527 and that was your moveon.org or your swift boat veterans for truth. nonprofit groups that had organized for the purpose of running these kinds of political ads and again, those organizations would also be reporting their contributors to -- in publicly filed -- i'm sorry. in publicly available reports that were filed with the irs. what happens after citizens united is any corporation can now run those kinds of expenditures. and that includes for-profit corporations but really what it mostly means is that a lot of nonprofit corporations are now jumping into the fray and those are generally organized under 501c4 under the tax code. and 501c4's that now have the ability to pay money in politics they are not disclosing their underlying donors if you ask your average american who bothers to think about citizens united what they think about their focus on kind of the big for-profit corporations and money and politics in that sense i know for an amicus brief that

we submitted in minnesota recently, you know, we went back and looked at the public reporting that was going on. and what you see is that, you know, the targets and the 3m's and the best buys they're not organizing political committees. they're not organizing political funds they are not running these kind of political expenditures on their own. what they are doing is contributing money to -- to nonprofits in the state of minnesota. there's a group called minnesota forward that target got into a certain amount of trouble for donating to. those nonprofits are really what we're focused on in terms of how do we to try to improve the disclosure of money in politics 'cause the concern is trying to make sure that those organizations are transparent in the way that the organizations making expenditures for citizens united were transparent. and just to illustrate this i guess one other chart that i threw in is another thing from public citizens showing the top 10 outside groups that spent

money on the 2010 election cycle. and if you look -- according to their list, they say that only three of those top 10 groups actually disclosed to their funders. but it gets a little bit more complicated than that because if you look so american crossroads which is number two on the list was organized as a 527 so they were disclosing their contributors, but and then i guess the other thing i would say is that american crossroads was was expenditure committee with the sec and the speech now case which allison mentioned. that case held that independent expenditure pac's could not be held to source and amount contribution limits and that means where it's a federal pac they would be $5,000 contributions they are an unlimited contribution threshold they will get contributions of $1 million or $2 million. if you go down to that list to no. four american crossroads was organized with a group called crossroads gps.

that was organized as a 501c4 so the two groups work in tandem but only the 527 is actually disclosing its donors. the 501c4 is able to take in any money without any disclosure. [inaudible] >> at this point that was probably the last slide that was going to be -- oh, no, no. that's fine. my apologies. >> that's fine if you want to go back over anything. >> well, i guess -- well, you know, folks should have the slides in front of them so just maybe in the interest of time i'll just keep going. but if anybody wants me to go back and look over anything, i'd be happy to do that. the one final thing i do want to say -- i mean, obviously all the examples that we give end up being inflected with partson issues. these are all things that come up in campaigns but certainly while the republican party, i think, was doing most of that kind of combined 527, 501c4, it's reported the democrats are setting up their own

organization so this is certainly something that is going be something we'll be seeing on all sides of the political spectrum going forward. so in terms of the issues that your offices are going to be seeing, i guess there's a couple that i wanted to flag, you know, that we're seeing in a lot of litigation. actually, the first would be -- would be one of the issues that allison was talking about, which is -- which is ad disclaimers. i guess maybe in sort of my answer to the last question, and perhaps in defense of the disclaimers is that oftentimes, you know, the entities that are actually put together to fund these ads have names that are uninformative or may even be slightly deceptive. an example that we tend to use a lot is an organization called littleton neighbors voting no. they were organized -- they spent $170,000 to defeat a local zoning measure in colorado that would have affected whether wal-mart could come to town and it turned out littleton

neighbors was entirely funded by wal-mart so the reason for these on-ad disclaimers when an organization especially a nonprofit is set up in order to put these ads out, that the voters have a sense of who's really funding the ads. you know, which maybe in some cases it's less helpful but certainly we think in a lot of cases is useful information that will help voters make decisions. and again,, you know, we would advocate that, you know, if littleton neighbors voting yes is an organization only funded by the local union or only funded by target or only funded by a local coalition of small businesses, this is also information that, you know, we want to get out there and so we do want to try to make sure this is a nonpartisan issue as much as possible. and i guess the other set of kind of litigation issues that i think you are all going to be seeing are what we think of as entity-based disclosure issues. and really the big wave of litigation in 2010 occurred when

a number of states -- in order to address the citizens united issue that i described before where a lot of new entities are making political expenditures, a number of states went and sort of took -- so, for example, 24 states had some sort of ban of corporate and/or union expenditures prior to citizens united. since that time, at least 11 states have enacted legislation to amend those laws and probably the most prevalent strategy was to amend the law to permit expenditures but then to require organizations making these expenditures to in some way, shape or form follow political committee reporting requirements. so, for example, in minnesota, which i know a little bit about because we filed this amicus brief, any corporation that made political expenditures had to file a report with the state and then had to have some sort of a fund. it was entirely under the control of the corporation and

it could just be an accounting measure that had a spreadsheet showing here's the money that we're allocating to political expenditures and here's where it's being spent but you had to have some sort of reporting that would be kind of analogous to the entity-wide requirements for anybody that was making these kind of disclosures. there was a group of lawsuits before the 2010 election, you know, basically arguing that political committee requirements were overly burdensome. that they interfered with the right of corporations to engage in free speech. and, you know, the tension at the heart of citizens united on this issue in my mind is that on the one hand there is very, very powerful and broad language supporting the idea of disclosure but simultaneously, there's a passage that talks about how burdensome pac requirements are and pac are not an adequate substitute for corporations or unions who want to engage in politics. and so i think that that tension

is sort of what a lot of these lawsuits -- whoops, sorry, tried to take advantage of to say we're not really getting the free speech right that a citizens united did because we're having to jump through these hoops and all these burdens. the good news from our perspective these lawsuits haven't been successful. as far as i know all of the district courts that addressed these cases denied preliminary injunctive relief and this these are bubbling through the district courts and the appellate courts but overall i think that, you know, the courts have sort of looked at citizens united and seen that as a signal that unless a disclosure law is really overly burdensome, not appropriately tailored or unreasonable that it ought to be upheld. again, that said i think everybody in this room is going to see a lot of litigation moving forward. i think in particular citizens united -- one of the things that it also says is that disclosure does not need to be limited to express advocacy, which is an ad

thing, vote for so-and-so. and it doesn't have to be to the functionel requirement of express advocacy. and i think folks in the states say there's ways we can broaden disclosure and try to capture some of the communications that we know are intended to influence elections but that are not being captured by the existing laws. you know, we certainly think that's constitutional as long as it's an appropriate and not unduly burdensome law but i think anytime the states try to sort of stretch beyond what federal law already says, you're certainly going to get a lawsuit -- you're going to get a lawsuit no matter what. so i think, you know -- we think you'll be able to defend those laws but there's going to be a lot of litigation ahead and so i can sort of leave it there. >> let's see if there are any immediate questions for you, mark and then we'll move to the next part which is some questions from me for the two of you. any questions for mark at this point? >> great, thank you. >> thank you, mark, very much.

>> as i mentioned earlier, there are lawsuits now or various aspects of campaign finance law in at least 14 states. how many of you are aware of litigation in your state that your office might be involved in right now involving the campaign finance law? if you don't have it yet, it's coming. there's no question about it. in part because of citizens united raising questions about the many -- many different limits that states have on amount and sources of contributions and in part for other reasons we're seeing a rising tide of litigation around campaign finance laws and disclosure laws in our country. we just concluded a case in washington state actually in the ninth circuit called human life

of washington in which the organization wanted to raise and spend funds regarding a ballot measure without reporting contributor and other information to the public disclosure commission or to the public. human life in washington challenged the statutory definitions of the political committee. they challenged the definition of independent expenditure and political advertising. we fought this all the way through the ninth circuit and finally the supreme court denied cert on february 2nd they found our disclosure are constitutional under citizens united's disclosure laws. and that's a part of the citizens united decision which has received a lot less attention probably because it wasn't 5-4. it was 8-1. and rulings 8-1 don't attract as much attention as 5-4 decisions.

and it was the prodisclosure provision citing the supreme court's statement, quote, that the government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements but may not suppress that speech all together. and consequently the ninth circuit upheld our disclosure laws on that principle and based on other precedence as well finding, quote, that there's such a substantial relationship between washington state's interest in forming the electorate and the definitions of disclosure requirements that it employs to expand that interest. what do you think the five big issues are going to be for whatever number you care to identify -- but what are going to be the next hot button issues in the supreme court or federal courts around disclosure around campaign contribution limits and the like? certainly citizens united didn't put a lid on that particular boiling pot but we expect it to result in more litigation. i'm curious coming from your contrasting points of view, what do you think the actions are

going to be and if you want to comment how that will affect the states we'll be curious on your view. allison, thanks. >> all right. i think i identified two. but i'll reiterate them since you asked. the issues involving attribution when it's appropriate to associate a particular act of financial support with a subsequent communication. and that that is -- you know, appropriately allocated and contributed to something that actually provides real useful information to the world about the interests. and along the lines with that, coordination. that is what kinds of relationships turn an otherwise independent activity into a contribution or an unkind contribution? the thresholds for coordination

at the federal level have been very vague for those of you who followed this stuff closely, you will know that the shays v sec litigation on the regulatory construction of coordination has been up and down a couple times now. and this is not good. i'm talking to you today as somebody who basically wants to deregulate campaign finance and i'll admit that but even if you don't, that is vague and unpredictable legal environment is dangerous in an area where people i feel that they know what the ground rules are to the extent we all sort of assert at the beginning people are well meaning and want to follow the law and i think that's mostly true. having this sort of flux in a very fundamental aspect of the law is not good. the definition of political committee is something you touched on. when is an entity political enough that it goes from being an entity that does something

else and just makes political expenditures in a sort of ad hoc occasional way to an entity that really is a political invention? and at the federal level there's sort of a major purpose primary purpose vague threshold if you're talking about tax law and sec law and what time is appropriate to examine to determine that is and the facts you evaluate an entity. and then the questions involving, are there special cases out there? are the r-there particularly bad actors in particular states. that a state has experience with that means they get regulated differently? and how do you separate that analysis from the interest of incumbents in state government who might want to shut down particular critics and you have a state because i'm happening to be looking at nevada and new jersey saying we're gaining as

legal. both states have taken vastly different approaches to how people involved as gaming licensees can participate in politics. but one thinks they probably considered it. is there something about being gaming licensee or having that particular relationship with your government that means that your expenditure activity is more suspect? it should be limited more. government contractors in general present these same kinds of issues. and i think -- those are the ones i think that are major. i think that's four and not five. i'll go with four. >> that's helpful. mark? >> well, i actually think our lists probably overlap. i agree coordination is an issue that's going to be coming up. and i actually think it's a tough issue especially because, amanda, one thing that -- i think one thing a lot of people find a little bit troubling at times is how much it seems like

independent speakers are kind of having more of an impact on campaign's offices and the candidates themselves and so the debate over party coordination rules is going to -- is playing out, i think, on a particular complicated terrain. i guess one issue that allison didn't mention that i would just flag as contribute bans and the supreme court decision in citizens united did not address the division between contributions and expenditures that has been part of constitutional law ever since buckley. and certainly, you know, part of a lot of lawsuits that have already been filed is challenged as saying corporate contribution bans cannot be sustained of citizens united and it's something the supreme court will have to decide but it will have to be bubbling up through all of your states and all through the federal courts as well. i think the political committee cases that we've certainly seen so far. and i guess the other thing --

you know, doe v. reed harassment is the other big issue we're looking at. doe v. reed said no to the facial challenge but as you can speech too much more than any of us could, you know, it's now getting -- it sounds like a fairly onus litigation stage in which people are trying to show there is or there isn't burden. there isn't a risk of harassment and i think that, you know, those sort of very fact-specific and time-consuming litigations around disclosure is probably the next phase of that type of challenge. >> yeah. >> but you can't foreclose a challenge based on specific facts. i mean, that's what naacp stands for. it's what socialist workers party stands for. so we knew that was a possibility. but we were fighting off an attempt to counter by the federal district court to get categorically to prohibit to get disclosures on any referendum participation ever past and present and that was way too much of a reach so we were not surprised by that outcome.

