enforcement to have checkpoints, to do all this stuff as the people we demonize impaired driving. we don't want anybody driving drunk and more people -- i think we have done a great job on the social drinking issue. but now we are down to a group of hard-core drivers have a real problem, they have a disease and continue to make the choice to from presidential history to the

serious topic of earthquakes. good morning to david applegate. he serves as the senior science adviser for earthquake and geologic hazards. could an earthquake of the magnitude of the one in japan have been in the united states? guest: i appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. we have two zones of the united states that do have the potential to generate similar kinds of earthquakes.

part of the pacific plate is diving down beneath north america. one part is off of alaska. in 1964, we have a magnitude 9 earthquake. it caused a significant local tsunami. the other is a small micro-plate linked to the pacific off the pacific northwest. we call this area cascadia. it runs from british columbia to california. a magnitude 9 earthquake is definitely possible there. host: we have a chart of the united states. it has the hazard zones. we always think about the west coast of the united states,

hawaii, and alaska as places more prone to it. but there are hot spots here. one is an area around missouri and another is around charleston. talk about those. guest: one thing we emphasize is that earthquakes are a national housing. they are concentrated in the west, but some of the most significant hazards can be found in the central and eastern u.s. rhe hot spot in the lowes mississippi valley is in the seceded zone to the wabash zone. at last had a major series of ruptures in 1811 and 1812. we are coming up on the bicentennial of those earthquakes. the hot spot that you see reflects another historic

earthquake in 1886. it may have been a magnitude 6 or 7 in charleston. we do not think of the central u.s. as earthquake country, but it definitely is. host: we will put telephone numbers on the screens to take your calls. we will also take twitter and female comments. 75 million americans in 39 states face significant risk of seismic activity. 26 urban areas are at risk of significant seismic activity. the estimate of $5 billion in potential damages from a major quake -- $500 billion estimate. fema is estimating that the annual earthquake cost is about $5.6 billion per year.

i would imagine that developing earthquake risk zones is a highly political exercise. so much is really at stake with property values, zoning, etc. how does this chart it put together? how is it finalized? how much does it change over time? guest: the hazard map itself that you have been showing is a marvelously non-political process. that represents the work of scientists. it is a broad consensus process of expertise. we're pulling together everything we have in terms of how things have happened in the past, the different ground shaking intensity away from faults. we can use gps to watch the plates move in real time.

we also have the past earthquakes. all of the information goes into this. we are part of a partnership with fema the national science foundation, and others, the mud develops designed maps. that goes into model building codes. it is a broad consensus process. this is where politics come in. the state has to decide whether they will adopt model building codes and how. that is very much a public process of trading off near-term and long-term risks. host: how has the science improved in the last decade? guest: gps is a wonderful new tool we have had. seismic networks remain the work force in terms of being able to

rapidly detect earthquakes. gps has enabled us to see the earth's crust moving in real time. it has given us a lot of additional information to understand these forces. the big advances have come in the wake of the sumatra earthquake in 2004. we will be room -- we were able to modernize a lot of our networks and stations to deliver information much faster and in a much more robust way. host: the deadliest earthquake in history from the u.s. geological survey. the china earthquake is lifted in 1566. it was 8.0 on the richter scale. china, 1976.

syria had an earthquake in 1138 we are 230,000 people died. japan is not in this yet. we do not know the whole on this. how do we know about the events that happened in 1138? guest: that is a great question. that is where we are challenged in the u.s. we do not have a long historical record. the specific records, we know the exact date on which one occurred. it is not from our records but from the tsunami that struck japan and the careful monastic records for centuries.

in japan, the precursor to this earthquake we just had, there appears to be one that struck in 1869. that is combined with geologic sleuthing to find the deposits that are indicators. there is a combination of science and history. host: you keep referencing the 200 year anniversary and records of the past. guest: earthquakes and defied the ability to do it short-term prediction. the notion that their interoperability to this that there is a repeatability is fairly well understood. that goes back to the plate boundaries. the vast majority of earthquakes occur where the tectonic plates are grinding against one another. some of the deadliest quakes

have been in areas away from those boundaries. those are some of the ones we worry about the most. they tend to be in areas where there has not been as much preparedness and experience that lead to building codes and mitigation measures. host: japan have loss of life from the earthquake, tsunami, and resulting nuclear issues. the u.s. has the largest number operating nuclear power plants. a number of these are coincidental with the fault lines in the areas we showed you. we will also have a discussion about nuclear safety. our guest is an expert on the seismic aspects of this. let's go to the first phone call from pennsylvania. sheldon is on the line. are you there? we will move on. next is lewis in baltimore.

