tv Parker Spitzer CNN November 18, 2010 8:00pm-9:00pm EST
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me got a full cavity search. >> you're disappointed. >> i am. you travel at 5:00 in the morning want some conversation, maybe light petting. >> maybe you got the celebrity treatment because they are fans of "john king usa" or "what the week". >> every time the tsa guys are friendly. they say, hey, you're the bald cnn guy. i know that, sir. thank you very much. >> i know a few. i will send your photo. thanks, folks. >> good evening. >> welcome to the program. another great program tonight. we'll go under the hood with the mechanic david goldsmith who will tell us why gm cars are getting better. >> i can never get enough car talk, eliot. we el look at a controversy with wr the new president at fresno university is an illegal immigrant. there is talk of deporting him.
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we'll look at that. >> and we have barney frank to tell us why the economy is coming back and why government played a critical role. first, opening arguments, very simple. it worked. the gm bailout, an enormous success. your tax dollars did two things -- restored an iconic american manufacturer to produce cars and it makes money. it is profitable. what more can you ask for? we'll get our money back. >> whoa, hoss. this is a great suess story. i'm not about to put a cloud over this wonderful story. we have a ways to go. the u.s. government is owed $27 billion. chrysler isn't a great success story. we can't get too carried away but the money is doing a good job. >> of course we're not there. we have unemployment.
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we have been talking about the crisis, but the notion that you have government completely step back which is what the tea party was calling for, now we have the example where the government said, we will roll up our sleeves, invest in a smart way, force the company to change, kind of get the give-backs by workers and by those who had the debt. get everybody to pitch in and what we get at the end of the pipeline is a new company that works. and so that is a better model than what the tea party is talking about which is run up the white flag and concede defeat. >> all right. >> to discuss more about the amazing turn around. let's go into the arena. joining us now, democratic congressman barney frank. thanks for joining us. >> you're welcome. >> today is a good news day. you know, the calculation of about 1.4 million jobs saved because of the bailout of general motors and the collateral industries in the auto sector. is this an example that you can now use to say, look, our theory of government intervention works and when the tea party screams
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about cut, cut, cut, you can stand up and say, wait a minute. here's proof that these things make sense. >> yes. you have a good argument by warren buffett. it's not a paradigm that it's something you want to do all the time. this was an emergency response but what it shows is the intersection and the interaction of the public and private sectors. people who think it is a war of public versus private are wrong. there are roles for both. the best proof was ford which was not itself facing bankruptcy which was not going to be asking for any of the money was a strong advocate for voting the money for general motors and chrysler which was the supply chain. the other industries. there is a lot of lip service in america to promote manufacturing in america. it's a hard thing to do. the single most effective thing we have done to sustain manufacturing in america and begin to expand it was voting the money that was lent to general motors and chrysler that
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in the case of general motors is going to be paid back and substantially for chrysler. it is an argument. it's proof that the notion that it's a war between the private and public sectors is mistaken. they both have roles and the important thing to do is get the interaction right. >> i want to go down the path of communication. one of the failures of the administration unfortunately has been that it has not explained what the affirmative role for government must be and the limits to the role so the public is left with a sort of unknowing sense that the government is grown, grown without articulation of why it could work. now you can see here's the proof and hope people use the example for that purpose. >> there is no question. when you want to talk about manufacturing, you want to talk about public policies, again, work with the private sector. look, people have tried to do it. i have tried to do it. we don't control the media and we don't control -- and the negative is easier to say.