other questions? >> i think for both opinions when it comes to attribution i think both your perspective on the efficacy and the legality of sort of the nutrition labeling facts for listing your largest five expenditures, for example, and also when you get into the question of political committees or 501c4's, do either of you think that there is a certain percentage threshold of either activity or dollars at that point that you'd have to disclose to member contributions? >> well, actually it's funny when i was on the train down from new york i was thinking about that nutritional labeling kind of analogy. and, you know, i do think it actually works. i mean, i think that -- well, in terms of your question about the legal si, i mean, i do think that -- i think that these kinds

of laws will be upheld by the courts. that's kind of my hunch. i think citizens united is a broad disclosure unless it's showing the law is really too burdensome, you know, i think it's going to be upheld. i think there will certainly be debates and challenges about how burdensome the specific requirements are and i know allison has written about that a bit and she can talk about that. we certainly want to be careful not to set de minimis thresholds and we're not interfering with the ability of, you know, folks who run a local campaign about a local ordinance that involves, you know, photocopied fliers and things like that. we don't want to interfere with politics, you know, but i do think reasonable measures to try to disclose the big funders especially on, you know, broadcast ads, tv ads and longer

radio ads, i think that certainly will be -- my hunch the states want to enact those laws they'll be upheld. >> around our office we call it truly interesting sum of money threshold. i'm not sure what that is in montana versus new jersey versus connecticut but having set that aside, i think the nutritional labeling that identifies that top 2 or 5 or 4 or whatever donors is preferable quite a bit to trying to go back and re-engineer what the intent of any particular donor was when they gave to say a trade ocean or one of these 50304 because intent inquiries gets very fact-specific and they get very invasive you get lots of, you know, credibility determinations in he said/she said-type stuff and they're not defensive type of stuff but they can be

provocative and burdensome to subsequent donors. and the top 3, top 5 i think probably provides useful information. again, i don't have a good answer for -- to answer your question directly and i think it would probably be upheld. but how you distinguish in the particular case the -- you know, the two sort of dramatic hypotheticals i set out, the very direct contribution of money for a particular purpose use the media as an intermediatia versus the regular dues-paying member. what if you have like a top 3, top 5 requirement for a large trade association and it only told people who the top 5 dues payer members are. maybe that's helpful but maybe there's another story that's being missed. and without getting into a purpose analysis i don't know

how you capture that other story. no, i'm still trying to work through this but i really do find that some of the suggestions that make sort of for-profit entities or trade associations alter egos of political action committees or low threshold will bring a lot of junk information into the system that is not helpful. >> maybe the one thing i would add to that real quickly one of the problems we've had is that, for example, federal law currently actually does require disclosure of underlying funders on political ads as part of the disclosure requirements but the sec has interpreted that to only funders who have earmarked funds for the ads and nobody earmarked the funds for the ads and nobody gets disclosed. i do think one of the things that we would push for is to kind of create the presumption to be that, you know -- we presume that funders, you know, are making contributions that they understand will be, you

know, put towards political ads because that's what the organization is doing but with the caveat that contributor members do have need to have a way of saying i don't want to support this political campaign and i don't want my name to be showing up on that advertisement. and i want you specifically not to use my funds for political campaigns. that would sort of avoid the kind of disclosure problems i think that allison is describing a little bit and we also think it would give contributors and donors and members a little bit more control over how their money is being used which we also think would be a valuable sort of service. >> general king? >> thanks. we had a case in our tenth circuit where the court said that our law that basically had a $500 threshold for being a political action committee was not the threshold so we're trying to craft a good disclosure law in our legislature this year but there are two competing proposals one of which focuses on lectionary on communications and one of which focuses on expressed

advocacy as sort of of the keys and i'm just kind of curious if you guys can talk about what you think is the more important of those two concepts and what is likely create a more enforceable law? >> our organization certainly is in favor of laws that capture election hearing communications i guess our concern is that otherwise you tend to only capture a very small amount of what political advertising really is. expressed advocacy has generally been defined as aspects that use the, quote-unquote, magic words to defined by buckley vote for, vote against, things like that. you know, it's very easy to avoid those words. and to run an ad that never actually says, you know, vote for obama but it's very clear, you know, saying, you know, we love obama. [laughter] >> it's very easy to get around that. no, we certainly do communications have to be clear. you want to have, for example, you know, timelines that are

appropriate before an election. you want to have money thresholds that don't capture, you know, small -- small contributors. you want to, you know, have requirements say that the ad is being targeted towards the relevant constituency. you definitely need to have the kind of things that are sketched out in the federal law and in the political reform act but we do think that those kinds of requirements will expand the law to capture more political advertising, political communications and that as long as it's done with the necessary clarity, you know, that it ought to be upheld. >> yeah. i mean, i'm reluctant to extend this era of good feeling that we have up here on the panel. he basically said what i believe. i guess our concern would be a little more strongly on people

recalling that election hearing communications and to the extent the court has said anything about what that classification is and what the regulatory appropriateness is are close in time to an electoral event. so i've seen attempts analytically out there in the world. at the california sppc being one of those places in the world where there's been this effort to sort of shoe horn the election era communications doctrine into a larger expression of what expressed advocacy means after citizens united and wisconsin's right to life. and by neglecting the temporal component of the election of the expressed advocacy jurisprudence i think you are missing the point. as somebody who might some day litigate this question, i would say that's an argument you're going to have to really think about if you want to, you know,

disagree with 'cause you're going to have to lay out why it is a standard articulated in a federal court case involving a federal law that was explicitly just applied to communications within the last three days of the primary or 60 days of a general election could somehow change a standard that was sort of the background standard for communications generally. 'cause i think the temporal aspect of the law was very important and one of the reasons why you get a slightly more lenient standard. >> yes, general sorel? >> both of you suggested that coordination cases are likely to be on a horizon. i'm wondering how the sharing of polling data from a campaign to a pac or a party plays into the determination of coordination

and rendering independent expenditures actually is a contribution and subject to contribution? >> well, it might be a factor in a larger picture, but i would be -- i would be reluctant to embrace a standard that didn't have some -- some communication or coordination that was about what the ultimate expression was. you know, polling data -- i'm sure the states -- i have to say i'm not an expert on the 50 state and campaign finance laws, but the federal law has had a way of valuing sharing polling data between entities. and at some point it's old enough -- it's not worth anything anymore. and it would be odd to have that conclusion be sort of something that at least at the federal law the bench or bar has adopted, oh, whatever, it's way of

dealing with the question, suddenly become, you know, in another context the determine that's not the opinion anymore. i think the district court in christian coalition tried to deal with coordination about it as straightforwardly and honestly, which is is a district court decision as, you know, i've seen in an opinion. and, you know, if i had the magic bullet that satisfied everyone's concerns about capturing real coordination but not capturing sort of behavior that had nothing to do with the expenditure i would give it to you today and you would go home happy. and so i guess i want to tend to err on the side of political folks to communicate with one another as long as there's not this contingency to this expression that you're worried about, whatever the expenditure was. >> you know, i guess i would say i don't have really have a good

answer to the specific question, the coordination rules are something that i still need to kind of wrap my head around. i guess the one sort of background issue that i kind of always think about as i'm starting to try to learn about that area of the law is, is the problem that we have with how the courts have treated independent expenditures as just being completely -- completely disconnected from candidates in a way that i don't think actually reflects political reality. you know, citizens united certainly says an independent expenditure is not being coordinated with a candidate and, therefore, there's absolutely no risk of corruption. well, i spoke with a friend of mine who's a political campaign manager and he said, you know, when somebody who funded a huge independent expenditure ad campaign calls, we're going to pick up the phone. that kind of information is just how politics works. i don't think that we're doing ourselves or candidates or contributors or anybody any favors by ignoring what politics is actually like and i guess that's sort of one of the reasons why i'm still trying to wrap around my heads around the

coordination rules is that, you know, i would like to see us kind of think about ways that are enforceable and fair but also reflect what people are actually doing. >> could you please join me in thanking our panelists. work well done. thank you. [applause] >> the u.s. senate is convening until 10:40 thongs when they recess for the colleagues in the house by an address by australian prime minister. when they return at noon two competing proposals to fund the federal government for the rest of fiscal year 2011. voting is set for 3:00. now live senate coverage here on c-span2. communication to the senate. the clerk: washington d.c., march 9, 2011. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable kirsten e. gillibrand , a senator from the state of new york, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: daniel k. inouye,

president pro tempore. mr. reid: madam president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: following any leader remarks there will be a period of morning business until 10:40, with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes. the majority will control the first half. republicans will control the final half. at 10:40 the senate will recess for the joint meeting of congress with the honorable julia gillard, prime minister of australia. the senate will reconvene at 12:00 and proceed to the immediate consideration of h.r. 1, the defense appropriations bill, which is the famous c.r., h.r. 1, and the democratic alternative. at 3:00 p.m. senators should expect two roll call votes in relation to those two matters. under an agreement reached yesterday, each proposal will be subject to a 60-vote threshold. madam president, on the news on the way to work this morning, i heard one republican senator, part of the republican leadership, say he thought all republicans would vote for h.r.

1, this job-killing -- that is what i said. this job-killing shortsighted bill. he said they were going to do it because of the numbers involved in it. the numbers involved in it. well, madam president, i tell everyone, my friends on the republican side, the american people are not as concerned about the numbers as what's in this bill with those mean-spirited riders. we're concerned about the numbers. the american people aren't concerned about the numbers. the president of the united states, the united states senate have agreed to address the numbers, and we'll do that. we've done it in our alternative here today. this is not a bill about numbers. h.r. 1 is a mean-spirited bill that will cut the heart out of the recovery we have in america today. it goes after little children, poor little boys and girls who want to learn -- they don't know what they want, but we want them to learn to read, to be able to

learn something. head start is a program that has been successful. we have a lot of poor people in nevada. i wish we didn't but we do. head start has been something that has been great for our community. national institutes of health, they're whacking of that. national science foundation. our clean energy jobs, they're going after that. national laboratories. where is the spirit of pete domenici? pete domenici, longtime republican senator, he and i worked as chair and ranking member of the energy and water subcommittee on appropriations trying to fund those very important labs. the labs do lots of good things. among other things, they make our country, nuclear weapons safe and reliable. what has been done with this meat ax approach that they say is only numbers is not good for our country.

i've heard my friend, the assistant majority leader, talk about what has happened to one of the smaller laboratories, one of the smaller ones, argonne in illinois. we have big ones, livermore, sandia, los alamos and other labs around the country that are some of the places where there is pure science. one of the few places in america today that we have pure science. what this h.r. 1 has done, what they're trying to do to education in our country, not only head start but how it affects education generally, what this bill would do if it would pass, h.r. 1, it's not numbers. it's not numbers only. what does it do to our port security? the presiding officer is from the state of new york. every day there are evil people trying to do damage to the people in the state of new york in the ports. our airport security, we still

have to look out for these bad people, shoe bombers and other people who come up with all these very bad ways to try to harm america. so for someone over here on the other side to say they're looking at h.r. 1 and they'll all vote for it probably because of the numbers, how insulting to the american people. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will be in a period of morning business until 10:40 a.m. with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority controlling the first half and the republicans controlling the final half. mr. durbin: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: i ask consent to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i ask consent the senate be authorized to appoint

a committee to join with the like committee in the house of representatives to escort the honorable julia gillard, prime minister of australia, for the house-senate joint meeting. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: madam president, i want to follow on what was said by the majority leader. this exercise that we're engaged in here, this conversation about how to finish this year, this fiscal year which ends on october 1, is one that i think has gotten out of hand, and i'll tell you why. i know the debt is a serious problem facing america. i know the deficit is something that threatens our economy and our way of living. i also know there are sensible, that you feel ways to deal with it, and one of them was addressed by the simpson deficit commission which i served on and voted for in terms of their final report. i disagreed with some particulars, but that's the nature of a compromise and the nature of moving our nation

forward. but what we tried to do in that commission was to take a look at this challenge and not solve it in a month or six months, but say how can we solve this, do it in a sensible, responsible way and still grow the economy? a few feet away from where we're meeting right now are some of the best minds in america sitting in a room meeting with senators. they represent the high-tech industries of america. and i just heard mr. john chambers, who is the c.e.o. of cisco, talk about the challenge we face and compare our status in the world to china today, the number-two economy in the world. and he compared our situation today to what it was just a few years ago. we are now in a position where we have one out of four start-up companies that we had just a few years ago, and it's an indication to me that if america is going to continue to lead in this world, we need to invest in the things that make us strong.

i'm not saying the deficit is not a problem. it is. but we will still have a federal budget as we address the deficit, and we should invest in that federal budget in things that are important, things that build our future. senator reid of nevada this morning talked about the vulnerable in america. well, i couldn't agree more. you don't hear the word "safety net" around here anymore, and it's unfortunate because we know that even in this prosperous society there are many unfortunate people. there are children who, through no fault of their own, were born into dysfunctional and poor families, kids whom we try to rescue from their plight and engage them in head start, bring them into a learning atmosphere, a classroom. i've been there all over my state of illinois. i was just there two weeks ago in chicago. i went into one of the poorer sections of that great city and saw a room full of 40 of the cutest kids in the world from

struggling families who are lucky enough to be in a head start program. and it means that for the better part of the day they are in a safe, positive learning environment. is that a good thing? of course it is. whether it's my son or daughter or your son or daughter, it really comes down to the basics. if we don't give our children the right liftoff in their lives, many of them struggle and, unfortunately, many f.a.a. so when the house republicans say -- many fail. so when the house republicans say the way to deal with our deficit is to cut hundreds of thousands of these children out of the head start program, to dismiss tens and thousands of teachers and staff, you have to step back and say are you sure? has it reached that point? are we at a point now where we have to deny these children access to the kind of learning experience that makes their school experience later on more successful? i don't think so.