caller: i am wondering about the reports we're getting from arkansas in the central part of the united states. there's one report of tremors in the great lakes region. last night, there were multiple minor sharks -- shocks in arkansas. they may be attributable to drilling for natural gas. the second question is, what about the atlantic? there is an area in the canary islands where volcanoes erupt. there was an eruption in the caribbean not long ago. if the canary islands iraq, they would create a tsunami that would be over 30 or 40 feet high. are we getting more tremors on the east coast in the central

part of the united states? thank you. guest: great question. with respect to arkansas, we have been tracking this. we've been working closely with the regional network based at the university of memphis. it has been measuring 900 of these very small earthquakes that have occurred in an area in central arkansas. it has been going on since september. it is not the first time arkansas has had these. it has had a history of being sworn -- swarmy in this area. be a separate issue from another fault line. the big focus is an understanding -- the biggest event has been about a 4.7.

it is to understand how it may be related to the gas development in that area. the arkansas oil and gas commission recently had a moratorium on some of the deep injection wells to see if there is a linkage factor there. the atlantic seaboard and the canary islands, the vast majority of salamis are generated by earthquakes. a small number are created by landslides, volcanoes. there has been research looking at the potential impact of a vector collapse. one of -- a chunk of one of the islands went into the sea. your rupturing several hundred kilometers of the earth's crust. the big line is jerking up and spreading out its energy into the ocean. it is hard to generate that same

kind of way from a single point source. these are possible in dense, but very improbable events. -- these are possible in dense, but very improbable events. host: we have a question about the effect of these on natural gas wells. guest: it depends. it has gone bust. both ways. in the 1960's, there was a deep injection into offers -- acquifers outside of denver that generated earthquakes up to a magnitude of five. there is no clear linkage to significantly larger earthquakes from this kind of man made activity. in terms of the impacts it would have on the development itself, we have seen changes in well water levels and the sorts of things. i am not aware of any specific

cases where a major oil or natural gas field was significantly disrupted. host: related news just came across from the associated press wire. it is from vienna. the diplomat says japan's radioactive fallout has reached california. the first levels are about a billion times beneath levels that would be health threatening. the diplomat has access to u.n. radiation tracking. he asked for anonymity on friday because comprehensive testing has not been made public. there are so many different organizations involved in the work that you do from the geological and seismic to the disaster prevention and response, to the diplomats watching this from abroad. how has your job in the years to have been doing it changed as the debate has become more

public and there is more access to information via the internet? guest: one thing i really like about the way we operate is that all of our data is made publicly available. it is immediately available. we have several hundred thousand people trying to get our earthquake alert. millions of people come to our website to get that. it is available to them as fast as to anyone else. we make sure we are informing the proper authorities. it is fairly -- jerry publicly open. -- very publicly open. one of the most important elements is the incredible interaction that now takes place. we have something where people can come into our website and describe what they have experienced in an earthquake. after a magnitude 5 earthquake in the u.s., we will get tens of thousands of people telling us about it. their human seismometers.

human seismometers turn out to be good. it helps to fill in the details of how the shaking disperses. one we are testing is how we can use twitter. when an earthquake occurs, their immediate reaction is to make a quick tweet. those can biggio located -- those can be geo-located. really trying to explore that. host: on thursday -- >> shame on us if we do not learn from their misfortune. japan is the most advanced nation in terms of seismic hazard. there earthquake early warning system saved thousands of lives.

with our funding, usgs got a huge leap of, were on early warning system -- leap up on our own of early warning system. the prototype is now caught up in the uncertainty of the 2011 project. we continue to plan for it when the funds to become available. host: talk to us about the united states early warning system for earthquakes and where its stance. guest: as our director indicated, we have seen the ultimate test of the early warning system in japan. right now we are so focused on the tragedy unfolding and continuing trauma. we have to peel back the onion and look at what did work. the number of people killed by

the earthquake appears to be in the hundreds and not in the hundreds of thousands as we saw in the case of haiti. that is because of two key factors. one is the building codes that have been enacted. the buildings did not fall down. the other part of that is prepared this report prepared -- preparedness. japan has a system sending electronic data ahead of the shaking. people in tokyo probably had about 60 seconds to get under desks, stop the train, it manufacturing facilities into a safe mode. there are a lot of things you can do in that timeframe. japan has the best networks in the world. we are in a prototype phase. we're working to develop the algorithms and a prototype system.

