Transcripts For CSPAN2 Capital News Today 20110712

you just follow the comings and goings of the movers and shakers at the white house and on capitol hill. i've been talking to people who have been out of work for the longest time, and whose families are really suffering missing mortgage payments, missing credit card and order loan deadlines, missing meals. one man who was out of work for a year, is married, and father of a 5-year-old told me what it was like last christmas when the family put up a christmas tree, but had no presents to put under it. this was a man in his 30s in ohio in 2011, but he sounded like a figure from one of those old depression e-ray hollywood movies. even though we were not able to give gifts, and everything, we still had each other and a roof over our heads, so we were blessed in that regard. americans are learning in this hideous economic environment to be thankful for small favors. there was a period when this man was so far behind in bills, he would go to downtown columbus as often as he could to donate blood just to collect the $50 they give to donors. i thawrt of it as additional income, he said, and we needed it. all over america, people who once thought they were solidly anchored in middle class are facing an economic abyss. poverty is one of the true growth sectors, but the poor are not talked about anymore. there must be close to 50 million poor people in america now, but you hear almost nothing about them from our politicians in the mainstream media. the poor are the invisibles in our society. now the poor and the middle class are competing for the same jobs. when mcdonalds announced in the spring they would fill 50,000 new jobs, most of them very low paying and many of them part time, more than a million people applied. unfriday, we had yet another horrendous jobs report with more than 14 million americans officially counted as unemployed, we created just 18,000 jobs in june, and very few of them were good jobs. the jobless rate rolls only to 9.2% because the people counted in the labor force in june declined by more than a quarter of a million, yet another bad sign. the reality, of course, is much worse than the statistics indicate. young people in our society are in danger of becoming a lost generation as far as economic well being is concerned. for perhaps the first time ever in the united states, they will likely earn less and experience a lower standard of living than their parents generation. college graduates are increasingly working jobs that don't require a college degree, thus pushing people with just a high school diploma or less into truly menial work or out of the labor force entirely. many men and women who lost jobs are facing the real fear that they will never work again. millions of people of all ages are working part time because they can't find full time jobs, and what we used to call fringe benefits, guaranteed pensions, health insurance, paid vacations are going the way of the typewriter and carbon paper. we are in the throws of a long term employment meltdown, and the need for urgent action could not be clearer, but what are they doing here? washington's alternate universe? are they trying to do all they can to create millions of new jobs? are they in a desperate rush to reinvigorate this faltering economy? no. they are engaged in a mind boggling droughtive battle over -- destructive battle over dualing agendas as if they are completely unaware of the terrible suffering that's out there. pick your poisen. the president's misguided let's weaken the social contract approach or the unvarnished let's make the richard natonskier scenario favored by the republicans. both plans are guaranteed to worsen and not improve the jobs crisis and further weaken an economy that is already on life support. jerry until recently joe biden economic adviser wrote, "washington needs to quickly and aggressively shift from its long term debt obsession to the much more immediate jobs problem. to do otherwise at this point would be deeply irresponsible." he's right, but i don't know if anybody's listening. it's as if the top leaders are incapable of understanding we cannot get out of the terrible crisis by doubling down on the economically destructive policies that got us into it in the first place or maybe they understand that only too well. if there is one thing i hope we emphasize during or program today is that you don't put out a configuration by spraying it with the axel lant that started the fire. we are here to start a more constructive approach, so let's get started. i'll introduce the panelists. [applause] make sure where everybody is. i'm delighted that congressman sandy levin, a real champion of working families is here with us. got his start as a labor lawyer in detroit and now served in the house for more than 30 years, he has never abandoned the fight for working people either here in the united states or abroad. he is a past chairman of the ways and means committee and now its ranking democrat. welcome, congressman. [applause] we are fortunate also to have with us heather boushey, senior economist at the center for american progress working on labor market issues especially the stunning impact of the great recession on workers and their families. she worked as an economist at the joint economic committee at the u.s. congress, the center for economic policy and research, and the economic policy institute. she has always been a powerful and articulate voice for economic policies, and we welcome her here today. [applause] rich trumka is here. some of you may have heard of him. [laughter] he is the president of the afl-cio, a rare individual who knows the ways of washington but understands from long personal experience the real lives of real working people in the real world. rich came out of the coal fields of pennsylvania and went on to become a lawyer and true policy expert. he carries the concerns of working people with him wherever he goes, and that includes to the white house serving as a member of the president's jobs council. we'll thrilled to have him here today. welcome, rich. [applause] speaking of the real world, we also have a couple of workers who will be telling us firsthand what it's like to be out there in this troubled era. i spent a little time with both of them while i was in ohio where i also got to spend time canvassing with working america whose folks are going door-to-door knocking on doors and asking people about their experiences. the first thing that amazes me about working america is anybody talkings to them because if somebody came to my door, cold, sayonara, but people talk to them. i don't know what their secret is. people talk to them, and you'll be amazed at the percentage of people who are struggling or having trouble making ends meet or their kids can't find a job to pay off the college loans. it's a real eye opener spending time with working america, and i appreciate the help they gave to me. anyway, these couple workers that we have here is one is shone desneed from ohio. she and several workers were laid off from a company in dayton that designed heating, ventlation, and air-conditioning units. she is still up employed and set to lose unemployment insurance next month. because of impending budget cuts, she may lose the home health care aid who provides crucial assistance to her mom who is suffering from dementia. we appreciate you taking your time. i know it wasn't easy, but thanks so much for coming out here. welcome. [applause] >> i'm delighted bob stein is on the panel, a father of three who lost his job last year. after working more than 20 years in sale and another six as a custodian at a parochial school, bob was fired and replaced with a cleaning surface. i went to parochial school in new jersey, so the nones would be upset to here me call a a public school. he was replaced with a cleaning service, and he'll tell us a little bit about his hunt for a new job which has not been easy. welcome, bob, and thank you. [applause] >> the empty chair there is not because anybody feared showing up to debate us today. al franken fears nobody. [laughter] he's going to be here later and wrap things up for us. senator franken grew up in st. louis park, minnesota, and spent 37 years as a come -- comedy writer. i wish he'd let it rip here and do a routine about the shenanigans he's seen since coming to washington. he probably won't do that, but he'll be with us, and we're be looking forward to that. let's get busy and do some work here. since we're talking about the real world, bob, why don't i just start with you. exactly how long have you been looking for a job this last time, and give us a sense of what that's been like. >> i've been unemployed since may of 2010. my background is primarily in sales, and i think that's where my skill set's best, so i tried to find a job in sales since that time, and as you're all aware, i'm sure you know when you apply for a job that will pay you a living wage, which i'm not asking for anything exorbitant by any means, there's 60-70 applicants. it's tough to rise to a top of the pile like that when there's other people who may be better qualified, have college degrees or beyond, so you do the best you can to make a good impression, and answer the questions properly, put together a good resumé that's very professional, and it's very frustrating because almost all your job applications nowadays are done over the internet through the various websites, and it's, from what i understand, it's very easy to turn people down. i've been told they go through the resumés mechanically, a person doesn't look at the resumés so it's just frustrating, and it's hard when you know you have a good skill set, you know you're a hard workers, you know you have the right work ethic, and you can't find a job. that's very frustrating. >> you mentioned what it was like going to job fairs. you said it was depressing. why is that in >> well, it is because you get the feeling when you are at one of these, they are there more for advertising than to find good employees. there's advertising, they list the people that will be there, and then you go, and one of two things usually happens. you find most of the jobs are low paying or that they seem like they are not really looking for someone, and you can get that feeling when you talk to someone whether they are really engaging you and really trying to find out what you have to offer rather than just handing you a bit of information or a brochure saying, you know, we'd like you to apply. it's just very frustrating, and i'm not impressed that it's a great way to find a job. >> how long have you been out of work, and what's your job search been like? >> i've been out of work since december 2009. i've been unemployed -- >> pull the mic closer to yo too. there you go. >> december 2009. it's been hectic. when you came out to go and search for a job, i was employed ten years at my last position, and it wasn't the same. like bob said, you have to go over the internet. you submit resumé after resume after res may. i've gone to job fairs. the last job, you know, i turned in told them my qualifications, was very positive, and i was told that 450 people were applying for one position, and still i'm lucky if i will be that one. you called back, well, can i contact you, send you more of my reference and, you know, they said, no, please don't contact me. that's basically what it is. you're like, i can talk my way into a job. all i want is a fair share, a decent job, a safe environment, i want to work. i have worked for 20-something years. six months after leaving high school, i got a job in the engineering field, and until 2009. it's not like i don't want to work. i love work. >> what are you going to do when you're unemployment checks run out? >> honestly, i'm not a person who lives in the here and now. i've been thinking for this for the past year. i'm scared. i don't know what i'm going to do. i have a mother that i have to take care of. i may lose the benefits that i do have. i have a home that i have paid off. i thought i was living the dream. go to work, you know, get a job, take care of your family and you're going to be okay. it's not like that anymore. i want the american dream. so many of us out there, i guess i'm going to have to get four to five jobs to make what i was making before, but who will take care of my mom? >> congressman levin, many american families are going under in this vast sea of unemployment, and yet it really does not seem that there is the sense of urgency that's required here in washington on capitol hill or at the white house. can you explain that? i mean, do you agree with that, and if so, why is that the case? >> in a way, it's difficult to follow bob or shonda, isn't it? i don't think anyone can tell the story quite like you do. i think the problem is that as you said, you used the word "urgency." there isn't a sense of urgency about the unemployed in this country, and i just want to go over a few facts and figures to kind of illustrate how the two of you really represent millions of people. 14 million -- over six have been unemployed for 26 weeks. it's historically the highest number on record. what's happening is this program is going to expire at the end of the year for most people because the emergency fund ends, and those who are on one tier can continue. there are four tiers, but after that, you're out in the cold, and as to the state program, the provisions that we put in place at the end of december go out of existence, and they help the stage because there was 1 urks% fund -- 100% funding, and we changed the period from so-called lookback from two to three years. that goes away. essentially you have millions of people who are facing what you're facing. i come from michigan, and i want to be very blunt to show you the lack of urgency, the lack of sense of community -- this is the state of michigan. recently, they changed the basic state program from 26 to 20 weeks. what would it take -- >> what would it take to develop a sense of urgency among our elected officials? i mean, what do your colleagues say behind the scenes when you're just having, you know, random discussions about the employment situation? >> they say how difficult this is. i'm on ways and means, and the majority of the republicans passed a bill out of committee that would have given the 30 billion that was there in the federal program to the states to do what they wanted to in terms of unemployment. they could either provide the benefits or they could lower taxes on employers and give the unemployed nothing. you asked me what it's going to take? there is an article, i think, just yesterday, about the invisible unemployed, and one of the problems is now the unemployed receive checks through the mail or through their cards. twenty years ago, i went with a reporter, and we went to an office in madison heights, and he interviewed people, and they were in line, bob, and he was able to see -- this was 20 years ago -- that these were a very diverse group, and he wrote up the stories, and they were on the front page of the newspaper, and i would just ask reporters if i might say so, media people to do what you did. they're going to have to go out and find those who are unemployed, and you mentioned the difficulty. there's also age discrimination. there's age discrimination. because the applications come in in these huge numbers, and age is indicated on the application, and so when you get 200-300 applicants for one job, it's very easy not to clearly obey the law; right? you just pick the younger ones so what do we do? i think what we have to do is do what you're doing today here, all of us, and we've got to somehow elevate the issue when we raised our voices once the bill came out of committee in the ways and means, and we challenged them to bring it to the floor, they didn't do that because we spoke up, and we said to them, dare put that on the floor. dare let people vote to take 30 billion away from the unemployed and give it to the states to lower taxes and not give it to the unemployed. >> rich, one more question to just sort of hammer home the whole idea of how serious this situation is. so, i mean, this is as we all know the worst employment crisis sense the great depression, and give us a sense of how it's affecting your workers and what you hear when you go around the country talking to members of the afl-cio? >> also, let me introduce our executive vice president, arlen hope-baker is here. orlene, we appreciate