an honest look at our deficit would not just go aviation and research -- go aviation and research and investment in our infrastructure. it would look across the board as the bowl-seupl stopb commission -- simpson commission did. how can we look at at this time, denying money to the poorest schools in america where they literally struggle day to day to try to turn the lives around of children who are in very dire circumstances. to cut, as the house republicans suggested, pell grants. pell grants, those are the grants given to college students from lower-income families. i look back at my life, and i guess, madam president, i was one of those kids. my mother was a widow and i wanted to go to college, and it wasn't a family experience, and i needed help. in those days pell grants didn't exist but college loans did. and the federal college loan came to my rescue.

here i stand today because of that. for hundreds and thousands of students across america, the pell grants are really their ticket to college. that's how they can get into college, earn a diploma and succeed in life. when the house republicans say we've reached the point where we have to cut that assistance to college students across america, you say to yourself, is it that bad that we have to reach that far? let me suggest there are other things we ought to look at first. i happen to believe in this great, prosperous nation that the most prosperous among us, the wealthiest, the people who have benefited the most from this great nation, they can be asked to sacrifice more. and i think they should. asking those at the highest income levels in america to pay more in taxes at this point in our history is not unreasonable and is not going to kill the economy and is just simple economic justice. if doing that means we can protect the most vulnerable and

protect opportunity for education, i think that's fair. i also question some of the things we're doing. look at the price of gasoline at gas stations across america today and then watch the next quarter early earnings report of the oil companies and tell me why we continue to funnel billions of taxpayers' dollars into subsidies for the oil companies. they're doing quite well, thank you. they don't need a subsidy that adds to our deficit. the same thing is true in my home state of illinois. let me just get real personal about this. i happen to believe that agriculture is critical to our nation. i believe that we need to be there as a safety net for farmers who can't predict what the weather will be or crop prices might be. but there are parts of our ag program that, frankly, need to be seriously reviewed and the federal contribution needs to be reduced. at a time when commodity prices are the highest and farms are the most prosperous and

profitable, the fact that we are sending so much money out of the treasury to some of the largest farms in america is just indefensible. so i'm bringing it home to the agriculture state of illinois, to our entire nation when it comes to oil and gas, and saying before we cut the money for research, as the house republicans suggest, at the national institutes of health, before we deny to doctors and scientists and the best minds in america the resources they need to find cures for diseases, to find the next wonder drug that will revolutionize life in america, before we do that, let's take an honest look at this entire budget. the house republican budget goes too far. let me also raise a point relative to my own subcommittee. we have funded three watchdog agencies to make sure that we never, ever enter another recession like the one we're in

now. after wall street brought the economy to its knees, sent millions of hard-working americans to the unemployment line and took $700 billion from taxpayers -- you'll remember that $700 billion in bailout funds. the house republicans are fighting to prevent the cops on the beat who are going to be there to ensure that wall street can -- ensure that wall street can can never reap this damage again, the security and exchange commission was to write new rules to bring more transparency to stock markets. the house republican budget would cut $231 million from the security and exchange commission over what was authorized. that's an 18% cut at the very moment this agency should be beefing up its ranks to keep an eye on what's happening on wall street and writing the new rules for enforcement. that may be good news for future bernie madoffs. it is not good news for investors and families across

the country who count on wall street and financial institutions across america to deal honestly. the commodity futures trading commission was tasked by the same bill to bring sunshine to what warren buffett -- the credit default swaps and other derivatives traded in shadowy over-the-counter markets. the house republican budget would cut $174 million from the commodity futures trading commission compared to what we recommend in the senate. a 69% cut at the very moment when the cftc needs better technology and more investigators to handle its awesome responsibilities. and then there's the third hit in the house republican budget. they go after the consumer financial protection bureau. it's brand-new. created by the wall street reform bill. that budget that the house

republicans are pushing would cap funding for the consumer protection bureau at half of what it would otherwise receive. since the day i first introduced the bill to create this bureau in a different form, but similar goal, with elizabeth warren's help, a professor from harvard law school, the republicans have fought this idea. when president obama signed it into law, the reformers, the people who want americans to have access to financial services that they can understand and use to improve their lives, well, we won that day as chairman of the appropriations subcommittee, i've done my best to make sure they have the adequate funds to protect american investors and maintain the sterling reputation of our financial institutions in wall street. as an early champion of the consumer protection financial bureau, i'm going to continue that fight to make sure that this agency has the power and the resources that it needs.

madam president, i would close by saying this, there is such a stark contrast in the vote that we'll have today. we're going to be asked on the floor whether or not members of the senate want to vote for h.r. 1, the house republican budget. the senate majority leader has remind us, it is not just a spending bill. it is a bill that is frayeded with every bumper sticker issue you can remember over the last 10 years. the house republicans didn't just want to cut spending, they wanted to inject themselves in the national debate of a myriad of issues. they want to take the spending bill and debate abortion. they want to take the spending bill and debate whether or not we will provide federal funds for family planning or planned parenthood across america. they want to take the spending bill and take the funding away from national public radio. they want to take this spending bill and they want to take one-third of the resources from the enviromental protection agency that they need to make

sure that the air we breathe and the water we drink are fit for ourselves and our families. that's what they're doing. if this is an economic emergency and a budget emergency, why did the house republicans devolve into this situation where it's just become a cat fight over political issues? we can do better. the american people expect us to do better. i'm still meeting with a group of five other senators, three republicans and two other democrats. we trying on a bipartisan basis to try the boll-simpson commission and build this into a thoughtful effort that will reduce the deficit in a meaningful way. it will take time. we're got going to finish it in six or seven months. we need to address our responsibilities here, the responsibility to build this economy, number one. and, number two, to put america's fiscal house in order. we can do that.

but we need to get beyond the current level of political fighting into a more constructive level. i hope that this bipartisan group that i'm part of will be part of the solution ultimately. in the mean time, we will continue our efforts. madam president, i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mrs. murray: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. murray: madam president, our nation's budget is a statement of our values, our priorities and our vision for what kind of country we will be handing off to our children and our grandchildren. working together to pass a responsible and forward-looking

budget that works for the american people is one of the most important jobs we have here in the united states senate. the outcome of this process that we're talking about is going to affect millions of families across our country and the decisions that we make right here this week are going to go a long ways towards determining if our economy's going to continue moving in the right direction. so this morning i want to speak about two very different budgets being debated here today. with two very different statements about what we should be folk with used on as a -- focused on as a country and two very different visions for how we need to be positioned to keep successfully and win the future. madam president, this shouldn't be a partisan process, and i'm still hopeful that we can work together on a budget plan that cuts spending responsibly and works for the american people. but i am extremely disappointed that republicans who came into office talking about the economy have proposed an extreme budget that would destroy hundreds of

thousands of jobs, devastate workers and small businesses across the country, and threaten that fragile economic recovery. i am disappointed that at a time when so many middle-class families still need some support to get back on their feet after the wall street crisis, republicans have proposed a highly politicized slash and burn budget that will pull the rug out from families and children. and i'm disappointed that while the senate democratic proposal makes responsible and practical budget cuts, that -- cuts that will allows to continue out innovating, out educating our competitors, republicans have a budget that would hack away at investments across the board and really threaten our nation's ability to compete now and into the future. madam president, we're going to hear a lot about big numbers here today and i'm probably going to mention some myself. but i think it's important that rekeep in mind that this -- keep in mind that this debate is

really more about dollars and cents. it's about real people with real lives. i recently heard from the south central workforce development council in my home state of washington who told me about a man they worked with by the name of damon. damon had been laid off from his job test machine equipment. he was laid -- he had been in that job for 10 years. he and his wife had to move back in with his father. he said no matter how hard he tried he couldn't find a job that matched his skills. so he had to do something about it. he went to the local one-stop career center, he sat down with counselors and he decided he was going to learn computer networking. he studied very hard and graduated from a local computer technology program. and despite this tough economy, he was able to work with a one-stop center to find a new job in a new field. damon was able to get back on his feet and support his family

because of this program. and he's not alone. millions of americans depend on workforce training programs to get the skills they need to get back to work and help our economy grow including 400,000 in my home state. but house republicans have propose eliminating these critical programs and cutting off services for workers who depend on them. at ta time when so -- at a time when so many workers are fighting to get back on the job, this would be devastating. i also recently met with a woman named tiffany. she's from shahlas washington. she told me her stepson rodney had difficult circumstances and fallen behind his peers and she and her husband couldn't afford private education that he needed to catch up. she heard about head start. tiffany told me she saw the difference in a few months and a short time later rodney was

ready for kindergarten and is now the top reader in his first grade class. tiffany and her family got support they needed. nearly a million families and their children depend on seat. but the republican -- head start, but the republican proposal we will be voting on this afternoon eliminates services for 218,000 children including more than 3,000 in my home state. it will close 16,000 classrooms across the country and cause up to 55,000 teachers and staff to lose their jobs. this extreme slash and burn approach is wrong. it would hurt the most vulnerable of our children and families in our country and leave us at a competitive disadvantage in the future. the republican proposal also slashes community development block grants by 62%. that will eliminate services and decimate housing and economic development programs in communities across our country. it guts the community health centers that so many americans

depend on for their health care, eliminating funding outright for 127 clinics in 38 of our states. reducing services at over 1,000 centers nationwide and cutting off health care for almost three million americans. that will cause 5,000 workers across our country to lose their jobs. but, madam president, not only will the republican proposal devastate middle-class families across the country, it would halt the beginnings of an economic recovery that our families and small business owners desperately need to take root. last month our economy added over 200,000 private-sector jobs and the unemployment rate fell to the lowest level in two years. we have a long way to go. but i'm confident that we have turned the corner and we're beginning to move in the right direction. economists on both the left and the right have come out and said that if the republican proposal

from the house were to pass, the economic recovery and millions of jobs across the country would be threatened. in fact, one independent analysis said the republicans' plan could destroy up to 700,000 american jobs in this country including 15,000 in my home state of washington. that would be devastating. and we cannot afford to let that happen. that's why, madam president, the senate democratic proposal would take our country in a very different direction. it would cut spending, billions of dollars, in fact, but it would do so in a responsible and practical way that would protect our middle-class families who need it most. and, madam president, our proposal continues to make the investments we need as a country to compete and win in the 21st century economy. take the highly successful tiger program that i helped create. communities across our country have been competing very hard for the resources from this program so they can invest in

transportation projects that make significant contributions to the nation, to their region or their metropolitan area. the tiger program is today putting workers on the job and it's helping to lay down a strong foundation for economic growth in this country. but the republican proposal would not only eliminate that program completely and slam the door on communities that want to invest in their infrastructure, it would also take back every penny of funding -- funding already promised in last year's budget. that will halt 75 projects in 40 of our states that are ready to go and put 33,000 jobs at risk. it doesn't make any sense. madam president, the democratic proposal would protect that critical investment. the republican proposal would also jeopardize public health and the environment by gutting the laws that keep our air and water clean.

it cuts nearly $2 billion in funding for clean water infrastructure which our local communities need to keep our families safe so when you turn on that water in your kitchen, you know it's safe. it slashes the land and water conservation fund which, by the way, uses revenue from offshore oil leases to protect some of the most treasured places in our country. but that's not all. the extreme republican proposal would also slash investments for our students and our children, including a $700 million cut to title 1 funding which will act 2,400 schools serving over a million students. and it cuts pell grants by 15%, which will make it so much harder for our kids to go to college today right now when they're struggling. the house republican proposal would even slash some of the bipartisan programs we've created to keep our families safe, including 66% cuts to both the transit security grant

program that helps make sure that our trains and subways are safe, as well as the port security grant program that helps protect our security assets across the country. that doesn't make any sense. if a terrorist attack were to occur at one of our ports or our transit systems, it would be absolutely devastating for our families and our economy, which is why the democratic proposal protects these critical investments. madam president, i ask for one additional minute. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. murray: madam president, those are just a few of the examples of the radical and irresponsible cuts that are proposed in the republican budget. we of course need to cut spending. we need to bring down the deficit. we all agree on that, but we've got to do it responsibly. and we cannot do it on the backs of our ph*eudz -- middle-class families who are struggling. i urge my colleagues this afternoon to support the democratic proposal. if we can't pass something today, i urge my republican

colleagues to come to the table, work with us to pass a responsible long-term budget that really does reflect our priorities and gets our workers back on jobs and invests in american future. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: later today senators will have an opportunity to take a position on government spending. at a time when washington is borrowing about $4 billion a day, democratic leaders want to cut about $4.5 billion in government spending for the rest of this fiscal year and call it a day. in other words, they want to take what amounts to a day and a

half-long holiday from their out-of-control spending and then return to the status quo for the rest of the year. let me just add that paying lip service to the threat caused by the deficit is not a substitute for responsible leadership, and the job-destroying tax hikes on small businesses and american families are not the answer to out-of-control washington spending. at a time when increasing gas prices are already threatening our economic recovery, a minivan tax that some on the other side have proposed won't solve our nation's fiscal crisis. but i'll tell you what it will do. it will destroy jobs and impose a real burden on families every time they fill up at the pump. at a time when people are looking for relief instead. democrats' steadfast refusal to cut another dime from the bloated washington budget has left them no choice. but to propose raising taxes on american families and small businesses so they can continue spending at unsustainable

