Transcripts For CSPAN Washington This Week 20120407

the this for a little over two years. somebody comes up and says, why do you depress me so much? i say i am just the messenger. i intend to be a better -- a better messenger this time. i am hoping the rest of this panel will be more optimistic than i just was. it is a very veteran view on this stage. next to me here is joyce chang from jp morgan, and here is vincent reinhart. last time he came to speak here he managed to invoke "rebel without a cause." you better not let us down. we want the follow up. just a couple of housekeeping points. remember to turn things that go "bleep" off. i think we have c-span here so we care a lot about the sound system today. this is on the record. keep that in mind. let's start with the eurozone. it is still the most turbulent part of the global economy. they seem to have stabilized things. we had the announcement of a new firewall agreement. are we out of the acute phase of this crisis in europe? >> the acute phase of the crisis that i would describe as liquidity, i think we are out. but the chronic phase which is the economic adjustment, we are embarking on that a very long road. we are forecasting a recession of 1.5% contraction in the economy this quarter. if you look at the fire wall, that is not what will move the market. ltro moved the market. if you look at where european central bank balance sheet is as a balance sheet -- with gdp, it is in line with japan. the systemic liquidity issues have been addressed through ltro, not the fire wall or other actions. but the chronic painful adjustment -- take a look at spain. 23% unemployment. the chronic phase is going to extend for a long time. the debt-burdened -- the public sector debt burden increase by 23 percentage points. >> since we have three countries in europe so far that have had formal support programs, how long before spain gets one, too. >> that depends on the willingness of leaders of the rich countries to continue to send resources to keep the enterprise on going. i worry about the chronic aspect. we have a continent in which a large number of countries will be shrinking as part of fiscal consolidation. the core rich countries expect to have export-led growth. it is not obvious to me who they will be selling to. if we get past the funding stage, we do believe the rule will appreciate and it will not be selling to the rest of the world either. -- the euro will appreciate. the chronic aspect of it is going to be, what do people see the benefit of keeping the exercise on going? back to the immediate question, it is an exercise program the imf used to do in the 1960's. what do they have to roll over, how much can the contract? the answer is it will -- it depends on the market aspect how wide it spreads. >> there are crunching of the fiscal deficit every time they do that. they drive more people out of work. then they have a worse deficit. >> think about the death ratio, on the bottom is the real cost of borrowing and real growth. when you try to consolidate you do not do anything good to real growth. you often make the sustainability problem even worse. the only moving part there is the real cost of borrowing. what we are seeing is increasingly they will use their domestic financial institutions as the repository of the debt they cannot sell. in some sense, the answer to your question is, how much more room is there to impose on the european financial system before semi forced ownership in countries. >> even that would not solve the risk problem. greece on the other hand is a great story. it is completely in compliance with their program. that is because the program has only been there for 10 minutes. >> i think you highlight the important question. i agree with the way they characterized as with the ltros, the fact that the ecb is willing to use their balance sheet that way. i ultimately it depends on greece and particular being an agreement with the europeans for continued funding. there is a fundamental issue of the greeks have to make a commitment that the rest of europe is willing to fund. they do not have a surplus at this point. as long as that is the case you run the risk that if the question breaks down, we are going to be back in a bore key phase. we have a greek election coming up and that will be difficult. there is the rest will go back to a world where you see the potential of a breakdown and greece ability to stay in the eurozone becomes an issue. i very much agree we are in a different world. one where growth issues are the predominant ones. detail risks are very much there. we still have, how will we deal with portugal? you look at the numbers on that and one can raise questions on that. then all of the broader financial questions are on the table. >> the portuguese spanish integration -- >> those are all complicating factors. those things can make the ecb's problem worse. i think we are in a different phase and things are going better. detail risks are out there. >> would -- the tale at risks are out there. >> you have one camp that is doom and gloom, and an optimistic camp. their thesis is muddle through. if you only can put models through as optimistic scenario, if you muddle along a tight rope, you will wind up falling off. >> i think it is inherently a risky path. while one can imagining working in some sense, it does not take large deviations to put you over the edge. i think that is the problem that people in markets have to face. the europeans have successfully managed to walk that so far. each time we have come close to the edge, we came very close to a destructive breakup. people kind of pulled back. i think there is a very strong incentive for the system to continue to manage in that way. it is difficult. it is dangerous for the system to be on edge. i think it is a drag on global growth in the sense that everybody looks at downside risk in europe as something you have to filter in. that affects your decisions. i think at the moment one of the reasons things are looking better in the united states is the downside risk we were facing last fall with the imminent crisis in europe has faded a bit. that is part of what has gone people more optimistic. i think it is an important aspect of how you look at a going forward. >> three years from now, will there be 70 members of the eurozone, 16 or fewer? >> i think fewer. -- 17 members of the eurozone or fewer. >> i think there will be the same. >> fewer. >> let's talk about the united states. you have been arguing in the month or two before that the chances of qe3 were high. heavy changed your mind? >> certainly. -- have you changed your mind? you have to respond to what they say. they are an open and transparent fed and they're telling you something that matters. we were thinking there would be a 2% or 3% chance in the first half. we have a forecast where the economy grows at trend. we have been above trend and we come back to trend, that is the second part. the third part is there is an election coming and they would not to want to stamp act during the campaign season. what the fed told us was that policy makers would be willing to act if there was evidence of a cooling in economic growth. they are not in the mode to buy insurance in advance of that. our forecast is one out of three chance the want to buy insurance, one out of three chance that given our forecast of growth they have enough reason to act. we're down to one of three now. >> are they making a mistake? we still have an economy operating way below capacity. your perk -- your projection is inflation is leveling off. you have a low capacity. it is not just politics. >> they admit there is a lot of resource slack. they assert that the temporary increase and inflation -- the increase and inflation is only temporary. expectations are well anchored. they are short of both of their goals. the real risk is a two out of three chance they do not act. in that case it is possible it was just a growth spurt, we will see the economy come back to trend, and it will be through july or august when the come to appreciate that and be hesitant to act immediately in the heat of the election season. i think it could prove to be a mistake. in 2010 they waited probably too long to nurture the green shoots. the only mark on qe2 in november. it started to accumulate as early as spring. >> i want to come to joyce for the international aspect of this monetary stunt in the u.s. part of this is the discrepancy between the employment data which has been fairly strong and gdp data has been less strong. how do you see that conundrum? >> that is an important aspect of how you look -- the chairman stresses and his statements, and that is part of what the fed is struggling with. when you look at it over the past four quarters you have gdp growing 1.5%. you have had the unemployment rate coming down a full percentage point. the fed has been clear they do not expect that to continue. what has driven that is two things. it is the combination of relatively low productivity growth and labor participation.a combination of low productivity growth and an exit of the labor force. the fed has argued that those trends are not likely to continue. consequently, i think the pace of improvement in labor market is likely to slow. i think the other problem they have is financial conditions. you saw in the way the market reacted to the minutes yesterday essentially there conundrum, if you like, that if they make it clear that they are not going to do qe, there is a chance that rates will rise, according spreads will fall, and credit spreads will widen, and there will in some sense engender a tightening of financial conditions that they do not want. one of the things all the policy leaders have been pretty clear on is that they believe at this moment we need to have continued very accommodative policies, and the market's own reaction to what they do can create a situation we do not want. the one aspect in addition to the way that vince characterize it is that you actually get into one of these on the backs were in anticipation of the not going, markets start to sell off, and you get an effect of tightening of financial conditions, which then undermines things. i think that is one of the trickiest challenges they face. be prepared because of that for confused communication. right now, they have embarked on two sets of on conventional policy. what is the ongoing balance operation in the second is managing expectations by offering the assurance that rates would stay low through 2014. markets are contesting that view. they have priced in a tightening before like 2014. fed officials will have to protest that, and how do you protest that? you emphasize how much slack there is, how much room for the economy to expand, how well inflation is contained. when you hear that, do not assume they are signaling they will do qe. they are defending what they have already done. >> it is an interesting conundrum about the way banks function. if we communicate more clearly, more extensively, more openly, then the markets would get exactly what we want to do, so there would be none of these this communications. lo and behold, they do that, and we are still talking about potential miscommunication. i want to come to joyce and ask -- if there is a sustained recovery that the fed appears to be wanting to believe in now, what that means for emerging markets, emerging- market currencies, and the global outlook. >> much of the story has been a dollar weakening story. you have seen in recent weeks a pullback in a lot of the currencies. the question is are we at the turning point right now? particularly when you look at the " prospects for europe. the message has been no further asset purchases by the fed, but we want the zero interest rate policy to continue through 2014. the central banks of large have signaled that. that still made emerging-market is pretty attractive place to be, just given how low yields are. peripheral europe at the beginning of the year was at 7%. it is now down at 5%. emerging markets are at 6%, a for your time is the growth. china alone is 50% of the contribution to global growth. for capital flows into emerging markets, it is still a pretty robust picture, given where interest rates are likely to stay for the foreseeable future. the question for the currencies, though, is are you through with the currency appreciation trend, particularly in asia where rates are very low. are you looking at a scenario where rates have to go up? if you look at what central banks have done -- $6 trillion balance sheet -- you have to be looking at a time when we're looking at higher rates and higher volatility. emerging markets looks like an attractive place to be, but the differential is only widening. you're getting paid more for being in emerging markets. >> do you think that in terms of the way the global system is perceived to operate, the wave of dissatisfaction we have had out of emerging markets will continue? just to recap, i would say that the first shock comes in 2008 when china holds vast amounts of dollar assets and suddenly realizes u.s. capital markets are not the safe, and the talk about dollar hegemony, and they want to change that. do you think that as things go forward, we will see more dissatisfaction about the way the system works? >> i think you are seeing that the satisfaction, but until you see countries like china make deeper progress on currency convertibility, interest rates, where else can they go, right? it is one thing to talk about the opportunity in the emerging markets, but you have a lot of distortion as far as macro controls and the size and liquidity of these markets. i think there is growing dissatisfaction, but emerging markets are still in many ways going to proceed slowly on how they manage the capital inflows. we are still in an environment where there are not that many investable assets for just the size of the reserves we are talking about. emerging markets now that 80% of the global foreign-exchange reserves, and we continue to invest most of that, just given the size of the markets. >> you argued that the level of distortion around capital controls in emerging-market are converging in a way. >> it is a couple of things. the first is expect more capital controls on average. in 2009, have the economy -- the economy's -- half the economies in were in financial crisis. in the emerging markets, it was the man shop. you snap back, you grow more slowly as a consequence. -- it was demand shock. that implies that emerging market economies are going to be dissatisfied with the very accommodative monetary policies in the advanced economies and therefore going to want to reclaim a measure of independence. the way you do that is put on capital controls. but they are starting from a very uneven pace. that gives china the opportunity to liberalize at its own pace, but brazil and more globalized economy is, to tighten at their own pace, converge in the middle. on average, there will be more. that let's ask another question here about global governance. you have got, on the one hand, the u.s. posting a new president of the world bank, and some commentators observing that the nigerian candidate seems to be much better qualified. you have a fight going on about imf resources with europeans hoping the emerging markets will kick more money in to match what they have promised. how do you see that part of the governance of the global economic system devolving? >> in some ways, if you look back over the last several years, i would argue the g-20 has been a success. the evolution we have seen from the g-7 back in the 1990's up until where we are now, i think there is some real momentum. for example, the committee that was made in seoul at the g-20 summit i think was a good thing, but if you look at what happened with europe and what is going on here, it has taken a bit of the steam out of the momentum, and i think that is something to be concerned about. i think about the situation in the u.s.. one of the things that is interesting is i have been looking at polling data on what kind of priorities voters have. one of the priorities is less money for foreign aid. if you translate that to what is on the agenda, that is a material issue. >> for the imf, you mean. >> yes. the g-20 essentially made a committed to try to complete the change in governance of the fund by september of this year. frankly, the chances of getting that through the u.s. political system this year at slim to none of your frankly, if you were to try, it would fail, and you would have to take a step back. i think about the risk in some sense when i look at all those things, of the u.s. taking a step back, frankly, from being part, global governance being a real risk. sometimes the debate over the world bank, i think, raises some real issues. i have personally felt for a long time that we ought to open these things up, but i think there is a bit of a risk, just from the u.s. perspective, that if we kind of take less of a leading role in these things, that our overall commitment to the process goes away. the same time, you see what is going on in europe where they are, in some sense understandably, obsessed with their own problems. that in of itself has also taken some of the emphasis away from the global governance side of things. at the same time, there's obviously a bit of a reticence on the part of the chinese to sort of step into the breach. it feels in contrast to what it felt like 92008 where i think there was, sort of, legitimate -- there was a real commitment to this. it added to the policy response. you get a bit of a sense of things kind of pulling apart in a way that i think is problematic. the realities of an election year in the united states are what they are. i think it would be a mistake to try to push this agenda now. you would get an answer you do not want. but it does raise risks about where we're going. >> reaching up to the audience and to the members in the second because there's a lot of talent in the room. we want to get questions. but let me pose one last thing to all of you, maybe starting with joyce. is there a crisis over the horizon that we have not talked about, that we have not focused on? is it turkey or some other economy running some kind of deficit that will be in trouble? anything you worry about with oil prices spiking in iran -- what is your risks set? looking out six months or 12 months? >> looking out six months or 12 months, i do not think it is an emerging markets crisis. even though you have a country like turkey that is more vulnerable to higher commodity prices that has a current account deficit, but does not have a funding problem. it has a pretty good domestic industrial base. i think the situation is manageable. the higher commodity prices on the whole are actually benefits to emerging markets a bit more. i think near term, the crisis still comes back to europe. have we graduated from the queue to chronic? is it really that greece was a kicking the can down the road restructuring? that an exit from the eurozone is something that gets more debate over the next six to 12 months, and then it comes back to europe? the big surprise last year was not europe. it was the u.s. ratings downgrade. that is what started the sell- off last year. we are getting into a u.s. cycle again. another debate about the u.s. debt ceiling. i think the markets will continue to focus on china just because there's not as much information available. and because there are more questions about how we are finally seeing a shift in growth in china from 11.5% to 8.5%, which in my opinion is not a hard landing. they talked about that for a long time. now it is actually happening, but everybody is worried about it. that does pose some uncertainty over the medium term. >> any date of the rising shock you want to predict? >> december 31. on december 31, an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. adverse the dynamics and a legislative sudden stop on the equivalent of 4.5% contraction in gdp and run the same time we're talking about the debt ceiling. >> and the ability of the u.s. political class to reach sensible compromise is not as robust -- >> not proven, yes. [laughter] >> i very much agree that that is the frame of risk. i just want to put something on the other side, which is i think there is an upside to the u.s., as well, which is if you get an electoral outcome that allows you to do things, i think we are lining up to do some fairly major things that are positive. in addition to some long run fiscal deal, i would point out that just in the last couple of weeks, there have been a bunch of plans that have been put out on the fiscal side. the differences in his plans is not really about stabilizing debt. they all do that. the difference is in the vision of government that you have. so i think if you get a clear outcome from the election on one side of the other, there's the potential for " doing a big fiscal deal, but that would include things like we are getting ready to do a major tax reform, which is i think potentially a very positive thing for the economy. i think we are lining up to the mortgage finance reform. i think if you get an outcome to the election that essentially puts gridlock to the site, there are very positive outcomes that could come of it. you look at the polls and ask yourself the question of how likely that political outcome is, and it is clearly not the most likely outcome. partly, as it think about how we think about the second half of the year, it will just be very complicated. there are very negative outcomes that are possible, and i would argue there are actual positive outcomes that are possible, and it will depend on the complicated interactions and what will get out of the election. >> in some sense, the good news is we are so efficient in delivery of fiscal policy that there is no single direction we have to go. that is it is about taxes, appropriations process, entitlements, the wii budget, the lack of rules. you could actually contest the election on two different views of how big the government should be, opportunity compared to safety, marginal structure, tax rates. two different views, contest the election, and whoever wins but it in place. the problem is if we do not contest the election on those issues, then it is difficult to put it in place after the fact. >> i agree with that. >> sounds like you are on a parliamentary system, and that is very dangerous. >> one of the things we are shaping up for -- i think the choices will be much clearer this time than they are normally. republicans, to their credit, have put on the table a credible budget plan that is in full detail and is very severe. it is not the plan i would choose, but it is a very clear vision for how you get fiscal consolidation. i think the democrats have a very different vision of how you approach the same problem. in some sense, i think you will have very clear choices presented to the electorate. it is an election. it is complicated. these are not issues that are easy for people to understand. one of the things that jumps out at the polling results on this is it is interesting that there is consensus in the electorate across the political spectrum in some areas that is encouraging. for example, you ask people, both republicans and democrats, if it would be willing to raise taxes -- do they think it is a good idea to raise taxes on people who think more than -- who make more than $250,000, and the answer is a majority yes. even among republicans. i think that is encouraging. looking at some categories of spending and asking if they are areas we should cut, you see some areas of consensus. on the spending side, it tends to be in relatively narrow areas. getting out of afghanistan, farm subsidies, foreign aid. unfortunately, that is not going to do it. one of the places a little more troubling when you ask about medicare or social security, you tend to get majority on both sides not for less but for more. 21% of republican voters would support cutting medicare. 24% would support spending more, which puts the republican plan in an interesting context. look, when you look at those numbers and ask the question if the election were held today, would you get a sensible response from the electorate on the fiscal challenges we face, i think the answer is probably no. >> both of you seem to be saying the chances of a bipartisan solution look incredibly slim. the electorate may not force this issue. -- the electorate may force this issue. there is not necessarily a drop dead date. if it can be postponed, will it be postponed? >> i think the odds of a bipartisan solution, unfortunately, given the political alignment, is low. to me, the good outcome for policy is a sweet, either way. all republicans, all democrats. that is the clearest way in my mind for where you will get progress on all these things. we get the most likely outcome, which seems today to be the president is reelected, republicans take control of the senate and retained control of the house -- that is problematic. that is the outcome where i am much less confident that we get, you know, progress. i personally think we will -- the problem at the beginning of the year will be handled in some way, but it is likely to be messy and noisy and have adverse effects to the market. an s&p downgrade seems possible, another one. fitch downgrade. >> you'll be happy to note that this reminds me of my second favorite quotation from kafka, which is from "the country doctor, which is, "writing prescriptions is easy. dealing with people as hard." >> let's go to questions. i see one right in the aisle there. >> a little twist on the question you asked. there is some discussion among economic, democratic elites that is sort of a hopeful discussion on our economy. i am interested in the reaction of the panelists to it. for one, the gdp growth is -- has been inconsistent with the employment numbers. typically, the gdp numbers are less reliable than the employment numbers. we have had a lot of revisions there. admittedly, on the downside, since 2008. the national income accounts, which should be about where gdp is, are a good bit higher than gdp. putting these facts together, the hopeful democrats say this is probably a pretty good indication that gdp growth has been stronger than we have seen reported and that we believe. i would like some reaction. >> are we richer than we thought? >> if you look at gross domestic income, it has increased faster than gross domestic product over the last year. we have seen some revisions. problem is that the spread between the two does the very a lot over time and can reverse itself, so it is tough to know. it is true, for instance, we got more household employment in the last month than payroll gains. there is clearly a possibility of a break out on the high said. hiring needs to income, in from the sales, sales leads to sales expectations. all that is on non-financial firms. but our work backwards. and hope is a strategy. but when my optimism flutters upwards, i think that the world is a risky place. we have an ongoing sovran crisis and banking crisis in europe. the possibility of elevated energy prices and a fiscal cliff coming. those are not the baseline outcomes, but those sales to potential outcomes are reasons investors should not have convictions, and if investors do not have convictions, you did not get the wealth creation the polls and economy of relative to trend. >> i think you are all too complacent about europe. seems to me that the european central bank has changed its spots totally from focusing on inflation to focusing on shoring up the banking system and keeping the economy afloat. that is likely to continue for three years or so, but three years from now, is there not a very strong possibility of a break up? none of these countries are going to be able to make the fiscal changes necessary. growth is going to be slow or negative. you will not be able to implement the austerity with the work rules that exist there. consequently, three years from now, the ecb will run out of money, and europe's structural problems will still in door. am i too pessimistic? that even the next three years, i think, are pretty pessimistic. looking at spain and italy, they have a hundred billion dollars of gross sovran funding. the next three years are hard. it could be about a breakup of europe, or it could be you have weaker europe and stronger europe, which is the equivalent of a break