what is it about this podcast and her take on Ukraine that speaks to you so much that you've been doing this for months. | ||
| What does she talk about when you listen to it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you again. | |
| That shows what a great questioner and broadcaster you are, honestly. | ||
| And I tell you that, because 50 years ago, I was on the radio. | ||
| I had a talk show 50 years ago. | ||
| And actually, my claim to fame is I invited the political genius that got Mr. Clinton elected. | ||
| And he passed away waiting for his first interview after Bill Clinton was elected president, waiting at a TV station. | ||
| I was a student. | ||
| I was a student, a freshman year student, and happened to be starting in radio as a high school kid. | ||
| And he came and spent an hour-long interview on my radio show and liked me a little bit. | ||
| This was the only show he ever did. | ||
| Well, Alan, to the Alana from Ukraine show, just quickly, because I've got other folks waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She, and I say that to try to give some credibility here, she's the most brilliant interviewing intellect. | |
| I always have watched folks over the years, and she caught my attention because of her range of absolute brilliance. | ||
| And so I think she's going to be the next foreign minister for Ukraine and the future president of Ukraine. | ||
| And I just wish you would invite her on is the reason I've called these six months to please invite her on as a guest. | ||
| You will see. | ||
| And she is the spokesperson that really articulates the position in Ukraine. | ||
| Even though now I have supported everything in Ukraine, I think this ceasefire is the way to go. | ||
| If the United States will get in Ukraine on the ground, we will be there to protect Ukraine. | ||
| And I think this is going to be like Berlin, where we have to just be there for 20 years until this poop guy is gone. | ||
| So ceasefire now. | ||
| Let U.S. come in. | ||
| That's the brilliance of this plan. | ||
| So there you go. | ||
| We'll leave it there. | ||
| That's Alan in Arkansas. | ||
| This is Edward in Georgia, Stockbridge, Georgia. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hey, thanks, John. | |
| Thanks for having my call. | ||
| You know, I'm a retired public school teacher, and I've listened to the news and your broadcast daily. | ||
| I call all the time. | ||
| We've talked extensively. | ||
| People got to listen to what Trump is saying. | ||
| Just the other day, he said when he had his melted on on Friday that Zelensky really hates Putin. | ||
| How profound is that? | ||
| The guy's killing millions of his people. | ||
| He's got 20,000 children that he's held captive. | ||
| You know, he's joked about a third term. | ||
| He's not joking. | ||
| He wants to be king. | ||
| I think the best thing is for Europe and Great Britain, as you're going to do, they're going to take over the negotiations because Trump's not, if he really wanted a true ceasefire, he'd be talking extensively to Zelensky and not to Putin first, and not showing their cards. | ||
| I mean, I'm a gym teacher, and we don't have a leader. | ||
| All his cabinet members are loyalists. | ||
| And my best friend from college is we were both best men in each other's weddings. | ||
| He's a Republican and he hates Trump, and his son is a die-hard Trumper. | ||
| And I asked his son, have you ever seen Washington Journal? | ||
| Because he thinks he's so knowledgeable, he has never seen your show. | ||
| He's 35 years old with a family of three boys. | ||
| But we're in dire straits. | ||
| I'm really thinking civil war in the United States. | ||
| Something big is going to happen. | ||
| We don't have 100 days left to see what Trump's going to do. | ||
| We know what he's doing. | ||
| And here's my last thought, John. | ||
| Why would Trump do all these executive orders when he has the Congress, the Senate, and the executive office? | ||
| And I mean, he might as well lay off some of the congressmen and senators if they really want to save money because he's doing everything illegally, tying up our courts and just making a fiasco. | ||
| Biden took this whole term trying to gain respect again from our allies, which we need to prevent a World War III. | ||
| But hey, you keep up the good work, John. | ||
| We'll leave it there in Stockbridge, Georgia. | ||
| Go to Barbara in Alexandria, Virginia, Republican, just across the Potomac River. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I just wanted to comment on the disgusting situation that happened in the White House on Friday. | ||
| It's just obvious, so obvious. | ||
| Not only was Trump brutal, he was crude. | ||
| And Barbara, you say this as a Republican? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yes. | ||
| I've come from a long line of Republicans. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Did you vote for Donald Trump any of the three times? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No, I did not. | ||
| I could not. | ||
| What I wanted to say is obviously neither he nor Vance know anything about Russian history or the Soviet history in the last 100 years, nor have they any understanding of what being under the Soviet boot really meant. | ||
| And further, you know, I was a young bride in Germany in the 50s after World War II when we used to have these alerts that possibly the Soviets were going to cross the line. | ||
| Let me tell you, the fear level is like being in a burning house and you can't get out. | ||
| They have no idea. | ||
| The American people have no idea of what's going on. | ||
| And I feel so bad for the Ukrainians. | ||
| Biden was so slow to react. | ||
| I've never understood why they were not able to defend their airspace. | ||
| And I just want to add one thing. | ||
| Central European countries that have been under that Russian boot until the 1990s, they are deprived. | ||
| They have never recovered from the devastation of Soviet rules. | ||
| And now I just want to remind Americans that the Soviets are experts at subversion. | ||
| And look what's happening in Hungary now. | ||
| They already have BLO RUS. | ||
| Those Central European and Eastern European countries have not been able to rebuild their economies enough to withstand the onslaught of Russia. | ||
| And just to remind everybody. | ||
| Well, Barbara, we'll end it there. | ||
| It's just after 9 o'clock on the East Coast, and we are with you for another hour here on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Want you to keep calling in, and as you continue to call in, we are going to head up to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue to 1600. | ||
| We're joined there by Philip Wegman of Real Clear Politics. | ||
| And Mr. Wegman, I want you to start this morning with the latest from what you're hearing up there at the White House on President Trump's speech before the House and Senate tomorrow on the tone of that speech and the content of that speech. | ||
| Well, this morning, President Trump teased that he was going to be making big news in those remarks. | ||
| We don't know exactly what that news is going to be, perhaps an announcement on tariffs with regards to Canada and Mexico. | ||
| But I can tell you that one part of the speech that really does need a rewrite is the foreign policy section of that speech. | ||
| After what we saw go down in the Oval Office just last Friday, all of a sudden, the U.S. relationship with Ukraine is very much thrown into question. | ||
| And certainly the White House was expecting that in this joint address to Congress, the president could tout a minerals deal. | ||