we're still a ways away from being able to actually deployed such a system. host: the next call is from greenville, south carolina. caller: i am a first-time caller and longtime viewer. you have always been my favorite host. i have a quick question about the characteristics of the zones on the west coast versus those on the central and east coast. what are the characteristics of the central and eastern charleston area zones? are they based on some of physics -- similar physics? guest: in the central and eastern u.s., we're looking at the reactivation of old structures. the east coast and entire eastern part of the u.s. used to

be very to comically -- tectonically exciting. the plates closed the ocean between europe, africa, and the americas. it opened again to form the atlantic basin. it would make the himalayas look like a small range. there are a lot of these older structures still there. we're no longer an active boundary here. some structures that propagate from the edges of the boundary may concentrate on these older structures. we also have some stress left over from grace years -- glaciers. we have glacier sheets weighing down the continent. with the removal of that, there

is a bounce back. that is another potential source of energy for these older structures to reactivate. it is the same basic physics and construct of plate tectonics. the biggest challenge with these eastern and central u.s. earthquakes is that because the cost is not as broken up as it is on the plate boundary, it is older and colder. it rings like a bell. the same breath. in the central or eastern u.s. has a much broader effect than an earthquake out west. when we have reports from an earthquake -- there was a magnitude five in 2008 of the illinois-indiana border. we had folks reporting on that front 19 states. it was a very broad area. in california, it will be felt

over a much narrower zone. host: the next call is from vermont, richard, independent. caller: what scares me more than the natural disaster is the reluctance of these people to inform us accurately. and just saw where japan has just now upgraded the seriousness to the same as three mile island. was three mile island ever got severe? guest: i will defer my comments on this to the u.s. nuclear regulatory commission. we work closely with their scientists and engineers on seismic matters. in terms of the nuclear accident, that is outside of my area of expertise. host: on the severity of the earthquake, it was first listed

as 8.9. it was then upgraded to 9.0 magnitude. what is the difference in the readings? guest: one of the challenging things with earthquakes -- with hurricanes, you have wind speed. it is one simple measurement to express the hurricane. in the case of earthquakes, we're trying to capture all the energy released by the event based on the records from our seismic stations. as we are adding all that up, the initial readings will not be quite as high as what we will finally come to. that is why you typically see some change in the magnitude. it is a remote destination. we work out 8.8 at 37 minutes. then we went up to 8.9 a few minutes after that. that is about twice as much energy released from that event. once you are at an 8.8 or 8.9,

you know this is a catastrophic earthquake. the same data that comes from our global network to our national information center and thieves straight into the noaa tsunami systems. all of the data was flowing. all of that was known very rapidly. host: was this the largest ever reported? guest: the biggest was in 1960. it was a similar situation to the chilean earthquake this last year with an 8.8. they have a zone there with the same kind of setting. host: wayne county, west

virginia, democrat. caller: i have two questions. i would like to know if c-span will to a program on a mountaintop removal mining and the destruction of appalachia, particularly in west virginia. my question to mr. applegate is that we have started to experience small earthquakes in west virginia in south central and eastern west virginia. we are concerned that because of the amount of earth moving involved in mountaintop removal that this could be a factor. i contacted usgs and they said it possibly could be. all the drilling for natural gas, a lot of that is in west virginia. near having major drilling

the area where the earthquakes have been reported. i would like to know if he can answer those questions. this is the biggest earthmoving project in the history of the world, mountaintop removal. what effect will that have on the stability of west virginia and the united states? guest: certainly, large efforts to move around the earth's crust can have an impact. we've seen that the case of large dams. you are changing the stresses that can generate small quakes. in terms of the mountaintop removal, the impacts really are very along the surface. we should look at that and try to understand from environmental degradation issues. in the case of west virginia, lots of seismic events are