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there is a headline 700 billion dollars in the t.a.r.p. well, we never advanced $700 billion. we advanced something in the 400s. most of that's been paid back. the bank piece of this -- it's not just general motors that's working out. we have already gotten more than we advance d to them and we have a profit coming in. we wrote into the bill requirement that is there be some payback. but at a time when unemployment is high, good news is a hard sell. >> can we cross the continents for a moment? since you talked about manufacturing, i know you signed the letter the other day asking the president to get a whole lot more aggressive about china and currency issues and with the world trade organization. don't you think the white house needs to get more aggressive? >> absolutely. there is a cultural -- what's particularly fascinating here is while we are being told, wait a minute, we have to understand china, the chinese are attacking
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ben bernanke for daring to put america's need for economic growth on the table and the chinese central bank said, america, you have to worry about the rest of the world. i was particularly struck that a group of republican economists including reagan and bush appointees specifically sided with the foreign central banks explicitly in attacking bernanke. let's give an example about china which has nothing to do with fair trade, et cetera. one of the areas where america does well is int lech chal property in movies, songs, software. piracy is rampant in china. when we try to get them to enforce that we are told, well, you know, it's hard to enforce. make it clear. if the pirated dvds, movies and software were attacking the chinese come mist party or government they would have no trouble finding them. the notion that china can't control the flow of information is nonsense. they can when there is anything political. they can round up anybody who said anything nice about a nobel
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prize winner but they can't control the widespread sale on the streets of pirated american property. >> let's talk about alan greenspan recently criticized dodd frank arguing that it will impede economic growth. what is your response to that? >> that's like being called silly by the three stooges. alan greenspan's failure to do any sensible regular fwlags in the financial area is how we got into this mess. in 1994, the last democratic congress before the one that we are now losing passed a bill called the homeowners equity protection act mandating the fed to restrict bad mortgages. greenspan refused to do it. he said, the market knows better. he said, don't regulate derivatives. yeah, there was certainty. the certainty was that any financial institution can do whatever the hell it wants to do and it brought about this terrible crisis. we have responded to that and i
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think here his predecessor paul volker has a better part of the argument. we listened closely to him and others and we imposed some restriction that is greenspan should have imposed. now, the notion that we have created the uncertainty, this is the man who has acknowledged that his failure to use regulatory powers caused a large part of the problem. he hasn't given us specifics about what he thinks we should do. >> congressman, you personally said that the critics of extending these risky mortgages to people who couldn't afford them were overreacting. >> no. i didn't say that. i did say that i thought fannie mae and freddie mac weren't in serious trouble. i was wrong about that in 2003 as i was about lehman brothers and wachovia and others. but i was always for them doing affordable housing. that's a distinction people failed to make. in 2004 when george bush pushed fannie mae and freddie mac to do more low income mortgages i objected to that.
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i did agree that we should be trying to get homes for low income americans but rentals, not ownership. i have been a critic of the notion that everybody should be a homeowner. i have pushed for affordable rental housing. i didn't foresee the extent of the collapse. what happened is that even housing above the low income level, i didn't see that. i acknowledge that. in terms of pushing for home ownership for low income people, no. i have always been critical of that and pushed for rental housing instead. >> one of the most credit kag pieces of dodd-frank, named after you, was the volcker rule which will take away some of the high risk endeavors of banks with government guarantees behind them. one of the first things the new majority says it wants to undo is the volcker rule. will you be able to stop that? can they whittle away at the critical issues in the statute? >> i don't think they will. that's an important point.
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what i worry is by using their control of the house they will try to underfund the securities and exchange commission. we have put very strict rules into derivative trading. by the way, one of the things i wish if we had kept the majority to do was to examine some trading activities because i don't think they add much, if anything at all to real economic activity. i think we have to distinguish between the role of financial institutions in financing productive work by people who produce goods and services and trading back and forth like kids with baseball cards and creating risk. they will not be able to undo anything with the senate there, the president there. i believe we have in this one clearly public opinion on our side. i fear in the appropriations process they will underfund things. they can't do that. we were careful with the consumer protection bureau. i'm very proud of what we did there working with elizabeth warren. we funded that without the appropriations process. we funded it by taking money
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from the fdic and the federal reserve that comes into them and diverted that to the consumer agency. but the security and exchange commissions, the trading commission which have important new responsibilities for regulating derivatives and other corporate monkeyshines, i'm afraid they will try to underfund that. >> you make a point about it not being productive to the economy. one of the critical accomplishments with restructuring general motors is gm is now a car company instead of a finance company. gm went over the cliff and had become a bank with mortgage financing and gmac. that's what pulled it under. now that it can focus on cars it will do what we need for the economy which is produce jobs for real people. >> absolutely. >> that is a benefit of the bailout. >> one of the things we do in the bail is restrict any new of these industrial banks because you get a boring of the
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industry. so that's an important part of what was done with general motors. >> congressman frank, thank you very much for the wonderful conversation. >> thank you. >> later in the program should a college student body president be deported for not being a citizen? we'll be right back. stay with us. >> the ford fusion last year was rated higher than the honda accord and the toyota camry. i believe that's true that consumer reports rated it as a better vehicle. it's not impossible for american manufacturers to make great cars. it is a fact, however, that they haven't been making good cars for a long time. patient: and that's why yellow makes me sad. i tnk. sarge: that's interesting. you know what makes me sad? you do! maybe we should chug on over to mambie pambie land sawhere maybe can find some yoself-confidence for you.? ya jackwagon! tissue? crybaby.