that. it goes from mild anger to hostility in a lot of places. when workers are first laid off, they have high expectations about getting a job very quickly. that hope slowly fades, and as it fades, it turns to anger, and then anger, they look around and say who is working for us? right now, you have in some areas over 20% unemployment in the construction trades, manufacturing has been hit very, very hard, our members are getting not only laid off, but they are having their benefits taken away from them, and if you look at the fights that we've just seen throughout the states, the republican governors used a budget deficit as an excuse to try to take away collective bargaining and the means for most people to be able to climb the economic ladder in a sense of a way. there's anger towards that, and actually it caught fire. you know, we've been trying to have a debate about collective bar gapping in the united states for a couple decades, and we were unsuccessful in doing it. scott walker handed it to us. we were having that debate, and 70-some percent of the american people believe that workers, whether public or private, should have the right to collectsive bargaining as a ladder to increase themselves economically so there's anger, and i think it's going to be difficult for us to mote -- motivate our members because there's a lot of frustration with both parties. of course, there's no comparison when it comes to democrats and republicans about who stands with workers and who stands with the rich, but there's frustration that more is not being done, and i think the time for excuses is about overment people don't care why it's not getting done. they only care that it's not getting done, and i quite frankly, happen to agree with them. this is a choice. this is about priorities. this is about will. this is about wanting to do something. we can create jobs if we choose to do it, but so far as a nation, we haven't chosen to do it, and that's not only regrettable, but we created a generation of workers right now that will never recover in their working lifetime for what they lost during this period of time. >> ahead of the big argument in washington, d.c. right now is allegedly over raising the debt limit, but what's really going on is competing plans about budget cutting which amounts essentially to dieses investment. given the economic realities, can you just outline for us the differences that we can expect to result from on the one hand investment in the economy if the politicians were willing to do something like that, or on the other hand, budget cutting that they're talking about so much. >> well, thank you, bob. i want to start in my answering the question where rich led off that, you know, this is a choice. the unemployment that we have in front of us is something that policymakers can do something about, and as the economist up here on the panel, i want to leave the audience with one thing which is that if we do -- what we do that is good for workers in this economy will also be good for the economy overall so often here in washington, and that's the way the deficit conversations are going, it's as hoe there's this big difference we need to deal with the deficit because that's good for the economy, but dealing with unemployment isn't, and, in fact, that could not be more wrong. until we get americans back to work, we will not be able to get our fiscal house in order so your question about what the difference between investing in the economy versus addressing these budget woes -- it's not -- it's such a false choice. you know, for starters, we're in this situation today because of the collapse of the housing bubble and the een suing financial crisis and all the big acronyms and words we learned so much about over the last few years, but that collapse of the housing bubble left a really big gap in our economy. i'm sure that many of us -- many of you here in the room today know that the middle class has been squeezed for decades, and one of the ways people dealt with the squeeze is by taking on more debt. a lot of that debt was also made possible by deregulation. there's two sides of the coin there, but as middle class families got squeezed and took on that debt, and after that bubble collapsed, we have a big gap in our economy. people don't have as much money, don't have as much home equity lines, and now they don't have as many jobs, and until we fill that gap with investments like in education or infrastructure or, you know, as an economist, i don't care what you invest in, just start doing it, and until we fill that gap, we're not going to get back to full employment, and until we're back at full employment, we're not going to actually be able to deal with the budget challenges because, as i'm sure that bob and shonda know, that if you're out of work, you don't pay as much in taxes because you don't have the income and you need the benefits. that's a big piece in the budget. until we push through that and get folks back to work and the economy back own track, focusing on the deficit will only, only further push our economy in the wrong direction, and my biggest fear right now is that if we do -- if the things work out in the way that it seems to be every morning when i get up and read the paper and get mad over my kitchen table, and as things go that way and cut in spending, and if we don't invest more money in unemployment insurance, if there's not a deal to cut spending, that's only going to raise unemployment. it's only going to lead to a worsening of our situation which will in turn just exacerbate the deficit budget. we're on a downward spiral and thanks to the leadership of congressman levin and senator franken, hopefully we'll continue to go in that direction. >> can i ask a question? >> sure. >> there's a program called american bonds, and over 100 million bonds have been used in its infrastructure, and you know somebody got up on the floor of the house and said that the problem with that program is that the money goes to the states and local governments. you know, that's where construction money goes. [laughter] they want us to bid out all the contracts in washington? [laughter] they've refused to renew it. it went out of business. at least 25% of the construction workers in southeast michigan are out of work and it's proablg -- probably closer to 35% and 40%. that hasn't happened since the depression. another example i was in fraser, michigan, and we went to another program. the money came through a federal program to the state's reinvolving funds for water projects, and it put people back to work, and it was interesting because it's a nonpartisan groups, but there's republicans and democrats in terms of their affiliation, city officials there who were saying what a wonderful program we could not have done it without the federal government. i stand there and i said, tell that to washington. tell that to some of the people in your own parties. those are two vivid examples of the need, and now they're talking about bringing up a highway bill that has $50 billion less than was provided the last time we passed it. if we don't have growth, we will not solve the unemployment program problem. it has to have that ingredient. >> rich, back to you. you have all these construction workers and manufacturing workers, jobless at the moment, and we have, if i understand it correctly, something like a $2 trillion deficit in terms of our national infrastructure needs. now, i mean, to me, this seems like a slam dunk, but apparently doesn't seem like a slam dunk to policymakers so talk a little bit about what we could be doing in terms of infrastructure and what you're members are actually ready, willing, and totally able to participate in. >> well, first of all, the infrastructure deficit is for all infrastructure, the existing according to the society of american engineers is $2.2 trillion, and then we have another $2 trillion deficit for 21st century, that's going forward doing smart grid high-speed rail and things like that to get us into the 21st century and keep us competitive. you're looking at a $4 trillion infrastructure deficit, and what was the republican response to that? to cut 30% out of an already anemic amount of expenditures and infrastructure so if we come together and a number of businesses, the chamber of commerce agrees with us, b that we can, should, and must invest in infrastructure in order to get the country going. it's a job creator. if we have strong by american provisions, it has downstream implications because you have manufacturing, transportation, design, all of those things get pumped from the stuff. now, we're also looking at doing a couple of things. one, the labor movement itself. we're talking about doing a $10 billion fund from the pension funds to leverage five or six times and a $20 million re-infrastructure thing for buildings, to do buildings. in fact, we're going to do this building to make it more green and efficient. we're taking our pension money and doing that, but we can't do this without the federal government leading because we can't get up to scale, and what you have is on one side, you have the republicans saying we will increase any tax whatsoever. now, think about that. if that's the case that we never increase taxes again, america's at its zeneith. it must start down. the infrastructure decays. the more the infrastructure decays, the less competitive we are. the less competitive we are, the more jobs go overseas. the more manufacturing jobs go overseas, the more research and development goes overseas. the more research and development leaves, the less competitive we are, and we're in a death spiral. we need to break that out and break the strangle hold that the house extremists have on the house. infrastructure's good for the country. it creates jobs. it makes us more competitive. it does everything that is right about this, and yet they are saying no, and we find that very, very disappointing. we're trying to do stuff privately. we're also working with a federal infrastructure bank to try to create that so we can leverage federal money with private money to get these projects going on the scale that we need to get it done with to make our country competitive and create jobs. >> right. and congressman levin, on the infrastructure bank, there's a number of proposes on the hill to establish such a bank. one, are you in favor of establishing a national infrastructure bank, and two, are any of the proposals going to go anywhere? >> the answer is yes to the first, and no to the second. >> wow. >> and i'll tell you why just very briefly, bob. we're in a crisis that has to be resolved. the basic issue really running through much of this is whether we essentially say everybody go it alone, or we have a public-private partnership. that's really the basic issue, and the infrastructure bank is tied into this because what it means is the kind of partnership, rich, that you were talking about, and it's interesting that groups come and say to us this is in the private sector, do something about this stalemate, but when they go back home, they don't raise their voices to help us break it. >> bob, i want to go back to something that congressman said about age discrimination. older workers who have not been hit the worst in terms of layoffs and firings, but who are really up against it if they are out of work trying to get back into the labor market. now, you're 60 years old. what -- what are your views about what's going on with all the workers, and what are you hearing from others whether they are friends, colleagues, neighbors, or anything else who may be 50-55 or older and out of work? >> bob, the things that concerns me more than anything else is that for a long time i've heard over and over again that it's illegal to discriminate with regards to age, and you kind of believe that, i guess, for a long time when you are younger and working, but when you hit the age and go through difficulties, it becomes very obvious that it is a factor, and what makes it so frustrating is i read article after article about how businesses are losing older workers and it's really affecting the bottom line. they are losing the brain drain. they are losing people with experience and people that have experience to come up with solutions to problems, yet -- and that's why a lot of older employees don't get laid off maybe as heavily at some other people, but when you are unemployed when you're older, that doesn't seem to apply. it works against you because if you're applying for a job and there's 40-50 applicants, and 15 of them are under 40 and have college degrees or maybe advanced degrees, and then there's bob stein, guess who gets the job? it's frustrating because you know that your life experiences, you know you're experienced in solving problems. it should be a real factor, and it should be an asset to an organization that has a lot of younger employees that don't have a lot of experience because i can remember 20-30 years ago that was a huge factor, you know, having someone older up in the chain tore a sales manager or a vice president that had experience to pass that on to younger employees to make them better sales people. it doesn't seem to be a factor today. >> and shonda, it does seem workers in general are being treated -- excuse me -- with less respect than we've come to expect over, i guess, maybe the past several decades. you were -- you were let go. >> yes. >> you hasn't done anything wrong. your employers made it clear you had not done anything wrong, and yet, explain to us how it was you were dismissed and how quickly you were off the premises. >> first, i found out i was old. i'm part of the group -- they put me in the classification of being older. >> old is really relative. [laughter] >> trust me. >> you're very young. >> i found out that if you've been unemployed for over a year, no onements you too -- no one wants you too. that's another point i want to bring up that is totally unfair. on that day, i walked in, sat down. i was told i was going to be put on a big project. i was going through the process of transferring and getting stuff ready, and my supervisor knocked on my cubicle and asked me to follow him. i said is there something the matter? i'm trying to get this set up and ready to go. he said, no, follow me. i looked at him and said, are you going to lay me off? he didn't say anything. i remember coming out of my mouth, going, wow. i followed him, and we went down, and the hr was on the conference call, and i department hear half the things she said. all i heard was you're going to be laid off. you know, you need to get this ready. i turned around. my supervisor said a couple few things to me. we went upstairs. i was grabbing a couple of my things, and i was walked out the door. >> on the spot, you could not come back the next day? it was over? >> no, it was over. it was basically over, and, you know, i gave them 10 years of my life, my loyalty, and i was just scooted out the door, and i heard worse -- people not even, you know, i don't understand lots of companies have lost respect for their employees. it's -- there's no reason for it. >> heather, you made it clear that there's thing that can be done to end the tide. we talked about infrastructure, but in the broader picture if we reallimented to do something -- really wanted to do something about unemployment and reinvigorating the economy, very prakically, what are things to be done? >> well, that's a hard story to follow. [laughter] okay. there is a long list of things that we could do, and i want to note that, you know, the most important thing we need to do is things that are going to maintain demand in our economy. one of the things that we see, you know, each and every month there's a sur vie done by the international federation of businesses, by no means a left wing organization remitting small businesses all over america, and as they survey, they said the biggest problem is sales, and, in fact, in their june -- in their june survey, they actually finally brought that point into their summary and say, hey, people are really worried about demand and sales. the policy things thattic you need to do if i were a queen and could do whatever i wanted would focus on demand, and you can do that in a bunch of ways, infrastructure investments, more investments in education. you know, keep more money out there, aid to the states to keep teachers and state and local government workers at their jobs. we, of course, need to be pushing back