>> and i understand, you know, we're all busy, and you don't have time to do all that kind of thing, but to talk a little bit about who we think will be responsible for assisting libyans when they start their reconstruction would have been becoming even if it turned out we couldn't implement it. but to say something that we did not expect -- we, the united nations, we, the united states,

we, anybody -- that there was a sense that we were going to return responsibility to the libyans, whoever they are, and we would provide some kind of assistance to them as they gathered around a table as people who have literally not talked face to face in years. and that's what it will be. it will be people from tripoli and people from benghazi who have not talked to each other for years and years and years. people from inside and outside who have not talked to each other for years and years. and somebody's going to have to be a facilitator there, frankly. but i think if we had been able to talk a little bit more about how we imagine that happening, it would have permitted us to say that, you know, from the beginning in good faith we did not intend this to be anything but an effort to insure that ghadafi did not win. unfortunately, right now it's not clear what it is. so everybody's wondering about why we bothered when we're not doing it in other places, when, you know, so forth and so on.

i think there was a legitimate, you know, rationale for what we did when we did it, but that will get lost because we didn't really describe what we anticipated to happen afterwards. egypt in a year. egypt in a year will be about economic issues. i, i don't -- i i mean, at that point there will be so kind of coalescence of a political landscape. there'll be a left and a right and a, you know, an ndp makeover and the brotherhood -- you know, there will be a political landscape, and there will be those parties will be advocating policies which will mostly be about domestic economic issues. i think everybody anticipates substantial inflation. we know the stock exchange is a pleat mess at this -- complete mess at this point. tourism has disappeared entire withly, so you have a huge sector with millions of people who are employed as opposed to

the unemployed. there's a lot to worry about on the domestic economic front, and i think there will be a lot of that. that, i think, will actually play into the military which i'll get to in a minute. i don't, you know, i just don't think foreign policy is going to be the principle issue unless for some reason we or somebody else decide to make it the issue. but this wasn't about foreign policy. it's still not about foreign policy. it really is about, you know, accountable government and fairness and a lot of the labor protests that are going on all over egypt right now are as much, they're partly about money but, again, they're partly about dignity. you, employer, are not paying me a living wage which is probably true. so it's as much about the right to the a living wage as it is to a certain number of pounds. that will continue. and there will be lots of debates about the policies on things like what should be the minimum wage and how to

accommodate the fact that, you know, what do you do with all your unemployed, and what will the minister of social solidarity be doing and welfare and so forth and so on. keep in mind that the current minister of finance is actually a labor economist. and that should tell you something already about the kind of priorities that the military have. they are not interested in washington consensus economic reform. her not. they are not. and actually one of the problems in egypt in my estimation is if you look at the people who who have been charged with corruption, some of -- you know, the former ministers and so forth. some of them are corrupt, but some of them were advocates of economic economization. taking a policy position which is now unpopular. so they've gotten caught up that this is all somehow corrupt, that big business is corrupt. and it's impossible to be a big businessman without being corrupt. and it's impossible to be a minister that was supporting

business without being corrupt. so that needs to get pulled apart, and we need to take the people who are actually corrupt -- of whom there were some -- and disaggregate that. but it does, i think it is an early signal of the kind of policies that the military are likely to be advocating insofar as they advocate for a successor regime. it's going to be about economic policy, but it's going to be a much more statist, you know, kind of middle-mubarak era set of policies. much more about equity than growth. that serves the military purposes. i mean, they are big owners of state enterprises and so forth. why should they be interested in if privatization? they're not. in addition to that, though, going beyond that a little bit, i think, the military wants to

be behind the curtain. they want what they were before. that worked very well. so, and they don't really care as long as there is an implicit deal that they can stay behind the curtain and stay where therm before. they don't care what goes on, they don't care who the government is as long as those prerogatives are not challenged. and to tell you the truth, i think the vast majority of people are perfectly content with that. even the people in tahrir square, they realize that an embrace of the military was pretty much all they had, you know, so those were the ones who were climbing on the tanks kissing everybody. they're also willing to say, okay, get back behind the curtain, let us debate everything else. there's plenty el to -- else to debate. and i think that would be a perfectly reasonable resolution by the likes of most people.

now, obviously, there are a few intellectuals who are going to push this, but by and large people would be content with that because there are lots of other issues that can be, you know -- free expression and issues of labor rights and wages, there's lots of other stuff to discuss in egypt before you start saying the military has a big chunk of the economy. so i think that's what they want. and if they get it, they're, you know, pretty liberal. >> okay. gentleman in the back there. oh, you're -- >> hmm? >> my question about what's changed. >> oh. [laughter] right. i skipped it, didn't i? a freudian slip if ever there was one. [laughter] i do think it's partly the maturation of this generation, i have to say. when we, when we were thinking

about, you know, that these regimes were getting sort of long in the tooth and we were thinking it about 10 or 15 years ago, suggesting they had gotten very long in the tooth by now, we were sort of speculating about the next generation of who would be the people that would come up, so forth. and that was the era when ghadafi and mubarak and so forth and so on, you know, all of these people, and one of these things we used to talk about was ben ali didn't have a son who would serve that kind of purpose. that seemed to be the inevitable transfer of power. how you would get to the next generation was through this quasi-monarchical way, but there didn't seem to be a way to get to what turns out to be the next generation. so one of the things that's interesting here is across all of these three countries, and i would argue this is true in the region as a whole, there is the lost generation of the parents.

and they're going to have to concede, in a sense. and this gets to this is it my turn because i'm now old enough to do it, or am i simply going to say the kids can do it for us? but that generation that is between 82 and 32 is just stuck. um, they didn't figure out how to do it themselves, um, and they are probably in a surprising way going to have to concede to their kids. >> [inaudible] >> hmm? >> like prince charles. >> yes. like prince charles. exactly. [laughter] >> i live here in washington d.c. i'm an egyptian-american. i'm one of these parents. i am giving up to my kids and grandchildren, i mean, they are just the future.

i'm so delighted with what they have done. i have a question about possible hijacking. is it, i mean, we are not there yet. we are not done. there is a lot of groups have been mentioned. is it possible that we will get lifted from true democracy through hijacking? i'm delighted you feel on optimistic about the future of egypt, and i'm glad to hear that. the other question, as an egyptian-american what can we do to help? thank you. >> yes, please. >> [inaudible] quick couple of questions. first of all, why the latest referenda, why there was -- [inaudible] i believe it was for these.

could you, please, elaborate on this. and secretary clinton was there last week, and one of the group of the youth movement rejected meeting with her. was it a reflection of a deeper sentiment among egyptian youth? is there a real deep grudge against the u.s. for last three decades or five decades? or it was just temporary? and the last question is you talk about some models, american models and other models and whether turkey could be modeled as muslim majority country and democracy was a topic entertained in washington and turkey. would you, please, pass on that if it was a realist approach from -- [inaudible] thank you. >> my name's connie, i'm with the american coalition

information network. in 2003 a document was discovered in the headquarters of -- intelligence headquarters of saddam hussein's baghdad that 13 turkish women were sent to egypt to its brothels. the parents of these women appeal today the first lady of egypt, suzanne mubarak, and unfortunately, their appeal fell to death ears. how transparent is the new egypt? do you think something could be discovered about these women? >> one last question. yes, sir, please. >> [inaudible] from the arab league. thank you, lisa, for your sharing with us. in your capacity as the head of the american university in cairo and the current change now especially that most of the people who carried the revolution was young people, do you see the anti-american

sentiment in the streets? and what do you see the role of the american university in the upcoming two or three years regarding the change in egypt? >> okay. i'm going to start with that last one. i'll give you my inaugural address. no. [laughter] i think auc, well, first of all, i do not think despite the fact that the youth group did not meet with secretary clinton and so forth and so on, i do not see a lot of anti-american sentiment in this. this is intra-egyptian, it is about relations between governments and citizens. over the course of time as policy positions begin to congeal a little bit, i suppose justice with economic policy will see foreign policy positions and so forth and so on, but it really is not about that, and i don't think in any of these countries at this point that's what the principle question is.

i do think that one of the things that, you know, i'll brag a minute about auc because i'm paid to, but also because i would anyway. i think we as an institution have played a hugely important role in promoting the kind of education for citizenship which is what animates these kinds of movements. so without saying that other kinds of education are not also important, i think the idea that a liberal arts education which encourages critical thinking, which encourages people to ask questions and think nimbly and so forth is, creates better citizens, and i think much of that sentiment and impulse and spirit was evident in, not only in the protests, but in their effective management, in the relationship between the many of the leaders of the movement with the wise men, if you will, who negotiated with the government and so forth and so son.