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with all this talk about gm we thought it might be a good idea to look under the hood. dade goldsmith owns an auto repair shop under the brooklyn bridge and works on all kinds of cars. he knows gm cars from the inside out. >> welcome to the program. if we can zoom in we have an older chevy and a newer chevy there. tell us how the gm cars look to you as a mechanic working on them every day. >> well, the new gm cars, i
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think, are greatly improved. we have seen big, big changes and, you know, they are modern vehicles, reliable, not polluting. we like the new gm cars. >> you say they are improved. i wonder how they compare to other cars that you see. >> i would say general motors cars for years were sadly not competitive at all. but lately, especially in the last three, four years we have seen, like i said, vast improvements. the impala and the malibus are getting very high marks. the guys under the hood, we see the difference. the cars are -- we don't see them coming in with annoying problems or things that make them not reliable. they are nice cars. our customers like them, too. >> what specifically is an improved part? what in the engine do you look at and say, wow, this is so much better? >> in the old days, general
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motors had a hard time complying with the new emissions standards and with the fuel efficiency standards. the cars just couldn't perform. i think they have caught up and now we have cars that pollute -- like this car, a 2004 colorado pollutes a whole lot less. i mean, this car probably pollutes 90% less than the vehicle that i have behind me which is a gas guzzling -- a beautiful car. it's a 1971 oldsmobile delta 88. it just uses a lot of gas and pollutes the environment terribly. this vehicle -- and many times in the morning this thing back in the '70s wouldn't start up. it would come in on a tow truck because it had the old style carburetor. >> you're talking about that car like it was yours 30, 40 years ago. >> i lusted for a car like this.
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i never owned one. i was in high school. i was in high school. so i look back at it and they are beautiful cars. everybody says, gee, dave, why don't they make them like they used to? >> i say they may be beautiful but thank goodness because this car is just -- it's not as safe, not as reliable, it pollutes. it's good-looking and it belongs in car shows. that's about it. >> david, if you had $25,000 today to spend on an american car, what would you buy? >> if i had $25,000 and i was going to buy a sedan, i would buy an impala or a ford fusion. >> one of the things that confuses me is it's one thing to drive it out of the show room and another thing to know five years later it holds up to the wear and tear of three kids and two dogs in the back every day and new york city's potholes.
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when will we see if the cars coming off the assembly line today really are going to with stand what we put them through? >> well, you're 1,000% right on that point. it is five years from now. that is the test. i know a guy who sells both general motors cars and he sells -- he owns dealerships and sells toyota also. he always used to say back in the day -- you know, he would drive a toyota with 150,000 miles on it and it would feel brand new. he'd say, why can't the americans do that? the fact of the matter is that they are starting to do that. but that really is the true test. we're seeing a huge improvement in american cars over the last two, three years but, you know, you're right. it hasn't been five years yet. we really don't know. >> thank you, david. thank you very much for your time. >> all right. thank you.
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>> coming up, the president is an illegal alien, but it's not what you think. we'll be right back. >> used to be general motors would break even if they sold 4 million car as year in the united states. now they break even if they sell 2 million. >> you got them to cut waste and spending. could you go to washington?
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general motors is back. the company returned to wall street with a bang today in the largest initial public offering of stock in american history at $23 billion. gm shares closed at $34 a share, a dollar above where the shares were priced. when the company filed for bankruptcy in june of 2009, gm stock was trading at less than a dollar. >> general motors is profitable again, enjoying a dramatic turn around after the $50 billion bailout last year. joining us tonight, one of the people responsible for saving general motors, harry wilson, former senior adviser to the task force. >> welcome. thanks for coming. >> thanks for having me. >> it worked. this was a huge success. congratulations. >> thank you. >> there were skeptics.
