It is the only way there could be a breakthrough. It is to challenge orthodoxy. Competition is fair. People have a right to practice their religion and decide their future. These are universal values. They are not unique to americans. I believe there is no exception to the universal desire for freedom. The issues that young people are seized with all across asia in the world, corruption, land rights, pollution, food and product safety. These are all fundamentally linked to openness and transparency and greater rights and freedom. No nationle opinion, has two. The exact system we have. Has to exact the same system we have. To makeful hard significant Technological Breakthroughs where orthodoxy is the norm. The very things that have made a such a prosperous and ,nnovative nation are openness a change of ideas, Free Enterprise and liberty, all which have their downsides. As he have recently seen in boston and other places, they have downsides. Would not trade them for all the world. They never tell another leader what is in their interest or what they should do. Are thee these fundamental ingredients for any nation in the 21st century. Byre was that famous line the founder of apple when asked what do i have to do to be more and his answer was think different. You can only thing different when you can think really. Where you can breeze. We me conclude by saying game. Is is not a zerosum it is overwhelmingly in our interest that india continues to grow. It is overwhelming in our interest that china grows in wet the World Economy grow believe success is fundamentally linked to ours. The ocean both east and west, particularly to the indispensable specific nations to help us shape a prosperous future for america, for their people and for the world. Think you all so for being gracious and listening. Inc. You. Thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] henry waxman tomorrow on newsmakers. He speaks of the debate over the keystone xl pipeline. He also gives his views on last week vote in the house to delay the healthcare law for one year. You can watch the remarks tomorrow at 10 00 a. M. And 6 00 p. M. cspan. Helen thomas died today at the age of 92. In her career, she covered every president since dwight eisenhower. She worked for United Press International where she was think the first bureau manager. And samonversation donaldson about their experiences covering the presidency. We are delighted to welcome helen thomas. With you both for being us. It is a pleasure. I want to share two different examples of the questioning a president. Let me ask you whether it is no clinton or barack obama, what is Sam Donaldsons approach . To find out something that is going on and pass it onto the public. It ought to be a direct question that heres she said they can answer directly it a choose. The problem is they often do not choose. If you get a followup you have to figure it out. O easy to throw it out. You have questioned every president since john kennedy. Did they give you the answer youre looking for regardless of their Party Affiliation . No. Of course they dont. It absolutely changed the subject era let me show two examples. Verse we will begin with helen first we will begin with helen. This is in march of 2006. After that great performance youre going to be sorry. Let me take it back. Your decision to invade iraq is going to bother thousands of americans and iraqis. Every reason given publicly turned out not to be true. Why did you really want to go to war from the moment you stepped into the white house . What was your real reason . You said it wasnt oil. It hasnt been israel or anything else. What was it . I didh all due respect, not want war. To assume i wanted war is flat wrong, helen. In all due respect. Hold on for a second. Excuse me. No president wants war. Everything you may have heard is that but it is simply not true. Bout the defense of this country changed on september the 11th. I doubtgot attacked, then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American People. Sam donaldson. Great question. President bush gave his best shot at an answer. You ask questions, get the president to respond. We get to ask the question we think is the best. They have to get the answer. In the public can make up its own mind as to whether he wanted to go to war or not. I think it is pretty clear. I remember during 2000 he was on our program on sunday on abc. We asked them whether Saddam Hussein really turned out to have weapons of mass destruction. I think you made up his mind a long time before became president. Lets go back to july of 1998. Sam donaldson is questioning bill clinton. You have spoke to the president about stopping. He is not stopping. Is there a point at which you were going to boo . Is this a lefty is successfully calling . What i do not think that is accurate. Let me say first of all i still believe the situation is serious. I still believe as a practical matter the only way it will ultimately be resolved is if the parties get together and resolve it through some negotiation and dialogue. I think this is primarily responsible. I think others, when they are having a good day or week on the military front, may be reluctant to actually engage in dialogue i think this is something that all parties are going to have to deal with. Since i have been on this trip i have checked an almost daily on the coast of the situation and continue to support strongly with our allies continuing nato an ambiguous statement that we should not rule out any options. I hope that is still the position of our european allies. People are dying every day. They are. On. Conflict is going both sides are involved in that. There is some uncertainty about who are willing to negotiate on it. Helen thomas. We have president s who are very gifted in talking and so forth. They never tell you the truth. We are going to take a look back at different moments of different issues. I want to begin by bringing in the students with some other questions. Were going to start at Pace University in new york. They will take a look at that history. Thank you. Thek you for coming back to class. We really appreciate it. Do you think obama is not taking a Strong Enough stand restoring International Opinion regarding the current controversy . I think he has caved. He wanted no punishment for anybody involved in those her rent this decisions. It has shamed and shop us all. I think they have caved because of congressman who cannot stand this. I think he has to do something for truth, look into the real causes and so forth. Hat motivated this is men obama. Watch president you see some weaknesses. Helen has pointed one out. A few weeks ago all of his people came forward and said we have looked at these bonus cant track contracts. It seems to be legal. Overnight there was outrage in the country. President obama said i am outraged. Here we have a situation in which a or c says lets let i cant the guy bonds. Lets move forward. Know when to be prosecuted. Last sunday. His chief of staff said we are not owing to rescue anyone. The country was outrage. The next day he said it is not the cia operatives but the people who wrote the memos. Have a really thought through these positions before they speak . We like the president. They look at different circumstances. We want presidency think it are in advance and do not just go with the wind. I think that may be a problem. These programs often set the agenda for the week. Why . What George Stephanopoulos does our program now. They get to see the newsmakers and let that how these people are doing. What can answers are they doing . Does it satisfy them . These are the same kind of people who watch cspan. Impressions their across the board. It is very important. Thank you. We want to welcome Sam Donaldson and talent. We have frank who was a at upi. Ue of hers our first question is from elizabeth campbell. Thank you. The Obama Campaign stress Government Transparency in the methods. Is there a difference in the press conferences . I should refer to helen in this. She covered george w. Bush during her years. I would rather have her talk about it. It was immediately after his girard dinners directed. It is nice to talk they. Can you follow through . I asked the few knew of any country in the middle east that has nuclear weapons. He hesitated. He said i do not want to speculate. As far as i am concerned his transparency was totally. I watched them raise bond. I thought there are some sensitive things which may be to conduct. Ve all of us know that israel has been your weapons. Everyone knows that. It is not a secret. Everybody knows. No american official has ever conceded that point. I would have felt much better if you would have said we know the that israel has nuclear weapons. We are for the nuclear zones. I want to abolish these. We have many allies. About it. Ight wantsot believe everyone to be on the table. This is the table. This is the test of his ability to say that. We will to marianna next. Holly has a question. Thank you for being with us today. In the Washington Post recently they wrote about the White House Press corps and if we should get rid of it. I think we should get rid of her. She does not do the daytoday reporting. It is very easy to sit back and criticize. Whenever points was that Investigative Journalism does not happen in the press corps. You have done that yourself. You probably find all with that. They sit around and wait to be cold things. As one if you could respond to that. It is not true. It is true that a lot of our job is to listing the press secretary. We do not have the ability to go everywhere in the white house. He may or may not return our phone calls. That is true. On the other hand, without holding their feet to the fire she would smith out news. One of the things i learned to do early on was to watch where helen went. It in the morning she there she was waiting for the press secretary. . O we break stories that is not the kind of beats. It is not sure that they cannot come up with something that they want to know. That happens all the time. It was only there when it does not have to be, rain, snow, blizzards, everything else. He knew the important thing was we had to keep an eye on the president when he is in public. The best time to get information is around 7 00 in the morning or at the end of the often the agenda is eating said. It is something that breaks out. At the end of the day they give you a left. You can go home. They can sniff that maybe he should stay and another half hour. There are things happening behind the scene. It is very interesting. It is important. I think capitol hill is the best in town. It is a 12 ring circus every day. Could breakthere he stories if you just stuck around. We did not do as much in debt for the watergate exposure. You do not have the time. Youre jumping around and so forth. I did think it is a valid point do not haveondence it. They have 18 reporters on that story. Theing in to try to find truth about watergate. Quick the advantage, we are able to go back to cspan archives. We will go back to your question. I want to go back to one of the most significant speeches delivered by john kennedy at the American University on the nuclear arms race. We will watch that in cu and coe back. Asi think if he is that bad a necessary, rational end of men. I realize that this is not as dramatic as the pursuit of law and frequently the words of the pursuant fall on deaf ears. We have those urgent task. Some says it is not useless to speak of world law or disarmament. Until thee useless leaders of the soviet union adopt a more like and attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. I also believe that we must re examine our own attitude as individuals and as a nation. Our attitude is essential as theirs. Whoy thoughtful citizen wishes to bring peace should begin by looking in with it by examining their own attitude and the possibility for the soviet union. Or the cost of the cold war. That was one of the most really and speeches kennedy ever gave. He said america would never start a war. I remember it. I was there too. The last paragraph i invite people to find speech on the internet and read it. As a whole world knows, the United States will never start a war. How times have changed. Johne assassination of kennedy, this generation does not remember what happened in november of 1963. What did it mean for the country at that moment in time . It was to matt it for the whole world, not just the United States. In deepest africa people were crying everywhere. He represented great hope for everyone. It would never be the same again. For many people john kennedy was the barack obama for us. Useful, vigorous, at least we thought so, beautiful wife, new beginnings. Let us begin again. Alliance for latin america. Peace corps. Man on the moon. Ng i understand when you people look at barack obama and go gaga. I mustnt all people do not either. Is for informal dinner at the we canouse. Do you aint land do you think we cant land a man on the moon . They say we never say no to a president. Is this guy not . September 11 two thousand one, parallels to what it meant to the nation. They are both dramatic events. President have been assassinated before but not recently and not let john kennedy. This is the first time we had really been attacked. Other countries have lived with socalled terrorist tactics. Terrorism is not a country. It is a tactic. It is terrorism. We were attacked. They are rolling out like hornets. Civil liberties. Forget we are going to do it. Now were coming up to your senses as a more realistic way to keep ourselves safe and to keep our values. It is the ultimate safety for this country. The world sees our values are different. Lesson that question . Thank you. The White House Press corps and journalists are the between the people and the government. Government is more likely to act if the people want something particularly. The responsibility to help set the president policy . I think we have three day help every day. It is up to the people to react. The student is very perceptive. That is how our country works. Is a relatively weak office. Article one is a legislature. They want the legislature to be said cream. To be supreme. It has become gigantic in the sense of form policy and going to war. If a president can marshal public opinion, that is powerful. The democrats were basically against. Its what them. That is the role power of the president. Rs part of that came two yea after john kennedy gave the speech about americans not starting a war. Lyndon johnson was just reelect did in one of the biggest pick trees of any president. This is an excerpt from april of 1965. Lyndon johnson try to reverse a pledge. And then four months later he said this. Ive come here to review once again the views of the american government. Americans and asians are dying for our world where each people may choose its own path to change. This is the principle for which our ancestors fought in the valleys of pennsylvania. It is a principle for which our sons fight tonight in the jungles of vietnam. Vietnam is far away from this campus. We have no territory there. The war is very dirty and brutal and difficult. Born into ang men america with promise are on the steaming oil. Painful we take this nation . For the sakepower of the people so far away. We fight because we must fight. If we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny and only in such a world will our own freedom be finally secure. Histhe war kill of killed presidency. He was hoping to run a ke again. Hey lbj, how many kids did you kill today . Every day hundreds marched in front of the white house. No more. Youre seeing these protests. Oh yeah. He inherited our involvement in vietnam. John kennedy extended it. Kennedy told number people when am going to it i withdraw from vietnam. It is a loser. Jonathan comes into power. In those days the fear of communism was so pervasive we had just emerged from the Joan Mccarthy era. When Joseph Stalin was in charge, we better be afraid of someone like him. Lyndon johnson thought that if he tried to withdraw from vietnam sensitive lighting from hughcommon yes communist. Ot be reelected last time listen to Lyndon Johnson talk to Richard Russell on the telephone. Richard russell was the great senator from georgia. Listen to the tape. You take this conversation. I know we cannot win in vietnam but i do not know what to do. This anguish president said. What he did was just get deeper and deeper. It destroyed him and almost the country. The generals told him what he wanted to hear, that they were winning. Thats all of asia would go. Do you know something . Ho chi minh had his forces there. We were able to carve out south vietnam. John foster dulles created the country free. The vietnamese wanted to live together. When people want to live together you cannot stop them. Want to live together you cannot make them. We control the rest of the way the people want to live. They were all falling apart. Was the dictator died they all ran off and killed each other. We stopped ethnic cleansing eventually. The point of a bayonet never does it. They told the secretary of state, he said when i die there will be no yugoslavia. He was right. He was holding them together with an iron fist. Some of the students at george mason university. George estrada has our next question. You earlier mentioned about not compromising our principles. Thet now with pakistan and taliban in that whole situation in afghanistan, there are stock that we might negotiate with of the taliban. When the compromise some of our principles . Given the circumstances that we are now involved, should we consider that compromising our principles and sacrificing other people would put us in a bad situation . I do not want to throw anybody to the wolves. Look. I him for helping people he wants to allow women to go to school, hold jobs. I am for people who want to live like we have. We cannot make them do it simply because we think it is the right thing to do. I do not know what to do about afghanistan. The soviet union tried it. I want to try it. Good luck. I fear that afghanistan and pakistan, and this is a problem for us is pakistan is on the verge of going to as an going to an islamic state. I fear that we cannot stop it by force of arms. We can help. We cannot stop it. Even told the people that they had to stop it and they will. They had enough for democratic ideas and pakistan to do it. I hope you are right. I want to talk about watergate separately. Why was china so significant . Why was it so important for Richard Nixon to go to china . He knew communism was not monolithic. He toured europe and learned so much about was happening in russia. The whole idea was if you make an overture to china you will so upset the russians that it would divide and conquer. China was important and we were pretending this whole big area of the map was a black hole. That 1. 