up. it is very clear that the fiscal path cannot be held amongst all the countries. i think that the focus will be less on the grease/portugal than on the italy and spain and what happens with those two -- less on the gree/ce to go -- greece/portugal. >> in some sense, he is asking if this superman bank in an act that is going to be revealed to be a cartoon. you have a million debates in europe. one fine day in december, the central bank says, "you know what? we would just print $500 billion in one day and do it again in february. >> i would distinguish -- i would follow that in the following way -- the central bank can provide liquidity, and liquidity is very important in the funding situation, and that is the contribution they have made. that was obviously an issue in terms of the response to -- if you go back to where we were a year ago, there was this perception that sovereign risk in the eurozone was limited and concentrated. essentially what we went through was an adjustment to the world that they're serious sovereign adjustment, and that generated pressures that the ecb could respond to perak what they cannot respond to is the fundamental question is that there are fiscal imbalances that need to be funded. it fundamentally depends on the political relationship between the countries that need the funding and essentially the european institutions willingness to provide it. there is a political set of challenges. you think about it between greece and germany. greeks have to commit to doing certain things, right, in order to make it politically feasible for the germans to fund then. as long as they can find a balance between the greek willingness to make commitments and, to some degree, actually deliver on them, in a way that is consistent with the political constraints on germany on providing the funding, this thing can go on. as somebody who has watched european integration from this side of the atlantic for decades, i am always struck by we tend to underestimate the commitment of the europeans to that process. i fully agree with you the there are risks in parts of this that are likely to continue. my response to sebastian's question was fewer than 15 down the road. is that too often? i do not know, but there are very big challenges. i think there are risks of accidents along the way. i do not think the ecb -- i mean, i think the ecb has done what it can do, but i do not think it ultimately faces a problem in the same way that they tend to think that is perfectly able to exit from its current situation and that will all be manageable in a reasonable way. i did not see that as the core problem. there is a different problem that is very tough to manage. monetary policy can be a bridge, but it has to be a bridge to somewhere. >> if there is not the fiscal consolidation, there is nowhere to go to. before we give the ecb high marks on everything, their attitude towards private sector involvement has been on helpful because they have put themselves -- essentially, they have said that they do not participate in a hair cut in the greek arrangement, but what that means is when they buy sovereign debt, it actually places itself senior to everyone else, so it does not remove sovereign credit risks in its open market operations. that then raises the question -- in a sovereign crisis in the future, what exactly will the ecb do? >> question right over here. question for joyce >> -- >> question for joyce. i was struck by your comment on what countries are willing to do. having traveled to asia, a guest we share a lot of they seem very willing to allow for the depreciation. i guess the question i have is what would you look at as a signal that they are allowing the euro-dollar to depreciate more substantially to allow both regions to grow their way out of their problems through exports, which is kind of what both need and can help them rebalance, but given their unwillingness, there has got to be something that you might be looking for as some sort of policy change or some sort of economic change that would signal greater willingness. >> i did not see the greater willingness. i think that there are emerging markets willing to look at more unorthodox policy mix is because they have their own domestic agenda. >> you mean unorthodox mixes in order to prevent depreciation of the currency? >> yes. we have seen that across the board in the number of countries, particularly in some of the commodity-supporting countries, that they have had appreciation pressures, but i go back to the point about the g-20. how will you get this kind of coordination with emerging markets countries and developed countries? emerging market countries, we still have such a big income differential. to try to convince emerging market countries where you have a standard of living, which they are still trying to bring up to provide resources for a bigger firewall for countries that have 35,000 or $40,000 per capita income. i think emerging market countries -- now, it is about their own domestic self interests. they have a deeper domestic investor base. i am not sure that you get a catalyst that comes out of some local policy coordination that will result in an agreement that will work. it seems to me you had an agreement in 2008 or 2009 that is more effective than it has become now. convincing for countries to bailout richer countries is just something that is politically very difficult. going back to the politics in all of these countries when we talk about europe and the u.s. imaging markets has its own set of politics as well. >> sounds like the climate change debate the bit where rich countries say that they are growing emissions faster, and the emerging markets say that they still emit more. >> i wonder if you could comment on china. there's two schools of thought, one that they are in trouble, show that is showing up in the currency and a strengthening. china recently raised its quota on bank lending and yesterday raised its quota on foreign investment in china. is it headed in the right direction or still headed for a harder landing? thanks. >> china is a very opaque economy. the line between the public and private-sector is extremely interesting -- indistinct, but that means there's a lot of policy to keep demand growing quickly, and our own forecast is they will succeed in that period that they can shift, essentially, credit bank capital and get some infrastructure building out of the private sector. if anything, growth is going to be very well-maintained in china. >> ok. do you have a question here? >> if sarkozy is not reelected, will there be a spillover to the rest of europe? >> that is a great question because it relates to the german fiscal situation where there is also pressure from the opposition on merkel to change her stance on austerity compared to growth. seems like in france and germany, two core economies', you could get political shifts. >> i will not pretend to be an expert on french politics. >> i did not ask you about the end of the election in spain, come on. [laughter] >> i think the german situation is a complicated one in the sense that i think there is actually more support in europe outside of the government then within the government, and there is this problem within the german government that it is a relatively narrow base taking the most hawkish position. merkel, unfortunately, is in the position of trying to lead a coalition that has that as a base, and it is a tough challenge for her to walk that line. i think having a partner in france who she could work with was very important. my guess is they will continue to find a way to do that, but it will make things harder, i think, for them to manage going forward. my impression is that the french, as the way they see these problems, is ultimately consistent with solving the issues in europe regardless of which side wins on the election, so i'm not sure it is a long-term issue, but it will make what is already a difficult process harder, at least for a while. >> one thing to come out of these political shifts in europe could be a transactions tax, right? the german opposition is saying that is their condition for supporting what merkel wants. is that something you're clients worry about? >> most feel that is probably something they will avoid at the last moment or that for one country to do that unilaterally is probably unlikely to happen. all sides are actually worried about the amount of regulatory arbitrage that could occur, so there has been questions about the pace of which the u.s. is moving compared to europe, and that is where we have seen more delays and more postponement, even though these become political issues. i do not think that has come up as a burning issue more immediately, but i would say that all of the peripheral governments have been overthrown, and belgium as well, so if you look at the trend in europe, a mean, look at all the periphery, and question on france, it is -- i think the risk still does come back to political happen is, given the kind of adjustment that needs to occur in europe. >> the question is is transfer free or core, and let's go to the question right here. >> what oil price or energy price over what time becomes a real game change your in your models? then again changer for u.s. growth? >> u.s. growth and world growth. >> i will speak for myself. in general, i think these things are not generally -- there's no question that higher oil prices are generally a drag. we did see in the first half of 2008 when gasoline prices hit $4 a gallon -- use of very discreet changes in consumer behavior. having been a $4 before, i do not think we will see that again. if we're talking about normal supply and demand in the context of coming into a driving season and things will go up probably until june, i do not see that as a big issue. if we go to a supply disruption out of the middle east, there are obvious scenarios under which that can happen, that is a different kettle of fish. i did not think that is the most likely thing to happen, but it is certainly one of the things that would be on my list of risks. >> i will also look at whether it is a supply shock or demand shock causing the change. first half of last year, you had a 33% move in oil prices that was largely a surprise shock with libya. if you look at where we are at currently, maybe it takes 0.25% off of growth if it is sustained. not a huge move. whether it is a supplier rather than demand shop, i think it makes a big difference. i would also put the risk -- it seems like sanctions are growing. i would put military conflict as an unlikely scenario at this stage in the game, but there's not necessarily a price. what we look at in emerging- market is -- what is the breakeven price for these countries? where they are budgeting the price of oil and saving the windfall for spending it, and i would say in emerging markets, most countries have been pretty conservative. they have budgeted oil conservatively. maybe $30 below where it is at right now. it is more of a problem for the developed market countries. right now, the current trend seems to me less worrisome than what we saw a year ago, given the move we had in the first half of the year. >> i think from a u.s. perspective, it is all about gasoline prices, and the evidence suggests that households basically pay for higher prices at the pump by cutting back on other parts of consumption as long as gasoline prices are within prevailing norms. once they break out more significantly from prevailing norms, then they cut back in total. if we remain around where we are, then that means it is a problem with lodging or food or from the home or components of consumption, but not for overall consumption. it is a modest drag because we are a net oil importer. our chief risk is we have now essentially rolled back earlier declines, so we are at the high-end of prevailing norms. any increase from here on would more likely be associated with more restraint. >> one last question. i saw one in the aisle there. >> where do you all think the dow will be in the first week of november? >> you will have to specify which day in november. [laughter] >> do you think any industries or countries such as iran will make any unusual attempt to influence the outcome of the election, say, by constricting oil supplies? >> a cake, two parts of that. >> i thankfully am an economist and not an equity strategist, so i feel acceptable in not giving you a straight answer to that question. having said that, one of the things we are thinking about is how the uncertainty around the election will affect markets. there's the economics of the fiscal clip and what not, but also how the markets will react in anticipation. if you look at what happened last year on the debt ceiling and what not, the interesting picture you get is that the primary effect of the uncertainty that was created by that showed up by a weaker equity prices as opposed to higher interest rates. so there is a sort of interesting question, if you are facing fiscal chaos -- how do markets respond to that? i think, certainly, the experience last year would suggest that that will show up as uncertainty about the economic outlook, uncertainty about earnings that translates into weaker equity prices as opposed to people decide they want to sell treasuries. i would suspect that be the pattern. to the extent that you come into the election with one of these uncertain outcomes that we talked about earlier, my guess is you are not going to get the reaction of people looking up and deciding they do not want to hold treasuries. it will be there is more uncertainty. the economic outlook is likely to be weaker, which will mean weaker equity prices. on the foreign meddling, it is hard to imagine anyone could do that successfully. it is a blunt instrument, and my guess is it would not do it. as someone who worked in washington for a good part of my career, i often hear conspiracy theories about this and that, and my general argument for why they are wrong as it assumes a level of competence that is not there. i apply that argument here as well. >> jpmorgan is forecasting for about a 14% return this year. we have had a lot of it already. i think what investors are trying to do is lock in what they made in the first quarter, which is in some cases with the forecasted for the full year, with all of this uncertainty ahead. but what i have seen over the last couple of weeks is you have had a breakdown in these correlations where everything was correlated. there is more bullish sentiment right now about u.s. equities. on the whole issue of foreign meddling, i have to just say that if you act unilaterally, you will have retaliation. there's the question of who is the first mover in the iran situation? who will do that in a unilateral way, face retaliation? and when you get something that involves more global coordination, which has been very difficult, so i think the approach has been sanctioned, which has seen some effects, and that is what they are going to stay with, but i have seen recently, though, the some of those fears on iran seem like they have dissipated a bit over the last month compared to a bit earlier this year. >> do you think have to believe -- kafka believed in devious bureaucracy? >> no that about it. i agree with the point that it assumes a level of competence that probably -- and ability to predict the consequences of the campaign, the consequences of two campaigns. with regard to equity prices, the world is a really risky place. with such risk, it is tough for investors to have a conviction and therefore tough to get durable wealth creation. we would say the equity market will be considerably lower relative to today. in particular, despite the fact that we have known since 1786 that it would be an election, equity investors have not really -- their window of observation has not embraced november or december 31 yet, but it is beginning to happen. as that happens, we are going to be spending the summer and into the fall looking at in- trade " on who will be president, who will win the house, who will win the senate, and we will supply the in to what we hear on sunday morning talk shows about what they do in power. that is not good for markets. >> we apologize for running over by 203 seconds, but it has been a great meeting. thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> next, discussion on civil liberties. next, planned parenthood and then quickly address -- then the weekly address by president obama and governor mary fallein. >> the next panel includes anthony romero and legal director steven shapiro, former solicitor general ted olson and "new york times" supreme court reporter. they discuss policing, torture, health care, campaign finance, same-sex marriage, and national security. this is one hour and 35 minutes. >> i want to thank cargoes of four -- thank cardoza for having me here tonight. as soon as i sat down, i remember the feeling that it was the home of the starship enterprise. [laughter] i want to thank you for putting this all together and for inviting me. hush " from burqa anyway, i am glad to be here. her subject tonight is the aclu. it has been involved in some of the most contentious cases since world war i. at the same time, it is one of the most polarizing nongovernmental organizations we have. a card-carrying member of the aclu is a badge of honor for some and not for others. i would like the least tried to demystify a little bit of what this organization is, in part how it goes about making decisions as well as some of the cases themselves. the idea is to have a free- wheeling discussion that i will lead. no speeches. in opening statements. -- no opening statements. i would discourage everyone to jump in, to feel free to pick up on one another's comments, agree or disagree. and remind us briefly what those cases are about. onward. the briefest of introductions, i want to get everybody involved really quickly. we need to go the extra step and explain. even among friends of mine and family members of my, when we defend the civil rights of the homophobic, disgusting reactionary christian minister to mao funeral -- to mouth funeral protests at the burial of men and women coming back for more, saying that the the reason that men and women in uniform are being killed is because god 's protection because we're giving the people like me their rights. i get a phone call from my sister say, are you kidding me? what happened to you? [laughter] and we have to really unpack it. i do not think it is self- evident. by sister is brilliant. i sister is a good person with great values. it is not just a hypothetical that you allow these loathsome points of view to be centered than the points of view that you like -- then the points of view that you like our next to mine. it is like tear gas. you think it is blown in one direction and the wind will blow it back into your eyes. you think you but censorship anyplace where it belongs. you better close your eyes. >> ted olson was the solicitor general for the bush administration who argued many important cases before the supreme court. the aclu is a polarizing organization because it is what? >> i disagree in the bill with the premise. i know that the aclu is unpopular in some places because it does what it does, which is to represent unpopular causes. but i never felt that way, personally. i know that other people do, especially conservatives. and i think of myself as a conservative. but i oso think of myself a little bit as a libertarian. in a conservative world, there is not a monolithic conservative world or republican world. there are a lot of libertarians are people who carry a lot about liberties at that part of the political spectrum. anthony does not want this to be a love fest, but i will try to say unpopular thing so he can defend me. [laughter] and i will always love you. [laughter] more out ofting this than i ever expected. >> hi thought maybe we would have the proposal take place in private. [laughter] but i am personally very grateful for the aclu and i always have been. i grew up in california. i think that would be silly you does is tremendous. it protects all of us. but i will not go on and on about that because you did not want this forum to be that. but i think that it is very important that we recognize that the aclu takes these petitions because -- these positions because someone is accused of a crime something like that and the aclu is protecting all this. i think that one of the things we will eventually talk about is that the choices that the use tip -- the still you makes, -- that the aclu makes, the civil liberties of one person can infringe on the civil liberties of another person >> absolutely. >> darrow purse fine -- debora parole stein -- debora perlstein. >> we are a pretty friendly group. >> if things don't work out, i may come back. [laughter] >> the door's always open. >> as i was watching the film, i was thinking about the history of my first awareness of the aclu. and it was around the not the case in illinois and thinking i had exactly that reaction. i grew up sort of been a jewish household, a liberal household, and my jews community thought thought, confront the cases in which that is not that easy, where there are pre commitments to some principles require rest to support people we could not possibly dislike more or challenges to really test what it was with what we believe been in the first place. and that is an unbelievably comfortable position to put people in. but you draw something from our nation constitutionalism panel yesterday. there was a concept and roman society that required this is essential to take a certain position. it is not good citizenship to just stand back as a society confronts major questions and crises and dilemmas. since and chip demand in gauging -- citizenship demands engaging. that is what makes it so challenging for many of us. >> high see that you went to the law school on that other california coast. >> stamford. >> what is your take? >> what is so striking about the aclu is the issue switch have been polarizing in the past have now become completely part of the american fabric. we cannot imagine how it was seen as a fundamental apocalyptic threat to the nation to pass out literature about communism or union organizing. so the aclu has rallied defined what it is to be in america today and i am grateful for those crusades of the past. my recollection of the aclu is going to your city in the late 1980's when the city was at probably its near anarchy, lawlessness, public places had been taken over by one set of individuals in many instances of mentally ill street addict, vagrants, that had made public spaces like public -- grand central terminal unusable to other individuals. not to the government, but to other individuals who had a legitimate expectation of being a will to use public transit or public libraries. for all the good that the aclu means to do with its free speech cases, continuing to police the boundary between church and state, i think in many instances, it has been a force of regression against enlightened urban policy. the prime example is continuing to go on in los angeles where there and villaraigosa, -- where mayor antonio villaraigosa has skid row near downtown that has been and still is because of the court battles that police are fighting a locus of smaller in depravity unlike anything you have ever seen unless you have been there. and the police have been trying to apply broken windows policing in a fair and just manner and they keep getting hit by lawsuits from the aclu and from other homeless advocates down there. the addicts who are trying to go clean, the elderly residents of terrified to go out on the street. and the people who are supposed to be beneficiaries of these are getting preyed upon by other advocates. in some instances, the aclu has lost a common sense of balance of rights and responsibilities that has made the effort to reclaim urban spaces and return american cities to the vitality that they should have and can have as new york city demonstrates and made that more difficult. >> and dave shapiro, it is time to call on you. he is the legal director of the aclu for a long time. >> right. >> would you like to respond to that? lost its balance. >> let me just say that the aclu does not support squalor. we occasionally support depravity. [laughter] but we do not support squalor. iswhat we're down to debating how the aclu response to using tactics and broken windows strategies that i think we have already reached acluensus on 95% of what yo does. that is a pretty good score card. our position is -- i lived in new york, light. i was here not only in the 1980's, but also in the 1970's when it was worse. the question is not whether we all want to live in a more hospitable environment and not whether we want our government to provide services to people who need them, including the homeless and people were suffering from addiction of one sort or another, whether the government is doing that in a way that is an assistant with the rights of the people it purports to be trying to help and in a way that respects their basic human dignity is. so is not a disagreement over gold, but over tactics. and the issue is more salian today, not so much over questions of homeless policy, but, if we're going to focus on your city for a moment, on the stop-and-frisk policy in the inner-city police department. -- in the new york city police department. but when we are stopping over 600,000 people in the street, less than 1% leading tour rest -- leading to arrest and the majority are racial minorities, then we're getting into public safety and we are losing in terms of the ability of people of color to live in this city and feel like they're not suspect just because they live in the wrong neighborhood or attend the wrong schools. >> i want to get into that. >> you'll get into the middle of this debate to request i have to get ataman year. -- but i have to get at them in here. he has been a very busy man. there have been some dramatic events in washington. jump in here. >> people seem to think that there is bad faith on both sides of the debate. and the aclu is accused of a certain kind of naivete, particularly about war on terror issues. anthony talks about the false case pitted it is important, but, in a way, it is an easy case. these are not people who pose actual threat to the united states. these are homegrown puny anonymities. but what about the people we actually have reason to be afraid of? in the last decade, the aclu has fought like hell and achieved very little. there is a product of -- there is a provocative article saying that some of these efforts have been counterproductive. if you go to court and ask for an answer, you may get locked into an answer you do not want. it is polarizing because there are really two different world views that are drifting further and further apart over whether the issues that engage the aclu and these important national- security measures where detention policy, rendition policy, all that stuff -- and even now when some of the domestic surveillance in ordinary law enforcement like the gps case and the strip search case -- we really start to live if we are living in a different era. if the courts and american when we are receptive u.n move away from puny anonymity. a peace keeping group that offered to provide the nine assistants to a group that had been labeled as -- provide assistance to a group that had been labeled as a security threat. that kind of benign speech can be made criminal by homeland security. i would be interested to hear some responses from stephen anthony about the strategic choices they have to make day after day over whether they have to even go to court to give an answer. >> anthony, go ahead. >> he is exactly right. in some cases, the faults cases easy. but you get the phone calls and the outcry is often from people who feel grief. >> i completely agree with you. the national security cases are among the most controversial adopted. i think they are the gold standard of our case. i get this all the time. why do you care so much about 150 some odd guys? you have 2.5 million prisoners in america. why would we spend millions of dollars on kalik shiek muhammed? why would we bring a case on the drone? in those cases, you are talking about the most critical exertion of government power. the number of individuals directly affected is maybe 100. but when you have the highest rank of