we're suggesting a cut from the 2011 levels of $142 billion. it's actually less than 4% of the amount of money that the government spent last year. well, we're still in the current year, but the fiscal year 2011. it would still spend more than we spent in 2010. so it's very hard to see how this could be fairly described as any kind of a draconian cut. it's a very modest cut in spending. and by 2012, the levels will be almost half a trillion dollars more than the levels of spending in 2008. but that's the first step is to cut spending in the immediate future in this next fiscal year. the second is to cap spending in the next several years. we've established statute thriments on how much the government could spend each year based on the level of spending in the budget resolution that i introduced on the senate floor which had almost all

republicans' support. i wish we had some democratic support and still hope we'll get some of the but the important thing about this budget resolution and these cap levels is, they reach a balance, not overnight. it takes nine years. but by controlling extend spending and adopting progrowth policies that encourage an expanding economy, we would, following these cap levels, be able to balance our budget and then finally we're advocating that as part of this package, as part of an arrangement by which we would agree to raise the debt ceiling, we would also pass in both the house and senate a balanced budget amendment to the constitution and send it off to the states. wwe would not suggest that the increase in the debt limit be contingent upon state adoption, but i am a confident that the states would in fact pass a balanced budget amendment to the constitution, if we here in congress would send it to them. it would have three big teaches and, again, the details of these -- it would have three big

features, and again the details would be outlays need to equal revenues. that is the fundamental definition of a balance. you don't run deficits. you make sure that you spend no more than you take n the sieged thing that some of us feel strongly about and i'm one of them, we ought to limit spending as a percentage of our economy so that the government doesn't keep growing at the expense of the private sector, which is exactly what happens when the government occupies too large a segment of our economy. and finally, we've advocated that we not create a mechanism that simply guarantees big tax increases in order to balance the budget and to do that we would like -- and we have included a supermajority requirement to raise taxes. so that a simple majority wouldn't be enough. it would require a supermajority, which would only occur presumably in truly extraordinary circumstances. see, i believe very strongly that we can have strong economic

growth and the job creation that we need. but to get there, we've got to create an environment here in washington, we've got to pass legislation and create an environment that encourages risk taking, encourages business formation, encourages new hiring, and we haven't been doing such a good job on that. one of the ways to do that is to put us on a sustainable, viable, fiscal path, and the cut, cap, and balance approach does that. we would raise the debt limit by the full amount the president has asked for, provided if he agree with us to put this country on a path to a balanced budget. i don't think that's asking too much. i think this is a way to achieve long-term fiscal success sustainability and just as importantly, it is a way to create an environment for the economic growth and job creation we need. mr. president, i suggest the absence of a quorum. mr. nelson: mr. president?

mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, i request consent to speak up to 20 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. nelson: mr. president, the budget committee chairman, the senator from north dakota, has in fact laid out a budget, and what it does is it brings us on a serious road toward budget balance by utilizing real numbers, not sleight of hand numbers, not budget fakery numbers, not a budget as a political document but a budget as an economic document, and it nips, indeed it savages the

annual deficit and the federal debt $4 trillion over ten years. this is real money, mr. president, and it is real money that is basically in balance between $2 trillion of spending cuts, which we've had all of those kind of talks going on down at the white house, and they seem to get to an agreement of $2 trillion of spending cuts. but when it comes to the revenue side, there seems to be an unwillingness to accept revenu revenues. mr. president, what i would like to do is elucidate further on the budget committee chairman's presentation yesterday or the day before of this budget on how

you can produce $2 trillion of new revenue and it not be considered as the just straight tax increases but instead of going to two other parts of the tax code that have been off limits to so much of the tax planning and tax cuts that we're talking about in the -- that we've been talking about. and of course i'm talking about the $14 trillion of tax expenditures that the federal government expends money by not having that tax revenue coming in to the tune of $14 trillion for special tax preferences over the course of the next decade.