levels. republicans, on the other hand, have made a serious proposal to rein in wasteful spending. to me, at least, the choice before us is pretty clear. but as we approach today's vote, it's worth noting that even if we were to pass the biggest spending cuts that have been proposed so far in this debate, it wouldn't even put a dent in the fiscal problems we face as a result of the growth in entitlement spending. think about it. democrats have been waging war this week over a proposal to cut $4.7 billion. meanwhile, the amount of money we promised to spend on programs like social security and medicare, money we don't have, is about $52 trillion. so this week's debate is just a dress rehearsal for the big stuff, and so far democrats are showing they're just not up to it. they either lack the stomach or the courage, and the president, as members of his own party

point out, is nowhere to be found on this issue. i've talked about this leadership vacuum repeatedly this week on the entitlements, sand how their unchecked growth threat tons bury all of us in -- threat tons bury us in red ink. we can argue about whether to cut $5 billion or $60 billion day to day, but the fact is if we hit the bigger number we're still staring at a catastrophe and the president appears to be totally uninterested -- uninterested -- in leading us to a bipartisan solution the way ronald reagan and bill clinton did the last time we faced crises of this magnitude. but when it comes to another crisis -- the jobs crisis -- the president isn't just failing to lead, he's flat-out barring the door with a mountain of stifling new regulations and calculated inaction on outstanding free trade agreements with colombia and panama. this morning the u.s. trade representative is set to testify before the finance committee to

voice the administration's support of the trade agreement with south korea. and while we support the administration's position on south korea, the lack of leadership on these two other countries which signed free trade agreements with us more than three years ago is completely disheartening. the reason for inaction is stunning. union bosses don't want to see them pass. for some reason they seem to think that expanding the market for u.s. goods into colombia and panama somehow hurts them, which is absurd. absolutely absurd, madam president. the administration has previously expressed tepid support for these deals, an acknowledgement that expanding market for u.s. goods can only help u.s. workers and the picture in colombia is better than the labor bosses would have us believe. but they fail to follow through. the irony of union opposition to trade deals is that an expanded u.s. presence in latin america can only help the workers there by exporting u.s. business

standards and practices. and, of course, more exports to u.s. firms mean more jobs for u.s. workers in the united states. in the last few weeks company after company has come before congress to testify how important accessing latin american markets is for the future and to create jobs right here in america. according to the chamber of commerce, failing to pass these trade agreements along with the trade agreement with south korea could cost us 380,000 u.s. jobs. while we dither on these agreements, colombia has moved on, having been stiffed -- stiff armed by the united states, it's finding other trade partners. naturally colombia has turned to other countries. and worse still, is warming relations with hugo chavez in neighboring venezuela. last week columbian president juan man well santos referred to chavez as his new best friend,

man who last year accused santos of threatening to assassinate him. the president should be listening to those of us who come to him with ways to create jobs, and this is one of them. the administration has no excuse for failing to act on these trade agreements. it's in the interest of our country to approve them. it would create jobs here at home at a time when we desperately need them. i am confident congress could pass these on a bipartisan basis today. i urge the administration to act today and not just on south korea, but on colombia and panama. i for one am prepared to do everything in my power to pass these agreements, all of them together, this year. madam president, i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: a senator: madam president?

the presiding officer: the senator from nebraska. a senator: madam president, i ask that the quorum call be set aside. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. johanns: madam president, i rise today to talk about the administration's really ill-advised cap-and-trade agenda and to support a bipartisan bill that i've cosponsored to stop it. the energy tax prevention act would stop the e.p.a. from going around congress and using regulations to implement the administration's failed cap-and-trade agenda. the bill is necessary because the administration is marching ahead with its cap-and-trade agenda even though the american people clearly want to focus on job creation, not policies that destroy jobs. for evidence that the administration is marching ahead, one need only look at the president's budget. it clearly states -- and i'm quoting -- "continues to support greenhouse gas emission

reductions in the united states in the range of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050." unquote. well, not surprisingly, madam president, these reductions are nearly identical to those proposed in the waxman-markey house cap-and-trade bill. americans rejected that legislation because it would have increased taxes on everyone. anyone who turpbts on a light -- turns on a light switch, buys american-made products, fills up their gas tank. the energy tax prevention act would prevent the administration from using its regulatory powers to circumvent congress and implement this energy tax that americans rejected last year. it's about protecting jobs, manufacturing jobs, for example. and it puts congress back in the

driver's seat, in charge of energy policy. taking it back from unelected bureaucrats at the too often overreaching e.p.a. above all, is this bill rejects the notion that placing additional energy tax burdens on americans is good policy. as the price of oil climbs and gas prices follow, our bill says don't hit americans with another tax. and make no mistake, cap-and-trade policies will drive up the cost of everything: transportation fuels and electricity leading the way. nobody disagrees with this understanding. in fact, the central policy mechanism, all of these proposals is making the use and production of fossil fuels more expensive. while the congressional budget office has weighed in on this, and they put it this way --

quote -- "a cap-and-trade program would thus lead to price increases for energy and energy-intensive goods and services. such price increases would stem from the restriction on emissions. indeed, the price increases would be essential, essential to the success of the cap-and-trade program." unquote. in other words, these efforts are designed to make oil and gas and coal-fired electricity more specks seive. and the same is true for the e.p.a.'s regulatory plan. gas prices will go up. electricity will go up. farm input costs will go up. and consumers will pay more. u.s. manufacturing will get crushed under the heavy hand of the e.p.a. meanwhile, our overseas competitors, unfettered by the cap, will gobble up market share

and those providing -- and hurt those providing good-paying jobs in this country. farmers and ranchers won't be spared either. the cost of running pivot irrigation will go up. nebraska has thousands of them. diesel fuel for tractors and combines will go up. the price tag on fertilizer that farmers need to grow crops will skyrocket. some of my constituents might be saying, well, i'm not a farmer, i'm not a manufacturer, so i'm not affected. but unfortunately, no american can escape this reach of this ill-az -- advised effort because refineries are first targeted in e.p.a.'s electrical schedule because electrical plants are first targeted, electrical bills and the cost of fuel will go up. if you think gas prices are high

now, brace yourself. more price hikes are coming. and if you think your electrical bill at the end of the month is already plenty high, look out for the e.p.a.'s energy tax. and believe it or not, the obama has made it clear that these higher prices are exactly precisely what the doctor ordered. during the presidential campaign, president obama famously said -- he was really up front -- "under my plan electricity bills would necessarily skyrocket." voters entered the voting booth with the false hope that we in congress would never let that happen. but sadly the obama administration has made it clear that they intend to work around congress. energy secretary steven chu even told the "wall street journal"

on september of 2008 -- quote -- "somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels of europe." unquote. now that's not my vision for america. and with gasoline over $7 per gallon in places like germany and france, i doubt that many americans share that vision. yet this administration has chosen to use the e.p.a. to make gasoline expensive through its ill-advised energy tax plan. the e.p.a. is targeting our fuel refineries when gas prices are headed to $4 per gallon and oil is over $100 a barrel. it doesn't make sense. but when we thought we saw a ray of hope, when the president said that he wanted to slow down the regulatory freight train bearing

down on the nation's job creators, well, something happened. he said that he wanted to refuse the regulatory burdens on small businesses. he went so far as to put out an executive order in january and he instructed the agencies to review -- quote -- "rules that have gotten out of balance, placing unreasonable burdens on business, burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on jobs and growth." unfortunately the e.p.a. apparently believes their greenhouse gas regulations are more important than job creation. the hill says, e.p.a. confident the obama reg policy won't affect -- the e.p.a. dismissed the order saying qoa e.p.a. is confident that the recent and upcoming steps to address ghd

emissions under the clean air act comfortably pass muster under the standards that the president laid out. in other words, the e.p.a. believes and continues to think that their regulatory cap-and-trade plan is not an unreasonable burden on consumers and job creators. you have to suspend all rational thought to reach that conclusion. it's unbelievable. here's the kicker, these e.p.a. regulations will have no impact on global temperatures. put simply, the e.p.a.'s agenda is all about more pain and no gain because the rules and regulations here in the u.s. don't control places like china, india brazil obviously. -- india, brazil obviously. global warming is called global warming for a reason. it's our farmers, ranchers and small businesses that will be saddled with the job-killing

cost. american job creators will have one hand tied behind their back trying to compete. even the e.p.a. administrator admitted that it would have edgn liberal impact -- repudiated the idea last year and yet the e.p.a. charges forward. we must restore some measure of common sense. this bill is the right step and i urge my colleagues to support it. i yield the floor, madam president. i yield the floor. mr. barrasso: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. barrasso: thank you, madam president. madam president, i come to the floor as i do every week as a physician who has practiced medicine and taken care of families in wyoming for a

quarter sent troy give a -- to give a doctor's second opinion on the health care law. county commissioners are coming to -- for an annual meeting. it was one year ago that nancy pelosi, then the speaker of the house, that addressed that group and said that we have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it. that quote has been replaced and repeated again and again and again and people now know what is in this health care law. people have found out and every month since this law has been passed, people have found out an additional thing about the health care law that they absolutely do not like. so now that the american people know what's in the bill and they know that they don't like it, let's get to the fundamentals of what the american people have asked for when they asked for

change in health care in this country. they said they wanted the care that they need from the doctor that they want at a price they can afford. well, the new law fails that test. it fails miserably. it has only taken a year to break almost every promise that the president made when he addressed our congress and we addressed the country. so what i'd like to do is take a look month by month at how those promises were broken and since it is now march and it started in march with her statement. in march of 2010, one year ago, the congressional budget office evaluated the law to see how much it actually would cost. they told us that the law could only reduce the deficit if it did something about the long-term insolvency of medicare. instead the democrats and the president proposed and adopted and signed into law cuts of ov over $500 billion from medicare.

not to save medicare, but to start a whole new government entitlement program. a decision that the c.b.o. said would increase the deficit b by $260 billion. well, let's go to april. in april we learned that the cost for those medicare cuts go way beyond dollars and cents. an analysis by the department of health and human services found that these cuts could drive up to 15% of hospitals out of business. for this administration the shortages of hospitals apparently takes a backseat to the shortage of washington bureaucrats. now, let's go to may. in may we learned that over 200,000 americans with preexisting conditions and expensive health insurance would not be eligible to enroll in the new high-risk pools created in the health care law. that is, of course, unless they were willing to completely drop the insurance that they had and wait without insurance -- wait

without insurance for six months. then they would qualify for what was in the health care law. for many people with preexisting conditions who are paying higher premiums, they felt that that would be irresponsible behavior, risky, put them at financial risk, but that's what this administration and this government was proposing. well, in june, after the administration sent over four million postcards to small businesses, you remember the postcards, the ones claiming that those small businesses would be eligible for a tax credit. well, the associated press blew the whistle it. it turned out the only small businesses that were eligible -- fully eligible for these tax credits included -- had to be fewer than 25 people. to be eligible they had to have fewer than 25 people. it reported that the tax credit drops off sharply if the company

employed any more than 10 people or if the annual salary was averaging more than $25,000. so if you had 10 employees and paid them on average $25,000, you could get the tax credit. but once you went to that 11th employee and gave someone araise, -- a raise, you started to lose the thing that the administration said was so valuable. that was in june. in july the obama's administration own justice department confirmed the individual mandate penalty as a tax increase. well, when abc news' george stephanopoulous asked the president if the mandate penalty was a tax increase, this is what the president said -- quote -- "i absolutely reject that notion." well, if the president absolutely rejects the notion, why is his own justice department contradicting him? in august, without so much as a hearing before congress, the president made a recess appointment. he tapped dr. berwick to run the

medicare and medicaid services. how big is this federal agency? it includes oversight on the budget larger than the pentagon's. dr. berwick believes the government must ration medicare. well, the president promised not to ration care. so why did he make an appointment of someone who believes it is inevitable to ration care and do it in a way without ever allowing the senate, republicans and democrats alike, members of this body, to even have a hearing so that this individual could explain his position, explain his previous comments, explain what he's said and written? the president refused and did a recess appointment on someone who never testified, never came to a confirmation hearing and he put in charge of a program with a budget larger than the pentagon. can can you imagine if a secretary of defense was made a recess appointment without a congressional hearing?