government decide to hold individuals without charges or trial, to ship them off to black sites, to authorize torture, which was hitherto illegal, and then endeavor to obfuscate that from the entire practice, lawyers, the public, you're talking about a high- stakes game that can literally change the course of american history. and when we allow a government like ours to hunt and kill one of its own u.s. citizens, not in a theatre of war, with no assertion of legal framework, no assertion of the fact, and then killed him without any judicial review, where the executive branch is to be judge, drury command executioner, the stakes are enormously high. those powers, once taken, are very hard to take back. in the case of mr. lucky, we have had enormous discussion. i think it is -- mr. lockheed, we have had enormous discretion. i think it is one of our product cases. i have gone to washington, d.c. with members of the democrats and the republicans and everyone in the room thought that we got anwar lockheed. and they all said, well, we got him. and i was the only one of the table who said how do you know? what proof have you got? how do we know that he did not have a massive conversion last year when he was being hunted by his own government. we now believe that people can change their mind, the people can lay down their weapons. what proved to we have that is man's rea, the minute before he was executed by his own government -- i am glad to take on the hard ones. that makes this more fun. where are the checks and balances? you have the president of united states, the attorney general who was appallingly pedestrian in his speech when he talked about due process does not mean judicial process, right? verbatim.ing purveyed o what is due process mean? it has to be the big adjudicative method for due process. they cannot confirm or deny the it existence of this program that i just laid at you in excruciating detail kit you have to say, my god, what type of republic are we talking about? at times, it often feels that we are at the cusp of losing the very basic rules -- and i am not exaggerating -- the most basic protections of what defines a republic. and those checks and balances, even if it is only one person in yemen, we ought to be very skeptical. >> you were there at this very debate of executive power post- 9/11. >> it is not ours that easy. i do not like the idea of defending a program where we kill american citizens without some sort of process or things like that. but i think you have to look at it from both sides when we're having this kind of a conversation. if you have individuals and if you are in the executive branch and you are sworn to defend the people of the united states and they are engaged in activities -- and they are plotting and you know that -- they are plotting to blow up a flight on which our citizens will fly or they are going to blow up a synagogue, one of the similarities we have in this country is the right to fly, the right to travel on an airplane, the right to go to a wedding or a public building, to have their children protected when they are trying to go to school, protected from things that happen in israel all the time -- synagogues being bombed and school children being killed with missiles -- if your responsibility is to protect the american people from that and you have someone who is in another country that you cannot possibly bring to justice before that crime or that mass act of terrorism is committed and you're unable to go to those places and bring them to justice in a courtroom, not going to be able to bring the witnesses and put them on trial, and you have the capability of preventing the disaster from happening, you are now thinking about the civil rights of this individual who is preparing -- and anthony says, maybe the moment before the missile strikes, he is having a conversion, but maybe he has killed lots of americans already. and he has equipped other individuals to kill other americans said that is already going on. now you have the rights of that individual to something that anthony calls judicial process, which you cannot possibly bring about. >> the question should be decided by the general? >> i'm getting to the dilemma. this is not an easy thing to answer. and you put those rules civil- rights -- those civil rights against the people your sworn to protect against acts of despicable terrorism. you do not have a choice to do it the way everybody would like, which is to bring someone into court, have all the witnesses, miranda rights, brady writes, all of those kinds of things -- you do not have that choice. so you allow that to happen until you do the thing that you cannot do, which is to bring about this judicial process or use a drone or some other method of killing that individual. i think it is extremely difficult. you could kill the wrong people. you could kill children there in the vicinity of that suspected terrorists. it does happen. it does happen in war. and it happens when you send soldiers into the field and they are defending themselves. they do not have the luxury of stopping someone and then giving their rights and giving them a lawyer and then trying them. they have to shoot and kill or they will die. so these things are -- i am with the aclu on these things. i am glad you're there. i am glad you are fighting for those things. but at the end of the day, sometimes, people in positions of responsibility have to make decisions because this is not a perfect world. >> i work with anthony and stephen when i went to guantanamo on the first trip that they let the ngo's -- >> after a very long and hard day looking at the military condition. [laughter] >> it was a very special trip. [laughter] on many levels. i wanted to get back to the broader point that saddam was raising and that goldsmith has been talking but in his book, the notion that the still huge positions in these cases has been either not at all productive -- they have not especially achieved anything in terms of promoting liberty -- but they may also be counterproductive. i guess i really think that is wrong and i at least think that the answer is a lot more complicated than that. for example, torture is an issue that i spent an enormous amount of time working on when i was at an ngo working on these issues. there was a time before, in 2002, where we have reports out of afghanistan where prisoners had blunt force trauma and we couldn't get anybody to listen. in the meantime, you had people on the right and left say, of course, you can torture, depending on how scary the issue is. then we have a grave -- we had of a grave -- we had abu gf raib,. tens of thousands of pages of documents showed more than 100 detainee's died in u.s. custody. then they have different interrogation tactics. it was a radically different debate. a bill inpassage of congress saying that you cannot treat people in custody with cruel and degrading treatment and there was a series of executive orders by obama that effectively ended the use of those tactics in american custody across the board. that is one example of what i think -- we don't even talk about it anymore. it seems like the sort of helped fix that. is it eradicated? no. to the extent the claim is that this is counterproductive, what is the argument? is the argument that, if the aclu had done nothing, we would have been better off because the hundred people that were at guantanamo would have been released anyway -- because the 800 people that were at guantanamo would have been released to you? it does point to a question that is about the budget of strategy. the aclu has the best negation shops in the country. how did you decide when to lee did -- when to litigate and when to negotiate. the odds are you will lose. so what are you gaining potentially in terms of calling attention to the issue and everything else versus what your potentially losing if you get a losing decision at of the court that changes the law is going forward? that is a tough call. >> let me just make a few quick points. nobody pretends otherwise. it is also true on this specific tissue around terrorism that the united states is not the only country facing terrorism. is the only country that uses the drones against its own .itizens i in answer to the question of how the lawsuits been counterproductive, especially a lawsuit that you meant as a going in that you may lose, that is a question that we ask ourselves every day in the office. this is a mantra that people have heard me say over and over again give if we think the chances of winning are slim, we are not in the business of losing lawsuits, unless we can identify other benefits that we can obtain simply by fighting. the mere fact that the lawsuit brought promise to the issue, which forced public discussion, which led to the attorney general's speech, which is then leading to a whole series of responses, none of the debate would have taken place or it's not for the spotlight that the loss to created. adam was saying that the earlier cases in the movie were simple. they were simple in hindsight, but not at the time. there is a famous concurring opinion where he votes to uphold the detention. and then he said he wished that the military would pick up these people and put them in camps and no one would come to ask your approval. then, after the war, everybody would have gone back and we would have not done anything through law that would have lasted more permanently. but now you ask us to ratify this and that principle hang s and you can call upon it in the future. >> you sounded sympathetic to the goldsmith argument. >> i was trying to be provocative. [laughter] half a lot of the work that the aclu has done -- >> a lot of the work that the aclu has done has gone a long way. the foil litigation used to be done more because we were richer. the aclu has taken on their role that we should still be doing -- clinics popping up in places like yale law school which is a measure of how much less of an economic engine the presse is. on this question about drones and killing people, it is right in the war paradigm. before the soldier shoot, he does not have to get a warrant. but if the attorney general is going to invoke the concept of due process and then redefine , i do think you want to stop and active -- and ask if that is due process to you. it does seem to be the presentation of evidence, the ability to counter that evidence, a neutral party, perhaps a lawyer representing to you. some kind of testing of the evidence. i would think that in a setting where it can be judged by the public, to see if our government is doing the things they want them to be doing through some kind of paradigm that sounds like with the attorney general is talking about. but we have no idea. we don't have a clue what kind of procedures are going on here. >> heather, you got us going here on the domestic front. to the same arguments apply in the broader context? >> said think they do. i think these are agonizing questions and i applaud the aclu for taking on a democratic administration. many of the traditional allies of the administration have gone silent. i think they have shown themselves to be very principled and they are raising very important questions. but there is a discourse out there that criticizes the growth of lawfare, that we are imposing too much of a due process paradigm in a war context. in a domestic context, mr. shapiro mentions the issue that we all want to support the economically people on the street. and that is true. i think they're using the court as a surrogate for making social and economic policy and courts are not good at treating off competing interests. so if they get on the order, for instance, on prison litigation where we spent x amount on prisoners' rights, that may be dispensable in the abstract, but it ignores the fact that public bodies have to make trade-offs of what they spend here versus what they spend there. and judges rightly are not often politically accountable so they are short circuit in in many instances a political process. as far as the issue of public safety and policing in new york, i would place that as a rights issue as well. or there has been no greater public's disgust over the past quarter-century -- no greater public policy of the past quarter-century with such success. in new york city, where you have 10,000 minority males who are alive today, who would have been dead, had new york homicide rates remained at their early- 1990's level. no war on poverty program has brought that degree of improvement to inner-city said that assertive data-driven policing has done. stopping frisks and hotspot policing is an essential part of how new york fights crime, but it has nothing to do with race. nothing. every week, the commanders in the new york police department meet to discuss the worst crime areas of the city. and they are concerned about one thing and one thing only -- where are the victims? and race never comes up. and when they find crime- fighter's occurring, they will deploy officers there because, unlike the rap against police for years ago which was that they ignored crime in minority neighborhoods because, all well, we know that is how those people be a, the process that has come to be known as comstat, that holds precinct officers responsible. they use stop-and-frisk when they see suspicious behavior. it has nothing to do with race. by intervening early in suspicious behavior, they prevent crime from escalating. new york city and new york state has had a prison decline unlike many other states, in large part because we are arresting crime before it happens. we are not waiting for felonies to occur. we are intervening in suspicious behavior. averting crime, pouring out someone's open whiskey bottle was drinking in public at 11:00 a.m. rather than waiting until 11:00 p.m. when a person is job and could get into a nice fight and a homicide. i think the aclu has done a disservice to police departments across the country by charging them with racial profiling, charging them with going after suspects on the basis of race, when in fact they are looking of behavior and they are addressing the demands of law-abiding people. if you go to a community meeting in harlem or brooklyn, they want police on the streets and they want them to arrest drug dealers when they come back and they want more quality of life public order. that has nothing to do with race and the new york police revolution has given a voice to the law-abiding residents in neighborhoods that never had it. >> of.i will ask one question. i think others confusing a lot were converging a lot of different things. there are things in their policing that are objectionable. if they are only stopping people when there is reason to believe they might be up to something nefarious, which is the constitutional standard, one has to question why 99% of the people who are stocker never arrested -- who are stopped are never arrested. >> they may be doing something nefarious but there is no evidence for appeared the police cannot always be right. you cannot always assume that everybody you stop and question is going to have evidence of crime on them. it does not mean that the stop was not following a reasonable suspicion standard. but i would also like to ask you a question. the police are often criticized for their stop ratios that do not match the population of the city, that that analysis that the sill you frequently uses to charge racial profiling. in new york city, blacks are 25% of the population and get 55% of all stops. what should the proper stop ratio be given that blacks commit 80% of all shootings and 66% of all violent crime? racialw in the aclu's profiling analysis is that it uses census data as the benchmark for policing, not crime. crime drives everything at the -- everything that the police do. given the crime disparities, what should a stop ratio look like that would satisfy the seal you? do you think that because whites are 35% of the population, they should be 35% of all stops, even though they commit only 1.4% of all shootings? >> were to begin, really? i grew up in public housing. i lived on the 12th floor. the elevators never worked. the family next to mine was murdered when i was 7 years old. i had traumatic nightmares as a .hild appeare i had cousins who ended up in gangs. i do not to relive the facts that i remember. however, let's just leave aside the arguments for a moment. if i want the police to -- the families who are essential to fighting crime in these neighborhoods, when you so anger and make good hard working class people like my family fear the police, which we did, and you get harassed like our clients and did in a recent lawsuit in new york where police were stopping people in the hallways because they're black or latino, when you make communities an essential part of good policing skeptical of calling the police, you are not doing anything for public safety. let's get down to brass tacks. if you're making enemies -- and i would love to go with you to some of these community town hall meetings. you pick some and i will pick some and we can compare notes. it is not all a kumbaya moment for people of color in the bronx when they see police walking down the street nor have they been held relentlessly accountable. we cannot even get convictions for cops who rape women when they are on duty. i think there are some very fine men and women in uniform and there are very many problems with the ways in which they are asked to do what are very difficult jobs. that being said, we also cannot look to the fact that some crimes get more attention in the police department. i want to get back to national security, but the local issues are very important. we are the only organization in the country with on the ground staff presence in every step across the country because you have to work locally for civil liberties. that said, the issue is how you think about crime. it is amazing to me the lack of prosecutions in the neighborhoods by for the most, wall street. we want to talk about crimes and we talk about the great tragedies of stripping people's pensions and homes and we look at the fbi, the police department, the justice department and the policy record of going after career criminals and pushing communities into further deprivation and poverty. policing is not all even-handed. figuring out the balance on these issues there are big tradeoffs in these big cases. there are always trade-offs. the question is where you come at it philosophically. the question is whether or not, in the name of the common good, you will be willing to abide and infringement of civil liberties. become so reductionist to from it that way. you're right. there are many calls to make in government. but sometimes the intelligence is wrong. we have gone to war over intelligence that was wrong. sometimes the facts are not as clear and that is why you need some kind of judicial body to make sure that what they assert is not just what they assert, but the truth. at the end of the day, when the stakes are so high on life or death, literally, you do not have the luxury of resurrecting some when you have killed wrongfully. that is where scrutiny is most necessary. you convict someone for the the dna is therend and you can let them out. but you cannot resurrect a person that you target for assassination. the power that is being exerted is such a at a level and nature that it is enormously troubling and provoking. there is torture going on in american prisons every day. so why do we care about the torture in guantanamo and the torture of the l.a. county jail. because the torture in guantanamo is done by the highest levels of government. we short circuit -- the notion that a short circuit the political process by bringing a lawsuit, i think that we kickstart the political process by bringing a lawsuit. there is no way that there is a political constituency for the guantanamo detainee or the people were targeted by the government. you have to turn to the courts. that is the role of the courts. on criminal-justice issues, the reason why we're having so much success on criminal justice reform -- and we have -- geriatric prisoner bills enacted in louisiana, mississippi enacting a law reform efforts, new york, california -- that is because we filed the lawsuit and because legislatures were forced to take a look at the set of questions and now we can resolve it with to do legislative process. when you carry a big stick, sometimes you use it and create political will on issues that are difficult to convince people on because they're not very nice people -- criminals or terrorist suspects -- and you force political leaders to take on water sometimes very difficult issues by forcing them down the road. >> i would say that, on skid row in los angeles, there is no shortage of advocates who takeover the entire pedestrian routes for their encampments of people shooting up drugs and killing each other. a woman was stabbed by a parolee. that night, there were 82 shelter beds available on skid row. the business improvement district could persuade only to people who are living on the streets to use them. those people have lots of advocates who were living on the streets or advocates who are immigrant entrepreneurs who are coming in the morning, having to clean hypodermic needles or feces from their doorsteps, or other business owners down there who needed to get to work and they are mostly immigrant workers. i think there is also -- it is not just individual rights against the government and the common good. that is simplified. it is one group of individuals against another group of individuals who are not these days very well served by our advocacy groups or by the courts. the judges in downtown l.a. who have been ruling on the ruling set of lawsuits that have been brought do not seem to have spent much time on skid row to actually see the efforts of the police there to try to convince get treatment, to take advantage of the services that are available to them and improve life for everybody. >> all of these issues deserve panels of their own, don't they? but there are >> you want to ask a question about citizens united. >> i read that there has been some controversy over the citizens united decision. i read the organization filed before the supreme court. that raised a lot of -- critics of the decision. i was wondering what the aclu opposes current position has changed or whether it remains the same. what can you tell us -- what can you tell us what if any impact that debate had on their position? >> before i answer, could i ask you? you raise this at the beginning. you said this was a great moment. .> i did you >> i do not remember if i mention citizens united. but i did not. i will be glad to say a word or two because i know a little bit about it. the briefs that were filed supporting what i would say as the right of organizations to participate in the political process by expressing their views about the qualifications of candidates for office, the briefs were filed by the aclu, the nra, the chamber of commerce, the democratic party. there was a immense broad spectrum of a meek as briefs supporting was ultimately the supreme court's decision. the case involved a nonprofit entity that was created to be an advocacy organization. it was formed as a corporation, it is like the aclu and the naacp. and so, and i think the question relates to what the aclu has done subsequently with respect to contributions. i do not think you have change positions with respect to expenditures that happen to be formed into a corporation. nonprofit corporation, small business corporation, a hardware store corp. -- the new york times corporation, bless its heart, has written maybe 22,000 editorials against the citizens united case. maybe it is fewer than that. one of the things the new york times says a bout that is that it is wrong that corporations have these constitutional rights overlooking the fact that new york times versus sullivan is one of the leading cases with everything who believes in freedom of the press and so forth. it is a complicated issue. i could go on and on about citizens united because i thought the principal that was being indicated there was the maximum amount of speech about the qualifications and confidence of -- the desirability of people running for their highest office in the united states was something that was fundamentally at the core of the first amendment freedom of speech and freedom of the press. the american people would benefit the more speech they heard no matter where it came from. that is my position on it. i was representing citizens united. but that is the principal. your question goes to the aftermath. it has stirred up a lot of opposition. it happened as a result. >> it has generated a lot of controversy. it has generated a lot of controversy within the aclu. there is no policy within the aclu that has been debated more times internally that the aclu's campaign finance policy including a subsequent to the citizens united decision. at the end of the day the organization always comes back to the same fundamental point. we are not going to solve the problems that plague the american political system by eliminating speech. once you say you can limit speech you have to give somebody the power to decide how much speech is enough and who gets to speak. when the have said enough. there is nothing in our history that leads you to believe the government can perform that job confidently or that you want to entrust the government with the power. our position has been over the years that if you want to decrease the influence of money in politics, the way to do that is not by decreasing the supply of money. the other lesson we have learned over the last 40 years is the money always finds other loopholes to seep through. you decrease the demand. you decrease the demand by creating a fair and equitable -- adequate system of public financing. if we were willing to invest money in our elections that we were willing to invest in one day of the war in afghanistan our politicians would not have to spend all day on the phone trying to raise money with private contributors. it at the end of the day, that is where we stand. that is where we stood before citizens united and that is where we stand after you -- after citizens united. >> what is the new york times problem? i do not get it. >> the editorial pages unrelated to anything. i have no opinions of any kind if i were to think back to a different life, because i practiced first met law 15 years before i turn to reporting, i would find it hard to argue with ted and steve that the first amendment is about something it is about protecting speech about politics from whoever. it is about giving people the maximum amount of information. therefore, we talk about difficult cases for the aclu. for them to give their constituency in the way most right thinking liberals think about this issue, it must be very very tough to keep the line steve just through. it will be interesting for me to see because there is another case coming up out in montana, whether we will see an aclu brief and there. good for them. let me be clear and full disclosure. in the aftermath of citizens united, the aclu national board did change its policy on campaign finance to accept what they would see as reasonable limits on campaign contributions. i think that was a mistake. i spoke against it. you can see i have to carry the fight even if i do not like carrying all the flags. this is the one i do not agree with i think this goes right to the heart of what is most important the political system is fundamentally corrupt. let's be clear. you cannot cover the sky with one hand it. my grandmother used to sit at to me. is correct. the question is what the fix it. for as it has always been public financing. to have a running shot at it. money does not by you in office necessarily. look at the california governorship. money can make you lose in office. to have a viable candidates that can run campaigns, public financing is the way to go. the solution of how you limit the corrupting influence of money in politics is what gives all liberals knickers in a twist. what my constituents want to do is limit the power of somebody else's money go into a party or candidate they do not like. i find hypocrisy of liberals who will denounce and fund some of the most largest billionaire philanthropist's -- i will not name, because i have to keep asking them for money -- they