regularly recorded on our network. most of those are mine blasts. those are generally equivalent to a magnitude 4 earthquake in terms of the amount of energy released. this has been ongoing for a long time. there are natural earthquakes that occur in west virginia as well. one of the big challenges as we look to develop these oil shale deposits throughout the various is to be carefully monitoring to understand the potential for induced seismicity. we are looking at the issue. we can expect this question to come up more and more. we want to understand it as best we can. host: this list of the 26 urban

areas of risk of significant seismic activity ranges from albuquerque to stockton. have all of them experienced some level of seismic activity? have some of them been quiet? guest: most of them have experienced some level of small earthquake activity. there is a background level of activity. i would have to think that if there is any example where there is nothing at all. one thing we look for is the ongoing of where earthquakes are occurring. the other part of this in terms of understanding the hazard is where large earthquakes have occurred in the past. in some cases, you have to go into the geological record.

you have to the geological sleuthing to recognize the hazards. there is not a lot of activity in oregon. you do not see a lot of earthquakes. but we understand it is capable of a magnitude nine giant earthquake that generates a significant tsunami back in the 1700's. will have done so in several hundred year intervals in the past. host: this is an interesting list. i want to read it to you so you can see the kinds of things they are thinking about. which falls are the most likely to produce damaging earthquakes? what keeps the one earthquake small and lets another go to hundreds of miles? what controls the interaction among earthquakes? what determines how damaging the ground shaking will be? what is the cost effectiveness of different navigation

technologies? what inspired you to get into this line of work? collectost geologists rocks. i cannot point to that. i can point to an absolute fascination with maps and wonderful early teachers that encouraged that. in terms of the hazard arena, most scientists gravitate toward where we feel our science can make a difference. this arena of natural hazards, i know why i am doing it every day when i get out of bed. host: he has his b.s. in geology from yale. have you ever been an earthquake? guest: i survived the great gaithersburg earthquake this past summer.

we have a little earthquake where we got thousands of reports. i slept through that one. i did my ph.d. work in the death valley region of california. we felt the landers earthquake of a magnitude seven out in the desert. i thought it was a blast from a nearby mine. my english major brother informed me he thought it was an earthquake. he was right. [laughter] host: amsterdam, new york, republican. caller: i was wondering -- if that goes off, it will be way over a 9 and make more of a mess than any earthquake in california. guest: in addition to tracking

earthquakes, we also have the responsibility for tracking volcanoes as well as landslides. we have a number of volcanoes observatories, including one at yellowstone with a number of other partners there. we carefully monitor the activity at yellowstone. what you are seeing on these maps is that the colors represent an estimation of the likely shaking experienced at any given place over a 50-year time. that is the timeframe for the internet. these maps are intended to feed into the model building codes. people often say that earthquakes do not kill people, building skilled people. the importance -- building codes are very important as a navigation tool. that includes the high consequence, low probability events as well as the more

frequent events. a yellowstone eruption is sort of the tail end of the probability. it happens every several hundred thousand years. it is obviously a high consequence event. host: this is a map that became familiar to many of us last friday as we were watching the earthquake and resulting tsunami wave as it was projected to travel across the pacific. i have a tweet about tsunamis. it is asking if seattle is protected by puget sound. guest: i would have to hand off to our colleagues at noaa. there certainly is a tsunami threat for puget sound.

the candy from locally generated events like a landslide and from a more distant event. is my understanding that puget sound is relatively protected from a pacific-wide tsunami. they do not get much movement in contrast to some areas on the coast. crescent city, calif., had waves of 112 feet. there are places on the coast where the waves are focused and concentrated. host: we have a couple of minutes left. let's take a call from charleston, south carolina. that is on the map with the earthquake risk. you are on the air. caller: dr. applegate, i wanted

to ask you about the subduction zone around charleston. i was wondering about the probability of an event happening again. guest: the good news is that there is not a subduction zone. most of the subduction zones are found from the pacific basin, the ring of fire. there is a small one in the caribbean. we do have potential for subduction zone earthquakes there. we do not think there is the potential for a magnitude 9. in the case of south carolina there are these crestal falls. these may be old structures that have been reactivated. the 1886 earthquake did considerable damage to a brick buildings. that is our principal concern when we think about a magnitude 6 or 7 in that area.