it's unthinkable. in september the administration released new rules estimating that 80% of the small businesses would be forced to change the coverage of insurance that they offer to their employees. madam president, these aren't my numbers, these are the administration's own numbers. but it was the president who said over and over again that if you like the coverage you have today, then you can keep it. now we know that was another one of the president's empty promises. well in october, responding to complaints from unions and corporations, the obama administration began handing out waivers. waivers that excused individual groups from obama care's expensive mandates. these waivers went mostly to those politically connected to this administration. now, most american families still have to bear the law's expensive burdens. currently -- clearly for this administration playing favorites is more important than achieving fairness. i think every american ought to be able to get a waiver from

this health care law. in november a majority of the american people voiced their opposition to this law and handed an election response that resulted in a significant change in the composition of the house and the senate because the american people knew they did not want this health care law. well, the american people were concerned that they even wondered if this law was constitutional and in december a federal judge in virginia ruled that it was unconstitutional to force americans to buy a product. the service employees international union, one of the biggest unions in the country, also admitted in december, that fulfilling the requirements of obama care would be -- obamacare would be financially impossible. this is the same law that they said the country needed when they lobbied in favor of it. in january of this year the medicare actuary called the administration's claim that the

health care law would bring down costs -- quote -- "false more than true." close quote. also a federal judge in federal struck down the entire law as unconstitutional. and then in february, last month, we learned that the i.r.s., when they submitted their 2012 budget to congress that that i.r.s. budget specifically mentions the health care law 250 times. they mention it as a source of authority and funding for new powers. they called the health care law -- quote -- "the largest set of tax law changes in more than 20 years. to begin implementing these changes will require thousands of new washington bureaucrats." well that was -- that was through february. now here we are, march 9. did anything happen in march that the american people now found out about the law? absolutely. last friday night the secretary of health and human services

granted another $150 -- 150 waivers. another 150 waivers. now there are over 1,040 waivers covering 2.6 million individuals. these are people who don't want to live under the obama health care law. they don't want it to apply to them and i think every american ought to have that right to that same waiver. well, those -- of those 2.6 million who have received waivers, madam president, 1.2 million are members of unions. so that's 46% of the waivers have been given to union members. now, the website where you go to for that information, of course, the -- the secretary has tried to disguise how they label these individuals and union plans are now called multiemployer plans -- multi-employer plans.

and in the change of the name for the website where you have to go to learn this is called promoting transparency. so we have an administration says one thing, does another, the american people now know what is in the law as they were stud wig the law before the -- studying the law before the vote. they didn't want it, now they know, and they still don't want it. it is clear it is unsustainable, unaffordable, unconstitutional. it is time to repeal and replace it. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from missouri. a senator: thank you for letting me have the floor for a few minutes. first of all, madam president, i'd like to say that dr. barrasso's second opinion is clearly the opinion of missourians. mr. blunt: and i think when you ask americans if they want to see changes in the health care system, but not these changes, they say, yes, we want the

health care system to be changed, we just don't want it changed this way. i'd remind the chair that in missouri in the primary election in august last year, 72% of the people who voted said they didn't want to be part of this health care plan. and this is going to be a big discussion and a big issue for the next couple of years until we decide what direction we're going to take. today i want to talk about spending -- these two bills are going to come to the floor today about spending. there will be lots of discussions about the cuts that the house made, the $61 billion of cuts, and how this cut could have been better, how this is a good thing for the government or for somebody to do. and of course i suspect that most all of that will be true. what's unfortunate is that we don't get to talk about on the senate floor today what we might cut instead of this thing that will be, these things will be

discussed that people think are such a good idea for us to continue. the truth is we have to make the kinds of decisions that get spending under control. this year we're going to spend about $3.8 trillion. we're going to collect about $2.2 trillion. and even though interest dollars is too big a concept -- even though trillion dollars is a a big concept to wrap your mind around if your company is spending $2.8 trillion and bringing in $2.2 trillion you'd understand your company was not going to be in business too much longer. if your family was spending $38,000 and bringing in the door $22 thousand, you'd know that couldn't continue. and this can't continue either. and the idea that we can't make $61 billion of reductions in spending in a $3.8 trillion

budget, $1.6 trillion of which is deficit spending, this doesn't make sense to me. it doesn't make sense to the american people. and we're going to have to have a government that can make choices. right now we've got government trying to do the same thing over and over again at all three levels. and some of those things government's trying to do at the federal, the state and the local level ought to be left to families when they could be left to families. and other things are the legitimate job of government. but everything is not the legitimate job of the federal government. and almost nothing is the legitimate job of all levels of government. we'd be much better off if we tried to make -- go through this process. is this a problem that only government can solve? and if the answer is yes, then the next question is, well can't we solve that problem closer to where people live and work and where the problem is, where families are? can't we solve that at the city level or the county level? and well, maybe the answer is

no. then the question should be: can't we solve it at the state level? then the question should be: if we're going to solve it at the federal level, is there really a constitutional definition that allows us to do that? and there are some things that only the federal government can do, but there aren't very many things that only the federal government can do. we're going to hear in this discussion today and in the coming weeks about lots of good things that can be done in our society. we're going to hear about some things that i've worked to authorize and tried to get us to make a priority and would still hope they could be a priority. some of those programs are actually cut in the house appropriations bill that i'll vote for today because my view is that we have to cut spending. and if we could cut the $61 billion this year that, exactly what i wanted to cut, that would be better for me. but i am committed to cut spending in any bill that we can

get enough people to put a bill on the president's desk that will say let's head toward a balanced budget. let's get a balanced budget amendment. let's head toward a balanced budget. but let's ask the right questions. before i came to the congress, i was a university president for four years. it was a private university, southwest baptist university in baliver, missouri. we didn't take state money. we had to pay our bills. because we had to pay our bills, as the president of the university i was constantly being asked to do things that were good things to do but i had several different categories of, no, this is why we can't do that. and maybe the two we ought to use the most often in washington, d.c. these days is, no, that's a good idea but it's not what we do. i said that a lot as a university president. as a matter of fact, in the four years i was there, i never had anybody come to me and ask me to

do anything evil. i never had anybody come to me as president of southwest baptist university and say here's something really bad that i think we should do as an institution. every idea that i got was a good idea, but it wasn't always something we could do. so one of my categories of "no" is, no, that's a good idea but that's not what we do. and we're going to hear lots of things about people with challenges, that somebody should help. the federal government is $1.6 trillion in debt this year. this year. not the $14 trillion of accumulated debt. $1.6 trillion this year. over $200 billion last month. last month's deficit was within striking range of the annual deficit for the previous, for the ten years that ended in 2008. we are now spending more in

deficit spending in a month than for a decade we spent in a year if you average out that ten years. it's very close to the february -- and, by the way, february is the shortest month that's the only month where we have 28 days of spending, and we set a record on monthly deficit spending for the united states of america that was almost equal to the average annual deficit of the previous ten years. and sometimes people come to me and they'd say, they'd have a really good idea that actually was something the university could do. and often then i'd have to say, that's a good idea. we ought to think about how we can do that. what you're going to have me figure out is what we can stop doing so we can start doing this. this may in fact be a better thing than some of the things we're doing tphourbgs but we just -- doing now but we just can't do everything. families deal with this issue all the time. you just can't do everything, even if it would be good to see those things done.

the federal government is doing the wrong thing when it heads down a road where you're spending so much more than you're collecting. one obvious answer is let's just collect more. and i suppose if you went to the congressional budget office and said what would the collection amount be for the federal government if the tax rate was 100%, since they don't do any dynamic scoring over there, their scores of tax policy doesn't matter, i guess they could add up all the payrolls of america and whatever they added up to that's how much money the federal government would bring in if the tax rate was 100%. but that would not happen. frankly, the tax rate of collecting the $2.2 trillion is about all that we ought to be collecting out of this economy. for 65 years after world world , the government spent an average of $1 out of $5 that the federal

government, that the economy could create. now we're spending $1 out of $4. there's a big difference in a country where the federal government alone spends $1 out of $4 that the country can create in goods and services as opposed to $1 out of $5. you're not going to get a lot more on the taxing side so we have to make the reductions in spending. then you're going to hear, we're just making these reductions out of 12% or 15% of the budget. is that fair? well, first of all, that's the only part of the budget that we can get to without significant legislative activity that should be the next thing on our agenda. let's talk about the 60% of the budget that we normally don't even talk about where if you meet the definition of the program, you get the money, and see if we can't figure out how to produce better results for fewer dollars. that's what everybody else in america has been thinking about for 20 years now. if you're still in business in america and you're competing in a global economy, you've been thinking how do we get a better

result for less money, not how do we spend more money. we need to be sure that the government is as good as the people it serves in that regard. and 12% or 15% of the budget, we're talking about reducing spending by $61 billion. that wouldn't begin to be nearly enough if you proportion it out. that's about a seventh of the budget. you multiply that by seven, you're still well over $1 trillion short of where you need to be. so we need to start by taking at least this much money out of that part of the budget and figure out how we can also make the government work better in the other 85% of the budget. this is -- today is what it is. today is a discussion to prove apparently that we can't do anything, that we can't do what the majority wants to do, in the senate wants to do, we can't do what the majority in the house wants to do. but let me tell you, what the

majority in the house wants to do is a minimum entry level to solving this whole problem. and i'm going to vote for it today, and i urge my colleagues to vote for it as well. and i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands in recess until 12:00

honorable julia gillard, prime minister of australia, for the house-senate joint meeting. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: madam president, i want to follow on what was said ednt to follow on what was said >> this exercise that we arersat engaged in here, this this conversation about how to finish this year, this fiscal year has gotten out of hand, and i'll tell you why. i know the debt is a serious problem facing america. i know the deficit is something that threatens our economy and our way of living. i also know there are sensible, that you feel ways to deal with it, and one of them was

addressed by the simpson deficit commission which i served on and voted for in terms of their final report. i disagreed with some particulars, but that's the nature of a compromise and the nature of moving our nation forward. but what we tried to do in that commission was to take a look at this challenge and not solve it in a month or six months, but say how can we solve this, do it say how can we solve this, do it this to dol grow what any sensible responsible responsible way and still grow y the economy. a few feet away from where we ae are m seeting right now are soma of the best minds in america sitting in a room meeting with senators. they represent the high-tech industries of america. and i just heard mr. john chambers who is the ceo of cisce talk about the challenge we faco and compare our status in theay, world to china today.number-twoe the number two economy in the o world. today and he compared our situation

today to what it was just a fewo years ago. hav we are now in a position where p we have one out of four startup years ago. ameri and it's an indication to meead that if a imericans are going tn continue in this world we need . to invest in the things thatt a make us strong. is. i'm not saying that deficit is l not a problem. we add it is, but we will still have a ficit, deficit. we should invest in that federau budget in things that are important. things that no our future. senator reid of nevada talked about america. hr i couldn't agree more. "fety you don't hear the word safety net around here anymore it's unfortunate because we know that even in this prosperous society there are many unfortunate people. there are children who, through no fault of their own, were born into dysfunctional and poor families, kids whom we try to rescue from their plight and engage them in head start, bring them into a learning atmosphere,

a classroom. i've been there all over my state of illinois. i was just there two weeks ago in chicago. i went into one of the poorer sections of that great city and saw a room full of 40 of the cutest kids in the world from struggling families who are lucky enough to be in a head start program. and it means that for the better part of the day they are in a safe, positive learning environment. is that a good thing? of course it is. whether it's my son or daughter or your son or daughter, it really comes down to the basics. if we don't give our children the right liftoff in their lives, many of them struggle and, unfortunately, many f.a.a. so when the house republicans say -- many fail. so when the house republicans say the way to deal with our deficit is to cut hundreds of thousands of these children out of the head start program, to dismiss tens and thousands of teachers and staff, you have to step back and say are you sure?

has it reached that point? are we at a point now where we have to deny these children access to the kind of learning experience that makes their school experience later on more successful? i don't think so. an honest look at our deficit would not just go aviation and research -- go aviation and research and investment in our infrastructure. it would look across the board as the bowl-seupl stopb commission -- simpson commission did. how can we look at at this time, denying money to the poorest schools in america where they literally struggle day to day to try to turn the lives around of children who are in very dire circumstances. to cut, as the house republicans suggested, pell grants. suggested, pell grants. >> the college students from lower income families. i look back in my life, and i guess, i was one of those kids.

you know, my mother was a widow, and i wanted to go to college, and it wasn't a family experience, and i needed help. in those days, pell grants didn't exist, but college loans did, and the federal college loan came to my rescue, and here i am today. for hundreds of thousands of students, the pell grant is a ticket to college. that's how they can earn a diploma and succeed in life. when the house republicans say they reached the point where we have to cut that assistance to college students across america, you say to yourself, is it that bad we have to reach that floor? there's other things to look at first. i happen to believe in this great prosperous nation, the most prosperous, the wealthiest, those who benefited from this great nation, they can be asked to sacrifice more, and i think they should.