now, if -- if that were not enough on itself, there is also an additional $1.5 trillion that is money that is stashed abroad that is not brought back into this country and therefore is not taxed that just a little portion of that $1.5 trillion over the next ten years could be brought in, used into productive beinactivities here in the u.s. but because it would be brought in as income, instead of like those 18,000 corporations in that one three-story building in the cayman islands, where all it is is a residence for a corporation to be a foreign corporation outside of the united states and, therefore, avoid u.s. taxes. now, if we're going to do

anything serious about lowering the deficit, we're going to have to try to stop this nonsense that's going on. all right, in the case of tax preferences, the tax expenditures, the $14 trillion, the senate, in an overwhelming vote a couple of weeks ago, actually attacked one of those tax preferences. remember when we voted something like 95-5 here to get rid of the subsidy on ethanol made from corn? it was a subsidy put in years ago to encourage ethanol made from corn as a way of blending it with gasoline that would then lessen our reliance on oil, particularly foreign oil. but now we know we can make ethanol from a whole bunch of other things, and it doesn't have to be making ethanol from

something that we eat, which all it was was driving the price of corn higher, and of course corn is being used as feed in the feed lots and, therefore, the meat products that the american consumer was getting at the grocery store were much higher in price because the very feed was. so we realized that here was a tax subsidy, a tax preference -- in other words, a tax expenditure that had outlived its usefulness. mr. president, there are $14 trillion of these tax preferences that are in effect for the next decade. and wouldn't it be a reasonable question to ask, could we but

reduce those tax preferences, just a little bit? if you reduced them just 17% of all those tax preferences, you would produce $2 there wil trilf that $1.5 trillion that's stashed overseas, if you could stop some of those laws that allow corporations to evade taxes by having a foreign corporation, if you could just tax a little bit of that, then we could even lower the percentage that we needed to get into the tax expenditures. now there are some tax expenditures that are obviously very popular and very necessary. charitable contributions, which includes contributions to

churches -- they get a charitable deduction that you deduct from your overall income in order to get your adjusted gross income; from that you subtract the various deductions that you have to get to your taxable income. and, clearly, charitable contributions is an activity that we want to encourage, and we encourage that in the tax code. another example is you own a home, you go to the bank, you get a mortgage, the mortgage payments that include principle and interest, you are able to deduct the interest that you are paying on that mortgage, and that is a tax preference. it was originally put in to encourage homeownership. well, should someone who has a $5 million home with a $4 million mortgage, should they be

getting the tax preference of the privilege of deducting all of that interest on a $4 million home loan mortgage as opposed to a $400,000 home mortgage? and i think these are questions. and if -- and so if you start just doing little things with this $14 trillion of tax preferences, you can make major, major reductions in the annual deficit. let me give you another example. oil and gas, there are a lot of tax preferences for the oil and gas industry. normally when a business goes in and provides capital to get a business up and going, that

capital equipment is allowed to be deducted over the life of that piece of equipment. well, so much of oil a and gas equipment is allowed to be written off in the very first year as an expense of doing business that that first year. in that first year. that's just one other example. and so if we really look at it, are we capable of taking $14 trillion of tax preferences -- some people call them tax loopholes, some people call them tax giveaways -- and, therefore, reduce those, especially the ones that are ineffective and inefficient, even though it's going to step on somebody's toes, some special interest that that is had a tax preference,

they're not going to like it. they want their goodies. but for the purpose of balancing the budget, for the purpose of bringing this deficit down so we can get on the road to fiscal order instead of the fiscal chaos that we have now, is that not a legitimate question to ask and a legitimate road to go down? no less, mr. president, than one of the senior economic advisors to president reagan -- his name is martin feldstein. a h espn a harvard -- he's harvd professor and was the chairman of the council of economic advisors to president reagan. i want you to see he says about reducing tax expenditures. and i quote -- "cutting tax expenditures is really the best

way to reduce government spending ... [eliminating tax expenditures does not increase the marginal tax rates or reduce the reward for saving, investment or risk. it would also increase overall economic efficiency by removing incentives that distort private spending decisions and eliminating or consolidating the large number of overlapping tax-based subsidies would also greatly simplify the tax filing. in short, cutting tax expenditures is not at all like other ways of raising revenue. end of quote. martin feldstein, well regarded in conservative circles. now, with this crisis looming,

why can't we get people to recognize that if you want balance, they have to give too, and here's a good way. i want to expand on this, another way that you can do it. you could actually, as the simpson-bowles commission suggested, you could lower these tax expenditures that martin feldstein is talking about. you could even take that additional revenue and pour it into the rest of the tax code and lower the tax rates for everybody, including corporate tax rates, and in the process you could also simplify the tax code into three tax brackets. all of the tax brackets lowered if you got rid of some of those tax expenditures.