| Of course, Ukrainian President Zelensky, he left the White House with a stone-faced delegation and without a minerals deal. | ||
| So now the question is, what kind of rewrite are the speechwriters going to be doing here in a short amount of time? | ||
| Because the speech is tomorrow. | ||
| I know that you profiled Vice President JD Vance recently. | ||
| What is your going back to that blow up in the Oval Office on Friday? | ||
| What's your take on his role and what happened there? | ||
| How do you read it from somebody who specifically looked at JD Vance and his political style? | ||
| The Vice President was very much sympatico with Trump in the Oval Office. | ||
| And I think that you raise an interesting question because previously we've seen other folks in the president's orbit, specifically during his first term, sort of avoid the spotlight, try not to get in his way. | ||
| But there seemed to be sort of a mind meld there because it was Vance who first responded to the question of Zelensky when he was questioning the efficacy of the diplomatic effort overall with the Russians. | ||
| Rather than shrinking, rather than getting out of the way of the president, Vance was ready to take a center stage. | ||
| He was ready to step forward. | ||
| And thus far, there doesn't seem to be any consequence. | ||
| I think that with Vance, Donald Trump has very much found his Hillbilly apprentice. | ||
| With Vance in attendance tomorrow night at that joint address, let me come back to that. | ||
| This is not exactly a state of the union, but it is in everything but name essentially. | ||
| What do you know about who President Trump is going to be bringing to this address, who he's going to be shouting out or pointing out in the audience this time around? | ||
| Well, all of us are going to be looking for Elon Musk, the leader of Doge. | ||
| And the reason we're going to be looking at him is because he's a manifestation of so much of what this administration has done during their first third of 100 days, right? | ||
| One of the things that is very apparent as Donald Trump goes to speak to lawmakers is that this is his show. | ||
| He's moving fast on his own with regards to executive action. | ||
| I mean, if you think about what he's done to remake the federal bureaucracy, some of these trade deals that he's tried to push through, his unilateral enforcement of immigration, this is not going to be a lame duck presidency. | ||
| He's not waiting around for Congress. | ||
| He's moving on his own. | ||
| Elon Musk is a good example of that. | ||
| Certainly, he's someone who has cut a lot of jobs, cut a lot of red tape. | ||
| And I think that he will likely be there in the balcony. | ||
| I'm not sure who the other guests will be beyond the First Lady and some others, but again, this is Donald Trump informing Congress what he has done on his own as they still get their ducks in a row for the legislative process for that tax bill. | ||
| What are you looking for in this week in Doge? | ||
| Speaking of Elon Musk. | ||
| With regards to Doge, this very much is as advertised. | ||
| Elon Musk is famous in his business empire for really cutting down to the bone, for trying to be hyper-efficient. | ||
| This is someone who has said that if you're not rolling back 10% of the cuts that you did initially, then you're not doing it correctly. | ||
| So I'm not certain where he'll be in the federal leviathan this week, but wherever that guy goes, along with his small army of programmers, he makes news and he changes things. | ||
| And then I guess finally, last week was a parade of international visitors at the White House. | ||
| What's on tap for this week? | ||
| Do we know if the president is going to be going anywhere after his address to Congress tomorrow night to sort of sell whatever it is he talks about tomorrow night? | ||
| Well, what we've seen is Ukrainian President Zelensky is very much continuing the tour in Europe as that continent asks themselves if they need to be more responsible for their own security because they're questioning whether the United States is a reliable partner. | ||
| I can tell you, this White House, they did not expect it to go down like this. | ||
| I had a number of sources reaching out saying that they didn't expect Zelensky to act that way in the Oval Office. | ||
| Certainly the Ukrainian president didn't expect Donald Trump or JD Vance to respond in that way. | ||
| But if you look at the parade of world leaders that were here just last week, whether it was French President Emmanuel Cron or British Prime Minister Starmer, they certainly thought that they were building momentum towards the foundation for a peace deal. | ||
| All of that is in flux right now. | ||
| And so the question for tomorrow's speech is, how will Donald Trump switch gears? | ||
| Remember, the last thing that he said as Zelensky left was that he was ready to invite him back, but only when Zelensky was willing to negotiate on Donald Trump's terms. | ||
| Philip Wegman and his colleagues at Real Clear Politics will be covering it all. | ||
| You can see their work, RealClearPolitics.com. | ||
| And you can follow Philip Wegman on X at Philip Wegman, Wegman with two N's. | ||
| Appreciate your time this morning. | ||
| Thanks for starting your week with us. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| About 10 minutes left here in our open forum, taking your phone calls, any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, now's your time to call in. | ||
| Noel's been waiting in Shaker Heights, Ohio. | ||
| Independent, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| Hey, I like to say I was on a carrier in the Mediterranean in the 80s, and Israel helped us in Lebanon. | ||
| It helped us in Assad was there today years ago, and the Russians had a warm water port there, so that was their interest. | ||
| Our interest was Israel. | ||
| The canals are there, the waterways are there. | ||
| And we support them financially and with our military. | ||
| So Ukraine is the same thing. | ||
| The waterway, the resources, we support them financially and with our military. | ||
| We would never ask Israel to get back the money that we supported them with because they're an ally and we should do the same for Ukraine. | ||
| Noel, what carrier were you on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Independence. | |
| There's a picture in today's Washington Times about the USS Carl Vinson is now in South Korea in Busan, South Korea, in response to recent moves by North Korea. | ||
| What does it mean when we send a U.S. carrier around the globe? | ||
| What does that symbolize in your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This symbolizes that we're keeping the seas safe for democratic trade and safety for our allies around the world. | |
| It's a power thing. | ||
| This is an empire. | ||
| And we have to keep the seas safe for all so business and transactions for everybody can take place in a democratic way. | ||
| What was your job on a carrier? | ||
| I don't want to get into that, but do you think Noel, these carriers are so expensive, these carrier groups? | ||
| I think we have about a dozen. | ||
| Do we need a dozen carriers for the United States? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the technology has changed, and so it may not be as effective as it once was. | |
| You might have to update your profile in the seas, but yeah, that's what I say. | ||
| You don't ask your allies to pay you financially when they're supporting you in other ways. | ||
| Noel, thanks for the call from Ohio. | ||
| This is Ingrid, Pensacola, Florida, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was watching the program Face the Nation yesterday with Congressman Mike Turner, the Republican. | ||