asking those at the highest income levels to pay more in taxes at this point in our history is not unreasonable and is not going to kill the economy. it's just simple economic justice. if discoing that -- if doing that means protecting the most vulnerable and presenting the opportunity for education, i think that's fair. i question some of the things we're doing. look at the prices of gasoline across gas stations today and look at the earnings and tell me why we continue to funnel billions of taxpayers' dollars into subsidies for the oil companies. they are doing well, thank you. they don't need a subsidy to add to the deficit. same is true in my home state of illinois. i'll get personal about this. i happen to believe agriculture is critical to the nation. we need to be there as a safety net for farmers who can't predict the weather or what crop prices might be, but there are parts of our ag program that

frankly need to be seriously renewed in the federal contribution needs to be reduced. at a time when comity prices are the highest, the fact that we are sending so much money out of the treasury so some of the largest firms in america is just indefensible, and so i'm bringing it home to the agriculture state of illinois, to our entire nation with oil and gas and say before we cut the money for research as the house republicans suggest at the national institutes of health, before we deny the doctors and scientists and the best minds in america the resources they need to find cure for diseases, to find the next drug to revolutionize life in america, before we do that, let's take an honest look at the entire budget. the house republican budget goes too far.

let me also raise a point relative to my own appropriations subcommittee. we have funded three watchdog agencies to make sure we never, ever enter another recession like the one we're in now. after wall street brought the economy to its knees, sent millions of hard working americans to the unemployment line, and took $700 billion from taxpayers, bailout funds, the house republicans are now fighting to prevent the cops on the beat who are going to be there to ensure that wall street can never reek this damage again. the securities and exchange commission was tasked by our wall street reform bill to write new rules to bring transparency to stock markets, and now the house republican budget cuts $231 million from the securities exchange commission over what was thosed.

that's an 18% cut at the very moment this agency should buff up its ranks and keep an eye on wall street and write new rules for enfor thements. that could be good news for future madoff's, but it's not for financial institutions across america to deal honestly. they were taxed by the same bill to bring sunshine to what warren buffet called "weapons of mass destruction," derivatives, shady markets. the commodity future trade commissions and a 69% cut at the very moment when the cftc needs better technology and investigators to handle its

awesome responsibilities, and there's the third hit in the house republican budget. they go after the consumer financial protection bureau. it's brand new, created by the wall street reform bill. that budget that the house republicans are pushing would cap funding for the consumer financial protection bureau at half of what it would otherwise receive. since the day that i first introduced the bill to create this bureau in a similar goal, with a professor's help, the house republicans fought this idea. when president obama signed it into law, reformers, the people who want americans to have access to financial services that they understand can be used to improve their lives, well, we won that day. as a chairman in the appropriations committee, i did my best to ensure they protect the american investors and

maintain the sterling reputations of our financial institutions and wall street. as an early champion, i'm going to continue that fight to make sure that this agency has the power and the resources that it needs. madam president, i close by saying this. there is such a stark contrast in the vote that we'll have today. we'll be asked on the floor whether or not democrats want to vote on hr1. the majority leader arrived at this. it's not just a spending bill, awe be bill that has every bumper sticker over the last ten years. the house republicans didn't just want to cut spending, but inject themselves on a myriad of issues. they want to take the spending bill and debate abortion. they want to take the spending bill and debate whether or not we will provide any federal funds for family planning or

planned parenthood across america. they want to take the spending away from national public radio and national broadcasting. they want to take one-third of the resources from the epa to make sure the air and water we drink are fit for our friends and family. that's what they are doing. you think to yourself, if this is about an economic emergency and a budget emergency, why did the house republicans let it get into this situation where it's just -- >> more debate on federal spending when the senate returns today. live coverage here on c-span2. senators in recess now, gathering for a joint session. this morning, remarkets -- remarks, and this is a picture of a door in that president obama will walk through in the white house this morning where he's expected to make a

personnel announcement. speculation is he'll name a new ambassador to china. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good morning, everybody. as many people know, our current ambassador to china decided to step down from his current job. during his tenure, john has been an outstanding advocate for this administration and for this country. he made a real sacrifice in moving his family out of the states that they loved and helped to strengthen our critical relationship with the chinese government and the chinese people, and so i am very grateful for his service. in replacing ambassador huntsman, i can think of nobody who is more qualified than gary locke. more than 100 years ago, gary's

grandfather left china on a steam boat bound for america where he worked as a domestic servant in washington state. a century later, his grandson will return to china as america's top diplomat. in the years between these milestones, gary has distinguished himself as one of our nation's most respected and admired public servants. as our country's first chinese american governor, he worked to attract jobs and businesses to washington state and doubled exports to china. two years ago, i asked gary to continue this work as commerce secretary. i wanted him to advocate for america's businesses and american exports all around the world, make progress on our relationship with china, and use the management skills he developed as governor to reform a complex and sprawling agency. he has done all that and more. he's been a point person for my

national export initiative, and last year, gary's department led an historic number of trade commissions that helped support american businesses and american jobs. he's overseen an increase in american exports and particularly exports to china, a country we recently signed trade deals with to support 230,000 american jobs. as commerce secretary, gary oversaw a census process that ended on time and under budget returning $2 billion to american taxpayers. he's earned the trust of business leaders across america by listening to their concerns, making it easier for them to export goods abroad and dramatically reducing the time it takes to get a patent. when he's in beijing, people can rely on him to represent their business in front of top chinese leaders. as one the fastest growing

economies, our relationship with china is one the most critical of the 21st century. we worked hard to build the relationship that serves our national interest addressing global security issues and expanding opportunities for american companies and american workers. continued cooperation between our countries will be good for america. it will be good for china, and it will be good for the world. as the gran son of a chinese immigrant, gary's the right person to continue this cooperation. i know he will bring the same skills and experience that he brought to commerce secretary to this new position that he's about to embark on. i want to thank him and i also want to thank his gorgeous and extraordinary family who is standing here, mona, emily, dylan, and maddie. it's also tough to move

families. maddie just turned 14, or emily, so i was talking with her as someone who moved around as a kid a lot as well. i told her it would be 10 years from now, but right now it's probably a drag. i'm absolutely confident that this is -- we could not have better representation of the united states of america in this critical relationship than we're going to get from the locke family, and, gary, i wish you all the best luck in beijing. thank you. >> thank you. well, thank you very much, mr. president, and i'm deeply humbled and honored to be the next ambassador to china. my grandfather first came to america to work as a house boy in the -- for a family in washington. he went back to china, had a

family, and my father was also brn in china and came over as a teenager later. he listed in the united states army before the outbreak of world war ii and saw action on the beaches of normandy and the march to berlin and came back to seattle to raise a family and start a shall small business. my father never imagined one of his children could serve as secretary of commerce in united states of america. he was beaming with pride today. sadly, dad passed away in january, but if he were still alive, it would be one of his proudest moments to see his son named as the united states ambassador to his an -- an zester's homeland. i'm going back to the birthplace of my grandfather, father, my mom, and her side of the family, and i'm doing so as a passionate

advocate for america, the country where i was born and raised. as commerce secretary, i helped open up foreign markets for american businesses to create more jobs right here in america, and i'm eager to continue that work in china and to help you, mr. president, manage one of america's most critical and complex economic strategic relationships. i'm excited to take on this new challenge as is my wife and our children to a varying degrees among the kids. [laughter] we will be leaving washington, d.c. with great memories and many new friends. being commerce secretary is one of the best jobs i've ever had thanks to the immensely talented men and women within the department of commerce, in the white house, and within the cabinet. i'm proud of the work we've done at the commerce department delivering services faster, serving the needs of the u.s. businesses and workers, saves

taxpayers millions of dollars by being efficient in what we do, and i'm confident these accomplishments will stand the test of time. mr. president, i'm eager to assume this new position, and it's a privileged responsibility to serve you and the american people as the next united states ambassador to china. thank you for the confidence and trust you've placed in me. thank you. >> thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> president obama formally announcing former secretary gary

locke to be the first ambassador to china. he would be the first chinese-american to hold a post and succeeding john huntsman who is rumored to be interested in a run for president. the senate is in recess now in a joint meeting. this morning the prime minister spoke to members in the house and senate. you can see that live right now as members gather together. it's on c-span this morning. when the senate returns in an hour, they'll debate two competing proposals to fund the federal government for the rest of fiscal year 2011 which ends september 30th. voting set for 3 p.m. eastern and live coverage when the senate returns here on c-span2. a conversation here with bill gates and microsoft, education and global health care and his career at microsoft.

in washington, this lasts about an hour. >> thank you. thank you. can everybody -- we're very pleased and honored to have bill gates as our special guest. as i said at the outset, this is in the 25 years of the club the biggest turnout we've had, and i don't think it's because the interviewer's skills were great, but because everybody wanted to hear bill gates, and the reason is because of his extraordinary accomplishments over so many years. i don't think he needs an elaborate introduction, but i want to make a couple points. today, bill is essentially the greatest philanthropist in the world. he gave away $30 million away of his own money. [applause] to his foundation and that foundation has to date given

away about $24 billion to causes we'll talk about including k-12 education in the united states and health care in the developing world. he's become not only a big donor to the causes, but somebody actually committed and knowledgeable about the causes brought to the intelligence and focus that he brought to his business career earlier. his business crear is also legendary. he left harvard in the mid-1970s and started a company later named microsoft, built it into the largest technology company in the world, and at one point, it was a company with the highest market value of any company in the history. in doing that, he revolutionized the computer system that we have in our country and revolutionized software and everybody here i dare say used the products of his company, microsoft. he was the ceo of that company from 1975 when the company was

created until year 2000. from that period of time, he managed to become an addition to a very successful entrepreneur businessman and ceo and became the wealthiest man in the world by far, and today tees one of the wealthiest men in the world. [laughter] forbes said he's the only third wealthiest man in the world and if he had not done what he did in philanthropy, he would be at $88 million. that's a nice must remember. it's another thing to run a company, make a lot of money and give it away, but what bill gates did throughout this is keep his feet on the ground, made himself a humane person and personalble person and

accessible person. what people admire about him is also the person that he has become and the person he has led some of the other people know. what i'd like to do tonight is to not only talk about the foundation, let him talk about the foundation, his philanthropic work, but some of the things that make him so human and interesting to talk to, so let me start by saying thank you very much for coming, bill, and i wondered if you ever thought, you know, what you could have made of yourself had you finished college. [laughter] >> you know, it's very legendary that you dropped -- >> it's legendary that you dropped out of harvard, but if you had not, every parent wants to know, had you not, do you think you could have built the company, or was it dropping out of college that made the difference? >> well, paul and i, paul alan, my co-founder, and i saw the

first kit computer on a cover of a mega. he had been talking about the miracle of the chip by three years by then. oh, it's going to happen without us. we have to get involved. this is so important. when that product was announced, it was called altar and the company later disappeared. the, you know, we felt like, gosh, we got to do it right away, and so school didn't stand in the way of that. i'm actually on leave from harvard at this point. [laughter] >> what did your parents say, you got a 1590 on your sats and what did they say when you dropped out? >> well, they were used to strangeness. they were used to my disappearing at night to use

computers. my senior year of high school i skipped because there was a job i was offered which was an amazing job to work on this complicated computer project for trw, and i got to work with brilliant people and i got to learn more. the people i worked with my senior year of high school said you should skip college and get a h -- ph.d.. i bent went to my parents and say, yeah, i'm going to skip college. they said, well, actually, you should go to college, and that was good advice because in terms of social development -- i never finished my social development, but it helped. [laughter] >> when you were in high school you prepared a program that enabled you to get in classes with mostly girls as i understand it, so you met girls at that time. is that true? >> well, i wasn't good at meeting them, but, boy, they were nearby.

