Transcripts For CSPAN Capitol Hill Hearings 20110818

system. >> i got in trouble talking about the federal reserve yesterday. [laughter] about the federal reserve yesterday. i got lectured about that yesterday. >> i am just trying to wonder if he would be an advocate for at least auditing the federal reserve? >> i think there have been a number of candidates that have stood up over the course of the month and it really questioned the transparency of the federal reserve. absolutely. whether you are the governor of a state to, whether you are the president of the united states, whether you are the head of an agency or an independent branch of government -- not a branch of government but an agency of government like the federal reserve, they should open their books up. they should be transparent so the people of the united states know what they are doing, how they are doing it, and, frankly, if the mistrust that is there today -- if they would simply open up and be transparent with the american people, i think they would go about finding out whether there is some activity. until they do that, i think there will continue to be questions about their activity and what their true goal is for the united states. >> to leverage much for coming to new hampshire. and this year of 2007, the total gdp was 2.12 trillion dollars. the annual deficit today is 1.6 trillion dollars, and the gdp is 14.2 trillion dollars. we have been in a holding pattern since the end of the last republican president. what would you do about fixing the problem? >> obviously, working with the house of representatives and the senate, i am a little biased here. i hope we put up 20 or 30 more seats in the united states house and run the table and have 60 republican senators to work with. that would make a lot easier from my perspective. working with those two legislative bodies, to put a budget in place that is balanced. start freeing up the private sector to create the wealth and that it will take to pay off that, i think close to $16 trillion national debt. but if the legislature for what ever reason does not agree that that is the way we should go, the president has one other powerful tool. that is his pen to veto spending bills. i love this country enough to wear out the ink in a veto pen if that is what it takes to say we will not spend money we do not have. our children pose the future is more important than that. >> good morning. i am a mother of a united states marine. in your opening remarks, you mentioned our state's model, live free or die. if you thought you individual liberty, i wonder how you reconcile that all you with your executive order to mandate medical treatments specifically with the vaccine to little girls and texas. if that was a mistake, how you reconcile your recent support of legislation were the state of texas now mandates medical treatment specifically the meningitis vaccine for college students up to age 13 whether they reside on campus or not? >> my wife is a registered nurse. her father is a physician of 52 plus years. both of my parents are cancer survivors. i hate cancer. we passed a piece of legislation in texas in 2007, the same year that i sign that executive order to invest $2 billion over the next 10 years to find the cures for cancer. the issue for me was one of cancer. i made a mistake. clearly in how we put that forward without working with the legislature. it did create not only a firestorm, but it also created a conversation between parents, mothers and their daughters that i really think was helpful. that way they could make a decision on whether or not they wanted to have access. the legislature clearly set meet a message that that was not the way they wanted to go. i respected that, and i still respected today. the idea that we have got diseases that are killing our children and that we have proven maxine's like the one for meningitis and we are not making it available, i think it is unconscionable. i think it is our responsibility to take care of the citizens of our state. again, it is a state issue. the texas legislature agreed with that. i signed that piece of legislation. if you do not want to do that and new hampshire, i respect that. in texas, we think it is important to protect our kids against a number of diseases. we've mandate -- we mandate vaccines for those pretty close to the legislature process. i learned a good lesson of not getting out front of the legislature to far. >> he spoke of private sector as opposed to the government for bringing our economy back in line. i am hoping what -- i am wondering what your plan is to remove and transitioned the heavy government involvement into the private sector? >> it is not going to happen. per question is how you remove the regulatory impact that is very pervasive throughout our economy and move our country back towards a more federalist type of approach. is that a fair way to -- [unintelligible] >> in reference to the book he brought up -- you can find that at bonds and noble or amazon.com. the proceeds go to -- i talked about that in the book. we really have gotten away from our roots. the government and particularly the centralized government -- look. it is human nature to acquire more power. whether it is in a state or whether is at a county or city level, people tend to accumulate power. we need to wean our way away from that. for instance, on the regulatory side. if i am so blessed to be president of the united states, there will be men and women going into those agencies that are clearly pro-business advocates. they will bring that philosophy with them. i think it is one of the things that is missing in washington, d.c. we almost have an anti business climate. the idea that the national labor relations board would stop a company like a bowling from going into a right to work state like south carolina is beyond me. if you needed just 80 per sticker snapshot of what is going on with this administration, there you have one. i am a pro-business governor. i do not make apologies to anyone about that. i will be a pro-business president. i would not apologize to anybody about that. i think that is the future of america that we get this country working again. >> you get the last question, sir. >> [unintelligible] could you tell us a little about your views of retirement savings and whether they should be protected? >> simply put, i agree about your position. there should be incentives out of government for specific things. whether it is energy and it trying to get this country more energy dependent -- i think you should have a conversation nationally about how we give incentives to those. i think we need to give incentives to our citizens for their savings so that they can become more personally responsible. incentives work. obviously, we will have a great and abroad conversation about which ones are right and which ones are not, but the fact of the matter is, people respond to incentives. they help bring businesses there to compete with other states. i think that is fine and we should be thoughtful. as i said earlier, and i will route, those offshore profits that are being taxed at 35%, which should give those companies an incentive to bring that company back on shore to the united states to create jobs. thank you for letting me be a part of this today. [applause] >> i want to thank the government for taking time out of his busy schedule to stand by >> we wish him much success and good health as he journeys through the great state of new hampshire. i am sure he is going to be spending a lot of time maybe drinking coffee. i couldn't think of a better gift than a texas-sized mug of application -- politics and eggs. good luck. >> thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> republican presidential candidate rick perry campaigning in new hampshire. this is how his kay was covered. >> larger it has been. governor perry wasted little time. >> one in six eligible americans cannot find a full-time job. that is not a recovery. that is an economic disaster. >> after a little q and a or topics ranges from headache to global warming, it was off to resonetics. then we sat down with perry, to discuss, among other things, his devout christian faith. >> i am a big believer in the 10 commandments. which one of those have you got a problem with? my faith is part of my life. >> on the economy, perry says he would follow the templates he built in texas. he didn't back off comments made this week where he said if secretary treasure ben bernanke printed more money, it is akin to treason. >> quit printing money, quit devaluing our dars. cut out the tax the, the relying lations and the lawsuits. >> he would say take a look at his record and decide for yourself. he promises to spend a lot of time in new hampshire and looks forward to mixing it up. >> i don't really trust people who don't have an opinion. new hampshire folks and granite staters, they have got opinions. >> watch more video of the candidates. see what political reporters are saying, and track the latest campaign contributions with c-span's website for campaign 2012. easy to use, it helps you navigate the political landscape with twitter foods and facebook updates from the campaigns, candidate bios, plus links to c-span media partners in the early primary and caucus states. all at c-span.org/campaign2012. >> president obama concluded his three-day bus tour of the midwest with a couple of town hall meetings in illinois, including one in atkinson. he focused on jobs and the economy for a little more than an hour. >> thank you so much. thank you. everybody have a seat. it is good to be back, back home. [cheers and applause] >> it is good to be back in atkinson, good to be back in henry cowen -- count. i just got back from the whiteside count fair. spent some time with some cows. [laughter] mayor gus junior. [cheers and applause] >> i told gus that i didn't have any gray hair either when i took office. [laughter] >> i just want you toast know what you have in store for you, right here. everybody tells me he is doing a great job. i want to thank the wyffels family -- excuse me. [laughter] >> i haven't had lunch. [laughter] >> i want to thank the wyffels family for hosting us here today. please give them a big round of applause. [cheers and applause] >> i want to thank lisa of lisa's place. where is lisa? [cheers and applause] >> was that lisa? because secret service had to shut down the road and do all this stuff, i know some of you guys have not been able to enjoy her outstanding food. as a consequence, my staff is trying to eat up as much as possible. [laughter] >> my understanding is i have a pie coming. is that correct? [applause] >> what kind of pie? coconut cream and a sin man -- cinnamon roll. i am very excited about that. coconut cream is one of my favorite pies. and congressman bobby shilling is here. [applause] now it is absolutely terrific to be back home, and i just want to first of all say to so many of you. i had a chance when i was still running for the united states senate, and a lot of people did not know my name. this young lady, she is got like a picture -- she has got like a picture -- i will sign it. of course i will. [applause] and so as we have been traveling through the back roads of iowa, and now illinois , it is such a reminder of why i decided to get involved in public service in the first place. we have obviously been going through a tough time over these last two and a half years. we went through the worst recession since the great depression. we saw eight million jobs lost, four million before i took office, and then another four million in the first few months of 2009. a lot of small businesses got hit. and so i think a lot of times there have been folks who wonder whether our best days are still ahead of us, or are they behind us? but i will tell you, when i traveled through downstate illinois, through iowa, through the midwest, i am absolutely confident about this country. and the reason is because of you. the reason is because of the american people. because as tough of a time as we have had, there is not a country on earth that would not readily change places with us right now. [applause] we have still got the best workers in the world. we have the best entrepreneurs in the world. we have the best scientists, the best universities. we have so much going for us, and you see it at a company like this one. i was talking to the wyffel brothers, and they are telling me they are now expanding. they have hired some new folks, starting to go into some new markets around this region. so we've got so much going for us, there is nothing wrong with our country right now. there is something wrong with our politics. there is something wrong with our politics. [applause] you know, when you look at this debacle we had with the debt ceiling and raising it, what you realize is that our politics, ep gauging -- engaging in partisan gamesmanship and potentially seeing the first default in america, that has no place in how we move forward together. when this country is operating off of common ground, nobody can stop us. but when we are divided, and we end up having a whole lot of self-inflicted problems. the fact of the matter is the economy has gotten better than it was when i first took office. we have seen over the last 17 months over two million private sector jobs created. but everybody here knows we've still got a long way to go, and it is urgent for us to make sure that we are joining together and not thinking about party first, not thinking about elections first, but thinking about country first. [applause] that's the message that we need to send to washington. there are some things that we could be doing right now to put our neighbors, our friend, some family members back to work. over the last not just two days, but over the last several weeks, i have been talking about some additional things we need to do. there is no reason why we should not extend a payroll tax cut that put $1,000 into the pockets of every single family out there. that means they have got more money to spend. that means businesses have more customers. that means the economy grows and more people get hired. we could renew it right now to give business the certainty that they are going to have customers not just this year, but next year as well. the only thing holding it back is our politics. it is traditionally a bipartisan idea. there is no reason why we shouldn't bass it. there is no reason why we shouldn't put americans back to work all across the country rebuilding america. as i was driving in here -- [applause] as i was driving in here, i saw a new fire station is being built. right? [cheers and applause] thanks to the recovery act. well, we need road, and bridges, and schools all across the country that could be rebuilt. and all those folks who got laid off from construction because the economy went south, or the housing bubble burst, they are dying for work. contractors are willing to come in under budget and on time, and interest rates are low. so we could finance right now the rebuilding of infrastructure all across america that drove not only unemployment in the construction industry down, but drove unemployment down across the board. and traditionally that hasn't been a kenyon martinic or republican issue. that has been an american issue. we have taken pride in rebuilding america. the only thing holding us back right now is our politics. we should be passing trade deals right now because the koreans, they can sell kias and hyundais here in the united states. i think that is great. i want to be selling ford's, chryslers and chevies in career. and i want products across the world stamped with three words, made in america. that is something we could be doing right now. [applause] there's a bill pending in congress right now that is call the america invents bill. basically it says entrepreneurs who are coming up with good ideas. let's say the brothers came up with a new strain and wanted to patent it, make it easier for them so they could market it, make money off it and hire more money. we can do that right now. the only thing holding us back is our politics. over the last six months, even though the economy has been growing, even though the economy has been recovering, it has not recovered as fast as it could. and some of those things are not in our control. we couldn't control the tsunami in japan that disrupted supply chains. we could not control what happened in the middle east that drove up gas prices. we don't have complete control over what happens in europe with their problems. and all those things of have affected our economy. but there are so many things that we've got control over right now that we could be doing to put people back to work. and by the way, there is no reason to think that putting people back to work is somehow in conflict with us getting our fiscal house in order. this downgrade that happened, they didn't downgrade us because america couldn't pay its bills. they downgraded us because they felt our political system couldn't seem to make good decisions in order to deal with our budget the same way families deal with their budgets. so the fact of the matter is that we came close to a grand bargain which would have said we are going to cut spending we don't need in order to pay for the things we do. we are going to eliminate unnecessary programs to pay for student loans so they can go to the university of illinois or the university of iowa. [applause] we know that we've got to invest in basic research. that is part of what made us the most productive agricultural powerhouse in the world. so we don't want to cut back agricultural research. in order to pay for it, we have to get rid of some things. but we have also said we have to do it in a balanced way. a couple of days ago warren buffet wrote an op-ed piece in which he said it is time to stop coddling billionaires. he pointed out that he pays a lower tax rate than anybody in his office, including his secretary. that doesn't make any sense. if everybody took an attitude of shared sacrifice, we could solve our debt problems next week. i do not want a tax break if that tax break meant that a senior citizen is going to have to pay an extra $6,000 for their medicare. before we ask the students to pay a little bit more for their student loan, we should ask the gas companies to get rid of some corporate loopholes that they do not need because they happen making record profits. [applause] a lot of this is common sense. in minnesota i pointed out that there are times in my life that michelle and i, things were a little bit tight when we were starting a family. we had all these new expenses. we had to make some choices. we did not say to ourselves, we are not quick to put any money into the college fund so we can keep eating and fancy dinners anytime we want. i did not say to michelle, you have got to stop buying clothes, but i am going to keep my golf clubs. what we said was, let's figure out what are the things that are point to be important to our family to succeed in the long term. let's invest in those things and stop investing in the things that do not work. the same approach can be taken for the american family. what has been striking as i have been traveling over the last few days, you guys, you are fulfilling your responsibilities. you are working hard. you are looking after your families. you are volunteering at church. you are coaching little league. you