so on so -- so on. so i think there's enormous opportunity for us to continue playing that kind of role in a new egypt. i think it's actually going to be easier to do that than it had been in the past. it will be amplified through free expression and so forth in a way that it wasn't before. so from my vantage point, the kinds of values that auc represent should be even more deeply appreciated and 'em pedded in the society -- embedded in the society. as you can tell, i'm very optimistic. one small gesture that we've made to this end in the short run is auc is governed by a protocol that was signed in early 1970s between the egyptian government and the american government, and one of its provisions is that auc has a position at the university called the university counselor who is the lee liaison to the egyptian government.

we have had for the last three years a university counselor who has, among many other things, watched the university do a search for a new president and sort of seen how an american university routinely operates. he's now on public service leave, an idea that's new to egypt, as a minister of higher education. so we hope that the experience of seeing from the inside the workings of a genuinely not-for-profit, private institution and so forth will have some utility to him as he think abouts about the fact that all of the national universities are now in an uproar because the students want all of the presidents and deans removed because they were all appointed by the president of the republic. that is mubarak. so how do you design a mechanism for the selection of presidents and deans? well, it probably won't be constitute a board of trustees and have them run a search for the president which is, obviously, what auc did. but something different from simply saying the president

names these people is likely to come out of that. so i think in lots of ways like that, large and small, we will prove to be contributing to the capacity to think about different ways of doing things. from the political science on we can talk, you know, we can bring experts on parliamentary systems and presidential systems to the way we operate, the way we run our own affairs might be useful examples to consider as we go forward. so i'm, i think auc represents an opportunity, a resource for egypt now even more than it did in the past, and i hope we fulfill those expectations. the kurdish women question, actually, i don't obviously know the answer about that particular case, i had not heard about it before, but the larger question about transparency, i think, is a very interesting one because i think there is the intent to be a much more transparent

government even in this transition period than had been the case before. but note that for all intents and purposes all of the files of the interior ministry have been burned. there have been fires in the interior ministry and in local state security offices all over the country. and the reason we know about the interior ministry is it's a block and a half away from our downtown campus. and so we are constantly having to reroute our puss because there's a fire at -- buses because there's a fire at the interior ministry. the upshot, however, is there has clearly been an effort on probably a number of parties' parts to destroy evidence. now -- and some of the tahrir protesters did put out some of those fires and try and get some of that evidence and so forth. but it's interesting, it's not even clear altogether who's been lighting the fires because there

are disaffected police who were fired and went back in and started some of the fires, and then there are probably security people in the employ of the interior ministry who are destroying evidence. that's what many of the protesters think. in any event, this is part of one of those transitions questions, the extent to which you have a capacity for documenting a truth in reconciliation and so forth and so on. i mean, part of the point of burning all of that evidence is making it harder to do that. so it may be that going forward you have a much more transparent bureaucratic, ordinary if you will kind of administrative apparatus, but it's not clear that that kind of administrative apparatus would be able to recoup the past. and the question of the past and who should be brought to justice is, in fact, a very complicated, murky one. so i think, as i say, that

particular case may have been lost in the fires. other ones like that may have been lost in the fires. but we will never know. there was some recuperation of some of this material, and some of it had been shredded, and we were kind of facetiously talking about the fact that as happened in the aftermath of the iranian revolution there were a lot of unemployed students that can piece together all the shredded material. that may happen in some circumstances, but the stuff that's burned is burned. so i don't know what will happen. turkey as a model is something that you hear a lot, actually, in the united states. you don't hear it so much in egypt because i don't think they want to have any single model. this is going to be an egyptian project. so they want to take a little bit from chile, a little bit from turkey, a little bit from, you know, somewhere else and

construct snag's egyptian. it may -- construct something that's egyptian. it may borrow from one country or another, but people are starting to say, well, what happened in indonesia? what happened in other places? so being a muslim majority clearly wouldn't matter, and that's why people are asking about indonesia. but at this point there is no sense of, okay, this country shows us our future, and i think that's quite deliberate on the part of those people who are trying to sort out what kinds of policy and procedures they want to advocate. the question of the youth and mrs. clinton, i actually didn't put much import in that. i think it is clear that mrs. clinton's visit was not particularly well organized, and so the figuring out beforehand who would be willing and able to meet with her, i think, didn't happen. and so some of that, you know, they left themselves open to, apparently, being disrespected,

if you will. but i don't know that there's anything deeper to read into that at this juncture in any event. on the issue of the turnout for the constitutional referendum, the mid 40s may not sound like a lot to you, but since the turnout for the parliamentary elections in the fall was 5%, mid 40s is pretty high. and, in fact, it was viewed as very high. people were very, very happy. there were all these people who said, i haven't voted in 40 years, i never voted before, you know, so forth and so on. so it may not have been 100%, you know, but in many of the rural areas i think the get out the vote mechanisms didn't actually operate, and most of the people who voted actually wanted to vote. and the interesting thing is they all said one to have the things -- one of the things that was fun about voting is they didn't know how it was going to come out. [laughter] so i actually think everybody believes that the turnout was pretty high, and it was a very

satisfying experience for those who enjoyed it. as far as what egyptian-americans can do now, i think there is a very important egyptian diaspora, particularly in the united states, but elsewhere as well. and i think this is a time where it is valuable to people in egypt to see that reconnect, to see people making investments and that can be investments of time. it doesn't have to be investments of money at this juncture. although -- i mean, i'm, you know, not, again, being a little facetious. i'm sort of a value investor. i think warren buffett is right and, boy, are there values in egypt right now. if i were an investor, i'd be going into egypt and picking up these properties because give me five or ten yearses, i'd be a millionaire. so, i mean, and i think that's

true literally economically about business, but i also think it's true in general. this is such a good time to make investments, as i say, of time, of expertise, of commitment, of moral support, of, you know, whatever kind of resources you have, this is a great moment to say, yes, this whole community of what is estimated to be eight million egyptians living overseas -- who knows -- to have that be part of these conversations and be part of the networks and so forth and so on. people in egypt love that. they love to know that people are pay attention and caring and so forth. so whatever your particular resources are, they would be welcome back in egypt at this juncture. >> well, on this very upbeat note, i think you will all agree that we've just heard the very engaging and quite insightful presentation. so, please, join me in thanking dr. anderson.

[applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> in a few moments, democratic

representative anthony anthony n the first anniversary of the health care law. and in 45 minutes, a discussion of how to prevent students from dropping out of high school. >> several live events to tell you about today here on c-span2. one is a forum on the future of homeownership including comments from former housing secretary henry cisneros and leaders of the national association of home builders. that discussion, hosted by the atlantic and national journal, begins at 8:45 a.m. eastern. then at 1:30 eastern, a brookings institution discussion on the role of egyptian civil society and the political process. panelists include representatives of the american chamber of commerce in egypt, the international youth foundation, and the national endowment for democracy. >> this weekend on american history tv on c-span3, chuck kohlson, special counsel to

president nixon, talks about the watergate break-in, the secret white house tapes and his relationship with the 37th president. brown university president ruth simmons on the role of history in academia and how it was used in our universities. also, remembering the father of the constitution. james madison should also be known as the father of american politics. for the complete weekend schedule, go to c-span.org/history where you can also press the c-span alert button and have our schedules e-mailed to you. >> new york democratic congressman anthony weiner, a member of the energy and commerce subcommittee, said yesterday that the white house needs to do more to highlight the benefits of the health care law enacted a year ago wednesday. he spoke for about 45 minutes at an event hosted by the center for american progress action fund. this begins with the group's chief operating officer, neera tanden.