on the cuts that are being made to unemployment insurance as congressman levin mentioned. there's 19 states that cut back on their unemployment benefits, and not just michigan, although it was van guard, a leader in this unfortunately, and, of course, when the benefits expire in december, the long term benefits, i'm concerned there's not a lot of political will here in washington to continue the benefits for the long term, and these are all important for maintaining demand. there's also a number of things we could do to help people who are in their jobs just simply keep them; right? we know each and every month while we have reports of headline numbers, you know, 18,000 people gained a job last month. what's really going on, of course, is that millions of people are losing their jobs and gaining jobs, and 18,000 is just sort of the net number. if we can do things to keep people who have jobs on the job, that could go a long ways towards solving a lot of our problems. there's a new work shares, not new, but reintroduced work shares bill introduced by senator reid just reintroduced this week to allow employers if they need to cut back to cut back on hours and allow people to get unemployment benefits to make up for some of the differences in their incomes, and there's a whole bunch of other policies we can go through on that. i mean, i think that there's two other points i want to make on this. number one, as i look out in the audience, i see many, the faces of many people and organizations that have very long and fantastic and well-thought out jobs agendas because we've been doing this for years now. this has been a crisis. it's been here for quite some time so there is, you know, there's a lot of great ideas of things we could do. one of the challenges that we've given ourselves is to come up with ideas that we think could create jobs and also be politically possible, and these are very difficult meetings that we're having because the bandwidth for what is politically possible means you can't spend any money. it's not clear to me how to increase demand and not spend money at the same time. we're putting out a list of ideas, and the long and short of it is is there's things on the margin, lower interest rates on student debt. there are things to be on the margin. they are not going to solve the problem, but i think the challenge is we continue to have this big problem. we've had it for quite some time, and it's really, you know, the economists appear to be -- most of us -- in some agreement on what to do, but it's really up to the world of poll tilings to make that -- politics to make that happen. >> rich, speaking of politics, you said something with political implications and it's going to be difficult to motivate workers in this environment now. that especially has implications for president obama and the democratic party so can you talk a little bit about that? >> sure. you know, i think we saw a little bit of this in 2010. i was originally told to get people motivated. we did it, were successful by getting them up saying there was a major difference. the problem right now is that the debate on the deficit is sort of consuming everything. nobody is talking about job creation. the president's not talking about it. to the house's credit, they are talking about job creation. i think the senate has begun to start talking about job creation, but when you go back into the field, it -- we are -- our organization, our political program runs on volunteers, and those volunteers continue to be enthusiastic or nonenthusiastic. the more enthusiastic they are, the better the turnout, and the more wide ranging they are, the more effective we are. when you have people talking about extending tax breaks for millionaires, but not being willing to protect social security or medicare or medicaid, you know, that has as heather said wide-ranging implications for the economy because we have a demand problem. if you take benefits away from any one of those, money gets diverted from demand into just living and they have less money to spend so it spirals the economy down, and the fact that that's the central debate right now i think is almost ludacris. it will be tough i think to motivate members across the board, and it will not be with a party message. it has to be each candidate specific because there's friends out there and there are acquaintances out there. they said, we love you, good luck. you know, in this election, we're going to say to them, we love you, and good luck. [laughter] but, you know -- [applause] but to our friends, i guess it won't be hard to motivate them. our members know that conkman lev -- congressman levin stands up for them day in and day out and they fight for us every day. those are friends. for friend, we'll be able to motivate them. i think for acquaintances it will be far more difficult this time. >> bob, i think you may want to cut us short. i see others who want to participate. can i follow-up on what rick said with just one minute of facts? >> sure. >> because i think rich, you've now included a note of the importance of opportunity and the importance of fairness, and in a sense the importance of community. these are the figures about income growth from 1976 to 2007. 58% of the income growth in those 30 years went to the top 10%. 58%. a third went to the top 5%. 20% of income growth, those 30 years, went to the top 1%, and nearly 10% went to the top one-tenth of 1%, and so we need to talk to our fellow citizens. this is the land of opportunity, but when income growth is so tilted in favor of a small minority, it really challenges the growth of the middle class and the united states of america. without collective bargaining -- i come from michigan -- there would have been no decent wages, there would have been no decent health care; there would have been no decent tensions, and now the challenge is with the way income is being distributed, that these -- these attributes that were part and parcel to what made america a strong middle class country remembering those who were not yet in it, that's really the challenge i think that we face this year and next. >> yeah, those are fantastic stats, and i'm glad you brought them up. i'd like to adjust two more. one, you talked about income, but, of course, we know that alongside that, we've seen this divergence between wage growth and productivity growth that workers used to get -- they used to see about the same increase in their wages as they were seeing in the productivity, and, of course, that diverged. actually just a little bit -- about the time i was born, so really you know, it's been quite some time we've seen the big divergence in productivity and wage growth. that's a big piece of the puzzle, and what we need to preb when we think about that is america is a very rich country, and we've continued to get richer and richer, but it's the middle class and workers that have not shared in it. as we think about the creation about jobs and what we should be doing, we need to remember that although there's a lot of rhetoric around belt tightening and it's hard for families around the country, it is not hard for everybody, and there is wealth created in figuring out how to make that work for everybody needs to be a part of the conversation so that's whattic about when i don't want to get depressed about this is we are creating value here, and it's just -- it's going to the top, but we have to figure out a way to share it with the middle class a >>h, i'd like to build on what heather and the congressman said. from 1946 to 1973, productivity in the country doubled and so did wages as heather indicated. the interesting thing about that was the people in the bottom two courts, their wages were rising faster than the people at the top. during that period of time, the american labor movement remitted 40% of the workers so we were driving wages for union and non-union workers. workers were getting their fair sthair, about 40% of us, and that's what collective bargaining did. the wages have actually now stagnated, and so all of that gap if you look the at productivity this way and wages this way, that gap is increasingly going to the people at the top, and, of course, we're down to 11.5% or 12% of the people right now that we represent in wages, and sap discrimination gave you the -- sandy gave you the figures for 30 years. i'll give you the figures for the last 20 years because they're accelerated. in the last 20 years, the top 10% got nearly all the income gains. the top 1% in the last 20 years got got 56% of the income gains, and the top one-tenth of 1%, that's one person in every thousand has gotten 30% of all the income gains in the last 20 years so it's now accelerating. it's getting more con concentrated, and it wont by accident. -- wasn't by accident. i was in the mid-70s that ronald reagan and early 80s that ronald reagan at thatcher and a group of other people did a thing called neoliberalism, and most americans don't understand it and think it has something to do with being a liberal when it's really the exact opposite. it says that anything in the way of the market you eliminate it so any kind of regulation that distorts the market place, get rid of it. collective bargaining, that distorts the market place, get rid of it, and they went after all of those regulations, and we saw the result of it. we had an economy that wasn't what they said. it wasn't self-correcting. it wasn't fair. it wasn't adjusting. it will get back to that if we don't change this thing and get more of the share of the income that's created in the country going to average, every day people so that they can spend the money and create a demand that actually grew this country, and that's not happening right now. >> heather, i'll ask you, well, the right wingers and conservatives will tell you there's no reason to be concerned about this. concentration of wealth, economic inequality, there's winners and losers in a society, so why should anybody care? so you tell us why we should care about that. >> well, we should care for two sets of reasons. one is that, you know, we live in a society, we live supposedly in a democracy, and so just on that alone we should care about it, but i'm an economist, not a political scientist, so i'll leave on that and you can all talk about that amongst yourself. hearing about equality is important for the economy and economic growth. you know, one of the things we have seen as equality has widened in the united states, there are reasons to believe that that has an impact on how well our economy performs overall. let me just, you know, point to a couple of things. certainly as we saw the hollowing out of wages in the middle, especially for men in the 1970s and 1980s, you saw families increasingly then putting women, you know, having lives work. you saw this increase in dual owner families, all these implications for what happens inside families, but that was one of the ways that family dealt with greater inequality is there was more women working. well, by the time you got to the 2000s, families were still experiencing this wage stagnation, wages still not going up even though they were working longer and harder, which, of course, has all these implications for the children's well-being, elderly that women took care of, that's sort of the moral and those kinds of issues, but it also then created the opportunity in some way for families who were trying to just keep up as we deregulated our financial markets and said, oh, you guys can do what you want in terms of finance, a lot of families were struggling to keep up then willing and wanting to take advantage of some of those things, which, of course, is how we got to the economic crisis. there were families taking on too much debt in large part just to keep up with their standard of living, and that, of course, is imp kateed in the crisis -- imp kateed in the crisis. there's an inner connection an a area for economists to think about about the inner connection of inequality, how we got to the crisis, and how unstable we've become. there's great new research that's been done at imf by economists who pointed to countries that have more equality, have longer spells of economic growth. their growth periods last longer. it creates more stability and longer periods of economic growth so i think those are some of the reasons that we should really sort of care, you know, just in terms of economic growth, but then back to just one last point on sort of the politics. you know, there does appear, and there's this very interesting, you know, my second favorite, well, former "new york times" columnist -- [laughter] did a wonderful speech on a study. i believe it was last summer looking at this very question, the inequality in crisis and why should economists care, and he, he huge -- like lighted interesting research and it's also led to this polarization in terms of our politics. now, i'm not the political scientist, but i do think that there is -- there's certainly appears to be something to that, and i think that we should be thinking more about how that's playing into what's going on here in washington in terms of who is getting elected and how they are getting legislated. >> in our last few minutes, i completely agree on the inequality thing. i mean, societies that are more equal do better in a range of areas that societies are more unequal, and the united states is among the most up equal of the advanced nations out here, but in our last few minutes, going back to politics and turning to you, rich. first i'm curious is president obama a friend or acquaintance? [laughter] >> he's a second cousin. [laughter] .. stimulus program was too small. of course back then we've got to remember most economists were saying 8.5% unemployment would be the bottom. we went to over ten so no matter what we would have been under on that. the second thing is even 8.5%, the program was too small at that time and structured the wrong way. one-third went into infrastructure, one feared went into the state and local governments and the third and to tax cuts. the tax cuts generated about a dollar and 4 cents per dollar of investment. to give you some scale for that a dollar in food stamps will give you a dollar and 74 cents in economic activity and tax breaks given to all in economic activity so what you had was a stimulus to small and then drained away by one-third because it went into these tax cuts that most people didn't even know they got a tax cut. i used to go to meetings and say how many people knew they got a tax cut and two or three people would raise their hand. the republicans if they had done and what had a neon sign that jump up when you open your check and say that's got from the republicans that obama didn't do anything. so it started creating some jobs, some that were shot already and some that were slow. there was a structural problem in it because they said the jobs have to be done, infrastructure jobs had to be done in 18 months and that meant they were small jobs. if the what they would have been big job creators included and so that's slipped back on stuff and then i feel that he made a very strategic mistake whenever he started talking about job creation and deficit reduction in the same sentence because people got them all jumbled up and here we are talking about deficit reduction with no talk about job creation right now, so i think there was a strategic mistake and he should have extricated himself and i fink we still showed start talking of debt. it's only going to spiral as a downward and i will give you a classic example of all the cuts come austerity programs. they did that to greece and the more they pushed austerity on increased deeper their depression goes and the higher their debt. this was supposed to be a program to get them out of debt and out of recession and it's pushing them in the opposite direction that's precisely what's happening here. all the gibber jabber about debt reduction at the time when we have a jobs crisis and 14 million people out of work for the longest period ever made history with treason. [laughter] and so i think he needs to focus back on jobs and let people know he really is going to create jobs and is talked into other people like them that work and let me just get this off my chest if you don't mind. >> i don't mind at all. [laughter] >> i absolutely resent the fact some of these scott walker trying to say this is the workers' fault. [applause] >> somehow america's workers were unable to compete in