are doing everything right. all you are asking for is that your political representatives take their responsibility just as seriously. [applause] and part of that means that you have to put politics aside sometimes to do what is right for the country. people were asking me, why did you not call congress back after this whole deficit ceiling thing? why did you let them leave town? i do not think it would be good for certainty to see members of congress are doing all over again. i figured it was time for them to spend a little bit of time back in their own districts. hear your frustrations and expectations. i have been driving on this bus seeing all of those flags on the way in. little kids ready to go back to school and grandparents in their lawn chairs, folks out in front of the machine shops and fire stations. you go through small towns all across america and it reminds you how strong we are and resilient we are and how these and we are and that should be reflected in our politics. that should be reflected in our government. that is why i have toenlist -- in our fight foru the future. i need you to send a message to washington. do not draw lines in the sand. it is time to put country ahead of party. it is time to worry more about the next generation than the next election. if we do that, nobody can stop the united states of america. god bless you. thank you. what i want to do, i just want to take some questions. it is not very formal. just raise your hand. we have folks with microphones. i am going to goboy, girl, boy, girl so that it is fair. do stand up and introduce yourself. i will start with this gentleman right here because he is next to the mic. >> welcome to ask consent, mr. president. -- atkinson, mr. president. we enjoy growing corn and soybeans and we feel like we do it as safely as weekend. mother nature has challenged us. please do not challenge us with more rules and regulations tinder us from doing that. we would prefer to start our day in a tractor cab or eight, tab rather than filling out forms or permits to do what we would like to do. >> we have the secretary of agriculture right now. is there a particular rule that you are worried about? >> we hear what is coming down about noise pollution, dust pollution, water runoff. sometimes the dust is just common sense. >> if you hear something is happening, but it has not happened, do not always believe everything that you hear. i am serious about that. a lot of times, the folks in washington, there may be some staff person somewhere that wrote some article or said that maybe we should look into something. the lobbyists and associations will get all ginned up and they will send out notices saying, look at what is coming down the pike. a lot of times, we will be applying common sense. somebody has an idea, if we do not think there is more benefit than cost, we will not do it. i want to make sure that everybody gets accurate information. if you are worried about something going into place and that makes it harder to form, contact the usda. my suspicion is that they will be able to answer a lot of your questions and it will turn out that some of your fears are unfounded. nobody is more interested in seeing our agricultural sector's successful than i am. i come from a farm state. i spend a lot of time thinking about downstate issues as a united states senator. i am very proud of the track record we have developed. we look at what has been happening in terms of agricultural exports and in come during the time i had been president of the united states. i think we will have a great story to tell. i want to work with farmers to ensure that we are doing it in the right way to make sure that we are successful. >> i appreciate that. >> the young lady right back there with the glasses on. there she is. >> welcome, mr. president, to henry county. i owned a local real-estate company here in henry county. you know where i am heading, housing. every week i sit around the kitchen table like families here today and i hear the stories of the lost jobs upside down in their house. i asked, what programs are out there? i sought a turnaround c --saw a turnaround come may and june. we are in rehab. we have made adjustments. people are making progress. since the debt ceiling fiasco in washington, the phone calls stopped. we have no consumer confidence. interest rates are a record low. i should be working 14 hours a day and i am not. what are your future plans in helping middle-class america, generations x and y to get the country out from where we are. i want to know, what are your continued plants? >> you are absolutely right that housing has been at the core of a lot of the hardships we have been going through the last 2.5 years. we have been making a priority to help people stay in the homes that they could afford. some folks and bought homes that they could not afford. some others just had bad luck because they lost their jobs or they lost their shift. we are trying to push the banks or the servicers to do ammonification is that would allow people to stay in their homes -- do loan modifications that would allow people to stay in their homes. >> the loan modification system is a nightmare. the lending standards are so high. you have to be perfect and it is not a perfect world. >> you have a couple of million the modifications that have taken place. a lot of families have had to work down their debt. we are starting to see things bottom out and confidence start to pick up. i cannot excuse the self- inflicted wounds that was the debt debate. it should not have happened the way that it did. we should not have gotten back close to the brink. it is inexcusable. a lot of it has to do with confidence, as you said. companies have never been more profitable. they are hoarding their cash. they are not investing. a lot of banks have recovered, but they are not lending the way they are used to -- the way they used to. they need to have slightly tighter lending practices than they used to. that is part of the reason we had a housing bubble. we need to encourage banks that are -- to take a look at customers that are good credit risks, but are being punished. i will be honest with you. when you have many trillions of dollars worth of housing stock out there, the federal government is not going to be able to do this all by itself. it is going to require consumers and banks and the private sector working alongside government to make sure we can get housing moving again. it will probably take this year and next year for us to see a small appreciation again in the housing market. what we can do is make sure that we do not do any damage. that is what happened in this last month. that is why i was so frustrated by it. the last thing i will say, if we get the overall economy moving, if we passed the payroll tax cut, if we get some of these tax incentives for businesses past sed, if the overall economy is doing better, that means that consumers are doing better and housing should do better as well. thank you for your great question. the gentleman right there. yes, sir. >> hello, mr. president. my name is larry and i worked at the rock island arsenal. thank you for coming to our town. we are happy to have you here so we can talk to you. what do you think the simpson- bowles commission contributed to the debt discussion? what do you think can be accomplished by the new super committee? >> let me thank everybody that does work. you have been out there and saving lives and making sure that our troops are well- equipped for generations. thank you. [applause] the committee, this is a committee i set up to look at our current fiscal situation to see what could be done. it was a bipartisan committee. it was chaired by a well-known republican, alan simpson. and the chief of staff for bill clinton. it has equal numbers of democrats and republicans as well as business and private sector leaders. basically, what they recommended is what i have been talking about. a balanced approach in which we are making some modifications to what is called discretionary spending, that is spending we do every year on everything from farm programs, to student loan programs, to food stamps, you named it. and we cut defense spending in a reasonable way. we look at ways we can make modifications to strengthen social security and medicare for the next generation and how to raise additional revenues to bring the budget into place. the truth of the matter is that the commission recommendations are ones that not only i, but the gang of six agreed to as well. that was bipartisan as well. it was the package we spoke to john boehner about. we came pretty close. i will tell you, i think speaker boehner was prepared to do it. he got some resistance in his caucus. they said that we are not going to vote for anything that has revenue in it. what we got was this $1 trillion worth of cuts, when we needed $4 trillion to close the deficit and the debt. we got the commission to come up with another $1.50 trillion. i believe that we need a balanced approach. when this committee comes forward, i will make a presentation that has more deficit reduction than the $1.50 trillion that they are talking about. it, let'sgoing dto do fix it. the only way to do it in a sensible way is to have everything on the table. you cannot take things off the table. boulder, the people he has assigned, -- john boehner, the people he has assigned, none of them can vote for increased revenues. if you have $10 of spending cuts for every $1 in additional revenue, all of them said no. that is just not common sense. i cannot imagine that is how atkinson runs its operation. the mayor had a situation where they said, we are not going to pay for anything. we are not going to pay for roads, we are not going to pay for schools, you name it, we are not going to pay for it. we still expect you to provide those services. the mayor would be in a tough spot. the bottom line is this. i will be presenting, as i have already presented, i did it back earlier this year, a plan that says that we are going to have spending cuts and we are going to have revenue. we will have more spending cuts than revenue. we are going to take a balanced approach. everything is going to be on the table including our long-term obligations. the thing that is driving the deficit -- we have a balanced budget back in 2000. here is what happened. we decided that we would cut taxes. without paying for it. we had huge tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. we had two wars. for the first time in history, we did not pay for our wars. when our grandparents fought world war ii, the entire country paid for the war that we've fought. we were the first generation not to pay for our war. we did not pay for medicare. then the recession hits, which means that less money is coming in, but more money is going out in terms of helping the unemployed and helping local governments not lay off teachers and firefighters and so on. you combine all of those things and we have a big debt and a big deficit. it does not require radical surgery for us to fix it. it just requires us all to take an approach that says we are a family and all of us will share a little bit of the burden. those of us that are more fortunate, we can do a little bit more. corporations can afford to close some loopholes and simplified the tax codes to get it done. this young lady in a pink right here. yes? >> hello. i am from illinois 30 miles east of here. it is a parole community. my question is about jobs. what can you do it without congress to make a change in jobs so we can see a growth in job opportunities? >> there is something we can do without congress. i set up a jobs council. it was made up of a lot of employers. it is made up of small businesses and also some of the biggest companies in the world. what can we be doing to encourage job growth? they came up with a series of recommendations, some that do not involve congress at all. we have a lot of vets coming back from afghanistan and iraq that have incredible experience. 25-year-olds leading platoon's into battle. handling millions of dollars worth of equipment. the problem is we are not doing a good job handling them marketing the skills that they have to employ years. we just announced a couple of weeks ago a whole new initiative where the department of defense is going to have a reverse boot camp. just like to train folks to come into the military, you train them going out to figure out how they're going to get a job. [applause] and we got commitments from employers all across the country to say we are going to hire veterans. in some cases, what we want to certifications.e i had lunch with a group of veterans in minnesota the days ago. one was an emergency metic that had been in theater. you can imagine what that was like. he came back and he wanted to be a nurse. he was having to take a whole nursing program from scratch. he had been dealing with young men and young women in uniform that had the worst kinds of medical emergencies. he was patching them up. he has to go back as if he had never been in the medical field at all. that is a waste of money. that does not make sense. that is an example of things we can do administratively. this gentleman here asked me about regulations. show us particular regulations that may be getting in the way of new hiring. there are going to be some that are important. we want clean air and we want clean water. if there is a bunch of bureaucratic red tape and it is not improving the situation, let's figure out how to get rid of some existing rules. let's review every rule that comes in for its cost benefit. that is something we can do administratively. there are some things that we can help on. we could do a lot more at if we got congress' cooperation. those are proposals that have an have the support of republicans and democrats. and building roads, when did that become an issue? eisenhower built the interstate highway system. eisenhower build the interstate highway system. last time i checked, he was a very popular republican. this is what i mean about politics getting in the way sometimes. you cannot bring an attitude that says that i would rather see my opponent lose than america win. you cannot have that attitude. who is the gentleman with the goatee. right there. >> thank you, mr. president. my name is justin. my question was about revenue. i see a lot of the republican presidential nominees signing pledges not to raise taxes. i was wondering thank you could make a pledge that any deal would have a revenue increase. >> it is just math. if you have a deal that does not have revenue in it and you still want to close the deficit by $4 trillion, which is what the experts say is required to stabilize our deficit and our debt over a 10-year period, if you do not have revenue, the only thing that you can do is cut things like medicare. there is no two ways about it. you have to drastically cut medicare, you have drastically got to cut medicaid. you have to cut back on education support in significant ways that affect school kids right here and across the country. since i am in wyffels, it is like in your feed corn. you are cutting back on the things that are going to help you grow and help this country succeed over the long term. it is just not a smart thing to do. it is not how you would run your own family business. i think it is also important to understand that we can raise the kind of revenues we are talking about without having an impact on middle-class families that have not seen their wages and incomes go up in over a decade now. it can be done. the tax code is followed loopholes. -- full of loopholes. when it comes to the corporate tax rate, we could actually lower the old corporate tax rate, which would make us competitive, if we closed up a bunch of these loopholes that special interests lobbyists have been able to get into the tax code. it might take some lawyers, but it would be the right thing to do. when it comes to upper-income folks, i talked about warren buffett. the truth is, i will give you one example. the reason warren buffett's taxes are so low is that he typically gets his income from capital gains. capital gains are taxed at 15%. you're and come taxes, you are not being taxed at 15%, most of you. as a consequence, these days, the richer you are, the lower your tax rate. that is't be something defensible, regardless of party. that cannot be the way it is. [applause] one last point i want to make about these pledges. i take an oath, my pledges to make sure that every day i wake, and i am looking, for you, the american people. i do not go around signing pledges. i that is what i am focus on. that is how i think every representative in congress should be focused. not about some special interest group, some lobbyists, or some association somewhere, they should be thinking what is best for the country. [applause] all right. this young lady has been very patient. yes, you. >> i am kelly. i am 8 student at western illinois university. i am a supply chain management major and a french major. i wonder what you think is one of the best majors in order to get a job. a profs seem to think that supply chain has a lot of job opportunities, but i wonder what other majors you think are good to study. >> i can tell you will be good at what ever you do. [applause] when you finish, let me know. we will talk to lahood and we may hire you. you seem very impressive. you are already ahead of the curve. you understand that the economy is changing. the days when just because you want to work hard you could automatically find a job, those days are over. the truth of the matter is everything requires an education. i do not have to tell the farmers here. you are looking at gps. your studying markets all around the world. it is a complicated piece of business you are engaged in, not just a matter of going out with a plow in a field. that has happened to every industry. when i go into factories these days, what is amazing is how clean and quiet they are. what used to take 1000 people to do not only takes 100 folks to do. what the challenges in rebuilding our economy is that businesses have gotten so efficient -- what was the last time somebody went to a bank teller? the use the atm. the use a travel agent or -- instead of using a travel agent, they go on line. lots of jobs have become automated. that means does investing in our kids' education -- nothing is more important. [applause] nothing is more important. it also as a good question, which is why do not go to college without having some idea of what interests you. supply chain management i think is a great feel because the world is shrinking and products from atkinson and up on a dinner table in china somewhere. that means that people who understand how to move products, services, and people in efficient ways, there will be a high demand for them. i do not think a professor is trying to keep you in class. i think he is onto something here. one of the things i am worried about and we are trying to put an emphasis on in education is can we do more with math, science, technology learning because i can guarantee you that if you are a skilled engineer, if you are a skilled computer scientist, if you have strong math skills and technical skills, you are going to be very employable in today's economy. that has to start even before young people get to college. we are trying to institute a program -- science, technology, engineering, and