Transcripts For CSPAN2 Capital News Today 20120412

of the cold war but informed catch-22 succumbing out one and did it kind of caught in this way, and by the thai amihai mike nichols came out in 1970 vietnam was a lost cause, so the book was bracketed by these dates. if this is where you want as i reread it if the book is seeking in a way to make congress a virtue of i'm going to reduce a couple of sentences from this handsomely reissued book and absolutely sterling introduction but there's an appendix in the back with some fascinating excerpt about catch-22. this is one by philip, an english man the son of a great historian, and says if catch-22 has any continuous seam it lies in the thai year less efforts of the house. an american hero to evade combat duties and defends almost ought moral obligations of men to be physical towards and as pointed out they almost always involved others in their senseless and unfeeling cooperation with of the forces of war the man who has the courage of tariffs physical cowardice is the only kind of man who will eventually make war and possible by refusing to play any part in it at all. i think it's sort of possible to look at mel phill's famous character whose line was i prefer not to. >> do you think the book is really about cowardice, violence or total anti-war mac? >> just to comment on what was said, the real model is a distance and the elite which is the greatest book ever written except for catch-22 -- [laughter] is this story. the story of a meaningless war for no reason and the survivor is as he is always and he gets away. but what do i think it's about? i haven't the faintest. >> tell us what you think it's about to be disconnected on one subject and as i said before i think it's on the same subject as his next book something happened which is set in an office in the family as opposed to a war plant that subject i think is what dominated the anxiety. he was scared, and something was going to happen, in the one book the metaphor and the other book the metaphor is the normal man's working life, but the tall and they are about is the same. he knows something terrible is going to happen, and catch-22 is trying to make sure it doesn't happen, and something happened is about knowing it's going to happen and then it happens but that is the subject as far as i am concerned in the brilliant metaphors, and i think these were the internal pressures that have led to these books. >> do you think this is his best book? >> it's about something that happened which i love as much. that's something that's developed over the years. i can't forget something happened. i can't get over that, i can't even talk about. they have some things in common for instance he has to .5 children. one of the miss disturbed -- them is disturbed. when you said what's catch-22 about, when you think the word about kings and queens and peddling the only resource families had which is they're pretty girls and the novel about adultery because he could have a mother affair in a town and no one would know it. and then i think this is not official they became about and if anything is one of the many things of catch-22 it is the hatred of authority and the officers or the most heated people in the book, and distorted to work on most and they are all our pals sitting at different tables not invited to things. we hated them. they were officers, but i think when you think he did catch-22 and something happened he was the opposite of what he appeared to be. he was a complex, sophisticated, elegant man masquerading as an ordinary guy and they thought he found the manuscript of the soldier because they couldn't see the person who had written the book. but over time of course there was only the person that had written the book. estimate he was different things at different times. i first met him in the 1950's which was three years before the book was finished and published and he was not the guy you met. first of all, she was working as an admin come he was the guy in the gray suit just before the book came out his hair was short and he was correct. he wasn't overflowing and he was nervous. this was his first book. now i'm talking about with me and my colleagues he was dealing with them. it took a little while, and of course you can't be in a proper editorial relationship unless the two of you end up, but he was like the guy something happened. we know it was true he was in the air force but we don't really realize something happened, too said it was true to him and the change came when the catch was published and hailed by those that field and became more and more of a success he blossomed he took the symbol chollet of being a success. he just loved it and he wasn't embarrassed. i'm director of catch-22. [laughter] >> kurson anecdote i can't resist telling and it's from tracie dirty's very fun biography published about a month ago called just one catch. anything written about joe inevitably has to have the word catch, but the reach of this novel was truly universal even though we didn't hit "the new york times" best-seller list until mcnichols made it into a movie nine years later at which point it sold 1 million copies in six weeks and among his many admirers hot the british philosopher and the ultimate crime for peace dying better read than dead. you must come out and visit me. and joel rives and some knocks on the door and announces where upon they fly into a rage and began screaming at them saying go away, get out of here, bartleman, and in the car he is trembling and looking for the regular shift when bertram russell at this point his butler came running out and said no, no, no, it's okay we thought you were edward teller. [laughter] >> we are going to turn the question to the audience in one minute. we have a final question from me and that is when joe rode catch-22 i think this is correct he was writing one from the cuckoo's nest and carol was written on the road and were riding the cat's cradle. we are the silent generation, we didn't protest. something was bubbling. >> it had to do with the war. >> humanitarian award? >> it had to do with the experience of world war ii and the holocaust. how do you deal with all this stuff and cope with it in one jewish way the humor, not that they were all jewish but was in the air. joe was probably preeminent among them. do you think that his fear and anxiety and what you are describing before cannot of holocaust? >> i think they can out of him. estimate the jewish neurosis. >> we are not neurotic, we are just accurate. [applause] >> don't you want to see the audience? can we have some light so we can see how beautiful everybody is? we would like to invite you if he would like to raise your hand and shout out as loudly as you can. >> the ones behind you. >> i read the playboy interview with heller when it came out, and the interviewer said something about realizing the last name in germany was shithead and he said that's one of two things in the novel i kind of slipped in there. what's the other one? >> don't ask me, and i wouldn't buy that at face value, either. >> i bought it. >> don't believe everything you read. >> you want to step up to the mic? >> i was just wondering if you could tell some stories about working with alan on the set. >> he was an actor, but we had a very difficult schedule because we depended entirely, we had a genius director of photography and he decided they would shoot into the light that meant basically from two to 4:30 every day you could get ready week that a signature look at 2:30, or four. >> we thought it would be $11 million. that's what was expensive in those days. we were in mexico for what seemed like years, and no actor could go away because we didn't know when the weather would be just right, so some people stayed there for months waiting for their seen, and he always stayed there because he was in every and did nothing but bitch. [laughter] and he thought he was a terrible. i wrote him a letter and i said you know, you have no idea how good you are at this. let me send it to you. there's a new dvd. look at it. you're great. and he wrote me a very nice letter afterwards and said he couldn't quite see himself the way i do but he sees what i mean about the whole thing. >> how did you get that cash i don't think there was a terrific actor alive that wasn't in the movie at that point. >> they all wanted to be in it. everybody loved catch-22. we had done the graduate together and we were it for those 15 minutes, they were the 15 managed to become minutes in which we started. i remember a strange little guy who came to addition and was a little hard to hear him but i thought as he read one or two characters this is interesting we have a great actor here and when he was through i said well, actually you can have any part you want. it was held pacino. [laughter] and he said that's wonderful. let me get back to you but never got back. he could have been a star. [laughter] it's that little twist of faith. i asked him years later we did a lot together it seemed like and he said i was busy trying not to go crazy. he said i could never have done catch-22 which is what marlon brando said, but what it feels like when you were the king and first came to hollywood how do i know i spent all my time trying not to go crazy, and there it is. every one of the actors who became a friend, perkins was a dear friend and richard benjamin -- we stayed friends for the rest of our lives like being in camp together. >> prison camp >> i've been thinking about the kaleidoscopic structure. i've been thinking about the kaleidoscopic structure of the book and a cyclical and the turning and thinking about how it is a lot like the psyche of a person at war, and i was wondering after reading some of the back matter in the book about jim webb talking about how the book affected him and the soldiers were reading it in bunkers. i'm wondering if any of the soldiers reached out to heller to think and perhaps for capturing that kind of psychological experience. >> i'm going to interject one thing and then maybe you can answer this. do you know -- i'm not sure that it's required reading that it's on the reading list of the air force academy. >> chris, did they ever talk to you about that. >> no. may i gloss a little bit on jim webb and the marvelous introduction i remember the appreciation of joe heller certainly after he died and was written after jim webb the u.s. senator from virginia. there were the two most highly decorated marine platoon leaders in vietnam were jim webb and ollie north jim wrote a novel that is still fond of as one of the great war novels come a very different cup of tea status the right expression from catch-22 called field of fire, and jim royte this appreciation in "the wall street journal" and its quoted at some length in the introduction, and he recounts being in the ninth circle of hell coming he and his platoon has been taking terrible casualties. he said their insides were crawling with hookworms and bad water we had been drinking, and in the midst of this blood and misery and death he hears someone shouting in this foxhole and saying you've got to read this, you've got to read this, and it is a tattered copy of catch-22, and he had read the book of growing up as an air force brat on the base in nebraska but he said he devoured it, his men were passing it around and he said it didn't matter to me at all that i was reading a book that -- and these are his words, it was protesting the very war i was fighting. the book had been written in 1961 and we are now and probably 66, 67. but he said what mattered is that i had found a soul mate, someone who understood. and jim webb is a very tough customer. the book that can reach jim webb and bertram russell partly explains why it's sold 10 million copies since 1961, although mcnichols can take credit as we know for at least a million of those. you know, i just want to add one thing to the discussions. we all talk about it as if the enemy in the war but let's also remember this is an anticapitalist book, and a lot of the satire this is not about war, this is about the question. [applause] >> can i tell little anecdote about joe heller? >> right into the microphone. >> linus dr. richard and i had the honor to take care of. richard said it's seen by most and is already experienced by most patience. but first i want to make one comment. i think the remark about -- i met joe heller one day, and having met him i commented i read his book and so forth and he said could you help me, you are a doctor command by the i never realized he to doctors because his father died of a screw the operation by doctor and nobody knew that. his father drove a bakery truck or something like that in coney island, and he said my wife has a skin lesion on her breast. can you tell me what it is and help me. so for people got up and held up a beach towels making some sort of a kind of alcove where i was able to lower the dating scene and examine her left breast which had ringworm and i prescribed the appropriate treatment and then the next day he appeared on the beach with a copy of catch-22 because she asked before give me a copy of your book. and described in the bud the medical services rendered on such and such. [laughter] and i still have a copy of the books but the second thing is i'm responsible for him partly reading his second wife because she was tonners that took care of him during his desperate about where he was paralyzed in my brother's apartment one weekend morning not able to bend down and tied his shoes or to talk or swallow and my brother said you have the syndrome and he had never seen a case before and he called a neurologist who also agreed, and was a long story but i just thought i would tell you how i met joseph heller. [applause] >> were you friends with him when he was suffering? can you tell us about that? >> no, i wasn't. valerie could tell us. she was there. i was with him when he was suffering through life. [laughter] but, you know, what was extraordinary to me was here is a guy that was no stranger to tragedy. he just told us about how he lost his father. there was another death, perhaps a beloved selling. 