that is the and reinforced masonry structures. we saw this in christchurch, new zealand. the earthquake was a magnitude 6.3 that occurred a few weeks ago. there were a lot of brick buildings from the same time. of 1880 -- there were a lot of brick buildings from the same time period of the 18 eighties. the map indicates it is in the low probability, high consequence type of things. we estimate is about a 7% to 10% chance of a repeat of the event. that is probably in the same ballpark for south carolina. host: the last call is from queens, new york. caller: i consider volcanoes to be the venting process of the

planet. consider gravity is trying to squeeze the planet and keep us on the ground. the swirling of the lava is the pressure trying to pull out. do you think drilling for oil and leaving big holes in the earth -- if you put coals and an apple, you will crush it. do you think that is because of earthquakes? -- do you think that is the cause of earthquakes? guest: the earth is a big place. the kind of pinpricks we deliver with drilling are probably not going to be significant from the standpoint of what you are describing. these are in its forces -- immense forces that are and least -- unleashed.

the earth does go through big events. we do have these large, sudden earthquakes. in terms of the volcanic activity as well, in terms of the human scale activities having a major impact on the, i think it i is just a different

i picked up the three, and a former county chairmen. i was the county chairmen in my county twice, once for four years and once for six years and i'm going to just tell you this is where the elections were won. they were here where the rubber meets the road. >> judy, thank you for the work that you do. [applause] >> i would be here on march 15th, but i not going to have anybody to stand behind me.

>> i'm really glad to be here for the kickoff the series speaker event because we are getting ready for something very important. the 2012 election is going to be a watershed election in american history. matt didn't go into all of my pedigree and shouldn't. i dropped out of college in 1968 and ran 30 counties for nixon in the presidential campaign and i've been involved in every presidential campaign ever since. i told some of the leaders of the committee in all of that period of time until about two years ago there was an expression statement that i've never heard made. however, every day, every week for the last year and a half i've heard people say this. i'm concerned my children and

grandchildren are not going to inherit the same country that i inherited. i never heard that at the death of watergate and at the height of the war in vietnam. jimmy carter's administration, bill clinton's administration, but it is a reminder to us that the stakes of this election and what we need to be focused on and that is winning. winning in 2012. they say 50 years ago or more conrad hilton, the great hotel was on the ed sullivan show. maybe a couple of you are rich old enough to remember ed sullivan. [laughter] one sunday night 12 million american households watched and to inventor ed sullivan and he calls out conrad hilton a man who created a new business at a luxury hotel chain, the bill

gates of his day and ed sullivan said you can only tell the american people one thing well would you tell them? conrad hilton never hesitated. he said put the show were curtain inside the tub. [laughter] he knew what was important to him. [laughter] and i am here to talk to you for a minute about what's important to me. we have an enormous election coming up in 2012 and as some of you know i'm thinking about being a candidate. i'm seriously considering that. i'm not going to make a decision until the end of april but i thought a lot about what we have to do with our candidate is really barbour or somebody else. we can get the 2012 election and get a guide for 2012. why did we win an enormous victory in 2010?

because the election was about policy. it was about the great issue facing the american people. that's right. [applause] when the elections are about issues in public policy is good for the republicans because to most issues, most americans agree with us, and as we saw all in this election when the independent support for the republican candidates by the 60-40 margin was about public policy. because people look at what is happening in the country today. why is our economy not recovering like it should? why is it recovering more slowly than in the past recessions? why when we bring the new administration do we lose 7 million jobs in the first two years? the home prices last month were back to what they were in 2004.

the gdp only went up 2.8% in the last quarter of 2010 when if you look at 1983 and '84 after a similarly deep recession at this point the economy was roaring. why? i will tell you why. it's not because of the failure of business. it's not because the failure of the free enterprise. it's a failure of government policy. the policies of this administration are making it harder to grow our economy and making it harder to create jobs in the united states and pick an issue that you want to start. taxes, the president for two years had hanging over the american economy the state purpose of the largest tax increase in history. he lost no republican senator would vote for him. they lost.