| And the host asked Mike Turner saying that a report had come out, had confirmed that the Defense Secretary Hagseth had ordered United States Cyber Command to temporarily halt cyber operations and planning against Russia. | ||
| And that's as long as the negotiations continue, there are no negotiations underway. | ||
| I'm 75 years old. | ||
| As long as I can remember in my years, Russia has been our enemy. | ||
| I don't understand, for the life of me, how a president could cozy up to this particular Russian president. | ||
| He must have something on Trump. | ||
| Why would Trump be so defensive of our enemy? | ||
| And as far as the cutting, I'm amazed, and it's very seldom said that these tax cuts that the Republicans want, $4.5 trillion tax cuts, are to be made permanent. | ||
| And on top of that, they want to add $4 trillion to the debt ceiling. | ||
| I just don't get it. | ||
| Maybe someone can explain it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It's Ingrid in Florida. | ||
| This is Donald in the Show Me State of Missouri, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| Thanks for getting in. | ||
| I'd like to explain to everyone that what's happening with Zelensky and President Trump, Ukraine and Russia. | ||
| So many people in America think that the United States has to have an enemy. | ||
| And they're stuck in the 1950s and 60s Cold War mentality. | ||
| There was something that was coined in 1962 called Mutual Assured Destruction. | ||
| And that means that Nuclear war is so bad that if it starts, then everyone is going to get hooked and the earth will get knocked around when there will be a nuclear war coming. | ||
| We're in the very last days before Christ comes back. | ||
| And President Trump just wants to try and make sure that we don't run right into this nuclear war without looking both ways before we cross that street. | ||
| And so what we need to do is try to negotiate with Russia on our nuclear arms so that we don't run into a situation where our arsenals automatically launch at the same time. | ||
| And like I said, the end of the world is coming and it will be very, very, very bad when the nuclear war does arrive. | ||
| And it's going to happen quicker than people think. | ||
| So let's just enjoy our green grass and the blue sky as long as possible. | ||
| Zelensky, when he was in the White House the other day, he did not want to accept a ceasefire with Russia because he's into revenge in his mindset against Russia. | ||
| It's Donald in Missouri, our last caller in this open forum. | ||
| About 45 minutes left this morning. | ||
| In that time, we'll be joined by Gene Dodaro of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. | ||
| We're going to be talking about the high-risk lists, programs most at risk of waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| Stick around for that conversation. | ||
| We will be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Tuesday night, watch C-SPAN's live coverage of President Trump's address to Congress, the first address of his second term, and less than two months since taking office. | |
| C-SPAN's live coverage begins at 8 p.m. Eastern with a preview of the evening from Capitol Hill, followed by the President's speech, which begins at 9 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| And then watch the Democratic response after the President's speech. | ||
| We'll also take your calls and get your reaction on social media. | ||
| Over on C-SPAN 2, you can also watch a simulcast of the evening's coverage, followed by reaction from lawmakers live from Capitol Hill. | ||
| Watch President Trump's address to Congress live Tuesday, beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, our simulcast live on C-SPAN 2 or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app. | ||
| Also online at C-SPAN.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, bringing you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Looking to contact your members of Congress? | ||
| Well, C-SPAN is making it easy for you with our 2025 Congressional Directory. | ||
| Get essential contact information for government officials all in one place. | ||
| This compact, spiral-bound guide contains bio and contact information for every House and Senate member of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Contact information on congressional committees, the President's Cabinet, federal agencies, and state governors. | ||
| The Congressional Directory costs $32.95 plus shipping and handling, and every purchase helps support C-SPAN's non-profit operations. | ||
| Scan the code on the right or go to c-spanshop.org to pre-order your copy today. | ||
| Nonfiction book lovers, C-SPAN has a number of podcasts for you. | ||
| Listen to best-selling nonfiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on QA. | ||
| Hear wide-ranging conversations with the non-fiction authors and others who are making things happen. | ||
| And BookNotes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of nonfiction books on a wide variety of topics. | ||
| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org slash podcasts. | ||
| There are many ways to listen to C-SPAN radio anytime, anywhere. | ||
| In the Washington, D.C. area, listen on 90.1 FM. | ||
| Use our free C-SPAN Now app or go online to c-SPAN.org slash radio on SiriusXM Radio on channel 455, the TuneIn app, and on your smart speaker by simply saying play C-SPAN Radio. | ||
| Hear our live call-in program, Washington Journal, daily at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Listen to House and Senate proceedings, committee hearings, news conferences, and other public affairs events live throughout the day. | ||
| And for the best way to hear what's happening in Washington with fast-paced reports, live interviews, and analysis of the day, catch Washington today, weekdays at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| Listen to C-SPAN programs on C-SPAN Radio anytime, anywhere. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| We're joined now at our desk by Gene Dodaro. | ||
| Since December 2010, he's served as the United States Comptroller General. | ||
| Mr. Dodaro, what does a Comptroller General do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my responsibilities are to lead the Government Accountability Office, which is an independent organization and a legislative branch of government. | |
| Our job is to support the Congress, help carrying out their constitutional responsibilities and help improve the performance and help ensure the accountability of government for the American people. | ||
| We're independent, nonpartisan, objective, professional organization, and our scope is the entire scope of the federal government's operations. | ||
| How do you carry out that mission? | ||
| How do you ensure accountability? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we do this through a series of audits. | |
| We'll do 500, 600 audits every year, everything from the development of weapons systems at defense to the provision of Medicare services across the full spectrum of the federal government's responsibilities. | ||
| We audit the financial statements of the federal government, and we do these performance audits are mostly what we do to see if programs are delivering on their expectations or they could be made more efficient and effective to provide better services to the American public. | ||
| So we try to make government more efficient and effective, but we also try to make sure that it's delivering on its public safety responsibilities, national security, homeland security, etc. | ||