3 billion people did not exist as far as we were concerned. Lding to china, only he cou have done it, someone thought to be anticommunist. A republican. A liberal democrat would have been run out of town. He was able to do it. If it werent for watergate, president nixon would have gone down as a really first class president. People say we want the Environmental Protection agen. That was nixon. We expect the presidency not only keep the law they keep the law and obey it. This is how he ended his presidency from the east room of the white house in 1974. So i say to you on this of then, we leave proud people who have stood by us and were were us and served this country. We want you to be proud of what you have done. We want you to continue to serve in government if that is your wish. Always give your best. Never get discouraged never be petty. Always remember others may hate you. Those who hate you do not when in less you hate them. Then you destroy yourself. So we leave with high hope, good spirit, and with deep humility and with very much gratefulness and our heart. Very poignant moment. It was a personal tragedy. They were all in tears. He did not mention his wife who was standing by him. We felt all offended by that. I guess you cannot think of every ink. He did talk of his mother. It was an incredible moment for him to have a resident who always had to rose to go and wrong road. E roa when you talk to nixon, how did he respond . He was terrific kerry he was very he was terrific. He was very glib. He never had a podium or notes. He knew what he was doing, always. And yet he got sucked into the watergate thing because he wanted it all. He wanted a smashing big three. That overtook him. How greed in the end does us in. Act to the students, this time in denver. Steve tyler has the next question. How is the current scandal similar or different to the watergate scandal, especially for all of us that do not remember either thu those . Not call it a scandal. It is a scandal. Are there parallels . The have to be very careful. Want them to look at these people. Did they knowingly twist the law in order to come up with the whate of locality to mask has been torture for centuries . Waterboarding is not true. Slamming someone against the wall is not true. Is not new. The privation of sleep, did they do this . If i were a defendant, if they call me in and said your name is yoyo and you wrote these memos, i would say i may have that it was under heavy pressure from higher us that white house. How far do we go . Maybe we go as far as we need. Theyre all defending each other. There is the whole mantra that they left to obama. Lets move on. Lets forget the past. Let bygones be bygones. They are thinking we cleared the air. Take a marijuana smoker and let them out of prison. These fall out. Heas in the courtroom when threatened the watergate richlers with maximum sentences. One of them wrote a letter saying there were higher ups. Ets see how far it goes it was a nuremberg defense. We were only following orders. Next question from george mason university. Was so many people watching you and relying on you to ask the questions, how is criticism helping you and how do you deal with that . Ignore. Hard to you want everyone to love you. You always knew that was in profitable was impossible and not the holy grail. What you do. O you have to believe in yourself and believe what you do. She is right. You have to ask the questions. You have to do what you do. Aen i covered Robert Reagan lot of good republicans let me know that i was a vicious kurd trying to tear down the best president we ever had. Are there to keep it straight. In the second term, the monica thing came up. I covered bill clinton. Now they said what happened to you . He used to be a great reporter but now i guess you got rich. With ageblicans said comes wisdom. A lot has to do with whether they like what you say in terms of their political hero. In the wall street why did inasked this apply to all the prisoners we had picked up whether it was in afghanistan or guantanamo. They have eight years carpet that nobody else does. Is asked what happened to you of the criticism . Posted ayer and i primetime live. Diane did an interview with Saddam Hussein in baghdad. She was asking him for press freedom. You do not allow anyone to criticize you. He said you do not either. He knew nothing about the world. You do not allow people to criticize the president of the United States. To said when are people criticize the president they get their own television program. There is a moment i just want to ask you to describe a speech he gave in 1979 called the malaise speech. It has become emblematic. Why . We were in dire straits. The country was going downhill. Gas lines were merging. Inflation was beginning to really eat away at our society in a huge way. The president took the wrong course. Consider taking the ronald course. No matter what you thought, he was an optimist. Hes that we have these problems. Maybe we will not be able to do as well as he used to do. Maybe we will have to accept that. He never used the word malaise. The speech was tagged the malaise speech. Telling the truth. American people always want up the things. That seemed to be such a downer for them. They turned against him. Whether you liked him or not, they gave him that. I like jimmy carter. I think history will be much kinder to him than the voters. He did a lot of things that made it safer in the world. The peace treaty between egypt and israel for which he was the nursemaid. That was just one of them. He made certain the panama canal went to panama. If he hadnt we would be fighting in the canals of panama. Normalizationnal with our relationship with china. And won the nobel peace prize. We have had three president s. The final analysis he was not a Good National politician. He hated small typ talk. You may not vote him that if you double over and you still say i like that man. Democrat leaders did not like him. He did not really touch them. He was an engineer. You covered this. You know this is not the way you do business in this town. You do business on a personal level often. You scratch your back i will help you out the next time you need it is very important to have personal relationships. You cannot be bothered. Goodbye. Lets go to Pace University in new york. Thank you. Eyelid like to say it is such an honor to address both of you. Thank you so much. His administration which claims to be incredibly transparent to depart from the trend of u. S. President s restricting the medias access to the west wing . Good question. I suspect that could happen. And the president gets in trouble, when their staff get in do. Ble, inevitably they they havent done anything wrong. The world is out there and it hinges on the american presidency. Then the natural tendency is to want to restrict the flow of the nation. They really want to draw in the wagons. I expect it to happen. People have good faith that it is impossible to say, come on. She me again. He doesnt walk on water. He stepped into the oval office, all of a sudden, the buyer ire is this and i band torture. I had to laugh at some of his quotes. How are you going to prove it . Candidates who win have to meet him so. Candidate obama is now meeting president obama. Candidate obama says no earmarks. President obama signed it because he knows he has to do it. Reality sets in. Candidate obama says no lobbyists. President obama says we may re exceptions because these are exceptional people. 90 c stories about people who have lobbied for great causes now you see stories about people who have lobbied for great causes and cannot have a great job in the Obama Administration and where their expertise would be great good. Hes going to have to make these adjustments. The danger is with young people who ought to be idealistic. Some of them will say this is not the candidate that i fell in love with. Great people do not pay their taxes. Jefferson talked about the importance of the freedom of press and how that is fundamental to what our society is all about. Take an opposing point of view. Reporters do their job the way they should . I think they did a horrible job in a runup to the war. Every day president bush and his cohorts were telling us they were going to war. Nobody asked why. Iraq had done nothing to us. We invaded that country. Nobody says why do you want to go to war. We do not have our own cia. I do not know someone named blue ball or whatever his name was. , they cia said slamdunk have weapons of mass describe of masst distraction. It is hard to say, on. I got onto the fact late when the un expect are finally got in. A few weeks later he said the americans say they know where these weapons are. We asked them. They had said we know. They gave us the locations. We went there. We did not find anything. I thought oh. Uhoh. He never asked where are they. That is a secret. My question is for helen thomas. You mentioned earlier about the norberg defense only following orders. Do you think if they were to prosecute people in this debate of tortures, should they prosecute everybody involved . Does that only work for the people who were actually doing the tortures and were directed to do so . I would ask the Justice Department what is the law here and how does it apply. Put inc. That too many this in a blind trust. How could you order such torture if youre a human being. I am so shocked and ashamed. I think all American People are responsible for this. They knew enough about this to say no way. Like if you listen to what he said, he said al qaeda was relatively unknown. It was relatively unknown, it shouldnt have been to the Bush Administration before 9 11. Clark, he was the ongoing expert was banging the door repeatedly. Even george tenet sent over that famous memo were this was to the effect that al qaeda wants to strike in the United States. For them to say we did not know anything about this is nonsense. In thing on the matter the nierenberg defense, one said to shock the conscience. If it does not shock the conscience it is ok. I did for i differ. Thit is not not to germany. A were not sending people to the gas chamber. They were not sending people to the gas chamber. You could reassign. You could say i do not think it is legal. At some point something should say no. There is an experiment in which ordinary people are asked to turn it up if someone lies. Turning people start it into a point that would cheer them. You are caught up. After 9 11 we were all caught up. George w. Bush had a 91 popularity rating had he chosen to govern from the center. It was a country that did nothing to us. Now a question from george mason. Ask theld like to russian quickly. They are two of the best theres questioners of our generation. What makes a good question . The shortest distance between two points, for one thing. Find out the truth if it is possible. I think we should always go for the jugular in the seince that you want the truth. Multiple part question. Helen was the best. You have just the challenging question. If you ask do you care to comment, what kind of question is that . Yet a form a question. If they can set it down successfully, you have done your job. If got me in the sense that the answer to my question anyway you thought was terrific, i have done my job. My favorite question is why . Helen used to ask questions of jimmy carter. Youre a failed president. Had you answer that . Do not expect him to say you are right. If you say what do you make of the polls, that is not a question. That is a cream puff thing that should be on his press that. Its going to be so defensive. He said we are looking to studying this and people are dying. While they are looking, they are dying. Alstom. Thank you. Today at the langley had quarters president obama announced the secured interrogation memos detailing torture and abuse of detainees. They are expected to make their rounds soon. Obama said it was meant to prevent future torture. Perpetrator should not be perpetrated. What you think the value will be of no Legal Recourse will take place . Information. Never do it again. Withres the problem thinking the rest of the world does not see what is going on. Or if we say we stand for something we do not. We believe that. It is not true. The American People are smart people. If we say to the world we did this, this is why. I think that comes off so much better than to pretend it didnt happen when they know it did. Love means never saying youre sorry . Ronald reagan was at the end of his residency. Teams were going pretty well with the soviet union. There was this model with gorbachev. The soviets had this in the street. They had atomic weapons. It was still a dangerous era. The berlin wall and circled the city to keep people in. Wall. Od in front of the he delivered what was perhaps his most famous line of his residency. And we will show it. Is from june 1997 in germany. We Welcome Change in oak in this. We believe that freedom and security go together, that the divan advance of human can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance the cause of freedom and peace gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the eastern europe, if you seek liberalization come here to this gate. Open this gate. [applause] mr. Gorbachev mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. [applause] they sent the draft of that beach over to the state department, and the state department was horrified. Thats an inflammatory statement. You cannot do that. Reagans chief of staff at the time tells the story that the president asked can what he thought he should do, and he said, mr. President , i cannot tell you what to do. Thats up to you. And reagan said, well, im going to deliver it. So he delivered it, and it set a tone that was just terrific. People in the gulags said when they heard that it was just wonderful. So it was right. He had an instinct. He was an actor. Actors have an instinct for the dramatic. Often in the american presidency, the dramatic is an important part of the presentation. His wife urged her husband to go to a meeting in moscow with gorbachev. At the time, Margaret Thatcher had said that we could do business with the soviet union. So when he went to moscow, found out the russians laughed and they cried and they were human. When we got back to washington, i said to him, you think if you had gone to moscow 10 years ago, 20 years ago, you might have found out the russians laughed, they cried, they were human . He said, theyve changed. Reagan viewed the world through rose colored glasses. He had cancer, as you know, colon cancer. Fortunately, they got it before it invaded the and all of that, he refused to believe that he had cancer. There was something in his colon that have had cancer. Well, sir, whats the difference . You would ask him if he had cancer, he would say, i had cancer. My question is regarding the torture issues that are now on the forefront of politics. Do you think the torture issues are distracting too much attention, time, and energy from the Obama Administration from . Ddressing other Current Issues if so, what can the administration do to correct this . A distractioninly from a main effort like healthcare reform. It is a distraction that takes energy and time, but i i think it may be worth it in this case. Our Current National director of intelligence said the other day that he thought this is now obama posture record, not bushs, that some good intelligence was obtained through those methods this is now obamas director, not bush s. But he says the damage done to the country far outweighs the information we have got. I repeat what i said earlier its better to let all the sunshine in, let it all hang out. This is not intelligence which is going to cost some of our troops in the field. Lets talk about that. Back to the socalled pentagon papers. Threatenedstration newspapers to try to close them down if they published what was a chronology of how we had gotten into vietnam. No secrets there that would threaten anyone oh, yes, it would threaten the political survivors of some politicians, and i think this may be happening here, too. Otherwise it would be a coverup. We should know what has been done in our name. It is us. We are responsible for everything that happens in our name. Bill clinton did not tell the truth during part of his presidency. How does that impact how history will judge his eight years . People can make their own decision. When they investigated him on allegations he may have committed perjury and instruction of justice, two felonies for which americans go to jail every day, in association with an alleged with a white house intern sexual affair the first week, they took a poll. Morris morris, who now is a commentator, a political guy, and the poll said that 60 to 89 of the American Public if it was true wanted him out. So clinton, famously, according to morris said, well, we are just going to have to win then. So they set out with a campaign to win, and ultimately, they did. In december 1999 as he was preparing to leave office, he talked about Monica Lewinsky as a way for him to protect the constitution. Here is what bill clinton said. I remember that. Regarding impeachment proceedings, you are quoted as saying recently that i was right to stand and fight for my country, my constitution, and its principles. Explain what you meant. First of all, lets go through the whole quote i also said first, as i always did, that i made a terrible personal mistake, and i apologized for it, and i have done my best to atone for it, and i certainly paid a high price for it, but i think that , first will record that of all, the whole whitewater thing was a sham and a fraud and at some point, a lot of the people who were involved in it knew it and continue to pursue it, and knew there was not a thing in the world to it. That it was dragged out for political reasons, on and on years beyond. Millions of dollars of taxpayer expenditures beyond where it should have been, and the whole impeachment proceedings i think we had 800, i believe it was, constitutional scholars that said it should not have been the subject of constitutional impeachment proceedings. All i would say again is that i have let thewould constitution down, i would have done the wrong thing, had i and not steadier. I also believed in what i was doing for the country. I believe we were doing the right things for america. I do not mean in any way to take away from the mistake i made, but i still believe when it came to the impeachment thing that what i did was in the best interest of the country and was certainly faithful to the constitution. Im not sure the Founding Fathers would agree if they were listening to that. Hes wrote that. We wrote this, and we had no idea pk it was about one saturday morning when he had to testify in front of a federal judge under oath perjury under oath about his love relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He dodged, he weaved, and ultimately, in denying it, it came down to an argument about whether oral sex is in fact sex or not. When he finally admitted that, yes, he admitted to the grand jury because he knew if he lied their he would be out in august of that year it that it was just oral sex, and that was not really sex, when he said he had not had a sexual relationship, he was talking about penetration, yada yada yada. Ok, i do not think his sin was anywhere near the quality of , and you could argue that the impeachment investigations begun by the republicans in the house of representatives was a political vendetta more than it was seeking to preserve the great oath, but it is comp lex, and he is not entirely blameless, and i do not think he could say i was defending the constitution. I do not think he will find mount wind up on rushmore. But i do think he was a good president. He left a surplus in the treasury and so forth. But he never knew one second in the white house eight years when he was not being hounded by the republican right. And he never knew his enemy, never understood where they were. They never gave him legitimacy as president. We have a problem in this country, at least in my short time of covering it and studying president s. Franklin roosevelt, i think, will go down as a great president , but almost half the population of the country hated him. Did not just dislike him or say he was not their cup of tea. They viciously hated him. Truman, not so much. A little. Eisenhower, pretty placid. Hatred in lot of dallas. Schoolkids taught by their taught, they cheered as by their parents. Johnson because of the war. People have come to hate him. Hey, lbj, how many kids have you killed today . No one hated jimmy carter. But beginning with Ronald Reagan again, with bill clinton particularly, the republicans decided they were going to get him. Then when george w. Bush came in, the democrats decided they were going to get him. You could argue or good reasons, if you want to. And today, the viciousness toward obama i watch those ,ea party years tea partiers people should petition to address grievances, thats great, but they did not like obama. 