and there was in december, yet within a month in the state of the union address the president reiterated he still wanted the largest tax increase in american history. then a few days later he came out with a budget for next year, $1.3 trillion of new taxes on the american economy. now, how are we going to grow the economy and create jobs if the government is going to take another $1.3 trillion out of the economy? kallur business is going to expand to hire more people when they have hanging over their head the president wants to hit them for $1.3 trillion that otherwise could go to the capitol investment, to more employees to better pay and pensions. spending, this administration thinks the government growth is

the answer to economic growth. let me tell you bigger government means a smaller economy. let me just say that very directly. bigger government means a smaller private economy because how can the private economy grow when the government sucks all the money out. but that is what we have saved. the last two years, the first of the obama administration, they raised spending -- i'm sorry, they spend $7 trillion. and we lost 7 million jobs. i guess we ought to be glad they didn't spend $12 trillion or we would have lost 12 million jobs. but their idea that growing of the government is helping the economy is backwards and it's wrongheaded. you can tell we have an administration not there were

there's nobody that riverside the front side of a paycheck in their career. but it's not just taxes and spending. the gigantic deficits are a huge drain on the economy and a chance for economic growth. do you know that from the constitutional convention of 1789 entel president obama was inaugurated in january of 2009 and that 120 year period the american government ran up less debt and that 220 years than the obama administration budgets will do in ten years? $13 trillion of debt in the next ten years if obama's budget is

adopted. now the news media talks about he's moved to the middle. he got the message. well, what are the facts? issac days after he got the message, his budget proposes increasing spending to $3.8 trillion. he proposed increasing the deficit to $1.6 trillion in one year. can you imagine if your business revenue was 42% less than your expenditures you could write a book about. start a chapter 11. [laughter] [applause] the government can't spend selfridge any more than your family can, but they seem to

have lost sight of that, and that's why as the chairman said, his little girl comes into the world in a gargantuan debt that she and my grandchildren are going to be paying off when they are our age if they don't do something about. if we don't turn the corner and turned quickly we all understand that the cascading effect of the federal spending and federal debt beans every year you let things keep going in the wrong direction it becomes much harder to get them back on track, to get us back to normal and you know what needs to be done. first of all we have one plant 6 trillion-dollar deficit because it costs too little. it's because we spend too much. if we are going to do something about that, we've got to do it on the spending side.

the director of the white house for ronald reagan when we were rebuilding the military. let me tell you something. we can save money at pentagon. anybody thinks you can't save money at the pentagon has never been to the pentagon. i could just tell you, general, you know that i'm telling you right. we can save money on the defense, and if we republicans don't propose saving money on the defense we will have no credibility about anything else. it is smart, good, right, faithful to our campaign that our guys right now are trying to cut the non-defense discretionary budget. trying to cut the annual rate of $100 billion a year. but it's a drop in the bucket. it is a $1.6 trillion deficit. and you cannot deal with that unless you deal with

entitlements. again, we will have no credibility if we talk about getting control of the budget if we don't deal with entitlements. and this is an area where the president is absolutely a wall. where he has and understands vividly what has to be done and he has chosen not to lead. without his leadership, we still need to deal with this but it means the next president has to have the courage to deal with entitlement spending in a way that protect our beneficiaries but does so without running up this unbelievable burden on the generations to come. the good news is it can be done. the good news is it can be done but it must be led by the president. if we don't have a president who

has the courage to tell the american people the truth, something i think the american people are prepared to hear, then we are not going to make the progress we need to make if we are going to get our country back. taxes, spending from a deficit, debt, healthcare. how do you expect employers to add employees when the have no idea because of obamacare with the obligations and costs they will have for those employees. this is another example where the obama administration's policies are hurting the economy and making it harder to hire people rather than easier. in the energy policy -- this administration's energy policy can be summarized in one sentence. they wanted to life of the cost

of energy so americans will use less of it. that's not energy policy, that his environmental policy. they think we will have less pollution if we use less energy. we will also have a much smaller economy. we americans for 400 years since the british landed in jamestown have been blessed with abundant affordable american energy. and this administration is the first since i don't know when that doesn't have a policy focused on more american energy but that is what our policy should be. more american energy. [applause] all of the above. we'll come gas, coal, nuclear, ethanol, a word probably foreign to many of your years.