| You use the term efficient, and these days people immediately think the Department of Government Efficiency Doge is GAO the Doge of the legislative branch. | ||
| Is that a fair description? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, when the Doge is in the executive branch and they could actually carry out activities and make decisions, you know, whereas in our job, our job is to advise the executive branch and to advise the Congress. | |
| And most of our recommendations are implemented by the executive branch voluntarily. | ||
| Over 75% of our recommendations are implemented every year. | ||
| We'll make about over 1,200 recommendations a year. | ||
| We save billions of dollars every year through the implementation of our recommendations by the executive branch and by the Congress. | ||
| What is the high-risk list? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The high-risk list is to try to focus the attention of the Congress on their oversight responsibilities, but it's also helpful for the administration, particularly a new administration coming in, that highlights what we think to be the greatest risk of fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in the government. | |
| And it also points for the last several decades to areas needing transformation. | ||
| In other words, they need to change their missions a bit. | ||
| They need to adapt to modern challenges for the 21st century. | ||
| And so it's a combination of both of those things that we help focus attention on. | ||
| There's 37 high-risk areas according to the high-risk list this year that was put out by the GAO. | ||
| And viewers can go to GAO's website and find this report themselves. | ||
| Here's some examples of what gets listed on this list. | ||
| DOD, Department of Defense weapons systems acquisitions, enforcement of tax law, ensuring the national cybersecurity, managing federal real property, national flood insurance program. | ||
| Start with the weapons systems acquisition, because that is an area for folks who have paid attention to the high-risk list over the years that has been on this list for decades. | ||
| And you're still saying to Congress, this is an area that's at high risk of waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And the main area here, it's one of the charter members when we started a list back in 1990. | ||
| Medicare was another one. | ||
| In this area, we've seen over time some progress, and we've reported progress, but still, the weapon systems still take on average, major systems, about 10 years to develop. | ||
| They're developed usually at costs much higher than they're originally estimated, and they tend to be delivered in scheduled delays later so the warfighters don't have them as soon as possible. | ||
| We've made a lot of recommendations to implement best practices in these areas. | ||
| We've seen some improvements, but now we're seeing continual problems in fielding this. | ||
| Now, this has gotten more sophisticated, obviously, over the years with more software-intensive weapon systems, more sophisticated weapon systems. | ||
| And so we've looked at how some of these things should be developed and should have best practices. | ||
| If we know what the problem is and you've offered ways to fix the problem, whose fault is it that this has been on the high risk list for 35 years? | ||
| Is it Congress not having the desire to fix this problem? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's primarily because the Department of Defense is not consistently implementing leading practices that we've suggested. | |
| They've adopted these changes in their policies and procedures. | ||
| We're encouraging them to do more. | ||
| We've updated the leading practices and we're encouraging them to do more. | ||
| But they can't seem to consistently apply these practices, one of which is to not put things into production before the design is complete and the maturity's tested. | ||
| Now they're under a lot of pressure to develop these systems because of near-peer competition from China and others. | ||
| And so I understand they're under pressure, but they need to be more deliberative about the practices and to make sure that they stay with things over time. | ||
| There's a lot of turnover there too in project manager. | ||
| What's the poster child for wasteful Defense Department system development? | ||
| We say systems. | ||
| What's an example? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a couple of Toro combat ship in the Navy. | |
| They've had problems with the frigates that they're developing right now. | ||
| So the Navy's had challenges. | ||
| You know, the F-35 program's the most expensive weapon systems in the history of our country. | ||
| And we find that despite all these years, it's costing more than what they expected. | ||
| It's not being able to be used as much as they'd like to have it used for those that are deployed already. | ||
| And there's spare part shortages. | ||
| And so those are among the ones that we've singled out over time. | ||
| We're going to go through more of these high-risk areas, the high-risk lists, as the GAO calls it. | ||
| It's available at GAO.gov. | ||
| And Gene Dodaro, the Comptroller General of the United States, with us until our program ends today at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Go ahead and start calling Ed with your questions, your comments. | ||
| We can talk about some of these areas. | ||
| We can talk more about the GAO. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats to call in. | ||
| 202748-8001. | ||
| Actually, we'll do it by regions in the United States. | ||
| So it's 202-748-8000 if you're in the Eastern or Central time zones and 202-748-8001 if you're in the Mountain or Pacific time zones. | ||
| Gene Dodaro, another one of the charter members of the high-risk list is the enforcement of tax law in the United States. | ||
| Why has that been something that's on for 35 years now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, there's a gap between taxes owed and taxes collected every year. | |
| Voluntary compliance is about between, hovering between 82 and 85 percent. | ||
| So the latest estimate of IRS is there's a net tax gap of $606 billion. | ||
| That's an annual figure, the most recent one. | ||
| So we have problems collecting taxes. | ||
| There's a lot of underreporting. | ||
| There's people that report and don't pay. | ||
| And then there's this segment of people who don't file taxes at all and should be filing taxes. | ||
| So IRS needs to have a better enforcement strategy to close that gap so the government gets its fair share of revenues that it's due. | ||
| And this is particularly important because our fiscal sustainability on the long term is not good. | ||
| And I've made a number of recommendations to try to get the government on a more sustainable long-term fiscal path. | ||
| This is part of it. | ||
| There's overspending and improper payments as well. | ||
| The other problem IRS has had, and the reason it's on there has been because of identity theft. | ||
| There's a lot of people that steal identities of legitimate taxpayers that have been filing returns. | ||
| They get the payments back from IRS. | ||
| Now, we've made a number of recommendations. | ||
| One was to expedite the information on W-2s from employers to IRS. | ||
| While IRS was due to give it to individual taxpayers in the end of January, in the past, it hadn't given it, the employers haven't given the information to IRS until like March and April. | ||
| So they didn't have it when a lot of people were filing. | ||
| So they needed it to compare to the returns. | ||
| Since that's happened, IRS has been able to forestall billions of dollars in identity theft. | ||