60 combat missions in world war ii and salles lots of his friends get killed. >> he knew that things are going to happen and they did. >> he has a devastating illness and it wasn't clear that he would survive but he was basically in some kind of an iron lung for nearly a year and then he had a very anguished and some time of public divorce, so this was a guy that knew winston churchill's if you are going through hell, keep coming. joe kept going, it was surprising to me he wrote with a joyous personality he was. he loved life. he loved food and especially when you were paying for it. [laughter] he had an awful lot of july for a guy that had seen all this stuff. >> should we go to the next question? >> this is probably a question for anyone who has an opinion, but i was wondering why do you think it was that there was such an almost famously long period of time after publishing catch-22 before something happened in the next book came out, and then after something happened came out it seemed like he was bringing up books with some frequency. >> there are many possible answers to that, and i don't know that i have any. first of all come in the beginning he was having too much fun being a the author of catch-22. he wasn't one of those people who was unhappy if he wasn't working. [laughter] r.e.m. won so i know what i'm talking about. and he was having a great time. but more seriously, this was very, very, very painful material for him both of the first two books, and i think it was very difficult. it took him many years to write catch-22 as we know where it was six or seven years in all and that was about the same, then as i said before, i think those helped him move beyond his anxiety and freed him to play a round, and among his later books, some are better than others, not unusual, but there was no book that took it out with him the way those did. >> don't forget he was working during the day. >> for catch-22. you know, he had to go on writing because he had to make money, and was the thing he did but i render him saying to me something happened again, that was a question of his books became what i called notional, she got the notion and felt he fulfilled it. these were not negotiable. they came right up and it was a struggle. >> can you talk for one second about how it came to him almost in a vision it's been written about many times? >> he wrote it one night. he was in bed dreaming and the first paragraph came to him coming in the by the next morning the entire book was mapped out in his head. >> it had been simmering, this material. stan eqecat took about things like that because we were too busy even making jokes about other people were saying this isn't any good or let's put it there. it was hands-on, it wasn't conceptual. estimate what's more fun? nothing. >> you spoke about jim webb's response reading the book while he was in combat. i read about six weeks before my 17th birthday into about three days of doors on the unlisted and i flew about 70 combat missions in vietnam as a crewman and i had the dark view of the war at the same time i was motivated to be in it and when i look back on that now i find myself really puzzling how it was the book motivated me to serve at the same time it made me so skeptical and nobody has talked about the under current. would you talk about the commerce there's also an undercurrent service and bravery and heroism that motivated some of us to do this and i'm wondering if anybody can unpack that. [applause] >> first of all, thank you for your service to the country. [applause] only joe could address the question that you have raised. let me ask you, did the people you serve with, did they know the book? was the same book that was making the rounds? it was certainly adopted if you will or kill offered by the anti-war movement back here. was it being a red? >> you know something dumb can i interrupt for one second? you said the things that have surprised me the most tonight. because i don't understand why that booklet motivate anybody to go into the service. [laughter] >> are there any psychiatrists here. i want to say one thing about percent and i said before it's called being a human come and if you want to understand it best, go back and read thea lee and. it's all there. everything is there. read those and you don't have to read anything else. as a matter of fact i you remember having this discussion, the eliot was his favorite book, and he rented by age ten. i had forgotten. >> let's remember she was a teacher and light. estimate this is a minor thing but let's talk about the be 25 and what it was to crawl from one end to the other which is what you had to do to get into your position. never, never mind the battle. we were bruised, battered come simply from chongging to get around these machines there were no round edges. we all had and they were shooting at them. you had to be a goddamn hero to fly in the be 25 and you have to be physically at the very top of your life. they were athletes and they were heroes 60 missions in one of those things. i barely made it from one end to the other. at the same time, you know, we have to do stuff like hanging out but we were in helicopters and we were comfortable. they were always injured when we did flying scenes. was a monstrous within and a monstrous thing to operate so they were like baseball players, they were athletes and they were heroes. >> one of the essays in the book in the new edition says a lot of people think the book is about schumer, but this person thought was about violence and about the feeling of soldiers in war being buried alive, and i thought you captured some of that in the movie. >> we spent a lot of time thinking about it and about the health of it. we actually blew it up that one night. we did it all on one night and was a big farm house and we blew it up and you have to be alert and we had dozens of cameras. we only did once, and the had it every night over and over command of course the bullets counted. i think the heroism which is sort of not mentioned very much, i think that they were heroes. he was a hero and he spoke as a disillusioned hero. i went to a writers' conference in key west in the war american literature and just about everyone on the panel was a combat veteran and rode a rumor of war and joe was on the panel and he was utterly dismissive of his own heroism. i can't remember his exact words but he almost discouraged what he did and you have robert stone and philip staring at him saying you flew 60 combat missions in world war ii, and he said you know, he's on the ground, left the battle of the bulge and such. i was stunned. in five years of lunches, drinks, dinners, i don't think that he brought up world war ii once but there was the generation that's one of the reasons they call it the great generation they didn't want to talk about it but he wrote a book about that. >> i will tell you what, we are going to run out of time cities will be the last three and we will go one, two, three petraeus connect at the end of the book when you saw them walking around and he has a realization what allows the earth, that it's not any more just as he says where there is treacherous and porter put the whole world, and horrible things can happen to someone anywhere. at the end of the book he escapes, but we don't know what happens to him after the escape. it just ends with he was off, and in the movie the ending is perplexing in that he's in this tiny lifeboat, the camera is panning out to the ocean, there's music playing is he going to make it or isn't he, and i wonder what you think the tone is of the end of the book and the end of the movie. [laughter] >> i see you in a tiny life raft. [laughter] >> me too. [laughter] >> i have no answer for that. i think the image speaks for itself and either suggest something or it doesn't. i can't attack or defend it. i do want to tell a true story of joe somebody was sitting near him any party and there was a total of talkative repeals was relatively outtalk and the guy next to him said still you've never written anything dead as catch-22. he said to house? [laughter] >> perfection. let's go here. >> my question is on that point. what do you think about the last novel and one of the things i thought was most poignant is the notion of a novelist struggling with the fact that his first novel may have been his best. >> i have to say i was in a mid no way an admirer of his novel and in fact i was in the editor or the publisher but he wanted me to read it and i didn't think he should publish it and he needed to which i took the understood but i thought it was very interior. >> you know, trollope once said, and i'm going to mean all this but one of the misfortunes that can have somebody especially if it happens early to estimate he knew. he was unbelievably shrewd. he had all bases covered and he knew that he was at the end of his talent and get he needed to publish the book for various reasons including financial, and there it was. it didn't have to be explicit because we knew each other very well, so i thought it was unfortunate but also his life from his career, it's not for us or me or anyone to come along and say don't do this. >> can you name three artists, writers from anybody who just got better and better? >> first they have to live a long time in the second, the have to be true genius. >> name them. >> william shakespeare. >> that's too easy. >> that's the point, the greatest continue to evolve, and those people have so much. there's so much the have to give the could do 40 more masterpieces of the only had the time. >> there was one in a generation >> that's the point, the greatest geniuses continue to evolve and other people have their thing to do and it's wonderful, and then they've done it and either fate steps and or of a slightly tero but as wonderful the returns joseph, his last books are terrible. that's the way it is. >> but we talked a little bit about how this unconscious creative less and scientists as well it percolates somewhere in the unconscious and sometimes it pops held on the forum and it can take years and years and meanwhile come if you are an established writer you feel the compulsion to write without that. >> because it's what to do. given life for breath, we keep going. that's what it's about. >> final question. >> so, the academic take this with everett says about war and katulis some that it's a parable about the loss of faith in god. does this have any basis in reality to your knowledge? >> i happen to have wrote down my favorite passage in the book which goes to that point. we will sum up this way and i think it's an answer to the question. good god, how much reverence can we have for a supreme being that finds it necessary to include such phenomena as flem and 2-cd decay in his system of creation. [laughter] >> i think that answers your question. what in the world was running through that evil mind of his when he robbed old people of the power to control? why in the world did he ever create if payment? do you remember when he wrote that? okay. i think this has been a spectacular night. how lucky have we done by the panelists? [applause] the head of the major league baseball players association >> i walked out after the victory and said diman. i know a lot of folks are going to write and maybe even at the white house game over but this is a long way from over. we will continue to go out and fight to make sure we defeat president barack obama and when the house back can't take the senate and stand for the values that make us americans and the greatest country in the history of the world the shining city on the hill to be a beacon for everybody for freedom around the world the head of the major league baseball players association michael wiener talks about future of collective bargaining in baseball. players and owners reached a five year sleeper deal in november that increases the minimum salary to $480,000 in the chess players for the growth hormone. from the national press club, this is just under an hour. [applause] had to leave too heavily new orleans saint matter but the it director of the association is a longtime general counsel here and want to thank the executive director of the major league soccer players association and his general counsel john newman, judy space, general counsel of the sciu kaj change to win and i'm also honored to acknowledge your the presence of mark pierce, the labor relations board, sharon glock and richard griffin and the members, the executive secretary over here, patricia smith akaka john, i probably will come as well a longtime colleague and friend, the virginia assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel. thanks to all of them and all of you for attending this afternoon. we are going on 24 years i've worked for the union that represents major league baseball players and for going on 24 years, i've heard that's great but it's not like to work for a real union. you get to hang out with derek jeter or jose batista it's part of your job you have to go to the game and you have to go to the world series every single year. i will concede there are been a to working for the team but the same time, the mlbpa is a real team. our guys have a higher public profile. but at bottom, the mlbpa does everything it does. we attempt to further the members' interests and protect members rights through the process of collective bargaining. collective bargaining as an institution took body shots over the past year in wisconsin most notably other places the rights of public sector employees to bargain was blamed for the state fiscal difficulties. in indiana, the so-called right-to-work legislation was passed where the supporters were contending the collective bargaining hamburg job growth. the national labor relations board had been vilified for fulfilling its statutory mandate to administer the federal labor statutes. in the sports world the players abandoned the right to bargain collectively in the face of aggressive demands from their owners. fortunately for all that dispute was resolved without the loss of regular-season games. fans were not as fortunate it was in a truncated season. the mlbpa and the clubs by contrast announced new five-year labor contracts last november a month before the previous deal ended. we have no lockout, no-strike, no threat of the work stoppage. why did a collective bargaining succeed in baseball last year? how did baseball, the sport whose labor history is most contentious avoid strikes in 2011? some suggest a smooth negotiation was inevitable given the circumstances under which we bargained but neither revenue and more profitable the explain the result. coming into 2011, the nfl's annual revenue exceeded major league baseball and the annual revenue lagged hours but both picked protracted fights with other players and the millionaires versus billionaires' line was also set of baseball in the 80's and 90's when every labor negotiations included the work stopped. profitability