we've got to have all of the above and we are going to have them for the foreseeable future. we are not going to see coal go out of the energy picture or oil or gas or nuclear. we have a lot to learn about what happened in japan. we need to learn and seek what things are that are similar to the way we do things in the united states and what are not similar. but we need to understand 20% of the electricity in the united states comes from nuclear. it's going to be that way for a long time and many people including me that believes behooves us as a nation to increase that percentage so other fuel can be used for other purposes rather than just generating electricity. this isn't as simple as the bp oil spill where it was clear to those close by that the cut

corners. when they were shutting in the well they didn't follow the normal standards or the normal protocols. we've totaled 31,000 wells in the gulf of mexico in the last 50 years and nothing vaguely similar to this that ever happened before and the reason is because they didn't do what everybody knows you're supposed to do. we don't know what happened in japan. we know about the earthquake and the tsunami but we don't know enough about the systems and what has worked and failed. but we need to study and learn and make sure we continue to have safe, reliable, queen nuclear energy in the united states. let me kind of come to a conclusion here about saying this. we've republicans need to be careful when we talk about cutting spending and we talk about not raising taxes.

in fact in my view i would propose cutting taxes. today in the world we have a global battle for capital yet because of our mistaken tax codes we have a trillion dollars of u.s. money stranded overseas and to our multinational corporations just sitting and it's either going to sit there or it's when to be invested in the foreign economies in europe and asia and south america. we need to repatriate that trillion dollars. we need to tell these companies bring this money home, bring it home tax-free. because that money isn't coming home. we need that money to come home to build new facilities and invest in new technologies and to hire more people in america.

not overseas and that kind of tax policy -- [applause] is a tax policy we need to follow. at the same time, i think it is way overdue that we join most of the other advanced nations in the world, our competitors, by cutting the corporate income tax in half as almost every of their country in the last ten years. if the left wants to raise taxes i think we need to make those tax cuts. because we want to grow the economy. we want to add jobs for americans. it's not satisfactory that we are not doing anything about the 7 million americans who lost their jobs. we have to be careful about this

as we talk about this that people understand that cutting spending would be good for economic growth. that cutting taxes will be good for job creation. that getting rid of obamacare will make it more likely for people to get hired. that having more american energy policy would help our economy grow in america. and we need for people to understand we are not just interested in cutting spending and reforming entitlements just for the sake of doing so. the need to understand that this will help us achieve what must be achieved. my old friend and fellow mississippian is the founder and ceo of fedex. he is a great saying. he says the main thing is to keep the main thing the main

thing. [laughter] the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. american people need to understand from our party comes from conservatives that the main thing is to grow our economy and put people back to work, that economic growth and job creation is what we consider the first national priority and these other things are means to that end, that we are not trying to cut spending for the sake of cutting spending. we are trying to do so so that the private economy can have more money. because we understand the difference between our philosophy and the philosophy of the obama administration. president obama has unlimited faith in limitless government. we all know that our founding

fathers gave us a eighth limited government so that we come the marketplace, free enterprise, entrepreneurial americans come small business people, farmers so that we can grow our economy, that we can hire people, the we can make profits, that we can make america the kind of an economy, the dynamic economy that it's been for so much of our lifetime and that the private sector has to do that and what we want to grow, not the government. [applause] i would close by saying to you might spend a few minutes here talking about public policy.

and the reason i think the next election must be about public policy. it's about public policy and the results that would come from those policies we will win that election. the american people already looked at obama's policies and they know they've been bad for the economy, they've been bad for job creation, bad for health care in america. they've been bad for the account of energy policy that we need to grow. but it's not enough in a presidential election just to see what's wrong with the other guy. we have to make our proposal about what we would do to grow the economy. , what we would do to put people back to work in fact, to give the on the winds and americans the chance for better paying, higher skilled jobs that result in careers, not just a short term job that is our obligation.

if we need it, we will win this election. if we need it, steve's young family here, this is the number one table that the dinner, let me say that these young people but steve stifel would have a far, far better chance to enjoy what we have enjoyed, the greatest, most exceptional, most prosperous nation society and culture ever imagined on the face of the year at. we can do what it takes to ensure these young people get the upper to eddy. we can never let it come to pass that our children and grandchildren don't inherit the same country we inherited. thank you all very much. [applause]

[applause]

speeches likes to find an anecdote to make a connection. so when i asked the told me, well, a lot of lawyers, accountants, technical people. i went back and racked my brain and remembered an old, old story it is the story of the sea of of the most powerful company in the world. he has a very critical question that he has to ask. he calls and his chief engineer, calls and his chief counsel and chief accountant. he says, gentlemen, i have a dilemma. i need an answer to a very important question. he turns to the engineer and says, here's the question. how much is to end to.