| But still, some get through and they still need to focus on that. | ||
| Let me do another high-risk area, managing federal real property. | ||
| This one's only been on your high-risk list for 22 years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, there's been a lot of excess government property around for a long time. | |
| It's been accentuated now because of telework during the pandemic. | ||
| A lot of the buildings are older. | ||
| They were built for a day when you used to have paper files. | ||
| And so you need a lot of room for that and a lot of administrative support. | ||
| And of course, the computerization of a lot of things and digitalization has changed that dramatically. | ||
| So the buildings Aren't good for current workforce. | ||
| I remember one of the examples of this was the government printing office. | ||
| They have a huge building on Capitol Hill because they used to have huge printers where they would print out the congressional record, and then it went digital and there was all this space in that building where they didn't need that footprint anymore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right. | |
| And you can replicate that across government with different examples, but a lot of it's happening. | ||
| And the government hasn't had an efficient way to dispose of property that they didn't need. | ||
| And the Congress passed some legislation to create a separate board to try to expedite that. | ||
| It hasn't really worked very effectively. | ||
| They haven't been in sync with GSA and OPM about the disposal of these properties. | ||
| So that's a problem. | ||
| Is there a BRAC commission for the military side of this? | ||
| Is there such a thing as a BRAC for federal rural property? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's what this legislation was for, John: to create this commission that was separate from the government with some experts, and they were to identify properties that could be sold. | |
| But then they had to turn the list over to OMB and GSA. | ||
| They then had to agree and actually execute on the list. | ||
| And often they didn't agree. | ||
| And as a result, there weren't that many properties disposed of. | ||
| There's a last round going on right now, but this is a big problem. | ||
| Now, one thing we have got them to do is to get out of a lot of costly leasing over time. | ||
| But they need to continue to improve that. | ||
| The deferred maintenance on these buildings has grown exponentially. | ||
| And there's also security concerns. | ||
| It's another reason they're on the high-risk list. | ||
| We did some testing of trying to get through items through security guards, and we were able to be successful in a number of cases. | ||
| And this is with batons and other sharp instruments and things. | ||
| And so the security of the buildings needs to be there as well. | ||
| But there's a huge opportunity here to save a lot of money by getting rid of some of these buildings, consolidating agencies and buildings, and getting rid of some costly leases. | ||
| Gene Dodaro is our guest taking your phone calls. | ||
| He is the Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office. | ||
| It was once known as the Government Accounting Office. | ||
| How many folks work at GAO now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
3,600 people. | |
| We have a very multidisciplinary workforce. | ||
| We have experts in every aspect of the federal government: healthcare, environment, transportation, et cetera. | ||
| And then we have a lot of technical experts, John. | ||
| We've also built our capacity in science and technology areas. | ||
| You know, I have a chief scientist now. | ||
| We have about 160 or so scientists that focus on artificial intelligence, quantum computing. | ||
| We use them. | ||
| We're looking now at the refurbishment of the nuclear weapons complex. | ||
| And so we need people to have nuclear engineering. | ||
| Of course, some of the weapon systems at DOD are nuclear-based as well. | ||
| Has GAO seen any staff cuts with everything we've been seeing from Doge in the past month, or will it, if not? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it depends on where the appropriations end up for this year. | |
| Fortunately, Congress has asked us to expand our capability into the science and technology area. | ||
| So we've been having pretty good stability in our staffing at this point in time. | ||
| I'm hopeful that that remains the case. | ||
| We're being asked to do a lot more as the government's activities continue. | ||
| We've been asked to look at the Department of Efficiency, Doge, and so we'll be looking at their access to information systems, many of which we audit because they're payment systems. | ||
| Do you have any early thoughts on Doge yourself? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, As someone who's spent decades butting heads with the bureaucracies across the federal government, there is an opportunity for great efficiencies and effectiveness. | |
| I think, however, that it would be better to do it by identifying what functions you need to get rid of first and then to figure out how you want to shape the staffing to downsize the staffing for that. | ||
| I don't think starting with just eliminating groups of employees, I wouldn't consider that the best practice about how you would want to go about it. | ||
| Let me get you some calls. | ||
| Alex is up first here in Washington, D.C. Good morning to you. | ||
| You are on with Gene Dodaro. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I just wanted to provide sort of my experience. | ||
| I used to work for the Department of Defense, and I listened to Mr. Dodala, that's what talk about encouraging them to implement better business practices, and that's, I think, a good recommendation. | ||
| But I think fundamentally the issue is that events can fire employees that don't perform, and it can remove leaders that don't perform, and the government can't do either. | ||
| So the problem that you really run into is you can write a bunch of papers about good ideas, but at the end of the day, if you have people that are not able, not capable leaders, you're not technically able to implement those changes, they won't happen. | ||
| And the way the bureaucracy is set up is it's like a big network where all of these nodes are dependent on the other nodes to function, if that makes sense, right? | ||
| This department defends that department. | ||
| So all it takes is one or two bad leaders or just bad departments and the whole thing grinds to a halt. | ||
| And they get a situation where a good chunk of the organization knows that this department is terrible or this leader is terrible and they can't get rid of them for years. | ||
| And that's kind of why I think that a lot of this stuff about encouraging better business practices is kind of performative until you are willing to remove people that don't do a good job. | ||
| And you need people that are honestly able to be there and say, hey, if I'm not doing a good job or if we're not making any positive changes for the country, then we need to go in a different direction. | ||
| I hope that's what Doge does. | ||
| Let me take your point, Gene Dodaro, on that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, that's a fair point. | ||
| And I think always people are important. | ||
| Leadership's important. | ||
| And you have oversight in this area by the Congress. | ||
| I do think there's a problem at defense because they rotate people through a lot. | ||
| So people don't stay through the entire development of the weapon systems process. | ||
| So people are coming in and out of the process. | ||