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you put together a $50 billion investment in the company. what was the grand bargain? who gave back what to make it happen? >> sure. i think the reason the company is so different, the reason it's so well received is there were three things taking place. two big bang concepts. one cost about $9 billion. secondly a huge reduction in the amount of outstanding debt liabilities to the tune of over $90 billion. third a profit portfolio that we didn't have anything to do with. the team was redeveloping. it's much better than it's been historically. >> you helped them get rid of waste and cut spending? could you go to washington and do this? >> i tried to go to albany. >> was this the right time for the ipo in the midst of the industry still recovering? >> they want to maximize recovery for the fax pairs and get out as fast as possible which is good for the economy and the company. there is a natural tension there. i think the company is ready to go public.
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it's developed great results, been profitable this year every quarter and will remain profitable. i think there is tension of how many shares you sell and when you sell them. the longer they wait the more money for the taxpayer but the longer government intervention asks. you could argue they should have waited but at the end of the day they are honoring what they have said which is they want to get out as quickly as they can without damaging the company. >> we have heard that the government is getting back a big hunk of money. >> yes. >> we still have a way to go. $26 billion yet. >> mm-hmm. >> my understanding is that we have to with able -- gm has to sell shares at $53 a share for on average a couple of years for the government to recoup the money. is that likely? >> i would say we'll probably fall short. here's why. the way the deal worked before the ipo is they needed to sell shares $42 or $43 a share which the company will be close to $34. in a year it will be in the low 40s.
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had they waited a year they could have sold all the stock at that level. they sold almost half the stock, about 40 to 45% of the stock today at $33 a share and locked in a loss on that stake, raising the average from $43 to $53 a share. i think they can get to $53 within two or three years as the company generates cash flow and as the economy recovers. but i think they will try to get out sooner than that and will lose a modest amount of money in the context of the deal. >> we have decided to buy shares. is this something average americans can do? >> absolutely. any american can buy stock today, tomorrow for around $34 a share. not different from the ipo price. i think it's still attractive. >> you said it will go up to the low $40s in a year. >> that's my view. >> this is good. >> i'm buying more shares. >> that's better than my savings
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account. >> there is risk though. >> but it could be bailed out again. here's another piece of the bargain. the products. you said you cut costs, got rid of liability and it's a better company which raises the issue. it's a car company. when you looked at it it was into mortgages, auto finance. it had become a finance company, not auto company. they were distracted and now they are building cars and better cars. how did that happen? >> on the product side gm had been working it out for a period of time. it's accelerated and is continuing. they really had rna vested much more in the products. there are two pieces to it. one is a common sense car design. so one of the real arche types of the u.s. auto industry and of gm's new design would take literally a few hundred dollars, invest it in the interior of the car and sell it for several thousand more. the malibu sells for $4,000 more
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than the old chevy malibu and it only costs a few hundred dollars more to make. that's profit and they sell twice as many. that's a more valuable product to gm. they have done it with the malibu, equinox and a slew of new products. >> there is a study that says the bailout saved 1.4 million jobs for gm and chrysler. was there any other option in your mind? >> no. the alternative -- this was -- look, i'm a free market guy. >> you're even a republican. >> i am. the only republican in the leadership team. i feel passionately generally opposed to government intervention in the economy. in that moment of time where we were in american history was one of these once every 75, 100 year moments. because there were no capital markets the return is no capital. the company is liquidate. the entire auto industry would have gone away in a period of time. lost more jobs because you're not adding in ford and ancillary
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jobs associated with it. you would have lost this great industrial backbone that didn't need to be lost. that, to me, when you look at the all the tys was a clear choice. >> harry wilson, fascinating discussion. thank you. still to come, nancy pelosi, dick cheney and -- lord voldemort? we'll see what they have in common coming up in our political party. >> there is no citizenship requirement. it's student government. i'm here to serve the students, not the state of california or the federal government. and aleve was proven to work better on pain than tylenol 8 hour. so why am i still thinking about this? how are you? good, how are you? [ male announcer ] aleve. proven better on pain.