will fund the campaign finance reform efforts and they will spend $50 million to unseat george bush in the last election. campaign finance for you, not for me. it is often the problem of saying, being concerned about the money coming from, going to individuals you do not like. what is the solution? if you do not like where we are with citizens united and you do not like the corporations have free-speech rights. the aclu has free-speech rights. we have freedom of speech and association. if you are willing to bend our right to free speech and and the rights of corporate free speech, that is a fine way to do it. that is not what i would suggest. that you have citizens united, what is the solution? maybe the montana case, maybe another bite at the apple. maybe you have individuals who advocate, it is time to have a constitutional amendment process to see if we can carve out that free-speech is for people and not for corporations. many have been thinking this is a good time to revisit the first amendment, i would ask you to put down the birr that you are drinking at home. -- the year they have been drinking at home. the idea that you could reopen it with this climate and this congress and he will try to carve out the big, bad contributions from corporations that corrupt the political process and you will not do damage to the type of free speech rights that you probably want to support like labor unions or the aclu or packs of the planned parenthood pact, i think you are all delusional if you think we will do something good for democracy by visiting the first amendment. it is the question i would like to enter the most. is probably the issue we do the least. i do not know what the solution is to cancer. i cannot find a cure to cancer. the jurisprudence is not moving in my direction to find a cure to cancer. the same thing with campaign finance issues. if somebody has a perfect silver bullet that will do all good and no harm, then bring it on. right now a heated political context, a polarized country, money coming from -- individuals do not like. i actually think that is america. that is the robust political process. there is no such thing as too much speech and too much concern when politics is at play. >> all right. rachel jacob has a question about the death penalty. but i was wondering if you can discuss -- [unintelligible] >> do you have it. done this on the dna database? >> where does it draw the line familiarizing with the kids? >> [unintelligible] >> including marijuana arrests? >> holding it for future law investigations? what's all of these are balancing cases. i think the benefit to being able to solve crimes the director actively or in the future outweighed -- retroactively or in the future out weigh the risks to personal privacy. if somebody has already been convicted of a crime, their interests in the privacy that dna has to be outweighed by the fact, there is a possibility involvement in other crimes as well. law enforcement is right there that this is an extraordinarily powerful tool. it can help save lives. dna is getting to be a more and more accurate science. if he's a dna can exonerate people -- if you say dna can exonerate people. i do not think the downside risk is as much as the upside risk. >> i was going to sit one sentence. one of the issues i think is we are simply arresting the and convicting far too many people. this would be a less serious question if in fact we were arresting and convicting fewer people. but when we are criminalizing as much as we have criminalize in this country, we are creating an entire and their class that now not only has their dna on file for the rest of their lives, they are denied the right to vote in many states for the rest of their lives. they have difficulty getting jobs when they get out because they have a felony conviction. i think you can separate the database issue from the question of, who is going into the database and who is going into the database is far too many people. >> i quite agree with everything steve just said. i want to use this in part -- it is fascinating with the aclu and their role in life and we are talking about the issues -- the substance matter of american life. it is great but an interesting way of proving my earlier point. these are the issues that draws. that is why it is sometimes controversial. in response to your particular question, i am less concerned about the laws that say after conviction, laws that have been proposed and out that as a everybody is stopped and picked up. i am still concerned about it for the reasons the outline. what concerns me most in the death penalty context in the these issues of dna being used to exonerate questions of privacy and other kinds of life issues, in the death penalty we have seen the contraction and a contraction of the number of issues and the number of moments which is possible for a court to hear this evidence. this evidence some states are pushing back against that. that has been very productive. it does to the broader question of the role of the courts and the role of the courts are asking -- the roll the aclu asks the courts to play. it is less concerning if you have this kind of policy. if you know there is going to be a repeated moment where the vindication of the rights of other side in court -- whether it is to exonerate or to convict -- or whether it is the adjudication of an individual right of privacy that is being advanced. what we have seen, and one of the roles the aclu has played that is most important in security context, is a contraction of the role the courts are willing to play. even as the technologies grow, even as the number of issues we call security related grows, the courts maintain this view that anything in that category we cannot do. if the legislature continues to narrow the jurisdiction of the courts, there are still many issues, nobody has a chance to litigate. that is what worries me. that is a process failure. it is a moment when there is secrecy in the political process or the political process is not working and you do not have the courts as a process to fall back on. across the board whether it is criminals, issues an exoneration, security issues, it is the insistence that the courts are a coequal branch of government and have an essential role to play is one of the things -- >> 3 points on this. i know we have to be quick. one is a scale of the database. it will be so large. it we have to be quite sure -- it will be as foolproof as possible in terms of the level of dna samples. the idea of dna is quite different than once fingerprint. with a dna you can unlock an entire health history. your genetic history. with those con swabs stored properly by a police lab, you can have all sorts of access to the person's body and their history and background. there are a history of cases where police officers have used police databanks to go after their girlfriends or they're divorced wives as a way of retaliation. we have to be quite sure that is not going to have privacy court should. the third one i cannot help but tweak the police department when you are here. can you explain to me why and whether you support the idea you would carve out marijuana arrests as not being in the dna data banks? you can be in the dna databank each update turnstile because you left your metro card at home. if you are smoking a joint on the street, you are not in the dna databank. how does that compute? i think the reason why it does not, the reason they allow that carve out is because there of marijuana arrests are so racially skewed it would be impossible for them to say that it does have a ratio impact. if you look at the data, white kids smoke pot on the same and equal levels as african-american and latino kids. drug use is across the race lines. yet the marijuana arrests are predominantly black and latino. they have carved up the kind of marijuana arrests. they knew that ratio was so concentrated among people of color they did not want to fight that battle. >> i would said it probably carved out because it is a battle right now. they were not willing to fight that because of the advocacies -- the notion that marijuana arrests are being driven by race as opposed to public use of marijuana. they are unfortunately -- there is not a single criminal law that does not have a racially impact. the victims of that are the law- abiding members of minority neighborhoods who are disproportionately victimized by crime. i do not think the impact is a legitimate argument to pull back on neutral laws that are being applied in a neutral way. the shooting per-capita rate in brownsville brooklyn is 81 times higher than in bay ridge, brooklyn. that is not an artifact of racist policing. that is because people living in brownsville are victimizing their fellow neighbors at the higher rate. people are dying there at a higher rate. that is what police are conducting stop and frisk said at a much higher rate in brownsville. >> you cannot allow the assertion to go unchallenged. it makes it sound as if the african-american and latino residents are therefore in a lee an inherently more violent than the good old white folks. but it has nothing to do with in a nest. it is simply a fact. >> it has everything to do with opportunity, heather. we take away affirmative action programs, and when we take away the social safety net that the manhattan institute has been very aggressive in championing the efforts, and people out the rug from poor people where they have very few opportunities to make a lot of themselves, is when you see the violence. i am no different than my cousins who are serving time in jail. what is different is i was given a chance. my cousin, as smart as i am. i went to princeton, he did time. he has great parents. same neighborhood. opportunity defines one's life progress. >> there is nothing that has created -- there is nothing that has traded more opportunity than the drop in crime. had given people the civil liberty from fear which is what people and park avenue -- >> i have a question regarding the lgbt movement for marriage equality. you think that the ninth circuit court reservation who addressed the issue of process and the heavy reliance -- does that undermine the argument that there is a fundamental right to same-sex marriage? >> i guess that is addressed to me. what the ninth circuit did, the panel decision of the ninth circuit we are talking about, i hope everybody heard the question. it had to do with the decision hurt by the panel. with respect to the basis upon it is a stain or a firm, the district court decision striking down proposition 8. -- it is sustained or affirmed, the district court decision downping -- striking dumpe proposition 8. they decided there was a constitutional right for citizens to marry somebody of the same sex. when the case gets to the night circuit, the ninth circuit is focusing on the fact that the supreme court of the united states in the rumor case had determined that similar constitutional amendment in colorado taking away the rights of gay and lesbian citizens violated the constitution of equal protection clause and the process clause. those two clauses are fallen in every time we talk about this issue whether it is the large -- folded in every time we talked about this issue. it is a fundamental right to marriage and an equal protection claim. but the ninth circuit did is make a relatively narrow decision but also talking about all of the justifications that call-up -- california had offered for its active discrimination against people on the basis of marriage. it essentially systematically found every single one of those justifications without any rational or reasonable basis. while the decision was focus somewhat narrowly on a couple of supreme court decisions that happen to be written by justice anthony kennedy, that in no way we believe undermined the extensive factual and legal record that was compiled in the district court and form the basis for the district court's 184 page opinions. what will happen from the ninth circuit we do not know. another is a petition for rehearing on bond, pending it has been sitting there for six weeks. it will take 13 out of the 25 active judges in the ninth circuit to grant rehearing on bond. some think it will happen. some think it will not happen. in either event i suspect it will go to the supreme court. if i have not answer that, i would be happy to elaborate. i wanted to do it since it's a to the time constraints. >> anybody else want to weigh in? >> i have a ton of questions on this, but not right now. >> thank you. my question is about internal polarization as well. the aclu policy initiative promoting ferrites and process. is a contradiction in valleys before -- between your first amendment advocacy and pro- government to advanced consumer privacy. is there a tension between the liberal values and pro- government progressivism within the aclu? if you want to take this opportunity to talk about health care as well, feel free to do so. >> i have no credibility on health care because i thought it would be an easy win. whatever else is quick to happen it would not be an easy one. this is back to a comment somebody made at the very beginning of the panel. i do not think it is the most prevalent conflict we face. generally our cases involved individual rights against the government. there are many circumstances that we have to confront whether they are individual rights on both sides of the question. but the most difficult for us. i am not sure there is a simple equation that enables us to resolve those problems. we approach each one on their merits. we try to balance the competing rights as best as we possibly can. in most situations we like to believe it is not a zero sum game. is not either or, there is a way to reconcile both rights. you have raised the issue of free speech and digital privacy. the situation arises for us when somebody wants to pick an outside -- pickets outside of an abortion clinic. whee believe it the right to picket and we believe in the right for reproduction choice. when the press was to public -- the press wants to publish, over the years we have tried to work out the -- we have tweaked the solutions. we have given more thought to the problem. it is a general problem that cannot be avoided. you do the best that you can. i will say just one last thing on the whole issue of digital privacy. the aclu over its history has been primarily concerned with invasions of individual rights by the government. we support laws like had 07 as a private corporations cannot discriminate on the basis of race. it is perfectly clear there is at least as much threat to digital privacy coming from the goals and facebook said the world, the united states government. we will have to think about how to balance those rights as we go forward. >> i wanted to pick up on the health care piece of this. although i would not have expected, i am teaching constitutional law to the students this semester. i see a couple of them there. my poor students, i made them read the entire 80 page transcript of the supreme court last week. i know they enjoyed thoroughly. >> 80 pages? what's the first 80 pages of tuesday. >> you need the first half of tuesday. >> i let them off so easy. the point is, it is fascinating to see this case friend as it has been publicly. it is an individual right against individual rights case at some level. the right on the other side is, you cannot force me to buy health insurance as it has been framed by the plaintive's side. you saw some of the most dramatic moments in the supreme court debate and public debate as well. this motion that, why should the government be able to tell me to take my money and to give it to somebody else. i do not want to buy health insurance. i should not have to buy health insurance. you are using my money to subsidize somebody else's care. the answer that the government council gets to this is, yes, this is what the government does every time the taxes people. this is exactly the power to tax which the plaintiffs say, yes, but you did not call this a tax. you call this a penalty. if only you had called this a tax, then it would be ok. what is the argument there? the health care bill would be ok if you put the letters t-a-x on the title of the provision. the plaintiffs would say, we have no issue with the acceptance of government power? they are pressing on the real argument there. it was not clear enough to the public what congress was doing. they were trying to sneak it in because they thought it was politically easier to pass as a penalty that as a tax. the political process will not work of the voters do not know and cannot evaluate what they are really getting. that argument works sometimes. if the government is doing things in secret, if it is addressing lost to a discreet and insular minority, if it is inserting some random committee bill that some giant authorization bill, the health care law is the most heavily democratic the processed law we have had in the last 20 years. you would have had to be living under a rock to not know exactly what the bill was doing. the argument that individuals could not effectively vote out their members, if they did not like this member -- of the cannot out by the did not like the law, they did not know this was really about taxes and not penalties, this is not an example of a case where there is a political process failure that you need the courts. either the court decides that in june or the voters decided in november, but there is every reason to think that the voters know exactly what was going on but it was passed and no plenty enough to vote against it if they do not like it without the court's interaction. >> i have to let adam in on this. >> it is much too difficult to get into. but i think deborah has generated the general -- demonstrated the general academic you. that is not what we saw the court at all. making people engage in a commercial transaction with a private company is fundamentally different than paying taxes to the government and getting something in return. i want to make a point to follow up and come full circle about polarization. there is one way in which the aclu is not polarizing. at the supreme court, this is a testament to the [applause] leadership, -- they are really read with care. i say that in a setting where greece are not read with care. -- briefs are not read with care. i know in chambers on the liberal and conservative side, the handful of outside groups whose of me as a brief skit really read, among the those are the aclu because they come from a certain perspective but they are credible and trusted. i think that is a testament to a really smart run lead -- legal shop. >> i would just say this. for those of you who absolutely disagree with the aclu and would have never given their time, had there was generous to give her time this evening to comment and engages in discussion. for those whose rigid for those who would not even give us the time of day and want to switch the channel off of c-span. the conflicts of today's panel was the aclu in american life. the question you have to ask yourself is, would american life like without an aclu? if one did not exist, would america be the worse for it? i know the answer in mind is -- the answer in my mind is, i guess, america would be worse if one did not exist. if and if you do not believe in our work, these issues are too much for us to be silent bystanders. if we do anything right, it is just to get the far republican right to bring the part of america saying, why is the aclu advocating on behalf of citizens united? if we can get their light bulbs to sparkle and said, how can i possibly agree with the aclu on this issue, maybe that is a teachable moment for all of us. in american life is all the better when we have these debates. democracy can be a great many things but it should never be quiet. our job is to be as loud and noisy as possible. thank you to jeffrey at all. >> said at the beginning, this was a huge subject. became clear that everyone of these issues you have spent a lot of time on in the debates. -- it became clear that on these issues have spent a lot of time on the new dates. >> thank you to all the panelists. thank you for having me. i hope you enjoyed it. thank you very much. [applause] . [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> we had -- we ask students to create a video showing us what part of the constitution was most important to us and why. today we are going to nashville, tennessee. she is the third prize winner. how are you? >> i in good. >> why did you choose to focus on the first amendment? >> we thought it was very general. we decided to look at the individual parts of the first amendment. we chose the religious liberty clause is. we thought it was something we could personally relate to because we each have our own little point of view on religion. we also thought it was something that other people in our community and in our nation could relate to as well. >> how did they help you understand the establishment and free exercise clause? >> the open our eyes to how it impacts not only a small group of people, but how it impacts the entire nation. it is not case by case our problem by problem, it is always affecting as because everybody is practicing their religion. they all have their own personal connection to it. >> how does this topic affect your community? what's everybody has their own religion and their own views on religion. these causes of protecting them by giving them the freedom to practice their religion and to express their religion without being persecuted. it allows us to go to school and a two work, have a job, own property, and vote without being the -- without being judged by our faith in our religion. but how does your research affect your position on the topic? what i have always been a strong supporter of religious equality. it has really opened my eyes to how important this is and how important these clauses are and how they are always affecting us. has made me a stronger supporter for religious freedom. >> what was your favorite part in creating the documentary? >> my favorite part was the editing because i love creating videos. i love that as a hobby. i got more of a professional hands on experience with it and it was a lot of fun. >> what would you like others to learn from your documentary? what's up with others to watch our documentary and really feel he way -- >> i would like others to watch our documentary and see how it is always affecting us. no matter how small it may seem, they are always there and giving us the freedom to practice and express your religion without being persecuted perry >> thank you for talking to us today. >> thank you. >> congratulations. >> here is a brief portion of the documentary. a religiously diverse nation. >> no matter who we are and where we come from or what faith we have, we are americans. the establishment and exercise clauses but said the religious liberty clause as pierre >> the first amendment says we should not make any law prohibiting the free exercise thereof. >> the establishment clause is basically about no establishment. we would not set up an official state religion. the free exercise clauses about individuals being able to freely exercise their beliefs. but the establishment clause is there to protect religion from government and government from religion. to separate the two. >> if it keeps the government from taking sides in religion. the government is required to be neutral between religion and on religion. >> you can see the entire video and all the winning documentary's at studentcam.org. >> next, remarks on women's health by the president of planned parenthood. some year and tax filing tips. >> this sunday on "q &a." >> when i got the opportunity to me both of my senators, is being able to meet them and talk to them. >> some leaders like leon panetta talked about how important it is to be financially sound. if we are not financially sound, devoting money to national defense will not be worth it because you will not have any money to devote to it. >> high school students from all 50 states participated in a week-long program in the nation's capital share their observations and experiences of they interact with members of congress, the supreme court, and the president. >> there is a lot of partisanship going on and i am the one who is reaching across the aisle. everybody we have met here from progress has said that and it makes me wonder if everybody is saying that but it is not actually happening. is there a discrepancy because what they are saying that what they're actually doing and i never really thought about that before i came here. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on "q &a." >>cecil richards spoke at a student form at woodrow wilson school of public and international affairs. the daughter of ann richards and focused her remarks on birth control and health care. her speech is one hour and 20 minutes. [applause] >> i have to say i am honored to have the opportunity to introduce cecile riches. she has served as the head of planned parenthood since 2006. every year nearly 200 centers nationwide, this 95-year-old organization provides family planning, reproductive, and sexual health care to nearly 3 million people. during her tenure, she has expanded the organization's advocacy for access for health care. she has led a nationwide campaign to preserve access to planned parenthood's preventive care through federal programs. she started the youth initiatives program that trains young people each year in leadership skills and health care advocacy. she is invested in private -- planned parenthood online, a web site that provides mobile access to health information and is visited by 33 million visitors every year. under her leadership, the number of planned parenthood supporters has doubled reaching a total of 6 million people. before joining planned parenthood, richards served as the deputy chief of staff for nancy pelosi. in 2004 she founded and served as president of america votes, a coalition of 42 national grassroots organizations working to maximize registration, education, and voter participation. in 2011, richards was named to time's magazines annual list of 100 most influential people in the world. we are very privileged to have her here. she has been recognized as a national leader by the national council of jewish women, u.s. action, and the prize for creative citizenship. she is a 1980 graduate of brown university. she also serves in her spare time on the board of the ford foundation. today's talk, keeping politics out of women's help is being presented as a criminal -- at a critical moment in a nationwide conversation about women's health. the public outcry after the susan b. cullman withdrawal and the reinstatement for breast cancer screening, the debate about contraception and religious organizations, whether they can be obligated to provide health insurance coverage, and even this week as the supreme court hearing on the affordable care act has brought start a attention to the question about what the appropriate role is for government and for non-profit organizations and for insurance companies in promoting women's health. for many of us who study or advocate on behalf of the issues or for those of us who care about the issues, questions about ensuring woman's access to health care are not new ones. researchers at the center for health and well-being and the office of public -- i am sorry. the public of opposition research has focused on the importance of women's access to run the world. women die from pregnancy related causes each year. princeton scholars like dan cates had examined how access to health care and sub saharan africa impact's the rate. most of these deaths occur in developing countries, the united states has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among developed countries -- 1000 maternal deaths per year. among developed countries, the united states also has the highest incidence of low birth rate and the infant death, something that is not unrelated to maternal health. the steady policy approaches to improving the maternity care system. my own research shows that extending public health insurance to poor women and children has improved infant health and reduced mortality. clearly, there is a long way to go given that half of pregnancies are unintended. clearly planned parenthood continues to fill a vital need. one of our newest affiliates has done research showing that political participation of facts access to health care and infant health in brazil. when i was preparing these remarks, i could not help thinking about the different careerof miss richards' looking at political participation and also access to health. it may be that the link between politics and women's health is inevitable, miss richards will speak to that. please join me in giving her a warm welcome. [applause] >> thank you so much. thank you. thank you for the really nice introduction. it is wonderful to be with you this that the day. it was great to be here all day and with a lot of interesting students at the woodrow wilson school. thank you to all the students and faculty who hosted events and got me around campus. thank you for having me here. i also want to acknowledge the interim ceo of planned parenthood -- anyway, welcome to all of you. it is nice tv princeton. before i give my formal remarks, you do not know that much about me and i do not know that much about you, i will mention a couple of things. i was born in taxes. i was born in waco, texas even. somebody had to be. [laughter] my folks both went to baylor university, which no is the baptist school. there were high school sweethearts and they both went on to baylor. my mother said everything they did was that much more fun because it was either against the royals or it was a sen. -- against the rules or a sin. the baptist convention disallowed six standing up at baylor because people might think you were trying to bet -- you were trying to dance which is forbidden. that is my family upbringing. but it was being at baylor which made them tough. our family was one where every issue and movement back into town the got involved in. i grew up in dallas in the heights of the civil-rights movement. they were involved in that and the woman's movement. our dinner table was not aware you 8 but where you focused on whatever issue they were involved in on the campaign. that is how me and my siblings were raised. we eventually moved to austin. my mother was a traditional housewife. it was the 1950's and 1960's after all. we moved to austin at the height of the anti-war movement. everything was going crazy. she was invited for the first time to run a campaign, which was unheard of for women in that time. it was for a woman who wanted to run for the state legislature. the whole thing seemed a little bit craft. i thought, and what the heck. i would think -- i will get my hand at it. all of us kids got to be involved. we learned of the political skills you need for a lifetime like handing out bumper stipples -- stickers and yard signs. anyway, the end of the story is, it was a very competitive race but this gentleman one. many of you will remember, but sarah at the age of 26 argued the roe versus wade case before the supreme court. she has spent her entire life fighting for a woman's writes. i feel like my whole life as come full circle. the real moral of the story is my mom kind of got hooked on politics and she would run for office herself. she did a series of times. she was elected to a variety of offices. it was one moment where the stars and mooned aligned and we elected the first and only completely pro-choice woman governor of texas, my mom, and richards. [applause] i just think about, we all stand on the soldier's -- shoulders of those who came before us. i want to give a special acknowledgment to mom and all the women years ago fought the battles so we would not have to fight them. yet here we are doing it all over again. please all of you who are actual scholars, do not like this said because it will not sound right. life is not one thing after another, it is the same damn thing over and over again. now i will get into my serious remarks. since this is princeton university i prepared remarks about a topic i think is interesting. i want to acknowledge your fabulous -- what fabulous work she has done here at the woodrow wilson school and how lucky brown university is to steal her away. i mention that because my first experience with planned parenthood was with brown a as a student. i use birth control and college. it was rather unthinkable to go to the campus health center. planned parenthood was the only place i knew that really do everything about birth control. it is kind of funny because a lot of change since i walked to the help center in providence, rhode island years ago. a lot of things have not changed. that is how millions of women first get birth control is that planned parenthood. i am sorry. i have a bit of a cold. every day hundreds of people, primarily young people come to the health centers and ask the same thing. i need to give birth control and i needed affordable. i do not have money to pay. where i am afraid i am pregnant, is there somebody i can talk to? i think i need testing for rick and aristide. planned parenthood was started 96 years ago. it was out of a concern that with men were unable to get information about birth control, and were unable to get any kind of birth control devices and were unable to plan their families. margaret was drawn to this work by seeing her own mother who had died at the age of 50 after having 11 children and seven miscarriages. her body literally wore out from so many pregnancies. that is how margaret got into the work. you read about the early days in which women brought diaphragms over from europe in their suitcases and smuggled them through trains. it was not since 1936 that the laws were rolled back and there were not finally repealed to 1970. it was not until 1965 that the griswald supreme court decision actually finally legalized birth control for married couples in america. i am glad we are not facing the griswald decision with the supreme court, i have to be honest. from where margaret began 96 years ago fast forward to today where planned parenthood is, one in five women come to planned parenthood at some point in their lifetime for health care. 3 million patience come every single year. for so many women now, a family planting -- planning center like planned parenthood, that is the only doctor visit they will get all year. so many women put off their health care. they are also getting their breast cancer screening or cervical cancer screening or an s t e test. some come for prenatal care as well. over the last year we have seen an unrelenting attack on women and young people being able to go to planned parenthood for basic preventive care. we can talk about all the political battles that have been fought over the last year, but what i would like to focus on for a few minutes here in my remarks is that at this moment in which politics seems to be a increasingly used to limit access to fix education, for basic for mission for young people and reproductive health care, i actually believed there was a huge opportunity on the horizon. that is through technology. and i think the technology is a way you go a lot -- beyond a lot of the political barriers put up to women for access to care. that is always our goal at planned parenthood. to reduce the barriers to get access to reproductive health care information and services. using technology in a new way is like the latest iteration. health care barriers in this country are difficult depending on who you are and where you are. people face barriers because of their economics, their background, where they live, their race, their language, their geography. and the united states seeking our reproductive health care services as a whole other layer of barriers whether it is access to safe abortion services or birth control or as t d testing, the additional barriers are the social stigma and -- getting basic answers to health care needs and it limits too many people from getting the care they need. this is my dream to give you a glance of the future where i believe we can deliver information and education and health care and a digital and social age. it is critical that we do so. to level set this, i think it was alluded to already, five years ago when i came to planned parenthood, we started plannedparenthood.org. this is a classic case of if you build it they will come. the minute we were able to get ourselves together and get organized and every new addition to the site generated more and more traffic. we were finally able to get it or you could type your zip code and find a health center anywhere in america. we became the fandango of reproductive health care in this -- what kind of birth control could work for them women fill that out everywhere. i heard about this other kind of birth control. maybe i should check it out. another may need an ltd test or an emergency contraception. the 3 million patients came through our health center doors last year for the most hands-on care. last february, more than -- last year, we moved to mobile phones. in 2012, this year, we estimate we will see 40 million people online and half of them will be through their sulfone. or those of you who have kids, if it is not on your cell phone, it does not exist. [laughter] over the last couple of years, we have been a living in the digital laboratory where we have been able to track what are on people's minds and what they need and ask people what they look for and start piloting really innovative programs to reduce the barriers for young people in this country, this whole new generation coming in to get access to care and services and try to eliminate some of the barriers we have. it is important. we have to do this. i know a lot of people worked in public health. despite all the things we have been able to do in this country, at the forefront more than anything, we have moved on to the i pad, which has revolutionized the world. the numbers speak for themselves. we have the highest unintended pregnancy rate then any developed country. on average, 730,000 teenagers will get pregnant every year. the vast majority are unintended and undesired pregnancies. we know that being a teenage mom is a huge contributor to poverty later in life, not only for the mom, but for their children. children under 18 have a 64% chance of growing up in poverty. so these are really important issues. the other thing that has a lot of conversation about this is the cdc. it has been focused on the rate of this td's among young people. i do not want to -- rate of s t .'s among young people i do not want to scare you or make you have to call your children away. [laughter] they are not having half of the sextet is happening in the country, but they are getting half of the infections for std's. for bad health outcomes, it is disproportionately happening among young people of color and people who have fewer economic options. and teen pregnancies, the taking huge toll co. what does it cost in taxes in this country? it is $11 billion to $12 billion every year. it is not just about health outcomes, it is a terrible drain on our nation's economy. the thing that is heartening is that we know how to keep young people from being that statistic. there things you can do together to make a difference. many young people deny get birth control information by the time the first time they have sex. generally, parents talk to children about sex. will we talk to teens, they say that their parents never talk about sex. so go back and talk to your child about it tonight. this is politically very challenging. in utah last week, the governor vetoed any kind of information that would give information to kids. we only have abstinence only education. see how that is working for us. legislatures in other states are making it a lot harder for young people to have sex education. this is one of the most universally -- regardless of .eligion or anything else we have to figure of ways to get sex education to young people without having to get it through the legislature, through the school board control of the barriers that exist. that is where technology comes in here 13-29-year-olds spend 7.5 hours a day in front of the screen grid i do not know what else they're doing. [laughter] if that is my son, if that is what he is doing, everything else he is doing is sleeping. looking at the tv or texting could there is a lot of competition and that is where young people are paired for out of five teenagers have a cell phone could by the end of this year, half of them will have a smartphone. they have access to everything. 87% of teenagers sleep with their cell phones right next to their heads. we will soon discover what the medical issues are related to that. [laughter] and then the average teen 3400 cents text per month. this is something they're living with every single moment of their lives. before, it was getting a car appeared now, it is getting a smartphone. it is bridging the digital divide either through a laptop or stationary computer. because african-american and latino teenagers are more likely to use their phones to access the internet than other teenagers. they live on line. they're not only going to defend websites. they are talking all the time and they're having social information and they're looking for sexual information. news flash. [laughter] about half of young people use the internet to search for health-related information and it is information that is sensitive, that they may be embarrassed about talking to people about. some of it is drug use, sexual abuse, and depression. this is why it is so important. they are looking for information that they may not want to talk to their parents about or their teachers about. so they go on places like yahoo! and get information. and just read this the other day. this was on answered.com. someone asked "can i use a plastic glove instead of a condom." i did not want to even think about that. [laughter] but the website has this as the best dancer "one time, my brother used one -- the best answer, "one time, my brother used one and the girl did not get pregnant." [laughter] it used to be that you got that information at a slumber party are on a school bus. now you get it online. the need and the demand to get in this place is critical. we need to be aggressively in the social online sphere. we're getting into these conversations. we know questions that have and frequently asked questions for young adults and we are developing stuff on tumblr and other teen sites where they are having this conversation already. the other biggest demand is parents who say i have no idea how to deal with the explosion of information my kids are faced with and not able to have a real honest your heart to heart about sex education. this is one of the single biggest things that parents are talking about on blogs. the concrete areas -- i think these are encouraging and i think they can make a difference. the first is texting. the days of the 1-800 number is going away. it is replaced by text and jack. we have -- text and chat. we have a texting and chatting program to get a hold of a planned parenthood person 365 days. and we advertise through programs that children may watch. mtv said to was, you know, we run these shows, but we do not know a lot about what to say to young people who are concerned about getting pregnant before they are ready to have a child. so we advertise and partner with media entities like that. our first year evaluation showed success. it was the immediacy of what people can get paid the conversations are incredible. we got a text from a young woman last week. again, it is not even like hi, my name is jimmy. "i am afraid i might be pregnant." so we had this conversation. she had unprotected sex the night before. if you do not want to be pregnant, you can take emergency contraception, the morning after pill. and there is a slight delay. then she checked back a "i can ?" and there are exclamation points. you could feel the relief through the text. suddenly -- she was in crisis, terrified she is pregnant, probably did not mean to have sex, not on birth control, and now a person on the other end of the text is telling her, you know what, your life may not be over. again, we could help her get unemployment with planned parenthood so she could get immediate contraceptive appeare. now they can go through text and chat to get information immediately. and we're finding that a lot of things -- kids do not even want to say things out loud. how long did she wait before she could it meant that she might be pregnant? they ask on text and chat the same things you have heard. like, i heard you cannot get pregnant on the first time. can you get pregnant if you're still on birth control? can you get birth control without your parents knowing? that is a huge issue for young people. some are quick answers. some are more complicated. but the most exciting thing is we can get in at the moment of need where young people live in regardless of your situation. i think it is the single most promising real-time technology that takes away barriers. these are kids in texas and they have absolutely no one -- not to keep picking on taxes, but it is the biggest program of its kind in the united states. another way to rich people is telemedicine. there is the video conference and local care providers and get state-of-the-art testing and treatment. the va has been pioneering this forever. veterans in rural areas do not have local clinics where they can video conference with a doctor. so we have been experimenting and have begun a pilot with this as well across the country. patients come into our health center and meet with a health assistant or a nurse and then with a doctor that they can join by videoconference in real time and interact about birth control and std testing. they can walkthrough do in the blood sample or taking a swab and talking with the patient about what the results can be. and getting into networks where we can provide care. and making sure that we partner with others to do videoconferencing and telldmdci emedicine. i grew up and texas -- a group in texas, as i said. mind such a decatur was a coach. he -- my sex educator was a coach. he did the best job. traditionally, sex education took place in school because that is where we can reach a lot of young people. but what you know it is that come increasingly, there are too many places where they are banding sex education. even now, only 21 states really require sex education. of course, it is the states that do not require it that have the highest teen pregnancy rates and std rates. another study in a long one of study shows that sex education actually help young people change their behavior. it helps them to delay the first time they have sex and it also helps ensure a greater likelihood that they will actually use protection when they actually become sexually active. if i were to ask the number people that we see on line, basically, each month, it is equivalent to about 160,000 classrooms in america. just do the math. this year, there is 1.9 classrooms in the year. we are creating digital sex education based on kinds of behavior change. one of the key things, for those who study behavioral science, one of the ways to have teenagers delay being sexually active -- first, they have sex because everyone else is having sex. they want to be like everybody else. we're getting messages out that change that behavior. when you teach a young person that, on average, people start having sex at age 17, that is the single most important piece of information that will help them delay the onset of sexual activity. the second important thing is that 80% of young men use a condom when they have sex. that complete increases condom use and that is how we can get to the other 20%. you may wonder how these help once worked. they absolutely work. mental health, smoking cessation, but only a few in reflective health care. we are creating the largest intervention related to sexual reproductive health based on science and what we know that people like to do online, particularly young people. if your love my son, it is play videos and share things. -- if you are like my son, it is playing videos and sharing things. it is really important to use a condom or having a question posed on yahoo! answered by someone who actually knows what they're talking about. that is really exciting. there is an opportunity here to use videos. we have already seen it, beyond the ones of cats playing the piano, which are great. but young people are looking for this information. the thing about planned parenthood is not having to create a demand. it is already there. we do not have to convince people of things like global warming could we do not have to convince people of poverty. young people are already interested in what we do. it looks different from when it started 90 years ago, but it is actually kind of the same thing. we are reaching more young people and providing information in real time. the single biggest struggle is dealing with the politics of it all. it is the barrier of politics. every time we made two steps forward, there's another step backwards. partisan politics, rather than public health care policy, is what is driving health care policy in america. there are challenges by congress and other trying to create barriers to education. we see a tax on access to planning, to cancer screening, to pap smears. i think it is important to remember that the u.s. house of her pretended as a year ago funding for planned parenthood had nothing to do with abortion. the attacks that were made in this congress was about eliminated all the preventive care that we have d.eated that was literally what was at stake and that is what the house voted to do. we are in the early fighting to get preventive care in this country. it is an obvious point, but if you really wanted to reduce the need for abortion in this country, would you not come volunteer at a planned parenthood health center? we do more every single day to prevent unintended pregnancy and the need for abortion than all of these people with picket signs will do in a lifetime. last year, a lot of states passed laws that really target regulation of health care reproductive clinics. it makes it more difficult for clinics to stay open. we see a slew of new bills that strike at nothing more than humiliating women. texas has actually passed and implemented the required vaginal ultrasound bill so that women in the state of texas, regardless of what point they are in their pregnancy, they have to have a vaginal ultrasound before they have any procedure. these are procedures that are not medically necessary mandated by lawmakers who are not physicians. this is politicized. i want to of the size -- i want to emphasize that they just voted down the birth control ban in arizona. in arizona, planned parenthood was started by peggy goldwater, barry goldwater's wife. planned parenthood is the ultimate. it does not come with a political label. last year, we have seen what young people around the globe can do in the face of censorship and what our supporters can do when planned parenthood is under attack. this is the other power of technology could it is the power to connect people, to tell our stories, to get our message out and to drive social change. in the last year, more than 1 million new people have joined planned parenthood as activists and more than half of them are young people. when the house voted, young people mobilized more than ever before. more than 1.3 million tweet -- which is what you do on twitter -- [laughter] they occurred in less than three days and drove mainstream media and coverage. that change the story immediately. and the legislature was trying to pass the same bill as texas on the vaginal ultrasound, but women and young people mobilized and made a human chain around the capital. texas gov. rick perry, when he ended the state family planning program in texas, thousands of people rallied in towns and big cities and did it through social media. there are some in this country who wanted to inspect the 1950's. i take comfort in this fact. 96 years ago, margaret hanger was arrested for distributing information about birth control, literally just pamphlets about birth control. but this coming year, more than 40 million people will have access to that information through our web site. so you have to say there is a little bit of progress. [laughter] sorry. i hope that works. [laughter] it is not everything, but you have to take hope and opportunity for the future, right? otherwise, you just get too darned discourage. i think there is potential for everyone who believes that reproductive health care, information, and services should be available to everyone. it can change people's lives. the technology itself will not change the world. but through all this, it can together could think to some much for being here today. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> thank you so much. time for some questions. i guess i can take the prerogative as the chair to ask my own questions while we're waiting for some people to come down. i think it is fascinating that you have all of these different ways of reaching people now. if you could expand one thing, what would it be you would pick out of your initiative? >> it would absolutely be taxed and chat. i read all of the directions we ext and it would be taxe chat. i get to meet people all over the country. almost every week, someone will come to me and say that planned parenthood changed my life. no one ever forgets having gone to planned parenthood. you may be anxious. you may be embarrassed. you may be afraid of the questions you have to ask. and planned parenthood was there. this is what we see on line could some are so relieved that somebody is on the other end of the wire or whatever it is -- i don't know how it works. [laughter] that can be there in their moment of crisis and you can live truly here this relief over the phone, even if it is a tough situation. i think that is the single most important thing that we can be doing. >> ok. >> thank you for your top and the very important work you do. i have a question -- you touched briefly on this, the legislative backlash we are currently seeing with reproductive rights and so on. i wonder if planned parenthood has a long term vision plan of action in terms of rolling things back. technology is extremely important for getting information out there. but my next thought is that there's all of this censorship that is happening. in some schools, you cannot access information or in public libraries. >> right. it did used to be you could go to public libraries, but now you can do to cell phones. that is where people are moving to give you can literally get this information into the hands of people that has been his starkly difficult to get. i will put it back on you. my host is your generation. there are a lot of things that give me hope. i am a perennial optimist despite all of the incoming information. i have seen this last year young people get organized and take on these issues in a way that i have never seen -- that i have not seen in decades. it is not just young women. it is young men. a greater population of the people coming to planned parenthood are young men. they're taking on these issues as well. these issues -- these are issues of human rights, not just one gender or another. i think it is exciting. i just want to know how many people can you bring. who will stand up at the end of the day and make a difference? in the affordable care act yesterday, the supporters of the affordable care act out number the opponents in front of the supreme court 5-1. [applause] and a lot of them were young people who got access to planned parenthood or women's health care issues over the last year. i just think there has never been a better opportunity and there has been -- and there has never been a greater need to stand up for your generation and demand the right to ask for health care information and the services that will help you live your life. so that is my charge to you, ok? >> i have had the privilege of working in the texas affiliate. >> nice to see you. you have been amazing work there. >> i was privileged to work there. i wanted to ask your opinion on the new legislative trend, like bills introduced four months old, like by agra with -- like the prostate exams to get viagra. >> most of the bill's letter being passed limit women's access to health care. underlying them is a fundamental tenet that women are incapable of making responsible decisions without the legislature intervening in their personal lives. that is absolutely unacceptable. i love the thought that they will equal the playing field. if women are incapable of making their medical decisions, then men must be as well to try it on and see how it fits. i do think social media made a great role in this. there is an example that probably all of you saw. issahearings were held by 8w on capitol hill appeared and here are five men who are about to explain that women do not need sexual health care. someone took a picture on their on linephone and put it and it would viral. through social media, people tell their stories and expose what has been a lot of hypocrisy it around the treatment of women and women's health care issues. now we have the need to do it and we need to be using it. i think it is absolutely transformative. thank you for what you do and for the work. texas is one of the most challenging places now. centers at the rio grande border. it is a sad day. >> i just wanted to say thank you so much for what you do. it is a real honor to have you here. i am just learning about the leadership responsibilities you have held over the course of your career and you continue to hold. it is incredible. i was wondering if you have any tips for young people on how to manage your time if you want to -- [laughter] >> i am sorry. >> how to maintain the energy to feed on these issues and fight for them even though there's such a struggle sometimes. >> i have no idea on time management. once you have kids, it becomes even more complicated. the only thing i would say -- and some of us talked earlier in some of the of the class's -- i have been unbelievably blessed in my life to do work that is meaningful to me and make a career of it. all of you young people who are starting out and thinking about public health were working in non-profits or whatever else, if you can find something that you are passionate about and you can do that for your job, i just cannot tell you how blessed your life will be. i can do this into the night. there's nothing more energizing to me then getting to do the work that i do that planned parenthood, to organize more people and young people and interact with them and learn from them. that is my only advice. you will never manage your time. you like something that use spending time doing and you can do it. so good luck to you. [laughter] >> thank you so much for coming in spending a couple of days with us. one of the wonderful things about the woodrow wilson school is that all the international students are here, in talking bill today and to students last year with their international classmates, most of them have been shocked at the political turn of events in the united states. i was wondering if planned parenthood is looking to international models at all or is there anything that other countries are doing or not doing in terms of politicizing these issues that planned parenthood is looking at to get ideas of other ways to move forward? >> first, let me join international students in saying that i am shocked at the political turn on these issues, particularly on issues of women's health. and i would also invite anyone from any foreign country who has any suggestions on how to get out of the fix we are in. i am more than open to suggestion. there will be a point at which folks say enough is enough. and i hope we're getting to that point. in an interesting way, i think it happened in the komkan situation. we want people to get early screenings and self detect breast cancer. it was first that we were out there trying to demonize planned parenthood. that was a real problem. and the american people said that was too far. that is too much. you cannot play politics with breast cancer screenings in america. and that got turned around. frankly, we have to speak up now and we have to talk about the fact that the issues we're dealing with our health care issues. the one who sees this as a social issues someone who has never used it, right? 98% of women who have used for control are catholic women. so this is a strange social phenomenon. my favorite statistic is that the average woman in america plans to have to 0.3 children, somewhere --2.3 children, somewhere around there. the average woman spent 30 years trying to avoid pregnant because she does not want to be. that is a lot of birth control. that is not a social issue. that is a major public health issue in this country and we should do everything we can to help them. ok, off the soap box pierre >> thank you for coming and getting this talk and think for your work. one of the things that has shocked me the most about the recent presidential campaign coming even though it should be so much about the election, contraception kept blowing up. 99% of women use birth control, 98% of catholic women use birth control -- it doesn't even seem to be good politics. why is this issue continually floating up despite its political in viability -- inviability. >> ok you are really smart and i agree with you. [laughter] in the 2010 election when everything that realigned in this country, birth control, abortion, they were not mentioned at all. that was an election the people were concerned about the economic decline, about unemployment, about home floor -- home foreclosures. the new congress, did they start dealing with those issues? no the jobs bill? no. the first thing they did was and the national family planning program. it is not what the voters wanted. in fact, i do not like to be that competitive, but after this entire back and forth we did with congress over the funding planned parenthood, planned parenthood's approval rating went up. 69% of people in this country approved a plan parenthood and a 10% of people in this country approval of congress. [laughter] [applause] so to your point, i do not think it makes political sense. the concern is watching this republican presidential debate which is a debate to the bottom. it is like i will be worse for women's health, no, i will be, note i will be. i say this because we have a lot of republican supporters who are discouraged by the turn of events. this presidential primary has been a fight for the hearts and minds of a very small segment of this republic. -- of republicans. it is rewarding folks who are trying to hold the party hostage to a very extreme agenda around women's health. end resultw what the will be. i do think women are upset and i do think that one thing to remember is that women will be the majority of voters in november. 53% in the 2008 election was women. i am grateful that a lot of men are in this room. but women and young people will probably determine who the next president is of the united states. so it is you in your hands whether this country on these issues moves for work or if we go back to the days of "madmen" and no one can get access to birth control. but i do think it does not make political sense. i am glad you're here. [laughter] >> one of the common arguments i hear against planned parenthood is that they encourage irresponsible behavior. frankly, i hear the argument from my peers at princeton all the time. i sometimes travel to respond because it is a very plausible argument. i do not know -- it is a very principled argument. >> pardon me. i think there are a couple of points. i mentioned earlier that there have been studies for years that providing an people information about birth control, the more young people know about sex education, that they know about birth control, that they know about contraception and std's and conscious -- and prevention, the less likely there will be risky. and you may teach kids in high school. the man not have sex in high school, but at some point, they will. and they need birth control. and the more likely they are you -- they are to use protection. i think part of your question is that i don't have to talk about sex for young people to think about it. [laughter] i am not trying to be funny about it. sex is everywhere except when it comes to providing real information and honest conversation. i think about my own kids who grew up watching "gossip girl," "one tree hill," let's just go down a list. and somehow, we do not want to provide access to good information. the cat is out of the bag. [laughter] i think the most important thing we can do and we take this very seriously at planned parenthood -- when and people come to planned parenthood and the text us, they want to know and my normal? is it weird that i am a virgin? this is the way i am feeling. our goal is to help young people delay having sex before they are ready and to make sure that, when they do make that decision to become sexually active, that the use protection and the use contraception. that is our whole goal. so good luck. [laughter] and thank you for the question could that is a really good question. >> i want to thank you again for coming and i also wanted to -- >> your the politest students. [laughter] >> endure hilarius. i really appreciate that. i wanted to -- and you are hilarious. i really appreciate that. i wanted to bring that back to the young people who will be a high percentage of the voters. there are politicians and other people making these decisions for women and wanted to ask you come on behalf of your organization, if you have a message or you would like to create a message for these women. even though it does not have a lot to do with their personal concerns, you see them backing and supporting different politicians or pieces of legislation that would otherwise harm them, regardless of whether or not they are from this party or that party. is there something that can be done? is there a lack of information? what really needs to be out there to say, hey, this is important not just for yourself, but -- i don't know. >> i will put on another hat. i am also the president of the political action fund. we endorse candidates and worked at elections. one of the things we did this year was launched a website called women are watching. we host things the candidates are saying that relate to women's health care access pipit is really hard to follow the ball -- health care access. it is really hard to follow the ball. there is so much going on. certainly, they are running for president, but they are also running for office all across the country. that is something that we hope to be able to provide. one of the things we found in the past election is that they are pretty skeptical of politicians, young women in particular. shocking. [laughter] so they discount a lot of the information they hear at election time. but the really trust planned parenthood because they feel we are an honest broker when it comes to women's health care issues. it is important for us, again, in a non-partisan way, to show what these candidates are saying and what they're committing to on women's health care issues. i keep saying i have seen it all. i have never seen an election like this where literally issues of access to birth control may be determined in the presidential election. it is kind of crazy. yeah, it is kind of crazy. so -- >> not to be redundant, but thank you again for coming. [laughter] >> you must be taught when you are freshmen. you always think people. that is really nice. it is my honor to be here. >> you talk a lot about the services that planned parenthood provides, but often times when you first mentioned planned parenthood to people, the first thing they think is abortion. how do we change -- i think that the image of women's health is still abortion. how did you change it to talk about -- how do you change it to talk about more things? >> i want to be really clear that it is really important in this country that abortion is legal and it is safe and that women can get access to it. there are too many places in the world where men die -- and they did in this country as well before abortion was legal. so that is a part of women's health care. but it is not all of women's health care. more than 90% of our services is preventative. the idea is to have fewer unintended pregnancies in the first place. but we have to continue to tell the story. but part of it is your opportunity is provided through the congressional debate and letting your patience be the face of planned parenthood. two examples -- one was an interesting moment -- it is sometimes our opponents who give us a little bit of an opening. so when he said that 90% of our services was abortion, he was called on it and he was pressed about it and said he did not intended to be a factual statement. [laughter] it was not the only moment. and then we can say this is what we do pick and then i was on tv that night -- this is what we do. and then i was on tv that night to say this is what we do. some of the fox newscasters -- [laughter] one of them said, during the big debate over whether planned parenthood should exist, one of them said that women can go to smears andfor pap stuff like that. but then walgreen said, no, don't come to walgreen's for pap smears. [laughter] and then someone said to, yes, go to walgreen's. look for the stirrups that are between the kiddie litter and the toilet paper. [laughter] in this last year, we had thousands of patients tell their stories on tumblr, on facebook, and more. one woman from florida went to congress three times. it is really putting a face on who planned parenthood is. we got one story from all 50 states, put it in a book, and to the to the members that the united states senate. we just have to continue to do that and help educate people about the entirety of what women's health care is in this country. >> thank you for coming. [laughter] >> it is like a game now we're playing. >> we are only talking about one half of the parents, constructive parents. i wonder if you can talk about how you have an initiative to bring the men into the picture and talk to them about their risk for std's and how they can inform their girlfriends are they can inform their boyfriends. can you talk about how you can bring in young men so they can grow to be better lawmakers? [laughter] >> i knew you had an ulterior motive there. [laughter] i am so glad you asked that .oul men are coming to planned parenthood as partners or as patients themselves, we are doing more in education for young men. some of them are already parents before they wanted to be parents and training them to work with other young men. it is to teach them what they need to know, everything from negotiating skills to information about contraception to help them finish school if that is terrible, to finish college if that is their goal, and not become a parent until they are ready to take care of their families. young men a huge part of this and a growing part of our organization. i was at our national conference and we trained a huge leong leadership -- accused young leadership, and a third of the educators are young men. they will come to these issues from a lot of different walks of life. some come because they're concerned about birth control, some from a social justice pointed you, but i feel that this action -- to me, i look at the future, i see how technology can change the future. but the other is, if you look at this coming new generation in the united states of america, it is the most diverse ever in our history. it is so exciting. it is the earth's ethnically, racially, sexual orientation, you name it -- it is the versdie ethnically, racially, sexual orientation, you name it. for the moms who fought for reproductive rights, we cannot let them down. but we need to bring this into the future. i am glad to see so many men here tonight. [applause] and here is one right now. [laughter] >> hi, thank you again for coming. [laughter] in light of recent comments by rush limbaugh -- everyone about contraception and the context of ovarian cysts and requiring explaining the reasons that we need birth control to prevent cancer -- i guess my question is what role do you think sex positivity should have in women's health? is it a acceptable to say we need birth control to prevent cervical cancer or ovarian cancer or do you think it is just as legitimate to say that we need birth control because women have the right to have sex as men do? >> here here! [laughter] look, everyone is having sex. even members of congress have sex. it is unbelievable that we cannot be honest about these conversations. so this bill -- i was in arizona two weeks ago. they were going to pass a bill that says basically -- if you are a 35-year-old woman, married with two kids and you want to use birth control, and you want it covered by your employer through your insurance plan, you have to bring a doctor's permission slip to say that you are using it for something other than an unintended pregnancy, as if somehow there are better reasons to use birth control. [laughter] there are other good reasons, but it is absolutely ridiculous. this whole thought that women -- it is just insane to me. the good thing is that the senate voted that down today. but it will be back. yes, i think that it is right. we are sexual beings could that is part of who we are. it is time -- again it is just incredible to me that this country cannot come to grips with that. as we also know, it is often times the folks who are the worst attackers who seem to have their own issues with sex. i think it is really important that we stand up for the right of all people to have a sexually fulfilling life and to not have children when they're not ready to have children. to have that control, it is just crazy. i think the american people think it is insane, too. itean, you are sayinseeing every day. >> thank you very much. i am one of those international students at the woodrow wilson school has a hard time trying to understand the politics of women's health in the u.s. i'm from canada could ally of the state bills coming toward -- i am from canada. a lot of the stables coming forward, it is pushing women's health into the private sphere and that government should not be intervening is de legitimizing women's health. >> part of what is at stake is that we believe there should be public health system in america. women's health is being used as the lead dog in this conversation. the question is, does the legislature -- do politicians have the right or have better information than the woman's medical doctor on how to deal with their medical care? that is what this is about. but the issue whether we believe public health is a good in and of itself, i think it is a fundamental thing that we will have to grapple with. i will pick on mitt romney for one minute. he brought it on himself. he said the of the day -- he said we would get rid of planned parenthood. but the other thing he said is we cannot afford planned parenthood. we cannot afford that in this country. i know that we cannot afford unplanned parenthood. we already know the billions of dollars that costs. you know what, we simply cannot afford to provide health care to people in this country anymore. the medicare program that president nixon signed with bipartisan support, the entire family planning program that provides health care for 5 million people every year, that is a fundamental question. not only of women's health, but whether you believe that public health has any value in the united states of america. that is what concerns me. i do think that is what will be at issue. for those of you who are looking at public health as a potential career, frankly, there has never been a more important time. public health care is good in this country and we have to nurse it and evaluate. it is fascinating that we hear the supreme court decision on the affordable care act. i do not know what will happen. but we have to get serious in this country to make sure that people have access to health care. i am so grateful for what you do and grateful for this opportunity. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. >> tomorrow, democratic pollster doug shown talks about his new book and what it means for 2012 and beyond. and hans von spakovsky talks about president obama and the health care law. and robert jones examines religions impact on the 2012 presidential campaign. "washington journal," live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> in his weekly address, president obama talked about the significance of the easter celebration. then mary phelan talks about the republican energy plan could she criticizes the obama administration policy on drilling, particularly the keystone pipeline. >> for millions of americans, this weekend is a time to celebrate the dutch -- silver redemption in god's hand. tonight, jews will gather for a second seder for the will retell the story of the exodus. we have the routes and miracles that took place years ago. they give the strength as we face the future. easter is a time to reflect and rejoice. tomorrow, we will celebrate the resurrection of the savior who died that we might live. we recommit ourselves in following his example. we rededicate our time on earth to selflessness and loving your neighbors. we remind ourselves no matter who we are or how much we have, we each stand humbolt in the -- which each stand humbled in the face of god. the notion that there's something out there that is deeper than ourselves, these police are among all americans. they put our lives in perspective. for all christians celebrating the resurrection with us, michele and i would like to wish you a happy easter. afro-americans, hope you have a happy weekend of reflection -- and for all americans, i hope you have a happy weekend of reflection. >> i am mar puffy fallin from the great state of oklahoma. we are an energy state. we are moving forward in the area of cutting edge renewable energy. it has been an important part of our history and our economy has benefited tremendously with the help of the energy sector could oklahoma has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, 6%. we are the no. 2 state in the nation for job creation in the last 12 months. in 2011, our citizens experienced the fourth highest income growth in the united states. we recognize that the energy industry is an ally. that is why republicans continue to support the production of all kinds of energy resources. our pro energy policies stand in stark contrast to that of president obama who seems to see men made energy as a hazardous waste. he made his first visit to oklahoma since being sworn into office. while he was here, he made some interesting claims. we surprised to hear the president say that the supports an all-the-above energy policy. this is the same president whose party puts a cap and trade plan would dramatically raise taxes on energy producers. they would discourage energy production, drive up gas prices and utility costs on american families, and destroy american jobs. while he was in oklahoma, he also surprised us by taking credit for the southern leg of the keystone pipeline, an important project that would allow oklahoma energy produces get their product to the gulf coast. the only problem is that the southern leg of the pipeline did not need the president's approval. it was already in the works. here is another inconvenient truths that the president avoided, and his administration is continuing to hold up construction on the northern leg of that pipeline, which would have created thousands of jobs and over $1 billion in private investment. he says his number one focus is jobs. finally, president obama made the outrageous claim that his administration is responsible for the national increase in domestic drilling. here's the truth. drilling is increasing in the united states on privately owned land. we have the ingenuity and hard work of american men and women in the private sector. on public land, for which president obama is responsible, drilling is rapidly decreasing. and because of the severe limitations that the president has put on drilling, especially to offshore drilling, that number will continue to fall. the bottom line is this administration is taking credit for american into production while it works to aggressively to undermine it. besides being hypocritical, the president's doubletalk is dangerous tour our economy and national security. we know that families are already struggling in this economy and our feeling pinched by rising costs at the gas pump. america remains dependent on foreign oil from regimes. millions of americans remained out of work and president obama continues to propose a job- killing tax hikes and infrastructure projects that would lead to the creation of new jobs, not to mention new revenue to state budgets. it does not have to be this way. the energy resources in the united states are enormous. in fact, shell deposits in the u.s. can power this country for more than 1000 years. the energy crisis we are facing today is not a lack of energy resources. it is a lack of leadership. and that starts at the top with our president. americans are paying the price for a failed policy, fewer jobs, higher fuel prices, and less opportunity. across the nation, republicans are supporting all kinds of domestic energy production and the jobs that come with it. the american people deserve an energy policy that creates a stronger economy, more jobs and opportunity, and the security that comes with american energy. thank you for your time and have a wonderful easter weekend. endt's next, some year- income tax filing tips. after that, a discussion on civil liberties in america. then remarks on women's health by the president and planned parenthood. >> monday night on c-span. tavis smiley leads a conversation -- >> in 1990, the average member of congress had a net worth of $250,000, excluding the home. in 2010, congress had a net worth of $750,000, excluding their home. everybody else state level, but the members of congress found a way to enrich themselves. i am not hating on congress. i am not speaking on wealth. but people who have that kind of wealth do not understand somebody who needs $40 on their by weekly chat. -- on their weekly check. >> now some income-tax filing tips from "washington journal." this is one hour and 25 minutes. host: we will ask him the first question. regarding major changes in the 2011 tax season that have come from legislation that was not passed the last time we got together to do this. guest: congress has done very little. all the biggest ones have to do with people having to file that is basis reporting. people are confused by it could it is even a waste of time because the irs does not need the form. it only is required by persons who sold stock. this form has to report not only what they got when they sold the stock, but the broker has to tell them how much they paid for the stock. ultimately, everybody's stocks will be covered by this. >host: when you go to your broker's office, should you be carrying one of these forms? guest: your broker will give you a 1099 be that you have to take to your accountant's office. host: what has been the biggest change during the 2011 tax season? guest: it has been the capital gains and the fee losses on the schedule. now they need to be separated in six different categories. it listed the two categories. it is now six categories. if you're just sitting down in beginning this process, what is first in your mind? guest: the most important thing is to be sure you are paying tax on all of your income. a lot of times, people will forget some income. at this stage, they should get an extension, because it is so complicated sometimes that this is way too late to be trying to get all of the tax work done and finalized and having a good number. host: kevin mccormally, the irs, the government, is actually giving us a two-day extension this year. guest: that is right. the 17th is the deadline. the 16th is emancipation day, a holiday that nobody knows existed. abraham lincoln released the slaves in washington d.c. -- washington, d.c., before the rest of the nation. host: we are talking with kevin mccormally, editorial director at "kiplinger," and robert baldassari, a certified public accountant. if you want to get involved, and you have some questions regarding your 2011 federal taxes, here are the numbers. host: you can also send us e- mail and tweets and the conversation goes on on facebook. talk to us, kevin mccormally, about standard and personal deductions. have they basically remain the same? guest: they are up a little because of inflation. about 75% take the standard deduction. a lot of them think they're cheated, but really they're not because the standard deductions cover all of your expenses, like