is of the driver. both in devotee of the profitable league reportedly unprofitable one in the nba had work stoppages in 2011. baseball's profitability still in between the two. moreover, each of the last three contracts were reached without a stoppage one negotiated when they were suffering losses in 2002 and when they were enjoying the profits in 2006 and last year when the truth was in between. there was nothing preordained about bargaining during this round. as always the union was prepared for the worst-case scenario. we have reserves in the bank, canceled players to save their money and told pleaders that while no one wanted a stoppage they had to be ready if there were coming. we have been applauded for having achieved labor peace but i will let you in on a little secrets, labor peace wasn't our goal when we started bargaining. our list of adjectives and marketing generate over years of discussions with players including improved health care pensions come higher minimum salary, better treatment of injured players come a better salary arbitration, free agency rules and a host of other demands but the labor peace was not on the list and neither was the leader war. we set out in the negotiation to achieve a fair deal for players, i believe a good deal. the preference just as it was under martin miller's leadership was to get the deal without the work stoppage. but the goal was a good deal, not a quick, easy or painless one. collective bargaining by design is an adversarial process to record negotiations in 2011 with major league baseball were adversarial at times intensely so. controversial even provocative decisions or advanced. conversations repeated, frustrations expressed, meetings ended abruptly. people, players and owners, negotiators for both sides got angry. we didn't hear the argument publicly as we've done in the past, but that doesn't mean that we didn't argue. collective bargaining in the end is about power. federal law governing the collective bargaining limits the exercise of power but not to be much. there's plenty of room under the national labor relations act to beat your counterpart in to submission even to mutually destroy your industry. for years in baseball the struggle that is collective bargaining was defined by the owners attempt to force the demand down their throats sometimes through distasteful and such as lockouts, hard bargaining and replacement players, sometimes not through the practices. in 2011 and in the more recent bargaining round, but power struggle has manifested itself differently. it's still a power struggle. the designers have not changed. they want to pay as little as possible and controls the services for as long as possible and that is understandable from the perspective. what has changed is that baseball owners led by the commissioner have come to respect the collective power of the bargaining adversary of players. there was through the solidarity of players in the eighties and nineties and culminated in the real sense in the spring of '95 when the owners use replacement players throughout spring training to try to break the union and force acceptance of the salary-cap and not a single union member, not a single roster player crossed the line. but i was then. the membership of the union trends over quickly. only a handful of players active in the 2011 were professionals during the 1994, 95 strikes. the understand that each generation of players must justify the respect their predecessors earned. we must remind the owners of the collective power every time we come to the bargaining table. that is why starting with the days of marvin miller the union has insisted on direct player participation bargaining process. the formulate strategies that might come as no surprise and the attend bargaining sessions. we will schedule such unless they can be there and actively participate in the sessions. at any given meeting of the negotiators are as likely to hear from curtis were jeremy got three or cj wilson or carlos nueva them they are to hear from me. plater participation in the bargaining in 2011 was extraordinary. and even for our union unprecedented. as for the leadership, we had a remarkably dedicated negotiating committee of 25 active players. week after week of conference calls they were responsible for developing and improving all of our major bargaining proposals and the negotiating committee members attended a morning session after the session. the player participation extended to the full union membership. we had to end 38 different major league players attempt the sessions in 2011. two injured 38 players in the first week in the majors and players with 20 years of major-league service whose tickets had been punched and whose major league careers may not extend into 2012. players making the minimum salary or $20 million per year come from virtually every country represented in the bargaining unit. it was a tremendous show. in the power struggle with this collective bargaining it is natural to gauge the strength of your counterparts. thus to injured 38 players provided an unmistakable answer to any owner who might have questions whether in 2011 the collective power of the players remain read deserving of respect. collective bargaining changes when each respect the power of the letter. you've got to try something else if you can't just push your counterpart a round. if you to change you have to persuade them to give it to you or you've got to fashion some compromise in which to trade for it. the most likely result of bargaining in that situation is a deal at or close to status quo. that may not be what is best for either party or the industry but that is what you are left with. our new collective bargaining agreement amounts to far more than a truce to be the contains many significant revisions in the sharing of the debt service rules, a new structure for the league and divisions and a new format for the postseason play an enhanced health care coverage for international families, and improved benefits and other payments flowing to the former players and their widows and it changes in the agreement and dozens of other improvements in the working conditions of players. this negotiation touched more of our contracts than any other. none of those changes are made at gunpoint. some resulted from persuasion. there were times one recognized the validity of the others positioned and i acquiesced to a proposal. many resulted from compromise and frequently creative compromise. one side or the other often expanded the scope of matters under discussion to create more flexibility, more. other changes resulted from the party identifying areas of mutual benefit. i can't say this has never happened before in our bargaining, but only bits and pieces to eight. they were unimaginable in our past. information and drug sharing and testing it perhaps 15, 15 alignment. that happened only because each side was prepared to remember a good idea matter who presented at - the idea historical was associated with the letter signed. oregon was on just how to resolve our differences but we could identify it further in our common objective. how does that happen, a work stoppage because of the mutual respect for each side's collective strength but why didn't we default to the status quo deal? the answer lies in respect, respect here for the players idea not just their muscle. i could dodd and the negotiators and owners who are recognizing players are not just a force to be reckoned with that in the area after area the student 38 guys that showed up had good ideas out to improve the game and the industry to read it may seem obvious the best players in the world and representatives would have those ideas to read it just hasn't been of the thank you to the baseball owners and is certainly didn't seem obvious in the approach adopted last year by the nfl and the nba to rid the success of bargaining in baseball last year was not just the we made a deal without a stoppage but we need agreements in scope and the content that should benefit players, owners, fans, and connected in the game for years to come to resign now torn between prudence an opportunity to recruit instils a guy that's worked his entire career in baseball to limit his remarks to a spa but only of a shoulder opportunity tells me i should least try to relate baseball bargaining success to the broader world. this is the national press club after all, not the might and might show. [laughter] the economic downturn has placed a tremendous stress on the already adversarial relationship between workers and their bosses. private sector employers and employees in the u.s. states increased global competition. public-sector labor relations have been caught in the size of budgetary crises. in both areas a hamdi response has been to attack workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively to strip the or bargaining rights from public employees as private sector workers that seek to organize. that is unfair in part because the economic difficulties were not caused by america's working men and women to read history councils such blame may be inevitable but that doesn't make it fair. it's not true that municipal and state employees making $40,000 per year caused the present fiscal crisis. it's also unfair because the printing workers of their rights to organize and the only realistic leverage they have, it's okay and even laudable in the country for political candidates or companies to have leverage because of their financial assets. it's okay in the country to obtain leverage through a successful push for legislative or regulatory advantage. but why is it not acceptable for the workers to exercise the only leverage the possess to act. if you take bargaining rights away from wisconsin schoolteachers or indiana factory workers it leaves one side of the contest with no ability to compete. as in the public policy of the country that labor relations should be a fight but never a one-sided fight. it's fundamentally unfair in this environment to pass legislation this still loves that fight but for exit against working men and women. of a collective bargaining allows the workers a voice and the argument over their working conditions. bargaining doesn't guarantee and a result, it doesn't guarantee the pensions will be preserved or the wages won't be reduced. under the legislation on the books for over 70 years permitting workers to organize and bargain collectively has been seen as a natural component of our competitive economy to read what is unnatural and counterproductive for the recent legislative efforts to strip workers of those rights to the economic health of the country will love revitalized by the departing workers of their voice. in 2011, baseball demonstrated the collective bargaining can produce the progressive and productive agreement if each party respects both the power and the ideas of its counterpart even in an economic and chairman as challenging as today better results will flow from the bargaining process and the unilateral position by management. better ideas will be generated with employee input to relieve prison and baseball through the collectively -- we've proven that in baseball through the innovations such as the world baseball classic or jointly run international tournament to be played his sometime in march. agreement who reached can be implemented more effectively and efficiently as shown by the jointly administered drug program. unions can effectively and present workers even and struggling industries. collective bargaining in times such as these may be difficult, adversarial and contentious but as it is demonstrated in baseball of all places, it is the surest path to a mutually advantageous and potentially enduring solutions. thank you, enjoy the season it should be a great one. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] since you believe baseball collective agreement is the gold standard for the sports league have you been approached by other leaders asking for advice? >> of the leaders of the various sports unions capri, kind of matters and the unions do as well as evidenced by the soccer players' representatives and football player representatives here. more than occasionally i will talk with the head of the hockey player association who happened to be my boss for 20 some odd years. the industries are different and sports are different but we collaborate as you might expect. estimate you mentioned the struggles and wisconsin to have you ever at finest leaders and to people seeking out. >> haven't been presumptuous enough to try to give advice to somebody representing the public sector union and the nature of bargaining is different, but we frequently are contacted by the unions and their members for the letters of support for assistance. our players and members politically are all across the spectrum but when it comes to the labour matters they understand the importance of the unions and we try to support those unions every chance we get estimate your heading into years of labor peace that you think people willing to negotiate because what happened with the strike of '94 and '95? >> i don't know about more willing to negotiate but you can't understand our success as bargaining without understanding that history. as i said before, we move to the world there was respect by both sides for the bargaining power on the anniversaries because of what happened leading up to 94 and 95, so i don't think you have the agreement that we need and 02, 06 or 2011 if they hadn't taken the stand they took. >> a couple of questions. wondering if they were represented during the negotiations either internal or collective bargaining one person says it cost the average american family of fort 300 deutsch a baseball game. is this due to the baseball players' salaries? >> there's a few questions smuggle them there. [laughter] we didn't have any sense on the negotiating committee unless you count players themselves but i can tell you the players we have representatives here, all the players sitting appear as well as bg were committee members themselves on the racket. players are constantly thinking about fans and public acceptance of the game that shows itself in the negotiation like the schedule and things like the post-season, the drug-testing program throughout our negotiations. in terms of a potential link in the ticket prices and the player's salary is i know there are a couple of distinguished economists in the room today but the ticket prices are set based on the supply and demand for the product they set prices