| We also have continual changes in the political leadership across the government. | ||
| Every time there's a change in administration, there's at least 3,000 people, political appointees across the government, who are then replaced by new people coming in. | ||
| And the average tenure of political appointees in the government is only a couple years. | ||
| So there's a lot of churn there. | ||
| But your point about holding people accountable is exactly right. | ||
| And that's what we try to suggest to the Congress and making changes and recommendations. | ||
| Our recommendations are always to the leadership of the department. | ||
| And Congress needs to hold them accountable as well. | ||
| Is it too hard to fire a federal employee? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not if you document their performance effectively. | |
| You know, I've been able to do that at my organization. | ||
| And it takes work. | ||
| You have to set expectations clearly so that you can judge their performance. | ||
| And you've got to be willing to give them early notification that they're not performing well, document it well, and then you can go forward and remove people. | ||
| I'm not saying it's easy, but if you're a good manager, you should be able to do it. | ||
| To Toledo, Ohio, this is Sue Waiting. | ||
| Sue, you're on with Gene Dodaro of the GAO. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you. | |
| I was calling in. | ||
| I thought we were still in the last conversation you were having before you added this gentleman. | ||
| But I will say by listening to him how he praises the people in his part of the organization as highly skilled and people we need to solve these problems. | ||
| Why are his people so much more important and more skilled than all these other people? | ||
| They're just slashing out of these jobs. | ||
| And the way the Congress and I heard Marjorie Taylor Green one day saying these people don't deserve to even be treated like human beings because somehow they've infiltrated our government and collect paychecks where every civil servant has is it helps this country with their specialties. | ||
| It's work that they love. | ||
| And we're just going in and eliminating them without, you know, I'm sorry. | ||
| Well, Sue, let me take your point. | ||
| Gene DeDaro. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, first, Sue, thank you for that observation. | |
| It's a very astute one. | ||
| One of the advantages that we have at the GAO is since we're in the legislative branch, we have our own personnel authority. | ||
| So we're independent of the Office of Personnel Management and anything in the executive branch, executive orders or other things. | ||
| We also, at the GAO, the Comptroller General, the head of the organization, has a 15-year term and can only be removed by an act of Congress, impeachment, or joint resolution. | ||
| So we have a lot of independence. | ||
| We run our own operation. | ||
| Our attrition rate's only 4%. | ||
| People stay at the GAO. | ||
| They become experts in all these areas. | ||
| Now, as it relates to what's going on now in the executive branch, I am very concerned. | ||
| I've been in the GAO over 50 years. | ||
| So I've met thousands, thousands of federal employees over those years. | ||
| Most of them are dedicated. | ||
| They're trying to do a good job. | ||
| They didn't cause this deficit. | ||
| They didn't structure the organizations the way we have right now. | ||
| And I think they need to be treated with more respect than they have been so far. | ||
| But, you know, elections have consequences. | ||
| There's a need for more efficiency. | ||
| And we need to go about it in a way that achieves those objectives, but yet treats people with dignity and respect. | ||
| A 15-year term? | ||
| Does that mean your term is up this year? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, that's correct, John. | |
| Can you be reappointed for another 15 years? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no. | |
| And even if I could, my wife would not let me in the House if I did it again. | ||
| How is the next Comptroller General picked? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a 10-member congressional commission that gets formed as soon as there's a vacancy in the position. | |
| It's a Speaker in the House, Majority Minority Leader, Chair and Ranking of our Oversight Committee, House Oversight and Reform. | ||
| The Senate, Senate Pro Attempts, Senate Majority Leader, Minority Leader, Senate Homeland Security, Government Health Affairs, Chair and Ranking. | ||
| They come up with three or more names. | ||
| They do an executive search. | ||
| Three or more names go to the President. | ||
| The President picks. | ||
| The person has to be confirmed by the Senate. | ||
| That's the process. | ||
| Just about 20 minutes left with Gene Dodaro this morning of the GAO, GAO.gov, and you can search through all of their reports on that website. | ||
| Encourage you to do that while you're listening to this segment, especially the high-risk list. | ||
| Recently released 37 high-risk areas in the federal government. | ||
| One was added this year. | ||
| A lot of these carry over year to year. | ||
| Improving delivery of federal disaster assistance is the new member of the high-risk list. | ||
| Explain. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think everybody would agree we're having more severe and frequent weather events. | |
| In the last 10 years, it's cost the federal government over $500 billion to provide assistance to disaster areas. | ||
| FEMA is stretched way too thin, the Federal Emergency Management Organization. | ||
| They're managing right now, John, over 600 disasters. | ||
| Some of them go back 20 years because it takes a long time for the recovery phase to kick in. | ||
| A lot of people focus on the initial response, but the recovery phase. | ||
| There are over 30 different federal agencies involved. | ||
| Requirements are different for each agency. | ||
| Like, if you want to build infrastructure, you can go to Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, you can go to HUD and you can go to FEMA. | ||
| And they all have different rules. | ||
| So there's much more streamlining. | ||
| So our recommendation is that we need to improve the delivery of disaster assistance. | ||
| You know, a lot of insurance companies now are not insuring some of these events, like fire insurance. | ||
| We've seen that happen with the proliferation of wildfires, for example. | ||
| The flood insurance program now. | ||
| Another high-risk list area. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That one's not actuarily sound. | |
| Right now, that flood insurance program owes $22.5 billion to the Treasury Department. | ||
| That's after $22 billion. | ||
| That's after Congress in 2017 forgave $16 billion of debt that was there in that program. | ||
| So that needs reform as well. | ||
| But our whole disaster response and recovery effort needs reform in light of these recent, more recent and severe events that are expected to continue. | ||
| Government could do better in this area. | ||
| And I think the survivors would agree. | ||
| Dave, Michigan, good morning. | ||
| You are next with Gene Dodaro. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, good morning. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I'm listening to Mr. Dodaro, and I have to say this man is I'm really encouraged by him. | ||
| He speaks with such a level head. | ||
| And I just want to know when there are people like himself and there were inspector generals of all the other different departments. | ||