math -- and to the lower schools so kids become oriented towards those fields. that is where we traditionally have had a comparative advantage, but we are losing ground to china, india, and places like that because their kids are focused on that subject. we need more of those. you keep on studying supply chain management. i would tell you just in case there are any foreign language teachers, having a foreign language is important, too. that makes you so much more employable because if you go to a company and they are doing business in france, belgium, switzerland, where you're somewhere and they find out you have that language skill, that is going to be important as well. we do not do that as much as we should. we do in the united states. congratulations. i am proud of you. [applause] >> thank you. >> i have to call on this night right here. what is your name, a young man? >> my name is alex. i am 10 -- eleven, sorry. >> did you just of labor day? >> yesterday. >> yesterday was your birthday? >> yes. >> happy birthday. give alex a big round of applause. [applause] >> mike rand paul is a former -- my grandfather is a former and owns part of a local ethanol plant. i was wondering -- what are you going to do to keep the ethanol plants running? >> that is a great question. is your grandfather clause bite? what's the lives somewhere else. >> you are an excellent representative for your grandfather. [applause] we might have to hire you, too. i think those of you know that when i was a united states senator, i was a strong supporter of biofuels. i continue to be a strong supporter of biofuels. our next agricultural secretary continues to be a strong supporter of ethanol and biofuels. i will say that the more we see the science, the more we want to find ways to diversify our biofuels so that we are not just relying on corn-based ethanol. we can do more to make corn- based ethanol more efficient than it is. that is where research comes in. there are some wonderful research facilities in the university of illinois system that had done a lot to advance the science on this. but the key going forward is going to be can we create biofuels out of switch grass and woodchips and other materials that, right now, are considered waste materials? that is important because, as most farmers here note, particularly if you are in livestock farming, right now because of feed keeps on going up and the cost of food, as a consequence, is going up. only about 4% of that is corn being diverted into ethanol. but as you see more and more demand placed on our food supplies around the world -- folks in china and folks in india start to eat more meat and commodity prices start going up -- it is important for us to figure out how to make biofuels out of things that do not involve our food chain. hopefully, your grandfather with his ethanol plant is starting to work with the department of agriculture to find new approaches to the by a tool industry. this is a huge area of support. this is another example of making sure our budget continues to invest in basic research. that cost money. it all we are doing is cutting and we are not thinking about investments, then over time we are going to fall behind countries like brazil where they already have a third of their although fleet operating on biofuels. -- auto fleet operating on biofuels. we should not fall behind countries like brazil. we want to be number one in alterative energies. that is good for farm economists. hold on. right here. >> thank you, mr. president, for being the president. [applause] i want to go home and maybe ask my mother to could make a good meal so i can tell her i lobbied you. she is a senior citizen. what is the likelihood of her social security getting a cost- of-living next year? >> let me talk to you about social security. it is very likely that she will see a cost-of-living increase next year because inflation actually rose this year. the reason there were a couple of years where she did not get a cost-of-living increase was because, even though she probably felt like because of food, gas, and groceries were going up, the overall inflation indexed did not go up. there is a time where we were in what is called deflationary where the call for a little bit lower than they had been comparable to previous years. all of that is done automatically. it is not something i'd make a decision about each year. i promise you when folks do not get there cola and a right to me and say, "you did not give us a cost of living. did you not care about senior citizens?" i have directed back and tell them that is not something i did. these are things that happen automatically. while we are on the topic of social security, i want to make sure everybody understands. social security is not in crisis. we have a problem with medicare and medicaid because health care costs are going up so fast. part of the reason we passed health care reform is to change public health care system operates and reduce health care inflation. but we have a genuine problem on medicare and medicaid. health care costs are going up as a lot of folks are entering into the system. if we do not do anything about medicare and medicaid, but it will bubble up our entire budget. so security is in a better position. when i year olds say is coastal's -- is such as security going to be there for me 20 years from now? yes, it will be there to 30 or 40 years from now. the adjustments we have to make on social security are relatively modest. they are the kind of changes that ronald reagan and tip o'neill agreed to in 1983 that created long-term solvency of the system. we can have social security solvent for another 75 years with just a few modest changes. the italian grandmother it was not made that did not give her article look last year. in fact, we try to pass a supplement because we knew seiners or having a tough time. we could not get passed to congress, but they should get some modest increase next year. ok? all right. in time for a couple more questions. one more? this is always a tough one -- this last one. i am going to call on you. you are right there in front of me and the microphone is already there. >> my name is pam dennis. i worked for the agency that serves ed henry county. i understand that drastic cuts need to be made in order to balance our budget, but with the last couple of years been so difficult for jobs, white or budget cuts to programs that are helping people keep their heads above water -- i am referring to community services and experience works -- those types of programs lb but keep their heads above water. why could we not get somewhere else and leave those alone for now or at least fewer cuts? >> first of all, it is important to understand if we take a balanced approach, we do not need drastic cuts. the low income housing program, just to take one example, what we have done is said we have modestly reduced it, but partly because we have increased it significantly right when the recession hit and it turned out we did not need as much budgeted as was actually used. obviously -- what we're trying to do is keep the bulk of that program in place. folks would it help in the winter at the cannot afford heating oil. that is not going away. the general principle you're talking about is right. we should not cut those things that help those who are most vulnerable if we can find other places to cut four things it would be nice to have, but do not need. i agree with that general principle. when congress gets back in september, my basic argument to them is this -- we should not have to choose between getting our fiscal house in order and jobs and growth. we cannot afford one or the other. we have to do both. the best thing we could do for our deficit and debt is grow the economy because when the economy is growing, more money in people's pockets, they pay more in taxes, there is more revenue. that helps to reduce the strains on our budget. we have to do both. essentially, the best way for us to do this is to look at some of our long-term obligations and cost, figure out long-term savings that are gradually phased in so they do not hit too hard right now. in the short term, there should be some things we do that are paid for by some of these long- term savings in order to get the economy moving. some of the programs you mentioned, i think, are ones we should be able to help people make sure they are not freezing during the winter. that is a basic obligation we have to our fellow americans. >> some of those programs are dependent upon the unemployment rate. my question is with the unemployment rate, your only counting the people on unemployment, not the people who worked a temporary job and was not eligible for unemployment, or the people on unemployment and now that unemployment has ran out. those people are not being counted. that affects the phoebe -- fame of finding that in the county gets. we are not eligible for the money -- the fema money. i think that is tied up a skewed number by using the unemployment rate. >> here's the basic principle -- with the economy not growing as fast as we want it to, the need is going to outstrip our resources. there is always good to be more need and out there relative to the amount of money the federal government can spend. but i guess the main argument i am making to you is that do not think that our choice is we either have to stop or obligations to the most vulnerable or to our seniors or to our kids, or, otherwise, the budget is going to go -- the deficit and debt are going to go sky high. we can do both in a sensible way. i will be presenting before this joint committee a very detailed -- very detailed, specific approach to this problem that allows us to grow jobs right now, provide folks who need help the help they need, and still get the deficit and debt under control. we also have to look at some programs to cut -- because they may not be will decide. let me give you an example -- unemployment insurance was decided that in a time when you would of laos and people would hire you back with the business cycle came back. the economy is changing so fast right now, people are having to retrain. companies are moving to a different state. we have to rethink how we do unemployment insurance. what they did in georgia is instead the beginning of an employment insurance, just a check, we will give it a subsidy to any company that hires you with your unemployment insurance so you are essentially earning a salary and getting your foot in the door into that company. yet they hire you full-time, but the unemployment insurance is used to subsidize you getting trained in getting a job. those kinds of adjustments to programs, we have to be more creative in terms of not doing things the way we always done them. let me close by saying this, atkinson -- first of all, it is good to be back. i am grateful to all of you for your extraordinarily what -- extraordinary welcome and hospitality. do not bet against america. do not bet against our workers. do not bet against our businesses. we have gone through tougher times than this before. we have always come out on top. as long as we pulled together and as long as american know-how and ingenuity is promoted, there is no reason why we will not get through these tough times just what we have before. america is going to emerge stronger, were unified, and more successful. in order for that to happen, i need your help. if i need your voices out there talking to folks from both parties and telling them we expect you to show some cooperation, stop thinking about politics for a little bit, and try to make sure we are moving our country forward. if you are delivering that message, it is a lot stronger than me delivering that message because you are the folks who ultimately put those members of congress in office. all right? thank you, everybody and god bless you agre. god bless america. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> in a few moments, a foreign on prospects for the deficit reduction committee. then, a town hall meeting with senator tom coburn from oklahoma. after that, a discussion of homeland security says 9/11. then an air line pilots panel on aviation security. >> on washington journal tomorrow morning, we will talk about the proposed national infrastructure bank with former pennsylvania governor. indiana governor, mitch daniels, will take questions about the economy, job market, and the budget deal. then, sean ed henry focuses on the fbi's role on focusing -- on cyber threats. washington journal every morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. like the declaration of famine in somalia was not made lightly injured late reflects the dire conditions of the people in somalia. based on nutrition and mortality surveys, data verified by the cdc, we estimate that in the last 90 days, 29,000 somali children have died. this is nearly 4% of the children in southern somalia. our fear and the fear of the international community and the governments in the horn of africa is that the conditions in those regions of somalia will spread to encompass the eight regions of somalia. even if september and october is good, we could bear witness to another wave of mortality in the south doo-doo waterborne diseases. >> what's more at the c-span video library. >> now, a forum on prospects for the joint deficit reduction committee, which will soon begin to look for ways to significantly cut federal spending of the next 10 years. from the brookings institution, if this is a little less than 1.5 hours. >> in the last year, i have denser but -- surprise on a couple of occasions. the biggest surprise to me for a long time is this committee and the way we have dealt with our debt ceiling in this most recent iteration. here is how we will proceed -- i will give a brief description of the agreement. i will leave a lot out, because it would take a long time to read it. i specialized in simplicity and that is what you're going to get. after i had described the deal will turn to sarah blinder, a senior fellow here at brookings. she is an expert on congress and legislative politics. she is going to talk about the history of super committees. there have been previous committees like this one. whenever congress cannot make a decision, they need to appoint a commission or committee or so forth. sarah will talk of little bit about this particular committee and how it will operate. they would turn to bill gale. he was the tax policy center here. he is also the author of several versions of gen your projections with all kinds of interesting baselines. in fact, bill can produce baselines' faster than congress can pass legislation. about a minute and have that they reached the agreement, he came at the baseline. shockingly, he will talk about baselines. it turns out they are a very, very big deal. then we will turn to henry aaron and. the says the president and congress has it wrong. finally, we are going to turn to my good friend bill frenzel. for those of you under age 60, you may not be as familiar with him. he was in progress for 20 years. it is the ranking member of the budget committee for several terms. bill was as much about the budget as anybody i had been captured in washington. bill is one to talk about the politics of the budget deal. let me just say a few things, keep in mind simple, about the agreement. the agreement has three distinct parts. first of all, it raises the debt ceiling, which with the point of the whole thing. this time we did two other things. psychic, we reduced the deficit, a crucial part of the deal. third, we agreed to have a vote in both the house and the senate on a balanced budget amendment to the constitution. that will take place in the fall. the first -- the second part of the deal -- the first part of the deal is raising the debt ceiling. that is done by about $39 million first. whatever it turns out to be it will get us through the 2012 election, which was one of the main goals of the administration all along. the president got, at least, that much. the second, but for most complicated part, is reducing the deficit. that also comes in two stages. the first is immediate agreement to approximately $900 billion over 10 years. if there are lots of numbers floating around. the bill will talk about the baselines. the budget of 40 is $935 billion. there are other baselines and so forth. it includes interest. this is a very important point about the budget. the more we cut, the more we save just behind the cuts in programs because interest is getting to be a huge part of our budget deficit. we are headed towards, 10 years from now, we could be paying $1 trillion in just interest costs. it is a very big part of the savings. this is achieved by putting tax on discretionary spending. the first step is a discretionary spending caps -- both defense and non-defense. there is a fire wall between security and non security. that only last for two years. there could be lots of interesting things happened after 2013 in how these cuts in appropriations are actually made. there is the part everybody is talking about and the reason we are here -- this new device that the leaders came up with -- the super committee -- joint select committee. it's as joint so it must be really important. that result one way or another if we live up to the agreement between $1.20 trillion and $1.50 trillion in additional cuts over 10 years. there are six republicans and six democrats. they were appointed by the leaders in the house and the senate. the bill -- they can apparently choose whatever baseline date what. that is a very important issue. they can make any changes in spending or taxes. there was some dispute about that, but the text of the agreement makes it clear that they could raise taxes. they could cut whatever they want to, including medicare and medicaid. they have carte lot to do whatever they want to do. a majority vote decides in the committee, not like the president's deficit panel. seven out of 12 votes wins. it's to get a majority, you can pass what everyone. they have to report their decisions by november 23 and congress must vote by november 23. they must vote without amendment and they cannot be filibustered in the senate. these are the best moves you could possibly have. in that respect, it looks like it could be a good deal. if they do not reach an agreement or if the congress votes it down, there is an automatic -- we use a fancy word thomas sequestration -- they're the additional cuts would be $1.20 trillion in discretionary and entitlements. there are complex rules about what cannot be cut. medicare can only be cut by payments to -- to providers. there is a 2% limit even in that part of medicare cuts. there are a bunch of low income programs set aside -- food stamps, medicaid -- that are protected by sequestration. now we would turn to a history of special committees and a few words about the process of this committee. sarah binder. >> gracias. of what to start all with three points about congressional committees in general and a little bit about the application for the membership of the joint committee. a specially appointed congressional commission normally fails. i want to talk a little bit about what they tend not to work. second, this committee the first a bit from the first incarnation. it is important to understand why it differs but why those differences might be consequential. third, membership in the committee has a number of applications for what is likely