as high as they can based on the demand for those tickets it doesn't have anything to do with how much they get. >> you think the union would ever agree to eliminate the hitter and restore it to the way that was meant to be played? [laughter] >> i don't know if there are names on that one. it could have come from my wife who's been known to parade around the house. i have gotten a variant of the question frequently. neither the owners or players came to the bargaining table looking to change the rules even though we change the alignment of the league and post-season play. i don't think anybody would design an industry where one had one set of rules and the other has another what i think that that compromise if you will this year to stay for a long time. >> ct and sports have become a big issue at the professional and amateur level to read what is it doing to address this issue in baseball? >> health and safety was part of the negotiation as it has ever been in addition to what we did in the joint drug program to address the substance abuse by the players we negotiate oversee for batting helmets and recently the new protocols for treating, diagnosing we negotiated over safer bets. there was a tremendous amount of negotiation. i think that's a reflection as i said before what bargaining can do when you try to stop knocking the stuffing out of one another that allows them to put their heads together and solve problems in the way you can't do when it is a def match. >> likened the only be required to take blood test for human growth hormones if they don't have anything to hide when not conduct random tests like any other sport? >> again, a few questions in there. the blood testing and drug testing we agreed to stands up to that in any other sport including olympic sports. what we agree to it's not only the players can be tested for the reasonable cause, that's true, all were tested for blood during the spring training of 2012. i dare say we had more blood collections in the spring training of 2012 than any sport has had in any single year alone just with our spring training testing. we also have the random testing for all the players starting this off-season every player subject to testing when it is over. >> what is the difference between of smoking on the ball field and not using smokeless tobacco? why should players be allowed to chew tobacco in front of the players and the kids? >> one is you can't play baseball while you're smoking and there are secondary -- it interferes with work and there are health risks associated with smoking. the position on the union on the smokeless tobacco was clear we long advised the smokers of the product and provide resources to try to cease using. the discussion we had shows the player can have an impact on the use of the product by younger people and through education and other efforts we are going to do our best to respect hawken the teams like the pirates hope to win without a salary cap. >> i could say the same way small teams like the twins and the marlins and the rockies have. major league baseball has shown we can without a competitive balance cap come in the game since the agreement reached 1996 has been unprecedented through revenue sharing or the reserve system which allows them to hold on to the reserve rights for players the first six years of their career and other measures including our competitive balance. i think owls well, representative as the owners think we are at a place where each team has a fairer opportunity to win the world series tariffs mcalpin you encourage the teams to share revenue on instead of pocketing it? >> that's a subject that we have focused on in bargaining over the last 20 years as well as any other. we do it a few different ways. we have an enforcement mechanism in the contract they are required to spend revenue sharing proceeds to put in more competitive team on the field and there is an arbitration process we can go through and we've used it effectively in the past and we believe that in the last round of bargaining but moreh important we try to create incentives so that each team has the maximum to put a competitive team on the field think some of the most creative bargaining we have done and this goes back to chuck o'connor involved in the initial bargaining over the revenue sharing agreement some of the most freshening the system no matter where they fall on the revenue spectrum has an incentive to try to win. islamic the head table was talking to become active in leadership. what role do they play that others do not? >> there's a lot of people in this country who think they know about baseball and there are guys that have played the game. [laughter] the guy that plays the game knows what it means, and knows what its field, they know the stresses that being a professional baseball player they know the joy of being a professional baseball player. it's always been our view that to effectively represent baseball players you have to have the input. you get the input of current players of the time but it's useful and essential to have a deep group on stuff without giving away, we have people on pos staff even on whose career spans an entire history of the association and part of or success is touching that resource kept any time i need to send an e-mail or make a phone call to rios panic with 2020 hindsight how do you think the drug testing and busbee seven mlbpa hurston handle? >> i don't have 2020 hindsight. don has said in retrospect it would have been better if devotee associated with the game had moved a little more quickly. but let me say this the board in the history of baseball suggests it would have been very difficult for the bargaining history of baseball explains we got to the random drug testing about as quickly as we cut like with everything it was three contentious drug-testing history. in the mid 80's we had a joint drug program and the owners terminated at. the drugs that were involved or of cocaine and not of enhancing drugs but they chose to terminate the program. who knows what the world would have been like if we had a program continuously operating out through the 80's. we did very contentious fight drug testing the owners made a proposal on the testing in 1994, but i think it's fair to say it was not seriously pushed by the owners at that point. the first time the seriously proposed random drug testing to the cut testing the players agreed to it, so on the same place i think your buddy can take a hard look at what they did when you understand the history of the bargaining in baseball i don't know if we could reach an agreement much sooner. estimate from a players association perspective is there any concern about how young baseball players are being treated and developed a high school and college that you care to address? >> we won the best athletes playing baseball and we want all young people playing the game and athletics to do so safely. this is another area of the critical operations management trying to provide the resource equipment playing fields for more players to play the game particularly in urban areas of the country and other places of the world where the resources don't exist through the base baltimore fund being jointly trusted by management and union officials. we've provided millions of dollars to try to get more players on the field and give more kids the chance to play baseball and softball. >> with so many choosing soccer or are you doing to encourage them to play baseball instead? [laughter] >> all right. sitting over here i have the head of the one of my dearest friends who would be very upset with me if he thought i was discouraging people from playing soccer. [laughter] there's a lot of people in this country and a lot of people in this world. i don't think we need to discourage any kids from playing any sport. we want kids to be active. there's plenty of kids playing baseball and markets paying soft ball than ever before and there is plenty to go around. what would be the impact of the deal for the act renegotiated now than the orioles owner peter angelos gave most of the profits as a tv sweetener for putting another team in his backyard. [laughter] you want to take this one? [laughter] the local tv revenue is a crucial part of our game and industry and give seen their rights, the local broadcasting rights go through, and that really only makes sense when you think about baseball is 162 new reality shows a year, very cheap to produce, tremendous content and baseball sits the new media very carefully. very, very closely to i'm not going to try to predict how the negotiations involving a the national orioles is going to play out. all seat will be a very important negotiation for both franchises. players have benefited financially from the rise in the regional sports networks and payments to the team to reduce the potential global bursting eventually? >> as i said in a loss question i'm not a media consultant. by understand that all of ratings for the national defense, not just athletics are facing a challenge when it comes to baseball, the power of baseball as programming in the local market is extremely high and a tremendous amount of content with that is where the satellite radio or television or the internet and the other way is that baseball was transmitted. i give people a lot of credit for recognizing the changing technology and seeing different ways to bring the game to people more, and their local markets but people who want to follow the tigers were the red sox even though they may live here in washington. i don't think there is a bubble. i think the value of the content is there. stomach could the new smart from application ever replace baseball cards? [laughter] >> that may be the hardest question i've been asked because the requires me to know what a smart phone application is. i'm not the most technologically savvy person. i think as a kid that grew up collecting baseball cards and even swapping baseball cards as late as college including with some people in this room a think you can marry the technology with vote jolie if card collecting, and i think that our licensees are joined licensees of major league baseball in this area in order for the cards to continue to be vital are going to have to continue to find a way to use the new technology in that area. >> will mlbpa ever endorse other cards aside from topps? >> the mlbpa and the mlb have had agreements with others. topps has not been or more now the sole licensee of the baseball players association. while top historic week for reasons i won't bore you with has been making cards the longest part of time. we've had other licenses to reduce the liquid is the union position on the hall of fame induction for players who use steroids? i'd have to talk with the current members of the union but i will give you my position. i'm not afraid to do that. the hall of fame is for the best baseball players that have ever played. he belongs in the hall of fame and the best. if you want to have some notation on their black. or accused of having done that, so be it. there are people with the hall of fame and there will be people in the hall of fame that have committed to have engaged in a massive conspiracy called collusion to defraud the fans of free competition. those people belong in the hall of fame as well. from the executives that have been involved the should all be in. >> do you think the drug scandal has treated fans and made them more suspicious. >> mabey but i think that young fans or young people are more jade than the is to become a period. maybe that's a good thing. athletes and celebrities are covered in a way now that they were not covered certainly when i was a kid. and would be in possible i think whoever your hero is, to see as the larger than life figure. baseball is as popular as it's ever been cautioned by attendants and ratings. its popular among today's youth, stephen f. peter jay did, i think the understand both the beauty and the power of the game, and the incredible talent of the players that are playing. should they have a role in selecting bud selig's successor? too absolutely not. i think one of the positive things that i've seen in baseball since 1988 is a recognition by everybody that the commissioner of baseball. representing the fans, representative of the game where the institution, and i'm not saying that bud selig and people in the office don't think about the institution just like. it's an adversarial process. that's hard works. he is unabashedly the head of the owner's love comes to. we will wait with interest 20, 30, 40 years from now but actually start -- [laughter] we should have no role in selecting his -- should the city's be subsidizing stadiums for the millionaire owners? >> i have to decide whether to answer that one as the head of the baseball players and the asian and will. wants to get as much support from the municipal authority as they can purify the it is the subject of some economics, can be the subject of the debate in particular cities whether the internet facility is the best. as you said, and we welcome the assistance of any municipality that's willing to provide. >> what impact will the sale of the dodgers and the middle of lawsuit have considering these are two of the largest markets? the dodgers and the mets are not only play into the largest markets but are. whether you are a mets fan or dodgers or not, you want to see those kind of an choices. the dodgers sale, and moving to and having a group that is involved, a group that not only has the financial wherewithal for the game and the acceptance in that community is great for the dodgers fans and everybody in baseball. i'm not just saying this because my wife is a mets fan and they can focus on trying to the best team on the field. it's one of the treasures in the history and it's better for the game to be as competitive as possible. >> there's been a lot of talk about paying the athletes. should they became our unionized >> this will but different for the baseball players than it is for the questions usually come up with respect to football and basketball players. .. we advise players on the one hand part of why baseball is as popular as the days that fans have a personal connection with baseball players may be different than they can assured that their players. those days the players on their favorite jeans every single day from the beginning of spring training until the team's season is over and social media allows fans to connect with those players and a very intimate way. national team since every guy is a celebrity and so