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welcome to our political party, an off beat conversation with opinionated guests. tonight we start with dennis rodman, one of the great nba defensive players of all time. he racked up -- come on, dennis. >> i have no business on this show. >> 12,000 rebounds. here we go. the part you care about. just as important he's participating in a raffle to support the mission of st. francis nonprofit drug and alcohol treatment center in ft. lauderdale, florida. how can we buy tickets to the raffle? >> are we taping now?
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>> yeah. >> oh, yeah. rodman.com. this organization is about helping homeless people get off the street, get their lives back together, stuff like that. i used to be homeless back in 1981, '82. i use my fame with this organization because it's a great one. >> if you win the raffle, what do you get? am >> oh, a lot of money. it's about -- there is a house that was donated they can't afford because times are hard. they gave it to the money to raise money for them and the charity. it's a $3 million house. >> you're using your fame to draw attention to the issue. >> draw attention to the issue. >> great stuff. also, joe queenan, an author, humorist, columnist with the wall street journal and a great
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singer as we found out last time he was here. >> adequate. >> by my standards, great. >> and we have nicole kurokawa with the independent women's forum thinktank in washington, d.c. and andrew jenks who tells me i'm not part of his demographic. he has created and stars in "world of jenks," a documentary film series on mtv. welcome, everyone. >> all righty. first question the national book awards were announced yesterday and patti smith's memoirs "just kids" won an award. if you awarded a book you have read recently, what would it be? >> i read a book called "a thousand sisters, the worst place in the world to be a woman." it's about the congo. i recommend it. >> sounds important. >> it was sad. >> anybody got a more happy idea? >> i was going to say "don
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quixote." but i read a book called "pantopticon" about universal surveillance. there is cameras all the time on us and people start taking the video and editing it and making their own films with you in them. it's just really scary, creepy, interesting book. >> may not be fiction. >> it's fiction. >> but it may not be. >> there are 200 cameras have taken pictures of us today. 200. every day you go. every bar you go into, in the subway. it's a scary book but good. "don quixote" is as well. >> it's awesome. we have important, creepy. fun? >> russell brand is good. he has a memoir out. he keeps it real, talks about how he faced drug charges and how he was bulimic at age 12 and now is a famous rock star. it's a good memoir. almost as good as this guy's
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back in the day. >> dennis? what do you got for us? >> just a few. >> yours? >> i don't have a book right now. i wrote four. >> really? >> yeah. >> i would say my book sbm do you have a favorite among the four? >> mm-hmm. "i should be dead by now." that's my favorite. >> is that the motorcycle? >> that's the first one. >> "i should be dead by now". i like that. >> got it. glad you're not. >> how about the happy one? >> not a lot of upbeat stuff there, joe. >> here's something up beat. gm is back, maybe. there is a big ipo today. which american icon would you like to see make a big comeback. >> they still owe $27 billion. man. how are they back? >> you know who must have gotten the federal money? you know who got federal money?
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i think the oakland raiders did. they're back. they're winning. scored 59 point as couple wee e weekles ago. >> we have an expert here. it's not the teams that spend the most that win. it's the teams that find the raw talent and get it young and cultivate the players, right? >> no. >> you disagree? >> dennis raised warren buffett. >> i didn't say he liked it. >> he wrote a thank you note to the government in the op-ed page and said, thank you for bringing the economy back. if you could say thank you to the government for doing something, what would it be? >> you can't thank you to the government. the government owes $13 trillion. what the hell is that? we're not coming back. come on, man. >> you buy gold? >> only silver. come on, man.
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>> she's good. >> she don't say much at all. >> joe, you don't say thank you to the government for anything at the wall street journal. >> i do. the national parks in maine. i was there for the first time. >> which one? >> maine is further away than canada. you have to drive forever to get there. acadia national forest, cadillac mountain at 4:56 in the morning it is the most amazing thing and the government operate it is park. >> vancouver, ontario, all those places, man. wow. those strip clubs are awesome. >> that's the canadian federal government. >> thank you for the strip clubs. >> all right. nicky? >> i'm a libertarian so there is little i would say. but he wrote the letter and got a medal of honor. i may consider my positions
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going forward. >> how about you, andrew? >> i would say the grants the government has been giving for education, a lot of college students. on my way here i was reading the average college president makes over $1 million a year. >> i saw that. >> while us college kids of that age are getting totally -- >> i don't know if it was the average guy. i think there were a couple over a million. i don't think it was the average. i may be wrong. i think there were a couple over. >> maybe i read it too fast. maybe i should check my facts before i'm on cnn. >> we have another question when we come back. don't touch that remote. >> you could decrease the cost of health care in the united states by 25% and still improve care. we know that because my neighbor in saskatchewan has the same population as montana and their health care costs half as much. hi.