>> thank you all for coming today. my name is neera tanden, and i'm the chief operating officer at the center for american progress. i also oversee our health team here at the center, and so we're very honored to have, have you all here. prior to my time here, i served on the president's health careae reform team at the white house and was an adviser to secretarye sebelius. so i'm particularly honored tows welcome you all here for the anniversary of the affordable care act, the first year anniversary. while it's the first year anniversary for the affordable a care act, it is actually a six-year anniversary for us here at c.a.p.. it was six years ago today that we put forward our own plan to provide coverage for all americans reform the health care system through insurance regulation, provide tax subsidies and subsidies to

people to be able to afford it and to lower the cost of healthv care. and if that sounds a little familiar, i hope it does because we believe it helped shape theus debate in the presidential cycli and, ultimately, congressional passage. and over the last six years c.a.p. has worked very hard to push the idea of covering all americans and lowering health care costs as well as workingush with allies in congress in last year's debate to get the bill done.rkin and through that process now sis years later, i know that on thi. anniversary there are those who are a little wary from thenow attacks a year later. people wonder why the bill is still so controversial and why we're still having to defend it. we have a congressional debate which instead of moving forward to discuss how to make the law b work more effectively is really about how to take all the benefits away from people. m and a lot of us can grow aivel

little tired.bout i find myself every once in a while growing a little weary from talking about health care reform and defending its benefits.aw but every time we grow weary, i hope we remember the people who are already benefiting from this law; the cancer patient who no longer has to worry that she har to cut off her, her basicent, services from her doctor because she's reaching her lifetimeer limit. because of the affordable care act, those days are over. limit, because of the affordable care act, those days are over. the parents who worry about being able to get health insurance for their child with asthma because she has a preexisting condition. because of the affordable care act, those days are over. on the affordable care act anniversary, i also hope we'll remember those public servants who underwent angry town halls, some of them under went death

threats to defend this, during the process of the deliberations and ultimately voted to have affordable health care for all americans. there were many public servants who knew it was a tough vote, knew it was a politically tough vote for them, but they did it for a simple reason, that it was the right thing to do. in the cynical age, it's important to remember that that was really the guiding principle for very many members of congress. so we're very honored today to have one of those fighters and true champions of health care reform, congressman anthony weiner. he's a western who never shies from a fight. often leads the fights on behalf of progressive values, whether it's 9/11 workers or health care reform or funding basic benefits for the american people. he's been a champion for these issues throughout his service and has been a champion for health care reform. for that, we're very grateful and very honored to have him.

congressman weiner? [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you very much and thank you for the center of american progress for hosting. it is indeed the one year anniversary of health care reform and i'm thrilled to be here. if you are busy or have time later, i'll also be doing a twitter town hall meeting at .. was 6'4", 220. this is all that is left of me

after 22 town hall meetings, 70 hours of markups and hearings. i think there has been this exaggerated sense that was frequently from -- that was expressed by rather inartfully by nancy pelosi in a widely misquoted thing she said. there was this presumption th once the law became a reality people would see it on a piece of paper and policies would start to take shape and we see people in the community that benefited from a. it would be harder to make up stuff about the bill. harder to lie about the bill. that turned out not to be the case. regulator, year after and to paper by the president and year that people can see what is in the bill and what is not, it is widespread and quite sophisticated and well done campaign by republicans and opponents of the bill, many sponsored by the health-care industry to make up things about

the bill to continue the mistrust that goes into it. i think to some degree we democrats and progressive sometimes have is fidelity to process and words and laws that we sometimes don't realize that it is not enough just to say here is this a great bill and then off to the races. we haven't done a particularly skillful job in the last year of providing basic thrusts of republican opposition to the bill and thankfully the republicans have given us another bite at the apple by coming to washington after a campaign 2010 with an agenda built entirely on the things they are against. chief among them being the health care bill. they have come to zealots repeal and replace this bill. every day we had hearings and some other vote on defunding or eliminating the health care bill that put an enormous amount of stock in having portions of it

will unconstitutional. some of the hiding under the desk wing of the democratic party are chagrined at this. i on the other hand and a center for american progress in this way as well, this is the second opportunity for us to make the case and explain to people the separation. what i would like to do is if there is a lot of opportunities people are doing summaries of what is in the bill i want to take those basic republicans thrusts that we have not done a good job confronting head on. just trying to take him down a notch and try to explain why at the end of the day they're not only not valid but in many cases hypocritical. the first thing said about the bill is to some degree we responded the bill and worked on a was this notion that when we had done to health care was this giant transforming live fanged. in fact it wasn't.

for many americans who have health care of the workplace they will get treated like crab by their health insurance companies. they will have very little control how high their rates go. they still have very few choices they're going to have. of would have liked to have done more transformative things and made those things more difficult but of a deep sense going into this that we wanted to try to find a compromise between the people who were like me who said let's double down on the employer base model, double down on the single payer government model the bridge to medicare which essentially takes money from taxpayers and give it to doctors and takes nothing in profit and the employer based models. the effort was made to double down on the employer base model so there were great pains gone into by the sponsors and those of us who supported the bill not to completely disrupt the marketplace of people that

already have a health-care. one thing that is most commonly said in its health-care was completely transform. for those that are uninsured it will be a dramatic improvement. they will have a place to go. for small businesses that want to do the right thing. enormous benefit but this notion that the entire health care infrastructure got turned on its head year-ago today is mythological. there are things that were changed but not nearly as many as many people in america wanted. if you look at many poles what wound up happening are you satisfied if you drill into those that dissatisfied you find that many of unwanted much bigger change because they found out frankly their benefits were not going to improve that much. next we republicans say it is similar to the first that a big government takeover of health care. infected is the opposite. when people used words like socialization to describe what

is happening this is the polar opposite. we are taking taxpayer dollars and giving them to private companies. private insurance companies. the opposite of socialization. in fact even if we had done what i wanted which was expand medicare to more americans that would have been not a government takeover of anything because it is to private doctors and private hospitals and private clinics. the idea that socialization or something like that is happening is quite the opposite. we did to great lengths in this law to empower people to get private health insurance policies. beaufort we hear is particularly interesting to have governors to washington and complain about the plan although they were governors with political interests, come to washington and say you are trampling on our rights. if you look at how the bill is structured the exchange plans we gave the states every right to a minister changes and even the

most anti health care governor is going to say we want our state to governed the exchanges. we hear republicans complaining that there's not toward reform. there's peace in the world so she is able to come by. she does start at the top? she will be one of the people who ask me questions. the decision not to include a broader tort reform with limits on court in the federal law, something republicans bitterly complain about what they hat tipped to the idea that that is the province of state of this wasters. the idea that there is this big government takeover trumping state's rights is not the case.

finally, we heard many governors complained about provisions of the law that expand medicaid eligibility between now and 2018 saying you'll bankrupt states. what they fail to point out is in that period of time more people will be covered under medicaid but it will be paid for entirely with federal dollars resulting in what should be a dramatic savings for the state's. there is the scenario in 2019 that states have to bailout more but that is only -- because if you think about the expansion of medicaid still means you would have to have an enormous number of poor people. funny to listen to haley barbour come to washington saying you will bankrupt us they. if you take it to its logical extension needs to be laying that there is an enormous number of poor people in the future in his state. further ironic to hear the governor of mississippi which has the most generous reimbursement rate of any medicare medicaid state from all about the federal government,

they get close to and 80% reimbursement on their medicaid expenses compared to 50% in new york state. far be it from me to complain about haley barbour. but i do believe the complaints about from the state's right there not true. today we saw an article in usa today by congressman gray, talking about the burdens on small businesses. there are none. that is not true. the 1099 provision, there is consensus to do away with, is the wholly new regulation tax fee burden put on small businesses. on the other hand in this law we are going to make it 30% cheaper for any small business to offer health insurance to its workers and in the future we will allow those small businesses to go into this exchange where there's competition to hold down prices.

we offer small businesses for the first time ever the opportunity to get subsidy to purchase health insurance for their workers. if anything we have republicans complaining bitterly about one of the largest tax cuts for small business in american history. the idea that somehow small-business being burdened by this law is quite the opposite. we hope small business takes these incentives to go out and buy insurance for their workers because it is simply unfair to have a shoe store on one side of queens boulevard that makes the decision to offer health insurance competing against one on the other side which doesn't. those costs are getting a pass along one way or another. the way we choose to solve that problem is to offer heavy incentives for all small businesses love for insurance to their workers. another common cry we have heard from the republicans and the notion that this is going to bankrupt the federal government. we can have a conversation that

could dominate this forum on how this cbo's 4 was done, how the 20 year projection shows this is going to be a dramatic reduction in the national debt and deficit. what i prefer we focus on for a moment is an element of this discussion that has not come about costs. the cost to the federal government is only one of the cost we have to deal with when dealing with health care. we also have localities and local taxpayers. when uninsured people walking to hospital emergency rooms for, in do york city we pay $8 billion in taxes each and every year for the uninsured and underinsured not counting the social cost of the fact we have 17 fewer hospitals in new york city since 2000. that shows up in note cbo's for, in none of the debates we had in washington about the costs of

this bill. frankly there's a transfer from local taxpayers, from state taxpayers to the federal government in this bill and even with that transfer it winds up being savings of $1.2 trillion over 20 years. when we had this conversation about bankruptcy one of the things that the cbo gets the zero credit for the lot of the incentives built into the bill were preventative care. we know intuitively and because our mothers told us that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure the propeller doesn't see it that way. they give us no credit for doing things the virtually everyone agrees in medicine and common sense and business that if you do some things like we do in the -- on the medicare side where we cover preventive services 100% without a single copayment that you will and surprise people to get those preventative services.