we advise guys it's great for you to use social media if you're comfortable doing it to establish the connection that fans. on the other hand, you've got to think before you do it. and we've been fortunate. our players -- and i say we haven't had difficulties, but our players have used that speedy response. it's a great way to cement that between fans and players. >> what advice can you give young players to become professional baseball players? >> learn to throw left-handed. [laughter] another possibility mbg could help me out on this one is catch and hit left-handed. bizarre teachings to keep you in the game for a long time. i think that i go back to doing kids play sports and it was fun to play sport, not necessarily inking when you're eight years old you're going to get a college scholarship or you'd get a chance to play professionally. what i would advise any kitties to play sports, be a good, plays many sports as you enjoy rather than just focusing on one particular game and playing back your round. if you have the talent in the competitive tries to use her at attucks go to get an education, that's great, do that. if you happen to be one of the new percentage that have the ability to make a living professionally, but she can't think about that when you're a young kid. >> bundled baseball had its first women's player, umpire or general manager? >> general manager could have been at any point in time. there are several baseball executives rate now working for clubs, working for the commissioners up this are imminently qualified to be general manager. that's just a matter of time and opportunity. umpires i know less about the possibilities of a woman becoming an empire to league level. i generally consider, not to stereotype, that women generally been smarter than men so why they would want to be an umpire may not be a question. it's a very, very difficult job and thankless job. but we are ready for a female general manager and is the number of great candidates out there right now. >> will there ever be a true world series in which the top mlb team face a top foreign team.? >> in oshawa teachers stage for a day champion north america plays the team in japan. that would be a lot of challenge they appear to the world baseball classic and the torment i describe really get to that. the world baseball classic at the best players in the world hootenanny plana measure the response and the cuban national team, japanese players and competing against one another in a very high-level competition and we really hope that this is the first time while playing 2012, 2013 with qualifying rounds in the world baseball classic has within it the potential to be that kind of true world series. steve mackey said the umpire chuck is tough and thankless. but mlb ever utilize instant replay to assist umpires? >> i think as many of you know, we'll already due to some extent on what we call boundary calls for home runs if the ball is over a fence or interfered with by this fan. and our collective bargaining, we did reach an agreement to expand instant replay to other cause, to a fair and foul calls and to what are called trap plays promoter player caught the dollar has the ground. the agreement was subject to further bargaining that hasn't been concluded between the owners and umpires union have instant replay is the subject is made the owners have to bargain outlet players union but with the umpires union and from the bike is concluded you very well may see expanded replay in the game. >> to baseball players considered them part of the 1% or 99%? >> i think it given that choice, most baseball players who played in 99%. the best part about this job -- there's a lot of challenges, but the best part is working for the players and the reason for that is that the players recognize just how fortunate they are to make a living and make unbelievable living playing the game of baseball. there's an incredibly humble, reykjavík i they don't take for granted at home with a house. they give back to the community. part of what makes them great union members. while the economics of many in the place them in the 1%, their outlook towards life is such these are regular guys. >> or do you think of the best baseball players of all time and why? [laughter] steve rogers, bobby pineda. [laughter] tony clark and bj surhoff. i'm going to be a little bit of politics here and not name any names. i can say everybody thinks the best baseball players are those playing the game and they were seven, eight or nine years old. but i think i can say with confidence the best baseball players of all time are those playing the game right now. the quality of their training, of their fitness in the skillet competition has gotten to the point where the players and the fact we are more inclusive than we've ever been if you go back to the history of the game before african-americans could play. i'm not going to name any names. everybody has their own opinion. but i can say with confidence the quality of the game today is as high as it has ever been. >> if you're trapped on a desert island, which to mlb owners would you most prefer to be with? [laughter] >> said the challenge here is doesn't own or want to be on that list are not on that list is that i have to figure out. maybe time warner would be a good choice because he is responsible for having created all these wonderful television shows and great entertainment that he be an interesting guy to have as well. let's see, i guess magic johnson because who wouldn't want to be on a desert island with magic johnson clinic >> we're almost out of time, but before a scare last question with a couple housekeeping matters to take care of. first of a lecture match about the upcoming luncheon speakers on monday, april 50 with alec waldron, actor and spokesperson. a sold out, the two into c-span or log into npc.org to watch a streamlined pma four will continue to have baseball stream at mike rizzo, general manager of the washington nationals and i'm a night with billie jean king, tennis legend. next to a database on our npc malik. it'll be handy for drinking coffee on a desert island. and i have one last question. who do you think will win the world series this year? >> someone predicted it i would get this question and answer i gave with every player pays the same amount of dues and this dues there were pays the salaries here. in seriousness, i think even the most ardent baseball writer with a this is almost an impossible year to pick that. he got six or seven teams in the american league that are just as good as settlers to make it to the world series in the national league appears to ido pin. that's the one question about that. that question i will do. >> how about a round of applause for our speaker today. [applause] i want to thank you all for coming today and i would also like to thank our national press club staff, including journalism institute and broadcast center for organizing today's event. finally a reminder you can find more information about the national press club on her website. if would like a copy of today's program, please check out the website www.press.org. thank you all for coming. we are joined. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> now, a panel discussion on possible changes to the tax code, including the other group, which are required those earning more than a million dollars the year to pay at least 30% and tanning taxis. the moderators john nichols of the nation. this is 90 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> okay folks, we are going to get started. i am tunku slur, executive church of americans for democratic action. i also serve as secretary of the a/d education fund and is an upper-level welcome me well here today. very excited about the penalty put together and i want to handed over to bill rice, who as their director of of program and policy and we would get going. thank you. >> thanks, don. my name is will rice. as don mentioned in literature program and policy for the americans for democratic action education fund. for those of you who don't know, americans for democratic action, 88 is the nation's longest established liberal advocacy group he founded in 1847 by people like eleanor roosevelt, john kenneth galbraith, hubert humphrey and a host of other progressive luminaries. for the past year, the ad fund has been holding a series of monthly congressional briefing while they try to bring imports and national topics to the attention of congressional staffers as well as other interested citizens and this is the latest iteration of the series. the event is also part of the commonwealth project, which is a joint venture by the ada and the coffee party u.s.a. at the list of people here to thank, so hold your applause to the end. i first of all want to thank our honorary host for today's occasion, which is the congressional progressive caucus and its executive director brad altman. also, the update says senator sherry brown has been valuable in getting us this space and all the attendant facilities and i.e. and a berendt has been the person who's been a point person. on the house side, amanda on is a staffer in the office of our organization president and she's been very useful. i want to thank her partner in this unit up for a fair economy, excellent group that works on issues of economic injustice and inequality out of boston and specifically leave. , tim sullivan and marcel liu helped with every thing from publicity to the lunch you are reading right now. and finally want to thank the staff and volunteers that ada, which includes obviously tunku slur, executive director of americans for democratic action, communications to or and volunteers gene o'grady, bad ways and very. today's topics, how to make the tax system fair has been and will be a hotly debated topic this whole election year. what the nation facing record budget deficits at the same time to slow economic growth, the question of how to raise revenue miss very to address those is an extremely urgent one right now. next monday, the senate is going to be considering the so-called of several, which would raise taxes on for wealthy people look a lot of investment income. earlier this year, the house voted on the budget, the ryan budget that moved in the opposite direction. but as diversion as the occupying movement and warned by the secretary tax rate, the question of who should pay how much has come to the fore the public discussion and that is why we are here today. we are going to address this issue with an all-star cast dream team, and the other term you want to use for a whole bunch of people who really know what they are talking about assembled up here. and that the end of their discussion, we are going to accept questions from the audience. we have a handheld mic that will come to you. if you watch us remotely, whether these be an or use stream, lifestream on the internet, you can tweet questions to this address right here at ada at fund. but only if you watch life. if you watch it on tape we've all gone home. i beg to turn the program over to our moderator, john nichols. he is the washington correspondent for the nation magazine. he is also the associate editor of the capital times in madison, and not her of the just published book, appraising, how wisconsin renews the politics of protest from madison to wall street. so with that, we can thank everyone and applaud everyone i just thanked them also welcome, mr. nichols. [applause] >> thank you. right up front i want to say ada become a/d education fund and especially will to win out of his way over many, many months to pull this together injured during decile into this position. and i think we are very excited because these rare to have this collection of people together at such a critical moment. the president of the united states literally was talking about these issues today. he's out on the road. many political pundits believe framing his whole reelection campaign around many issues that will be discussing today. so i think it is incredibly appropriate and timely for us to be in this position. i think that we'll must be one of the more visionary people in america to put us here today. i also wanted to the sherry brown, senator range for this or didn't arrange the room, he also is one of the senators who is more intensely engaged the tax policy than just about anyone else in this icon that fascination. always not with us, smes watching us via c-span and the thought is. 100 years ago, barbara pollack on the great progressive reformer and later progressive movement of that era proposed an amendment to the republican party's platform. a red, we collect the revenues to sustain our national government to taxing consumption. these taxes upon the consumer are levied upon articles of universal use. they bear most heavily upon the caller and those of modern means. other countries, tax income and inheritance that a progressive rate, the burdens of our people should be equalized and should hear his chair. amazingly enough the republican party of 1912 adopted some element of that proposal over the ensuing 100 years the party seems to have wrestled with the issue of baked and may not have come down in the same place. but i say the proposal of 100 years ago to remind people this is not a new conversation. we are not arriving at this point without a lot of background, a lot of history and frank a lot of frustration. getting fair taxation, an idea of a suitable tax policy to the forefront even a popular debate is one of the great challenges of our time. we've seen for a variety of reasons to be edging towards the point where that might happen and i give compliments to paul ryan the house budget committee chair because he is forced some of these issues and gone to what many people see as extreme, but forced other folks to talk about tax policy in ways that they had not to this point. i give president obama credit because president depalma has countered with a discussion of the prophet rule, which begins, does not end, but begins to address some issues. but we go a lot further than the buffer will today. today we will try and explain why it is so very hard to get a good riproaring honest debate about tax policy at going in america and in our congress. we look at why it is so important to have these debates at a time when the alternative appears to be a nasty dirty discussion that takes us into taking apart undermining and eliminating social security, medicare and medicaid and what ideas could and should be in play at this moment. we talk about what our prospects are