[laughter] they tended to be the better looking girls for some reason. that's the beauty of being in charge of the computer scheduling as i decided when the classes met and who was in the classes. it was a semicomplicated software problem, and they were super nice to let me do it, and they paid me money to do it, and so that was a great position. >> well, when you -- a couple years ago you were given an hon their degree at harvard, and you told your parents you'd go back to get your degree, but you said you were assigned to lism in what i think was the yard and you wanted to live there because there were more girls in that part of harvard, and you thought it would give you a better opportunity begin the fact there's so many geeks there and you would be outshining the rest of the people, but you said it didn't really work. >> well, yeah. the first year i lived down in the yard, but then i chose to

live in radcliffe. the next two years were there. that had a great 50/50 ratio where the river houses had three to one. that was hopeless for me. [laughter] 50/50 didn't do much for me either, but again -- [laughter] it was at least a better background for studying. >> well, when you started your company, did you actually ever have an ambition to build such a large company, or what was your ambition at the time? did you have a business plan that led to microsoft becoming what it became? >> we had a contradiction in the company plan by saying there was a computer in every desk in every home running microsoft software, which that's a plan for a big company, but in terms of our practical what we thought about, i would be saying, okay, no customer pays me for a year, can i meet the payroll? i always had enough cash on hand because i had a lot of customers

go bankrupt. of the first 13 customers, eight didn't pay us in full. it was a flakey business with people coming and going. [laughter] fortunately in a radio shack, apple, a few good ones got in in that early list. we were really putting one foot ahead of the other, and whenever somebody said to me, what's your plan, my plan was to double. clearly, we can double. i said that with 100 people, 500 people, 5,000 people, and so if a way we were actually being really realist tick about what we needed to do and what the income would be. i remember once when the forbes 400 list came out and there were no software people, but like hang wang and intell people. that's interesting, did we double more times, we might be on this thing. >> wow. >> it brought the contradiction of the vision and the let's just plan the next doubling in the

focus. >> did you consider starting the company or building anywhere other than your hometown area because it wasn't then considered a center for this kind of activity. >> well, that was the real decision. our very first customer when i dropped out of harvard was in ailing cerk ky. i learned how to spell that, and it was not the easiest place to take to higher people, so then that first customer got bought by a california company, and we knew we had to move. the choice was to move to silicone valley, and we were worried about the traffic and employee loyalty, or to move to be right at the dfw airport because we were doing business with asia. we thought that would be cool to just get on a plane or move back to seattle, and anybody in the company wanted to move back to

seattle, but i tell the truth, and eventually we decided that would work and could create a loyal group there, but it was completely out of the computer game. the computer game traditional computer game was on the east coast, boston was the biggest part of it, and then this new game was almost entirely in silicone valley. >> when you mentioned forbes and took your company public in march of 1986, you then became the first self-made billionaire at the age of 32; is that right? >> yeah. when we went public, within a few years, the value kept going up. >> when you became a billionaire at a relatively young age, early 30s, how did it change your life, and did you find people treating you differently? did your parents treat you

differently? [laughter] >> well, i ordered cheese on my cheese burger without hesitation. [laughter] i was talking to my dad once, and he would say, yeah, it must be tough for paul's dad that his son makes more money than he does, and then, you know, i didn't answer him, and my dad said, oh, oh, okay, you make more money than i do. [laughter] i was his best customer at the law firm at the time, and i've done well with the legal profession now. [laughter] now, i was fanatical. between the age of 18 and at least 30, i was just totally focused on microsoft. i didn't believe in vacations. i let other people take them a little bit. i knew everybody's life. i knew when they came in in the morning, when they left at night, and, you know, i was just

so excited, so thrilled by the work we were doing and wanted to say in front of it that the whole notion of what the company was or what the process was wasn't that interesting. sometime in my 30s, "fortune" wrote an article about giving it away and how giving wealth to your kids is not necessarily a favor to them, and i remember reading that and thinking, okay, i'll have to think about that someday. i was 38 when i got married, and then i did have to think about it. >> now, you marrieded someone who not only had two college degrees, two more than you, but had the advantage of having them from duke, and now as everybody knows she's your partner in the foundation, the bill and melinda gates foundation. how does that work? do you have to agree on every gift or how do you sort through the gifts and decide what the areas of focus are in the foundation? >> well, she's an equal partner

in this whole thing which is a lot of fun, to have a project that is deep and complicated. you know, she knows when i get overexcited about something, maybe i've gone too far, she thinks about the people. she is great. she chooses a few topics that she's more in depth in than i am. we learn from each other. we do a couple trips together. in ten days we're going to india for a week together, and then three or four trips each of us go somewhere, and then we get back together and explain what we saw there. it's worked very, very well. she knows some of my weaknesses and it's helpful with those things. in fact, she went up to -- she got to ride on air force one before i did to boston. >> so when you got your foundation pretty much off the ground in a significant way, you had an earlier foundation, but when you got it jump started,

you contributed $20 billion at the outset, so what was it like to write a check for $20 billion? >> [laughter] >> well what happened, the year 2000, microsoft was valued over $500 billion, which was an unusual number. i thought it was a good time to give stocks away. it was just stock certificates that went into the foundation, and over a period of time those were sold. there's an endowment there that's being managed. what happened was my dad was retired from his legal career, and a microsoft executive retired, and they were talking about working together, and i thought, okay, given that i'm still so focused on microsoft and i don't have that much spare time, these two will do a good job. i started to learn about

vaccines and how underfunded they were and what a miracle they were. i learned about reproductive health, and so having those people already sometime from melinda to get folks involved in this made sense. when you create a foundation, there's a 5% minimum payout. in the year 2000, it ramped up quickly to spending that 5%. >> so now you retired from microsoft essentially in 2008, i guess, and you're still the nonexecutive chairman, but 100% of your time is really in philanthropy now. how did you decide the two areas to focus on were k-12 education and health care in the developing world. how did you pick those and what subject did you not pursue because of those two? >> well, we decided our main focus would be whatever the greatest inequity of the world

is, something that affects life in a very deep way, and that's where we take global health, where we saw that because the poorest people don't create a market, that there's not much research in ma -- malaria vaccine, and yet if you get those vaccines, they are delivered everywhere on earth, even a place like somalia with no government, and they have an enduring effect not only on reducing death, but also reducing sickness. the majority of kids in africa never develop above a 90iq because they had infectious diseases meaning their brain doesn't fully develop. that holds those countries back in a huge way, and then parents who have healthy children choose to have less children, and the master switch of all problems is if you have too many people,

feeding them, keeping them stable, the environment, everything that counts is impossible, so that's why global health was our number one thing. then we said, well, we should pick a problem in the united states because it really was the incredible education system and stabilities, the brilliance of the american system that allowed the people to learn, allowed my cro soft to exist, and so we give a little over a quarter to education just because, you know, we wanted to have a global cause and a domestic cause, and that's mostly what we do. we've added some things that help poor people in agriculture, water and sanitation, and so we're actually a total of three divisions now. >> but you must have -- everybody you see must be asking you at this point in your life for money in some clever or subtle way. you must have gotten used to that, and how do you respond to so many people. do you say go see the

foundation? >> yeah. there's a lot of interest in raising money, but if you really tell people what you're focus is, you know, it's about global health, poor children saving their lives, we're very, very interested. if it's about improving the u.s. education system, we're interested. if it's outside those areas, it's almost, you know, very likely that somebody else can do that, it's a wonderful thing. even a foundation of our size has to have some degree of focus to build up expertise and see where we're going wrong. i think in a general foundation, if they did half as many things, they would be better off. they would do it with more measurements and learning curves. it works out okay. you know, i can say no. >> okay. [laughter] all right. >> warren buffet taught me how. >> you mentioned warren buffet.

you had a relationship with warren buffet for a number of years, and one dwai he called you up wanting to contribute to your foundation. how did that come about? >> it was a very unusual set of circumstances. i met warren back on july 5, 1991. my mother said that she had buffet coming over and said come meet them. i said, i'm busy, mom, which i said that a lot of times. i was still in my fanatical stage at that point. she said, no, no, you have to come buy. >> i said mom, he buys himself stocks. somehow stocks are mispriced and hoe -- he knows that. [laughter] that's bad human welfare. she said i should come, and then i went and met warren, and he

started asking me questions about, you know, why didn't ibm do what you did? why couldn't people see where the computer's industry is going. these are questions i wanted somebody to always ask me. i got to ask him about various things, about the businesses he knew anyway, so we became pretty deep friends. we golfed together, played bridge together, goof off and have a chance to talk, and then tragically his wife died, and i think that was in 2004, and you know, his plan was to achieve -- he would do the making the money, and she would run the foundation, most likely she would outlive him and have lots of time to do it. when that wasn't going to be the case, warren completely to our surprise decided to form five

foundations a substantial portion, i think 85% or something like that going into our foundation, so that was fantastic, but completely unexpected from when he called that day giving you $30 billion. >> what was your reaction? >> wow, he's really serious about this. [laughter] he said to me at one point, you know, after -- about a year after his wife died -- the logical thing to do would be to give this money to your foundation. i said, yeah, maybe. but he wasn't suggesting it would happen. in fact, he suggested it wouldn't happen, but he was just brainstorming. yeah, that would be the logical thing and i said, well, maybe. then three months later he called and said i'm actually doing that. i said you're doing what? well, i want to give a large part to your foundation because i like to delegate things.

[laughter] >> right. >> seriously warren has clear principles. when it comes to running geico and in terms of giving money away, he's picked various foundations. >> he didn't say i want my name on your foundation? >> no, no. well, it was funny, first warren said, no, he didn't even want to be a trustee, but it was said in an unusual way. i asked my wife to call him and see if he meant it. then he kind of would have liked to be a trustee. [laughter] that's his way. he's been just totally supportive, gives advice, and helps us think about some of the tough issues we face, but it's a lot like he treats the managers of his businesses that he knows they love the work, they will do

their best, you know, all those people want because they admire warn so much they want to do good work for him, and they know he's available to provide advice. >> right. now, you have obviously had a great career in business and now philanthropy. how do you compare the challenges and excitement you get from the two different types of endeavors? >> i would say there's three phases. there's the early microsoft days, the first ten years where i got to write a lot of code. you know, it was hands on, and nobody wrote code without me looking at it or hired an engineer without me interviewing the person. that had a perception to it that everything had to be in the right place, and that was very cool, but then i couldn't keep that up because i wanted to do a lot of products. i had to step back, not write code and manage and pick strategies and still pick

managers, but not all the people, and so i really had to adjust to a more and direct way of contributing, and there's a lot of mistakes you make when you first start doing that. the work at the foundation is a lot like that phase, the third piece. it's similar. there's sign -- scientists working on vaccines, you have to decide who to fund, there's a lot more complexities politically. issues like k-12 education is decided politically. at microsoft, other than the antitrust file -- [laughter] whatever you call that -- [laughter] most things were more more of an engineering type thing, and the marketplace told you when it was right and wrong and it had this excellent metric. on some of our science stuff at the foundation, it is more like that where you either have it or you don't. it's subject to clear

measurement. the beauty is if you invent a new vaccine, nobody uninvents it. if you create a new way for teachers to be valued and company sated, that -- compensated, that can come. in tennessee in the 80s that was a good system, but it only lasted five years and it was abolished. >> you wrote code for a long time and are a soft ware expert. i wondered two questions about it. i'm usually a last adopter, so i'm not the most experted person. why is it when i turn on my software, to turn it on, i have to have three fingers, alt, control, and delete. why the three buttons to push? i could never figure that out. [laughter] [applause] >> when you want to start up the computer, you want to know there's not some funny piece of software in there looking at

everything you're doing just pretepidding that it's -- pretending it's the real software. there's a processer in the keyboard when it gets that funny sequence it does a hard reset on the computer so you know it's the boot software. we didn't want it confused with normal key strokes. a lot of people wanted a special button, but as the keyboard was further away from the computer, we came up with that. maybe we could have done better. [laughter] >> it worked out well. only one other question. why can't you have software, maybe you do in your program, where if i send an e-mail to you, but i don't want you to send it to somebody else, you can't forward it. i send an e-mail to you, and it can go all over the world. can you prevent that? >> actually, microsoft exchange, if con figured the right way,

two things. one is you can have e-mail not to be forwarded, or second, it can be forwarded, but the originator sees the forward of every forward, and the originator can see exactly what's going on. >> i got it. >> well, you have to notify people that that's an e-mail, it's a traced e-mail like that. the -- to some degree as soon as you send somebody an e-mail, in an extreme case they can take a photograph of their screen, put that in the scanner, and e-mail that photograph to people. once it's in their brain and they can retype it or do the photo, you can't guarantee information doesn't leak out, and so there's never, you know, there's never a perfect system, but there are systems that make it easier to stop people from forwarding things. >> back to those days for a moment. when abm --

ibm was looking for someone to provide software, what was it like to get ibm to select you? were you exeating with a lot of other people -- competing with a lot of other people? why did ibm say we want to -- why do you think ibm didn't want to own the software? >> they were not serious about personal computing. ibm had many, many locations and laboratories, and one was bocca raton. they did a project that was a complete bomb. some genius up at head quarters decided, hey, we take four years between when we conceive a product and when it's done. we should try to get that down to a shorter time period, so let's just take some random product and see if we can get it done quickly, and bocca -- there

was a kind of rp at headquarters that took labs to bid to show a new methodology. they did this bid where they said they would use outside venders, intell for the chip, us for the software and get a product under two years. it wasn't that important what the product was, but the forecast was to sell 200,000 of them. it was not a major project. it was just this thing that they were doing, and they thought of it as a toy computer. it had an optional disk, but not a hard disk or anything. well, this group at bocca raton was a great group. we made this thing more powerful than headquarters understood. that was the magic of the process ser. we wanted to do this. what was problem was this thing shipped in november 1981 and it sells like mad. very quickly it sells over a million machines. well, the other divisions at

ibm, a group that did the low end business computer called data master and the display writer. those two divisions said they are out of control. they are selling cheap machines and messing up the markets. they both did to take over the personal computer division and said, remember, these guys are morons. [laughter] >> right. >> headquarters said, hey, wait a minute, this is going well. they took the guy who ran the pc division and put him in charge of the other two divisions. [laughter] ibm in some ways, you know, like many companies, they were actually fairly enlightened about key steps and other key steps they were not. the particular contrast we had with them was we were very explicit that if anybody else does computers, they, you know, we need to make more money than

new ibm. you didn't pay us enough, so we have to sell it to other people. they understood there were ibm360 compatible machines up there. they understood that upside. the nature of the value of that, there was one guy at ibm who objected to their contract. hey, maybe we shouldn't do this, and he was overridden. later he tried many projects and found a company to replace us, but they were not fanatics. >> he had not been overridden, that was the most expensive decision ibm made. >> yes and no. the system was not guaranteed to be successful. there were lots of personal computers. what happened was there's a generational leap that the group at bocca raton and us decided to

move up to a slightly more powerful machine. because it was good and ibm, it became a template. i believe computing would have happened even if ibm was not a part of it, but it's hard to go back and consider the other pathways. you know, ibm, you know, did very well. they made a lot of money on personal computers for a long time and then eventually sold off that division. >> do you think had apple licensed its software to people, in those days they didn't have open systems i guess, open architectures, do you think that would have made a difference in your company? >> yeah, we told apple they made a mistake with the macintosh. we had applications for them. the dominant word processer on the pc worked perfect and the

dominant work processer on the mac was the software we had written. we told apple who almost went bankrupt, please license your software to get the scale of economics. the iron yi is they fired their ceo and brought steve back. they made it work fan tasically not only for their computers, so you can do it on your own, but it's just a different model. the my cro soft -- microsoft model is for all companies, and apple is for their own software. >> when you wrote were book about your company and life, you didn't mention the internet in that book. maybe i'm wrong, but -- and did you foresee the interpret coming along or did it surprise you on how important it became as part of the whole computer generation?