or not likely to happen this fall. first, why did committee typically fail? what is the for this time around and what can we learn? it is not unusual for congress to kick the can down the road when it is unable to solve long- term problems. there are clear the of examples. there was a commission in 1993, the entitlement commission in 1997, the simpson bowles commission in 2010 -- none succeeded in producing a plan that would be afforded to the house and senate to consider. even when there are episodes to success, when you look under the hood it turns out the agreement was reached by people outside the committee. when commissions are successful, such as the military commission, it turns out that the mandate is a very narrow. we can come back to the reasons why that commission might have succeeded. why did these commissions not tend to work? i like to think of political reasons and a little bit of the context in which these commissions are created. first, it is typically deadlock over issues of the day that caused congress to kick the can down the road to delay failing to reach a decision. commissions and committees tend to inherit the stalemate that created them in the first place. when we think about the still night, we have in mind the intensive polarization. the policy differences between the parties and the rich strategic reasons they disagree with each other. party see the differences -- city problems differently. they see solutions at differently. political incentives for legislators to create these commissions in the first place -- these commissions find it hard to overcome the politics that created them at the beginning. second, i think there are institutional reasons why they tend not to work. they are typically created by executive order, not like a joint committee, which is a statutory basis written into law when presidents set up these commissions through executive orders, they have a simple majority requirement. there provisions are rarely, ever, protected procedurally. they are subject to filibuster and party control of the house floor. the most successful commission is one that approved the rule. commissions created by executive border cannot have legislative authorities. many commissions are hampered by the way in which they are created. there are reasons why they cannot succeed. they are rarely created in times of crisis. even that there was crisis, the crisis may be necessary to get the agreement. how is this super committee different than what we have seen his courtly? it differs primarily in terms of the institutional factors i have mentioned. it as a statutory basis. it as a majority vote to report. no amendments on the floor. no filibusters from the right or left. the house rules committee cannot do a deal of the big four. of course, there are triggers written into the law. congress has once again kidd began down the road, but the gamble explode if they fail to reach an agreement. why is that important? it is the consequence of failing to agree. typically the consequences of stalemate -- some orders welcome the stalemate. this time the cost of stellate is much higher, at least we think it is. it may compel the committee not to deadlock. with all of these procedural advantages, the political factors that lead to failure are essentially still in place. finally, what are the implications of the makeup of this particular committee? first, his committee, not surprisingly, inherits the polarization we see in the house and senate. at the line that the house and members -- house and senate members doubt and ideological lines, the closest you get is the democrat in montana. that makes their charge card if the charge is to build a bipartisan coalition. it is reported to keep in mind that party leaders let -- let very little to chance in selecting their contingents. the republicans offered a third tier party leaders like tile mary. they offered big tax committee chair, you may wonder where paul ryan is. we will come back to that in a moment. why is this important? this committee will operate in continual confrontation with party leaders. the deal is immensely important to party's reputation. this is not a rogue committee. this is not some symbols, which we get all of to the side. this is not a gang of six effort. the parties had deep stakes in the outcome of this committee. it there is going to be resolution, the key question is do the parties seek compromise in their electoral interest in 2012? keep in mind what paul ryan said yesterday after he refused three times to be on the committee. "we should not have a decision where politicians reach agreement in back rooms. this is a decision beds should be brought to the american people." in other words, these are decisions for the campaign trail, not for the joint committee. where does it lead us? i suspect, just like tarp, just like the april budget agreement, this will likely be another last-minute deal. do not put the turkey in the oven to early for things given. second, it will likely be leadership endorsed. it will probably look like the other deals. it is the end against the middle. finally, the committee does not operate in a vacuum. there are many other deadlines over the next year. it is possible congress could rewrite the law the. the committee is not the last stop. >> i would recommend to the audience that they buy their christmas presents early. bill? >> thank you. talking about the size can be on the tedious side. let me try to justify it with two points. first of all, the committee needs to cut $1.50 trillion or the automatic trigger is kicked in. in contrast, the debate about the baseline is a four. idolatry in question. -- $4.50 trillion question. after that, they have a $1.50 trillion question. if you can win the baseline argument, you may be willing to say it cares about the $1.50 trillion when you already had your $4.50 trillion. i want to give a simple example of what you're so good to talk about, just the tedious part. a baseline issue is basically if you need to cut $1.50 trillion, the question is compared to what? if you compare it to a baseline with the government has no revenue and spends 50% of gdp, it is easy to come up with $1.50 trillion. but you have to have a baseline to compare it to. the budget deal has all sorts of asterisks, but it left this $4.50 trillion question completely undefined. there is no god as to the budget deal about what baseline people actually use. think about is the following way? suppose you had been eating badly for the last 10 years and you have been gaining a lot of weight. you want to lose 15 pounds. we will not go with 1.5 trillion palace. the question is compared to what? the way we usually think about it is compared to where i am right now. i want to lose 15 pounds. there is another way to think about it. i had been eating badly for 10 years. if i continue to eat badly the next 10 years, i will lose 45 pounds. i will lose 15 pounds relative to that 45 pounds over the next decade. nobody is serious about losing weight bills in a 45 pound weight increased and says they are going to lose 15 pounds relative to that. but using what the base lines would be the equivalent of increasing the deficit by $4.50 trillion and in st. i am to cut it by $1.50 trillion. that is essentially what is at stake here. that ends the non tedious portion of the top. [laughter] the standard baseline is what is called ", at walter "it does not actually current law, but it is close enough. it assumes that all tax cuts that are supposed to expire actually do expire except for a few. it assumes the alternative minimum tax will grow rapidly over time. it assumes that congress is going to make the medicare cuts it is supposed to by law. it assumes other things about military spending, discretionary spending being held constant after being adjusted for inflation. the current base line is basically the answer to the question what would happen if congress literally did nothing the next 10 years? if passed new legislation, just reported it -- we appropriated the same amount of discretionary spending each year? that is not a very realistic base line to use it you want to see where we are headed. but it is a good baseline to use if you want congress to have to recognize the cost of any changes to tax law or spending items that it and adds. it is the equivalent of saying here is my weight now, i want to lose 15 pounds relative to my weight now. that means a relative to the current law baseline. if congress does anything, it needs to start where it is a cut relative to the current law. using the current law baseline would be the equivalent of saying it define yourself or get a whole, the first thing you do is stop beating. -- stop digging. an alternative space flight has been used a lot and i feel some responsibility. we have been doing this over a decade, even back when the government was in surplus in 2001. the current policy baseline is basically the answer to the question what happens if congress acts in the next 10 years the way it has been in the past? the business as usual baseline. it has shown a large increase in deficits over time. the current policy baseline assumes the tax cuts get extended. it assumes we do not let the alternative minimum tax take of the whole system. it assumes we do not spend in -- as much in iraq and afghanistan over the next 10 years as we do now. it assumes that congress is incapable of making these medicare cuts. it is a kind of business as usual baseline. it is a good measure if you want to see what path we are on if we do not change our ways. it is the 45 pounds gaining of the next decade if we continue to eat badly. my point of the last decade has been here is the current policy baseline. if you do not want to use that as a baseline if you are cutting -- if you are trying to reduce the budget deficit. once you reduce the budget deficit, that is the equivalent of saying i need to go on a diet. i am not going to build in 45 pounds or $4.50 trillion of a great weight or increased budget deficit before i start cutting the deficit. so on the current policy based line has always been a good guide to where we are headed if we do not fix things, but it is not an excuse to not fix things. in all the committees, bulls simpson included, the obama administration, the congress -- they want to use the current policy baseline because the bills i get all these nice things. extension of the bush tax cuts -- but it is not a serious approach to solving the budget deficit because you are saying we are to cut taxes then we are going to start balancing the budget. why do you not just cut taxes by $4.50 trillion would be the obvious rejoinder to that? again, we are talking about two different baselines that are larger than the actual $1.50 trillion that progress has to cut. just to make it more complicated, it turns out that the republicans this time around what to use the current law baseline even though that means the bush tax cuts have to be paid for it they are extended. the democrats want to use the current policy baseline even though that is giving away the financing of the bush tax cuts. we can talk about the politics of that if you want, but let me sum up the bottom line. the baseline is where the action is. if you can get the fourth of idolatry and changed their, you care a lot about the $4.50 trillion in the supposed cuts. they should used car lot as the baseline. none of this means they can or cannot reach an agreement. that would depend entirely on the issues that sarah mentioned. it is important to keep your eye on the numbers when people talk about including tax increases in the deal if they are talking about doing it from the current policy baseline, that involves less revenue than sticking with the current law baseline and having their taxes in the deal. it gets very complicated. it is very orwellian. it's very tedious. but keep the weight loss example in the back of your mind. that is probably the simplest way to think about it. >> henry, what did we do wrong? [laughter] >> built used a white law story. i am going to use a medical story to start my story -- to start my comments. i cannot claim originality, but i think it is apt. a person lying on a street in process of bleeding out, he emerging all over the place -- when he bent over, you tell this person to stop smoking and eat better so that they will have a better chance for a long and healthy life. the recent i am used this example is because i think it is symptomatic of a kind of policy derangement represented by the debate now going on in this city over budgeting policy. i would like to start with half a dozen facts -- i believe they are facts. all as to where they think they leave you. obviously, the nation is in the deepest and most protracted recession we had experienced in the last 70 years. fact two, increasingly economic forecasters agree that there is no realistic prospect for a significant economic expansion any time in the near future. that leads me to factory, which is this bad news is -- factory, which is this bad news is happening in the face of the monetary authorities to be supported of economic expansion. fact four is that over the past couple of years, fiscal policy nastily, including not just federal fiscal policy, but also state and local fiscal policy, has become significantly more -- workingn verary against economic expansion during that time. the center for budget and policy priorities has a nice chart available in a handout showing that 37 of the 50 states and in the united states, including all the large states but one, have seen reductions in spending compared to levels that prevailed at the onset of the recession. the one exception, texas. texas will join this group shortly because they have budget cuts coming that are going to make them a contractionary fiscal force as well. fact five is that nearly half of the unemployed and a slightly growing fraction have been out of work for six months or more. that proportion also is a 70- year high. fact six is that standard and poor's notwithstanding, there is little or no indication in financial markets that investors are seriously concerned that the united states will default on its debt. in witness of the "current yield on tax indexed bonds with a maturity of seven years," the yield on those bonds are negative. people are paying to request -- invest in them rather than requiring a positive rate of return. i say all of this along with the fact that we do face serious long-term fiscal problems. we have been pointing this out for many years. but right now, we face an immediate problem of great seriousness. that is a dangerously slack economy. for us to be focusing now on dealing with the longer-term problems through measures that promise to aggravate the near term problem is, in my opinion, truly weird. i think it is important even as we consider how this committee is going to function, how the budget process is going to play out, that we not forget the weirdness of the priorities that are expressed in that policy. i think in this circumstance it would be truly perverse for congress not to agree to what, i anticipate, to be president to extendsire unemployment benefits again and to extend the payroll tax holiday that was enacted earlier this year as well. in my view, the current policy would be a combination of short- term stimulus, including investments in public works that we can finance at historically low interest rates together with longer-term deficit reduction enacted now, but to take effect only when the recovery is well established and unemployment has fallen to a certain target level. this is a little more than an hour. >> welcome. please, have a seat. they've given me some instructions. >> i'm hearing something in the background. are you hearing something as well? we have this going. this is better. welcome. the whole purpose for a meeting like this is for me to hear from new to get inputs and gay criticism and counsel. i am not proud of the work the senate has done. i do not think we have addressed the real issues. i think we have treated a lot the sentence that no disease. i'm taking all sorts of cold medicines. my grandson our granddaughter gimme a nice summer cold. i do not think we have a problem. most of the elected officials are interested in solving the probm. they're interested in addressing solutions to the system that ends up helping them. i know that sounds like an unfair criticism. the look of what we haven't done, if the home maneuver is there, revving cuthem, there is a big difference between freedom and a real republic. i am unhappy with what we have been unable to achieve. i been unhappy with the fact that hardly anything has gone through the senate. i am unhappy with what went through two weeks ago. less than a minute on that. the problem is not the debt limit. 