95 of americans thought they were going to get a tax cut. Do you think they were out there saying, i dont want a tax cut. How dare you, mr. President . No, and when people who are supposed to be straight anchors for a News Organization lead ,ith the vicious rhetoric thats not a tea party because they think their taxes are too high. That is simply, we do not like obama. And this is destructive for the country. I do not care which side of the aisle you are on. To george mason. Next question. I have a question about reporting. When you are asking questions tough, controversial questions, and you know they will not like it, is there a fear that in the future, at maybe the next press conference, they will not call on you and you will not be able to ask a question . Are you on some sort of reporter blacklist . It happens, no, but that would not stop you from asking the question. Everybody who comes to a press conference has a question. They all want to be called on, but i have been very privileged because i work for a wire service where i automatically would get the first or second question. I think i have had my day. Let me speak to you about helen. I knew because i knew her well, and we would talk in the press room how she felt about things, but if you look at her wire copy i dont care, republican president or democratic president absolutely her personal opinion was not there. Now that she is a columnist, we know exactly how she feels about the news. When you ask the president a question, most of them are smart enough to understand no matter how sharp it is, you are asking a legitimate question assuming it is legitimate and you are not expressing your public opinion. I have asked president s who i liked and admired very sharp i think sharp questions, but they have not taken it personally. There was one time Margaret Thatcher was coming on a state visit, and her car was being held at the east gate. It was a hot day. Out from the stands, well, bring it on. The turmoil, not the president , said,s press secretary, this is a terrible thing to do. And then i got a raise. I said, call them up again, would you . But my boss was unique thomas d. I would not advise reporters to try that. I want to share a story you have told about before about marine one, the helicopter, and Ronald Reagan. Tombstone, it will say, born on a certain date and died on a certain date, and it will he shouted at Ronald Reagan. I never shouted a jimmy carter. He was walking along, but reagan was kept away for political reasons. We would walk to the helicopter, and the blades were never revolving. You do not have revolving blades around the president of the united dates. The motor was on. He would cut his mask. We shouted, but when he heard a question, he wanted answers. He would come on over. If he had never come well, im marginally smart enough to stop shouting eventually, but one time out of six or seven, he would deliver newsworthy answers. You just had to keep doing it. Back to denver, next question. Thank you. Christina has the next question. Thank you for being on the show today. My question is for helen. As the first female officer and first female member of the white house correspondents association, you have aided in challenging gender barriers for female journalists and other political scientists. What role has gender play during your career . How significant has it been to your career . I never aspired up the ladder. I just always wanted to be a reporter, but i was astonished when i came to this town. No one ever told me it was a mans world. I hope i have been in the front of all the challenges to fight against discrimination against women. I was appalled to see so much. National get into the but welub until 1971, were manning the barricades for years before that. I will tell you something the first luncheon with a foreign dignitary at the National Press club i attended i think it was the Prime Minister of india, but i cannot remember i was amazed. We were all down on the floor. Having lunch. We were all men. Up on the balcony are the women reporters. They were not even allowed to be on the floor of the press club. Of reportersunch kept pushing saying, hey, we are here. And we are looking down on men. You did it, helen. You didnt. Katie has the next question. Did it, helen. You did it. Katie has the next question. We talked about transparency and how that is one thing obama has stressed. Curious,uestion which president has been the toughest to cover in terms of dodging questions or being transparent or not being transparent with what is going on . None of them are really transparent. The longer they are in office. They come in with great intentions, but as soon as they stepped into the oval office, all the information that i think belongs in the Public Domain suddenly becomes their private reserve. My observation is maybe it is george w. Bush, although there are lots of runner ups. I think his attitude was, im going to try to do the best job i can on behalf of the American People as i see it. When you need to know something, i will tell you. Otherwise, but out. Out. Erwise, butt that was not the most secretive administration that i ever covered. Ronald reagan was running for reelection. Deficits were just ballooning. They, we would kill for small deficits. They were huge. We were trying to get him to answer, what are your plans to reduce the deficits . He would dodge and he would we then all of that, but she said it very well he would then go to the grand old opry, and they would be the bibles. They would be singing and balloons wouldhe be going up, and leslie would be talking about with these pictures, the deficits, and she got a call from someone i guess the chief of staff or someone. Michael deaver, the assistant chief of staff. She was afraid she would be chewed out because she had been pretty tough talking about the deficits, that reagan had no plan. When you have to war against images like reagan was able to produce, omaha beach, at the grand ole opry, elsewhere, what you say does not matter. Its the picture that matters. Story a day,ed a one story every day that we were supposed to focus on. Right. On september 11, 2000 one, george w. Bush goes to the oval office and delivers this address. Good evening. Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom ofe under attack in a series deliberate and deadly terrorist attacks. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices. Secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers, moms and dads, friends. Nd neighbors thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. Did that moment changed the presidency . It helped change it. The Founding Fathers said. Ongress should declare war but in the nuclear age, we got to thinking there was no time for congress if soviets have the missiles going and in 28 minutes it will be here, so the president could just go ahead and do it and they would have to report later. Then president got the idea that we will have to defend the country, and i will do it, but right here, he was determined, and as he saw events play out, they got some congressional approval later, but he was determined to do it. There are two events that i have seen, helen, so far in this decade which have given president immense power. That was one. We were all behind him. Get them, i dont care who they are. He was able to do anything he wanted. Striker back strike a rat, suspended a lot of civil liberties. Then we have another one. Has grave economic crisis given barack obama immense power. We think it is to reform things and socialcare security and all of that, but at the moment, he, too, has an opportunity to do not anything he wants, but if he can do Mass Public Opinion behind him, to it. I think it changed our lives, every person. Take your shoes off at the airport. Security everywhere. Ou cannot go into any Building Security became the top issue in everyones mind. And it was accepted, but i think it did change our lifestyle. My wife and i went to spain for little vacation, and you have to put your luggage through the machine but you do not have to take off your shoes. I said to an inspector who spoke english that we had to take off her shoes in the United States, and he said, yeah, but it is not necessary. Weve still do some things. We have suspended have you packed your own bags . We can look back at some of the thing still in place and say that its not necessary. Couple more questions. Lets go back to Pace University. Thank you. Twitter, blogging, and texting are all new media for people to get the news. Are they exciting for you as reporters, or do you prefer the oldfashioned papers and television . Also, just how do you feel about these new mediums in general . You cannot stop technology. You cannot hold back the tides and all that, so you have to adapt to it and all this. I think the new mediums are a twoedged sword. Everyone being able to participate, let all flowers bloom im for. Everyone should get out there, say whatever you want to, tweet you know, in the proper places. Not at funerals or something. The other thing is have you checked it all out . When you Say Something is fact, had he really checked it and made certain . Theres a lot of stuff out there which i do not think they have checked out at all, but people can look at it and say that is true. There was no holocaust. Lyndon johnson organized the kennedy assassination. Not true. Media from thed standpoint of people, whether they are working for abc news or just those of you in class there who want to check these out think you go saying you you know something. So technology is good. Fundamentals are a degree. Absolutely. Everyone with a laptop thinks they are a journalist. Credo ifave a your mother says she loves you, check it out. Just the fact, maam. Now everything is in the air and you do not know what to believe. No editors, no standards. The blogosphere scares me to some extent. There was a guy in eastern jordan ahead of all correspondence at cnn. It correspondence like him. He stood up for them. He a good guy. He went to topless he went to panel. And he was on a he was a little hot under the collar, and he said something to the effect i think American Forces are targeting journalists. Iraq and barney frank, who was no great conservative, stood up from the floor and said, i dont think thats true. He took it back almost immediately. He said he meant they were not taking enough care when they shoot to know who they are shooting at, and journalists get hurt. All right, you can disagree with him and all that, but the right wing blogosphere got started and within three weeks, he was was fired. Cnn could not take the heat. ,ithout examining the facts does he really deserve to get fired . But the blogosphere is so pervasive and quick that you do not have time to sit back and the atlanticead next month and see what that guy thinks. No, its over now. Lets get a question from denver. Whos next . Thank you, steve. Clark has a question. Thank you again for joining us. Its an honor to have both of you. My question involves the fact that over my lifetime and certainly over both of your long careers, you have seen the idea of news move from more of a Public Service into the realm of a profit generator for companies , and i wonder if theres anything you see that we can do to move back to news being more of a Public Service, or are we doomed . I would not use the word doomed. We are not going to go back. For networksime where the News Department did not have to earn money. Vcr, no cable, no blog a spear, no internet. If you wanted to watch that too, you had to watch us. So the networks were rolling in money from prime time and soap operas, so the News Departments could do programs like edward r merles harvest of shame, which of es edward armor murrows harvest of shame, which exposed the plight of migratory farmworkers. Today, trying to catch one viewer is so important to the bottom line. No one says to me, you cannot do that story because it may not be sexy enough, but you get the message in the sense that the or die by you live them. Look at shows now with the absence of poor tim russert, much lamented and properly so. As adjustments are going, are the ratings because it is money, advertising. You asked if we go back to the good old days where you can do anything you want without reference to whether it made money no, i dont think so. A final question i know you have been asked many, many times why are you a reporter . I became a reporter, i have to admit, selfishly. I thought it was exciting. I loved it. Ifres an old expression you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. Ive may have worked a day or two. I think if you are serious about the business that if you can bring people information i do not want to put too fine a point on it, but if you can, you feel good about that. You do something that may be worthwhile. A lot of people have things they do that are worthwhile. You do not have to be in the news business. The third thing will say is i have been so blessed. I have been around the world eight times on the companys dime. I could not have afforded that. I have seen things that are in the history books. My point is simply that you are going to be there watching history, and that is a great privilege. And you have covered every president since jfk. Why are you a reporter . I get an education every day. You keep learning. No other profession gives you that opportunity. You really are giving a Public Service when people are informed. You cannot have a democracy without an informed people, so it is great to be a part of this system. I think that the more people know, the better off they are in this country and the world. We are grateful to helen newspapers andt of Sam Donaldson. Thanks for coming by. We appreciate it. Thank you, steve. [applause] the white house released a Statement Today about the death of helen thomas, calling her a true pioneer, Opening Doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism. More than 100the appearances of helen thomas on cspan at our video library, and watch indepth interviews with her about her books, including listen up, mr. President everything you wanted your president to know and do. Now a discussion about standard ground laws in states throughout the u. S. From this mornings ashington journal washington journal. Its about an hour and a half. Host for the next hour we are going to take a look at stand your ground loss. Joining us is jon lowy. Theo joining us is john lott. Author of more guns, less crime. Thank you for joining us. As the way we found it, a simple definition when it came to stand your ground loss and the United States goes a such, allow any individuals who are in any place they have a legal right to the to use deadly force if they feel threatened with bodily harm or death even if they have the ability to flee the with that as a starting point, what is the purpose of a stand your ground lawn . Confrontation. How have you seen this applied across the United States . Caller we traditionally had defense where a number of problems arose. One is ambiguity about what it means to retreat as far as possible. There are cases where somebody would retreat and prosecutors thought they could you havereated further. Basically a similar standard to what you have had. Some states have essentially had a stand your ground since they have been states. A person believes they are in imminent danger or serious injury, the only thing is are they required to retreat as far as possible . Most of the states in the country, 30 states, have some form of stand your ground in terms of legislation or in terms of court decisions. Host what would you add to that . Guest there has been a right to selfdefense in the law for as itng as we have had laws. Actually worked perfectly fine. There was a logic to it. They also had to take reasonable measures to avoid conflict. The law was intended to save lives, to prevent crime. The nra and the corporate friends pushed these stand your ground laws. I do not have the full name. It had a lot of Major Corporate funders pushing very conservative agenda and stand your round was part of the legislative portfolio. What it did was it took out the requirements of people to reasonably avoid conflict. What it created was incidents like in the George Zimmerman case where, whatever the facts were, what was clear was mr. Zimmerman could have remained in his van, he could have avoided confrontation in any number of occasions, but he did not have to do that. Since he had a gun he knew that if he got in an encounter the worst that was going to happen was he lose the fight and pulled out the gun. And do what he did and kill unarmed 17yearold walking home. Now, there is a reason why the Attorneys Office there is a reason why the Attorneys Office composes these loss from the beginning these laws from the beginning. Guest even the president s statement yesterday indicated that the gun was not raised as a there is a reason why. No matter what you think about the other aspects of the case, zimmerman was on his back. There is no place for him to go and retreat when he fired the shot. Any type of reasonable standard was the he believe he was in imminent danger or threat of serious injury . The jury did not make any other decision about whether it was possible for him to retreat. That was the question asked of the jury. Host 30 states have this law and florida passed it in 2005. Under then governor jeb bush. Other states had them before. Other states have put them in since then. Have we considered this law even before the zimmerman case . Was that something people know about . Guest we at the Brady Campaign oppose this law from the getgo. We thought it was a bad idea. Prosecutors and police oppose it as well. I think that while mr. Zimmerman did not assert a stand your Ground Defense, if he had he would have had to take the stand at a hearing, which clearly he did not want to do. However, it was in the jury instruction. Havee that, they would received a much different set of instructions, which would have talked about mr. Zimmermans obligation to reasonably avoid conflict. Insteadthey were instructed that ,he had the right to stand his crown and defend himself. One juror specifically mentioned the fact that mr. Zimmerman had the right to stand his ground. She got that from the jury instructions. Guest the subtext of this . It is a pretty strange debate in the sense that the prosecution did not argue this, the defense did not argue this, the whole reason it was included in the jury instructions was that it was part of the normal selfdefense statute that was there. There was not an emphasis put on this at all. The fact that this has been made to be an issue is kind of strange. I have not heard eric holder, i have not heard anybody going say exactly how the stand your ground law would be relevant. Just one comment about police, there is a survey that has been done by 400,000 Police Officer members in the United States. He had Something Like 70 of the police they surveyed that supported stand your ground laws. I do not know what survey you want to relate to read i think that the general issue is one of confusion. You have a relatively simple line with regard to stand your ground. I can give you cases in oklahoma there was a case where a man was knocked down by a robber. The robber knocked him down again and a third time. This gentleman is trying to run away from the robber. Only after that third time he pulled out his concealed handgun and fatally shot the robber. Prosecutors argued it was still possible for him to retreat even further. That is the type of thing where you go and impose a type of possible ambiguity, you make them have to wait too long for them to be able to defend you impose real costs on individuals having to make the decision. The issue is one, does it deter crime, and two, what about the safety of the individuals that are there . That seems to be the bottom line. You can bring out the racial aspects and other things. On those first two points i think the data is pretty clear. Guest there have been studies that have went out, they studied the effect of stand your ground and showed that stand your ground has led to an increase, a significant increase in homicide with no deterrent effect on other crimes. It is certainly a negative. Other papers have a surveyed particular cases in florida found very disturbing results. It has been applied to get drug dealers and other criminals off the hook. There is a Racial Disparity in the application were basically there is a great difference between if the victim is black or white. There are huge problems both in the broad picture and host we are going to continue this conversation until 8 45. If you want to call in it is you can tweet us questions as well, [video clip] http twitter. Com cspanwj. Yesterday the president talked about the statements am a possibly looking at them. We will play with the president has to say and get your reaction to them. [video clip] for those who resisted that idea that we should think about Something Like the stand your ground laws, i ask people to consider if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk . Do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting mr. Zimmerman, who had followed him in a car, because he felt threatened . If the answer to that question is at least ambiguous it seems to me we want to examine those kinds of forms. Guest a lot of the president s statement yesterday were about his own personal history in terms of profiling and what have you. I appreciate him speaking out on told on those types of things. He is simply wrong about the law. Just because somebody follows you does not give you the right the law is pretty clear. A reasonable person would have to believe that you are in imminent danger of death or serious bodily interest. Or serious bodily injury. Just because somebody is following you on the sidewalk, even if that is the case its not even clear the original operator asked zimmerman whether or not he knew where martin was. He says he got out of the car to look at that point and when the operator realized he was gone the operator said you did not need to do that. He said ok. Even if beside the point. We take the president at exactly what he is saying there, you cannot shoot somebody. The thing that was unusual about this case is he has physical injuries, a broken nose, lacerations, bruises on his face. You do not need that for being able to defend yourself in any case. You have to be able to convince other people that you were in serious risk of death or serious injury. Simply saying that somebody is following you does not give you the right to pull out your gun and go and shoot somebody. If that is the case you are going to get convicted of this had much more evident surely, somebody who has got a broken nose or damaged to themselves, you can say that gives some reasons to be fearful. Host can it do anything now as far state laws are concerned . Guest the senate is going to be taking up hearings, according to dick durbin, where he hopes to that to pass a federal law that will ban these types of laws in the states. Guest i think what is important is that the president recognizes we are engaged in a national conversation. About race and gun laws. Why could George Zimmerman shoot and kill an unarmed 17year old walking home and get no punishment . If he had unbuckled his seat belt in his van he would have gotten more punishment killing there isyearold. Something extremely wrong with that richer. Victor with that picture. It is more than the stand your ground laws, it is also concealed carry laws. George zimmerman had an arrest record, arrested for resisting arrest was some violence. He had a Domestic Violence restraining order by an x fiance. Under floridas relaxed concealed carry law he was entitled to carry a loaded hidden handgun anywhere. Under anyones view, he showed a lack of judgment. There is no authority under florida law to revoke his license. He gets the weapon he used to kill Trayvon Martin issued back to him and he can continue to carry it. Host the ability of the president to address stand your ground law any power over the guest i think there are some federal possibilities here. It has always been a state issue, and practically it will be decided in the states and i hope the state of florida will revisit stand your ground and amend or repeal them, but i am not aware of federal legislation that has been introduced that guest undo the state laws. Host lets get some callers into the mix. Charlotte, north carolina. Steve, you are up first. Caller as someone that has been a victim of a nonviolent incident of a gun violence incident, i understand the need for self defense, however George Zimmerman, who i feel was hunting someone, had a can of red pepper spray or a stun gun and immediately escalated to deadly violence. We would all be coming and story. I know he might be charged with something be telling a different story. And now he might be charged with but i think the idea is that George Zimmerman and there are some people carry weapons around it are looking for it. I wish was some other way, but it is not. Host thank you, steve. Mr. Lowy. Guest you make a great point, steve, and this is a problem with concealed carry laws because they carry weapons in Public Places and they have no business to. That is what you saw with George Zimmerman. Even the fact that he immediately shot Trayvon Martin in the heart, even if he had pulled out his gun, there were so many things he could have done with it. He could brandished it. He could have shot it in the he could have shot in a nonlethal place. He immediately went for the was clearly, at a minimum, grossly irresponsible. We should revisit should people be entitled to carry loaded guns in public when they do not have the training, the judgment or the need to do some . Host mr. Lott . Guest florida has had concealed carry laws since 1987, and over 2. 