conversations that we are going to be having about incentivizing in years to come primary-care physicians by increasing reimbursement rates in medicare and medicaid for primary-care physicians to get more people in the front end of the health care structure then later end, none of those savings are included in the bill so if anything the cost articulated by the cbo's or are very conservative. in fact savings are going to be much higher and if you start adding in savings to state and local taxpayers you're going to see the number increase even more and finally there is this issue of the mandate. this has dominated more conversation than it really deserves. the philosophy behind the mandate is one that most americans understand. the idea that people have to bear some responsibility in this transaction for their own care. if we offer incentives we offer

subsidies, ultimately they have to accept responsibility for their own health care decisions in as much as they impact everyone else. there is a basic element of we golf thinking that right of my fist ends at your nose. i can do what i like about what i beg your rights as a citizen then there is a reasonable place for government to come in and said those rules for the road but would comes to health care people who choose not to get insurance arm making a decision that only two branches on the decision tree. one is to beat ritually healthy and the other is to pass along the expense of health care to someone else because as much as we may think we are ready the sheer expense of getting hit by a bus is pretty high and when you can't pay it it gets passed to hospitals and fellow citizens. the mandate is something included in romneycare and the bill the president signed a year ago today. it is not that big a deal.

in massachusetts which is a similar model, i will enjoy watching governor romney debate himself in 2012, a similar model that we sit here is your subsidy, here is a system to shop for health care more efficiently. now you have got to get it. a number of people given that structure which is the same in the bill that chose not to get into massachusetts was zero -- was 0.067% meaning virtually everybody -- this should be no surprise for anyone who thinks the way most people think, people want health care. they want health insurance. they want their family to be protected. they want that piece of mind. if lightning strikes and it turns out as many of us believe the supreme court turned out to be a third political branch of government and they strike down the mandate, big deal.

i believe as many of you know it is pretty clear that justice thomas should recuse himself from these given the money he has gotten from organizations that are dedicated to the overturning health-care reform but turning that aside, we see the direction the supreme court is going though i think it would be folly to strike down. i think this is clearly under the province of the commerce clause. it is a small number of people. the solution if the mandate is struck down is not that the bill falls like a house of cards people will not suddenly chair and say i was going to sign up and now i am not. the solution is going to be offering something everyone agrees is constitutional and that is the public option. clearly that is constitutional. no one denies that. medicare or social security where we require people to withhold money from their checks and going to those programs. if you think about that list i

just read and the brief rebuttal, it doesn't change the fact that for millions and millions of americans they saw this first year not be as much about back and forth as if they wanted it, if they were a senior citizen they got coverage through the doughnut hole. if they were a young family, of 24-year-old person they were able to go on to their parents's health insurance plan. we know now that coming up on a couple phases of the bill, this next period is going to be very important. the rulemaking will go on and you are going to have an enormous back and forth about the minimum standards in the bill. that is the next big fight. every advocate for an illness will want coverage. advocates for certain technologies will want their services. that will be tough but

necessary. the third stage of the bill and implementation of the exchanges which is the big stuff in the bill covering the uninsured and taking that burden off of states and individuals. that gets implemented and people shoot those exchanges like many dealers -- and the final stage of the bill is republicans who voted no going through ceremonies and town hall meetings where they are bragging about how great obamacarries and they have to bite their tongues for calling in obamacare for the next 50 years but i don't anticipate that this fight will end. i think we are in this dynamic facing in a certain direction on this bill and i think we will have debate. democrats only have a couple choices. we can engage the debate or not engage the debate. it would be folly to believe it is going away and it would be folly to believe i am either. thank you very much.

[applause] >> we will take your questions. >> we will take questions from the audience. first of all, you referenced the presidential debate and upcoming presidential debate. the presidential candidates, possible republican presidential candidate celebrating the anniversary in a different way than we are. they are lining up to attack the bill already. what specifically do you think advocates for the legislation should do over the next year as presidential candidates on the other side attack the bill with a lot of things. >> that depends on who we want to run against us. the one thing we have to do is

make it clear that a lot of the values these republican candidates as bows are in the bill, are reflected in the legislation. this was basically a structure that republicans for years had advocated. the idea of taking tax benefits and incentivizing people to get health care. we took a couple steps to codify a little differently than wait -- they would have. there are inherent inconsistencies in the argument. one is the class act which is a voluntary long-term care insurance plan. what it does is if people sign up they can stalk away some money and get a guarantee cash benefits to provide long-term care services in years to come. what many--year after year and this is what they want to repeal. we need to embrace this

argument, we need to engage and have some fun with the argument with mitt romney. for no other reason, to some degree -- giving him credit. deserve some credit for leading an adult conversation in massachusetts but also showing something else. even a state isn't muscular enough to force insurance companies to compete and hold the downgrade. most of the rest of the field, overly lying about provisions in the bill. i don't think the president should engage everyone but we as democrats have an obligation to the primary voters of iowa to

have this debate. >> we demand they put their own plans forward. i want to shift to the budget debate. in the budget debate, so much money we spend and the debate about writers. i wonder, there has been a lot of back-and-forth because there was real concern about trying to eliminate the writer and could end up we are anyplace where a government shutdown friends overof writers itself and how the do think we as advocates respond? what do you think -- how does that set up? >> for one, we need a competing

narrative for the basic thrust -- one is this repeal and replace. fundamentally, i believe americans offering the choice between repeal and replace and something like implement and improve believe in the idea of not rolling back things but work amount to make a better as we go. yet we have offered that narrative. it is reflexive up to now but we also need a competing narrative on the overall budget fight. the republicans have done a good job making this fight on their side. they are for lower deficit and smaller deficits and lower taxes. the good things government does, we should have medicare, social security, we will not budge on that and let's negotiate. the public perception is we have

not defined our side of the argument very well. we want to shut down government over repealing health care reform. there is this nihilistic tendency among republicans, but it is insufficient to wait for the republicans to self immolate. i think we do need to have an affirmative contract. >> questions from the audience if you could just identify. >> thanks for a wonderful -- we were inspired. republicans keep saying cut deficits and costs and yet they are against cutting medicare and medicaid. how do we come back to that?

>> implicit in a lot of their critiques during health care they can't possibly like medicare very much. i asked a panel of witnesses at one of these mind numbingly boring hearings on repealing health-care whether the panel considered medicare to be a single payer system that made the ride so much. there is this notion that takes a great man to build a barn but any jackass will kick one down. we know the republican talking points against the solutions we try to come up with. we have yet to see public pressure put on them to -- affected how you'd better ideas

during the health care debate-we asked for 30% reduction in fort and they found it would save money. roughly $5 billion a year. we spent $2.7 trillion every year. they have yet to be terribly serious about it. i think we haven't done a very good job even with thrust and parry. this nonsensical question about double counting of $500 billion in savings in medicare. article after article explained and they keep using it because it is successful. we do a much better job. >> right there. >> my name is scott from gw. thank you for -- i don't think members of congress get enough

credit for this bill. you get a lot of crap for it. i am diabetic and have a preexisting condition. i am able to stay on my parents's plan until i am 26. recently the president said something about letting states opt out if they come of with a better plan a few years from now. what is the consensus on that and what will they do? >> what is your name? >> scott. >> there's a lot of talk about the free market governing health care. you chose to have diabetes. i want to make sure. >> when i was 8 i said -- >> thank you. i think the president articulated something. i was debating whether to bring this up in my remarks about things we are not pushing back upon. there have been -- i don't know

what the numbers, 1,000 waivers of different provisions from states and labor unions and businesses. this notion of one size fits all, federal government shoving a bill down people's throats. h h s administered this bill to be very sensitive to the idea we have common objectives, lower-cost send more access. they want assistant to work. the idea that we would not want the lot to work by driving health insurance companies out of business or being inflexible in its regulation. the waiver and i hope the administration understands and makes this argument more forcefully is an argument that a lot of people who got waivers were organizations who didn't like the bill. some of them are friends. when the president says if you have a better idea to accomplish the same thing i am in the process now in my office of trying to see if we can take some up on it in the city of new york. i have a passing interest in the management of the city of new

york and looking at all the money we spend in medicaid and medicare and new york city can come up with a better plan. that will always be the case. it is a serious conversation about whether a state can do it better than we should do it. many states, massachusetts and others that have tried to do some of these things that wound up coming to the government saying we need federal muscle to make these programs work. the president is right. if you can achieve the objectives of the build and all of us would be flexible enough to go to it. >> over here? >> thank you. i am from american democratic action. you mentioned we are not doing a very good job at that narrative. i want to ask why, what agency

needs to play a role helping craft that. as a young progressive where should i go and who should i look to for leadership on these issues? >> thank you from your organization. it is more about who we are structurally as progressives to some degree. we have this idea that if you have a lot and think it through carefully and try to implement regulations put in place we are all going in the same direction. ultimately a way out to this day talking about death petals. i think we have in some degree played more skillful defense and offense at the same time. you will see a lot of democrats. nancy pelosi using her twitter feet to have another benefit of the bill. that is important to do but also important to realize that we have not done a good job disabusing americans of some of the things they have heard so

many times. it is obviously not true. people can go to any web site. and check it themselves. we have to keep -- we have to keep at these fights. who does it? the white house has to understand at the same time they are trying to write these regulations it is going to be an issue in campaign 2012 whether they would like it to or not and they should make a virtue of it and maybe be doing more. there are a lot of people in congress who are trying to do it but also we in congress still have within the democratic family have disparate voices. some people are cringing any time health care comes up. they don't want to go through that again. won't get any better. we are going to have this discussion whether you want to or not. >> questioned in the back?