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voldemort is back in "harry potter 7." of the three which would you least like to be stuck with in an elevator. >> yo-yoni don't want to be in elevator with pelosi. >> you'll choose voldemort? >> i know this is unpopular, but she scares me. maybe you have met her. she's scary-looking. >> she's charming, genteel, smart. your politics may be this far away but you would find her absolutely delightful and fascinating to spend time with. >> my son worked on the hill and said she was sweet. >> she's a terrific role model. i disagree with her politics across the board but i would love to talk with her. >> nobody wants to be in the elevator with the guy from harry potter? >> have you seen lord voldemort? you'll be 10,000 years back in half a second. >> who is the person you would least like to be stuck in an elevator with -- just anybody in
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the world? >> dick cheney, if he's got a gun and there is a duck on one side, i'm in the middle and dick cheney. >> i think dick cheney. >> i don't think he even need it is gun. >> he's got a bad rap. >> that's good though, bro. nice to meet you. >> i don't know anything about it. >> these guys are happy to meet. joe, dennis. glad we could bring you together. >> i have seen him before. i havene hasn't seen me before. >> i've seen you. used to be the governor, right? >> you just figured that out. >> you're that guy. >> i'm that guy. all right. >> i don't want to end the party. it's just getting good. thank you for being with us. >> there is no citizenship requirement to be a student office holder. it's student government.
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in the bank. >> sounds like a magic truck. >> thanks for being here. >> good to see you. >> every time we have a governor on, eliot is old pals. i'll go first. you siaid the trick is applying lessons learned as a rancher. >> you will have good years and bad when you're in business or running a ranch. the way we managed to stay in the black in montana is not that the recession didn't arrive here. we have 7.5% unemployment which is lower than the national average, but when we had the good years four years ago and five years ago like every other state in the union, what we did is we quit bonding. we didn't borrow any money for projects. we paid cash on the barrelhead. we put $175 million in one-time funds in our pension program to shore it up. then i built the largest savings account in the history of montana because i knew, you
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know, when you've got a good year going and the cattle are fat and you have grain in the bin, who know what is prices will be next year, who knows whether the rains come next year. the rains didn't come and revenues declined but unlike 48 states that went into the south park, we kept money in the bank and now we are just drawing down on the savings account. i just proposed a budget for our legislature yesterday. we increased funding for k-12 education and higher education. we also cut some budgets elsewhere. but we increased our budget by about 1.97% and i proposed to cut more taxes for more montanans and we'll have one of the best fund balances in history. it's good management. >> an araising accomplishment. you did get federal stimulus money to help you tide over the downturn you were talking about? >> when the federal government sends you money, you put it in
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the bank account. that's the way it works. one thing is true. there are 50 business models in america. what all governors do is the same thing. 85% of the budget is to educate, medicate incarcerate. if you look at a pie chart of new york or california and montana, you'd find out that we effectively distribute our resources in almost exactly the same way. so people who say they want to cut the size of state government or reform state government, i tell them, unless you've got a plan for education, medication or incarceration you're blowing smoke. >> you are laying out a blueprint you say could be applied to the nation. take your methodology and take your theories about how you run your state government, apply it to the federal government. where would you cut? what would you do? we are saying that i mean your cuts. what would you cut if you had to in the federal budget? >> let's get to the heart of the matter and talk about medicare and medicaid. montana and the rest of the states around the country, we
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pay more for health care than our competitors do in canada, in europe. we pay more and we get less. we pay two and three times as much for prescription drugs as they do in competitor countries, more for medical devices, more for insurance. therefore, our health care costs are higher in the united states than they are in other countries. yet they pass the health care bill without challenging the expenses of the medical devices, of the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies. they just added new members to medicaid and medicare and kicked the costs down the road. what you're got to do is challenge expenses, decrease the cost of health care in the united states by 25% and still improve care. >> let's go to social security, the other major expenditure on the books. what would you prescribe for social security? sp. >> frank luntz polled young people and asked, "do you think you will ever get a dime from social security, and do you