| And he's already spoken a bit to make me already feel like my question's answered. | ||
| But here it is. | ||
| Simply, what is the need for Doge at all? | ||
| Well, I think, you know, first of all, with regard to the Inspectors General, as I was testifying before the House last week, I mentioned it was unfortunate, my view, that they were fired. | ||
| You lost a lot of expertise and experience, and the people and the inspector generals need to be independent to function properly. | ||
| And when some inspector generals were fired in the past, I went to the Congress with some suggestions that if you're going to fire them, and the president has the authority, I'm not quibbling with that, but they also, the inspector generals also report to the Congress. | ||
| And they should be given 30 days' notice and specific reasons for removal. | ||
| That wasn't done in this particular case. | ||
| Now, the Department of the Doge, Government Efficiency, I think, you know, the executive branch needs to have an active role in trying to streamline the government. | ||
| The Office of Management Budget in the Executive Office of the President hasn't had the capacity in the past to do this to the full extent possible. | ||
| So I don't quibble with the need for it. | ||
| The only thing I would say is that it needs to be more a deliberative process. | ||
| The agency heads need to be involved. | ||
| It needs to be a little bit more systematic so you don't have unintended consequences. | ||
| They've already let people go. | ||
| They've had to bring them back because of the criticality of their positions. | ||
| I'm also concerned 20 of the high-risk areas are on there, in part because of skill gaps and shortages within the agencies, whether it's VHA, with doctors and nurses, particularly medical health professionals, because we have problems. | ||
| You know, in this country, I think it's a national disgrace. | ||
| We have 17 veterans a day on average commit suicide. | ||
| They need help. | ||
| They need timely medical care. | ||
| And we need emergency responders. | ||
| We need people that understand and can protect the nuclear safety area. | ||
| We need people in health care that can focus on infectious diseases. | ||
| And we can have a national surveillance program. | ||
| So you need to take great care because while the government is in need of more efficient and effective processes and streamlining, it does very many important things essential to the well-being of the American people. | ||
| And so we need to make sure that we have the right skills in the right place in the right mix. | ||
| And then I'm also concerned about the probationary employee issue of this thing because you need to have people who are willing to come into the federal government over the long term. | ||
| You need to have a good succession plan. | ||
| We're taking on many important domestic issues and national issues. | ||
| And so you need a pipeline of talent. | ||
| And it's been hard enough to attract people to the federal government to carry out these critical responsibilities. | ||
| And this doesn't, I'm not quibbling with whatever policy any administration wants to set. | ||
| But over the decades that I've been in government, I've seen administration after administration set policies in place but not have the capability in the executive branch to effectively implement those policies so that they get implemented. | ||
| You need to have the right workforce, regardless of what your policies are, to have it effectively implemented over time. | ||
| And you need to take great care with this because the government has such a critical role in our economy and in our country providing critical services to people, particularly vulnerable populations. | ||
| You mentioned GAO has been in this government efficiency space for literally decades. | ||
| Has anybody from Doge come to talk to you or your folks at GAO on efficiency efforts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first thing, John, there's a Presidential Transition Act, as you know. | |
| And in that act, GAO is listed as a source that incoming administrations can go to. | ||
| And so what I did was be proactive. | ||
| As soon as President Trump was designated president-elect, I sent him and Vice President-elect Vance a letter, and we published on our website a whole section of all our high-risk work, every open recommendation. | ||
| We listed key issues they were going to face. | ||
| We gave them contacts for experts in those areas. | ||
| And, you know, so we haven't had any official outreach. | ||
| The only outreach that we've had is at the Treasury Department. | ||
| We've done some audits of the general fund, which is the payment system, the cash system for the government. | ||
| And we issued a report and they asked for more help there. | ||
| Now, what I'll be doing, as I do with every administration, I'm starting now, is to outreach to the new secretaries of all the cabinet officials and other major departments and agency. | ||
| So I'll have an introductory meeting. | ||
| I'll offer help and to get a dialogue going with the leadership of the departments and agencies. | ||
| But that's where it stands right now. | ||
| You mentioned testifying before Congress last week. | ||
| Anybody who's watched your testimony before Congress over the years knows that you are not one of these agency leaders that come in with a giant binder full of information that they go through to answer members of Congress. | ||
| I've never seen you actually come with a piece of paper or a note. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Is this all these reports are in your head? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A good deal of them are John. | |
| I mean, I take my job very seriously. | ||
| I have great people. | ||
| I do a lot of briefings. | ||
| I prepare a lot before testimonies. | ||
| And because the one last week was three and a half hours. | ||
| So you get a lot of questions. | ||
| And I try to anticipate what kind of questions that I'm going to receive. | ||
| And I have a fairly good idea of those. | ||
| But I prepare properly and well. | ||
| I found that if I talk without notes and look people in the eye, they'll pay more attention than they would be. | ||
| And it's interesting to note some of the members of Congress will note that you're doing that and you see them pay more attention as you're watching them in these hearings. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, you know, there's a reason we read our kids to sleep at night. | |
| You know, I mean, if you're reading the prepared testimony, they don't know if you believe it or if somebody prepared it for you. | ||
| You're just reading it or be able to answer the question. | ||
| So I started back many decades ago to develop this technique, and it suits me. | ||
| It may not suit everybody, but I find it much more comfortable and compelling and easier to deliver your message. | ||
| As a C-SPAN viewer, it is notable to watch. | ||
| Next call, James, in Ohio, good morning. | ||
| You're on with Gene Dodaro. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| It won't take much time for me to say what I've got to say, but I'm 96 years old, World War II veteran and a career veteran. | ||
| And as far as our obligations are concerned, I'm concerned about America keeping their obligations to the people that they make obligations to, such as we promised Ukraine that we'd protect them all the time if they give up their weapons. | ||
| I wonder how come that we're not protecting them as we promised. | ||
| I've always kept my promises. | ||
| When I tell somebody something, I stick to it whether it takes the hide off of me or not. | ||