>> i am debra schuman with position for national health program which is our national symbol payer organization and i have been working in the state of maryland with the governor's coordinating turtle to implement the affordable care act. one of the main things going on in an apple is during this session is to try to create an exchange or at least set up the structure for and exchange. in maryland we have two boule insurance companies, who control 70% of the market. one of the things they talk about in the committee meetings in an apples is who will pay for the exchange? they look at it as another layer of bureaucracy and i have to say i agree with them. i wonder how this gets paid for once we have the essential benefits package. we have -- these are all good

things. essential benefits package is a good thing. no lifetime limits is a good thing. no preexisting condition limitations. those are all good things. but i really can't believe that an exchange will control costs and it hasn't in massachusetts and i would like to hear your comments. >> there is no doubt we are to some degree betting on the following premises. that if you give companies a playing field on which to compete, if you give consumers information that allows them to examine choices side-by-side that the presence of that competition and rules of the road being consistent will lead to people making decisions that are driven by costs and consumers will choose lower prices. and more choices people have the more likely costs will come

down. this is not socialism. it is free-market concept. it is the law of large groups of consumers shopping for a product. we are not taking a shot in the dark because putting aside the massachusetts experiment which has mixed results we have federal employees' health benefit plans which cover nine million americans and their families. that is a pretty big universe of people who use an exchange model that is low cost meaning the administration of the program costs 27.057%, < 0.1% of the costs of the administration. inflation is significantly lower than the marketplace as a whole but there's one other element my republican friends talk about a lot but ignored in the bill. once you have regulations that

are consistent across state lines the tendency can no longer have the very bare bones thinking. there's nothing stopping companies from offering services over state lines. the mantra for republicans is why don't you let companies sell their product over state lines? the simple economic reason is the state's rights argument, they like to governor and insurance recommendations and insurance commission. another is a fairness thing. if tennessee to take an example offers a bare bones low-cost health care plan it would serve to attract a lot of younger healthier people and states like maryland and new york would be stuck with bigger families and sick people and would be fair. once you have these regulations in place you have two joyce's. your question is why cbo said having a public option would save a bunch of money because we would know that there would be an efficient low-cost option

available for people and with that knowledge we know the competition would have some effect of lower costs but to some extent it is an experiment with the rules of the free-market and unfortunately the insurance industries have proven the laws of economic gravity don't apply to insurance rates for a lot of reasons. hopefully this model will work. >> time for one more question. right there. >> final question. what is the verdict? happy birthday or very merry and birth day? >> i will let you take that. >> the way i look at it is what are we going to be saying about this in ten years? if you look as i did at the debate on medicare, look at the year after there was still

enormous amount of questions about whether this would work. we have divided public opinion. ultimately near universal among older people, near universal support for medicare. a great deal of confusion. i do think if we look back at this year, and we are going to laugh at some of the things critics said about the law we are going to see that things like an armageddon or whatever john boehner said, are crazy and a ultimately we are still going to be tweaking it in ten years because that is -- we are treating medicare to this moment. this is that a that democrats and people who voted for this bill should be celebrating. i hope it is the day americans

renew interest in it and don't look at two people shouting on tv and try to learn a little bit more about the law and i believe each successive year that goes by we handle this conversation right it will be seen as a true success story. the question is going to be this. this time in 2012 or later in the fall of 2012 are you going to see ads by the republicans saying don't fauve for president obama because he passed obamacare or are you going to be seeing ads from president obama saying all the people like some in this room getting care and how much better the economy is. i think it will be the latter. thank you. [applause] [inaudible

conversations] >> several live events to tell you about on c-span2. one is a forum on the future of homeownership including comments from henry cisneros and leaders of the national association of home builders and the national fair housing alliance. that discussion hosted by the atlantic and national journal begins at 8:45 eastern. and 1:30 eastern a brookings institution discussion on a roll of the egyptian civil society in the political process. panelists include representatives of the american chamber of commerce in egypt, the international youth foundation and the national endowment for democracy. >> beginning april 1st and throughout the month we feet to the top winners of the c-span2 student competition. nearly 15 a nit middle and high

school students submitted documentary's on dauphine washington d.c. through my lens focusing on events or topics that better help them understand the role of the federal government. watch the winning videos on c-span and meet the students who created them. stream the videos online at studentham.org. >> now discussion of high school dropout prevention hosted by the group of america's promise alliance. over the next 40 minutes you will hear from the governors of maryland and virginia and the mayors of indianapolis and oklahoma city. >> i am sorry he is not here. i was dying to ask him how everybody can get the money out of mark zuckerberg to their own city but we have to do that some other time. to start, governor o'malley, you are proud of the fact that maryland ranks no. one in

education. and -- >> none of that! >> 80% overall graduation rate and you are a race to the top winner but you do have 27 dropout factories high school senior state. what are you doing about that? what are you going to do to raise the graduation rate? >> there are a number of different strategies implemented with the local education agencies people associations. the most important things we did in baltimore city will take a larger high schools and split them into smaller schools and also being able to create scenes in some of the high schools for a career path and career and college readiness. those were very important. the other thing we have done in the last few years is expand the number of career and technical education offerings. we have gone from 30 to 38 to

the extent we are better able to match up the ct with the places where we have the greatest drop of problems we realize a lot more of the goal of graduating more kids. all of them come down to leadership. whether it was restart, the most important thing for turning around any high school is having a great principle and that is not something the training pipeline for new principles is not something we have done as well as we need to. that was part of our race to the top application and we are hopeful john's hopkins university will better reinvigorate that pipeline of training and recruitment so we get the best leaders into our high school that has the greatest challenges and the greatest opportunity for progress. >> we start with the governors and mayors and mix it up.

we have a lot on the panel will and wont to get to as much as possible. the mayor of indianapolis where according to our numbers your dropout rate is quite high and only 49% of your high school graduates actually graduates. there are eight dropout factories in indianapolis. i want you to use that as a leaping off point to tell us what you identify as the challenges you face as mayor of the city was five cities with education challenges and what is the opportunity? >> the number you are talking about is one of our school districts -- in indianapolis we have 11 school districts and 80% overall graduate in indianapolis. we have a difficult school system as others do with larger cities across the nation but what we have done in indianapolis is have chamber of commerce started a program

called the common goal. a few years ago for instance across the city of indianapolis, graduation rate was around 69%. now it is at 80. within that district the urban district if you will, graduation rate is 56%. what we have done is put graduation coaches in the schools. we put people into the schools from communities and nonprofits work very hard to make sure those kids have a resources and teachers. >> uconn graduation coaches. >> chamber of commerce put in against the united way which is a tremendous part in indianapolis. so many other people in larger companies have come together to help out. it is like the community coming in to the school to help out and the numbers in the last three years we have seen an increase. >> you have a 77% statewide

graduation rate. and 25 dropout factory schools. where is the dropout crisis in your agenda? >> finishing high school and going on to either a good job or college education accessing the american dream. i think it is going to take a motivated teacher and concerted parent to solve the problem and secondly to tie education to economic development and job creation. not just into the green itself but the access to a good job and dreams for the future. we employed a couple strategies that are helping as others said a very intense dropout prevention and intervention program. we got turnaround specials going into those schools with a high dropout rate and those that are now fully accredited and doing

some very intense work particularly with principal and others to turn it around and some reforms to create a little competition within the school system. college schools and merit pay and a virtual schools and all kids learn better in the classroom. all those are part of the solution with one particular answer but creating schools where people want to learn and see the tickets of well paying jobs in the future. >> begs a lot of questions about what the responsibility is and i would like the mayor to weigh in on the oklahoma city with a 60% graduation rate. seven dropout factories. not only how high is this on your left of priorities but what do you do about it once it is up there? >> greg twitter rate in the city reflects the state average. we have one of 24 districts that live in the city have issues. one program we have that i would