state taxes. the only reason you claim it is all of your qualified expenses are less than this amount, so you always get more than you deserve. for married people, it is $11,600. so, unless you have more than that in more -- charitable contributions and state income taxes, you'll want to take the standard deduction. host: dallas, texas, robert, you are on. go ahead. caller: i have a question about box one of the form the university provides. it has $1,601, and this translates into a form 1040a. the best i could do was $800, on 31a. moving down to line 40, is another $800. and i correct? would that be correct? guest: i think that shows you paid tuition. that should not be reported as income. i did not have the form in front of me. guest: i am not familiar with that, either. guest: if you have to be careful with forms of come out of student programs. usually, they will get a form showing the money was paid to them during the year. a lot of people did confused, they may have to pay tax on the money, but if it was for qualified expenses, it can be free. you want to make sure your report of the income, and you do not want to report anything you do not have to report. host: california. go ahead. caller: thank you. i have a little property, and i am paying a young man to maintain the yard, cut the grass, etc. am i right or wrong in that i need to do a 1099 for him if he is being paid more than $600 a year? host: robert baldassari? guest: but there used to be a rule that came out about a year ago that the answer would be yes, but i think that was overturned just for 2011, and just for rental properties, as opposed to businesses, and also for 2012. is that right? guest: i think it was overturned completely. it was part of the health care reform law to raise money to prevent people from not reporting this income. the 1099 form is not required. the big question is in is this person an independent contractor, in which case it is his responsibility to pay the taxes, where is he your employee. if this person is considered your employee, you are responsible for social security taxes. does he work for other people? if he only works for you, he is probably your employee. he did not to the 109942011 -- you do not have to deduct -- do the 1099 for 2011. a lot of this never gets reported because the irs does not get a report of it. the issue of the broker reporting and capital gains, the reason the irs wants broker reported on capital gains is they know the more information they get from somebody else about your income the more likely you will report your income and they will get the taxes due. host: the legislation on capitol hill, what stage is it at? guest: nothing is happening on this now. at "kiplinger" we do not think anything is going to happen until next year. there will be talk about tax reform, but this is the kind of thing that could come up in 2013-2014. host: after the election. guest: after the election, but then there will be another election. host: illinois. hugh, go ahead. caller: i am talking about a couple the has an income of approximately two hundred thousand dollars, they all approximately $125,000 on student loan costs. is there a way to itemize the interest expense on this college loan? thank you. host: robert baldassari? guest: the interest on a student loan is not deductible. the interest on a home mortgage is deductible. guest: just up to $2,500 can be deductible -- deducted. with this kind of debt, i'm sure the interest is higher. host: we have a tweet. host: robert baldassari, is that the smart thing for her to do, filed in february, or take some time and make sure you have the in david biggar material you need to file a complete return? -- have all of the material to file a complete return? guest: they have a tendency to reassure them, maybe twice, once -- reissue them, maybe twice, once in february, when some early-march, and sometimes in later-march. if you do not have any investments, then it is ok to file as soon as you get your w- 2, but if you have investments you might be getting dividends on, i would say wait until the middle or the end of march. host: if you have already filed, electronically, and you find more paper work, is there a process you can use to add this new material? guest: there is a form called 1040x, and that is an amended return. guest: one thing we have learned from the irs is is the first return requested a refund, you should wait until you get the money before you file the amended return because it can confuse the system. if you owe more money, you should do it as soon as possible to avoid late payment. host: we are talking about your 2011 federal taxes with kevin mccormally of "kiplinger" and robert baldassari, a certified public accountant. georgia. eric. caller: good morning. i have a question about income levels. i have been taxed, normally at an income level that has been pretty good, and i would usually either not to pay any taxes or get a refund, but for some reason, the tax level i am being taxed on it is going down. i did not know if it is because i'm making more money, or because they changed the law. thatne of those guys bought a stock in 2011 and also sold a stock in 2011, and i am also confused about this law reform. guest: the -- about this form. guest: the form is confusing. the key question is does it report a basis or not? there are up to six different versions, and it is those three for a long-term and short-term gains that are itemized for the year. it drives you crazy, but if you follow the instructions, you will get the right answer. now, as to the question of having less withholdings, i cannot answer that. withholding is determined by a form filed called the w-4, in which you claim allowances. if your withholding has gone down, maybe you changed your w- 4. do not worry about a refund. 75% of people get refunds. half of $1 trillion has gone from the irs to tax payers. people have too much money withdrawn from their paycheck. the vast majority of people get a refund in the spring, and they get excited, but it is their own money. most people can claim extra allowances, and if they do that on monday when they go to work, they will get a pay raise because withholding will go down, and take-home pay will go up. host: we have some sound from the irs commissioner who was discussing good and bad tax preparation, and how the taxpayer is taking the vantage of by bad tax preparers. [video clip] >> so, the vast majority of tax preparers are honest, ethical, hard-working, and provide a great disservice to both the tax -- a great service to both the tax system and the country. the problem is there are unscrupulous preparers out there who one, bring down the reputation of those great preparers, and the real problem is with the taxpayer left holding the bag at the end of the day. if you go to a preparer, they jack up your refund, tell you you will get this big refund and you deserve it when you do not. you get $3,000, you spend it, we figure that out, the preparer has packed up shop, and you are left holding the bag. so, it is a small number of people that are unscrupulous, but those are people that we need to make sure we are focused on self the taxpayers get good -- focus on so the treatment.s get good host: we have good tax preparers here, and good folks that report on taxes, kevin mccormally, and robert baldassari. our next call comes from columbus, indiana. joe, you are on "washington journal." caller: good morning. i have a question about 1099b. what is reported from the brokers, they try to put in watched sales, but they do not do any between securities and options, nor between my other accounts or tax-deferred accounts. none of the numbers -- i use a sophisticated third-party tax software to keep track of all of this, and i have done it for a few years, and it is a very good product. i know it is calculating things right, but the reconciliation between what my brokers are giving me and the form is way off. can i put a general explanation of where i think it is coming from, or should i -- i've written my congressman asking for relief, but i wonder if i should not file, file for an extension, and hope something better comes along between now and six months? i appreciate your comments. host: robert baldassari, go ahead. guest: this has been a tough year, especially with the washed sales, which means if you have a loss, that is not deductible. if you have multiple brokerage accounts, the brokers to not know you have bought the same stock back in a different account. you have to do that manually. it takes a long time to do this manually, because you have to go to each piece of the stock sale, and separate what is deductible and what is not deductible. host: if a loss is not deductible, what is the incentive for buying the stock back? guest: it is ok to buy it back, but just do not within 30 days. some people might, thinking that maybe they should not have sold it. days so that, and something they sold it, something else happens, and they think it will go back up. guest: the loss really is not a lost forever in that there is an adjustment to the basis of the new stock. is really complicated -- it is really complicated. what do you think about attaching a statement like the taxpayer suggested to explain why the numbers do not add up? i assume the irs will get a lot of them. guest: i assume they will get a lot of them, and it is ok for a -- to attach a statement, because once the irs will see these, if there is a statement attached, saying this is what the brokerage statement says and this is the real answer, hopefully that will prevent some correspondence from the irs. host: our next call comes from texas. paul. is that right? caller: yes, sir. my question is my mother is a retired teacher, and she has been helping my brother for four years last fou with his car payment and insurance coverage because he was not working full-time or making enough to sustain himself in his household. is there anything she could do for those years the she has been assisting him with $500 a month, is there some way to claim that money as a contribution or assistance, and maybe get some kind of a tax credit? host: kevin mccormally? guest: probably not. generally, someone can be declaimed -- claimed as a dependent only if they're under the age 24. for older people, if they make more than $3,700, they cannot be claimed as a dependent. your mother would have to show they provided more than half of the support. it is difficult. you might as to check instructions on what is called a qualified relative. the best that would do is give her an opportunity to claim an exemption which reduce her income by about $3,700. there is no charitable contribution when you are helping a family member. host: marcel, arlington, virginia. go ahead. caller: to the comment made earlier by one of your professionals on the student loan interest deduction, according to the tax guide, 2011, and this also won fourth 2010, anyone with a nagi of over $120,000 gets a much lower tax deduction. if you have a hundred $50,000, you essentially get 0 -- 150,000, you essentially did 0. -- you essentially get zero. i did not anywhere close to what i did $50,000, and when you go to the form, i have zero. my experience with the income tax changes over the many years has been that slowly the irs has diminished many of the deductions that you could take earlier, but you cannot take now. student loan interest deduction is rather recent. i did not think it is that old. for example, many people on the a form could take certain deductions that you cannot take now, also for improving your house. host: marcel, we will leave it there. yet given us a lot to work with. bob baldassari, give us some insight on his situation, and explain what end nagi is. guest: it is agi and is adjusted gross income, which includes dividends, wages, if you have retirement plans, or social security -- all of those things add up to what is called the adjusted gross income, and then there is the itemized deductions after that. when the caller was talking about the interest deduction being phased out, that is something we typically call the hidden tax increase, because sometimes people would say the tax rates have not gone up, but some of the deductions have been limited. so, people end up paying more taxes, even though the rates have not increase. host: the next call comes from the emmy, florida. -- miami, florida. caller: good morning. i have a question. i have already filed by texas, and i filed them as married, even though my husband has been unemployed and he has no income. i am a mother as well. i have a child. my question is, is it better for me to send in a correction as married, head of household, or lead it passed is, and jointly -- lead it as is, and jointly, or is there any advantage for the future if the situation changes, which we all hope it does. guest: you can only -- you can not filed for head of household if you are married. the only reason to do it separately used to reduce your tax bill. the only way we have ever seen this happen here is if one spouse had huge medical expenses and the other spouse did not. there is a 7.3% threshold. if one spouse had low-income and huge medical bills, may be would be deductible, but he does not need the deduction because he does not have any income. you are better office leaving it alone and going forward, continuing to file married. part of the rule is you cannot be married to be ahead of the household. you have to be providing a household for independent as well. that is for single people who have children. host: 5 were a single person and i had a parent living with me -- guest: as long as they are a dependent. host: have an e-mail from courtney . [laughter] guest: now we are getting to the amp. people talk about the flat tax. you do not get many deductions. you do get to deduct your charitable donations. but there is no deduction for taxes or for your dependents. the alternative to a minimum tax can be complicated. the hot topic now is that, when the minimum tax first came out in 1963 or 1968, something like that, very few people were subject to it. but now a lot of people are. host: what is the income threshold that triggers the amp? guest: it is something like $45,000. if you have more than that, you could be subject to amp. they have a lot of state tax deductions because they are in a high tax state, like new york or california, or they live in a big house and they have a lot of real estate taxes. guest: the dependent exemptions reduce your income and you deny get the deductions in the amt land. host: kevin mccormally oversees the finance magazine. he also oversees the tax letter, agricultural letter, and the website. you are a busy guy. [laughter] bob has extensive knowledge of the health care industry and practical management serving this industry for over 35 years. back to the phones. rockford, ill., david, you are on "washington journal." caller: i have a question about supplementary income involving property. they have different forms this year. at the bottom, it changes. i am trying to figure out how to get the total amount. guest: the actual form, the lions have changed and they are asking for the different numbers in different orders. it will come out exactly the same as the form did last year. host: the next call comes from woodbury, new jersey, michelle. caller: i have two questions. is there any case where you can file for a refund other than four years ago? and the federal reserve board of governors is a federal agency, but the 12 regional banks are international stock corporations. do they pay u.s. taxes? host: bob, you take the first half on filing the tax refund for the last four years. guest: there is a statute of limitations. if you have already filed a return, you cannot get money back after about three years. after three years, there is the statute of limitations. the figure starts when you file your return for the due date, april 15. if you filed in march and you go to april 15, and three years. if you wait until the summer time to file their return with an extension -- to file your return with an extension, add three years. host: respond to the second part. guest: most agencies pay taxes. i do not see why they don't. host: from florida, patricia, you are on. caller: i want to ask about the 1099c. i had a difficult for closure. it has already been purchased by someone else and sold to a new owner. now my tax preparer says the use of have to pay tax on that. i did not make any money on it. it is not an earnings. why do i have to pay tax? host: kevin, why does she have to pay tax? guest: there are exceptions for home principal residences i think that the canceled debt is forgiven in 2011. i know it was in 2010 could i think it was extended in 2011. be careful about that. a lot of people do not understand that it is only taxable if you have money. if you're insolvent, it your debt exceeds your assets, which is usually the case for people when banks let them walk away from launch -- because banks want their money back, but if you are insolvent, you do not have to repay cancel the debt. lots of times, people get these 1099c forms if a credit card company does that. if you are working with a professional, he should know the rule. but it comes down to your assets and liabilities at the time of foreclosure. so be careful. host: we have another e-mail from a person who is in a bad way from florida. guest: i think the answer is yes. even if he is unemployed, if the person is under 59.5 years old and they have money in an ira, there would have to pay the 10% penalty. even though there is not an income tax, there may not be taxable income, he still has to pay a 10% penalty. host: this is not one of those situations where you can attach a note to it? guest: no. caller: i am a retired teacher, but my husband is still working. i was wondering if i can contribute to a roth ira. i know my husband can. guest: if your husband has enough earned income to cover both of your contributions, there is a spouse ira. he can contribute his earnings to your roth ira as well. that is called spousal ira. you can go for it. host: jack from florida, go ahead. caller: on the amt, i was told by the irs that, if i found a standard deduction, i do not have to worry about it. is that correct? guest: i do not think that is correct. they still have to go through the form. if you have some capital gains -- well -- guest: i think it is highly unlikely. generally, most people would not have to appear but bob -- would not have to. but bob is right, you have to go through the form. guest: if you work for a big company and they give you some stock, if you have rental property and you have some depreciation on that, that can be different. if you have an interest in a partnership, that can be adjusted. it is highly unlikely. if your to take the standard deduction, it is highly unlikely, but not impossible. guest: only 4 million will pay amt. this still a very small percentage of people who get trapped. host: central florida, al, you are on. caller: i took some social security disability. we had to go through the appeals and, unfortunately, this happened last year. they went ahead and paid me in december, a large lump-sum. i was told i could not deduct the attorneys' fees that i had to pay. unfortunately, it was added to my wife's teacher salaries and it bumped up to the 20 percentile bracket good is there anything i can do? i feel like the irs gave me a double whammy because of this. guest: i am not sure why your attorney fees are not deductible. the fact that it came as a lump- sum, do not think you can reach back and say that you have to carry it this year or can you carry it forward. generally, legal fees, in the pursuit of taxable income, is deductible. they are not deductible against what you received. it might be limited. host: let's go on to brookhaven, mississippi, david. caller: as i understand the wash sale, is that at the end of the year you stop trading before december and wait and clear all your trades to where your flat with year trading activities, they need do not really have to concern ourselves with a wash sale, just attach a note to your trading and explain what happened. host: will a note to do it? guest: i do not understand question. caller: the wash sale requires -- if you trade within 30 days. if you trade within 30 days, but at the end of the year you sell, clear all your trades to where you hold the stock, then all wash sales are washed out. so you should be able to explain that with a note and without going through all this complicated bookkeeping. guest: you do not even have to attach a note. if you were clearing out all of your sales, then the loss you were not allowed to take on your first sale is added to the basis of your second sale. at the end of the year, you file your return and there is no statement that you need to attach. host: we have an e-mail -- guest: that is absolutely right. i like to say that what goes on in the ira is like vegas. what goes on in the ira stays in the ira. caller: thank you for taking my call. i worked for a company for about 10 years. i was putting money into an account with them. and they had a 3% match. in 2008, i had almost $18,000 in there. actually, that was by 2006. by 2008, i had less than $6,000. my husband had a bit so we rolled it over to a different ira. the company worked for only made a 3% match. so i lost over $10,000 and told there was no tax deductions because it was in an ira. it just does not seem right. guest: that is right. there is no tax deduction. whenever the money went in, it was not taxable. 3%, you did not have to pay tax on that. if you put some of your money in, it went in before it was taxed. the fact that it went down in value, it was very sad. we see it all the time, but there is no tax deduction. host: this is an extension of what happens in the ira stays in the ira. chicago, illinois, steve, you're on "the washington journal." caller: i am starting a new business. i am a carpenter, sole proprietor. i was told that, if i start my own business and pay myself from my company a small wage and take the remainder as a dividend at the end of the year, that with the taxes are lower. is that correct? guest: yes, it could be corrected the irs does not like this at all. they are cracking down on it. the irs is very suspicious of businesses where the owner earns $20,000 in wages and gets $150,000 in dividends. that is a real red flag. it is legitimate to set up a business this way. but the goal is to tax avoidance and that is where the ira will -- where the irs will come down hard. host: does this generally trigger an audit from the irs? guest: if you are set up as a corporation, if they see a corporation where the owner takes a very small salary and a very big dividend, they will audit you and they have made very clear. if it is an unincorporated business and you're the sole proprietor, there is no difference between a salary and a dividend, so to speak. host: st. petersburg, fla., robert. caller: thank you, c-span, for all you do. i have a question on a roth ira. i am almost 59 and i am considering rolling over a small roth ira into a trading account. is that permissible? gains in any taxes oon that account? guest: you can always trade inside a roth ira. if you have it in a mutual fund, you can roll it over and trade as much as you want. if you're talking about taking it out of the roth ira, completely, if your account will be open for at least five years, that is free money. i do not know why you would want to appear as long as you maintain the roth, there are no tax consequences on your trades. in the traditional ira, sometimes you want to get the money out because capital gains are outside of the ira and taxed at 15%. and you can be taxed as much as 35% when you take it out. host: carson city, nev., dan is on airline -- on our line. caller: i have a question about schedule c. i have a small business and i had some losses from theft. is there anywhere on that profit-loss where you can write off that? write off theft? >> guest: yes, if it is office equipment, it can be deductible on schedule c. it can be a deduction in terms of office supplies and things like that. if it is money, then it is different. there is a different form or a different way to show that. you have to separate between money and everything else. >> suspected the funds. >> thank you for taking my call. i have a question regarding the ira contribution a bit. in 2010 i contributed $5,000 to ira. i actually put into 2011. is there any way to fix the situation? what you should be okay because you can make a 2010 contribution to an ira up to april 15 of 2011. you always have until the due date to make the contribution. if you detect it in your 2010 return, you should be fine. if he got the money and by april 15 are whatever the deadline is pure red i would take a look at that. you always have that to make a contribution to the ira. we have an article. we will go through a couple of those and get our panelists to weigh in. the first thing i want to talk about is noncash donations. you give backs of old clothes earth's to other charities. in take a tax deduction if they are an acceptable condition. clothing, furniture, appliances and linens are examples of items that qualify for this deduction. you should allow the charity's name, the date, and the location of your donation and the reasonably detailed description of the items to donate. if i give one of these non-cash donations, who determines the value of those donations and how i can write them off? >> it is the taxpayer that will have to determine what the value is. the charities themselves will never value it. evaluate based on the condition of it. if you have nice clothes and a good condition, that will have a higher value than other not so nice clothes. if you have an expensive piece of furniture that was in good condition that has a thought higher value in that is all beat up. there are places on the web site on various web sites that will show you what the average used value is. >> back to the phones. >> it is just a little below santa rosa. >> that clears things up. >> what is your question or comment? >> you are a lot to give a gift or -- you can get a family member whatever cash up to 13,000 note tax consequences either way. did you have to that in a lump sum? >> if it is like an allowance for a a dependent child, somebody who is in college. >> i work for a man who used to do that. he is to give 10 doesn't to each one of his grandkids. i could write you a check for that money and it is not taxable to you. it is of no tax consequence. kenya every month give them $1,000 if you wanted to. >> i will take my check in a lump sum. >> it does not have to be in a lump sum. it can be any dollar a month early in the year or late in the year. all at one time. if a difference whatsoever. >> you are on loss of the journal. go ahead. you will need to turn your television down. >> i have a question. i am unemployed textile barack obama para >> we will move onto it. caller: i got a wedding present years ago. how do i have to pay income on it? host: have the run this by caller: your:it was a long time ago. host: if he is gone to sell a wedding gift after 40 years, what is the situation? guest: anything that you sell, if you sell it at a profit you do have to pay tax on it. if it is a personal item or a wedding present, but if you make -- if it goes up andus valley you have to pay tax on it. host: we're talking to a personal account appeared we have another 35 minutes of the program. if you have questions regarding your federal taxes in 2011, give us a call. host: this is property -- the property was lost. what will happen with refinancing income that was taken out of the item. is that money totally tax free? >> my understanding is the 1099c which is cancellation of debt. there is a special provision for 2011 that is not for rental properties. that is taxable income by the irs. that is why the letter sent you the 1099c. they expect that as income. caller: my wife and i refile for our income tax every year. i have questions about the disabled tax credit. what is it? what do you have to do to qualify or -- for it? i can i get a straight answer for everybody i asked. >> i am not familiar with that. >> i think the dependent care credit is also for disabled kirk people. if you are paying for a disabled person, if you care for is a you can work the credit is there. i am not sure what the definition