're spending money we do not have. congress is lazy. [applause] it does not do the job of oversight. we have a list, may even have here if you get a chance, i would recommend you go to our website and that this. this is not a partisan attack on anybody. this is $9 trillion worth of savings. backed by the congressional office studies. office of inspector general, congressional research service. it is all foot noted. we cannot continue to dwhat we are doing. nobody is willing -- this ithe way to solve the problems. you do not have to agree. at least it is a plan that will get us out of trouble. why is that important? we wrote the book. we went through and researched every aspect of what is in that. you go on-line and it is searchable. there are cuts in the defense department but it will solve our problems. the reason that is important is our grandkids are important. i used to worry about this. i do not any more. i worry about us. the problems are that serious and that significant that we need real action and real leadership to address. it will require the same thing the bill to our country and made it great. sacrifice on the rease part. everybody will have to participate to solve the problems. we have lived the last 30 years in this country of our children and grandchildren. guess what? the credit card bill is dead. we cannot get another one to make the minimum payment. it is disappointing to see the lack of leadership coming out of washington to address the real problem. that is spending money you do not have on things you do not need. we will spend this whole time answering questions. we have some microphones around. if you raise your hand, they will find you. also get a microphone to you. here comes one right here. >> my question is what you talked about leadership. you have a gentleman and i use that term loosely holding office, the highest office of our land that lied to congress. the pposals have put in place will not be spent on people in this country illegally. one of your associates call him a liar and he was centered because of it. we have proven tax dollars are being spent on health care of illegal aliens and the president knew that whene said that in congress. lying to congress is a criminal offense. punishable by prison time. you guys let him get by with it and you have yet to impeach him for the unconstitutional behavior and laws he has enacted. [alause] >> first all impeachme proceedings have to start in the house. you may be absolutely accurate in your assessment. i am not sure. still getting an echo here. we have a problem with illegal immigration and the only way you solve it is control the border. it cannot do it any other way. want to control the border, you can sell the other situations that have come about because of the lack of that and that is not a republican or democratic problem. that is a problem and the decision to spend [unintelligible] and you need to be talking to your oklahoma residents. -- rep. they chose to make that decision. you need to make sure you are [unintelligible] i spent three and a half days on the border in march and the ory i was told by the border patrol against what was told by the management are 180 degrees apart. someone is not telling the truth about the border and i tend to side with the border patrol, not the administration. >> we need to make sure we get people in e middle. >> i want to thank you for your time tonight. i really appreciate it. i am a proud democrat. i am also a democrat who realizes that there are some good people in the republican party and you are certainly one. >> thank you. >> you have pven that by your actions, you have proven it by showing you have a heart and if you -- you care for the people even of other parties and i know that you are not in norquist fan. i have not read all 614 pages of your document. i have read the section by section outlined in summary of the savings and the highlights. i want to tell you that in my opinion this is a historic document. i do not think anything like it has been done before that i know of. and you and your staff should be proud of it and you should be commended for it. iave two questions for you. [applause] you have broken to some degree the norquist hold on the republicans in the senate. he has a stronghold on the republicans in the house. my question is, do you think there is any possibility of that getting broken in the near future or any time? my second question, what does the future hold for back in black? >>hank you. two good questions. americans for tax reform, i agree with 98% of what they said. it is like any other principal position. when you carry it to a far extreme becomes idiotic. what they have done is carry the position. the number one is -- it is foolish and does not solve our country's problems and puts one person in a position to say they are going to decide what one group is going to do in terms of following their oath of the constitution. the thing is is what we ought to be doing, no matter what party you're in, it is what is best for the country. if what that -- is best as foing the tax code so apple does not have to hide money in the caribbean in tax shelters and g who gets these wind credits, pay some taxes. the fact is, 20% of people pay 84% of the taxes. one in five pay 84% and 51% of the people pay no taxes, no security, and a medicare by the time they get their tax credit back. we need to change that. i'm going to do that. we need to solve the problems and quit worrying about what part someone is in and quit worrying about losing control. are we going to survive? let's have a fair tax cut. i would like to have a national sales tax and get rid of all this. to answer your second question, you have a great status in washington and its recognized by everybody else in the senate. what we put out in back in black is a basis of what will happen to getting our spending under control. people spent lots of hours going the extra mile past would everyone else looked up and looked at the real bas of what we're spending. we have 82 different teacher training programs run by the federal government. 82? why? we have 47 job training programs across the nine agencies. all those with the exception of three overlap with one another. what would we have 47 job- training programs? we have programs that teach people financial literacy. the last people who ought to be teaching anybody about federal -- financial literacy is the government. there is a $350 billion that we can say every year is from waste and fraud. there is $100 billion of ways. and stability in the federal government. $350 billion, that is twice what congress just dead. the fact is career politicians do not want to do the hard work and make the hard choices because every one of those programs have a constituency out there and they are afraid to stand up and tell them. we have got to be told know. we cannot continue to borrow 43 cents out of every dollar we spend. the answer is quit spending money. >> and want to congratulate the people here. thfirst town hall i went to that you gave was in an abandoned school district in broken arrow. there were 35 people there may be. it is great to see this many people interested today. i would like to make two points. i wish somebody would go back andeach the leadership in washington to speak plain english instead of all this political correctness. in the talks there was not one spending cut. people sitting around the kitchen table, thr definition of a cut means i'm going to spend less than i have been spending. that is what we expect out of washington when you tell us there is a spending cut. number two, i would like to see more support for the fair tax. that does a number of things you discussed about a national sales tax and get over all this bickering about what company gets what tax cut. thank you. [applause] >> just one short comment. what the past, what the senate and house passed is $832 billion more in discretionary spending over 10 years. just so you know. $832 billion. there is no cut. there is a $7 billion cut this ar. the authorization for we will spend on discretionary. that is made up for with increased spending. we can easily cut spending. our fellow oklahomans to a great job. go and ask. could you cut and i will? i have had them come to me. this comes from federal employees that call our office and say, did you know this is going on? what i have is this wonderful investigators -- these wonderful investigators. we go digging out. here is what happened. let's make sure we go to the center. i am looking for the mike. where are you? the thinking behind that is they're ridiculing you for your vote. they are ridiculing me and they are making fun of me. i do not like that. i have some suggestions that will save some money in our budget. i looked at our budget. the justice department, if you take their budget and divide by the number of employees comes out to $250,000 per person. they did not produce any revenue. that is the cost you are paying. the interior department is $279,000 per person if you take the budget and divide it by the number people. those are huge numbers. no company in the u. can operate when it costs that much per person. one thing we could do. i likeour idea of changing the tax system. along with that, the thinking and the assumption is it will save everyone a lot of money. the fair tax saves 110,000 employees. if implemented we would have 110,000 fewer employees in the federal government. i have experience with the internal revenue service. i am not an employee. >> most of the people here do as well. >> yes, well, my experience is that there is a number of them that are incompetent. you cannot fire them because we have a collective bargaining agreement that prevents and competent people from being fired. this a goes -- this goes across every agency. the faa, fcc, the corps of engineers, the internal revenue service, the department of state and justice. all the federal agencies have this. you cannot fire incompetent people. we need to change that. that would save a huge amount of money. >> thank you. [applause] >> we will come down into this section next. >> hello, senator. i am an avid supporter and have been to your visit to -- offe to visit you. what can we do, the people, to help you accomplish what you need to accomplish? [applause] >> that is a great question. let me stop for a second. i fail to thank tulsa community college for making this available for us tonight. [applause] let me do that. you have so much more power than you think you have. i gave a speech about.5 years ago on the senate floor. the title was, there is a rumble. there is a rumble occurring in america. you can hear it. it can hear the dissatisfaction and you can hear the problems that people are saying. what has happened is more people have become aware. the best way i know to hold us accountable is to get everyone aware. so people will not terate the incumbents and intransigence of washington. and everybody in this room has family that are not necessarily active on political events and i am not talking about campaigning. i am talking being knowledgeabl and learning what you hear from the right and left and making the decision yourself rather than taking the plum that both sis give. communicating that to your family and friends not only in the ste but outside. it is a wonderful feeling to see a guy like lon johnson come to the sete. he built a business from the ground up and left -- he does not care if he ever gets reelected. he is running to help save our country. he left the business and left the family and making the sacrifice to change things because he knew that he was unable to build that business because of the environment this country created. i think what you have to do is -- do not be timid about communicating what you believe to be in the best interest of our future as a country. i think we can achieve history. if you look at history, all republicans -- dole. we are the only republicans that have come together that is this massive mix of everybody. we have the ability to achieve history and the way to survive is get your fiscal house in order and your economy running so you can project the power and confidence that is necessary for our people to live in freedom. that is at has to happen. you ntrol it. if you dece to sit back and not do something significant, your children and grandchildren will have the impact of that. >> thank you for being here this evening, senator. i want to congrats yocongratula. my comment i until harry reid would not let you submit a bill for an up and down vote, it seems to me like you are going to be on every sunday morning broadcast for the next week for two and let the people, the american people know what that plan would save as in trillions of dollars. then the pressure will then -- would be on harry reid to give you a chance to submit your bill incorporating that. is that not possible? >> it is possible but the fact is there is a wide range of bias in the media. they are not necessarily interested in promoting the plan that has us live within our means. they're more interested in presidential campaigns now which is the most ludicrs thing. we should not even be considering. we have big problems and that is 14 months away. it does not matter whahappens. what is happening right now is over the next three to five months, it will determine to a great extent the future of -- future of everybody in this room and we ought to be accurate. we ought to be nipping at the hills of everybody in congress to make sure they're doing that kind of work. next, we will have someone on the military right here. >> i am a disabled vet and i have a problem with this article that talks about cuts or planning for the military. being an active military family, my husband, myself, and our son, part of the problem with the military is they get very little pay as it is. not only the disabled vet but also the ones that are retiring and the ones who are active military. you plan on cutting some of their benefits, and you are taking people who are already on food stamps and welfare, because they cannot make ends meet. you are making it even harder on them. >> let me give you the statistics. i appreciate your concern. nobody appreciates our military more than i do. the average military retires at 21 years. during that time, they have significant benefits. that is the fact. number two, do not take what we have said in isolation. we have said is everyone has to give. how are we going to lose our eedom? the consequences of that will be a disaster. what is the biggest thinge do? the biggest thing we do is track your prime. someone who retires for 20 years and health care for $250 a year. it has not been looked at in years. we cannot afford it. the average person is spending $1,000 a month or their employer is for health care. this is $250 a year. do not do just that, do everything. so that everybody participates. let's make sure that we keep the commitnts that we are making, not the benefits that were made as a condition of signing up. nowhere can you find the fact we made a condition. number two, let me finish. the secretary of veterans affairs signed executive order that cost you $42 billion. what he said is no science to back this up. if you served in vietnam or korea or on a ship and you have heart disease as a veteran we will call that agent orange related and we will give you money. as a physician, i can tell you there is no correlation in any scientific study. we're giving checks out to people who weighed 300 pounds and smoke three packs a daynd not care what they eat. there is $350 we can use to take care of someone who was a real veteran and we can solve the problem. what we have done is not have an appropriate look. we are -- have jt passed the bill. it is one of the best things that has happened. we can make sure that educational opportunity is greater than anybody else's. we have done all those things. it cannot look at this as one thing. you have to look it and everybody, including congress, is going to participate. >> thanks for coming to tulsa. i want to thank you for your leadership and i am proud to have u.s. our senator. -- have you as our senator. i have one recmendation. i do not know if you have heard the name gave ramsey but you should go to washington. if you have not heard his name -- >> here is our problem. people who have been successful on not willing to sacrice and go get criticid and ridiculed as a u.s. senator and that is one of the reasons we have problems. we have people -- there is nothing wrong wit career service but when you have no firm of reference in the real world, when you have not done the things that the average american has done and you are called upon to make critical judgments about our future, -- people likeave ramsey ought to run and so should a lot of people who have refused to sacrifice. >> i have one criticism. you' not on the republican presidential ticket. >> i have to find you. >> i read recently that the u.s. gives financial aid to a least three-quarters of the country in the world. some of those countries are openly hostile to the united states, the heinous. why do we continue to give money to those countries? >> a great question. let me give you detailed. there are 16 countries that own more than $10 billion worth of our debt. that were given -- we are giving foreign aid to. how do like that? 16 countries that on $10 billion. they are loading as money. we're giving the money back to them. they do not need it very bad. we're going to cut everything. here is the point. this young lady is upset with me because she thinks i am singling out military. if we are solving our problems everybody gets to participate. no exceptions. where there is waste, and has to go away. where there is fraud, we have to put people in jail. where there is abuse, we have to clean it up. for there is access we have to minimize. and then we will have a country that will be worth the sacrifices that the veterans, the people who serve -- [inaudible] let me go back to one other thing. our foreign affairs is at risk for two reasons. it is out of control on how we spend money. the best way to have great foreign affairs is to be a great economic power. if you are not an economic power, it does not matter how much mey is spent. we have to do is we have to recover and embrace what is necessary for us to grow our economy. why is it that we are at 9.2% unemployment? there is no confidence the future is there so that the capital that is sitting on the sideline will come in and create opportunity and jobs and wealth for people that are looking for jobs. so we can solve those problems. it requires leadership. it is not a republican or democrat thing. it is a lack of leadership in the house. it was there with bush and obama. where are we? wave your hand. gotcha. >> i am from oklahoma. i appreciate you being here. getting back on the military, i have sons were serving in the united states air force. i have one on his way home as we speak from afghantan. [applause] >> thank you for youservice. >> i know there has been so many who of not made a home. that is not the way we want them to make a home. i appreciate our military. not only because of my son's but my father spent 26 years in the military. brother just retired last weekend. back in the spring, my sons were told they probably would not be paid. paye was delayed -- it was delayed. these were young men with wives that are serving our country. never did i hear that senators or the president or anyone was willing to take the pay cut or even those -- [applause] or even those that have retired and those getting a monthly paycheck, not one time did i hear anyone say, we should give and not our military. that really disturbs me. i think it disturbs a lot of people. i realize, i have not read your ok. i'm just learning about some of that. maybe this is more of a statement but i think that all of those in the senate and hse and our president should step up and say, we are willing to give and take off of however many thousands of thousands they make a year and get down to where normal people having come. >> thank you for your statement. the biggest problem is why would we allow the military to become a pawn in a debate overhe future of this country? [applause] once you do that you know you do not have leadship. [applause] it is an absence of leadership. when it uses the military as a pawn instead of saying it is an exception, if you look at the constitution, the number one thing the congress is supposed to do is to defend the country. all of the rest of it, 70% of what we do looking at the constitution is probably outside of what our standards believed ever supposed to be doing. [applause] i hear your statements. it is a lack of leadership and awareness owhat is important. what is most important is when somebody sacrifices and gives of themselves. they have given that. the point is we should never allow that type of situation where they become a pawn. we had aill, you did not hear about it. the press does not want to to know about it. we had a bill that no matter what happens the military gets paid. nobody put on a press release on an. not cover it. where are we? i want to thank you for your our state. grateful we have you. to take take this wrong but i think there is a feeling across the cntry that career politicians do not listen to wes. i find it very frustrating that a letter, i cannot send an e-mail to someone own representative or senator. i cannot get a phone call not take it from area code. there must be a secret to that. being to if i want to make a or even a senator mcconnell or someone my representive. i feel like we are not being listened to. i am glad to hear you say we power than we think we have. one thing that would help with the term limits. [applause] i do not want you to tak it would love to see the power taken away from career politicians who think they are washington forever with all of the benefits they have and they never want to leave. what did you think is the chance for a term-limit bill to make it through either house? on term limits. our founders wrote, alexander hamilton believed in rotation in office. that is another word for term limits. believe why anybody would want to be in washington for a long period of time. i agree with them. until you take control, and i'm talking about people, you say, 12 years in the senate is plenty for anybody. is too much. i am feeling the where of it right now. maybe it's the cold but probably not. control and taken back, and i know you hear both the media. it is one of the bt things happened, the tea party. [applause] awareness to know the facts about what is going on your country. then when you find out, you are aghast. the report on which i forced to a year- ago, it will blow your mind on all the a year. from a of the bureaucracies. nobody looks to see if they are accomplishing anything. the likelihood until you enact constitutional amendment and you need 67 senators. only three of us the near-term lamented. long road to hoe. that limit, you do amendments. and on term limits and we are cooking. we're back in the saddle. >> my name is sarah. advocate for nursing homes and residential care facilities. cuts to medicare and medicaid, i am about protecting our elderly in the medicaid and medicare facility. to know how proses to balance the budget and still make sure our . >> that is a great question. the first question for you is you look at the constitution in the government's role to do that? [applause] is personal responsibility, not government responsibility. number three is if we're going to decided is a federal responsibility, we should be much more efficient with medicare which has $100 billion of fraud in it. some of it through nursing extended care facility. designed be inefficient. the average medicare patient in pays in $120,000 out $350,000. how long is that going to last? part a will be bankrupt. that is the hospital portion. something has to happen. a couple of things need to happen. paul ryan to call this heat said we ought to have system where people can use markets to help get the best deal they can. him is changing medicare. medicare is gonna change because cannot borrow money to keep running. have to change. do we have commitment that we sure we take care frail and infirm, yes. but we also have a commitment to kids to know -- that we do not take away their opportunities. we can do it much more efficiently and effectively. spent twice as much money on care than anybody else in except one nation. 