politically for bringing them in to play and we will discuss the fascinating tension of some wealthy americans whose just a day should pay more taxes. i'm novel notion, which we have some real experts on. i'm going to begin with rebecca thiess. he forgot rebecca, let me take us around her panel cepeda can tell that they are inimical to rebecca was history. bob mcintyre, with the heck are you doing on this channel? [inaudible] >> well, i have a microphone. this is so cool. i wanted to talk into a microphone. it's one of my favorite game. i know is that these things. i've been doing this since 1975 and you could argue it should blame for everything that's wrong in the world today, at least when it comes to taxes. i take no credit for religious strife. and just to say that people think man, this is always going one way and it's always begins test. that's not true. we've had over the years amazing victories and some staggering losses. are we better off than they were then? hard to say, but we certainly have done good news as well as bad and i am looking forward to this year to pushing that rock up much closer to the top of the hill before it falls back down on me again. >> you do as director for citizens for tax justice. >> that's my title. >> you're supposed to throw that in there. >> doesn't everyone know that? be met with combat to thicken and ask you why you haven't had more success over those 40 years. >> rebecca. >> hello, everybody. i'm an analyst at the economic policy institute in about this on policy with the lupita tax policy and social security thrown in there. the things i've been most involved if they dpi i've been putting together numerous budget alternatives in which i really enjoy doing. we did document called investing in america's economy that came out november 2010 and is basically your ideal budget picture for the next 25 years i ain't. and then we've also been assisting the progressive caucus in putting together the budget alternative over the last two years, the budget just cannot two weeks ago and i highly encourage you to check it out. i spent a good deal of time working on it recently. >> rebecca thiess is with the policy institute and the draw with progressive caucus, which i think i 76 votes. >> 78. >> 78, my apologies. mike lepham, tell us what you've been up to in way with this. >> , responsible wealth director of an spare economy.org if you want to look it up online. but what i do is organize wealthy individuals and business people and investors were in the top 5% was sort of been used as the poster children for tax cuts and we get them to say, you know, getting to the halls of congress works very well resented and give them a voice and save we need higher taxes on folks they test. we also try to get voices in the media and corporate boardrooms of corporate accountability. i would say we're actually just over the white house and folks were talking with president obama who just gave a speech on why we should have the prophet rule. and i would venture that i might be the only person here who will advocate repealing all of the bush tax cut so we can come back to that one. >> will have a wrestling match on the issue. >> some of your folks that she's gotten to speak up for raising their taxes include? >> well, the most famous is a guy named bill gates senior. his son done at the tech company called microsoft. he has been a big advocate for the estate tax, for having a strong estate tax. there's a number of other. we have two dozen people assigned onfavor of a strong estate tax. >> thank you, mike lepham. dean baker, tell us some of the stuff you've been working on. you can codirector the center for economic policy institute initially have somewhat of a different hat. i like to do things like tell people there's a housing bubble that's going to crash and wreck the economy. i'm the sort of person that gets ignored in washington. i've been told it was too early. >> tell you things today that will matter 400 years from now. >> at the background as it is important to understand the macroeconomic context and unfortunately people down here they call the fiscal policy initiatives of the macroeconomy doesn't matter and it actually does under. visit the old enough to matter to a balanced budget surpluses and the 90s and 2000 or you should know i don't have all because we wrong, the congressional budget office was wrong about the macroeconomic projections. if they'd been right about their projections back in 1996 and a 6% unemployment 2000, bill clinton would not have a balanced budget. for the other important point i like to make in the background economic context is a look at our long-run with chicken little's comments on a health care story and in its nonpublic health care story. as the private sector health care. if we don't fix it, none of us can think of enough taxes to pay for. we have to remember to fix the macroeconomy were talking about taxes, and they proselytizer for the financial speculation tax, tax and wall street speculation come with good reason off a lot of money has the other nice effect increases the quality and makes the financial more efficient and eliminating high income people. so the best way to do that to get rid of the problems of the top 1% is due to the top. if they don't get it to begin with we don't have to worry about taxing. >> financial transaction tax, and vehicle of national nurses united and other labor groups and even a reference in the congressional progressive caucus budget. i believe tom harkin -- chuck marr. you've scoped around the capital little bit and i are doing some other or tell us what brings you here. >> chuck marfa center on budget and policy priorities were a work on the focus on tax issues right now obviously the hot topic for us is divine budget, which hopefully will get to talk about today. also the whole issue of tax reform which i like to raise flags about as well. heading into the big debate which is about the tax cuts for the first step should be definitely released the high income start and then we can talk about the others. >> thanks, chuck. elspeth gilmore, resource generation. tell us about that. >> hi, i am elspeth gilmore, codirector and we are a national nonprofit that works for people 35 and under to mobilize with 12 come as we been recently identified as a 1%. i figured how to mobilize resources and access to actually move towards progressive social change. the recently we've been working on a tax equity campaign and it's been really exciting to figure out how the 1% can speak out in the moment and occupy a vote rally here today to talk about and figure out how the 1% can say it's in their best interest and especially bring the voice of younger folks and i speak both from a member of the organization as well as here comes the really moving my peers to be part of this movement and moment. >> i want to bring back enough in history here just to give us afraid kerry provided the moment, do you think occupy wall street has played this at if you can't rule and bringing tax policy debates to the forefront? >> absolutely. one of the messages i want to bring today is the way that occupy been able to shift the huge moment when folks in this room and the people i work with and the people mike worked with and staffers in congress, people in the of a chance to take the moment and move it forward and figure out how to capitalize on not to knew what they brought to the forefront into policy. >> i think that is except they had to bring to the forefront of tax policy debates as it's never easy. rebecca, you've been working a lot on sort of the history of tax policy. i realize that this moment there's people across america think i wonder what is on some other channel. but it's actually very exciting. give us a quick hits here to give us a sense of how important understand where we came from is rather than where the debate is today. >> i read through this rather quickly, but we are coming up on the 100th anniversary of the 16th amendment. that is next february. >> the 16th amendment of course allowed the government to put in place the income tax -- federal income tax. save big moment in our nations history. i go back before that to begin with. we had a federal income tax during the civil war instituted because the needed revenue to help pay for the war. it was done away with in the 1870s. some politicians try to bring it back a few decades later and was actually found to be unconstitutional. i am not a constitutional scholar. i cannot explain exactly why was unconstitutional. >> they said it was communism. >> okay. >> bessie got through the progressive era at the turn-of-the-century, more and more people started coming out in favor of us having an income tax -- federal income tax. he saw william howard taft come out in support of one. we thought teddy was about, and is supported that and an inheritance tax. >> so for some of the folks who were around for the election of 1912, that was the liberal and conservative wings of the republican party both coming out. >> and an interesting note is that the teddy roosevelt and later franklin roosevelt trained to a progressive income tax is an issue of fairness. they did not scream as they need revenue for x, y and z and i think we see obama doing the exact same thing and it's an issue of fairness, not of pain for the war. those are issues as well, but fairness and closing the income gap -- i'm sorry, the income inequality gap is important as well. so would result on election we saw the 15th amendment and the income tax come into place. tax rates immediately raised during world war i to help pay for that war. they came down after world war one and cannot significantly throughout the 20th under harding and coolidge. then of course the great depression hit an federal revenues took a really big hit. is that fdr, i said, come out not only for america, but for actual tax fairness. in 1935 he proposed significantly what we might call soaking the rich. and he ended up raising top rate to 79%. i recently read when he did that come he also raised the threshold to $5 million, which is $78 million in today's world and it did on the john rockefeller tax rate. so then we saw world war ii and taxes need to go up again to help pay for the war. you couldn't do much more on the wealth he. tax rates were already fairly high, so what happened was we saw significant base broadening. the taxes went up significantly during world war ii and after the way they came down on the week, but not as much as you might think. here's than inflation and also resist soviet expansion, which did not allow the military budget so we have high militaries ending. we could not bring taxes down to match. kennedy and reagan were the two presidents. actually kennedy was assassinated before he could actually push through a tax cut in john divac, but they were the two presidents who brought tax rates down. but just to wrap up what is important to note over the last 40 years in tax policy is that we've seen some pretty interesting trends. the first of which is falling marginal income tax rate. you know, they used to be 91% back around the time of world war ii and they have 20% under reagan. they are now 35%. that was put in place by president george w. bush. we've also seen a decline in the income threshold, so it used to be up around 3 million fell to 1 million in the 50s and now it's at 380,000. for that is the amount of money is taxed at the top rate. finalists in corporate income revenue fall by about half. the share of gdp and corporate puffery have not fallen and we've also seen substantial increase in payroll tax rate -- used to finance social security and medicare. >> thank you, becky. as she ran to the history noticed bob mcintyre sometimes rolling his eyes, sometimes not being seen a remember that. but bob, you have been out there since joe ford was president. it is a long journey. using victories and it's important to recognize that tax fairness can win. but you've also seen a frustrating battle. give us a sense of where we are at now is retired a tax paid in tax fairness hayek and also why it seems to be so very hard to bring these issues to the forefront to get a real debate on tax fairness. >> well, there's been a change in the republican party since the liberal years of ronald reagan. that has been a big difference. by again, incoming e-mail, put through possibly the worst tax bill in the history of the united states in 1981. he was advised by people like jack kemp and newt gingrich and arthur laffer, a business professor who was unfortunately a laughable name. he was told the attack was on the rich people and corporations that would increase revenues and he could pay for his defense increase. he believed that because he was a believing kind of man. when it didn't work out, a year later when he came to reagan and said there's a big budget hole and reagan that its doctrine that says you me and tip o'neill right? the speaker of the house that time, a democrat. well, for the next -- rest of his term, reagan raised taxes every year, mainly by closing down the loop holes he previously opened. in 1986 he went a long way to getting rid of tax shelters and individual tax code and making the corporate income tax back to what was supposed to be. that is a very good thing. how did we do with? the stars were aligned may be, but we had a bipartisan congress, public and senate. democratic house, republican president. and the public was energized and it takes some credit for that because i was putting out reports regularly about how general lack turk and most of the other big corporations are paying any taxes. and we made to pay taxes for a while. then exchange, democratic party somewhat less interest and tax reform and things started to go away. but now we are at a point for a bit of a more again about who should pay for government, whether we should pay for government, whether we should have tax breaks for millionaires or whether we should medicare. that is a nice way to frame it, but it's a true story. should we give corporations big tax breaks with us to move jobs offshore or do what they do anyway? or should we repair the infrastructure so business can succeed in this country? a lot of business people with her for the latter, but a portion of the lobbyists aren't as powerful as some other companies. they think the public kind of gets annoyed to hear tremolite taken bowing in so many other companies are making these enormous profits and pay nothing in taxes. they might go for a guy who's going to do something about it and i don't mean that romney