the world and come as a crisis we force those nasty bankers to loan and make all those billions of dollars. we force them to do that. i think that's the most ludicrous thing i've ever seen and for any of the press to get any kind of credence or any kind of legitimacy to that argument i think calls their credentials into question as well. >> i think congressman, you may get the final question here. republicans seem to have captured the narrative that the stimulus failed, monetary policy failed, that what we need are more tax cuts, that spending of any kind is going to be harmful, etc., etc.. is it too late now for the democrats to counter that narrative, and if it's not, how do you begin to counter it? 2012 is getting closer and closer. >> well, i feel we are trying and it's not easy. republicans have had a very simple message of tax cuts work, and if you touch the tax cuts for the very wealthy, it will impede growth. and i feel we have one thing going for us, those of you who don't believe it, most people in this country don't believe that. most people in this country, not all, since that maintaining the tax cuts for the very wealthy does not encourage economic growth but is misplaced in terms of economic growth, so i think we are in a very difficult position because of the rise in the deficit. i think it's up to us to try to paint a clearer picture and injected into this debate the basic fact most economists agree with, and that is if we do not promote jobs, we will not be able to get a hold of a deficit. >> can obama get elected if the official rate is 8.549% next year? >> yes. but it's not a reason i think so that's not a reason for one second to accept it and i think maybe this is a good place to close. >> we can close it right here. >> i just -- i don't know what cameras are here and what reporters are here. i have no idea where you're from. but look, if i might call you by your first name, it really represents the challenge facing this country you really do. you've worked hard, those who say unemployment compensation is an incentive for not working. they should talk to in the challenge before this country and the president is to illustrate we of millions and millions of people in our country. many since their teams who've been laid off through no fault of their own, and it's up to us to provide the balance as we face the deficit of economic growth so you can get to work. if you don't get back to work, it won't work for america. somehow if we can just have you go on tour -- i don't know. [laughter] i don't know what we would do, but we have to have some confidence i think that we can get this message through meetings like this. i have a sense of optimism i'm not sure what the unemployment rate would prohibit reelection. i think though the president must be reelected but we must also take the steps now to get america back to work. >> thank you, congressmen and panelists. [applause] we are going to open things up to questions, hostile and otherwise. [laughter] >> this is probably one of the best presentations light seen since we've been suffering and that's what the country has been going through. you describe to us where the american dream has gone straight down the pot and it's not about the dissemination of the middle class. it's just those who are now working were working poor because of the peace you describe what your mom and as well as the piece that you described to the difficulty with having to be able to struggle and put yourself to the side looking for new employment. we salute you for speaking out and second one to say thanks to richard and heather and representatives levin for giving back that fight that kind of spirit and direction for what we have to do. you all have given in this morning through your direction, bob, at least a clearer understanding and with the biased press has been doing for the last year and a half and to be able to think from what we got from the session. i want to say thank you. >> thank you very much. yes. >> this is really to president trumka, but mr. herbert, thank you for all you've done writing about these issues. encouraging to all of us. agreed panel. [applause] >> since 2001, the united states has run a trillions of dollars of deficits, 2 trillion with china. congressman speed, you had an interesting hearing last month which the professor from the university of chicago said that these trade deficits are a key part of contributing to the budget deficit because we were outsourcing the wealth creating part of our economy. so to me, the dealing with of the trade problem is a very important part of dealing both with the jobs crisis and the budget crisis, yet we don't get the media focused on the trade deficit as a part of this problem in any way. and i think we've got to understand when you're running net exports to deficits year after year, your training wealth out of your economy and are not creating jobs in this country. [applause] i would jump to say amen. moly internal being won't allow me to do that. it's also not just an attack of the trade regime, but for 80 years under george bush even the feeble laws that we had were not being enforced. president obama is trying to enforce some of the laws and look what happened. we took a case on pipes and said china was cheating, openly cheating as there were sanctions against them and we created a couple thousand, 3,000 jobs immediately tire shiastan we created 3,000 workers because we were playing on a level playing field so what we need is a trade regime and treats because the tax code encourages people to take the jobs offshore and then keep the money offshore and at some point maybe we will get to comment along the fall league of a think they call it tax holiday which would be another disaster for america. of course trade is an important part but the tax code as well because as we lose those manufacturing jobs, we also lose the r&d. and since 2000, as of last december december 31st we lost 24,244 manufacturing plants in this country as of december 31st. those were good paying jobs but as a job creation will supply a year of between four to five so when you lose a manufacturing job, you lose four or five down the road and we need to focus on those and it takes tax code as well as trade. >> different part of the room. >> how about in the back over here. >> thank you. with voice of america my question has to do with the pending free trade agreement with panama and colombia, and the question is for mr. trumka, heather and representative speed. do you think a final approval of the free trade agreements will have job growth, job creation in the united states, economic growth in the united states and are you for it or against it and why? >> as currently structured, the answer is no. for korea we would listen hundred 59,000 jobs, for columbia i think it's 40 some thousand combined. jobs we would lose as an estimate but columbia is a special category. forget about the economics. 51 trade unionists were assassinated last year in colombia. the most dangerous place in the world to be if you are a trade unionist assassinated and i frequently asked groups like this the question if 51 ceos had been assassinated last year you think we would be clamoring for a free trade agreement or for the rule of law? , levin fought to try to get the work planned put into the preliminary language so we'd had enforceability. as it is right now, colombia either lacks the ability or the will to enforce the rule of law and protect trade union. the work plan the president agreed to was an improvement but after the agreement is signed there's no way to enforce it. nothing. they could from their nose at us and there's nothing we can do. so economically it's a bad deal. morally it's a bad deal and the people, the workers, the working class on both sides of the borders this approach and will fight against them. that includes us. >> i would add to that comment there's new work by economists i would point to a new paper by a daughter who's a professor at mit and a couple coauthors whose name escapes me at this moment and i apologize for that but it shows places that have increased imports from china specifically a trade with china that lead to job losses and wage declines in those communities to read and it was important because economists for a long time have been ambivalent about that and so there is a burgeoning area of research that shows the trade is not always necessarily good for employment and just here in the united states on these you never know what's going to happen until this happened, but it seems the estimates with or not we would create a lot of jobs with panel and columbia there doesn't seem to be a lot of sound empirical evidence that shows the would be an outcome. >> congressman? >> let me just focus it gives me an opportunity why we are concerned so much about the workers' rights and trade agreements. and this relates to the columbia agreement, the action plan that i think had and has promised but by alladi and others have insisted that it must be part of the free trade agreement. >> this hasn't been understood quietly enough. why is the american labor movement interested in a workers' rights provisions in trade agreements applying to workers in other countries? >> i think there's a basic issue here is that people who care about our workers need to care about workers elsewhere. that's the basic premise. but also, it isn't understood why it's so important, and this relates to the struggle we've had in terms of agreements with latin american countries. there needs to be with basic standards and the enforceable for these reasons. first of all, it's important for the workers in other countries. second, it's important for the development of the middle class's in those countries. the countries that have not paid attention to development of workers rights in the middle class in those cases have ended up with authoritarian regimes because the mass of people do not benefit from the economic benefits. it's also important for our companies because they need middle class people to buy our products. it's also important for their workers in this country. there's a basic principal of the workers in our country's should not compete with workers in other countries who have pressed their rights. so for all four aspects it's that there be meaningful and enforceable workers' rights provisions in those agreements. i think there is a in a panel. in korea it was never an issue. there were other issues with columbia a new regime sits down in agreement with our government on an action plan on workers' rights, violence and immunities and there is resistance to placing that clearly within the third columbia agreement and in my judgment that is unacceptable. >> another question. can we go to the side of the room? >> thank you. we will go to you next. >> okay. first i have to state my neutrality while working i was both in the public and private sector. my question is this. how do we stop that it, maybe it is a disease in this country for the public worker. it makes it much easier to cut public programs because we are cutting public workers and it starts when your job is lost. we need to put as much emphasis on saving jobs, preserving important jobs as we do in creating jobs, but first and foremost it seems to me we have to stop this horrible habit sing without challenge the public worker. >> excellent question. a very sympathetic response to this panel ensure. as the congressman and then to respond to that question. >> really quickly, i was a labor lawyer and i called the university a voting trade union had the workers eventually they said to me we can't recognize the union. why? the binder shows. you've constructed the building. why can't you find yourself as to representation by a union? the finally came back and said to me it's based on the english law that can do no wrong. [laughter] >> that's what i was told so often for chaired the community and the act in this country and all i can say is we need to ed trustees issues, but if public employees had not collective bargaining all these years, they would not be such a vibrant part of the middle class of america and we should stop polluting the public workers in this country, period. [applause] >> there's no question they've been used as a scapegoat issue after issue in the state after state from scott walker to governor christie in new jersey. so the first thing is to get out the facts. the facts are that one, public employees are not overpaid. in fact, in wisconsin, for instance, the high year your degree, the more underpaid you are. if you have a ph.d. you get about 35% less than a ph.d. in the private sector. that the tensions that were told there these outrageous tensions. they averaged about $19,000 a year. and quite frankly, i find it america stood on its head when we look at a group of workers to say they have something and other people don't and we should take away from those who have. remember when we were at our zenas when people didn't have something we looked at and said why not? how we take away from those who have it and the implications i would have, the lower that you slash retirement to less demand the lesson growth, fewer jobs, less growth to spiral continued a downward so that's one thing. preserving jobs, should have asked when you said we were doing this on infrastructure and i didn't get through at one of the things we're doing on infrastructure is training 40,000 people from the community to be able to do green jobs retrofitting and things like that and retraining 100,000 of our workers of our members in the construction, 100,000 would be retrained. their skills upgraded so they can do not just one thing in the economy but everything in the grain economy and make a career out of it, not a single job, and people also don't know that the labor movement is the largest provider of adult education in this country. we provide more skills training and education for that reason to preserve jobs, and i would ask everybody here we hear people here making jokes about public employees. i wish to stand up for them because they're the ones that make the world go round and they are in your hospitals and in our towns and protect your house and rush into a burning building. they take care of your sick mother and dad. they are there every single day. >> the teach your kids. estimate your kids and grandkids. >> c2 [laughter] >> i didn't say great grand kids. [laughter] >> i don't think i need that. that tells us the story to me that there are influences the same people who brought the financial crisis and i don't agree with other people borrowing more than they could have was the whole financial system beginning with the repeal that led us down that path. but those people are the ones currently fighting raising the debt limit. those of us that have the same as fact and that is damaging, seriously damaging the american economy, as that same group is taking their money feet don't have money but they are investing in overseas, and so the dynamic is that their interests are not in the strength of the united states economy. it's an access wherever they can be found and a strong america doesn't give them that kind of access and puts a huge white elephant in this conversation. >> we need a question. >> here comes the question. the other side of the claim is that there are real structural changes in our economy. one of them is a dollar of gdp has fewer workers associate. >> we've got to have a question. >> fever is there is a bifurcation of the work force in terms of high-end and low-end -- >> ma'am, i'm going to cut you off. somebody tell me if we have an offering in citing in the house? >> the question is in days gone by one of the things we've done is increase the mandatory age of education and that takes people out of the work force -- >> seriously, please. some of the question is what's wrong with doing that now? someone said earlier invest more in education. in addition to investing more in education and giving all the workers access to >> i don't know if your question is. >> the question is one solution, there are others, is the hurdle of white elephants, not just one -- we expand the minimum age and at four years of college -- >> i'm really sorry. you had an opportunity to make your statement and i think people understood what you said but i've got to stop it. next question right here. >> how important is it fixing the job crisis that obama will be reelected in 2012? >> that's a good question. [laughter] >> congress and? >> do