the engineer says, that's very easy, sir. to end to has always been for, is for, and will be for. not satisfied with that. he turns to is chief counsel, a lawyer. he said how much is to end to. he says, well, sir, there are certain jurisdictions in which an approximation close to three. nine or four's acceptable and others that is not accepted. we will have to go out and do a study which will take us six months and probably cost $600,000. he said that is not one need. he turns to his accountant. he says, how much is two and two. the accountant leaps up and goes and locks the door, palls the shakedown, opens a drawer, puts the phone in the drawer, shuts

the door, grabs the ceo, takes him over to the corner and says, how much to you wanted to be. [laughter] that has absolutely nothing to do with what i'm going to talk to you about tonight. i thought i would come and talk to you a little bit about what is happening in this country right now. i think if you are like me, like anybody in my family, like anyone at the table you are at, you have a little bit more anxious to than you used to think you're going to have at this stage in life. what is going on in our nation and what is going on and around the world. i was talking to someone the other day. i hate to say this. i am actually nostalgic for the

old days. it was the superpower confrontation with the u.s. on one side and the soviet union on the other side. when every issue we knew what the sides were. they never changed. it was the u.s., great britain, france, and our allies over here, the soviet union and her allies over there, whether it was straight to my international conflict, whatever it was. blinds were drawn. today on every issue they have to build a new coalition. you have to go out and beg your friends quite often to be part of it. it is not an easy world. it is much more complicated than it was then when the soviet union was the soviet union. and that is uncertainty. that turmoil, that lack of stability seems to be part of the process, not only

internationally, but within our own country. it doesn't mean that we have not had economic turmoil before. we seem to be going through it now and with a lot of unrest. what i would like to do tonight is talk to you a little bit about the economy, a little bit about energy because it is a very important part of what we are seeing on television every night now, and talk to you a little bit about what is happening around the world or at least in a couple of places, and all those pieces come together and are reflected in what we might call the agenda for 2012. the political agenda for 2012. first of all, that may take a look at the economy. we certainly can through a very difficult time. for whatever reason the economic

system build up within itself, a bubble. bubbles always seem to be the cause of economic problems with the there are a real-estate bubble of the internet bubble or this bubblehead that bubble and the realistic bubble. real-estate -- mother nature, particularly the economic side has an amazing way of bringing things back to reality. quite often that collapse is rather calamitous and certainly wasn't at the end of 07 through 08 endo nine. we had a real problem. we won't debate whether or not we are in favor of things like tarp which were put into place to try and keep the system from collapsing. won't argue whether or not in those very critical days at the end of 2008 whether we were on one side or the other, but the fact is we went through a process, extend the bleeding,

the fiscal bleeding, and then we have started in 2009 and 2009 and the beginning of 2011, the challenge of trying to rebuild. one of the things that was done by the current president, and he had not only power and the white house, but control of the house and the senate, they decided to have a strategy of spending money. it is important to understand how much money was spent. it is important to try and a identify what impact that money had and try and get a handle on how we then reversed the spending trend as any family would have to do if it went through that same kind of cycle or any business would have to do and retrench because retrench we

must. nobody is denying the fact that we ought to be cutting spending. we ought to at least identified how serious the problem is. interesting number. the last fiscal year before this administration came into power we spent almost $3 trillion. the year after that when they came into power and put the budget together and went through the process of implementing their strategy of stimulus we were spending almost $9 trillion. the one-third increase. you can sustain one-third increases for small businesses, but i doubt that you will find a major business in the country that can tell you that in one

year they can increase by one-third, expand themselves, and not feel any pain. we feel pain. we have increased our national debt tremendously. the chilly from about eight plus trillion dollars close to 13. it is about a 65% increase in three years. a 33% increase in expenditure rate. the strategy that some people are suggesting to deal with is the freeze it at a 30% increase and go on from there. it does not work. arithmetic is a hard taskmaster. you cannot pretend the numbers are not there. the problem is not just that the federal level.

you look around the state's. it's a slightly different order of magnitude, but for each and every one of them, virtually each and every one of them a very similar problem. here in massachusetts, as i understand it, the problem of the state budget level is between two and $3 billion. in new hampshire it's almost a billion dollars. for all the states across the country taken together its about $150 billion. and that mock -- that is the easy part of the challenge for the states. the states have a second problem, and that is the problem of pension benefits and retirement obligations. in new hampshire the numbers i know the best, almost a billion dollars of problems in the budget. we have a pension and which the