5 Million People have had concealed carry permits for over 10 years and you are simply wrong, if they are arrested, they will have their license suspended, and if convicted, if you look,revoked. Since january 2008, according to the state of florida, out of the millions of people in the state of florida that have had permits there have been four revocations for any type of firearms violation. That comes down to less than one 1000 of 10 of one percent. 1 . 1 10,000 of it is a lower rate than Police Officers are convicted of firearms violation. The pepper spray is interesting, but the case shows the limits of pepper spray. It was raining that night. If you read any directions or simple things on pepper spray, they will tell you that when it is raining, it will not be useful. There is limited use when there is wind. Try and use peppers are in those conditions would be useful useless. We have data of people trying to defend themselves in terms of the National Crime Victimization Survey that surveys over hundred 30,000 people a year over 130,000 people a year, and by far, the safest thing people can do when confronting a criminal the only peern. Reviewed studies that have looked at stand your ground law have found a benefit in terms of lower crime rates. We can talk about studies that have not been published yet that looked at laws passed after 2005. A lot of states have had these for centuries,es. In some cases. Host the point is made about studies and data hominy deaths deaths have resulted from stand your ground laws. Mr. Lowy, did you want to contribute to that . Guest there have been at least two Academic Studies. Guest unpublished. Guest that have shown a 7 to nine percent increase in homicides and no deterrent to crime. When we are talking about tepper spray or tepper spray or a gun, it seems very clear that it George Zimmerman had not had a gun, he would not have gotten out of the car. If you and i were unarmed, and had the suspicions, we would have remained in the car and we would not have gone out after the reason he did is because he had a loaded gun in his side. Guest murders had taken place in this area. Numerous robberies, other things. Here was a citizen trying to help out, trying to protect the neighborhood that was there. Why do we want people to hunker down inside of their homes all of the time . This is a horrible tragedy, but the question is and this was the charge that the jury had, was zimmerman in reasonable fear of his life imminent danger, not something that would happen in our . They said there was an incident fear for his life imminent fear for his life or bodily injury. If we say that we should stay in our homes, and no one should care about fellow citizens in terms of trying to protect them, that is a sad state of affairs. Here is a guy who had his neighbors harmed in very different ways from murder, to rape, to robbery in this relatively Small Community and he wanted to try to do he has done this lots of times. He was not out hunting people in any of these other cases. This was the first time where there was evidence he had been the sickly at cap. The bizarre thing is forensic experts, medical examiners on both sides, were basically saying that martin was on top. Host we have to get a call in. Guest there were two questions one was a zimmerman guilty of a crime under the existing law now that it has the stand your ground law written by the nra. I am not talking about that question. The second question is is zimmermans conduct conduct that we want to encourage, and i would suggest given the fact, the 17yearold unarmed man not doing any harm killed on his way home was a bad result. What we would prefer as a society is that George Zimmerman call police if he has suspicions, remain in his car if he does not see a crime committed or likely to be committed, and that is what he would have been required to do before stand your ground. It is because of stand your ground that he was entitled to go after Trayvon Martin and have a selfdefense claim. West hold onto your thoughts. Have to take a call, florida, george. Republican line. Caller i know the legislator who wrote the bill and had it passed, and i have been on the team for the sheriff to be reelected. Mr. Lowy, the reason zimmerman could use stand your ground was because Trayvon Martin was ahead of him, turned around and came back. I have to sayus. This also, sir not only was the law written because white people among his constituents, wanted it, but black citizens, also, they are the ones that are put on more iith crime than other people. Know mr. Baxter. Hes a good man. There was no talk of race when the law was presented to the legislator here in florida. The fact remains that both black voters and white voters wanted this to happen. Host mr. Lowy, since he addressed you. Guest there was not a referendum on stand your ground by the people of florida. The question is that the issue is you had a right to self defense before stand your ground. There is a misconception that you did not have the right to defend yourself. You had forly did. Centuries. Stand your ground eliminated the duty to avoid conflict if you reasonably could. Who would not be in favor of that . Why do we have policy that encourages people to enter conflict where they might use lethal force and perhaps kill someone unnecessarily question mark the studies are out there showing unnecessarily question mark the studies unnecessarily . That is really the policy issue. There are studies out there showing this is a bad idea. And we should go back to the overrule and revisit these issues, like they say, like concealed carry, whether someone like George Zimmerman should have had a concealed handgun in the first place. Host mr. Lott . Guest it was passed bipartisan. If this event had happened anyplace in the country the jury would have received the same instructions with regard to reasonable us reasonableness in terms of whether you face imminent danger or death. And they would have come down, presumably, in the same conclusion that was there. One thing is for sure, this was not a stand your ground case. Nobody argued that. This was a reasonable defense argument. Every state has a reasonable defense argument there and they have had it before we became a country. So, we look at these things look at the research that is there and people will look at more guns, less crime, a review of the published, peerreviewed academic literature, and you find overwhelmingly people find a benefit from these types of laws. Look at concealed carry. Generally, the debate has been about two thirds of the academic literature finds that it reduces violent crimes. There is about onethird saying there is no effect, but there is no one that is publishing these things arguing that there has been an increase in murder of any type that has been a result. Guest that is connected. You are arguing against concealed carry. Host chris on twitter says the problem with stand your ground laws is the burden of proof for self defense is so low that it is an inducement to murder. Guest the burden for self defense is exactly the same as it was without stand your ground. You have to go and argue that a reasonable person believe they were in imminent danger of death or serious injury. That was the rule before florida past stand your ground, it is the role now. It is a rule in virginia. It is a rule in maryland. It is a rule across the country that is going to be there. The issue is whether you have this additional requirement. Whether he had to once the confrontation started, could he have retreated . Did he retreat as far as possible . No one, the prosecution, the defense, brought that up as an argument to consider. Host mr. Lowy . Guest that is just an inaccurate description of the way the law is in stand your ground states or the way it was before stand your ground. I have the jury instruction they would have received before stand your ground that says a defendant can not justify the use of force unless he used every reasonable means within his power and consistent with his own safety to avoid the danger before resorting to that force. That is completely contrary to the current law. Under the stand your ground law, at least in Home Invasion cases, it creates a presumption that if you use force it was reasonable. So, it totally shifts the burden as the tweeter suggested. Finally, on the benefits of concealed carry, as the star lot knows, john donahue as mr. Lott knows, john donahue and many other academics have found relaxed concealed carry laws does not create a benefit, and in fact creates a negative affect on crime and that mr. Lotts studies have been rejected and any other academics that have looked at the data have been unable to replicate them. Host quick response. Guest you have to look at the studies more. There is no statistically significant effect is what the debatedy says. That you have had i have a list of Academic Studies more guns, less crime, the third edition, chapter 10, as citations that can follow each of the academic journals. It is on my website. People can look at the academic, peerreviewed articles that are there, so it is simply incorrect. When you go and quote this, there are two parts one is whether people retreat as far as possible. The second is the reasonable standard in terms of whether or not there was serious fear of death or injury. Since there is no possibility for him to retreat, the prosecution at the end of the case was saying that martin was on top the question is when did he use force . How far could he retreat . If you take that fact pattern and put it in any state in the country, you will get the same qualifications. The issue is what a reasonable person think they could retreat in that case, and nobody is arguing that. Host let me take a call. Mesa, arizona. Robert. Independent line. Caller i am an independent because the democrats and the republicans just go along with what they think they have seen. Trayvon martin was portrayed as pictures in a white hoodie at 12 years old. The stand your ground law is ridiculous in some cases heard if you are standing cases. If you are standing, you pull your gun out and fired into the air or the ground, the person will leave you alone. In this case, zimmerman did not have a chance. He was put on his back, and Trayvon Martin got on top of him with a ground and pound, and the only way he could defend himself was to shoot that young man, not a 12yearold in a hoddie, but a man that was much bigger than him in a black hoodie. Host mr. Lowy . Guest we have to look at the change in stand your ground, under the old law, you had to to avoid able means confrontation. Did people. Protect it titled them to defend themselves but they needed to. First you have to take reasonable actions. He would have would have had to stay in his car. Had to avoided trayvon if he thought he was someone worthy of a police car. He would not enter the fray. If you did not have a loaded gun at your side it would have eight and that car. , asreason why he went after it did not have to get that far. Under the oldve law or if you did not have a gun the florida entitled him to have. One has to look at the arguments the prosecution made. Nobody brought up this ground as a reason for the jury to consider. This is not important to me. We are talking about a national debate. This forve had this their entire existence. I can give you lots of stories where prosecutors had to get into these issues. Did this person retreat as possible. What we need to do, even if i were to say everything you are saying about this one case is right, a tragedy that could have been stopped by not having stand your ground, even if i agreed with that, the issue is what is the effect from these laws and concentrating on one story without dealing with why these laws got past there is a reason the states have these laws. There is a reason why courts, even before the state passed these laws, and these types of decisions. They did not just arbitrarily, 50 or a hundred years ago, in the state of washington, or other places, go and make these rules. There were real reasons in terms of producing bright lines that makes it easier for people to make decisions when they are defendant themselves. Guest they were passed because the nra is a powerful force and has pushed for them. Guest they were there before the nra existed. Guest this is a common phenomenon with the former nra president pushing for this. Guest how do you explain it was before the nra existed . Guest it was totally contrary to fundamental american law before the nra began this push. Host we are talking about stand your ground laws with Jonathan Lowy with the Brady Campaign, and also john lott, the author of more guns, less crime understanding crime and gun control laws. Brent, california. Caller i do not agree with the law for the fact that zimmerman did not have to approach martin. That means everyone can go and stand behind the law and shoot somebody. I do not agree. Me and my wife lost our son six years ago last month. He was an innocent bystander. He got killed. He was only 20 years old. Guest host mr. Lott . Guest i can generally say blacks in this country are most likely the victim of violent crime, and if you look at who uses stand your ground the most and how successful they are, it is basically blacks and hispanics. Blacks use it at twice the rate of the population, and 69 of the time that blacks go and use the stand your ground law in legal defense, they are successful. For whites, they are 62 likely. Hispanics are even more successful, 78 of the time. My research, if it convinces me of anything, it is basically two groups of people that benefit the most. One of the groups are poor blacks that lived in high crime urban areas. I think police are the most important factor in reducing time, the police themselves now theyve virtually always arrived after the crime has been committed. What do you tell these people . Should they all grew in their homes . Should they not go out at all . Should they board their windows and never leave their homes . It is not just zimmerman that could have a gun and use it for selfdefense that allows them to walk the streets of his area. It is people in liberty city i grew up in miami, he put in other areas that have high crime rates. That is when you want to improve the quality of their life so that they are not locked up all the time. If you could guarantee Police Protection all the time, that would be great, but the thing is what you want them to do . Nationwide, the average Response Time for police is 11 minutes. 11 minutes is a lifetime for one of these people, assuming he can even make the call. It is a lifetime for someone in these high crime, urban areas to have to wait for police to arrive. Host is to loa mr. Lowy. Guest brent, i am extremely sorry for the loss of your son. Our gun laws make it far too easy to have not just people with arrest records like George Zimmerman carry guns, but far too easy for convicted criminals to get guns and we need to step back and recall the conversations we were having in the wake of newtown, connecticut, as well. We do not have background checks for all gun sales. Criminals can go to gun shows and go on the internet and get guns no questions asked. Assault weapons ak47s, a r 15 are available. They can be obtained without background checks, they can be carried and they can be utilized in incidents like the Trayvon Martin tragedy. We do need to step back and look at this moment as a teaching moment and think, how can we save the lives of people like Trayvon Martin . Host what about mr. Lott when he cites minorities in florida especially, and how they benefit from the . Guest it does not cut completely across racial lines. There are examples of some africanamerican, lawabiding people Marissa Alexander, i believe her name was, who was abused and shot a gun in the air and was sentenced to 20 years and the stand your Ground Defense did not work for her. On the other hand there has been drug dealers, some of them africanamericans, some not, that have gotten off the hook using stand your ground. It has been unequally applied. It is not just cut across racial lines. It just does not work. We have to look at how do we save the most lives estimates are we doing everything we can to keep dangerous people from getting lives. Harley doing everything we we can to keep dangerous people from getting guns, and do we have a criminal Justice System that gives justice to people that are wrongfully injured. One thing studies have shown on stand your ground is they have decreased the cost of using lethal violence. As an economist, i am sure you appreciate that, mr. Lott, because the cost of using legal violence has been decreased because it is easier to get off the hook. Easy exercise more often and an increase in homicide. Guest the question is, it lowers the cost, but i am a law abiding citizen and i need to defend myself, i might not defend myself because im worried about retreating as far as possible. Guest that was not a problem. You always had the duty to reasonably retreat. Host let him finish. Guest you can not assume that just because there is a lower cost than all of those things are a bad affect. There are lots of cases. There is a list on my website people can look at and see cases, time after time, where there has been this ambiguity did the person retreat as far as possible . If i have in the back of my mind worrying about will i be prosecuted if i got up a fourth time . As in the oklahoma case, what happens in the case . The Alexander Casey and case in jacksonville, i can only go by what people have said, and it sounds like she has been able to get she would should have been able to she should have been able to use it. She could repeal. Her exhusband was threatening her. She claims he was going to kill her, broke through the back room bathroom door she was in, followed her, was approaching her, making threats, and she fired a warning shot in the air. If all of those are factually true, i would hope she will be able to defend herself in that case. I would not want to change laws that would make it more difficult. She should have, when she fired the warning shot, the reason she is using the stand your ground law is because she did not retreat further at that point. Doing he her to worry about that do we need her to worry about that . It is why she should, if the facts are true, be able to defend himself and not get rid of everyones right to do that. Guest everyone had the right to defend themselves. The only difference with stand your ground is it enabled people to enter the flight, and