identify is the truancy program. we have the police department involved. the moment kids show a tendency to be true and we have a police officer on the porch of that house with the idea being if we can engage the parents on the front end we will have a better chance of creating a dropout problem. >> without leaving too far ahead how the have the resources to the police officer on the front porch? >> if we don't we're dealing with that kid six months later under a difficult situation. we will be using a police officer with that drop out than or later. we have to keep him in school. let a kid drop out of school the idea that he will run into a police officer down a line is almost guaranteed. >> my impression is your education program is focused on rebuilding all the schools in the city. how does that link up to apply resources to drop outs? >> we have a penny on the dollar

sales tax to rebuild every building in the inner-city district. all 75 are refurbished. the idea being is a kid have a better environment the kid will more likely want to be in school and teacher will more likely want to teach at that school and a parent will want to be there on parent teacher night. the capital needs were at the point of an emergency. we are in the final stage of building that. the high school have opened up and we're working on grade schools and we will have virtually all 75 of the buildings done. the capital needs were fundamental and something the city could provide. the programming is technically not under the jurisdiction of the mayor so it is more difficult but we are rolling up our sleeves and getting as involved as the district will allow and we are seeing more cooperation with the district so i am very encouraged. >> do you have to have a bond issue or a referendum? >> we go to the voters. we have 24 districts. the people who attended to vote

yes didn't live in the inner-city districts so we had to get them to buy into the fact that the quality of the inner city school district was important to the quality of life and we passed a referendum 60% in november of 2001 and collected the dollar and some money went to the district but the bulk of it went to the one inner-city district that had so many deferred maintenance issues and was never going to work its way out alone. >> did you imagine that working in maryland? >> we increased our sales tax by a penny and in the last few very difficult years we have had two years in a row of the highest amount we ever invested in public education. we increased by $1.1 billion just over the last four or five years. we are at a time in our country when everyone wants to eat cake and lose weight. we went great schools. [applause]

we all want great school -- >> they are all eating cake right now. >> we have to be honest with one another. we want great schools but many of us want leaders that tell us what solve all of the nation's problem is another tax cut or lower taxes. there's no way to build schools without paying for them. [applause] that is why i lean forward when i heard the mayor talking about what he was able to do to do that throughout your whole city. we need -- we are one of only 17 states that does anything on school construction. most states don't put any dollars towards school construction. in our state we do. in the last four years we have funded even with 5.6 and now six$.6 billion in cuts and reductions we funded an all-time high in the last four years in

school renovation and school construction in our state. we are one of only eight that has the aaa bond rating and education is the most important thing we can do to win the future so that our kids have jobs and we have a better economy and that is why we make that investment, something we are only able to do by forging that precious consensus necessary to do the tough things like raising the sales tax by a penny in order to pay for it and putting on a progressive income tax or god forbid even asking corporations to pay a little more on their corporate income taxes. >> taxes are not something you like to raise but what is the budget situation in schools in virginia. all over the country we are cutting school budgets. what are you doing to face the budget deficit problem? >> like most chief executive

officers of the state, there are some tough choices that have to be made. we cut $4 billion out of our budget last year and make reductions in k-12 and health-care because we felt it was not the right time in this economy to raise taxes on those citizens so we made tough choices and six months later ended up with a budget surplus and this year we have been able to reinvest $100 million in new money on higher in education. we are turning a corner. it is probably fair to say we should not overemphasize money. there's no question that it takes resources to create schools and innovative programs. but so much of what determines the outcome for young people is what i said.

it is a concern to qualify it teachers, it is an engage parent and the type of environment you create work kids come to school and builds motivated and sees that this is their ticket to the american dream. it takes both and if we don't put more emphasis on quality and outcomes and results and too much on input and money we will lose votes. >> let's talk about in put and results. when we hear about school reform in the most broad definition of conversation off and fall to private solutions in addition to government and put. let's talk about some of those, to what degree do we have to dependent on charitable giving, on private investment, and on things like charter schools which don't necessarily depend on the traditional model? >> it is okay to depend on that

sometimes. in our city and most cities across the nation the larger corporations want to be part of that solution. they are asking to be part of the solutions are am fine with that. unless the law is changed somewhere else i'm the only mayor that allowed charter schools. charter schools are wonderful. i believe competition in schools is a good thing. i don't know why choices are looked upon as bad in education where is good everywhere else. charter schools are a good option. a lot of reform measures across the nation have to be looked at because i am results oriented. if you are doing the same thing over and over again and say we need a little bit more money sometimes maybe but most times probably not, is the model that isn't working and we need to look at what works and what does not work and like i said we had graduation coaches, bringing

people into the schools because as the governor said very well, it is the teacher and engage parent but i tell you a lot of kids don't have an engage parent. [applause] >> we must be cognizant of that fact. some people want to blame the parent. i never blamed for parents because i believe we are in a multi generational cycle where some parents don't know how to help their kids because they never saw it. they don't know what it looks like. let's be cognizant. some kids are smart enough to know they don't want to go home. it is not a good environment. we must put that caring adults in that kid's life. that is why mentoring programs are so important. there is an organization called starfish initiative. there's a lot of that. i am sure it is the same in most cities across the nation. our community wants to be involved in the school system.

we want the school systems to be receptive to that because at the end of the day when kids graduate they will be in that system. we have many different models. we are lucky to have an organization called the mind trust which is a premier educational innovation organization. we are trying lots of things at different levels. we want innovation. we want to try different things. we want competition. we want those kids to graduate. one model does not fit all. i could show you examples of charter schools we have done. we have one school that is devoted to kids with substance-abuse. you want to see high school graduation? go to that high school graduation. it is remarkable. six kids a couple years ago, none of those kids would have graduated from a traditional

high school. >> the model you are describing is sort of the model that the civic marketing plan describes. you seem to have done it. i don't know how familiar you are with it but that is it. to take these problems schools and surround them with the support families and kids need, help support education reform, after-school programs. to what extent are you implementing that concerted strategy around the problem schools. >> that is a very good model. you can address the problem unless you address the entire community where a young person -- there has been a great model

in the city, take a holistic approach or the fact is the young person has to face the impediment of success. with the alternative environment with education and so forth that they can use to exo. turnaround specialists don't have a 1-size-fits-all program. they don't know what is going on in that school and the social service systems and the education system is to provide everything that that young person might need to a chief. that is the approach we have taken and reduce the number of schools that haven't attained and manners of learning them from the class of 72 to 19 this year so we are making progress with those individuals schools. the other thing we try to and that we have talked about yet that is important is we have to ratchet up the focus on our elementary and high school. [applause]

it is frightening away we are falling behind other nations and the number of young people graduating in science and technology and math and health care. these create the wealth the jobs of the future and keep american an exceptional nation and keep the military strongman technology revolution going on in america great. these are things through first robotics programs that captivate these young people and get them interested in school. if they are excited that you support them they will do well. >> you want to add things to what is being done now. the they cost money? where do you get it? >> if you look at what happens in blast few decades it is generally not much. in virginia i tell you we increased our student enrolment over the last decade 7% or 8% but the amount of new funding has gone up 45% or 50% so it

outpace the rate of growth in student enrollments so in an inflation-adjusted per-capita basis it is the growing even with the cuts we made so i think it is back to governor o'malley's contention of leadership in schools stretching those dollars farther and putting them.. >> well, first, public safety is the priority of city government, and from an educational perspective, i think it's important to keep the

philanthropists engaged. if they ever get to the point where they don't feel like their investment is making a difference, they'll withdraw. so you've got to keep a conversation going between the educational leaders, your superintendent, the school board members, the philanthropists and the city government, and the more people you can get pulling on the same rope, the better chances you're going to be. but when budgets get squeezed, you've got to keep the philanthropists involved. >> give me an ample of how that's -- example of how that's worked in oklahoma city. >> we have a program called educare, and it's going into our weakest-performing zip codes and spending quite a bit of money putting highly-qualified teachers and providing educational services for those kids at age 2 and age 3 and age 4. george or kaiser is one of the chief philanthropists, but the inas much foundation is a factor as are others in oklahoma.

it showed me if you spend enough money and get to a kid early enough even in those weakest, underperforming zip codes, you can make a difference. it's not the kids. there's still a question of can you afford that high level of early childhood education. and if not, what can you afford? i mean, how much can you dial it back and still get some spear your results? -- superior results? >> what are the rest of you doing about preschool/early childhood education? be do you have programs for that? >> sure. one of the most important things we were able to do with the increased funding from the thornton initiative which was about the last six or seven years of ramping up was to be able to go to full-day kindergarten throughout our state. the year before we did that, not a single grade scored majority proficient in reading or math. the very next year after we had full-day kindergarten, the first graders were not only majority

proficient in reading and math, i think they've now got on the a point where we are now above the national average in reading and math, and now grades 1-8 are majority proficient after eight years of full-day kindergarten. so full-day kindergarten made a huge difference for us, and we similarly have been putting together sort of a collaborative approach to target the pre-k interventions in the zip codes that need it the most bringing together foundations and others for our ready to learn initiative so that more and more of our children in our state are ready to learn by the time they're ready for kindergarten. >> mayor, could you follow up on that? >> we have many programs similar to what mayor cornell said. a lot of private organizations have come along going into the most difficult areas of our city, and they make sure these kids, 3, 4, 5 years old have what they need to be prepared for the first grade.