you agree? >> compared to the seven dwarfs on the oversight. [laughter] if they got elected it would be the depression to be some coherence into economics is important. one simply says cut, cut and you ask them what their jobs program is its cutting. cutting doesn't create jobs. it doesn't, so i think it's important, it could be more important if we focus on jobs in the afterward and say i'm not going to listen to your chatter in sound bites, i'm going to focus the country on job creation and put 15 million people like to work and salt a whole bunch of other problems that's what i'm going to do. would be more important if he would say that. >> over here gentleman in the red shirt. >> two quick questions and this is mostly pertains to the representative since you can take action on less. there are critics on wall street wondering when you will fight to get glass-stegall past sooner rather than later and i know marcy kaptur has been strong at attacking some of the ayn rand ideology behind that. the other thing i want to point out since obama has blatantly come out and said he wants to burst searches treat medicare and basically the trees the american people, the congress put up resistance against that. >> i think the president said social security and medicare from the discussions i'm not sure you can say that he said he's going to butcher them. >> now you say that, i'm not sure which group you belong to. >> i think we need to be careful to be accurate. the president never said to butcher social security and medicare to read in terms of glass-stegall, i think we need to focus on trying to enforce dodd-frank right now and let me just say what's happened in the house we have a perspective by the way not a single jobs bill has been presented to the house of representatives. second, we had a debate on the agricultural bill and there was an amendment not a single dollar could be used by the department which has jurisdiction over dodd-frank for the enforcement of dodd-frank and that past and virtually every republican voted for it. that shows the difference in the house of representatives and i don't think it's wise to obscure. whenever the complaints may be the differences between the two parties, those differences are deep and wide, so when it comes to the reregulation where necessary, let's fight to those who say the answer is to de rick healey everything and allow -- [applause] was cited are they on? we've lane to say not a single lauer to implement dodd-frank, not a single dollar to address the swaps problem. and who's side are they on? and i must say i will fight anybody who tries to obscure those differences because we see them every day on the floor of the house. every day. that's where the battle is. >> very briefly there's a fight going on right now on dodd-frank because we are trying to read the regulations and and they are doing everything they can to weaken those regulations, and i've got to tell you the secretary of the treasury we've been on the wrong side recently handed the exempted koren derivatives which is a big chunks of the regulation that needed to happen and now they are exempt because secretary geithner said the definition shouldn't include them. if you want to have glass-stegall batt, dodd-frank is the substitute and regulations that are being written are either going to be broad enough to cover the situation or they're going to be contracting so much so i want you to weigh in on having those regulations remain strong. there's a lot of fighting going on over that right now estimate a question way in the back i want to give you your exercise. >> atingua started the discussion with the deficit and if we look back right after the depression of world war ii, our deficit related to the size of the economy was about 125% of gross national product. we are looking at about 77% right now. we came out of the 50's and 60's by manufacturing, by having a booming strong economy. with that, i have to ask -- i've heard a lot of good stuff about columbia, but i have to ask south korea trade agreement lowers the content standard to 35%. that means 65% can pass through from china and north korea or from mexico into the united states and the cold a south korean good or an american good, and gives up the supply chain and that's where the jobs are. we don't need a model that's modeled after the political auto industry. we need a model that's modeled after the american aviation industry. thank you. >> we will be discussing that. we will have plenty of time to discuss that. >> i don't think we need to get into a long debate. north korea is simply incorrect. and some of the other facts are there are differences of opinion about that, but by kinkead bald help if there is a distortion of the facts and i will be glad to discuss it with you and we will have plenty of time. >> five been falling america history we have to restore our fairness and concept and you are talking about ways to compare to the measurement and one is there not a good measurement because they make a productivity and that is why you have with the high income who take over people's jobs and so we're we change the way the productivity and to get it that - productivity so we want to say send the money to the jobs, let us go to the state and local government because those people who create the job is to destroy our economy. so what i try to see is where the jobs should be or where the benefits should be [inaudible] you have the people of -- >> thank you very much. we are going to have to wrap it up here. i appreciate your comments. i appreciate the panelists one and all. i hope you can give them a round of applause. [applause] and then if you'd be kind enough to welcome senator al franken. [applause] >> i thought the panel was brilliant. [laughter] i'm sorry i didn't hear a word, but i can't imagine some of the things i will probably end up repeating what a number of folks on the panel said. heather actually testified to the committee that german harkin of health committee is have a couple of hearings on the middle class. they've been overshadowed by some of the stuff that's going on. the current debt crisis upon us on whether we are actually going to become a dead beat nation, and some of us feel we are currently in a situation where the republican party holding the democrats in congress hostage, and holding us hostage with the debt ceiling, knowing that in a game of chicken that the irresponsible and darrell issa say irrational plater has a distinct tactical the advantage over the irresponsible and irrational player, and if it's very dangerous and the unfortunate. i'm very pleased to be here at the afl-cio. i am a member of the afl-cio and of the four unions and i am proud to be a member of the writers guild first and foremost of the american federation of tv and radio artists and the screen actors guild and the directors guild and life walked picket lines and high understand and still get some residuals that were negotiated, residual payment schedule was negotiated by our union and walk the picket line to make sure we got those so i did about 12 bucks. [laughter] that makes the public service i am doing possible. [applause] >> to me there were some a wrongheaded things going on right now. having spoke at the panel on the middle class and i believe was heather who said creating the middle class is an end unto itself. the middle class is the engine of our economy. the middle class in our country has created demand, the entrepreneurs, the small businesses that are the engine of our economy and on a middle class kid. i grew up -- my dad didn't graduate high school, my mom didn't go to college. i grew up in a to bid one bath house in a suburb of minneapolis. my dad was a printing salesman and i considered myself the luckiest to in the world because i was, i was a middle class kid growing up in america in the 50's and 60's. it was what else could you want? and i felt that i could do anything i wanted to do. i felt that i could be a comedy writer and do comedy and become a senator in that order. [laughter] that was my plan. [laughter] >> you know, there's a lot of talk about where we are in terms of death and we have a serious debt crisis. the question is how we approach it? we have 93% of our gdp is our national debt is 93% of our gdp. that's a scary number. we have been here before. at the end of world war ii, it was worse. we had 121.7%. our debt was 127% of georgy. we had something to show for it, we had more than one world war ii. we also had some distinct advantages that we don't have now. we had europe and asia that had been destroyed, so we had markets currently paid we had no markets right away, so despite our debt we started the marshall plan so we could help here not and create people to buy things. you need people to buy things. rich people can only buy so much stuff. [laughter] at a certain plant, they just run out of stuff to buy. and there are only so many of them. and then it sits on the sideline and we see that, a couple trillion dollars sitting on the sideline. why? because there's not enough demand. why is there no demand? because people are unemployed, people are underemployed, people are not being paid enough in the wages have gone down. we know this. i can't -- i mean i know i'm repeating stuff that has been said, and it's not because it's like i am a mind reader. it's because i know what we say. i mean, but had to have been set on this panel i know these people and i know what had to be said. >> so, the idea that those of the treetop, who now are richer than anybody else who has ever been. we have people richer than people have been the history of the world, and why they can't a higher percentage of their income in taxes is crazy. [applause] those in the senate where democrats we talked to people who were rich. we go to fund-raisers and there are some of them who say i won't know of any of the miami who don't say i'm willing to pay higher taxes. i really don't. i know the republicans go to the same kind of fund raisers and hear different things from their people and i respect that. but there is no evidence that works. my goodness. in '93 when we had something called the deficit reduction package, i know sambar's remembers this and publicly everyone on the panel remembers this very well president clinton said let's raise the top two levels, let 180 go to 36, 250 go to 39.6. every republican voted against it. every single one passed by one vote in the house and one in the senate and a weak republican, every republican who said anything said this would cause recession. new gingrich said this will be the democratic recession. the grammar is not -- [laughter] they don't know adjectives and things like that or maybe they do and are deliberately being rude. i don't know. he said it would be the democratic recession. phil gramm said this is going to raise the deficit and kill jobs. john kasich said that if this is not going to work, if this work i have to become a democrat. [laughter] which is why we now have a democratic governor in ohio, did you know that? [laughter] it worked and i will tell you why. just going on his own logic because we have the longest period uninterrupted expansion in the economy that we have ever had in our history when we increased the marginal rate on the people at the top, so it worked, and not only that but it turned a record deficit into a record surplus which he took from one bush a record deficit and turned over to the next record surplus. after george bush became president, after he became president, five days after george w. bush, not -- five days after president bush became president, alan greenspan testified to the senate budget committee and said we are in danger of paying off our national debt to fast. on a projected, we have a projected 5 trillion-dollar surplus going in over the next ten years, and we very well may pay off the debt to fast. the federal government is in danger of having too much money. we are just going to have too much money, folks, and he said what would happen as a result of that is because there will be some people holding onto their bonds and won't be paid off the right time so that actually we will have to take our excess money, the united states government we will have to take our excess money and invest it in private equities which will disrupt -- be disruptive of the markets and make them inefficient because of the united states government having too much money. this is after bush became president. so understand that after bush became president, alan greenspan was warning us about this didier problem -- by dyer problem. here's the theory. if you cut taxes you will automatically raise revenues. you hear that all the time. whenever you cut taxes it raises revenues. they always say that. you hear that all the time. watch fox some time. [laughter] every time we've cut taxes it doubles revenue. that's sean hannity like just nexus that or google. he says it every day. but then they also tell us you have to cut taxes so the government doesn't have too much money to spend. so in other words ronald reagan said in 81 like you can tell your kids all you want not to throw away their allowance. [laughter] you can look this up. in other words, his thing was you've got to cut taxes so the kids in the government aren't going to spend the money. so that furious you cut and coverage -- governor norquist says it. so their theory is based on good mutually exclusive contradictory theories. every time you cut taxes, you increase revenue. and when you cut taxes you decrease revenue. that's fun to hear. [laughter] and bush came in and said we are in danger of having too much money, and it's your money so let's cut taxes because it's your money, we're in a surplus so let's cut taxes. then as soon as we started going into the recession he said we are in a recession, we need to cut taxes because the economy is bad. so in addition to every time you cut taxes you increase revenue and a decrease revenue every time the economy is doing well you have to cut taxes and the different types that you have to cut taxes. this is the most incomprehensible economic few real-life ever heard. but it needs one more element to become absolutely dangerous and cheney provided that. when paul o'neill went out to him when the deficit started exploding like this could hurt the economy. the deficit is exploding and he said don't worry about it. romilly improved deficits don't matter. [laughter] bingo. so what does he do? boesh takes the biggest surplus in history and turns it into the biggest deficit in history, 1.2 billion -- $1.2 trillion debt projected deficit and in the economy i've done my job come here it is, we're shutting 750,000 jobs a month. i've done my job, i will go watch some rangers games. [laughter] i can't believe these people have actually paid any attention to anything so we have all this money sitting on the side line. look, we have to do what we did. robert reich said what country should we model ourselves after to get out of this? he said the united states of america. [laughter] [applause] >> we did this after lubold were too. we invested in ourselves in the right things and education and infrastructure. we invested in science and technology and innovation and education in 57 when sputnik was launched, i was 6-years-old, my brother was 11. my parents -- we were scared to death because the soviets were ahead of us and in space now, and if they had nuclear weapons. our parents to cross into the living room in minnesota and said you are going to have to study math and science to beat the soviets, and i thought that was kind of a big burden to put on an 11-year-old and a 6-year-old. [laughter] but we studied math and science and we beat the soviets. [laughter] the benefits in the space program were just on told. i was watching a debate during the last campaign and the republican candidate for senator said the government never created a job, and i notice i ron ackley the debate was carried on satellite. [laughter] >> who built the interstate highway system? i just -- now i know we are not going to get, you know, we are not going to get a big stimulus package so i'm looking for different ways, different models to build jobs. why aren't we retrofitting residencies, business, universities buildings? in minnesota we have our people who the building trades are just hurting and let's put them to work. we had a company in minnesota the build huge air conditioning systems. they're building the air-conditioning system to the two system for