so there are multiple ways that we can use this, and in the process then you are starting some serious tax reform. mr. president, the senator from north dakota has laid this out. he has explained this to the senate. he has the unanimous support of the majority of the senate budget committee. he has the near unanimous support of the entire majority in the u.s. senate. he has explained this to the president and to the vice president. and, of course, one of the easy ways to react to this is, well, there's not enough time. if we want to do major tax reform and tax simplification for the sake of our consumers, there sure is time, because we

could solve this debt ceiling crisis with a commitment down the line to doing just exactly what i've talked about. mr. president, as we're in this maelstrom of all these different ideas going around about what we're going to do before august 2 so that the debt ceiling can be raise and so that the country can pay its bills, there are disturbing things out there on the horizon that i've heard. and that is that social security is going to get whacked and that medicare is going to get whacked. by the way, what the budget committee is proposing does not touch social security or medicare. now, in the first place, social security is not in financial trouble in the forseeable future. it's not until the late 2030's

is when it starts to get into the difficulty. it's like about 2037 that it would not in that year be able to pay 100% of its payments. we can correct that before then. our problem is now. our problem is this next decade of bringing this budget on a path toward balance and bringing the annual deficit down to a much lower percent of gross domestic product. the budget that i have just outlined that is the work product of the senate budget chairman brings it down at the end of the decade to 1.8%, the deficit of g.d.p. any time you get below 3% of the

deficit being a percent of g.d.p., you're on the path to fiscal stability. and you're moving toward that position of balance, a position, by the way, that we enjoyed 11 years ago because we were in surplus. and 11 years ago we had had four years of surplus in a row. but we started enacting policies -- and i might say not with the vote of this senator -- enacting policies that caused the revenues to drop off considerably. and then of course when we got into the situation where we started increasing expenditures, for one reason or another increasing expenditures for national defense, for two wars and those were wars that we were not paying for with a revenue

source, we in fact were just going out and borrowing the money. and so this brings me now to medicare and social security. it might make some people in washington, d.c. feel good to whack medicare. it certainly wouldn't make this senator feel good. and it certainly wouldn't make an awful lot -- as a matter of fact, some 45 million senior citizens in this country that are on medicare, some of whom are living from hand-to-mouth from social security to social security check and from medicare reimbursement to medicare reimbursement for their health care, it certainly wouldn't make them feel good. and it's not going to do

anything immediately for the deficit that we're having to confront. so why trade off saying we're going to whack these two programs and not attack things like this? tax expenditures that are inefficient and don't produce what they're supposed to do in the incentives in the tax code t. simply doesn't make sense. and oh, by the way, isn't it interesting, isn't it almost ironic that the people that are now attacking medicare and saying that we have to whack it are the very people that were criticizing us two years ago in the health care bill when we did in fact whack $500 billion out of medicare in the health care

bill to put medicare on a more financially solvent program. and they were the very ones that were criticizing us for taking that money out of medicare. ladies and gentlemen of the senate, we've already taken $500 billion out of medicare, and so we ought to get down to the hard choices of budget-deficit reduction, which means cutting spending and getting rid of some of these tax expenditures so that we can start bringing our budget into balance. and, mr. president, my final subject is social security. now why in the world would you want to scare the bejabbers out of 45 million senior citizens in this country, some of whom literally are living hand-to-mouth, and from social security check to social

security check, and some of whom cannot afford even the cost of drugs, even partially provided for through medicare part-d, the prescription drug benefit. i don't think we want to do that. and as we get cloture votes to august 2 -- as we get closer to august 2, i'm hearing, and i hope every other senator is hearing from all of these senior citizens and these disabled workers that are relying on social security that they are concerned about washington's failure to get its house in order and that to do for us to fail to get the house in order, it's going to threaten the very source of income that they count on. and so, to risk a government default and to say that the only

way that you can do that is by taking it out of social security, which is not going to do anything for you in reducing the deficit over the next decade, which is the problem at hand. yesterday the president was asked if he could tell the folks at home no matter what happens that social security checks are going to go out the day after the government is supposedly going to go into default, and you remember what the president said? he said, i cannot guarantee that those checks go out on august 3 if we haven't resolved this issue, because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it. and so the people that are relying on a fixed income of social security to survive, social security payments are more than just a government