>> yes or no. it's easy to sound not humble. the book book talks all about information and super highway, the stupid term at the time, but yet, yes and no. the internet is this mind-blowing thing that completely changed the rules for everything. there's some almosts of it that all sorts of people in the computer industry were talking about for a long time. now, we kept expecting it to happen and it never happened and never happened, and then all the sudden it took off, and i don't think we realized why it didn't happen for the first five years before it did. once it did happen, that the more people who are connected, the more people want to be connected and stuff gets cheaper, and these idiotic investors completely

overinvested in the internet companies. they sent $100 million in silly money to try companies like and some survived like google, but the internet companies of infrastructure and building websites, 90% of them were laughable. it's like a soft puppet thing that people invested hundreds of millions into that thing. [laughter] anyway, that phenomena was mind blowing because it had such a powerful dynamic. some of these applications were what we and everybody else was why we did the personal computer in the first place. >> now, in your current position you can see almost anybody in the world and i assume you're not turned down for a lot of meetings, but who would you say are the most impressive business

or government leaders that you've met? are there people that stand out that are so talented or farsighted that you can remember what they said to you or you're impressed with them? >> i think warren buffet i think gives me the best advice about the world of business and how things are going. i'm constantly learning from warren because he's just amazing, and he puts things in a simple to understand fashion. i've gone to meet a lot of great political leaders. nelson mandela and if anybody whowf predicted what happened there, there would have been a lot of bloodshed, but i think it's his insights and permty. he's been quite amazing. i saw the soft spot for scientists, people who just take

their time solveing a problem, like designing a new toilet. you can have an impact on society, designing a better wheat seed for africa, designing a plant that makes its own fertilizer. some of the ideas, there's other people who just toil their life, some work out, some will not work out. i always love finding somebody like that who is doing great work. >> you met a lot of political figures and in washington today meeting some members of congress. does it occur to you that you could do their job better them them, and have you considered running for office? >> no, i could not do their job better than them. i don't think it would draw my best talent out, meeting with constituents, raising money. i mean, that's very important. it's interesting. think about the history of the

country, it's been veal well run. when you look at politics and think what a mess, you have to say, well, it's always worked out before. does this just happen to be the time that looks like it's not going to work out? [laughter] it sure looks that way. >> you would have to spend time raising money if you got into politics. [laughter] now, you know, what are you considered -- you're 55 years old, so that's relatively young for somebody to have the worldwide stature you have. some people don't achieve that until a later age. you are one of the most respected men in the world, 55 years old, what would you like to see as your legacy and what would you like to do for the next 25 years of your active life, 25 years at least, what would you like to do for the next 25 years and what would you like your legacies to be? >> well, the global health area

i love because it's so concrete and it's so impactful. last year, a little over 9 million children died before the age of 5. in the next 15 years we should be able to cut that in half. in the next 25 years, we should be able to cut that down to about 2 million, and you know, that has this huge effect in reducing sickness, reducing population growth, and so, you know, all it takes is about ten new vaccines, getting them invented and distributed out to a lot of people, so that's going to be, you know, unless things go way better than i expect, that's most of the rest of my life working on that global health mission. now, there will be milestones along the way. we think in the next three years we can eradicate polio.

the money gets raised, there's scientific work that still needs to be done to tune up the vaccines, they are not as good as they need to be, but there's going to be neat things along the way that happen there. in education, you know, education today is not much different than it was 50 or 60 years ago. i mean, if you take any endeavor, engineering or medical understanding, whatever you want to take, it's incredible. in education, that's just not the case. if you said the best teacher was some 1960 teacher, nobody could prove you wrong. the idea there's a system that teachers learn from each other, these amazing teachers that exist and you animal -- analyze why they are so good and

you can be more like them, having an evaluation system that encourages that increment and having technology come in so that a student can have the world's best lectures, a student can be analyzed, you can see what you know and don't know, be motivated by examples of interest to you, but, anyway, i think i'd love to see big success in the helping the world's poorest which is health and agriculture and see advances in health and education. outside of my family life, if those can be achieved, that would be worth the next 50 years. >> well, you have three children, and, you know, what would you do if your son or daughter went to college and said i want to drop out and start a company. i mean, how would you face that kind of situation? >> well, i wouldn't be able to say no. [laughter] but i think it is kind of an exceptional situation when it's

logical to not complete your education, so i probably resist as much as my dad did, and, you know, hopefully the kid has the passion. being willing to tell your parents that they are wrong is almost an acid test. if your parents object and you say, okay, i'm going back to school, well, then, you were not meant to drop out and start a company. [laughter] >> how do you keep your family normal? do you drive your kids to school, pick them up from time to time, do people stare at you? >> no, people are great. you any, i get to -- you know, i get to work with smart people, i take the kids to school, everybody is focused on their kids. we meet lots of families through our kids. you know, we do our best, and the kids are a lot of fun. learning things with them, i'm envious of my children because

today if you are curious about something, you can find out about it. with your parents or read or watch something on the internet. when i had to ask my parents something, you didn't always have an answer. >> do you have limits on time for children can spend on the computer? >> i would if they showed signs of extreme believer like i did -- behavior like i did. [laughter] >> but presumably no limits on x box i presume? >> i would have limits on all things, but everything's in moderation. you want your kids to read a lot, but not to the exclusion of other things. you want them to be in sports, have friends. striking that balance is hard. that's why the tiger-mother thing was interesting to send around because, you know, what is too much? what balance should kids have? everybody goes about the lines

differently, but so far none of my kids have shown such tendencies. >> warren buffet said he wasn't giveing his children money. in your case, do you have plans on how much you might leave your children or how do you deal with the enormous wealth you have and the effect it could have on your children? >> my wife and i will end up giving them a very, very small percentage. the goal, of course, is to give a kid -- [laughter] enough -- >> a small percentage is probably a lot. [laughter] >> you want to give them enough to say can do anything, but they can't do nothing. >> right. >> it's not clear what that number is. [laughter] and, you know, i'm sure we will think about it as time goes on. it's a tricky problem because every kid should have a chance to make their own way, friends,

associates should think of them as someone handed a strange position, but, then again, they get a great education, exposed to neat things, and so they are getting one the best deals in life, and from time to time they will say, remind me why you're not giving me any money? [laughter] it's great when they ask about something specific like, but at least you'll get me a car, right? [laughter] well, the bidding is really low here. [laughter] >> when you buy something, are you ever short of cash, or do you have a credit card or what? >> actually, my name is william h. gates iii and when i took my dad's credit card and used them when i was young, they said you're too young. [laughter]

it's more trouble than what it's worth to have the same name as my dad for both he and i. i don't carry much. i don't have a problem with that. [laughter] >> okay, okay. [laughter] all right, we have some time -- one last question before we ask the audience. you said your foundation would probably not stay around too many years after your wife and you leave the earth. is that for a reason? why don't you have a perpetual foundation? what's your thinking? >> well, rockefeller and carnegie have done an amazing job. rockefeller foundation picked causes out of the mainstream, deworming, schools for black children, medical research, university of chicago. they just did an incredible job. everyone should aspire to that level. i don't think though, at least

for melinda and i, a perpetual foundation makes sense. there's problems today like the childhood health problems and education, and the people who are rich today and have energy should focus their resources on those problems, and there will be rich people in the future who can know very well what those problems are, and so, you know, there's a foundation in the u.s. that has to give most of its money away to one county, and it's a guygan tick -- guygan take foundation and doesn't make sense. it's hard to pick it out in nature and so we're probably going to have the foundation last 20 years after the last of us to go because this vaccine mission we're involved in is because we built up a team and a staff. you need continuity, but when you pick a time frame where that

particular mission will end, then the money should be spent so someone else can form a new foundation. >> okay. any questions? anybody curious to ask a question? okay. one back there. somebody get a mic. >> you stay out of politics and don't endorse candidates. >> i try. >> i was wondering if -- [inaudible] >> well, the antitrust experience, i don't recommend it. [laughter] you know, when your own government goes after you, then all the governments around the world say, oh, great, we can go

after him too. you're in the field bleeding and every vulture is coming to get you anyway. it's an interesting experience. no, i wouldn't say it had necessarily affected my timing. i knew my cro soft -- microsoft was a company that who was leading the strategy shouldn't be 60 or older, and so i chose to retire in my 50s than i would have like in my 0s, but i knew it was in that range, 50-60. what happened was any dad did such a good job on the foundation that i felt like both my impact and my ability to learn a lot of new things would be higher at the foundation than microsoft. you never know on these things, but we had a great, great team at microsoft, and i made the change. >> okay. another question.

here, go ahead. >> thank you. could you please talk about the relationship between agriculture and health and the expressed intent of leadership in congress to defund global agriculture development? >> well, yeah, i didn't talk much about agriculture, but other than the health vaccine things we do for the poorest, the next really sizable thing we do is get involved in agriculture research, that is helping farmers have better seeds, access to fertilizer, and that is super catalytic. 70% of the poor people in the world are farmers with very small plots of land that have a hard time of feeding their family and the weather is very tough on them, and yet, there is this potential to give them better tools, better information, and particularly better seeds that will help them deal with that whether varying

and have cash crops and subassistance. it's great, the world spent a lot on agriculture in the 70s and 80s, the so-called green revolution and it was a miracle. we more than doubled the output and in many cases tripled the output of farmers. now we need to do that again. africa didn't get the benefit of that first round. the government funded some of this and was talking about increases, a few increases. now, it's one of those things that's up in the air in the overall budget picture as something that will be maintained or cut, and there is a proposal where it gets cut and there's a proposal where most is maintained, and we'll see where it comes out. >> okay. another question?

here, right here. sir, question. >> all right. a fun question here. what's your golf hand -- handicap? >> i was with some friends at augusta last week, and i go once a year. i had not golfed in six months, but was playing tennis. i thought that was the same. it didn't work for me. i was golfing a 24 handicap when it was all said and done. >> the putts, i mean, they just give them to you i assume? >> usually it's $1 bets, and that makes them take it all very seriously. [laughter] >> okay. back here. >> yes, i'm wondering if you might comment on our recent mayor election here as a resident of district of columbia and a entrepreneur who head quarters business here, the outcome was disappointing with

education and a lack of support with that referendum. i'd like to hear your two cents on that. >> well, washington, d.c. is a system of contrast. you know, in many ways, many of the statistics would tell you it's one the worst school districts in the country. it is a district with a lot of charter schools, and a lot of those are amazing. there's a seed charter school, and those charter schools not only are provideing great education, but have laboratories to learn about things like if you have kids from the inner city, you have a very tough, tough background, can you do well with them? when kids achieve, 90% of their kids going to college, spend money about the same rate as the normal public schools, that was a phenomenal thing. now, the tactics they use, long

school days, getting the kids in there on saturday, developing relationships, those are key things that are difficult to map over the public school system, but i think it's a huge contribution. the work michelle reed did to put in an evaluation system, we were supportive of that because we believe that over time evaluation systems get good. they can use test data, cameras in the classroom, student interviews, all sorts of ways to create a system that is fair and encourages improvement and takes the compensation away from the seniority basis that it's been to date. the jury is out on what's going to happen in the dc school system. will they continue to drive forward in terms of evaluation system, making it better and really running the system in a strong way on behalf of the kids? you know, it will be interesting to see.

around the country there's a lot of school districts that are trying out teacher evaluation. the whole state of colorado passed a law. there's six districts our foundation is funding, some partnerships with unions, and so i think we will get great evaluation systems, and i think the dc experience will contribute to that. you know, i hope it stays in the vanguard. >> time for one more question. here, if someone can bring a mic. >> you talked about the advantages in the global health arena is you have very concrete goals to point out and focus on and recognizing in the k-12 and higher education spaces is more political and challenging. with 25% or so of the foundation's resources still focused in that area, i'm interested to hear a little bit more about, you know, what are e