| And it's about time for the president to put on his big overhauls and his pants and tell Russia to get out of Ukraine. | ||
| This thing is going on too far, and we're at fault for not taking care of them. | ||
| We owe them a lot of stuff because of what we promised them. | ||
| And the last president was too chicken to do what he was supposed to do and stand up against Russia. | ||
| It's time to tell them to step out of that. | ||
| That's James in Ohio. | ||
| Care to comment on foreign policy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first, James, I want to thank you for your service to the country. | |
| We owe our veterans a debt of gratitude and also a commitment to honor the promises we gave to them, which is why I've listed a number of veterans issues on the high-risk list. | ||
| With regard to Ukraine, I don't get involved in foreign policy decisions. | ||
| I would say, however, that prior to the recent change in administration, we were providing training to the accounts chamber in the Ukraine on how to audit, like GAO audits, some of the assistance that was going there. | ||
| But that's been halted as a result of the shift in the administration's approach over there. | ||
| But I got to know a number of Ukrainians through that process. | ||
| And, you know, they're very dedicated people to their country. | ||
| I have a lot of admiration for them and their focus on protecting their sovereignty. | ||
| In your efforts in doing that, how much fraud, outright stealing of U.S. funds were they finding in that program? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, we're just getting started, John. | |
| They started with the budgetary support that we gave them for their health care workers. | ||
| You know, their economy was decimated, so they didn't have a lot of revenues that they would normally have. | ||
| So the U.S. provided some budgetary support for pensions, helped them meet their pension obligations, healthcare workers and things of that nature. | ||
| And the first couple audits that they did, they found some issues, but not anything significant. | ||
| On your first point, and it's an important point, VA healthcare, how do we improve health care for veterans in this country? | ||
| That's been on your list now for 10 years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, yes. | |
| To be honest with you, I was very disappointed with the VA's initial response. | ||
| I found them to be a fairly intractable bureaucracy. | ||
| It took them a long time to come up with an action plan to address the high-risk issues. | ||
| They still resist setting timeliness measures they can be held accountable for making sure veterans not only get the phones answered and get timely appointments, but actually get the care that they need, either in a VA hospital or in a community care setting. | ||
| So we still have a lot of recommendations there. | ||
| The mental health area I mentioned is a particular concern, particularly in rural areas of getting people the right mental health treatment that they need. | ||
| And right now we're looking at the suicide crisis hotline to see if that can be improved to try to prevent this unfortunate events we have with veterans committing suicide on a daily basis. | ||
| And we're also trying to get them to acquire their medical supplies and other things in a more efficient manner. | ||
| So they need some people. | ||
| They need some process changes over there. | ||
| And I'm hopeful I'll be trying to meet with the new Secretary Collins and, as I mentioned, with other people and try to encourage them. | ||
| They've also spent a ton of money on this new electronic health care system. | ||
| They've spent over $12 billion. | ||
| The new system's only deployed, been deployed to four medical facilities. | ||
| They're in the next year or two going to do five more. | ||
| There's 160 to go. | ||
| And also, user satisfaction is high. | ||
| I think 70 percent in the last estimate of the users of the system don't think it's helpful. | ||
| We could have done a three-hour show on the high-risk list as we go through these, but less than five minutes left. | ||
| I want to ask about some of the high-risk list success stories. | ||
| What have you been able to move off this list over the years? | ||
| What has been the most successful effort that you've been involved in here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'll give you three quick examples, John. | |
| One, many years ago, our weather satellites were due to expire and to their useful life. | ||
| And the government didn't have a good plan to replace them. | ||
| And if they couldn't replace them on time, these are geostationary satellites that give short-term weather forecasts and polar orbiting satellites that give the long-term forecast. | ||
| Ones by NOAA, the short-term defense Air Force runs the longer term on. | ||
| They didn't have good plans and they didn't have contingency plans, like using European satellites or something. | ||
| So we raised it on the list. | ||
| They got serious about it. | ||
| Congress funded it. | ||
| And now we have better weather satellites. | ||
| And we're very pleased that that happened. | ||
| Over the course of how many years? | ||
| It took a while. | ||
| It took a while, but we got it done. | ||
| And I was afraid it wasn't going to get done. | ||
| Last year, we also took off the list Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, the Multi-Employer Plan. | ||
| This is a corporation that ensures private sector pension plans. | ||
| Employers are supposed to contribute to pay for this. | ||
| If a company goes bankrupt, the people don't lose their pension. | ||
| That was going to go bankrupt. | ||
| And Congress provided a lot more money. | ||
| And so that's now going to be solvent for probably the next 30 years, absent any big change to the economy. | ||
| The last one is after 9-11. | ||
| There was a lot of problems with lack of coordination in the intelligence community. | ||
| Congress passed an information sharing environment. | ||
| We worked with the director of national intelligence and the intelligence community, about 16 agencies, and we have a much better sharing of information and intelligence to help protect our country. | ||
| So I'm very proud of that as well. | ||
| Of the 37 that are on the list today, what is the one that you're most worried about when the next Comptroller General finishes his or her 15-year term? | ||
| May still be there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Oh, that's a tough question. | ||
| It's like asking me to pick which one of my children I would like more than the other ones. | ||
| The one I'm most concerned about is cybersecurity, John, and infrastructure protection. | ||
| In the cybersecurity area, I listed that first as a government-wide high-risk area in 1997. | ||
| I added critical infrastructure protection. | ||
| When cybersecurity was a pretty new thing at that point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you could see it coming. | |
| You could see it coming. | ||
| And then in critical infrastructure, 2003, I was concerned about the electricity grid, our water systems, our telecommunications. | ||
| And all that's even more so at risk now as cybersecurity and technology is developing. | ||
| But you have artificial intelligence, which can help, but also has a dark side. | ||
| And then you have quantum computing on the horizon. | ||
| That will completely decimate our current encryption approaches. | ||
| So it's a whole new ballgame. | ||
| So the cybersecurity thing, while I started it in its infancy, I think is going to continue. | ||
| And I hope it's not on the high-risk list for my successor, but I wouldn't bet on it. |