the new world trade center because there's such a big and successful company they are creditworthy so they are able to borrow money. what they do is they just lend it to their customers and say by our area. we are lending you this with almost no interest. by this unit and within three to five years it will pay for itself and then the rest of the profits is yours. why aren't we doing that. >> we know we can pay for our investments and energy efficiency. if we got $2 trillion sitting on the sidelines, let's do it. myths do it. but put people to work and that doesn't cost anybody money. it's just when when. they sell their product to industrial manufacturers, some kind of manufacturer. the land and they borrow the money, pay it back, paying back the mortgage, and they saved the money in three to five years and the rest is gravy. everybody wins. people put to work. on foreclosures, we've done this -- we haven't done this foreclosure thing at all and we've done that in and idiotic way and bypass the homeowners, office of homeowners had to get. if any of us go back to our districts or states, if we find people that are in the hamper program trying to deal with their servicers you can't get the same person on the phone twice. we should have someone in the treasury who's on your side of working for you. there's a million -- these are the things we should be doing and saying what's happening now in congress it is very frustrating. .. to get our kids educated. they didn't say, they did name and say to balance the budget. they said it is to win an election, to win the next election. this came out, this was immediately after the last election. i am sure sandy -- i know sandy didn't come here thinking like do you know what i'm going to do? i'm going to get elected and then i'm going to work on the next election. that is not what the american be for want from us. they want us to work together. they want us to work to improve their lives. they want us to work to make sure their kids are educated. they want to make sure that their jobs -- there are jobs. they want to make sure we have the american dream, and the american dream is to have a good place to live, make sure your kids are educated and that they have health care. and a secure retirement. that is the american dream. that is all of this. and you know by the way during the clinton expansion, medium income went up. poverty was diminished. made more millionaires than ever. good for them. we need a totally different approach that we need to not be playing high-stakes game of chicken with, in which not only is the american economy at stake but the global economy as well. so, i don't know -- i am sure i have repeated and i am sure bob has told many of the jokes that i did. [laughter] he is famous for that. >> nobody can do that. [laughter] >> so thank you all for being here. [applause] >> senator al franken, thank you. thank you very much. [applause] and thank you everybody for coming. it has been great. really appreciate it. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> now is the time to deal with these issues. if not now, when? >> the debt limit is the legal limit on borrowing by the federal government and since 1962 has been raised 74 times. the last time in february 2010. follow the process of raising the debt ceiling on line with the c-span video library. search, watch, clip and share. it is washington your way. >> tomorrow on "washington journal" we will be focusing on the debt talk starting with a discussion with representative shock of the top. the house agriculture and natural resources subcommittee held a joint hearing on the on e u.s. forest service draft lan which would dan horizontal drilling for oil and gas. witnesses included representatives from the interior department u.s. forest service, the oil and gas industry and environmental advocacy groups. this is an hour and 25 minutes. >> the committee hearing will come to order. the chairman notes the presence of a quorum which under natural resources committee rule 3e is to members. the natural resources subcommittee on energy and mineral resources and the agriculture subcommittee on conservation, energy and forestry are meeting today for a joint oversight hearing to hear testimony on challenges facing domestic oil and gas developmenf land management/u.s. forest service ban ban on horizontal drilling on federal lands. under natural resources committee rule for f opening statements are limited to the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee. in addition opening statements will be offered stay by the chairman and ranking member of the agriculture subcommittee and should they wish to participate the full committee chairmen and ranking members of both committees. in addition i ask unanimous consent to include any other members opening statements in the hearing record if submitted to the clerk at close of business today. hearing no objection, so ordered. i now recognize myself for five minutes for an opening statement. today's subcommittee is meeting to review the future of oil and gas development on federal lands and light up administration proposals to enact complete dams on horizontal drilling on federal lands. earlier this year the u.s. forest service of george washington national forest released a force plan that had the administration's preferred alternative as the bayan on horizontal drilling on more than 1 million acres of federal mineral estate. this plan has proposed by the administration with essentially closed the entire resource to energy development, eliminate a key priority in the multiple use mission of four service lands and further erode our efforts to generate domestic energy security. while efforts are proposed by the forest service to close these acres to domestic development of our own natural gas, the cove.lng terminal operated by dominion purchased nearly 9 million cubic feet of norwegian natural gas just this year. let me repeat that. wyler four service is working to close their american lands to all drilling, we are importing natural gas from norway to meet the domestic needs of virginia anry drilling there in the process of holding hearings in the west to review the policies for the use of fracturing on federal lands. hydraulic fracturing. the director was quoted earlier this year saying cole we have not seen evidence of any adverse effects as a result of the use of the chemicals that are part of that fracking technology unquote. this is important is a 2009 p. on them. >> alum am instruction manual says directional/horizontal drilling technology is increasing. the blm strongly supports this environmental best management practice as a means of providing substantial reductions and surface disturbance. and overall impacts of oil and gas development, i'm vogt. blm says horizontal drilling is an environmental best management practice and there is no evidence of any adverse effects and yet the policy of this administration now appears to be an outright starting with 1.1 million acres in virginia. the key questions for the committee today is, how did this policy proposal permit the forest service to reach this point? how to their land managers determined that the best policy is an outright ban on development and what does this portend for the future? americans are desperate for new jobs and today's jobs report says that our economy continues to struggle with only 18,000 new jobs created in june. that his wife make so little sense to ban domestic development here while we continue a dependence in the case of virginia and maryland on norwegian natural gas. the four service as the custodian of our land has an obligation to work within multiple use mission to serve the people of virginia and the united states by promoting the conservation of our resources which undeniably should include the development of appropriate oil and gas resources on federal lands. i look forward to hearing from our witnesses today and i now recognize the ranking member, representative holt of new jersey for five minutes for his opening statement. >> thank you, and will the subcommittee chair of the appropriation -- of the agriculture subcommittee chair and ranking comment? >> thank you mr. chairman. according to the title of today's hearing, there is a ban on horizontal drilling on federal lands imposed by this administration. not true. unfortunately, once again this is a hurrying title which amounts to a broad and misleading generalization, another case of taking an issue far out of -- to score political or ideological points. and that the so-called fan in question is actually one of seven possible alternatives of a draft, environmental impact statement issued as part of a required update of the land resource management plan for the george washington national forest so let me reiterate. no decisions have been made on whether or not to allow horizontal drilling in the george washington national forest. now it is appropriate that we have a hearing on it. all that has happened though is that the forest service is evaluating the environmental impacts of a number of alternatives as required by law and they should be looking at these alternatives. and we should be looking at them too. none of the alternatives discussed in the eis would change the existing practices of allowing traditional vertical oil and gas drilling in george washington forest, for the i forget how many acres that are already under lease, 12,000 acres already under lease. furthermore, none of the alternatives it appears are going to -- well, we will look at those alternatives. horizontal drilling is commonly used in association with hydraulic fracturing and recent investigations have raised questions about potential water quality hazards associated with fracking and there is currently a study of potential effects being conducted by the environmental protection agency. the counties of rocking ham, augusta and shenandoah virginia, three of the largest agricultural counties in the state have expressed their opposition to allowing horizontal drilling and the national forest because of concerns about water quality. the city of harrisonburg, stanton, those cities have passed similar resolutions of opposition. to underscore the caution about moving forward with hydraulic fracking the forest protects a number of river drew basins including the potomac river that divides drinking water for those of you here in washington d.c.. given a local concerns and the unanswered questions the forest service i believe is acting responsibly with their proposed eis and the procedure associated with it. while we wait for the facts to be assembled, which at that point i would want to make, and even if the forest service were eventually to decide to prohibit horizontal drilling in the george washington forest it should be based on facts. and, we know it would not be a permanent ban. the forest service has made it clear that if natural gas can be accessed in nearby areas and private lands without adverse impacts to water quality, the service should consider and reconsider the issue. but banned or permitted, the decision should be based on evidence. the distortion in the title of today's hearing makes me wonder how grounded in evidence this discussion will be. now in the last 20 years natural gas development on federal lands has more than doubled from 1.2 trillion cubic feet 20 years ago to about 3 trillion cubic feet last year. moreover, according to the bureau of land management 90% of the nuke natural gas wells on public lands employ hydraulic fracturing. so overall, u.s. natural gas production is at its highest level ever. you know, the plans for terminals to import liquefied natural gas are being turned around because it is likely that there will be for as far as we can see, exports of natural gas. so, those are the facts as i see them. i hope that we will restrict this hearing to wherever possible evidence and facts. i:the chairman. >> thank you. i now recognize the number from pennsylvania a member of the subcommittee and this chairman of the subcommittee on energy and forestry mr. thompson for five minutes for his opening statements. >> thank you chairman lamborn, i appreciate your help and interest in holding this important hearing. since its inception the national or system has been intended for multiple use. this includes recreation tourism and yes, mineral extraction such as oil, gas and coal. for an example i don't have to look further than allegany natural force which is in the fifth district of pennsylvania which i'm privileged to represent. the oil and she was born there 150 years ago with the drake well and since its founding 64 years later in 1923, oil and gas production is continued in the nearby allegheny national forest. some semel have you believe natural resource production whether there's oil, gas coler temper and environmental stewardship are mutually exclusive. nothing could be further from the truth and for those who think otherwise i certainly invite them to pennsylvania and allegheny national forest to see for themselves. we have successfully produce oil gas and timber for decades while protecting our environment. in fact we boast of having the finest hardwoods in the world and because of their value i believe that the anf is one of the few perhaps the only national forest that actually makes money for the forest service. because we are blessed with abundant natural resources pennsylvania is again returning to its energy rich with the production of natural gas from the marcellus field which many experts feel is the largest gas in the world. the allegheny national forest is part of that. or modern technology especially horizontal drilling and hydraulic rack shrink, production of oil and natural gas from our many regions are now possible. fracturing and no horizontal drilling means no natural gas or oil from shale and no energy security. the marcellus is progress upwards of 100,000 jobs to pennsylvania alone. significant new tax revenues to the state and over $200 million to build new roads. none of that with taxpayer dollars and a manageable amount of natural gas in the country. after only four years of production and being less than 10% developed the marcellus has provided the the northeast united states with over 10% of its natural gas. aside from the jobs both direct and indirect in the private and public revenue it creates the shale boom is stabilizing natural gas markets in the united states. access to affordable natural gas are we impacts consumers because the production of shale gas brought by the horizontal drilling, or citizens can afford to heat their homes is wonder and the price of many goods produced from natural gas so no increase the cost because of gas prices. natural gas which sold four years ago for a record price of over $13 per 1000 cubic feet has been stabilized around $4.50. dow chemical and other petrochemical companies were set to move offshore a few years ago because of high and unsustainable natural gas prices in the united states. forcelli because of our ability to produce shale gas through a horizontal drilling and hyperfracturing instead of moving offshore and dell is planning to expand operations in the united states. jobs. make no mistake are affordable and predictable natural gas prices are a direct result of our ability to produce it from horizontal drilling and hyperfracturing. without a doubt development will have its challenges and i'm convinced that we can meet these challenges and do it effectively as we have for decades. knowing of our need for affordable unreliable energy which we are blessed with in this country i'm extremely concerned about the forest service placing a moratorium on applications for permits to drill any horizontal well and associated hydraulic fracturing end quote. not only does this underlined the multiple use but it also comes at a time when we are becoming more dependent on foreign sources and when world energy consumption continues to increase. while the federal government continues to stymie development of our own resources. let's not forget that oil gas colin all minerals on federal lands are not owned by the forest service but by the citizens of our country and would greatly benefit from their production. any action to prevent the development should be based on sound science in fact, not philosophy and not political agendas. the basic question i have regarding the decision by the department of agriculture and the four service to place a moratorium on even processing it permit to drill utilizing