Forum. Let me introduce each of the gentlemen here and then i will say a couple of broad words about where we stand in the Defense Budget to allow them to take off from where i leave off. We will have broad discussion among ourselves and go to you about half way through. Immediately to my left is former under secretary of defense who is pentagons comptroller. Bob has been through the battles of not only iraq and afghanistan but sequestration and shut down and has pretty much seen it all in the obama years where he was the comptroller for most of that period of time. He has been with hamilton but speaking today under his own and is also my former boss. I worked for him at the Congressional Budget Office. After that reflects badly in two ways by the time but as things turned out bob went to the air force and was comptroller throughout the Clinton Administration and spent a number of years in various pursuits. And then tom wright is sitting in the middle today. Tom is my colleague at broo
Coverage of the White House Briefing on cspan 3. Now we return to an event on the president s defense priorities. He has not done that yet. His secretaries have done that. They have said that at open testimony in speeches but hes not said it. And when as you saw with the press conference with the british Prime Minister when she said, im 100 committed to nato, he was shifting in his seat and he begrudgingly said maybe i said that. He needs to be very clear in a speech and like that i think it will help a lot. Because it will just demonstrate that u. S. Policy has not changed. Briefly on the third question on europe, europe should spend more, should meet the 2 target for sure but this is largely a crisis of the president s making. Right . This is not a this is not something i think that is the most pressing problem in europe. The most pressing problem in europe is russian aggression under the internal problems of european integration. Elevating this to the level that he has, i think it c
Coverage of the White House Briefing on cspan 3. Now we return to an event on the president s defense priorities. He has not done that yet. His secretaries have done that. They have said that at open testimony in speeches but hes not said it. And when as you saw with the press conference with the british Prime Minister when she said, im 100 committed to nato, he was shifting in his seat and he begrudgingly said maybe i said that. He needs to be very clear in a speech and like that i think it will help a lot. Because it will just demonstrate that u. S. Policy has not changed. Briefly on the third question on europe, europe should spend more, should meet the 2 target for sure but this is largely a crisis of the president s making. Right . This is not a this is not something i think that is the most pressing problem in europe. The most pressing problem in europe is russian aggression under the internal problems of european integration. Elevating this to the level that he has, i think it c
Coverage of the White House Briefing on cspan 3. Now we return to an event on the president s defense priorities. He has not done that yet. His secretaries have done that. They have said that at open testimony in speeches but hes not said it. And when as you saw with the press conference with the british Prime Minister when she said, im 100 committed to nato, he was shifting in his seat and he begrudgingly said maybe i said that. He needs to be very clear in a speech and like that i think it will help a lot. Because it will just demonstrate that u. S. Policy has not changed. Briefly on the third question on europe, europe should spend more, should meet the 2 target for sure but this is largely a crisis of the president s making. Right . This is not a this is not something i think that is the most pressing problem in europe. The most pressing problem in europe is russian aggression under the internal problems of european integration. Elevating this to the level that he has, i think it c
A troubling statistic i discussed in the book is 40 of the sons born to fathers in the lowest quintile of income remain in lowest quintile of income and so demography is often destiny. If you are born to a father who was very polar, theres a very good chance, not overwhelming chance, but a very good chance youre going to be poor as well. To the discussion that poverty relates to blacks and i discuss why that is the case then why much of this discussion can be very misleading. The poverty rate is slightly lower than that of native americans and alaska natives. But more important point is more than 75 of blacks are not poor so the kinds of generalizations and images with warm are unfortunately quite inaccurate, though it is the case that many, too many blacks are born into poverty and will remain in poverty. The most important conclusion that i think analysts of poverty have come through in trying to determine what the trend is is that today, the class gap is even greater than the racial