statistic. for them, social security is more than just a federal outlay or an entitlement expenditure. there are almost four million social security beneficiaries in my state, and i can tell that you that social security pays rent, it pays for the groceries, and it helps pay their doctor bills over and above what is provided as well as their drugs. it helps pay for that over what's provided in medicare. and so, as we try to come together, let's get out. it's interesting these speeches that i hear out of it, it's your fault, and it's your fault, and it's the other guy's fault, and

it's so partisan, and it's so ideologically rigid. the only way you're going to solve something that's so tangled up as this is is that people of goodwill are going to have to be willing to respect the other fellow's point of view and come together and build consensus to find a workable solution. and so, as we get closer -- and you can almost hear the background music. it's getting more ominous day by day, as the clock ticks down to august 2. and so there's something that we can do about that. the threat that social security payments could be delayed should not be used as a weapon to force a slash-and-burn cut to these entitlements.

and so, i said 45 million earlier. it's actually 56 million retirees, mr. president, that rely on these payments. and what the recent congressional research service states in a report says -- quote -- "under normal procedures, treasury pays social security benefits from the general fund and offsets this by retkaouplg an ekweuf -- by redeeming an equivalent amount of the social security trust fund's holdings of government debt." treasury now may need to issue new public debt to raise the cash needed to pay the benefits, but treasury may be unable to issue new public debt if the debt ceiling is not raised. and social security benefits

could be delayed or jeopardized. so, perhaps what we ought to do is in acts of legislation that -- is enact some legislation that creates a list of priorities for payment in the event that we hit a debt ceiling. and you could clearly put social security payments way down the list. and those lists could also show that favored treatment is given to the members of the armed forces and other elements of our national security apparatus. in the past the president and the congress have agreed to exempt social security from the debt ceiling in order to ensure that the payments go out to social security recipients. as a matter of fact, it was as recent as 1996, the treasury

reported that it had insufficient cash to pay social security benefits in march of that year. and in response, the congress then passed, and it was a bipartisan congress, it was headed by a majority of the republican party, and there was a democratic president, president clinton, and they passed and was signed into law a measure that provided the treasury with temporary authority to issue securities to the public in the amount equal to the social security benefit payments due. mr. president, i ask for four additional minutes. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, the senator may proceed. mr. nelson: and i will conclude, mr. president, by i wanted to point out that after that was

done in 1996, then congress later extended the borrowing authority for an additional two weeks. well, i believe that we should use what we know works and not play games with social security benefits. and so i am introducing some legislation, and i'm introducing it today. it's called the social security benefit protection act. and what it suggests is the way we ought to go. now, i know this legislation we're not going to take up and pass, but i have got a means by which i can get this idea out, and what it does is guarantee that the social security administration will be able to continue paying social security benefits to retirees, survivors and disabled workers.

regardless of what happens to this political gridlock here in washington. similar to the 1996 legislation, this legislation gives the treasury department temporary authority to issue new debt to ensure the payments can be made to social security beneficiaries , but only to the extent necessary to cover the needs of the social security program. and so i want to urge our colleagues to try to come together and give the assurances to millions of retirees that they are not going to be whacked, and especially so they are not going to be whacked out of political gridlock by all the rest of us for these excessive

reasons. and i urge my colleagues to take a look at the ideas in this legislation that i have filed. mr. president, i yield the floor and, mr. president, i would ask for recognition again. mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. nelson: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the consideration of s. res. 233 submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 233, honoring the men and women of the nasa administration space shuttle program on reaching the

historic milestone of the 135th and final flight of the space transportation system. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate proceeds to the measure. mr. nelson: mr. president, because i was on the floor, the senate remarkable staff that does this so much in a routine fashion asked me to do this, and of course it was with enormous emotion as i watched atlantis soar into the heavens last friday. this is a fitting tribute to the people that have made this program possible for 30 years, 135 flights, not without tragedy, for we lost two space shuttles and we lost 14 souls, and now we're going to a

vigorous new program with new, more efficient and safer rockets that will take us into the heavens. and so, mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate and any statements relating to the matter be placed in the record as if read. the presiding officer: without objection, it shall be so at the senator's request. mr. nelson: mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. brown: mr. president, i appreciate the comments from the senior senator from florida about social security. in my state and not much different in rhode island, the state of the presiding officer, the average social security benefit is $14,000 a year. a huge percent -- roughly, i