not avoiding conflict, but to facilitate violence and illegal conduct. Host some of the questions off of twitter couldnt martin and ashley have been standing his couldnt martin have been standing his ground initially. The second, mr. Lott, didnt Trayvon Martin have the right to defend himself wasnt he standing his ground question Mark Zimmerman stopped him his ground . Zimmerman stopped him. Guest Trayvon Martin was unarmed. He had a bag of skittles and icet. That is one of the problems when you relax stand your ground laws. You allow people like George Zimmerman, who had a criminal history, you allow people like him to carry handguns in Public Places because he is more likely to get out of his car and follow someone in the dark, and even if Trayvon Martin tried to defend himself, he would have been shot dead in any event. Host host mr. Lott. Guest you keep ringing up zimmerman bringing up zimmermans arrest record, and you know the facts, he was trying to help someone, and the case was dropped. Trayvon martin was armed with his fist. In zimmermans case, in anyones case, you cannot shoot someone because they are following you. A reasonable person has to believe you are in imminent danger. Having somebody walk on the sidewalk behind you, even if that is the case, and there is no evidence offered by the prosecution or rebutted, that indicated at the time the confrontation occurred that zimmerman was following him, even if he had been, you cannot shoot someone unless you are actually being threatened. I wanted to make one point about the alexander case. I was taking the case as you gave it. Why did she use stand your ground . She used it because she was not retreating further at that point. Either you bring this up as a case where you believe the facts or not, in my case question is if you believe the facts, do you believe that she should have defended herself, and if you believe the facts, without retreating further at that point, then you believe she should have been sentenced to 20 years. Host let me take a call. Florida. Republican line. John. Caller it is a shame that anybody loses their death, but i think the jury got it 100 right. The law in florida is not going to change. Host lets get another call from gilbert, arizona. Independent line. Caller i think it is about time we got to the heart of the matter which is that legislation such as the stand your ground law is being written by businesses in bed with our legislators, and furthermore, i am surprised that you have john lott on the show, who is essentially a shill [indiscernible] host since we left it off, mr. Lowy, pick it up, and mr. Lott, we will go back to you. Guest the lawler the caller makes a good point, that alec, which is a Corporate Alliance to post this pushed this legislation along with the nra. What happened after the Trayvon Martin killing shows that there is a disconnect between legislators that have pushed these laws and the general public because what happened after Trayvon Martin and what happened initially, of course, was George Zimmerman was not host mr. Lott . Guest again, this was passed overwhelmingly bipartisan. Virtually every member of the state house voted for this in florida. If you want to argue everybody is a shill you have to give both democrats and republicans that voted for this more credit. People solve the problems, the ambiguity in the law at that point. Why did the democrats vote for it . Are you saying democrats are all shills for gunmakers . Is that what you are saying . Guest a law that would revoke doctors and medical licenses if they talk about the risk of guns, i assume some democrats also voted for that law. It was unconstitutional. That is just an example of the sort of strings. Guest it passed by overwhelming the geordies in pennsylvania. Will you makes majorities in pennsylvania. Will you make similar arguments . Guest pennsylvania has a different law than florida. Guest it seems almost word for word the same. There are over 30 states that have these laws, and youll tell tell me that even though they have been passed at large, bipartisan majorities in all of the states it is going to be that these guys are just shills all of these democrats are shills . Guest there is a huge disconnect between the American Public and federal and state legislators on gun issues. We have seen that 90 of the American People support universal background checks. If you buy a gun, see if you are a convicted felon or domestic abuser. Yet, in most states, that is not the law. Under federal law, that is not the law. It does not show that representatives are getting it right. It shows that representatives are not listening to the voice of the American People. It shows they are listening to extremists and the gun lobby. Host south carolina. Ronnie. Jake caller you are conflating two issues. In the zimmerman case, it was clearly a selfdefense issue and not the stand your ground law. Secondly, if youre going to use a hypothetical, what if martin had a gun and shot zimmerman, i would submit what if zimmerman would have been allowed to go back to his car, and martin would have gone home like he should have, maybe we would not have had this problem. Thirdly, if you are going to call one person the show, the other is as much a shill. It is part of the brady center, he is using this to push them control laws. There are background check laws in almost all the states. Theyre just not being used. Host mr. Lott . Guest i do not like calling people shills to begin with. I assume you are well motivated on this. I assume you are wellmotivated. Guest i did not call you a shill. It was a caller, just to be clear. Guest well you are talking about people being bought off by business interests. Guest i said they are not representing the American People and American People. Guest you said they were influenced by these business interests and it sounded like there was a quid pro quo. You bring up the background checks. It seems like an obvious law to have him. Have. In principle, we ought to have it in all states, not just most, but what the caller was saying. Here is the thing, almost everyone that is stopped as a result of the background check is a false positive. When the president says there are 2 million prohibited people that have been stopped, the right terminology is 2 million initial denials. Just like you might remember the late senator ted kennedy, five times he was on the nofly list. He later flew. I assume we would not count that as five times stopping a terrorist from flying. That is the way they count them in these initial denials. In kennedys case, the he had a name similar to someone we wanted to stop. When private companies do background checks on people, if they had even one 20th of the false positives the federal government as, they would be sued out of existence, and the reason is they include things like Social Security number, address, other identifying information that makes it so you do not have these people with similar names flagging you. The fact that our congress and state legislators have not listened to the American People shows a great disconnect. You can draw your own conclusions as to their motivation, but you do have to recognize there is a gun industry in this country, almost a billion dollar gun industry, and they are a business in the business of selling as many guns as possible. It is within their interest. Host new york. Democrats line. Dee. Caller yes, good morning. I have to get my thoughts together. I have a question for both of these gentlemen. I would like to hear what each one has to say about this. I will go back to stand your ground and Trayvon Martin. It came into evidence that when George Zimmerman approached Trayvon Martin what he was doing there, he even pushes him in his pocket to pull something out. I submit to you that Trayvon Martin believed that he was pulling out a gun, and i believe he had every right to punch him. Further, just to continue this, and i want you to mention something about somebody saying George Zimmerman was following Trayvon Martin. I believe George Zimmerman went down between trees lane, as he testified, but Trayvon Martin went around a few houses. The kid was trying to run away and i think he was only by happenstance that they both met. Host let you both respond. Mr. Lott . Guest i watched the trial. I do not recognize the types of questions she is talking about coming from the trial that zimmerman initiated the conversation. There is no evidence the prosecution brought up with regards to those types of statements. What seemed to be clear is there was some point where zimmerman was following martin. He was asked by the operator where martin was. He got out of his car, looked, the operator said are you following him, and he said yes. The operator said he did not need to do so and zimmerman said ok. There is no evidence the on that point passed that point. Even if he was the caller wants to hypothesize about something that is not on the record that occurred there, but simply following someone, simply thinking someone pulls puts their hand in their pocket, even if that is true, will not pass the earth reasonable person test. You have to believe a reasonable person would believe you are in in imminent danger, and there is nothing there to implicate that was the case. First of all, if he initiated the fight and zimmerman started the fight, if zimmerman started the fight, he could not pass a reasonable person test. You have to asked if they reasonable person would consider there was the threat of death or injury. Host mr. Lowy . Guest we will ever know exactly what happened that night, but there are some things that are undisputed. George zimmerman could have called the police, stayed in his car, and if he had done that, nothing bad would have happened. He would not have engaged in violent crime, and Trayvon Martin would have gone home and watched the second half of the nba allstar game. The police would have come, and zimmerman would have gone about his business. That is a good outcome. How do we encourage outcomes like that . One thing we should do is make it harder for dangerous people like zimmerman to carry guns in public laces, as he did hit Public Places, as he did here, which emboldened him to follow martin and kill martin. We also have the stand your ground law, which, we discussed, is limited to the duty which which eliminates the duty to avoid conflict. If we pull back that law it encourages evil that zimmerman to stay in the car, a good outcome that we should look for. Host keith. Florida. Caller i believe it is funny to see a special interest cut somebody down for being in a special interest. I do not think this guy has been in a fight. If you are getting it up, it is a split second decision. You will use selfdefense. If Trayvon Martin was shot for putting his hands in his pocket, he would be guilty and in jail right now. I have questions for each gentlemen. The gentleman with the guns, would it have helped if it was open carry, or if the Neighborhood Watch people have notified him that he was Neighborhood Watch . I do not know if that should be law, but maybe they should identify themselves. For the other general german, why is it that states that have the highest most restrictive gun laws have the highest murder rates . Host mr. Lott question mark mr. Lott . Guest just to comment on the second one first, every place in the world that has banned guns, we see an increase in murder rates. It is not just washington, d. C. , and chicago, which a lot of americans arent familiar with, whether it is are familiar with, but whether it is britain or jamaica, you have to see who obeys the laws, and when you disarm them relative to criminals, you make it easier. On the issue of open and concealed carry, here is the deal. I think there is generally much larger benefits from having concealed carry because a criminal does not know until they attack someone if the person will be able to defend themselves. Even people who do not own a gun benefit because it creates a in the mind of a criminal. Somebody that wears an open carry gun, they might personally benefit, but if we had that provision, the criminal would know somebody else here is one way to think about it. Would you put a sign in front of your home that says your home is a gunfree zone . Presumably, nobody would do that because you are telling the terminal it is easier to criminal to attack you. If we only allowed open carry, it would be the same thing as those people that were not openly carrying, we would know they would be easy targets. Host mr. Lowy . Guest first of all, we are not talking about banning guns. Nobody is here there is a Second Amendment right to have a gun in the law nobody is here. There is a Second Amendment right to have a gun. The issue is what kind of gun law should we have, and the evidence is that the states with the most reasonable gun laws have the lowest gun mortality rates. California has very strong, common sense gun laws and a versatile background checks, an weapon ban, and they are a Great Success story. Between 1990 and 2010, i have reduced firearm mortality by 52 they have reduced firearm mortality by 52 . If you look at the states that have the highest gun death rates, they are states with very weak gun laws mississippi, arizona, alaska, arkansas, louisiana. I could go further. The fact is gun laws work. He could be more effective if you had federal laws they could be more effective if you had federal laws because you could have a jurisdiction like washington, d c, and you can get guns from virginia, south carolina, florida and easily ring them across the border bring them across the border. You need a strong federal law but you can and should have Second Amendment rights, which nobody is contesting, yet have reasonable restrictions to keep dangerous people from obtaining guns and have them on the street. Host leroy, baton rouge, louisiana, democrat line. Caller the stand your ground law does not make any sense. Im living in a neighborhood, but if ive it is not the greatest neighborhood, but if iran out of my house every time somebody was walking down the street, there would be a lot of killing going on in the nation. Host keep going, please. Guest i forget the man with the red ties name, but he keeps talking about obama. It is president obama. It is disrespectful. Host bo. Caller i would like to say the same thing. I do not know how i stand your ground law applies on a public street. You had Marissa Alexander fire shots into the air and she is facing 20 years. From a republican standpoint, she was in her home. The other aspect is how does the public street apply to stand your ground. Host why dont we consider the first part about the public street. Guest sure. The issue is do you have to retreat as far as possible customer somebody possible question mark somebody comes up to you possible . Somebody comes up to you, and can a reasonable person defend themselves . We have this ambiguity, this vagueness, what does it mean to retreat as far as possible . That concern, that the myth, it up limit, it applies whether you are in your house, your car or on the sidewalk outside of your house. To the caller before that, he lives in a high crime area. I can understand that. The problem is it is in those areas where people are attacked outside of their homes. The need the protection to protect themselves. If you want people to go and retreat as far as possible, you have to recognize there are costs and that is why you have common rules. Guest the caller gets at the core of the problem with stand your ground. Throughout history we had what was called the castle doctrine, the law around the premise that your home was your castle, you have the right to protect it, and if somebody came in without your permission you had the right to defend yourself, your family, your property and your home. What stand your ground does is export that doctrine into the public street. It enables someone like George Zimmerman to walk public streets, follow Trayvon Martin, and wherever he is, that is his castle. That is not his castle. It is public property and Trayvon Martin had as much right to walk on those sidewalks as George Zimmerman did. In those situations, you should avoid conflict, live and let live if you reasonably can. If you are in a situation where you cannot avoid conflict reasonably, you have the right to defend yourself. That was the law for centuries until the nra and their corporate friends at alec got into the act and rewrote the state laws. Host here is a map on states that have expanded the castle doctrine. Richard, laurel maryland, independent line laurel, maryland. Independent line. Caller thank you for taking my call. I would like to point out something for mr. Lott. You are wellversed in fact it you have written and you have written a book, but there is one niche in your life you need a little empathy. You need to realize, a young man, regardless of his class, his color, was killed, absolutely murdered forever, never to speak again. He was not available at the trial. We do not know his side of the story. Laws are made every day. They are broken every day. They are also cap everyday kept every day. The people that write the laws, the leaders of our country, are basically operating on the premise and as long as they operate on the premise of i have not broken the law unless i get caught as long as leaders show this type of attitude we will never resolve any of the issues we are confronted with today. Host mr. Lott . Guest as i said before, it is a horrible tragedy could i have tragedy. I have five kids. I cannot imagine losing any of my kids for any reason. We have to step back. We cannot talk about laws with one case. We have a huge violence problem in the country. 70 of the murders occur within about 3 of the counties. Even within the counties they are in concentrated areas. My concern is what can we do to try to save those people . Police are important, but what do you advise people in those high crime areas, where they are at risk minority communities. The thing that unites us all we might disagree, but what works in terms of saving lives. Not whether someone gets paid off by gunmakers or Something Like that, in order to go and test different types of laws that are out there. That is the concern that motivates me what will save the most lives here . You know, i do not know what else to tell him. I mean, maybe because we have been going through this case so much, or whatever, we have had these laws. We have had the law, as it would be applied in the florida case, the reasonable standard has been there forever, and we have this debate about the stand your ground law that have nothing to do with it. Guest the jury instructions that the jury received in the zimmerman case were completely different because of stand your ground. The jury was entrusted that he had a right to stand his ground. Before stand your ground, the jury would have instructed that the zimmerman had an obligation to avoid conflict. There is another aspect that we hee not talked about. Should award them all takes ensues and lost income compensation. There is no provision like that for other defendants. In auld lead will force place where they actually make a profit. They would get their lost income. There is no provision in law for anyone else that you get lost wages because you were able to just say defeat a civil action. Was it justified under the law a safer to make people who use lethal force. There is no policy reason to do that. Guest his life has been unchanged. He has been in hiding. To hold abeen able job down for over a year and a half. He has been receiving tons of that threat. His family has been receiving death threats. He has a real cost there. If we want to talk about it the incident the, he gets his Attorney Fees cover. He will get the relatively low income made up for for the time being have to literallys bent at the trial. What is the harm, how much money are you talking about . Whos just been made to compensate the time for that trial. Is that really outrageous . Guest under the law there are not revisions like this. Put people who use deadly force in a favor class. That is outrageous. That is part of the gone lobby fight. Laws passed in congress and many state which thatt negligent dealers actor andndustry or society has. There are many examples. These things do not make policy send. There are special exemptions to industry. E i have a question about mr. Zimmerman. He was Neighborhood Watch. Did hei did decide identify himself as Neighborhood Watch . The Police Officer pulls you over, the first thing they are going to do is some type of way to identify them. Did not identify himself as in the in. Trayvon martin does not know what this guy is. I do not understand that part. Going back to the part where he was having issue with law enforcement, he took a program to get a lesser charge. You are telling the other fellow did you know what happened . He was charged with aggravated assault on a Police Officer. He took a program to get the chart showed made a dismissal. What was the first question he asked . Means. S doing some other i did not hear the last part of this. I remember now. About whether zimmerman approached martin and then identified himself. At least the way the story seemed to go is he said martin popped out of the bushes on the said what are you doing and punched him in the nose. It seemed like he did not have much time to go and talk to him. If that is the case, i am not really sure what the caller will be asking him to do. If the Police Officer was attacked from behind or someone attack the Police Officer, i assume he would not have time to identify himself in that situation. , i cannotd to remember what the second part was. He took the class to get the lower charge. The charges were dropped because they said the Police Officer had overstepped his bounds. Zimmerman was trying to help out someone that was her. The Police Officer restrained him temporarily from doing that. He was not charged with the crime. I was not a witness. I do know it was the incident between zimmerman and the officer in 2009. This is incorrect. Zimmerman was charged in 2005 with resisting an officer with violence. He also had a Domestic Violence restraining order issued against him. The charge was reduced in the had been to and alcohol diversion program. This issue ofto concealed carry in. Law enforcement had no it 40 two deny him a concealed carry license even if they knew that he was a violent person. Unless he had a particular conviction, it did not matter what the fact facts were. We know that there is no thing in florida to concealed. License. When you are arrested or charged you suspended for the license. Now he has been found not guilty. To reviewo authority his record and to see. The court was determining whether he went to prison. Should he be entitled to carry a hidden little load a gun in public . Here is the bottom line. In florida from january 2008 to june of this year, four people had their concealed handguns revoke for any type of violations with over one Million People having built handgun permits. Yearlyly, you have a rate of less than 110,000th of 1 . People pushed the legislation to prevent the public from even finding out information. Go and google florida concealed carry statistics. You are going to find the database for florida. Monthly. Dated there is very detailed data. The number of people that had permits, how long they have had the permits. They have beenr suspended or revoked. In number of states have that data. Texas has it on their website. On the next, we will continue to conversation on the Trayvon Martin case. And armstrong williams. Well also set down with robert over the political environment as they prepared to adjourn for their summer recess. Now, and bernanke is taking questions from members of the reportabout the annual on the economy and Monetary Policy. This hearing is one hour and a half. Good morning. I have called this hearing to order. We will welcome him chairman bernanke back to the committee to deliver the semiannual Monetary Policy report. After the worst financial crisis since the great depression, the u. S. Economy continues to show signs of improvement. Recently, we have seen that the Housing Market has strengthened. 