1 1/3 out of it, one that of every $3 does not help anybody get well. it does not preve anybo from getting sick. obamacare is not the answer. [applause] my web site did with joe lieberman. bill that changes it. we make it to participate. senior citizens in this room, for the benefit you are getting from medicare part b. your grandkids are going to pay for it. was passed by republican president so the pscription not be a part of their campaign. it tells you how sick we are. the fact is it is fine to do for seniors. who is going to pay for i all we are doing is kicking the can down the road. who pay for it. what medicare part b is. cannot keep doing this. nobody can doubt my commitment done it for 25 years. thing you cannot say is doing the same thing and not go bankrupt. it's not that there is not a way but you have to take fraud out of that and some the waste. took $100 billion that is out you could do lot every year. that is only about 1/4 of it. we can solve those problems. but we cannot have any one group touch me. when we start to say, and if you are nursing homes, we cannot touch me. to touch everything. it all better but we cannot have is the say, i problem but don't you touch mine. i hear a lot. [applause] i am about 100 e-mails from oklahoma. years old. live off the social security and medicare. some of that. thank you very much. that is the spirit that built america up. that is what we need. we do not have everyone sang because a lot of people are giving. we need that spirit coming back. where are we? >> good eveng, senator. you for being here. i appreciate your service. warren buffett made a strong chiding congress f coddling the rich. he made a strong case that increasing taxes on the very harm investments and would be good for the country. what are your thoughts on these views? can money as he wants to tomorrow. [applaus if you took everybody who made to injured 50,000 and above -- not touch one-fourth of art that. 28% bigger than it was today and. have a government we cannot afford. do before we eliminate stupidity is to raise taxes on people. [applause] >> my name is william. thank you for coming to tulsa. on that note, there is a goa report that says 55% of the companies in the united states pay zero taxes. if you were in this truman had a job, would you be more taxes than those corporations? how do you propose getting that money back from the corporations that, for example oil. you mentioned on hardball during a debatehat you were open to wind and farm subsidies and ethanol. what about the billions that oil companies get in tax break stacks >> i am so glad you asked the question. i think it is great. how many of you know what the average oil and gas companies is in oklahoma and the nation? 41.5%. it is the highest of the standard and poor's 500. of all the a depreciation of all the taxes that tinges of everything, tax credits and everything else, the oil industry gets less than 8%. the tax credits they do get, they do not get tax credits, they get depreciation. here's where the lack of knowledge is in america. the oil d gas industry actual pays the same taxes without it. they just pay it later. because they are a capital- intensive business there requires -- so they can expense that. a ultimately they pay the same taxes. that is the only benefit we give. 92% of all the tax credits and deductions for energy go to wind, ethanol, thermal, the vast majority did of it does not go to the oil and gas. you see what happens? let me tell you how we solve the problem. we ought to have the lowest corporate tax rate in the world. [unintelligible] [applause] so we get rid of it. i am one of the few republicans have said if we can solve their problems here is going to have to be increased revenue. that means a smart tax system that will grow the economy a eliminate special interest favors for industry whether it is hollywood or whatever. [applause] so if you go back in the black you can see, everybody has to participate. you have all of the special things in the tax code that have been lobbied for. get rid of all of them. i do not want misinformation on energy. the biggest tax credits could to win. that is why g.e. did not pay any taxes. why should it ge not pay any taxes? i cannot understand that. i do not it think anybody can. i think you are right. we ought to be fair. but let's be truthful about what the facts are rather than because we're tired of gasping for dollars a gallon we're going to beat up on an industry that has provided us a value and several million jobs and can provide a ton more jobs if we were allowed to drill and get the resources off our own land. [cheers and applause] we are the only nation in the world's to have the amount of energy we have. it is greater than all of the combined in china, -- and saudi arabia. our government will not let us have our resources because we ha an agenda that says we cannot. that is stupid right now. [applause] we need to come back to the center because i'm not sure we treated peoplin the center fairly. >> thank you for the opportunity to speak to you. i appreciate your candor. we need more of that. i look at you as a leader regardless if i agree with you all the time. >> you are like my wife. >> i appreciate you. my question is not to get down in the weeds. i am a ceo and i have some specific policy questions i would li to talk about. tonight i want to ask, i ask you over a year ago question regarding the leadership and what was going on in congress. it only got worse. i was half-hearted the asking last year but i am serious tonight that what see happen throughout history is that society's crumble from within. that is what i'm afraid of for my own children. not for me. i have had the honor and privilege of working with david petraeus. i was part of the invasion force. we lost our daring as soldiers for a little while. the commander straighten this out and said you represent something magnificent. you represent the united states of america. you must maintain your bearing regardless of what is going on. we were with people who had good information involved in the murder of soldiers. we had to maintain our bearing. we had to make sure the mission was accomplished. we sucked it up. i do not see that in congress today. i see too much bickering and pettiness. i see them maintaining their bearing. it is not happening in congress. my message is go back to congress. tell them the people said i straightened up, get your bearings and do the right thing for the american people. we are afraid of what is going to happen if you do not do the right thing today. [applause] >> i appreciate your integrity. as we came in, there was a contract for the american dream passed out as is -- as if it were your endorsement. >> i have no idea -- >> i think everybody got one. maybe i should put it in the trash can on the way out. [applause] [unintelligible] >> we're coming right down here. >> every american between now and snowfall should read a book that was written in the 1950's by a russian immigrant called "atlus shrugged." it tells everything that is happening in our country. the big worry i have is you do not leave a dog in tehe hen house. [laughter] [applause] it did not take much precedence to realize that she did not invest in the financial industry before it bursts. it was predictedy everybody that it is coming. it was caused by ngress passing the community reinvestment act. it sat upon a malignancy in wall street or they were investingn strange derivatives that nobody had any faith in. it is still going on. we are forcing banks to lend money to people who cannot possibly pay it back. why don't we get rid of that act? it has caused all of the problems we have today. >> the community reinvestment act was the basis behind othe previous discrimination. which was real. i am not sure there is evidence of that today other than econom discrimination. especially as we find ourselves today. i don't know why we can get rid of it. i think we cpound our problems with the dodd frank bill because we did not fix a fannie mae or freddie mac. you're going to about ham -- have about 400 million more that we're going to have to pay. congress would not -- going back to the constitution. what does it say? is there anyplace to said it is congress to make sure you ha a home? no. you have congress pushing fannie mae and freddie mac. every time we get away from this document we put our future at risk. it was not perfect and it needs to be changed to one of the things i have done over the past seven years is spending time reading the federalist papers. madison and monroe when jefferson and hamilton and reading what they said. we are so far from what they thought we should be doing. it is amazing. i do not know how to answer your question other than to say you are correct. but we have to have some way to guarantee we do not read a line of districts in terms of investment. -- red line districts in terms of investment. we can prevent discrimination without being stupid. the last question and then i'm going to go eat dinner with my family. >> good evening. my name is christian and i am here on the -- on behalf of the alzheimer's association. thank you for your support in the past. i would hope you would agree that alzheimer's disease has become not only a public health crisis but an economic crisis as well to the tune of $183 billion annually. more as a baby boomers entered the medicare system. i wanted to say, thank you for supporting funding for the national institute of health but for holding the institute accountable for returning important data to us. i implore you to support the alzheimer' breakthrough act which holds people accountable to finding whatever amount it is we need to combat this terrible disease and also the hope for alzheimer's act which improves diagnosis, cure planning, and advanced measures. can we count on you? >> the answer is no, you cannot. here is my philosophy. i think we should have the best national institute of health and the world. and we do. its to have times the size it was 12 years ago. the last thing we need is special-interest groups telling the scientists where they need to go. francis collins who did the genome project is a good friend of mine. i had dinner with him a few weeks ago. he said police do not pass any more laws telling us what we have to do. let us follow the science to solve the greatest solutions. it is right. i love the advocates for all of the disease. my mother has alzheimer's. she recently died. the ms patients and the packer attic -- pancreatic cancer tients. we have so hurt the nih because all the congressmen are telling the scientists what they need to be doing. when i think we ought to do is back off and say, you are charged with taking on this new science and helping the most people to the greatest extent in the fastest way you can. we are going to let you dece what is important based on what you see as progress. [applause] so i am supportive and i am on the latest research, especially the inhibitors and other things going them to decide. some of them are and some of their e not. is, that is great. you have my support. but it is telling them what you you will do it, support that. i want to scientists to go where the path is to find it years. -- the cures. i'm going to finish out. for being here. is rewarding to see this many people. you may have heard a lot of goofy. you have an obligation to tell me where you think i am wrong. rather than get madnd walkout me an e-mail. read every e-mail the comes i my office. [applause] you will ultimately get an from me but it takes me a mails as well as be a senator. lot of time goeinto preparing the answer back for you. heard something you with, let me know. coburn.senate.gov. if you're out of state, i will take my time. represent people from other states. i represent my oath to the constitution. sometimes you will not like the get a you can guarantee it is my answer. [applause] you have been great god bless you and could night. . [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> i would say within the context of either protecting america or resilient america, we make a focus inside that for infrastructure. we need a better connection between the things that happen at general loewenberg's level. we have not yet figured out exactly how we get those two do i synchronize and complement each other as well as we should. down the road, i would expects we would do a better job, that public/private partnership across the three level of government. >> randy? >> a couple of things i would like to add. i think all of those statements that have been made have been absolutely true. but as i look forward, i think there are two things that we need to accomplish out of the public/private partnership. it has reached a certain maturation level at things like c.t. and people join those things for lots of different ares. maybe it was looked at as national interest for good corporate citizens. if i have to do business with x, i have to belong to exmp. we have now got on the the point from a preparation of response point of view, we need to start thinking of these public/private partnerships how do we expand the net people that are involved in these things to drive them down further into smaller business entities, broader participation? that's one thing. and then the second thing is how do we keep them from becoming regulatory in nature rather than being true voluntary public/private partnership based and how do we continue the to answer the question for participants of what's in it for me. until we can do those things, we're going to be kind of stuck in limbo and i think it is our biggest challenge from a public/private partnership point of view moving forward with homeland security initiatives. it is also the biggest opportunity that we have. >> when you think of cybersecurity in the public/private partnership, five years down the road? 10 years down the road, we can look at the public/private partnership as an electronic one. when you think about the technology that all of our critical infrastructures operate on, there is an extraordinary amount of technical innovation and a lot of that breeds more vulnerabilities, more threats, for exploit and there was sort of interesting piece released called enabling security in cyberspace. it is a futuristic look at how we can develop long-term with basic research and research and development electronic and internet-based, network based ecosystem that is self-aware, self-healing, self-monitoring in an automated way. it is really something to think about if we devote resources to research and get us to a point where we have a broadly distributed automated system for recognizing threats, stopping them before they happen, keeping our electronic ecosystem secure, resilient and functional. >> i would like to just comment about the fact, where are we going to be in five or 10 years? it is more of a where we are going to have to be in five or 10 years. if you look at what is happening, 420 million people cross our borders every year. 70,000 containers. in the maritime, it is looking to double by the year 2015. we are going to have to come up with a way of reducing the size of a haystack. and concentrate our efforts on what truly poses a threat. things like to trusted traveler programs. i believe are going to be absolutely essential if we are going to be able to manage this huge amount of people and things that are moving in the country. but then it also entails people stepping up and be willing to provide information, and i know, eric, you don't like to hear that, but asking for more information than we're already asking for, but that is a necessary part of the -- in my opinion, the solution down the road. what i would like to see the chamber do, and initiate, is a program along with, you see something, say something, to encourage the members of the chamber. now who travels the most in this country? the business community. that's whoo who is out there moving around the country. if we can get you to initiate a program, to encourage the people in your companies who are out there traveling, to join these trusted traveler programs, sign up for global sbrirks sign up for other programs that has got to facilitate moving them more quickly through and going back to the c.p. path issue, it is all about what are the benefits going to be? what is a tier 3 company going to get if they acquire tier 3 c.t. path capabilities. the benefit is it helps you. it helps your employees. it helps the poor men and women out there on the front lines trying to separate the good from the bad potentially, so maybe the chamber could, along with, if you see something, say something, encourage your flows join these programs and maybe' -- employees to join these programs and maybe even pay a few bucks for them to do that as well. i know that is asking of some people a little bit too much but i would like to see something like that. >> synchronize and compromise, i would add operationalize. when we activate our state of emergency operation center for