says he's going to do something they make an even more negative. >> is barack obama that guy? >> talking about the buffet will. is he getting to the point of seeing the kind of thing you're talking about? >> we are working on him. he says he wants to get rid of the loopholes, but wants to use the money to lower the corporate tax rate because immunization i guess corporations are paying exactly the perfect amount in taxes right now, which is 1.2% of the gdp compared to 4% back during the kennedy administration. >> might come the rover at the white house today. connect to the question is do we want to tax a policy that works for the 1% or tax policy that works for the 99%? you know, that is part of the problem is that we have our tax policy over the past several decades has really benefited the top 1% and not only that, their income is gone up, taxes gone down and meanwhile we say we can't afford to do stuff like invest in education and infrastructure and research and all that stuff. there is this myth out there that it is one wealthy person. we've got to get off of that entrepreneur who does all the work that we have to get government off his back. and then what we say is everyone who is rich as a small-business person. so we have to keep taxes low on these people otherwise they will not invest and do stuff, right? the reality is business people don't make business decisions based on the tax rate. i represent a whole bunch of business leaders. >> he ran a business for a long time. >> my family is in the paper business for a long time. take martin rothenberg, one of our response will members who sit for 25 years on the management committee at this time to me, no one ever mentioned tax rate from the table. it just doesn't come up. businessperson after business person will reinforce that the idea we have to keep taxes lower the capital gains rates low so people will invest is hogwash. it is being used to undermine our country needs to say we cannot afford to do all these and invest in the stuff the stuff that made these people rich and the first place. >> many of these are outlined in a fine new book. >> i happen to have written a book called the self-made men. it's all in there with profiles of great people. there's my plug. but it's true. it's really hurting our country. >> at that concept with one of the elements were a wealthy person, who may not even be friends business anymore somehow potentially going to create job or something is going to have been. that romney's money in switzerland will somehow be sent to. >> one person investing money in the stock you can buy shares from someone else doesn't create new jobs. a guy named nick and i wrote an op-ed in the seattle times and said they built big companies, but i'm not a job creator. we need a strong middle-class otherwise there's nothing to build companies for. >> either these guys talking about logical ideas, things that need to be done. i note, chat, your senior advisor for budget policy at the national economic council in your economic policy advisor, senate majority leader, worker senate budget committee. i would assume you are personally responsible for these things not happening. why don't we get to a real estate debate about tax policy? what are the pressures on congress to prevent us from getting their? >> but it happened in the last few decades was would have been in the late 1980s was president bush's father, herbert walker bush, his new tax pledge that he went back on contiguity conservative revolt against that and you have this pledge but the whole rise of grover norquist and the political dynamic in washington and he basically had one side of the table with the conservative movement has become a litmus test it against taxes. that sort of overtime has morphed into the top priority being taxes on high-income people. it's really any sense of hiring competing people are paying higher taxes. so you really have one big part of the debate and is constantly on high-income people. but the reason why it's difficult. but i think it now as others mentioned, you do have this moment to public opinion, or after decades and decades of greater inequality we do have incomes rising so sharply in the middle class, working class people becoming more stagnant, more difficult that the debate really has been almost impossible to avoid in this bubble to. you have a different public dynamic now and you get this debate on about the rule and you had into the debate over the bush tax cuts, you have this one side is very reluctant to give anything on that. but the public if there is this debate, which there's going to be really woodside is increasingly siding with kind to people doing fine. we don't need to keep doing everything for them and giving them more and more tax cuts. they realize a lot of budget decisions are coming and i'll had middle-class, working class people and everyone has to be part of that. >> congress, white house, is there money in politics component to any this? >> no. >> obviously money is rampant in politics. i would even say it's something about the corporate tax debate right now over whether the united states should seek to taxes on foreign process whether they should be the romney plan and we should have a zero tax rate on foreign process. which for most average people is probably not a good thing. why should we encourage china over investments in michigan and ohio. but from a company, for multinationals and their lobbyists, that's very much in their interest. so it needs to happen on these debates is they need to be elevated because if they can be put in terms of people who understand and get engaged, we have a better chance. >> that overcomes the lobbying pressures and some other pressures. >> very much so. >> let me take you in there because one of the things you try to do is bring folks into the debate to get attention and wealthy people should be taxed more. they are not simply saying were patriots. there's a sense of how you create a functional society. talk to me about that for a moment. >> is building off of mike was saying before, but we want what's good for the 99% and build and not the point that what we say we are all saying here is it's actually good for the hundred% of the wealthiest well in terms of building a civil society. but in particular, the young people i work with in the people i talk to every day and we battle mobilize, we know that actually the country one a listen as they get older and the kids to have is actually one the best public infrastructure and there's a safety net and health care education and the people affected by that are not only went to private school servers and directly impacted, but the entire community is people relying on public education. i want my kids to go to decent public schools that want to not have to hoard wealth are being communities or people are hoarding wealth and not having to -- having to live in scarcity mentality and worry that medical emergencies, to be a place for there's a collective net for all of us to have not only the 99%, but the 1% as well. >> dean baker. >> you in addition to saying there's a housing bubble and concerns we might want to look ahead to come you've been talking for a long time about fair taxation, fair tax policies but that will please in making that civil society. if we've got a consensus on the panel, is that we might be a moment where we could do some things. but our -- if we recognize some people that disobey and say we shouldn't do any tax reform, there might be in the simulate, put them on there. but for people who believe we are at the moment and things we should do, but at the initial steps we should take in things we should talk about right now that we can build out to the bigger things quite >> the most obvious thing is people mention the bush tax cut expire at the end of the year and should be almost a no-brainer that we want to take back the bush tax cuts for the top 2% and that raises to 36.9% back in the 1990s the economy did pretty well for job creators paid the higher tax rate. i don't see any harm in raising someone higher. 43, 44, 45%. even 50% hard to see being a problem. a couple of the things that people have alluded to, just common sense has created this big gap in tax rates on capital gains, income and dividend income and ordinary income. this is what he had to pass a rule or they need because you could have benefits of the world get most of all income from capital gains or income. people who work for a living pay 45%. if you got rid of most of the gap and i remember the tax reform, ronald makin me to speech and said we're going to have people make money the old-fashioned way by working and investing and that created the same tax rate for ordinary incomes. that means he got rid of the whole industry of hiding in tennis capital gains and dividend and their other types of incomes come until the recent people cheating the government. reagan was right there. >> reagan is coming out very well. >> there's a few other things. people talk about the tax code. we want to get rid of mortgage interest deduction would be a tough one. what she can do and i think you could support almost across the board. economists across the board. cats that. make a 400,000. the government is not to subsidize the 800, $900 million home. he takes care of just about the whole middle class. that would be a great way to raise money. the proposal president on the hunt with his budget proposal was to cap the rate at which you take deductions. so have all the people giving big deductions to charities or whatever else i meant that they would only be able to take the deduction of 20% rate, same as for the middle class person would pay. the last thing i will mention that doesn't often get talked about but would be a really good idea is the federal reserve currently holds $3 trillion in assets. even buying up mortgage-backed securities, government bonds. when they hold those assets, guess what happens to money? gets payback to the treasury. the treasury cut $80 billion from the set year. i would like to see the fed continued to hold the money and do the arithmetic is $800 billion over the decade. that is not in the game plan. the fed plans to not hold that money. there's other positions i will not go into, but there's a lot of money potentially there. washington may have to do this at his church and sometimes -- we don't have to argued. it's a creation of congress. congress can tell the fed what to do. the really good way to get a hundred billion dollars for the budget. >> were talking real money there? as long as the money, but the final transaction. >> financial transaction is great that the sites in getting currency and occupy wall street movement, but it's also getting play in europe and play in europe in effect is likely francis put them on the lap of financial speculation tax in many other countries in the european union, germany most importantly. they should sound strange to people. you can possibly do that. i ago will you have to tell people in england because they think they are getting the equivalent of 30, $40 billion a year in revenue. so they're not and futures, credit defaults, just stock trades. my calculations are if you had a robust tax, you could get as much as 150 billion a year, the taxi mentioned earlier proposed by senator harkin, tariq and from iowa, peter defazio for oregon in the house. that was scored by the joint tax committee is raising 400 billion over the next decade. it's a very, very low tax, paid almost exclusively by wall street with heavy trading. they will see your 401(k). you won't even notice. anyone who notices is doing something they shouldn't be doing. so it's a great tax. glad to see it talked about. it would be great if we could see headway on that. >> bob. >> hearing a lot about personal taxes and speculation. corporate taxes? anything we should talk about fair click >> so we should mostly talk about in tax reform. the individual site is kind of complicated than we do too many things to the internal revenue service, but the introspection of the charitable deduction of goforth aren't undermining tax fairness in any particular way. on the other hand on the corporate side it's an absolute mess. on average the big companies pay about half for what they're supposed to pay. but some are not paying full paris. >> they are not paying it. >> average. some of them are paying 35% and some of them pay absolutely nothing. that's kind of a weird way to even run an economy compared to tax system. it's it's just who is the lobbying power in washington. so if you're gen you hire hundreds of lobbyists and so forth, we don't pay taxes. if you're a retail store, you probably to pay 35%. and i have no problem with the retail stores paying 35%. i just think ge ought to also. if you didn't close the loopholes allowing this to go on, you could create close to $2 trillion over a decade. that's a lot of money. it's more than anybody is talked raising taxes, even by their phony baloney standards when they are cutting taxes, but say they are raising taxes. way more than some symbols, way more than they talk about and way more than anybody and it all comes just from each of these guys pay the rate they are supposed to pay. >> in the context of seducing united and a number of related rulings which seem to suggest corporations can get into the political game and fee collection results, how realistic is it to suggest that we are going to be able to get a tax fairness is in regards corporation? is it a political challenge within a legislative challenge click >> how realistic was that you think the ronald reagan would say a program like what i just described? is going to take some effort and leadership. we need the president of the united states to be bolder on the issue, but if he gets there, the american public will be with them in congress, despite the fact that they are frightened to death of corporate money used against them, they're even more frightened of voters not liking them in during them out of office. >> we've touched on on a lot of stuff. take me down the road. let's not go all the way. bush's go as far as to find some money. >> just for the record, before we run out of time, i suggested going back all the bush tax cut not because they think we shouldn't have some of those in place for lower income folks, but because we believe for a fair economy that is the way we'll get them, that were not ever going to get agreement on where we should draw the line. but if we get rid of them all go back to 2001 and start from there to give tax cuts to people who really