200 thousand jobs per month. The economy has shown signs of resilience, despite fiscal tightening. There been solid home price gains nationwide. No Home Construction has seen doubledigit growth. Home sales have also picked up. Many homeowners remain underwater. Numbers continue to decline. Going forth, i would encourage the fed to be thoughtful in this action, to make sure these positive trends in housing continue. Congress has a role to play. To address the shortterm challenges, the Ranking Member and i will release details this week of legislation that will get it back on stable footing, and strengthen a Program Important to many americans. Following this effort, we will turn to comprehensive Housing Finance reform legislation. Much progress has been made. The labor market has not fully rikard covered not fully recovered. Participation remains low. Moreover, unemployment means high remains high with College Graduates traveling to find gainful employment. These trends have effects on the economy. Over the long term, he rose in from prolonged erosion from prolonged unemployment will produce our countrys potential. It is important we help, not hurt americas prospects, and why it is so important that Congress Finds Reasonable Solutions to the recent increase in student loan rates. To fulfill its the fed should not step on the brakes. With Unemployment Rates high, the fed must continue to take action to support Unemployment Rate when the time comes, it is important that Monetary Policy easements are gradual, do not disrupt Economic Growth. German bernanke, i thank you for your years of service, and leadership, and a challenging time in our nations history. I look forward to your testimony. I turned to the Ranking Member. Thank you. Welcome. I welcome our Federal Reserve chairman ben bernanke back to the Banking Committee to testify at the semiannual hearing regarding the Monetary Policy going Monetary Policy. The banking regulators have been active on a number of regulatory fronts, including releasing final regulations to implement capital rolls, and propose relations on capital leverage ratios. I think chairman bernanke for dressing the concerns raised about the unique characteristics of insurance companies. A onesizefitsall approach regarding capital roles does not work for these types of entities. With regard to Monetary Policy, we have experienced a time where the fed has pushed the short term interestrate of 20 more than four years ago. As a result, the Balance Sheet now stands at nearly 3. 5 trillion with an additional 85 billion every month and Long Term Assets being added. Recently released minutes from the june meeting indicate members of the board felt that a reduction in asset purchases would likely soon be warranted. Several noted economist of called into question whether the benefits of these purchases outweigh the risks. The negative reaction by equity markets has indicated that some increase in the prices of equities and other assets is attributable to the Balance Sheet expansion, not to purely economic fundamentals. June marked the worst month on record for bond fund outflows. The reaction indicates that markets are still reliant on government intervention. That is not good for the Long Term Health of the economy. Im interested in hearing from chairman bernanke on the tapering process and market volatility. Because of the stance of the fed im interested in hearing about whether or not it would improve oath effect commitment to the policy, and the Market Reaction to it. Beyond tapering, which is simply slowing the rate of growth of the fed Balance Sheet ammann is the more important issue of wanting down the fed massive Balance Sheet. The fed has indicated that they may continue to roll over its holdings of longterm assets. It means that the Balance Sheet may not shrink for some time. The key element of the exit strategy adopted by the fomc is a 35year time where the fed would expect to a limited holdings of agencies. This was done for the purpose of nmis in the extent to which the Agency Securities portfolio mind that the allocation of credit across sectors of the economy. It means that the Balance Sheet may not shrink for some time. The key element of the exit strategy adopted by the fomc is a 35year time where the fed would expect to a limited holdings of agencies. This was done for the purpose of nmis in the extent to which the Agency Securities portfolio mind that the allocation of credit across sectors of the economy. Since then, the Balance Sheet has increased in size by more than 20 , to 3. 5 trillion. Thans increased by more 30 to 1. 2 trillion. Why does the fed see the need for such a combination accommodative policy to continue . Will the that revises Balance Sheet exit strategy principles . Will the fed be revising the time over which it is next to eliminate the holdings of Agency Securities . It is my hope this hearing gives additional insight into the plans for the future reduction of asset purchases, and a roadmap for a return to normalized, rulesbased Monetary Policy. Thank you. Thank you. To preserve time for questions and opening statements, limited to the chair and Ranking Member. I would like to remind my colleagues that the record will be open for the next seven days for additional statements and other materials. I would like to welcome chairman bernanke. He is currently serving as his first term began under president bush, and in 2006. Before that he was chairman of the council of economic advisers, and served as a member of the board of governors on a Federal Reserve system. Please begin your testimony. Thank you. I am pleased to present the Federal Reserve semiannual policy report to the congress. M r marks, i will express the outlook and turned to Monetary Policy. Short finish with a summary of our ongoing work on regulatory reform. With respect to the outlook, the economic recovery is continuing at a moderate pace, despite the strong head winds to create fiscal policy. Housing has contributed significant link to recent gains in Economic Activity. Home sales have moved up over the last year, supported by low Mortgage Rates. Rising housing sales are adding to job growth, and substantial increases in home prices are bolstering Household Finances and Consumer Spending, while reducing the number of homeowners underwater mortgages. It is like to continue to recover, notwithstanding the Mortgage Rate increases. It will be important to monitor the sector carefully. Conditions in the labor market are moving gradually. The Unemployment Rate is at 7. 6 . Nonforeign Payroll Employment has increased. Despite these gains, the job situation rates are still too high. Meanwhile, Consumer Price inflation has been running below the objective of two percent. The price index rose only one percent over the last year, ending in may. This is because of factors that are so that are transitory. The committee is certainly aware that low inflation poses risks to economic performance. By raising the real cost of capital investment, it increases the risk of deflation. Consequently, we will monitor the system, and will act as needed to move back to two percent objective over time. At the june meeting, my colleagues and i protected Economic Growth would pick up and coming quarters. Specifically, most participants all real gdp growth stepping up or in the second half of this year. It eventually reached a pace in 2015. They protect the they saw inflation gradually increasing to the committee two percent objective. The pickup in growth reflects their view that federal fiscal policy will exert less drag over time as the effects of the tax increases diminish. The Committee Also believes that the rest of the economy has diminished as the fall, reflecting using a financial stresses in europe, the Housing Markets, the budgetary positions of state and government, and stronger households. That said, the risk remains that fiscal policy will restrain Economic Growth over the next few quarters by more than we currently expect. The debate for other issues will evolve in a way that could hamper recovery. More generally with the recovery, we are seeing only a moderate pace pretty economy remains vulnerable to unanticipated shocks. With unemployment high and declining only gradually prayed inflation running low, the Monetary Policy will remain appropriate for the foreseeable future. In normal circumstances, committees basic tools for Monetary Policy is the target for the funds rate. Reducedt be meaningfully further. The first tool is expanding the Federal Reserve portfolio of longerterm treasury securities, and Agency Mortgage backed securities. We are purchasing 40 billion for month, and 45 billion per month in treasuries. The second tool is forward guidance. Within our overall policy framework, we think of these tools is having somewhat different roles. We are using purchases and the expansion of the Balance Sheet i merrily to increase the near term momentum of the economy, with the specific goal of achieving a substantial improvement for the labor market. We have made progress to this goal. We continue to improve our purchases until a outlook has been realized. Even after purchases in, the Federal Reserve will hold its stock off a market and be investing the proceeds, which will continue to put downward pressure on Interest Rates, support mortgage markets, and how make broader financial conditions more, data. More accommodative. We are relighting this is our second tool. To maintain a high degree of monetary accommodation for an extended time after asset purchases in. Even as the economic recovery strengthens. An appropriate combination of these tools can provide the high levels of policy accommodation need to promote a Stronger Economic recovery. In the interest of transparency, or dispense agree that it would be helpful to lay out more details about our thinking about the asset purchase program. Specifically to provide information on our assessment of progress to date, and the trajectory of the program as the economy evolves. This agreement to provide Additional Information did not reflect the change in policy. The Committee Decision regarding the asset purchase program, and the Monetary Policy, depends on our assessment of the economic outlook, and the rest toward our objective. Forecast must be revised when new information arrives. As i noted, the outcomes the Committee Participants all as most likely involve continuing gains to labor markets, supported by moderate growth that takes up over the next several quarters. Committee participants also saw inflation moving back to our two percent objective over time. If the incoming data word probably consistent, we anticipated, it would be appropriate to moderate the pace of purchases later this year. If the Data Confirms the pattern of improvement in normalizing inflation, we expect it to continue to reduce the pace of purchases for the first half of next year, ending around midyear. At that point, if the economy had involved along the lines we anticipated, recovery would have gained further momentum, and implement would be seven percent, and the inflation would move to our 2 objective. As such outcomes would be consistent with the goals of the asset purchase that we established in september. I have a site that because our purchases depend on economic their moments. There by no means on a preset course. On the one hand, if conditions were to improve aster than expected, and inflation appeared to be rising back toward our objectives, the pace of asset purchases would be reduced more quickly. On the other hand, if the outlook became less favorable, if inflation did not appear to be moving back to two percent, or with financial conditions were judged to be insufficiently accommodative to allow us to attain our objectives, the purchases could not be maintained for longer. Indeed, if needed, they would prepare to use all tools, including an increase in purchases for a time to promote a return to maximum employment. Forwardnd tool is guidance regarding the path of the federal funds rate. The committee is maintaining a high degree after the Asset Program ends in economic recovery strengthens. The committee anticipates that the current exceptionally low target range for the that are all funds rate will be appropriate as long as the and implement rate remains above six percent, and inflation remains well behaved in the sense described. As i have observed, the phrase at least as long as is a key component of the guidance. Note are thresholds, triggers. Thresholdse of the were not automatically in an increase in the federal funds rate target rate would lead the committee to consider whether the outlook and the broader economy justifies an increase. If a substantial part of the reduction is measured on employment, rather than gains of employment, the committee would be unlikely to define it as a sufficient reason to raise its target for the funds rate. Wouldse commit committee be a monthly to raise the funds were if remains below are long run objectives. Inflation remains near our objective, and Inflation Expectations are made anchored rate increases of the target likely to be gradual. Youme finish by providing with a brief update on progress to reduce the systemic risks at our larger firms. As governor the Federal Reserve adopted a final rule to adopt the capital reforms. Thefinal rule increases quality of regulatory capital by establishing a new minimum common Equity Capital ratio and lamenting a comp mental buffer. It applies only to large internationally active aching organizations consistent with their systemic importance. In addition, well propose surcharges on firms that pros pose systemic risk. The Federal Reserve is considering further measures to strengthen the capital positions of large internationally active banks, including the proposed rule issued last week it would increase the large ratios for such firms. The fed also is working to finalize the enhanced standard set out of the dodd frank act. Among the standards, stress testing and resolution planning are already in place. We are engaged in stress tests in reviewing the last the wave of plans in coordination with other agencies. We have made we are hoping to complete by yearend. The federal service repairing treaty late and supervise Non Bank Financial firms. The Financial Stability oversight canceled as an attitude nonbanking firms. It is propose a third firm, which has requested a hearing. Thank you. I would be pleased to take questions. Thank you. As we begin questions, i was the court to put five minutes on the clock for each member. Chairman bernanke, with inflation and unemployment high, what trends in the data would you need to see before deciding to begin unwinding Monetary Policy . Earlynwinding too threaten the economy and the Financial System . Certainly, we face the same issues that are always faced with Monetary Policy normalizing over a time of expansion. If we tie into sin, we risk not letting the economy get back to full employment. If we do it to lay, we risk inflation. There are going to be judgment there that are we have laid out a three stage process for our normalization. The first is dependent on the economy strengthening. To labor market continuing normalize, and inflation moving towards two percent. It is a process of slowing the pace of our asset purchases, and bring those to zero. Financialde since improvements on the labor markets. We have given live guidelines of how that would go for pretty second stage would be time in which we are watching the economy for improvement. As i describe my testimony, when an a plumbing gets to 6. 5 , before, and when inflation is looking closer to target, at that point, we would consider whether tightening and raising Interest Rates is appropriate. That would be the second stage three the final stage will be normalization of policies, and eventually the normalization of our Balance Sheet. As a noted in my testimony, assuming that the economy remains in a slow growth mode as weve been saying, that process will be gradual. What explains the recent rise in Interest Rates, and how much more of an increase in could cause a recovery to falter, and what would the Federal Reserve do to respond if Interest Rates spike . There are essentially three reasons why we have seen increases in longerterm rates. I would emphasize they remain relatively low. We saw a relatively good labor Market Report which was accompanied by a sharp increase. The second reason for the increase in rates is the unwinding of leveraged and successfully risky positions in the market. It is a good thing to have that happen. The tightening that is associated with that is unwelcome. The benefit is that some concerns about Building Financial risks are mitigated in that way, and make some participants more comfortable with using the tool going forward. The third reason for the increase in rates is Federal Reserve communications, and market interpretations of fed policy. We have tried to be very clear from the beginning. I reiterated that if we have not changed policy we are not talking but tightening all secretly of try to lay out the same sequence which i just described to you. Were going to move going forward, but i want to emphasize that none of that implies that the policy will be tighter at any time within the foreseeable future. When we are going to see winding down occur. To me it seems like targets would help reduce that risk. Do you agree . This is an issue we will continue to discuss. We have given fairly specific qualitative advice, and i did say the unemployment was indicative of the kind of progress we are trying to achieve. The thresholds are tied to rate increases. Therefore, while reaching the threshold is not necessarily mean we will raise rates. We are confident we will not raise rates before we get to that point. That is providing reassurance to the market. Thank you, and with regard to wanting on a Balance Sheet, you have indicated a willingness of keeping them out of the market. The governor said no one is talking about unwinding or selling securities. Which mean that the feds Balance Sheet to be over 3 trillion for some time. Not necessarily. Ultimately we will stop, and the Balance Sheet will come down. We have been allowing the securities to roll off. At a certain point when the economy is Strong Enough. It does not delay normalization by very much. But you are not expecting the winding down of the Balance Sheet at any time soon. Is that correct . The threepart sequence i described you, there again it would not we are not planning at this point to sell in the nbs. Bet we would be doing would allowing at some point we would be allowing them to run off and not replacing them. As long as you continue to hold, doesnt this lead to credit mispricing and investor risk . I dont think so. Particularly when we are winding down. I dont see that there is any real difference between our holding mortgagebacked securities, which is intended to strengthen the Housing Market, and usual Monetary Policy, which lowers longterm Interest Rates through short term rate cuts, which is also intended to strengthen the Housing Market. The Housing Market is always an important channel of Monetary Policy. I do not see there is any significant misallocation going on there. Thank you. Senator menendez. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Chairman bernanke, i understand this might be her final Monetary Policy report here before the committee before the end of your term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. And i am sure you will miss us, but i want to thank you for your hard work and dedication, and your service to the country, especially during a time of crisis, and i appreciate your service. We seem to be experiencing a trend where our economy and employment are growing, but we have a ways to dig ourselves out of the deep hole caused by the financial crisis. Unemployment is down, but it is still 7. 6 . More than a third of the people who are unemployed are long term unemployed, which is a true crisis for the 4 million individuals and families caught in this situation. And as you have discussed, long term unemployment can have serious consequences that make it harder for people to maintain skills to reenter the workforce. My question is while the economy is recovering, we still have a lot of work to do to get full employment and strong broadbased growth. With core inflation well below the target and weak demand suggesting inflation is unlikely to be up problem anytime soon, isnt it still too soon to consider policy tightening . Ive distinguish between changing the mix of our tool tools and the overall thrust of Monetary Policy. I agree with unemployment still quite high and with unemployment being too optimistic a measure, given some of the other statistic that youve cited, that both sides of our statutory mandate are suggesting that we need to maintain a highly accommodative Monetary Policy for the foreseeable future, and that is what we intend to do. But i think we will be able to maintain that high level of accommodation through rate policy and by holding a large Balance Sheet, and in making that transition to a different stage in the process, we are intending to keep Monetary Policy highly accommodative. I dont see any real difference between holding mortgagebacked securities, which is intended to strengthen the Housing Market annual Monetary Policy, which lowers Monetary Policy through shortterm rate cuts, which are also intended to strengthen the Housing Market. I do not see that there is any significant misallocation going on there. Thank you. Centre menendez. Mendon says. I understand this might be your monetary or last Monetary Policy report before you are done with being the chairman of the Federal Reserve. And im sure you will miss us. I want to thank you for your hard work and dedication and your service, especially in the time of crisis. I appreciate your service. We seem to be experiencing a trend right now where our economy and employment are growing and recovering, but we still have a ways to dig ourselves out from a deep crisis. Unemployment is coming down, but it is 7. 6 . More than 4 million individuals and families are caught in this situation. Discussed long term unemployment can have serious consequences, making it hard for people to reenter the work force. While the economy is recovering, we still have a lot to do to get back to strong growth. With core inflation being well below the feds target and weak demand suggesting it is likely to be a problem any time soon, is it too soon to do any policy tightening . Between, i distinguish changing our tedero tools and i t i agree with you that i agree with unemployment still quite high and with unemployment being too optimistic a measure, given statistic thater youve cited, that both sides of our statutory mandate are suggesting that we need to maintain a highly accommodative Monetary Policy for the foreseeable future, and that is what we intend to do. But i think we will be able to maintain that high level of accommodation through rate policy and by holding a large Balance Sheet, and in making that transition to a different stage in the process, we are intending to keep Monetary Policy highly accommodative. As the reserve has engaged in measures to strengthen the economy, some critics have argued any growth would be artificial or that low Interest Rates and cheaper credit might lead to financial instability or asset bubbles. If investors make riskier investment in order to reach for the yield. In the current environment, isnt weak demand a greater concern . If consumers are pulling back on spending because of high debt burdens and underwater mortgages and businesses are holding off on investing because of weaker consumer demand, doesnt that change relative cost benefits and risks of different monetary policies . It can. On the first point about artificial growth, during the 1930s, they held that recession was unhealthy. That recessions and depressions were healthy. They purged the evils out of the system. I do not think we hold that point of view anymore. We think our economy is producing below its potential. What Monetary Policy is trying to do is return to its potential, and that would be a real and Sustainable Growth that we can achieve. Given recent experience, we want to be careful to what is going on and pay close attention these issues. The relationship is a complicated one. On the one hand, low rates can lead to reachforyield and other risky behavior. We are trying to address that through regulation, through oversight, and through monitoring, and that is our first line of defense, but you point out it is not a simple relationship. A weak economy is bad because it means weaker credit quality, less lending opportunities, more defaults, and our strategy is to try to focus on inflation and unemployment using Monetary Policy and to pay close attention to Financial Stability and use regulatory tools we have. I appreciate that. There has been a great deal said about expansionary policy of austerity. As i am looking at what is happening in europe, im not sure that the measures taken under that guise produce the economic results we like to see and the consequential Human Results we have seen in europe, and i do not want us making those mistakes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, thank you for being here. Senator corker. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here. We were just talking about these meetings about like drinking dayold coffee. I do not really have any questions. I am here to thank you for your service. I know we have had our differences on some issues. I appreciate the way you handled the crisis. I think our country was under extreme duress. I do not know how many people could have handled that crisis in the way you did, so i want thank you for that. We have had discussions about quantitative easing. I know we have had differences. I know there is an industry of folks who watch every word you say, and people are doing calculations as to buy this instrument or that, and i know you have to be cautious about what you say sometimes, but this is a setback. I know there has been hyperactivity of the fed with the fed almost acting like an enabler. For congress, which is had very bad behavior for a long time. Thingsbility to do the fiscally and in other ways that would stimulate our economy. And i think you are well aware of those. Of do a pretty decent job staying away from it, although sometimes i wish you would weigh in more. I wonder if you have any parting comments. I wonder if you have any comments about over time of the hyperactivity the fed has been engaged in. In some ways congress has been so feckless, if that is any concern to you, and is there any similarity to a person who knows they need to do certain things, eat right and exercise, and instead relying on the fed for amphetamines and other things the economy needs. As you contemplate those, i want to thank you for your service, thank you for your friendship and whatever happens. I wish you well. Thank you very much for those comments, senator. On hyperactivity, i think we learned we did not have the right tools. We did not have a way to it address a failing Investment Bank that were not create a huge amount of bad effects on the financial market. We did not have appropriate oversight and the shadow of the banking system. There were a lot of weaknesses. In our oversight, regulatory system, and in our response tools to the crisis. It sometimes seemed frenetic because the fed was trying to improvise in many cases. I think we made some progress in setting up a more orderly framework. I hope that is the case. It is true Monetary Policy has carried a lot of the burden. We are more than happy to share that burden more equally with fiscal policy and other policymakers, but i recognize it has been a difficult time politically for people to come to agreement on some very important issues, and i dont think you mentioned the enabler idea. I do not think it is my place or the Federal Reserves place to try to force congress to come to any particular outcome. It is this congress that is responsible. Our role is to take what congress is given and how best to meet our mandate Given Congress actions. I do not think we should threaten congress with higher Interest Rates. I know you operate under our mandate. I would think most people would ration that the fed is there and in some ways accept the cover of us and for our inability to act responsibly. I think that goes without saying, doesnt it . You can see that our acting alone is not producing the kind of results that we would like. Growth is going in the right direction, unemployment is going in the right direction, but it is a slow process. Monetary policy is not a panacea. There is still room for congress to address these problems. Senator reed. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I commend you and thank you for your service to the nation. I witnessed your innovative and forceful approach to problems that were potentially devastating to the economy. I think through your service, we avoided a much worse situation, and i thank you for that. One of the things, reflecting back, there were a few governors in the fed who were talking about the housing bubble as the next great crisis, but it did not get the traction. Perhaps not identically, but in a similar vein, some of your colleagues are not talking about the huge growing student debt are now talking about the huge growing student debt that could have macroeconomic effects, slowing down home purchases, slowing down what we a storm what we assume with the normal course that you buy a home, you settle down, etc. But i also think it another way, underscoring another huge problem in the economy, which is the growing inequality of income. Our solution is education. There are reports from Georgetown University there is a 5 million projected gap between Jobs Available and skills available to fill them. As we increase borrowing, that i think will cut down on opportunities for a lot of people. Can you comment on the potential crisis in student debt, its macroeconomic effects and whether we do not provide support that this could be the next big problem that we face . This should acknowledge the ability to build your own Human Capital to grow your education should be a good thing. There was time when a student was unable to finance education. The fact we can do that is good for the economy as well as for individuals. The amount of debt is large. It is over 1 trillion at this point. I think it is not particularly likely to cause any sort of sharp instability. It has a couple of consequences. To the extent there are people who have taken out a lot of debt and they are not finding opportunities, over time they will not be able to buy a home and do other things they would otherwise be able to because they are paying off the debt. The answer is to have a Strong Economy that provides job opportunities, which i am sure you are trying to do too. The other is we need to make sure students are better informed about labor opportunities and different options they have. We know some of the private sector universities, online universities, which do not have good graduation or placement rates, people still borrowing. I do not want to step back from doing whatever we can to give young people the skills that are appropriate. Inthis growing inequality income in the United States, does it pose economic and social risks, and how do we deal with it . Other than through education in many different ways . It is a tough problem. It is not restricted to the United States. It is a global phenomenon. It has and going on for a long time. There are a number of factors. One of the most important is that the new technologies we are see a, what is called skillbiased, that they favor the most skilled workers, and they reduce opportunity for people of medium or low skills, particularly with those income position with the labor force, so i do not have an easy answer. Particularly in competition with the global labor force. So i do not have a need the answer. Do not have an easy answer. Related to your question about the student debt, i think focused skill enhancement, some people would be better off working to a job in industry where there is an understanding in advance that this is what is needed. This is the opening. Community college prepares those kinds of courses. Some more focused job oriented training for students might be helpful. This is a longterm trend. I do not have an easy solution. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and i too want to thank chairman bernanke for his service. We had our disagreements over the years, but not without, on my part, a great deal of respect for the way you have approached this work and the work you have done. I have a couple of questions. Of has to do with efficacy quantitative easing. There are a number of very thoughtful folks that have done analyses that suggest that the benefits of the quantitative easing we have had might be quite modest, and specifically, i think the suggestion has been that conventional understanding of the transmission mechanism of the increase in Household Net Worth to Consumer Spending would suggest a very modest increase to gdp that is resulted from the pretty significant increase recently in Household Net Worth. Ofn if you attribute all that increase to the fed, which is questionable, and your own previous question, you previous testimony. Correctly, review yupik acknowledge the nature of the if i understood correctly, you acknowledge the nature of the impact Monetary Policy has on Economic Growth might be a matter of timing rather than a net increase. It might not increase Economic Activity in total. If the magnitude of the benefit has been very modest, and at that, it might just be a shift in timing any way, that would suggest pretty modest benefits, and yet the costs and the risks keep mounting. In my view, the risk of asset bubbles, mispricing assets, the risks of whether or not we will have an orderly exit my question would be how to you quantify benefit going forward, and do you attempt to quantify the risks of what you have done . Yes, that is a good question. There is a very large literature and academic within Central Banks trying to figure out the limits of quantitative easing. It is quite difficult to know for sure, but the evidence is while this is not as powerful a tool as ordinary Monetary Policy, that it does have meaningful impact on jobs and the economy. Since 2008 we have had times wee have you come more returnd no ability to rates and we have become more concerned about inflation. Qe has provided a boost to go forward. I dont want to overstate it. There is a lot of work, and the preponderance of the work is quite meaningful. In terms of timing, it is true that no Monetary Policy can do very much about the longterm growth of the economy. But in a situation where we are well below that potential, if we can get back to that potential more quickly, that is a net gain that is enjoyed by the economy. In terms of the risk, i have identified in speeches and other places some of these risks. As i said in our statement, that we look at this carefully. I think the one we have paid most attention to is Financial Stability, and we have tried to increase our monitoring, and there is also risks both sides because if the economy does poorly that create risk. Let me acknowledge this is an issue that is important. We believe the first line of defense should be monitoring, supervision, regulation, and other similar tools, but we do take into effect, take into account, sorry, these risks when we debate our Monetary Policy. Do you attempt to quantify it, or is it subjective . We try to qualify it quantify it. It is very difficult to know what the size of the risk is, but what we do is that we do a lot of work, both qualitative and quantitative, trying to measure for example, we might be looking at covenants on loans, and whether or not those covenants are becoming less restrictive, which is suggestive or poor underwriting. Canubmit those so they understand where they may be sectors where Financial Risks maybe ill thing and try to gauge those. Thank you, i have other questions, but my time has expired. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator schumer. I want to thank you as well, mr. Bernanke, and i went to and i want to echo the views of many of my colleagues for your service. Your quiet and strong leadership has been instrumental in keeping our economy from falling into an abyss and repeating a great depression, and we are on the path to turning the economy around. My view is 2014 and 2015 will be stronger in large part the Building Blocks you put into place, even if you are no longer chairman of the fed. Not prejudging anything, of course. You have been as clear as i think you can be that the timing and pace of any timing tapering of your asset purchases will be dependent on financial condition. That is logical. In june, the committee predicted Economic Growth would grow, but Economic Data has been mixed. With a decent job numbers, but many signs of weakening growth. The baseline for your june outlook was worse than we first thought. Our firstquarter gdp average was lowered. So the economy is worse than you thought in june, but the markets are of the belief that you are still said to be tapering. If the economy did not change, with the fed the announcing a moderation in the pace of its out of its assets . Youve often said that asset purchases would continue until untilees financial the fed sees substantial improvement in the economic outlook. Does this change your outlook . Can labor markets continue to improve . So first about september 18, and about the labor markets. June was only a few weeks ago, so i think it is way too early to make any adjustment there have been data points that have been mixed. It is way too early to make a judgment. We are looking for a pickup as the year progresses. Our theory of the case, if you will, is that one of the reasons the economy has been so slow in the early part of 2013 is because of fiscal factors. Long hard to judge how they will last, but as the economy begins to move beyond that and fiscal strength fiscal restraint becomes somewhat less pronounced, you should see a pickup in growth. The september 18 deadline is not immutable . You are going to look at the data. It is a Committee Decision. Data going to look at the and it is going to depend on whether we the improve it. Does the weakening data changer outlook with respect to the labor market . We want to see improvements, but we want to see that continue. Form primitive continue, you need to have a broaderbased growth. Of the conditions i described, one is pickup in growth. Which will be sufficient to provide continued do you think we could be on a path to improvement labor market even with this relatively weak growth in terms of outlook . It is possible. It has only been a week, and we a few weeks since the june meeting, and we have new data. My second question is when you might end asset prices altogether. The minutes of your last meeting said that about half the participants said it would be appropriate to end asset purchases this year, yet you said you expect asset urges us to end sometime in the middle of next year. When you currently anticipate unemployment will be down around 7 . The level of unemployment you say represent the amount of improvement that would warrant this policy. Do those other members have a different definition of substantial improvement in the labor market . There seems to be some disparity between the other members and if you are not there come next year, there is worry. Do they think unemployment will be 7 this year, or do they have different assessments about relative cost and benefit . There are different perspectives. They could see a wind down because they are optimistic about the economy. Let me just assure you that we have a very careful discussion at the meeting. We have what is called a go round where every person including the nonvoters gets to express for several minutes their view on policy, both current and prospective. And the general scenario, which i described in my press conference, is broadly supported by people on the committee, including both voters and not voters. That is good to hear and give me relief. Senator coburn. Mr. Bernanke, i appreciate the service that you have given our country. Tohave nobody to compare it because we have never been in the situation we are in before. You have done significant work, and i appreciate it. I have a couple of questions in terms of your balance with your mandate both in terms of inflation and employment and growth. One of the things that concerns me is since 1980, we have change the way we measure inflation 20 times. If you use the same measure of inflation that we had in 1980, our inflation rate would be over 8 right now. And the other thing that concerns me is median Family Income in real dollars at the same as it was in 1989. So if i had a criticism of anything you have done in the last few years, it would really go along in line more with senator corkers thoughts, we have let you down. The kindergarten of congress has let you down by not doing these things to create the confidence, to create the certainty in the Business Community that would allow the significant capital sitting on the sidelines to be invested, which would create some of the growth that you were hoping to do. For that i apologize. Would you care to comment, since in your testimony, inflation is under control, but the average american over the last 10 years has seen significant inflation, and in the last few years, has seen significant inflation in the things that really matter. Let me talk about the cost of an education. Transportation, electricity, rent, food, bus out of what we have done, not intentionally, we have got a commodity bubble in many areas. Would you comment on changing metrics that we use for inflation as well as maybe what we could have done looking backwards that might have accentuated and augmented what you have done . Arenflation statistics calculated by the bureau of labor statistics. Which is made up of highly qualified professional economist. There is no partisan influence. Ther efforts is to make Inflation Numbers more accurate. In terms of changes, there was a Bipartisan Commission on inflation measurement a few years ago, which concluded that the official Inflation Numbers overstated, not over not understated inflation. So some of the changes they have recommended have been included. So there is a dissension between prices being high and prices being rising. It is true that gas prices and food prices, all these prices relative to peoples wages wages are not going up much. That is right, so the cost of living is going up it is not going up, it is high, it is not going up. Real wages have been going down because even though inflation is very low, wages have been growing slower than inflation. So Discretionary Income has decreased, so Consumer Spending is not rising at the rate at which you would like to see it. That is true, but that is not an issue of inflation, that is an issue of real living standards, and that has a do with the productivity of the economy and dissolution of and and the distribution of income and the fed cannot do a whole lot about that. So i would respectfully disagree that inflation is badly under measure. I think professionals are doing as good a job as a can to measure inflation, and if you look at a lot of prices, while they may be high, they are not much different from a year ago. That is what inflation is about, the rate of change over time. In terms of what congress can do, i think an effort to focus more on longerterm would be more effective. Rather than putting so much of the tax increases and spending cuts and a frontloaded way, would have been more helpful. If congress had created a if congress had created certainty in the longterm, the effectiveness might have been greater. Certainly. Thank you for the new rules. I urge you to hold fast to those. I hope that you will do that. Some financial analysts suggest we should not get ahead of europe. I think it is dangerous they have tried to characterize it as the ceiling and not the floor. Those of us in charge of financials the ability need to make the judgment as to what levels of capital will in shores ability without unduly affect flow of credit. I have had calls from my counterparts around the world. Explain to me why you think three percent is inadequate. He says we should do what we think is best and if we leave by example the rest of the world will follow. You agree . I agree it is a floor, not a ceiling. These are made right unanimous agreement. We are prepared to do whatever additional steps are needed to make our Financial System safe. I do not know if all countries will follow us, but ere are countries that have fought hard for this and have taken Additional Debt to strength in their banking systems, and we have a leadership position, but i do not get will be universal. I think we will see different response is. Most important will follow . I do not know if they will follow the same things. A have the key Financial Sectors that recognize it is important to have stability, and they have than willing to consider additional steps. We should not shrink from doing the right things . The other countries may or may not follow. We should do whatever we can to make sure the Financial Stability is safe. It is no surprise megabanks are doing well, it they continue to say regulations are killing them. Since the crisis, International Regulators have demanded more capital. Financial times asks where are the ill effects. He continued to set profit records. Warnings of calamity look more and more hollow. This reminds me that when we think about cost and benefit, industry wants us to think only about cost to them. Steel companies dump waste into our rivers, and then they warn it will be costly to clean it up. Those who believe in the society with rules understand auto safety might cost Car Companies more in seat and other safety features, but these save the lives. The same thing with banking regulation. They will help prevent what we saw five years ago with Retirement Savings and lost jobs. If these are the cost is, arent they worth it . The crisis was a waste of resources. We should look at the social cost and not just the cost to the firms, and that is what what we are trying to do. If they are not quite up to this quarter, that is the price they should pay . We should be looking at things that affect the economy more broadly. Are you concerned this result in less credit . I am not concerned about that. There is no evidence of that. Does it mean less credit available . If there is not less credit, there is no real downside . Rex the only downside is that if banks are finding themselves more costly to make loans, credit could start flowing through other channels. You are not implying we are close to that situation . Rex we need to make sure risks are not being offloaded into other parts. I appreciate the questioning of senator brown and chairman bernanke. Take you for being here and taking the time. I think you answered the question. I was going to ask the question of why we came to basil 3. I was looking at some in sight, and it seems the answer may be risk. We have a program for building capital. Then the surcharges and higher level ratio. In addition we are looking for wholesale funding, and we have discussed the possibility of requiring a large firms to have unsecured senior debt. We are trying to build up the buffer these firms have. Let me change to housing. We have had 300,000 people in las vegas receive foreclosure notices. Over 50 of the homes are underwater. What are we doing wrong, and what can we do as congress to help move and change the situation we have in some of these other states . I think from congresss point of view getting the financial situation working better in terms of creating that rule so there is greater access to credit and more people can buy homes, because the solution is to find a demand side so it will support prices and help us it out of the housing problem we have. Rex i was here earlier for discussion of reforms. Do you have a reference . I think it is time to move forward. Your insight on government involvement of Mortgage Securities . I think a key is going to be not that much making mortgages cheaper but making sure there is a texan situations where the Financial Markets are in distress why they were recently. If the government is involved, i think it would be important to make sure the government is appropriately compensated. It ensures they have enough capital to protect the taxpayer. If it is done it would be very helpful. Let me talk about one other topic. Gold prices have dropped to around 1275 for somewhere around there. Give the insight as to what longterm impact this would have. Gold is an asset people hold as disaster or insurance. They feel if things go badly wrong at least he will have some gold in their portfolio. A lot of people hold gold as inflation hedge. The perception is you have a hard asset that will protect you in case of some major problem. I suppose one reason gold rises are lower is people are less worried about extreme outcomes. Therefore they feel less concerned about the particular outcome. Psychologically what do they feel about the direction of the economy . I think it is not necessarily of had thing. People are just less concerned about really bad outcomes. Nobody really understands it, and i do not intend to understand it either. Think you for your service doing hard times. They reported some staggering numbers. Jpmorgan chase profit jumped. Some reports have indicated a big part of these are office have come from the banks trading activity. Are you concerned the biggest banks are loading up on the big risks again, or is there another nation for the spike . We have new requirements banks have to hold against these securities. We have done stress test where we as human the financial shock hit, and we have stress test did the banks to see if they have enough capital. The other thing is we are working to put the volcker rule into place. The question i am trying to ask is whether this indicates they are loading up on risk, and i appreciate you are telling me the way they try to regulate risk. Yesterday the secretary treasurer said, if we get to the end of this year and we cannot say we have ended too big to fail, we are going to have to look at other options. Do you agree with the secretary of the treasury . I do not know about the timing. I have said there is a strategy. Basel three provide additional support, but i think additional steps would be appropriate. We need to look at other steps i have introduced as well as senator cain, another tool in the toolbox to deal with too big to fail. I think we have got some time on this. Maybe a year longer, but we have to keep this under investigation. Is that fair . We need to look at more tools. I think there is scope for capital. Fair enough. The fcc announced they were stopping their investigation and had reached a settlement with the largest mortgage servicers in the country, and just last week they announced 52,048 people in massachusetts received checks under this settlement, and aggregate total of 41 million in compensation, or 800 a family. The medium income is 2 10 of one percent of the Purchase Price of the average home in the commonwealth of acid choose it. Is my job to look out for families in massachusetts about whether settlements are fair. I started looking into basic document and to see what they had uncovered. So far the fed and the occ have disclosed very little of what i have asked for. The question is how they know the payment a are receiving are fair if the fed and the occ will not disclosed the tales about what was uncovered in the investigation . We do not have that information for everybody, but we have it were some folks, and we are looking at how to get that information for individuals. We are talking about releasing more information about what we did find . We hope to have a report that will lay out all the information he have. Some of the information you have requested we did not collect or whatever. We will try to provide as much transparency as we can. I would be grateful. If they never take large financial it did to ships to trial, the resulting settlement are too weak. I know you will appreciate the slap on the wrist. If they are confident i think it helps everyone. The people who have received checks have not yielded their right. I hope they will be able to evaluate whether or not that is appropriate. I have a number of questions. If it is ok with you, i will submit these questions and ask you to respond. The question i have is about shortterm Interest Rate policy at the bank. In particular in relation to financial institutions, and i would love to get some further information on that, but i will submit those in light of the fact that we have a vote. Chairman bernanke, i would like to thank you for your Extraordinary Service and for your testimony. This hearing is adjourned. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] we every see standard of existence existence. It increases the value of everybodys property, raises the scale of everybodys very first sound film we have featuring a president is Calvin Coolidge talking about economic policy. It is not the most scintillating film in the world, but it is fascinating to see him, this early sound technology. We are going to reach a day very soon when there is tremendous amounts of material out there waiting for new generations of researchers to discover its, and make something meaningful of it. There is a lot of stories that can be told in our collection. We are so eager to make more of them available to people who discovered. American history tv, every weekend on cspan three. In his weekly address, president obama talks about the Senate Confirmation of richard cordrey. And the importance of the cfp. Also legislation to delay the individual mandates in the health care law. Hi, everybody. Three years ago this weekend, we put in place tough new rules of the road for the Financial Sector so that irresponsible behavior on the part of the few could never again cause a crisis that harms millions of middle class families. As part of that reform, we set up the Consumer Financial protection bureau, the first ever independent consumer watchdog with one job to protect families from that sort of behavior. Two years ago, i nominated a man named rich cordray, a former attorney general from ohio, to run this Consumer Protection bureau. But republicans in the senate refused to give him a simple up ordown vote, not because they didnt think he was the right person for the job, but because they didnt like the law that set up the consumer watchdog in the first place. So last year, i acted on my own to put him in charge because without a director, the cfpb couldnt use all the tools at its disposal to protect consumers from shady mortgage lenders, or unscrupulous credit reporting agencies, or predatory lenders who targeted veterans and seniors. And im pleased to say that he was finally confirmed this week by a bipartisan vote. Because of the work thats been done at the cfpb over the past two years, today, mortgage lenders, student lenders, payday lenders, and credit reporting and Debt Collection agencies all face greater scrutiny. And if they dont play by the rules, you now have somewhere to go to get some measure of justice. In fact, the cfpb has already addressed more than 175,000 complaints from every state. Today, as part of the cfpbs know before you owe efforts, students and their parents can get a simple report with the information they need to make informed decisions before taking out Student Loans and more than 700 colleges have stepped up to make this information clear and transparent. And if youve noticed that some credit card forms are actually easier to understand than they used to be, thats because of the work that richs team and others in the administration have done. Today, veterans have the tools they need to defend against dishonest lenders and Mortgage Brokers who try to prey on them when they come home. Seniors are better protected from someone who sees their homes or Retirement Savings as an easy target. And thanks to the hard work of folks at the cfpb, so far six million americans have gotten more than 400 million in refunds from companies that engaged in unscrupulous practices. Thats money we didnt have the power to recover before. You know, weve come a long way over the past four and a half years. Our economys growing. Our businesses have created 7. 2 million new jobs in the past 40 months. Weve locked in new safeguards to protect against another crisis and end bailouts for good. And even though more work remains, our Financial System is more fair and much more sound than it was. Weve still got a long way to go to restore the sense of security that too many middleclass families are still fighting to rebuild. But if we keep moving forward with our eyes fixed on that north star of a growing middle class, then im confident well get to where we need to go. Thanks, and have a great weekend. I am todd young from indiana. Tim am top congressman griffin. Equal justice under the law is a basic founding principle of our country. We want to see our children have the same opportunities we had. We want them to work hard, and have a fair shot at appearing achieving the success. When washington helps businesses and ignores of families and workers, americans a duty to speak up. The obama ministration announced it was going to delay the employer mandate in the president S Health Care law pretty take this action because because businesses are having a hard time complying. That is great news for big businesses, but it is less left hardworking americans wondering what about me . The laws mandates are just as daunting for individuals. They do not have an army of lawyers, lobbyists, and accountants at their disposal. The government without an additional 100 45 pages of regulations on the individual mandate alone. How are ordinary Citizens Opposed to keep up . Republicans publicans understand americans are worried about the impact. We acted. Lets be fair about this. If the president is going to help businesses by excepting them from the law, he ought to give the same relief to folks like you. That is why this week, the republicanled house of representatives passed a bipartisan bill i introduced authorizing president obamas delay of the employer mandate. The house approved my bill, the fair ms. For american the fairness for American Families act. Unfortunately, Many Democrats voted to stand with big business , and against fairness for individuals and families. President obama threatened to veto our proposal altogether. We take that to me he thinks it is fair to let businesses off the hook, while leaving families and harms way. It most certainly is not. We urge them to reconsider his veto threat. Well call in democrat leaders in the senate to give our proposal the vote immediately. Publicans will continue to do everything we can to protect all americans from the president s one size feet the presence onesizefitsall healthcare program. At hispanic american who runs a sall business in my district story is becoming all too familiar. He is ready to hired 1020 more people. Key cant because obamacare makes them choose between higher insurance premiums or hefty fines. He said the government should be my partner, so i can help my employees. I can help them more than the government, by literally and not able. The holding is a train wreck. The bottom line, the sooner we can delay thiS Health Care law, the sooner we can get people back to work, and focus on expanding opportunity for everyone. For now, thank you for listening. Thank you for speaking in supporting fairness for all. Have a great weekend. The next washington journal, Public Policy at the white house and capitol hill. Ben andsts are robert ra brian walsh. Then a discussion about race with Michael Denzil Smith and armstrong williams. Washington journal, live at 7 00 on cspan. This week on the