hydraulic drilling and hydraulic fracturing is when and why did that come to the conclusion -- they come to the conclusion these processes should be banned in the forest? did they perform environmental and economic analysis? did they have any evidence of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing our inherent threats to the force human health or our water supply? it appears that for service four service has no credible reason for moving in this direction. they beowulf % spacex for their proposed moratorium. i want to tinker with mrs. on the first panel director abby, deputy director holtrop and supervisor hyzer. at look forward to your testimonies and the opportunity to have a productive dialogue. thank you mr. chairman. >> thank you. i recognize the gentleman from pennsylvania and the ranking member of the subcommittee on conservation and energy in forestry mr. hold for five minutes. >> i would like to take our witnesses and guests for being here this morning. in times of global economic instability is important at the united states continue to move toward a secure energy future that what long-lasting economic benefits. this must include safe and responsible for mystic oil and natural gas production as part of a broad energy portfolio. while there is currently no dan or moratorium on horizontal drilling on federal as a draft management plan by the four service proposes to not allow drilling on a parcel of land in the george washington forced in virginia and west virginia. following normal process for issuance of any force management plan this draft proposal is currently available for public comment and still open for revision. drilling occurring on a public land every day in over 5 million acres of national forest land currently leased for oil gas coal and phosphate mining. both the four service in and improve land management have responsibilities related to the approval of oil and gas lease. though the four service has the option to veto a plan, more than 7200 applications for permits to drill on public lands and indian lands are expected to be processed this year by d. l. m., up from approximately 5000 in 2010. america's public lands and their resources contributed more than 112 lien dollars to the u.s. economy and supported more than a half-million jobs in 2010. the bulk of which game for management of mineral resources and recreation. the public land management at blm and the four service or some other nations greatest assets both environmentally and economically. i'm hopeful that these agencies realize the economic importance of u.s. energy production. the natural gas industry has safely and responsibly been operating on taxpayer owned land for years. this was possible production of domestic fuel creates tens of thousands of jobs, raises more revenue each year for american taxpayers than it spends and help stimulate investment innovation by businesses. i look forward to today's expert testimony in the opportunity to listen, learn and question those at the forefront of this important issue. thank you mr. chairman. >> thank you. has each of the chairman and ranking members of the full q&a peer they will be given an opportunity to make an open statement so i but now with nice announcement from massachusetts and ranking member of the committee on natural resources, mr. markey for five minutes for an opening statement. >> thank you mr. chairman very much. recent advancements in drilling technologies have unlocked natural gas supplies in shale and other conventional formations across the country. leading to a significant expansion of natural gas production, including on blm manage public lands. currently 90% of all new wells on public lands are hydraulic we fractured. to explain the hydraulic fracturing process, the energy corporation came up with a cartoon coloring book that follows the friendly fracas or is named -- terry through the natural gas drilling process. the lovable dinosaur playfully promotes the benefits of natural gas and paints a picture of a magical world filled with smiling rocks and grinning animals. the problem is that, unless you are a fracas soros, this world does not exists. in fact, the word talisman means lucky charm, which is what everyone else will need if you listen to him. in the absence of real safety procedures put in place, everyone will need a lucky charm, an object with magical powers and i understand why you would name your corporation that but i don't think we could case our public health and safety laws upon the premise. poor communities around this country the expansion of natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing has meant contamination of water supplies, loss of property value, it deteriorating health conditions dead livestock and destruction of christine forest and agricultural lands. a recent series of investigative reports in "the new york times" have highlighted some of the potential risks of natural gas drilling and inconsistent efforts to regulate this booming industry. for example the times reported that wastewater from hydraulic fracture dwells is contaminated with heavy toxic metals, highly corrosive salts, kiss and causing chemicals such as benzene and radioactive elements. large amount of his wastewater is disposed in sewage cheybenne plans that are not capable of removing the contaminants. this wastewater discharge can also enter into local waterways and the equipment failure can cause tens of thousands of gallons of chemical laced water to spew out of the well and into nearby creeks. these fluids are so toxic that a study by forest service researchers published earlier this week found that when fracturing fluids were spilled in the barge they killed off plans and trees in the area. without proper oversight, the disposal of drilling wastewater poses threats to agricultural lands, aquatic life and human health. particularly when public drinking water systems rely on waterways where waste is being discharge. to further cloud the problem, the oil and gas industry enjoys exemptions or exclusions in key parts of at least seven of the 15 major federal requirements of the laws designed to protect public health, air and water including the safe drinking water act and the clean water act. many of these companies have also refused to disclose the contents of their fracturing fluids. a century ago, when congressman weeks of massachusetts guided into law the landmark legislation that allowed the lands to make up some of -- the george washington national forest to be purchased from private individuals, this protected forest land and habitat for hundreds of animals, which drives tourism for the local economy and provides a safe source of drinking water to almost 300,000 local residents. even more so, although this is located in virginia, protects a source the source of water that needs our faucets right here in washington d.c.. while horizontal drilling has never occurred in the george washington national forest, expansion of these technologies without adequate safety and oversight could threaten natural resources and have the potential to turn stretches of forest into life was dunes, an environment that would only support the imaginary frakasaurus. while the discovery of new gas resources creates a domestic energy and economic opportunity and we should try to capture that economic opportunity, we must also ensure that the sex duration and production of natural gas is safely and responsibly and leaves us with a forceful of trees for another century and not a chemical wasteland. i thank you. >> thank you. we will now hear from our witnesses. i would like to invite for the honorable rob abbey director of the bureau of land management, the honorable joel holtrop, accompanied by mr. tony ferguson, director of the mineral and geology management usda forest service and ms. maureen hyzer forest supervisor of the jefferson national forest. thank you offer being here. like all our witnesses your written testimony will appear in full in the in the end hearing record so i ask you keep your oral records to five minutes under committee rule for a minute. microphones are not automatic so you need to turn a month when you are ready to begin talking. i also want to explain how the timing lights work. when you begin the clerk will start the clock and a green light will appear after four minutes. yellow light will appear in after five minutes the red light comes on. at that point i would ask you to conclude. mr. abbey you may begin. thank you corp. reading here. >> chairman and members of the committee it is minor to appear for the members here and talk about the blm's role and responsible development of oil and gas resources from our public lands in the federal onshore mineral estate. because there is no blm ban on directional drilling my testimony today is intended to provide an overview of our oil and gas leasing program and policies which include implementing leasing reforms, planning for development in the national petroleum reserve in a lasko, continuing timely processing of drilling permits, improving inspection enforcement and production accountability and reviewing hydraulic fracturing policies and practices. secretary of interior salazar has emphasized as we move towards the new energy front here conventional energy resources from blm manage public lands will continue to play a critical role in meeting the nation's energy needs. facilitating the efficient responsible development of domestic oil and gas resources, is part of this administration's broad energy strategy that will protect consumers help reduce our dependence on foreign oil, create well-paying jobs and provide revenues and economic it to be the two communities. in fiscal year 2010, more than 114 million barrels of oil were produced from the blm management role state, the most sense 1997. also in 2010 the nearly 3 trillion cubic date of natural gas produced on public lands made it the second-most second most productive year on record. federal oil and gas royalties in 2010 exceeded 2.5 lien dollars, half of which were paid directly to the states where the development occurred. leasing reforms at the bureau of land management put in place in may of 2010 established an orderly open environmentally sound process for developing oil and gas resources on public lands. these reforms focused on making oil and gas leasing more predictable, increasing certainty for stakeholders including industry, and restoring needed talent with but a comprehensive upfront analysis added to the process. in the 23 million-acre national petroleum reserve in alaska that blm has an active leasing program underway. over 1.6 million acres are currently under lease in that area. that blm has suffered six lease sales in the npra over the last 12 years. we plan to hold the lease a lease sale in december 2011 and each year thereafter. for careful planning that blm's leasing program in the national petroleum reserve in alaska insures that exploration and development of this oil and natural gas resource is done in a manner that protects wildlife and habitat and honors the subsistence valued by alaskan natives in rural resident. the blm continues processing applications from industry for permits to drill federal and indian lands. so far this year that blm received over 2600 applications for permits to drill and processed over 2800. we recognize oil and gas development is a market-driven activity. is industries choice as to when or whether to start drilling a well within the two-year two year period after an application for drilling has been approved. as of june 1 come industry has not yet started drilling on nearly 7100 applications for permits to drill that authority been approved by the bureau of land management. to improve inspection enforcement and production accountability will develop a strong certification program for all of our oil and gas field inspectors. personnel completed over 31,000 inspections in fiscal year 2010. these inspections insured that lessees meet environmental and safety requirements and that the reported oil and gas volumes match the actual production on the ground. recently we have seen increasing interest in the use of hydraulic fracturing techniques to stimulate natural gas production. that blm is particularly engaging the public, state and industry on this issue. in april of 2011 that blm held a series of regional public forums on use of hydraulic fracturing. over 600 members of the public participated in these farms. consistent with with the grammar presented by the blueprint for secure energy future that blm is working to ensure that potential oil and natural gas development on our public lands is realized. mr. chairman again is a pleasure for me to be here and i would be happy to answer any questions that the members may have. >> thank you for your testimony. we would like to now hear from the next witness, mr. holtrop. >> thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony and challenges facing domestic oil and gas development. accompanying me today as is tony ferguson our director of mineral and geology management and maureen hyzer supervisor of the jefferson national forest. to begin, i want to be clear, the u.s. forest service has no policy nor do we have any plans to develop any policy to ban horizontal drilling in the associated hydraulic fracturing. i also want to emphasize that forest plans are plans based on local community concerns which we take very seriously. before service is committed to doing our part to contribute to the nation's energy goals while at the same time protecting the landscapes of watersheds that are precious to so many. before service in the blm more closely on managing and delivering the mineral and energy programs in the united states. the agencies follow congressionally alvarez mandates that allow for the responsible development of domestic energy and mineral resources. generally speaking the forest service well that blm manages the subsurface. that blm issues leases for expiration and development of energy minerals after receiving content from the forest service for leasing those national forest system lands. before service bases its decision on whether to consent to leasing and guidance provided in our forest plans. they are developed in an open process, gathering input from local and state government interest groups and private citizens. in a forest planning process the agency strive to balance resource development with protecting the landscapes and watersheds that communities depend upon. the current oil and gas production in our poor system lands a sizable. 