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think you will meet an alien during your lifetime"? more of the 30 and younger people in the united states thought they would meet an alien than ever get a dime from social security. here, i'm going to tell you how to fix it. everybody who knows insurance understands time and money. you can't tell somebody that's 50 or 55 years old everything that you have done for your whole productive career is out the window and we are going to change the retirement age or change your reimbursement package. so you start from 45 to 30. somebody that's 45 to 30 we say, here's the deal. you're going to retire two years later and get 90% of the benefits that the people that are currently retired are getting. if you are under 30 you will retire four years later and get 80% of the benefits. >> governor, i want to shift gears here. you spent seven years in saudi arab arabia. what's your message from the middle east and what would you
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tell us about the middle east to help us develop a better understanding between those cultures and ours? >> well, first of all, people really don't understand that it's not a single culture there. they don't understand that the arabs have been fighting with the persians for 3,000 years. so step number one, when we went into iraq and took saddam hussein out, we created a vacuum. when i lived there iraq was fighting iran and they both lost a million troops in the war. when they were fighting each other they weren't fighting someone else. we empowered iran and now they scare all of our allies in the middle east. they scare the saudis, kuwait, the jordanians, the israelis. they are building the capacity for nukes. the blame is actually landing on our shoulders. if we would have let the regime in iraq continue, it wasn't a great regime.
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they were oppressive and tortured their people. it wasn't a good place for women but you picked a place in the middle east that is. to have a counter balance of iraq on iran protected our backside. now we own iraq and we have an iran that's empowered partnering with chavez and others in our hemisphere and we really have a tiger on our hands. >> governor, thanks for joining us. time is short. join us again in the near future and come visit. we look forward to having you join us here in person. >> great stopping by. >> thank you. >> thank, governor. >> we'll be right back. into electricity, so it's more efficient. so i thought... what if we put that same system onto one of these? [ people screaming ] who knows? we might be able to create the world's first self-sustaining amusement park. [ male announcer ] how would you use toyota technology to make a better world? learn how to share your ideas at toyota.com/ideasforgood.
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my kids say i speak a different language. but i love math and math and science develop new ideas. we've used hydrogen in our plants for decades. the old hydrogen units were very large. recently, we've been able to reduce that. then our scientists said "what if we could make it small enough to produce and use hydrogen right on board a car, as part of a hydrogen system." this could significantly reduce emissions and increase fuel economy by as much as 80%.
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>> i'm joe johns. the remains of an ohio mom, her 10-year-old son and a family friend have been found in a wooded area. the bodies were in plastic bags inside the hollow of a tree. police say matthew hoffman arrested for kidnapping the boy's sister revealed the location of the bodies. the alleged barefoot bandit pleaded not guilty in federal
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court in a seattle courtroom today. colton harris moore is accused of stealing planes, books and cars during a crime spree that lasted two years, often shoeless. dogs are among the most popular pets in the world, but how smart are they? tonight on "anderson 360" how dogs see the world and think. plus, dog whisperer caesar milan joins us. >> tonight on culture of politics we feature the president. not president but pedro ramirez, president of the student body at fresno state in california. he's a 22-year-old political science major who failed to mention something when running for office. he's in the united states illegally. >> uh-oh. >> there is no citizenship for student office. i'm here to serve the students, not the state of california or
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the federal government. >> you know what, when you dig into the facts it's not as though he came last week illegally and got into college and said, i'm getting into politics. he's been here since he was 3. he didn't know he was here illegally until he was applying to college. >> another point of view, the student who lost the election is the head of the college republicans and he's calling for ramirez to step down. have a listen. >> he mislead the students. he was not upfront about it. no one knew. i think he should step down and have a re-election. >> this is a classic though. isn't it? you have the college republican versus the illegal immigrant. it's a classic clash that corresponds to the debate in this country. clearly when you put a human face on the illegal immigrant it's a different story. nobody wants to punish this young 22-year-oldle. >> it's more than just complicated. whether the number is 11 million or 12 million of undocumented individuals here
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