so that's a big part of our philanthropy effort, also, in the city of indianapolis. we're lucky to have some big funders, we're lucky to have a lot of people who want to do these sorts of things in indianapolis, and i think it's had an impact. >> i'd like to divide the rest of our conversation into two general topic areas; who's teaching and who's learning. governor mcdonnell, the question of who's teaching often comes down to the question of tenure and collective bargaining and testing. how would you prioritize that in terms of what our concept here which is how to keep kids from dropping out of school? how important is that, and how do you change it if you need to change it? >> i'm sorry, gwen, how important is -- >> focusing on who's teaching, whether it's a question of tenure, collective bargaining rights, whether it's a question of testing? >> i think it's very important, again, able, talented teacher in the classroom with a reasonable

class size is critically important. i think all the literature tells you good things come with those students. we're constantly looking for ways to get more people motivated to be in the teaching profession, that means everything from looking at salary issues to making an easier path to licensure, for instance, to former military to be able to get more people interested in the profession, so i think that's number one is recruit m. secondly -- recruitment. secondly, we have looked at the issue of continuing contract which is our version of tenure to see whether or not modifications may need to be made there. those have typically not been successful in the legislature, but if you look at what makes people excel in american or business, i think having an at-will environment where people can discipline and hire and fire according to actual performance is worthwhile. you don't have that in the public sector as much, so i'd like to see some streamlining this to be able to hire the best

people and have the people that aren't performing well exit quicker. i think the president's initiative on merit pay is excellent. i put money in the budget for our first-ever merit pay pilot in virginia year, and i think working with the federal government on some of the things they're doing in that area will really help to provide the incentive for teachers not only to enter the profession, but then to excel while they're there. tying performance to compensation. it works in the private sector, we ought to use it more in government. >> governor o'malley? >> yes. >> same question. >> well, let me just phrase the question differently, and i'll ask you all to answer this question. do you regard teachers' unions as an ally or an impediment to school reform? let's just put it on the line. [laughter] i take it it strikes a note out there. [laughter] you can start. you're generally regarded as being pro-labor. >> lucky you. [laughter] >> i thought, i thought your

question would be do you see your teachers' unions as an ally or an impediment to student achievement and student progress. and so i don't know, i don't think that reform for reform's sake is something -- i'm much more entrepreneurial. i want to do the things that work to improve student achievement. there is not a large city in america -- with the possible exception of new york city -- that's experienced a bigger increase in student achievement over these last eight years than the students of the city of baltimore have. which is not to say that we don't have a lot more progress to make. but we're only able to do that because we treated our work force, our teachers with dignity and with respect. i mean, our -- [applause] so my administration and the people that have made me look

good to the extent i've been able to look good as a manager, we've won all sorts of awards and kudos for performance measurement, performance management. recently, the data collaborative, i think, gave maryland ab award from -- an award from going from last place to making tremendous progress on longitudinal data tracking so we can track that performance. but we don't go into this endeavor with the view that teachers are the enemy, unions must be destroyed, collective bargaining is bad. we're either going to work together, or you're going to have to find something else to do. and a lot of times, a lot of timeses we have found that managers not only in our public school systems, but throughout government use collective bargaining and work rules as an excuse for not doing their job as managers to write people up and to fire them when they're not performing. [applause] so i know it doesn't make a lot

of people happy. i know that sometimes it's an easier construct to think that unions are big and bad, they're evil, they're stopping all progress from happening, but i'll tell you what, mort, in the toughest of times, the people of maryland would not have come together to make greater investments rather than lesser in public education were it not for the advocacy, the performance and the hard work of teachers' unions throughout our state who supported us and allowed us to succeed in winning one of the very few race to the top grants. whether a work force is organized or not organized, i think as a manager, as a ceo you have to bring people together to achieve results, and that's what we're doing in maryland. [applause] >> very interesting. where i sit with this in the city that i am in which is, i'm a republican mayor in a leaning

democratic city, but as somebody asked me early on are you for unions or against unions, and i said, i'm for the taxpayer. if they bring value to the equation, that's what it is. it's just kind of funny that, i mean, i'm not here politically. nobody knows who i am -- >> we'll lee this event at point -- leave this event at this point. you can see the remainder on c-span.org. the atlantic and national journal is hosting a forum on the future of homeownership in the united states. speaking now is tom wilson, chief executive officer of allstate corporation. >> i'd also like to thank jared bernstein who's with us, the economic policy adviser of vice president biden, so we're pleased to have his support as well. it's been two years since we started these polls, and our goal has been to give the american middle class a voice that's heard above the ideological and political rhetoric and to let their view be heard as to what needs to be done in the america.

so we've had great teamwork with the national journal, with fd. we've opinion able to raise a lot of good -- we've been able to raise a lot of good issues, and we've raised new issues in this poll which provide very interesting material which ed went through. i'd like to share some of our own views. there's several very interesting themes that showed up in this poll and all the other ones as well. first, americans are optimistic, and they believe in self-determination. so belief in the american dream is alive and well, and that is a good thing. we saw it in our fifth poll where we looked at that particular segment of the population. this is, of course, a generation that's swamped with having a hard time getting a job, they've got student debt, many of them live with their parents. they are still optimistic in the face of all of that that they can have the american dream. in our sixth poll, 60% of people believe it is their own skills and hard work that can help them realize the american dream, and it is achievable.

what was very interesting to us about this poll was that homeownership remains a critical part of that dream. so, you know, of course, 73% of the people saying that owning a home helps them achieve the american dream. that's despite the fact in this our prior polls they shade a number of things -- said a number of things. they said this recession is different, it's a game changer. they said they were more risk averse. they are spending more and -- saving more and spending less. 27% of americans we know outside the poll are underwater on their homes, mortgages are worth more than their homes, and trillions of dollars of wealth have been lost. yet 70% of americans would still recommend to a friend or family member ha they should buy -- that they should buy a house, 89% of them would make the same decision to buy a house if they own one today. there are a couple of questions, like why and what are the implications? what do people know that we don't know when you look at the data in total? well, it makes sense because the

underlying consumer demand for housing has not changed. it's still part of the american dream, americans still want to own homes. so if you have that underlying demand has not changed, what you have today is a current supply in demand imbalance. it's a temporary imbalance, it's worse in some states, the sun and sand states than it is in places like new york. but you have a temporary supply in the balance, not a permanent shift in consumer demand. so now you could ask, there's a legitimate question to be asked, you know, what about the studies that show owning a home is not a good deal? it's a 1 president real -- 1% real rate of return, but by a margin in this poll of 4 to 1, people would prefer to own a house than to buy a stock. what these studies don't capture, i believe s the number one rule of investing which is what americans know which is buy what you know. don't buy what you don't know. at allstate we have $100 billion

portfolio, we try to buy what we know. as a consumer, you can know your local real estate market, you can know the houses, you can know the neighbors better than you can know what stock to pick. second, there's less downside in buying a house because you can always live in it, right? it's part of the american dream. in this poll you saw a number of people said they wanted to buy because of financial reasons, but a bunch of other people said it's where my families come, i can have memories here. some returns come in dollars, some returns come in memories. and americans are willing to invest in money to get that american dream, some of which is economic wealth, some of which is their personal welling well . and then there's a forced savings component which helps people. while lots of economic wealth has been wiped out, most people in america are either in the money or close to being in the money on their house. so of the people who are underwater if you look at the population total, about 10% of

homeowners are really underwater. they make up about 450 billion of the $750 billion of underwater. everybody else is reasonably close. so a couple of years of inflation should be able to bring you back to where you want to go. lastly, there's high transaction costs. so if you want to get out of a house, it's not like a stock where you can call schwab or somebody and pay nine cents a share. you have to pay somewhere between 5 and 6% commissions, legal fees, or if you choose to default, the costs are even higher because when you want to get back in, nobody's going to lend you the money to buy. so it makes perfect sense why americans are stay anything their homes. so demand continues to be very strong. so as a result my personal view then is what we have is a housing oversupply is temporary and that owning a home continues to be a good financial decision. so the question for most consumers today is not if they

should buy a house, it's when they should buy a house. and so, you know, now why i've said the supply and demand balance is temporary, that means it's not permanent. permanent's a long time. anything short of forever then becomes temporary. so nobody really knows how long it will take to work through this bubble, but particularly in some of those states that have been harder hit. but today the negatives still outweigh the positives which is why you don't see a number of people rushing into buy even though there's this demand there. let me go through a few stats which are not in the poll. first, there's about two years' worth of supply on the marketplace if you add in homes that are about over 90 days deliberate, so -- delinquent, so there's a fair amount of supply, plenty of opportunity to buy. there's no reason to have to rush to buy because there's plenty of stuff available and will be for some time. secondly, there's a lot of uncertainty in america. all of our polls show consumers are concerned about their job.