16.7 million barrels of oil and 194 million cubic feet of natural gas were produced in 2010 from almost 3200 federal national forest system lands. in addition there are almost 12,800 additional wells located on national forest system lands where the subsurface is privately owned the majority of which are located on the allegheny natural forest in pennsylvania. in fiscal year 2010, production from federal laws alone generated an estimated $361 million in payments to the u.s. treasury. a large portion of his revenues returned to states and counties. before service is committed to providing these energy resources and their benefits to the american people in a way that is consistent with our mission to safeguard the health diversity and productivity of her nation's forests draft plans. we understand that some members of the sub committee are concerned about the draft force plan for the george washington national forest and northern virginia and western virginia that proposes several options for public comment one of which is the preferred option that provides for oil and gas leasing that would prohibit horizontal drilling and associated hydraulic fracturing in certain areas of the forest. this draft plan includes several alternatives which would allow for horizontal drilling. we will carefully consider all public comments prior to the regional forest making a final decision in the george washington national forest plan. before service is accepting comments on the draft force plan through september 1. as with all our forest lands this plan is play specific de son particular circumstances of the george washington national forest and does not represent a broader policy with regard to hydraulic rack shrink. there are no forest service discussions are efforts underway to develop a national policy to ban horizontal drilling. on the contrary, the administration believes that the recent technological advances that allowed industry to access abundant reserves of natural gas particularly from shale formations provide enormous potential benefits to the country. as long as it is done in a way that protects public health and the environment. environmental protection agency is currently studying potential impacts to water resources from hydraulic fracturing at a subcommittee of the secretary of secretary of energy advisory board is developing recommendations on practices and steps that can be taken to improve the safety and environmental performance of shale extraction. before service will move forward to allow the safe and responsible development of domestic oil and gas resources consistent with the expert recommendations from these and other efforts. thank you for the opportunity to provide information about the oil and gas program on the national forest and clarify the situation relating to horizontal drilling and associated hydraulic rack shrink. i look or to answer any questions you may have. >> thank you both for your testimony. a housekeeping note, we will soon be going to the floor as they call votes and it will be a lengthy series of votes, so in that time happens, i will remind everyone that we will have to leave and i will set a time for us to come back hopefully getting some certainty for everyone's schedule who are here today, especially those of you who are witnesses. in fact they have just called votes. i think we have time to do the first couple of sets of questions for approximately 10 minutes. two sets of five-minute questions. then we are going to recess the subcommittee and they will set a time for coming back so thank you very patients. i wish this didn't happen but they don't have any control over that part of our schedule. ms. hyzer, as we all read this morning, oh god and by the way each member will be the nice for five and is for questions and -- ms. hyzer is we ever this morning our national unemployment rate unfortunately has risen to 9.2% in jan is only 18,000 jobs generated nationwide last month. when you decided to include a horizontal drilling ban in your draft force plan did you consult with the commonwealth of virginia or anyone else for that matter on the impact that would have on existing and future job growth in the energy development sector? >> congressman first of all i would like to thank you for asking me to this hearing and giving me the opportunity to answer questions about the force plan. we are in a draft comment period and i want to let you know that the testimony and statements that are made today, the transcript will be taken into consideration and part of the record. in answer to your question, early on we understood and believed that energy development was very important virginia. and that is why we decided to go ahead and address the need to make lands available for oil and gas leasing so it was a very important consideration for us. >> specifically i ask, did job growth or job creation factor in at all to your decision-making process thus far? >> we understood the relationship of energy development and jobs, yes. >> so you are saying he did take that into account? >> will continue to take that into account and we welcome additional information on this subject through the comment period that we can take into account the final decision. >> okay. did you seek to find out if there was any horizontal drilling or hydraulic fracturing going on in any nearby public lands that may have been done in a safe and proper menu -- manner? >> in virginia there has yet to be in a hydraulic fracturing done in the marcelle shale in virginia so we did not have information available as to what the impact would be. >> and anywhere else in the country, even farther distances away that you looked at -- what i think is a good safety record of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling? >> this is a local based plan so we focused our analysis and their information gathering on virginia and that is what our focus was. a community-based plan. >> thank you. chief holtrop the development of the marcellus shale added over 44,000 new jobs in pennsylvania, 389 million in state and local tax revenue, over $1 billion in federal tax revenue and nearly $4 billion in value-added to the states economy. similarly in west virginia be created over 13,000 new jobs and contributed over 220 million in federal state and local tax revenue and almost a billion dollars added to the states economy. when proposing possible job-killing regulations or ministry of actions, do you do a cost-benefit dialysis on the outcomes of local job growth and revenues? >> we do take into account the economic impacts and implications of decisions that we make. again, would like to stress there have been no decisions made in the george washington national forest plan. is a draft that is open for public comment at this time. but in the analysis of that or any other force plan process that we go through, yes and the things we take into account are the economic opportunities that are presented by -- opportunities to do resource extraction are recreational opportunities. that is one of the things we take into account just as we take into account the environmental consequences of the concerns over the use of water or the concerns with water etc.. one of the things i think another demonstration of the importance of the jobs and economics is in the draft force plan for the george washington, the proposal is to open nearly a million acres of the george washington national forest to oil and gas leasing. >> okay, thank you. at this point i will yield back the remaining time and i will recognize the ranking member for any questions you may have for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman. mr. abbey let me begin with you. much of the concern about hydraulic fracturing fluids have related to the types of chemicals that are pumped into the ground and then come back out of the ground, sometimes with added contaminants, including naturally occurring radioactive materials. it has been reported that wastewater from hydraulic fracture dwells in pennsylvania and west virginia have been sent to sewage plants that were not able to remove the contaminants, even though the levels were as high as 2000 times at epa's drinking water standards. and, then radioactive water was released into waterways as it was reported. as a requirement for drilling permits on federal lands, does the blm require assurance that radioactive wastewater will not be dumped into rivers or onto public lands? >> congressman holt, certainly water management is a big concern for all of us when we are addressing this. >> specifically radioactivity. >> the blm management issues are based upon the applicant being able to produce a permanent from the authorizing local community or the operating officials. >> so it goes to the state but not of blm criteria? >> exactly. >> is a requirement for drilling permits does the bureau require radiological monitoring of drilling wastes for protection of either the public or the workers? >> again we would differ back to the states. our local government officials have that responsibility. >> in light of recent developments do you plan to revise your regulations jointure that drilling wastes are handled in a manner that doesn't lead to public or worker exposures to radioactivity? radioactivity? >> our current regulations addressing fracturing on public lands in federal mineral to 30 years old. we are currently reviewing those regulations to determine what if any changes we would like to make an pursue any rulemaking that may be required. >> i hope you pursue that regularly because fracturing his been used for decades on a small scale but on this scale, this is nailed. so i hope you will pursue that. mr. holt, -- holtrop, nepa, one of the best features of the environmental protection law is, it provides for american citizens to have input into the planning process, which was something that was lacking in previous decades. how does the forest service engage local stakeholders in the planning process and in particular i'm interested in the consideration that you are talking about, economic considerations. i am particularly interested in the consideration of agricultural jobs. are you getting good input on that aspect? and let me interrupt you for just a moment. in my opening statement i commented that several agriculturally intensive counties had issued public objections. >> the process that the george washington national forest has gone through as well as the process that occurs across the country during these forest planning processes is very much as you indicated, a public process and we consider that one of the real positive benefits and the approach we take to get that type of input. in the case of the george washington national forest, we did have public meetings throughout the area, the communities affected and interested in the george washington. there are letters that we have received from three of the counties in george washington and two cities associated with the george washington, all requesting that the forest service take a hard look at or in some cases asking us to not allow horizontal drilling or hydraulic fracturing etc.. so taking those into account is one of those, not the only consideration but certainly one of the considerations that we would expect our local managers to do as they are determining what is the right course of action on a forest planning process. >> just a quick question mr. abbey. under the mineral leasing act, is it correct that no gas deposit shall be leased except with the consent of the surface managing agency? >> that is true and that would be come in the case of george washington would be the --. >> thank you very much. >> thank you mr. ranking member and we now will be in recess until 12:30. i don't have a crystal ball to know exactly when our vote series will finish. it is a lengthy those series. the good news, and is the only one of the dave to give certainty for all of you who came here, and we appreciate it, to give your testimony and along with the other concerned citizens we thought it would be good to give a time certain for reconvening so that you will know we won't be here anytime before that so we will reconvene at 12:30 in the subcommittee will now be in recess. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> we did finish the lengthy vote series and we are ready to get back into this important topic. the first panel is still seated and we appreciate you being here. we will get to the second panelists in this we can and the next set of questions for up to five minutes is with represented thompson of pennsylvania. >> thank you chairman lamborn. appreciate your assistance in coordinating this hearing. first of all i want to ask permission and submit to the record permission to submit for the record and peace of mind for the ranking member of the natural resource committee and made some remarks regarding the radioactivity in the region, regarding arcella shale and horizontal drilling. this is an article june 21, 2011 that reports on the mark study that was done by the department of environmental protection and pennsylvania that showed no radioactive contaminants or water used and produced so in western pennsylvania where we do a lot of horizontal drilling. so i would like to submit that to the record with her permission. >> without objection, so ordered. i want to thank the panel 1 of all for being here and your testimony. i want to start with mr. holtrop with the poor service. mr. holtrop on page one of her testimony you state that the u.s. forest service has no policy nor do we have any plans to develop any policy to ban horizontal drilling and the associated hydraulic fracturing. i look for yes or no answer in the following questions. does the forest service have a draft dated 2011 that states quote the service management agency parentheses usda -- for service, has a moratorium on processing service used plan of operations on an application forum permit to drill for any horizontal well and associated hydraulic rack sharing. the moratorium would end may 1, 2013. is that correct that exists? >> could you tell me what the title of the dis is? >> i sure can. i am reading it from the federal oil and gas leasing stipulations draft eis. george washington national forest april 2011. and section 1, my quote comes from section 1, very calm and in the document. horizontal drilling moratorium stipulation. >> so is this the george washington forest plan document that you are referring to? >> george washington is noted on here in the heading. >> so what that is, it's an alternative in our draft forest plan among several alternatives that we are considering. >> how do you -- trying to figure out in my own mind, so this was in an internal exercise. for something that was a proposal being considered and yet in your testimony you said nor do we have any plans to develop any policy. >> correct. what i am referring to, there is no policy that the title of the hearing had to do with a policy on banning forest service ban on horizontal drilling on federal lands. my statement was intended to assure you that there is no intend for us to develop a policy nationwide broadly that, what we are talking about on the george washington is a very site-specific locally driven and also says to the range of alternatives that we are looking for on george washington. >> okay. it still sounds contradicting. i did take your -- from your opening custody and mr. abbey's the frankly hydraulic fracturing is something that is embraced and i just find this helpful. even the consideration of this, which really is developing a policy, developing alternatives for policy. you are in the process of developing which really contradicts your testimony. the potential for moratorium was prompted by a specific occurrence in the national forest of environmental degradation or damage from horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. that is what i'm assuming. were environmental and economic assessments prompting the proposed moratorium proposal or options or whatever we want to call at? >> yes. there's environmental analysis and there has been public input. there's a look at all the available science as we had available to us to lead to the range of alternatives that we are looking at her go. >> so was, based on the science, there was actually in evidence of environmental damage from horizontal drilling and horizontal fracturing? >> the concerns had to do with the potential, whether they would possibly be potential effects on both service water and groundwater resources and there was concern over what might be the chemical makeup of the material following the use for hydrofracturing. and there is a great deal of public input from a lot of interest asking us to take a good hard look at this issue so we are trying to be responsive to the public's request for us to do. >> i understand public input and i appreciate the forest service but my question is what does the data show? i mean the forest service is involved in providing resources, so obviously oil and natural gas, there's a lot of pumped out of the allegheny natural forest. is their data? is there a track record? is there establish environmental damage and degradation that you had an in documentation or were these concerns of. >> i think probably the best way of answering that is, as we are looking at the whole range of resource values that we have, that we are responsible for, that there were concerns that were raised that we felt were important for us to consider the whole range of alternatives that we ought to look at. we have every intention of using whatever data is available to us if that science tells us that this can operate safely with public health and resource values accounted for it in that is the determination we intend to make her go i think what we have with national forest across the united states, we have a recognition that there are great energy values on our national forest system that are great other values as well and there's not going to be one solution to each one of those situations that is going to be the right solution. we are going to continue to look at all the resource values and all the opportunities that come associated with those. >> i am just asking and i would ask actually if you would forward it to my office. i'm looking for the facts in terms of whether there has been environmental degradation or suspect you lay them.

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