any hazard, it comes into it and engages with us. i don't want to push information to you and have you wondering what i know. whatever i know in the state of emergency operations center, i want you to know. you're wac. be part of your team. we have a a section that deals with our business partners. we participate in tabletop discussions. we'll contribute whatever we can as we do that. i think it is healthy to have members of the business community observe and participate to the extent there is interest and resources to do that. so i think we need to operationalize all of these partnerships so that they really become trusted, you know trusting relationships. >> we need to get more of the states doing that, general, if i may. washington state is sorts of a leader in that area. we need to get more of the states to have a private seb sector seat in their infusion center. >> it is seat. not a seed. >> one of the things the general points out. it is building a more agile way of having that relationship supported in a period of time when there isn't something happening that requires you to take your precious time and focus it on this. obviously everybody is focused on it post-event. but the period between hurricanes or some events how do we keep those relationships going? we have got to find a better way that is less occupying of people's times to sustain them. >> we talk about public/private partnership and i really want to make this real. what we mean by that. i think randy mullet has a great example from conway, the terrorist plot that was foiled in texas. do you want to give people a flavor of what that was like? >> what they are not going give you is a lot of details about what is going on because the case is still being tried. also i'm not going to give you a whole lot of details about -- i'm going to put my spook hat on today so that everybody knows that i won't share either. i'll share as much as i can. early on, conway was involved with an old program at t.a.s. called highway watch. we helped develop that program and trained thousands of truck drivers across the country. in fact, our whole workforce was trained under highway watch. that was very early in the process, but since then, through our corporate security and risk management and our recovery efforts, pandemic efforts, all of these things have blend into an all hazards-type approach to our training. it has involved not as simple as see something, say something, but how do you recognize anomalies in the system? what things should make you want to push the button, raise your hand, whatever you call it and move up through our escalation plan? once our corporate security gets a hold of it then it is vetsed a little bit more and -- vetted a little bit more and we work very closely with both local and federal law enforcement to investigate these things. for those of you that don't know what anne is talking about, a shipment came through our system that we discovered down in austin, texas, addressed -- it was a chemical that shouldn't be moved into a private residence, those kind of things. we were able to report that to the right authorities. it moved up the ladder and ultimately that was the individual who was alleged to have had targeted former president bush's home and those sorts of things. we felt very proud that our system worked but that was a -- the result, much like the homeland security efforts are at all businesses and the public space. years and years of evolution and moving to a new norm. i think that is a great lesson to learn that while a lot of things that have to do with terrorism are strictly based on terrorism and don't interoperate with safety. these things are not totally unrelated. from a corporate point of view, when it comes to risk management, business continuity plans, employment training, those sorts of things, they really are complementry. if done right, it can become part of your culture where it is embedded in your system. and through annual training, reminders, encouragement, we find that we do get involved with a lot in these kinds of things that all are care related. thanks for bringing that up. >> do you want to talk about the private sector speed of the nrcc and how that busy been maturing? >> it goes to where we need to be in five years. we finally got smart enough to do one thing and that is just to bring the private sector in not just for exercises and meetings. we have created a position that rotates every 90 days where a member of the private sector works on our team in our operations center behind the iron wall, sees everything i see. is welcome at all of the meetings and gives us a real life gun check. we started last november. followed by doug selby from big lots. if you don't know about the public side and the private side, most think they are synonymous terms. then we have brookfield propertieses. that was pretty cool. everyone said what is brookfield properties? getting to answer the questions we were able to educate folks about the role of property management firms. mark sacks is here. we have verizon. joel from verizon just started his time. the point of the program is to -- i'm not a fan of platitudes and you hear about the government being transparent. i think we're proving it and you can call any of them or their companies. talk to mark and see the investment that verizon sees in it. if nothing else, we learned from them and we learn with each new rotation and they learn from us. they get to go back to their companies understanding the challenges that the public side has. >> thanks. can you talk about immigration, the recommendations from the 9/11 commission? were there recommendations that have not yet been implement and that you think should be and we'll open it up, the role of technology going forward in immigration and other programs? >> there were a couple of key recommendations. one is -- that i have talked about and the other is overlooked. regular consequences for immigration violation. why we have such a sizable legal immigration population because people who do overstay their visas don't fear consequences because there often aren't unless they are caught for some other purpose or if someone works here illegally, there often are not consequences for that. so he the gets at this overstay question. and a couple of ways that technology can help is one, the systems, while we have come a long way in terms of sharing information and trying to break down the stove databases and along state departments, i.c.s., etc., d.o.j., there is still a ways to go. ideally where we want to get to is for all of these agencies across these departments including state and local lauferts, to be able to see the same information across the agencies, particularly realtime immigration status because that determines and helps make the decision for what this person is either applying for, if they are eligible for that next visa, if they are admissible into the country, if they are deportable. so to do that, we need to continue to connect these databases so that -- across the board they have the same view. another aspect to it is agencies need to know who they are dealing with. they need to have trusted identities of the individuals. there is still quite a bit of identity fraud, identity theft that is increasing in the cyberworld. and there is actually a promising public effort going on under what is known as the national strategy for trusted identities in cyberspace. this came about because of -- as we sign on -- online more and more to do different transactions, whether it is to set up a bank account, to ask for a movie on netflix, etc., having to manage more and more passwords across all of these commercial entities, people tend not to manage them very well and use the same password over and over again which leads to identity theft and commercial fraud, etc. in addition to improving commercial transactions and decreasing the possibility of identity fraud, there are real benefits on the government side including immigration from this idea. if the government had trusted -- trust in the identities of people who were applying for immigration benefit, visas, etc., then the prospect of fraud goes down and a lot more integrity comes to the system. ideally, the government, these agencies could get out of the business of having to develop or be in the identity business. >> thank you. >> one last question before we open it up to the audience. 10 years later, are we focused on the right things? are we focused on the right problems? intent a lot of time on armies and other aspects. what are we missing? what should we be focusing on? >> well, i can tell you that we have focused a great deal of energy on aviation. we focused a great deal of energy on maritime. but one of the great vulnerabilities that still remains is general aviation. we can track and regulate some of the commercial but if you think about some of the ave -- some of the aircraft that are coming across the border that we really don't know that much about, and another area that i think we need to be focusing on is a u.s.s. type of situation. with you imagine the havoc that would cause if a tanker were attacked by a small vessel at the port of l.a. and sunk it in that harbor? it would be devastating. so we have to focus -- i still believe that there is a great deal of interest on the part of the -- our adversaries out there in the aviation, but i think we're going to see more and more of this sort of biotechnique type of terrorism where they are picking smaller more strategic targets to go after that is not quite as operationly challenged. so the general aviation and the small boat strategies i think are areas that we are just -- we're just not up to speed on. >> i think we're hitting many of the right topics. i'll defer others to those. there is an element you can add. if it is a public/private problem then there should be a public/private solution. i recently got back to san francisco for the securities initiatives conference. two-day practice of public/private sessions and they were 95% in the public sector. that's the wrong answer. when we develop policies on the government side we need to bring the private sector in on the ground floor. the other, not the 11th hour, give them the -- you can give an opinion at the last second. then the other process i think needs to be changed is what you referenced. washington is one of 17 states. one size doesn't fit all. only one of 17 states has a former public/private partnership i would argue there is a business case for every business state and territory to have a public/private territory. until i can call sally in new mexico and joe in nanch then there is a problem and topics won't be addressed. >> back in 1996, 1997, if you want, the issue was -- that's what the president's commission was about. coming out of noinl -- 911. we brought cyberback up to the issue. i think it is important to recognize the cyclical nature in which we will deal with these things in response to the urgency of the public policy issue or some event that nearly happened or happened. over the course of the next 10 years werks have to make sure we balance out where we focus because the risk exists across that spectrum. we're a little bit more calm about a hurricane katrina now. another one will happen at some point and we'll see the same cycle. we have to accept that but we have to keep the underlying attention to make sure that we can deal with the full spectrum of the issues. >> so the con stheapt sometimes including i misinterpreted it when i first heard it, going forward, the idea of resilience. we prevent, prepare, respond, recover. it is a new term. we now have resilience. i thought it was because english is my second language but i was having a hard time with the word. as we work on that, clearly if you really understand resilience, i was talking to mark a little earlier, it does have to do with the way you design the building and the systems to withstand and then to take the hit and then to get back. general loewenberg mentioned getting the sector up and running. we have not talked about taxes. it is a relief. what you want is the private sector paying taxes again so that we can keep the country going. it is a simplistic sort of thing but we want to be able to be -- have that resilience, the ability to fwoned a certain degree opposed to not break when there is a very strong wind and to be able to get back up and start working and paying tax and going about our lives. >> general? >> i think we need to focus on the evolving nature of the threat. a threats that can -- in the next 10 years is a resill wall of the threat that confronted us 10 years ago but is dramatically different in many respects. we need to have a national dialogue that identify what is the basic capacity or capabilities we need in this country to address the evolving threats and then focus on how we assure consistent capabilities across the nation to respond to those. we have taken kind of a fractured approach over the past 10 years in large part, if i had my christmas list, i would have a thoughtful piece to encourage congress to organize this committee structure so there would be focus on homeland securities. instead of the 20-plus committees in the house. [applause] beyond that, if there are certain capabilities that are necessary for social security and for our business community security in every state and territory, then that ought to be a national undertaking to do that. i don't think we have really come to grips with that yet. we go back to our communications, information sharing, etc., etc.. the signer domain is going loom ever larger in the next 10 years as a point of vulnerability for every physical action and undertaking anywhere in the country if you can prevent oil from flowing or petroleum from flowing anywhere on demand then you don't have to use kinetic force and we need to continue to think big. we need to be able to respond to chemical biological and raid logical and nuclear events in the magnitude most of us don't want to think about but are literally in the capability of what i have learned to refer to as stray dogs. the looming threat is not a lone wolf from a pack. it is the stray dogs and the stray dogs are near united states. what used to be only the ability of a nation state to release in terms of catastrophic death and destruction can now be by a single individual acting alone. we need to focus on medical surge capacity which is one thing all officials identify as sorely lacking. it has not been addressed since then. as the threat looms and the consequence grow ever larger then our inability to respond to anything other than a chain reaction automobile collision at our teshiary care centers, it really is a matter of life and death for all of us. >> a couple of things. i agree entirely we need to watch how the threat is evolving and be able to change with that. so often, the way our departments are structured, the way we think in a bureaucratic way, the way we think in a private sector, we're still working on things that have happened in the past. a cowl of examples i'll use are the agency announce the going to promulgate rules on ammonium nitrate. that is what timny mcveigh used in the oklahoma city bombing. we have been working for years on a transportation worker identification credential. we talked about inpop ra bill. it is a huge expense for the privets sector. most of it is brought about by agency parochialism. we have a i dentification credential. we have an h.m.e. we have fast or -- to be able to cross the canadian border. ve a badge to be able to get into airports. all of those are based on the same security threat analysis and background checks yet the agencies won't give that up. so we have those kinds of things. we talked a lot about the most important thing is to allow the private sector to get back up and running. i told you about why my company sent me to washington. it was fear of what the government was going to do to our business model. i would say that when we start talking about our company response and recovery plans, the biggest unknown that we still have is what is government going to? and as we continue to do top-off exercises, we are reminded that we're going to shut down the border, we're going to close -- do this, that and the other thing, we're learning from that. moving forward, i think that is the single biggest hurdle that we have to deal with. >> a couple of things. one is the northern border. most of the attention has been on the southern border. understandably so right now. mexican drug war. but in terms of just listening to the republican debate last week, they talked how do you secure the borders. all they talked about is the southern border and the southern states. no mention of the northern border. our enemies are smarter than that. secondly, interior enforcement. we cannot seal the borders, so from a risk management perspective, you have got to deal with people who either sneak through or fly in with a visa and then overstay. so it gets out that recommendation by the 911 commission again of routine consequences for violations. most immigration bills, one of the first items in there is more border patrol agents, while that is important and needed, there needs to be more focus on interior enforcement so there are those routine consequences and we remove some of the hay to expose the needle. >> thank you. we're just about out of time here, i'm afraid. first of all, i want to thank you all. we could be here all day. great expertise. you can see that it is very interesting. a lot of folks that were formerly at d.h.s. or the private sector and how this turns around. i think that cross pollination of ideas is actually very helpful to protecting the homeland. i just want to personally nk-thank you for taking the time to be with us and sharing your thoughts . thank you very much. [applause] we -- i'll just ask you to just keep your seats here and we're going to have a wrap up from governor ridge at this moment. thank you. >> you know, oftentimes during my tenure as either assistant to president for homeland security or secretary, people ask me how do you sleep at night? and my response is i sleep very well. i just don't sleep much. one of the reasons i slept very well is because i knew that people represented the quality and commitment in the passion and the vision represented by the panel were going to work every day to make america more secure. i knew because i was on the inside, how committed these individuals were and their teams and their co-workers were from september 12 on. so i do want to pay public recognition to the panelists for their public service and the group of men and women that they represent in the homeland security family. i want to thank our sponsors, conway and c.s.e. we thank you very much. it has been a very, very important dialogue and conversation. i want to just share with you a couple of final thoughts. information sharing is still at the heart of how you combat terrorism. we have made a lot of progress. we do a pretty good job. it is not good enough, in my judgment. we have moved from a culture of need to know to a culture of need to share. we're part of the way there. the only way i believe we get there is to understand a couple of things that the panelists have alluded to either directly or indirectly. information is only valuable if it is shared. you keep it to yourself then you yourself are limited to using it. if shs shared