ron described this as the blast radius of the recession, like 70% of the people have a friend or family member who have lost a job. so there's this uncertainty of will i still have a job. as a result, they're spending less money. there's also uncertainty over the near term direction of prices. so, you know, why buy today if you think the price is going to go down 5 or 10% in the next year? you might as well just wait a little while, there's no incentive to keep buying. household formation rates have dropped in this recession. some of that's due to the economic problems we have, so you don't have a bunch of new houses, people needing to buy houses, and average income has been flat for over a decade, and what will eventually drive long-term housing prices will be that average incomes go up. if average incomes don't go up, it won't drive housing prices up. now, there are some positives. affordability relative to income is certainly better today than it has been in the last four or five years, and it's about to

where its average is. secondly, housing costs, buying a house today is actually cheaper than building a house today in many markets, so it's cheaper than replacement costs. and lastly, interest rates are low. nobody can predict exactly how long it will take, but i do believe this is a temporary shift in that because the underlying demand and desire to own a house has not changed. let's shift, though, our focus then from housing to really trust in the role of government and business. and as in our prior polls, we continue to see the opinion that business and government are not trusted and that they need -- and americans want people to continue to work together. they think we're not, democrats are not working with republicans, business is not working with government, and they're sort of tired of watching the ideological and petty fights. my view is ideological fundamentalism is out, it's no longer popular, and we need -- and they want us to get on with it. so one of the interest things from this poll which ed talked about is that, is the lack of

belief in how this is actually helping them. so let's go true that. the trust deficit is bigger than our fiscal deficit, and it's growing faster, and it is more dangerous than our fiscal deficit because a participant democracy is based on the fact that people trust their institutions. unless we fix this trust deficit by working together and show we can make changes, it won't matter how much money we're in debt because people won't believe in our system. you also see, what's interesting in this poll, is they don't see that the policies being enacted are benefiting them. so as it relates to housing, as ed talked about, over three-quarters of them don't believe they benefited in a government policy which is amazing to me. 70% of the people who get a mortgage deduction don't think -- now, some people would say, well, not that many people pay taxes, but still 70% of the people who get a deduction don't

believe it's a value which is consistent with our other polls. in i think it was our fourth poll, only two-thirds of americans did not believe that the policies being enacted were going top of help to them. they thought that the things people were working on was not what they were interested in, it was basically to help the special interests and the rich people, and i think you continue to see that as it relates here. this poll, of course, shows that the current programs aren't valued, or at least you could ask the question whether they'd be valued if they go away. sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder. you also see the country about evenly split between whether we should continue to support it or not. so americans believe they're doing their part. this concept of self-definitely self-definitely -- self-determination, i can make it happen, i'm saving more money, they just don't feel that the government and business are reciprocating, so they're really

pleading, please, get your act together, focus on the things that we're focused on which are jobs, primary and secondary education and the economic competitiveness of america. so met me close with just -- let me close with just a request of you. you know, two years later what have these voices told us? they've told us that americans are optimistic, that they are not naive, that they know that there are tough decisions that have to be made, significant sacrifices lie ahead. they are willing to work hard to make compromises to make america stronger. and what they are demanding is that we as leaders do the same. so i want to go back to the purpose here of what the heartland monitor was which was to let their voices be heard, and i have the opportunity and the privilege to be a leader of what's a great american company. with that privilege comes a responsibility, a responsibility to speak out and let other people's voices be heard. that's what we're trying to do with this poll. everybody in this room is also a leader in your own way.

some people are thought leaders, leaders from organizations, you have people who read your writing, who follow what you do. as leaders we need you to step up and let their voices be heard as well because if we don't eliminate the trust deficit, we will never get the economy back on pace, and we won't be able to help all these people achieve the american dream. so thank you very much, have a great morning. [applause] >> good morning. i'm the economics correspondent for national journal. thank you so much for joining us and for what i hope will be a really lively and interesting discussion today, but that's mostly up to jade, not to me -- jared, not to me.

i'd like to introduce jared bernstein, he's the chief economist and economic adviser for vice president biden, the executive directer of the vice president's middle class task force which has done a lot of work, deep dives on questions of employment, the economy and this whole idea of what it means to be middle class. this has been jared's work for a long time, sort of a running theme of his distinguished economic career which includes stints prolific book writing and op-ed writing. i can also tell you he owns one of the less mediocre jump shots of the entire obama administration. [laughter] so thank you for joining us and, jared, let's just start with kind of can you give us an overview? what's going on with housing now? >> first of all, there are many basketball players in this administration who are much, much better than me, so let's just correct that for the record. i played with the president a couple times, and he can get around me with absolutely no

problem. but he's a lot younger than i am. i would say, so i'm just going to speak broadly, as jim asked, for a few minutes, and then we'll have a discussion, and i know we're going to have time for your questions as well. of all the issues i deal with at the white house, homeownership is one that evokes some of the strongest emotions, and i think you can, you can feel some of that this morning. if you read, i thought, the very readable supplement that the national journal did on this issue. obviously, unemployment does, too, but they're intimately related. a primary cause of the great recession and the elevated unemployment rate was the housing bubble, a massive asset bubble inflated by a massive failure of the system of housing finance, both private and public. and yet if you read the supplement, the national journal supplement, you get a strong sense, and i heard in some of tom's comments and others a very strong sense that there's more than dollar and cents

underwriting, securitization, gses, etc. feeding this question of the role of home homeownership in te economy and in the lives of americans. there are strong emotions at play here too. and i think if you want to bring the best policy thinking to the issue, you'd better take these feelings and sentiments into account. you've got to use your brain and your heart to think this one through. let me be a little bit self-referential. for years i was a single, mobile person living in expensive housing markets in the northeast, and i did the economics and concluded that representing was a much better deal. renting was a much better deal. and even after the wife and kids showed up, i still argued for renting. i should disclose that our children came around about the same time the economist, dean baker, started showing me graphs of home prices diverging sharply from rentals and from middle class incomes, that is as the bubble was inflating. but both my wife and our

accountant who happens to be my wife's sister, so i'm not sure that qualifies as an independent view -- [laughter] were pushing for homeownership, and now we live in this lovely, leaky, somewhat funky house on a cul-de-sac. and, in fact, i had the somewhat peculiar experience of writing these comments last night while i was running downstairs putting buckets underneath leaks. [laughter] kind of forcing you to think about homeownership in a very personal wayment but in recent days with -- way. but in recent days with spring in the air, i can sometimes get home from my white house job when it's light enough to see all the kids playing in the cul-de-sac. i've got the old cat sleeping on the porch, and i get a beer, and i sit out there and watch the kids play. full disclosure, i'm checking my blackberry every five seconds, but you get the picture, and it's a nice picture. at the same time, i work for a government that's supporting

about 90% of all home loans, and nobody believes that good. the housing market remains fragile if anything is, quote, bumping along the bottom as a goldman sachs research note mentioned the other day. and it was a classic market failure firing on just about every cylinder. top officials egged on by dense in both senses of the word argued that government regulation was unnecessary because the markets would self-correct. potential homeowners signed on to deals that only made sense if they suspended belief in the law of gravity, at least as it applied to home prices. and, of course, they were egged on by shoddy underwriting working with securitizers who had little reason under an originate to distribute model to worry about loan quality. and as we forthrightly stress in our white paper on gse reform, fannie and freddie got into the game too, late in the game more chasing the market down than up, but no one's blameless in this

drama. so i guess my simple point is that there are a lot of sides to this question of housing. i don't question at all that it's a piece of the american dream, but that dream cannot come true if homeownership is unsustainable. as my colleague on our housing team, jim parrot, says homeownership can be a ladder into the middle class. done badly, it can be a slide out of it. so like many in this room, we've been thinking about how to do it right considering owning and renting, the structure of housing finance, the role of the federal government. we don't have all the answers, and we'll keep working with policymakers of all stripes to find the best policy architecture to support affordable housing options, liquid mortgage market consistent with prudent pricing of risk and protections for taxpayers and consumers. and once we get that figured out, you're all invited over for a beer on my front porch. [laughter] jim, over