of disability is. i am sure it is in the irs publication. it is dependent and disabled care credit. it will expire exactly what it is. the only way i get this credit is it that allows people to work for the money to tax. >> hello. i have a question. i received a form from the accountant from an estate. it was income 2011 that was not paid for 2004. i wondered what types of forms a will have to felt out. guest: bob endeavor talking about k1 forms here is a form that often comes in late. i am confused by this because you said the income was paid for you in 2004. if you did not get the income or have access until 2012, it will not be in coming to your report it appeared is like any other reporting statement. they expect to receive it. it is passing into through to you. >> one other question. there is one very narrow exception that if the trust pays you within the first 65 days of the following year, it will be paid within the previous year. he said he received something in 2012, if you received it by march 4, it would be considered part of the 2011 taxable income. host: i have an e-mail from somebody who is identified. i currently run a small camp business. beyond that i coach at a high school but am not employed full- time there. i received a check from school and have received payment from playing. the bulk of my income is from my camp business. does it make more sense to file as self-employed or buy something else? guest: it is one of those things you cannot go back. wherever you were in 2011, if you are self-employed that is how you have to file. you cannot go back and say into custody 11 i was a corporation. caller: hosthe also has to files an employee. the hefty fall of a scheduled c for that. they have to report their in, as wage income. you were both employed and self employed in the file. you have to attach a schedule see which is year self-employed form. guest: to complicate things even further, he says my business is sen llc. how much can i deduct in terms of food, entertainment, gas, and travel. guest: there are special rules as to how it is filed. then is technically called a single member llc and is disregarded in you have to file a schedule c. when it comes to the travel and entertainment, there is no limit to how much you can deduct. you have to have good records and follow the rules. it has to be business related. >> we have another 28 minutes in this segment. our next call comes from massachusetts. stanley, you are on the washington journal. caller: before i left new york, a also bel convertible from a friend of mine whose father died. i sold it and made $8,000 on it. i hope that is not taxable. guest: why would you think it was caller: not:i do not know. fat guest: i think bob answer the question earlier. -- guest: the losses he should report as a gain the difference between what you pay for it and what you paid for it. it would be a short-term gain which means it would be taxed at your top tax bracket. that is considered an accession to wealth and that is what the irs wants to tax. host: going to 5 little known tax deductions and credits. we have a thing called seller paid. . some home buyers choose to pay at closing in order to pay their mortgage rates. one point is equal to percentage of the mortgage. if the seller pays the points, they can deduct the points as prepaid mortgage interest. for home buyers with a marginal tax rate of 25%, a tax deduction for $1,000 would/$250 off your tax bill. you have to itemize to claim the deduction. if you have more the $1 million in mortgage debt you cannot claim the deduction. is it smart to go with this system? >> if you have the option of having the seller pay your points, clearly it would be better to have someone else pay points. this is a negotiated amount and a lot of times the seller might want to a higher sales price. they will agree to pay some points. you might be able to get a lower sales price of they don't pay the points. host: burbank calif., matt, you are on washington journal. caller: i have a simple question but from a complex -- i work a regular job where i work get a regular salary. i contribute to an annuity. i also have its of where i teach part time and receive that in come up monthly. i also have a job as a pottery teacher. then i also received some interesting into investments i have made. i also received a form -- i am wondering exactly what form such should be filling out. how to write off any of the expenses i have incurred as an employee. if i have many other deductions. -- if i had to do it with a preparer i would. host: given the good news and bad news. guest: with all of your different sources of income, all of it will be shown on your a tax return. it is not like you have some interest income. all of the wages will go on a 1040. the interest that you receive will go on schedule will be. the k one and come -- there is a schedule 3 and it will go on schedule e where you will show the k one and come. host: 70 is our next and -- our next caller. caller: if a couple buys a house and they are not married, do they have to file jointly to take credit for the interest and property tax or to one of them file separately to take it all? caller: host: if they are not mere the cannot file jointly? guest: when it comes down to who gets the deductions should depend on what the ownership interest is. if you buy it to jointly but one person pays all the interest and principal and property taxes, i think that person should take it. if these but you should take the deductions of the way you actually pay the deductible expenses parity should not paid jointly if you -- you have to file separate returns. you will probably get a single 1098 from the bank of the mortgage interest that will show the full amount. there is a special form you have to file -- >> there is no special form. will only have one social security number on it. the other -- it is lucky the irs will contact them and say we do not have any record receiving a 1098. host: would she be in her -- but they be lost liable for various taxes if they were married? are they going to have a lower tax bill if they stay single but living in the same house? if two people are married and file jointly, they might file single. it really depends on the and come and 1% as a high income here the other person has a lower income. it can be better join the. so many variables. caller: i want to first thank c- span for such an intelligent show. i listened to it every day. i am retired. i go to the bank and i take out the minimum amount. the bank charges me $40 to take out the minimum amount from my ira. is that legal? guest: a bank does something they do not like? caller: this time i took out $1,300 or something like that. host: what is your situation? guest: i would switch banks. this is a american free enterprise. in charge anything they want to make in the account. i am stunned. it is not illegal. i would switch to another banker credit union. i have never heard of anybody charging to the required distribution. most firms are more than happy to figure out exactly what you have to withdraw it and send you a check and move it to a taxable account. host: if she moves that to another bank or credit union, will she have to pay any sort of a bill or penalty? guest: she should not ever touch the money herself. nothing is reported to the irs and everything is fine. caller: after my father passed away he was not a u.s. citizen. would she have to pay tax on the money? host: where did you buy the property? caller: her father owned the property and south africa. guest: i am not sure i understood the question. he said somebody bought property in south africa? was there a death summer? host: in general and the situation, the father died. if only they sell the property for more than that amount is there a taxable gain. there could be a tax deduct for loss. i think for a property is treated the same. that is with the viewer has to look into is whether there are special rules for south african property. there would only be a gain if this open for more than what it was worth on the day the father died. if friend of mine had a situation where his wife inherited a home. by the time this so that it declined in bali. host: certified public accountant, they are our guests for the next 50 minutes. john in fairfax -- i think we already talked to john in fairfax. let's move on. stephanie, you are on the washington journal. caller: we 0 $3,700 this year. i wanted to find out how much to increase our -- i was going to increase to have them take an additional 75 out. i want to know if that is enough. guest: what you would have to do, if you think that the 2012 taxable income and tax deductions will be the same -- if you are 37 of dollars, you would look at how many paychecks are left -- >> it is april already. you look at how much has already been deducted for the first four months of the year. how many you have left. you increase it so you will have a total of $3,700 more withheld for 2004. host: what are the red flags that the irs looks for? what is it that triggers an audit and people should be careful not to trip the triggers? >> there is a pretty sophisticated system of grading the tax returns. they look at a lot of things. they look at your income and compare it to your deductions. if you have a pretty low income and a low mortgage, they will say, how can they pay such a big mortgage if you are only making a smaller amount of money. they also look at what is called the office and home girls. if you are self-employed and you wanted to take a deduction for your home, that is a red flag. if you have a large charitable donation that is out of the norm or the standard for your income level, they look at that. especially if it is a non-cash contribution that would look at the contribution. guest: he is absolutely right this is a red flag. if you have a large mortgage or charitable contribution, you should never not take a tax cut issue or a friend of an audit. the worst that will happen is that will send you a record this is proven, if you have records to show it -- we hear about home office deduction is being a red flag for an audit. most people climb home offices. if you deserve a home office deduction, you should claim it. the only reason you have to worry about red flags is if you are cheating. if you are cheating i hope the irs catches you. >> san antonio, texas. go ahead. caller: my question is regarding the affordable care act. it retired and placed on medicare. my income is $37,000. i see p a has told me when the affordable care act kicks in in 2013 i will be charged an extra 3.8% as an extra tax to pay for obamacare for the affordable care act. is this true? the second question is, i am already charged $1,200 per year for medicare. will i have to pay that also? thank you. >> it is not true. what a surprise, something about the affordable care act is not true. it would never kick and. it kicks in at a way higher level. to not worry about it. at $37,000 will not be hit by that. your premiums will not go up at that level. there is a surcharge for medicare premiums. is much higher than $37,000 that a kick said. i do nothing you have anything to worry about. host: we have a tweet from jim peretz's on a fairly regular basis. he says -- b>> i cannot remember if it was obama or bus, there is a lot of was there for 2000 or 2010, 30% of the cost of solar energy, wind energy, the you put into your home, 30% of that is a credit. you get a credit for that amount with no dollar limit. when it comes to when does or insulation last year, the musty get a credit for is $500. when it comes to solar, wind, our geothermal, i believe the credit the third two dozen 60. i do not know if that was an obama move or if that was in a lot for a while. if it was obama. that is a pretty big tax break to anchorage alternative energy. caller: good morning. to read for taking my call. i have two questions. the first question i have is how -- tax preparers did something wrong. from that we decided to audit everybody from immigrants from east africa. and then my second question is, many immigrants here, people from somalia, they have family and a symbolic and kenya. can they claim us? every mark -- every month we send money to them. >> regarding the tax preparation and the audit. if you have a tax preparer and you get audited, what is your best move? >> he should talk to the preparer and see if they want to go to the auditor. a lot of them would like to go to the irs by themselves. cpas i spoke to said the biggest problem they have is with a client that talks to much. often they may want to go by themselves. he is talking about that tax preparers. he will not find them by the time they did not. the irs will send out 90 million refunds this year before they ever see anybody's w-2 form. you get it months before the irs sees it. people filed fraudulent returns. the irs does not know better. they send a check out to the prepare. but the time the taxpayer hears about this, i think that is at issue. host: regarded the second half of his question, does it matter where you're dependent lives in order for you to climb the dependent? if you are living in the united states and their dependents overseas will that present a problem? guest: if everything else qualifies for the dependent exemption, i do not think there is a problem. host: i think the problem is citizenship. you now have to be a resident of u.s., canada, or mexico? i think there is a residency qualification. check the irs instructions. as one of the first things when it comes to who can qualify as a dependent. caller: i think there is a royal this is to have to provide a place of abode for more than one-half of the year. maybe that is where it comes then here in the united states. host: we have about five minutes left. thomas and connecticut, you are on the washington job. caller: i had a settlement with my employer for damages. i sued and i was awarded out of court a damage settlement. this was 20 years ago. forid not receive any 1099's 15 years. it asserted sending me 1099 r's . i wonder how i should handle this. >> it sounds like this guy is in trouble. caller: the city received a structures settlements. -- guest: he said you received a structured settlement. he said it was 20 years ago. i am not sure. guest: i am lost on this one. i am sorry. host: would it have been his responsibility to seek out the 1099 4415 years have passed? guest: this was a common misconception. even if you did not receive a 1099, you have to pay tax on the money they have to pay tax on the red if you receive some income and is taxable income, you have to pay taxes on its even if the paper does not see the 1099. guest: there is a road you have to get a 1099 if you pay something more than $600. i cannot tell you how many people i know that pretty debt payments under six under dollars and the thing the money is tax- free. it is with the irs does not know about it. host: pete, you are on washington journal. caller: as a widower, 65 years of age, how do a file under the standard deduction? do i file as a single person, a qualifying widow or, head of household? which went to a file? guest: d modify as telling you have been a widower? caller: most heated years. guest: the you have any children? guest: if you are a widow were 40 dead years up to the year of death if you have a dependent child you can still -- if you are a widow worked for two years of to the year of death, if you still have a dependent child -- if the older child over 24 or 19 or whatever, then you just have to file as a single person. host: i have an e-mail from a woman. she says, can a woman who is separated from her husband under a court order file as head of household? she has a 19 year-old daughter not in school with a, some $3,000. guest: i am not sure. the head of household rules are complicated when you have a child and you are married. if you're a separate bid for the entire year that is considered a married eva you are married. host: our last call comes from ohio. caller: i have a couple of questions of like to ask if i may. i have a doctor who is about 40- years old who put through college. it is a real good school and she graduated some cool body in the county. host: 93 to this or to the question. caller: is is all pertinent to the question. i put $85,000 in her education. i just wanted quinoa -- will i have any recourse to go back and be able to collect on any of that tax wise? in at a question of like to ask you if i may, i am thinking about -- i have about a $50,000 in come from retirement. i was wondering, is there any way -- what would be the best way to send her on to -- to get her cpa? the most economical way? host: we will leave it there. guest: there are all sorts of tax breaks for paying for a college education this sounds like this was in the past. the only thing you can rely on is the kindness of strangers or your daughter to help you out if you would like some of the $85,000 back. host: any advice for future cpas? guest: there is no real additional cost to become a cpa. if your daughter already has a degree, she just has to take the test. to become a cpa you have to have the equivalent of five years of college. four years plus the masters or requirement. also has to do is take the test. host: to live very much. >> democratic pollster doug schoen talks about his book and what it is for 2012 and beyond. hans von spakovsky versus response to president obama's remarks about the supreme court and the health care law. robert jones examines religions impact on the 2012 presidential campaign. next a discussion of civil liberties and today's america. a woman's health by the president of planned parenthood. weekly addresses by obama and mary fallin. a discussion on civil liberties and american life. the panel includes the executive direction -- director. they discuss policing, torture, health care, campaign finance, same-sex marriage, and national security. this is one hour and 25 minutes. >> i want to thank cardoza for having me here tonight. as soon as i sat down, i remember the feeling that it was the home of the starship enterprise. [laughter] i want to thank you for putting this all together and for inviting me. anyway, i am glad to be here. her subject tonight is the aclu. it has been involved in some of the most contentious cases since world war i. at the same time, it is one of the most polarizing nongovernmental organizations we have. a card-carrying member of the aclu is a badge of honor for some and not for others. i would like the least tried to demystify a little bit of what this organization is, in part how it goes about making decisions as well as some of the cases themselves. the idea is to have a free- wheeling discussion that i will lead. no speeches. in opening statements. -- no opening statements. i would discourage everyone to jump in, to feel free to pick up on one another's comments, agree or disagree. and remind us briefly what those cases are about. onward. the briefest of introductions, i want to get everybody involved really quickly. we need to go the extra step and explain. even among friends of mine and family members of my, when we defend the civil rights of the homophobic, disgusting reactionary christian minister to mao funeral -- to mouth funeral protests at the burial of men and women coming back for more, saying that the the reason that men and women in uniform are being killed is because god's protection because we're giving the people like me their rights. i get a phone call from my sister say, are you kidding me? what happened to you? [laughter] and we have to really unpack it. i do not think it is self- evident. by sister is brilliant. i sister is a good person with great values. it is not just a hypothetical that you allow these loathsome points of view to be centered than the points of view that you like -- then the points of view that you like our next to mine. it is like tear gas. you think it is blown in one direction and the wind will blow it back into your eyes. you think you but censorship anyplace where it belongs. you better close your eyes. >> ted olson was the solicitor general for the bush administration who argued many important cases before the supreme court. the aclu is a polarizing organization because it is what? >> i disagree in the bill with the premise. i know that the aclu is unpopular in some places because it does what it does, which is to represent unpopular causes. but i never felt that way, personally. i know that other people do, especially conservatives. and i think of myself as a conservative. but i oso think of myself a little bit as a libertarian. in a conservative world, there is not a monolithic conservative world or republican world. there are a lot of libertarians are people who carry a lot about liberties at that part of the political spectrum. anthony does not want this to be a love fest, but i will try to say unpopular thing so he can defend me. [laughter] and i will always love you. [laughter] >> we're getting more out of this than i ever expected. >> hi thought maybe we would have the proposal take place in private. [laughter] but i am personally very grateful for the aclu and i always have been. i grew up in california. i think that would be silly you does is tremendous. it protects all of us. but i will not go on and on about that because you did not want this forum to be that. but i think that it is very important that we recognize that the aclu takes these petitions because -- these positions because someone is accused of a crime something like that and the aclu is protecting all this. i think that one of the things we will eventually talk about is that the choices that the use tip -- the still you makes, -- that the aclu makes, the civil liberties of one person can infringe on the civil liberties of another person >> absolutely. >> darrow purse fine -- debora parole stein -- debora perlstein. >> we are a pretty friendly group. >> if things don't work out, i may come back. [laughter] >> the door's always open. >> as i was watching the film, i was thinking about the history of my first awareness of the aclu. and it was around the not the case in illinois and thinking i had exactly that reaction. i grew up sort of been a jewish household, a liberal household, and my jews community thought thought, confront the cases in which that is not that easy, where there are pre commitments to some principles require rest to support people we could not possibly dislike more or challenges to really test what it was with what we believe been in the first place. and that is an unbelievably comfortable position to put people in. but you draw something from our nation constitutionalism panel yesterday. there was a concept and roman society that required this is essential to take a certain position. it is not good citizenship to just stand back as a society confronts major questions and crises and dilemmas. since and chip demand in gauging -- citizenship demands engaging. that is what makes it so challenging for many of us. >> high see that you went to the law school on that other california coast. >> stamford. >> what is your take? >> what is so striking about the aclu is the issue switch have been polarizing in the past have now become completely part of the american fabric. we cannot imagine how it was seen as a fundamental apocalyptic threat to the nation to pass out literature about communism or union organizing. so the aclu has rallied defined what it is to be in america today and i am grateful for those crusades of the past. my recollection of the aclu is -e challenge us to really test what it was with the we believe in in the first place. it is an unbelievably uncomfortable position to put people in. you draw something from our constitutionalism panel yesterday. there was a concept of citizenship requiring people to take a position. it is not good citizenship to stand back as society confronts major questions and prices sank and france's dilemmas. citizenship the man's engagement at this level. i think that is what makes the aclu great. >> i see one to the law school at that other school on the california coast. what is your take on the polarizing question? >> i think what is so striking about the aclu are issues that were polarizing in the past have now become completely part of the american fabric. we cannot imagine how it was seen as a fundamental up apocalyptic threat to pass out literature about communism or union organizing. the aclu i think has really defined what it means to be an american today. i am grateful for the crusades in the past. it is with extreme -- history has that been kind to critics. i would say from this perspective both of the battles that have fought we now feel we were on the right side. that having been said, my recollection of the aclu is going to your city in the late 1980's when the city was at probably its near anarchy, lawlessness, public places had been taken over by one set of individuals in many instances of mentally ill street addict, vagrants, that had made public spaces like public -- grand central terminal unusable to other individuals. not to the government, but to other individuals who had a legitimate expectation of being a will to use public transit or public libraries. for all the good that the aclu means to do with its free speech cases, continuing to police the boundary between church and state, i think in many instances, it has been a force of regression against enlightened urban policy. the prime example is continuing to go on in los angeles where there and villaraigosa, -- where mayor antonio villaraigosa has skid row near downtown that has been and still is because of the court battles that police are fighting a locus of smaller in depravity unlike anything you have ever seen unless you have been there. and the police have been trying to apply broken windows policing in a fair and just manner and they keep getting hit by lawsuits from the aclu and from other homeless advocates down there. the addicts who are trying to go clean, the elderly residents of the sro's are terrified to go out on the street. and the people who are supposed to be beneficiaries of these are getting preyed upon by other advocates. in some instances, the aclu has lost a common sense of balance of rights and responsibilities that has made the effort to reclaim urban spaces and return american cities to the vitality that they should have and can have as new york city demonstrates and made that more difficult. >> and dave shapiro, it is time to call on you. he is the legal director of the aclu for a long time. >> right. >> would you like to respond to that? lost its balance. >> let me just say that the aclu does not support squalor. we occasionally support depravity. [laughter] but we do not support squalor. if what we're down to is debating how the aclu response to using tactics and broken windows strategies that i think we have already reached consensus on 95% of what aclu does. that is a pretty good score card. our position is -- i lived in new york, light. i was here not only in the 1980's, but also in the 1970's when it was worse. the question is not whether we all want to live in a more hospitable environment and not whether we want our government to provide services to people who need them, including the homeless and people were suffering from addiction of one sort or another, whether the government is doing that in a way that is an assistant with the rights of the people it purports to be trying to help and in a way that respects their basic human dignity is. so is not a disagreement over gold, but over tactics. and the issue is more salian today, not so much over questions of homeless policy, but, if we're going to focus on your city for a moment, on the stop-and-frisk policy in the inner-city police department. -- in the new york city police department. but when we are stopping over 600,000 people in the street, less than 1% leading tour rest -- leading to arrest and the majority are racial minorities, then we're getting into public safety and we are losing in terms of the ability of people of color to live in this city and feel like they're not suspect just because they live in the wrong neighborhood or attend the wrong schools. >> i want to get into that. >> you'll get into the middle of this debate to request i have to get ataman year. -- but i have to get at them in here. he has been a very busy man. there have been some dramatic events in washington.

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