there might be a whole bunch of other folks out there that could use it and it adds value you can keep your communities more secure. the other thing that is absolutely essential is trust. there is still this credible notion that i better not share because it is wikileaks all over again. i'm going to tell you, that is a potential. if it occurs then we have got to throw the book at them, but if you can't trust americans to secure america, who else can you trust? you can't trust the big city mayor and the big city police chief. you can't trust the vice president of security in this company or that company then we are -- we are a problem. so i think one of the challenges going forward is recognizing we change the culture from need to know to need to share, but we need to share more and we need to be more trusting. i loved the conversation about private sector engagement. we talked a lot about partnerships. only the thing i can say from my perspective is it can't be ad hoc. you can't just knock on the private sector's door right before an incident occur or rights after it occurs, you have got to be there long before. you have to be involved in the planning and the policy development and the training and the execution. now the best example i think right now is home cybersecurity legislation. to the department's credit, randy's credit, who came up here and talked before, the resources available in the infrastructure necessary to protect and frappingly, the government's infrastructure is owned by the private sector, so if you want to secure the country's cyberand digital assets, you had better involve the private sector not in an ad hoc way. i appreciate fema's and secretary napolitano's continued message of outreach. you need the private sector involved. everybody alluded to the employees. you talked about the impact of some of these -- the psychology. a lot of folks talked about the psychology of getting people in the mind-set. see something, say something. it is a bit more than that. i reminded that we wanted people to have ready kit. reab that duct tape? i remember those stories well. i wanted color-coded duct tape but i just coulden get it in. going forward, i think everyone hallucinated their concerns. but you heard what they said. they are all manageable. i had a budget secretary who said when you walked into his office, nothing stimulates the imagination like a budget cut. think about. do you think there is an agency in government today that could not get along with one or two or -- a little bit less, maybe not. maybe now is the time given the economic restraints in this country where we need thoughtful leadership to set priorities and find ways to find nesm find ways to build partnerships with the public sector to deal with those priorities. it can be done. i think this has been a very enlightening panel. i want to thank you for participates. i thought the panelists deserve an extra round of applause. they did an exceptional job. thanks, ann. [applause] >> in a few moments, the airline pilotings association hosts the forum on aviation security. "washington journal" is live at 7:00 eastern. we'll be joined by mitch daniels and have segments of infrastructure spending and the f.b.i.'s role on combating cyberthreats and fraud. several live events to tell you about today here on c-span. the national business group on health holds a news conference to discuss a survey of employer health care benefit costs. that's at 10:00 a.m. eastern. at 12:30 p.m., a forum on how shifts in political demographics may affect democrats and republicans in the next election. that is hosted by the american enterprise institute and the gal up organization holds a look at the american education system at 3:00 p.m. eastern. the airline pilots association annual safety forum yesterday included a discussion of aviation security. panelists include john pistole, head of the security administration. this is a little less than an hour nafissatou diallo. -- han hour and a half. congratulations to all the member who is received awards during their individual breakout sessions monday and tuesday this week. would you please stand to be recognized? we're proud to have you on our team. [applause] we now begin the afternoon session by focusing on the very important task of keeping our aviation system safe. like safety, security is all about eliminating or mitigating risks. the question is how do you continually improve the system when the threat is often difficult to identify and resources are getting scarce? discussing that now will be an all-star panel including captain moak and our moderator, the first vice president, captain sean cassidy of skeaian airlines. sean? >> good afternoon and welcome. i'm captain sean cassidy. the first vice president and as jay said a pilot for alaska airlines. we're pleased and honored today to be joined by the chief executives of the transportation security administration, alpa. and vice president of security and facilitation airports council north america who'll discuss the current status of aviation security and many of its aspects to include the use and intelligence of identifying risks, and identifying risk mitigation strategies. the subject is of great interest because after the event of 9/11 showed us it is empertive to stay one step ahead -- imperative to stay one step ahead of oural adversaries. damaging and destroying aircraft and assaultings passengers and aviation employees. in view of the terrorist attacks perpetuated by al qaeda on 9/11, the foiled shoe bomb attack by richard reid and the more recent attack to initiate an explosion onboard northwest airlines flight 253 on christmas day 2009, it is clear aviation need a target and why aviation security is high on the list of priorities for governments and the international aviation community. let's briefly preview pre9/11 aviation benchmarks. 1968-1973 marked the peak of hijackings, mostly to cuba. in that time, the u.s. department of transportation estimated that 364 highings occurred worldwide. most were political or financial in nature. our response strategy was one or accommodation more than confrontation. in the early 1970's, the government required the screening of passengers and property to make sure no unlawful or dangerous weapons were carried onboard our aircraft. from 1973-2001, the security system was pred dated on preventing acts of interference. its limitations were clearly demonstrated on 9/11. that brings us to the post 9-11 era. in congressional testimony, two wooks after the 9/11 attacks, the then acting f.a. deputy administrator said "the nature of the threat facing america has changed. what we faced on september 11 was a new phenomenon. hijackers taking over commercial flights for the sole purpose of turning them into human-guided terrorist bomb s of massive, explosive power." the fundamentals have changed. in november of 2001, congress passed the aviation and transportation security act. it established transportation security administration and charts the agency with responsibility for the security of all modes of transportation. the government's response to the new category of threat was understandable as it attempted to counter a repeat of the 9/11-type attack. all passengers were subject to the same airport screening techniques. an elderly disabled grandparent or a 5-year-old child o or a congressman. the process was rigid and inflexible. in an effort to better harness intelligence, the u.s. government approved a more sophisticated version of the computer-assisted passenger pre screening system. that program was replaced and then a variety of public and private information sources to establish a traveler's credentials and trust worthiness. it was abandoned ultimately to be replaced my the secure flight program. regarding use of intelligence in response to the northwest airlines 253 incident, the committee on intelligence offered some conclusions in its may 18, 2010 report. noticeably, the individual is not placed on the government's terrorist screening dats base, no-fly list. the state department should have but dd not revoke his visa. intelligence reports were not distributed within the c.i.a. subsequently, in december, 2010, d.h.s. a i nounsed that all passengers on flights bound for the united states are now being checked on a government watch list under the implementation of the secure flight program. previously airlines were responsible for checking passenger names against watch lists. a seemingly equal application at airport checkpoints, foreign nationals were allowed to board aircrafts which maze positive identification impossible. a man donned a mask that made him appear to be much older and he was able to board a a flight from hong kong to b.c. the potential for defeating a system that relies on physical technology. with a vastness in screening technology, we have seen the x-ray machine replaced with the more sophisticated c.t. scanner. it uses software anomalies identification systems. it can identify small automatics of explosive residue. the technology has become oppressive lents at airports and -- has become prevalent at airports. we're witnessing an increased use of human intervention through behavioral pattern recognition programs such as screening passengers through observation techniques used now at boston logan international airport 3789 it was also -- since that time, public awareness and support for this concept has been raised globally as evidence for subject matter exports. a risk-based or threat-based security system. long before the release over the paper, government and aviation experts undertook efforts to implement. this program was ultimately approved and implemented by t.s.a. after a number of years, it has evolved into a joint program between alpa and e.p.a. it began last weekend at o'hare international airport. it was there when the system first rolled out. there is a program of alternative screening. better resources at ascertaining and confirming valid threats. one facet of a risk-based screening system. in summary, aviation security screening measures have seen limited success in differentiating between those who pose a legitimate threat to aviation and those who do not. with that, i believe i have offered enough food for thought on this complicated, important topic. now i would like to introduce the members of this distinguished panel. lee moak. john pistole, administrator, transportation security administration. to my left, nick and to his left, chris bidwell. on a sidenote, chris bidwell is filling in for mr. principato who was not able to join us due to a family emergency. he joined in october, 2008, and is responsible for leading the association's effort on airport security, facilitation and activities. he monitors domestic and international aviation, regulatory actions and programs impacting security and facilitation at north american airports. we're very pleased to have chris here with us today. that concludes my opening comments as far as as what the rules of engagement are for today. we're going to give each of the panelists a few minutes to offer some opening comments and observations. then i have some prepared questions that we have been working on in collaboration with many of our security professionals and then probably about the last 15 minute or so, we're going to have audience participation in which questions were submitted ahead of time to some of our staff members in the back and then they will be submitted to me to pose to panelists. with that, chris bidwell to start off. >> thanks very much, captain cassidy, i would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation to alpa for inviting me to speak today at this event. over the years i've had the privilege to work very closely with captain moak, captain cassidy, mike fredericks. i can't list everybody because there are many other alpa representatives. i can say that alpa continues to be a great partner to airports and t.s.a. to support you on aviation security initiatives. i also appreciate the opportunity to speak on such a distinguished panel. unfortunately, as the captain mentioned, president greg principato cannot be here today as he had a family emergency. being an avid sports fan, i'm sure he would have likely opened with a baseball witicism. it is a pinch hitter, i will tell you i will do at least well as my home team, the kansas city royals. today i want to provide you with an overview of post 9/11 -- discussing the policies, procedures, technologies that have significantly shaped and contributed to the security enhancement of the system that we have today. security happens at airports and for that reason, it is essential for d.h.s. and t.s.a. to continue to coordinate with ancients onsecurity initiatives. just this morning, secretary napolitano speaking on the topic of homeland security since 9/11 looking back, back forward, commented that the role of the private sector is important and that security is a shared responsibility. and airport council international north america agrees and we recently met with the secretary to discuss ways commn which airports and other industry representatives can work together with t.h.s. and t.s.a. to discuss fufert enhancing aviation security -- further enhancing aviation security. leveling intelligence information and data. along those lines, the timely sharing of intelligence information is critical and this is evidenced by the -- a significant amount of data and intelligence of our nation that is available can and should be used to effectively harness and really focus our limited aviation security resources and, you know, through collaborative relationships, working in a classified setting, there is the upon potential for t.s.a. airplanes, airlines, alpa to enhance security while keeping in mind the need to balance that with customer service and fort worth si. in addition -- initiate si. -- there ought to be an initiative to review processes and procedures out there. there has been discussion about an orange-level review. we built on our strategic partnership with t.s.a. to launch what we call an in-depth security review. through that process we work with our members, t.s.a. and other industry associations to take a look at security measures, all current measures, some predated 9/11 and identify those that are out moded, need clarification or just need to be thrown out completely. and although security measures through the ideas have been rescinded, they were no longer necessary and this really allowed limited resources to be redirected to bolster other areas. in short, this is the essence of a risk-based program or initiative. it is worth saying many airports go above and beyond t.s.a. security requirements. they have installed various intrusion detective systems, closed circuit televisions and provided security awareness training to employees. many of these airport security enhancements were implemented absent a mandate to do so and had the additional benefit of not only enhancing security, but also improving efficiency. so to the core of the discussion today, t.s.a.'s security initiatives are in accordance with a key recommendation for focusing on people rather than things and this helps to preserve our limited resources. from a practical perspective, it harnesses available data to soy as an indicator to guide the application of -- serve as an indicator to guide the screening of resource. it should be and will be under these programs reserved and applied to individuals, items and cargo about which the least is known. a.c.i. support rs the initiatives and looks forward with working with the industry and our partners to rule out the noncrew member program and the nontraveler program. these programs have the potential to increase security and fort worth si of the current system while -- and top $1 billion annually. every part of the aviation industry plays a critical role in contributing to security. a.c.i. recognizes the many security initiatives advanced by alpa. we look forward to continuing to work with our industry and government colleagues in support of our shared goal of providing efficient and effective security. thank you. i look forward to the questions. >> thank you, chris. one note, too. while we're going through this panel and you're seeing the questions addressed an not answered, if you would like to ask quea, please feel free to jot them down. we'll have an opportunity to collect those questions. >> thank you. thank you, lee. and alpa for the opportunity to be here. a.t.a. appreciates it. this is a critical issue. on september 11, 2001, the terrorists were not attacking the airlines. they were looking for the most potent way to disrupt the u.s. economy and the worldwide economy. they thought it out pretty well. airlines are really the physical internet and aviation drives the worldwide economy as well as the u.s. economy. a.t.a.'s priorities here are pretty simple. we want a risk-based tridges-driven approach to security that enhances overall safety and security, makes the screening process better and quicker for passengers and also helps to facilitate the movement of good worldwide. that's why we're pleased to partner with alpa on the known crew member program. it is off to a good start. we're looking forward to seeing that program expanded to others. we also think it is the exact right kind of a approach. i commend t.s.a. for working with us on it. it takes available information and people who are less risk or no risk and moves them through the system, which is going to help everybody else along the way in the process. that's why we too look forward and support the known traveler program and look forward to a known cargo program. i would just like to take the opportunity before saying i'm willing to move on to questions after the others. administrator pistole is leading the right approach to secure based on solid intelligence and data sharing. smidge that is very much needed and can -- something that is very much needed and can very much help the process. thank you. >> all right. hey, thanks. thanks for the panel. thanks for everybody showing up. it is kind of a unique thing for me to be on a panel with captain cassidy monitoring it. usually it might be the other way around. as we approach the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, i think we were all shocked a little bit and we were fortunate in the event that occurred on christmas day, 2009, with the underwear bomber, with his attack on northwest airlines 253 and then following on what occurred in october, 2010, with the printer cartridge attacks on the federal express and u.p.s. all cargo aircraft provided a reminder that there is a determined, adaptive adversary that remains focused on attacking civil aviation and that we must be vigilant. we must continues to work together. that we mugs not let our guard down. it goes -- must not let our guard down. it goes without saying that i agree with everyone on the panel that civil aviation is a critical component of the nation's infrastructure and the global economy. piles have a vested interest -- pilots have a vested interest in security. in the ultimate command of the aircraft and the responsibility for the lives of everyone onboard. once we're airborne, problems are sealed in. we just can't pull over to the curb. so it is important that working together we combat those problems before they occur once we're in the air.

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