need them and put it back in economy. searches for the record i put them in. the united states has been working on this for 10 years trying to organize upper income folks from the bill gates senior signed on with that and basically the estate tax has been weakened and weakened over 10 years and is now to the point where the exemption is $5 million per person, 10 million per couple. we think that's much higher than it needs to be before you start paying dollar went in the estate tax. turn the legislation passes 1 million or 2 million per couple. >> jimmy turned from >> obama's position is three and half million dollars exemption, which we think is weaker than it needs to be. we have a letter actually we are circulating fair economy.org/open letter, but it is to go back the bush tax cuts on upper income folks, cut capital gains, how the strong estate tax to do so with the corporate tax reform. >> increase capital gains taxes. >> what did i say click >> cut. >> yes, thank you. anyway, >> the letter is called our tax code is red. we need tax solutions for the 99%. severe screen forms of back if you're here in the room. >> you are an entrepreneurial activists. >> that is what this is about. with the voices of wealthy people in particular. they make a huge difference when it are people who themselves will be taxed. >> i just want to turn a little little bit about philanthropy here. >> let me throw a little frémont here. there are some awful lot of folks to see if we got rid of tax altogether, which folks could do nice things and take care of everything. >> all the tax policies being talked about i'm really excited to move on all of them. the financial transaction stuff in europe is incredibly exciting from the difficulty people, capital gains taxes and whatever we can move through come i feel economic policy expert, but what we moved to a different over the year is exciting to me and just the context of philanthropy and what you're saying. i work with wealthy individuals. i am a wealthy individual under merkel after my organization and people who were conflict to, foundations and the amount of money we moved as a field of the sector and individuals is nothing compared to the dismay of our public infrastructure and all the things we talk about funding and to what the is moving and was raised at transaction tax. so to put it in the context of whatever we can move forward at any given point, d- money is not covered by individuals and what we give to charity through our own interest is a completely different ballgame and also what we talk about rights or moral imperative, as health care, education, but also human rights and things that we are all guaranteed, then are we leaving that up to charity? probably not. .. >> i don't think so. in order to do it it a fair and equitable way to protect the safety net the answer is no. it drives me crazy people talk about social security is fine another 25 years. have a huge trust fund the report is coming out soon. people will scream about passion come deficits the reality is so security is taking in less money we have a high unemployment rate. we need to fix on bad. people pay income taxes and the social security fixed and wait a couple years. that said it easy answer to the security problem is to raise the payroll tax gap. just to back up it is at $110,000 that means income above that is not taxed. if you raise that you can still pay out to higher benefits and solve almost the 75 years shortfall. those to make $200,000 to pay payroll taxes on all of the account instead of the first 110,000, that could solve the problem. >> it gets to the simplest level the richer you get to, you don't have to pay. >> with racing and come inequality you see a greater percentage of income above that cap. that used to be 90% knollwood is 84%. it has regressed with social security taxes. with affordable care act obama raised taxes it was necessary to get support on the positive side of the ledger. it is a trade-off. dubois to continue to fund medicaid or medicare? paul ryan does not the excel. i do. >> you have looked at the plan. as much as the president speaks about the buffett rule now paul ryan, i know democrats are very excited but does the talk about tax fairness or take us to the extreme of now plus steroids? >> his budget is the fight -- divided by spending which is harsh and he goes after poor people and medicated and medicare and puts the main part of the federal government on a downward track that is theoretically possible possible -- impossible and in sharp contrast to that mr. wright and starts with all tax cuts then goes much further. he talks about beyond the bush tax cuts deficit neutral the cuts not surprisingly are tilted toward the highest income people. he promises to take the top rate to town that 25%. so the result is the specific tax cut he did so hold another four and 1/2 trillion dollars deeper. the one mou poll off the table is capital gains think about that. you cut the taxes to the low was double the highest income people but did you leave the mortgage interest deduction exclusion and much or to the middle class people. but the obama proposal that raise this $500 billion some mr. ryan is implying to the highest income people. >> before we go. >> you do analysis of the media. how did we get to appoint the tax plan of the moment is a plan for redistribution of wealth? >> the ryan plan is in play. the way one step further it literally gets rid of matt -- most of the budget. under his direction assuming his numbers to keep military spending or around 2050 the rest of the government disappears. justice department, fda, there is no money for it. that is what he signed off on. that is incredible reporting. this is a lunatic budget but all these people running around washington saying he put a serious proposal on the table. reporters should be fired for saying that that he proposed getting rid of the federal government. nobody did that. >> there was a moment when the ryan plan came out to say we will cut $4 trillion off the debt obama's said the first to it by a ruling back the taxes. it is healthy. >> but where is our cuts? 5 trillion to make up the $1 trillion of tax cuts for the wealthy? we have to stop coddling the rich that we need these tax cuts in the voice to say in 201093% of it come gains went to the top 1% income over $350,000 you have 40,000 of the end of increase if you're in the bottom you got $80 it is bad and getting worse. to say rich people cannot afford it to? is hogwash. >> bob mcintyre remembers he ran on the slope and take the rich off of welfare. >> that is it could call to outrage let's give our round of applause to the panel. [applause] i would like to have questions from the audience. look at this address if you're here physically raise your hand john will call wait for the microphone because we are on c-span. >> we have about half an hour sphere make you may want to submit that for the record. >> the philosophy goes through kelso with them by gary theory of economics movie beyond the keynesian model challenging both neither thought individuals with the means of production is an important goal as the 88 education fund. you had walter and senator hubert humphrey both of whom congratulated kelso and celebrated the idea is to democratize. my problem is this is no discussion at all and it assumes the tax system has loopholes is a good system. that is unfortunate. >> tell people where they can find that plan. >> cesj.com. >> should be scrapped the whole plan? >> we have to have the tax system. >> ryan repudiated the 18th century. and what put together the constitutional convention with the property-tax come abraham lincoln instituted the first income-tax but teddy roosevelt running as a third-party candidate split the vote and got the 60th amendment adopted. >> you basically say we have a framework? >> with all sales taxes the attacks that is the scientology movement. oddly enough it is called the fair tax but a must be an acronym. [laughter] and you have those little they want to tax the middle class. kelso was an interesting character. we do have it is called employees' stock ownership plan that has turned into a shelter. >> you need reform. >> any item is a loophole. >> that is what my mother always said matter every tax reform is new loopholes. let's go to the gentlemen in the back row. there has been a lot of discussion of cap gains rates they are not indexed for inflation in exchange for the rates that are indexed and second, how much of an impact? does anybody have any idea the dollar weighted average. >> is a terrific question. >> who wants to grab a piece of capital gains? >> it is lower now would does not matter much but if you index the gains but don't index the debt you have created the tax shelter and the gains indexed make money by losing money. member to realizing capital gains is voluntary. we already have an exemption of the three quarters in a kind of rate redo get it seems unnecessary. >> the telling point* it is optional. what people don't know is also in somebody buys the stock at $10 as a young% and then you make a huge gain if you die without selling it the capital gain is complete the forgive then. so will the people make money over their life and borrow against it and it is never taxed. >> gourde give it to charity >> you don't have perfect fairness but we think i am getting money or interest or dividend i have to pay tax on that. i would not raise taxes at capital gains is counterproductive but we don't have to do was special index for that. >> just a quick word to put to dollar amounts on capital gains reform. there is an interesting debate about behavioral responses in what would happen if you did change the rate of taxing capital income. there is a great report i forget the name of it but you could find it and there is great detail on the research done on behavioral responses wide the joint committee on taxation may lowballed their estimates of how much revenue we would actually get. >> please stand up. >> i would rather not. the cbo said taxes are progressive. federal over 250,000 is 58% then state and local is another six. 34% of income over 250 dose to the local government. i know average taxation is 28% so it is regressive and the cbo has shown that. there is also the indirect cost issues like compliance andy legal system cost that is about 22% universal because wealthier people are in the courts. it is probably like 26 added to the 34 commas 60% of all income average is in government related cost. >> thank you. >> with the tax that sounds plausible. that does not bother me. the compliance cost does not make sense. >> they are the avoidance cost. people do it to try to lower their taxes. >> if you look at average tax system it is mildly progressive looking at combined taxes but income is not mild the progressive this skewed toward the wealthy sell you have people who cannot afford to pay any more. never mind fairness. >> it is not deliberate but 20 8% of the end come over 250,000. if we have a hard-working job creator they pay 20% on the $1 if we talk about the estate tax people are worried if we set the floor mob 1 million and $100 they pay the tax on the whole thing. no. it is only the $100. >> actually works. somebody sent three questions. first, apparently an occupier. what can occupied due to shed more light in the angle on the tax justice question. next come in a concern about the small revenue increase the above rules would generate. third, how possible are their taxes with many runs the elector of system? >> you try to connect these people. it strikes me occupy wall street, of which is now a national movement with many man -- manifestations but with inequality, is that how we might address it? >> i would go back to what i said before four of us to seize the moment but the question asked there is a way their needs to be a way to mobilize for any legislation to move. is a way just continuing the conversation he been people mobilized. it should be talked about everywhere but i ain't a lot of people. >> as a movement to raise the issues committee may want to president to be more focused. >> talk about occupy in response it is keeping the conversation going. also my own trajectory five years ago i was in a very different place. so people are turning into the issue and st. of wealth disparity and people looking at their communities tied to a larger analysis is a huge part of that is what will cause my generation to have a different perspective. >> i think occupied to get -- together with warren buffett saying stop coddling the rich and the pressure from the bottom and someone from the top say i am affected makes it possible for obama's to save the should have the buffett rule. is said tiny sliver of what we talk about. bush tax cuts come capital-gains, a bigger issues and this one metal sliver but it starts the conversation should the taslivet we talk about. bush tax cuts come capital-gains, a bigger issues and this one metal sliver but it starts the conversation should the tax the wealthy more. >> one issue that is important we have focused but as it plays out at the local and state level we have a great discussion or the state policy mothballed for those issues. is it important instead of just thinking this is washington d.c. debate. >> go back to of the gentleman was talking about. but for much harder on lower income people who pay the heaviest share of sales taxes and it will be paid -- people. it's much harder than federal taxes. >> with the financial speculation, the imf did a good paper a couple years ago. they did not say that is the best thing to do but they recommended a financial activities tax. for the most part those are exempted from the sales tax shirt, shoes but few go to the bank is not taxed. you can tax mortgage transfers. they can tax the transfers issued against property wherever it to okay mr. housing bubble. somebody has a question. >> i am with the anti-party organization in. talked-about the tax code that bet tax credits for low working family. the earned income tax credits does more than any of their program to lift people above the poverty line. but about those battles and how to protect. >> people should understand bob is the great sea year of all discussion. >> this is a huge year for the low income tax credit. abominate improve the child tax credit. if you look at the ryan budget this eliminates deficits and the same time preparing a tax credit. making minimum-wage pratt working full-time right now getting $1,800. if ryan goes into effec

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