believe, i think about half of social security beneficiaries in ohio rely on social security for more than half of their income, and when i hear proposals here that senator nelson also is speaking against to make significant cuts to force seniors getting $1,000 a month from social security and letting off hedge fund managers who are paying significantly lower tax rates than most people in the middle class, that the sacrifice is aimed toward the middle class and aimed toward seniors and not spread more evenly among people who are the most privileged of society, and it bothers me as it does i know the presiding officer. i rise today about a similar issue about a social security issue also calling on my colleagues in the senate and in the house of representatives to practice what we preach. presently, the congress and the white house are working to find agreements on a way to balance

the budget, as we should. i was part of the effort in the 1990's during the clinton years to -- that we balance the federal budget. in fact, during that -- those eight years, we took a terrible deficit and high unemployment, and during those eight years, even though taxes for upper income people were raised to 39%, we saw 21 million private sector jobs created, we saw incomes going up, and we saw president clinton left office with the highest budget surplus in american history. we saw the policies of the next eight years and what they did to our country. tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of wall street, bad trade agreements and giveaway to the drug and insurance companies and two unpaid-for wars and where that got us to this budget situation, exacerbated by this recession in the last two years or three years. so, mr. president, we clearly need to move forward in balancing the budget.

some washington politicians want to balance the budget by cutting the social safety net upon which millions of hard-working americans rely. i oppose those efforts in times of fiscal belt tightening. members of congress should also share the burden of reducing that deficit. that's why i have introduced the congressional retirement act of 2011. the amendment is simple. as congress and the white house seek an agreement on a deficit reduction package, members of congress cannot permit themselves to receive benefits denied to ordinary working americans while the wealth of members of congress varies, there is no doubt we receive a healthy salary and benefits compared to millions of american families who don't. members of congress also have an added benefit. we can access our federal retirement benefits early whether we serve as few as five or as many as 25 years. millions of seniors who have worked their lives in factories, worked their lives on -- in construction, worked their lives working the floor of retail

outlets, department stores or diners, millions of seniors can't do the same. for too many americans, social security has become their retirement plan. as pensions disappear and 401-k's plummet. all members of congress are able to collect their pensions at any time starting at age 50 if they serve 25 years. most haven't by the age of 50, obviously, but once serving 25 years, they can receive full pensions. they have served as few as five years, they can collect their pensions beginning at 62. so 25 years of congressional service and members of congress can receive pensions immediately upon retirement. 62 -- at 62, if they serve five years, they can receive a pension, not a large one at that point but a pretty decent pension at 62. but what about a youngstown steelworker, what about a columbus store clerk, what about a cincinnati nurse, what about a toledo sheet metal worker? what about an akron -- an akron

worker in an auto plant, in a rubber plant? do they get that option? of course not. they have to wait until 65 or 62 and a discounted amount to receive retirement benefits. no longer, mr. president, should any congressman, no longer should any congresswoman, no longer should any senator be treated differently from other americans. that's what the congressional retirement act of 2011 would ensure. this bill would amend the federal employees retirement system and the civil service retirement system to directly tie current and future members of congress access to their federal benefits, their federal retirement benefits, tie it to the social security retirement age. it's that simple and it's bipartisan. senator mccaskill of missouri, a democrat, senator johnson of south dakota, a democrat, are cosponsors. the house companion introduced by representative bobby shilling of illinois, a republican, has seven republican cosponsors. the idea is endorsed by the conservative national taxpayers union who calls it -- quote --

"one of the few serious amendments to reform congressional pensions in recent memory." i don't agree with the national taxpayers union on that many issues. they are too -- too willing to cut benefits for the middle class, in my view, but together in this issue we share the belief that members of congress shouldn't be treated like any other citizen. there is no reason it benefits -- there is no reason that the benefits of being a mechanism congress should be more generous than being a member of the middle class. according to reports, 13 sitting senators, 31 members of the house of representatives today have accrued annual pensions worth at least $50,000 if they were to retire today annually. meanwhile, american workers age 65 or older receive a median private pension payment of about about $8,000 a year. elected officials don't frankly -- i think you will look around this body and you know that most house members and senators -- at least a mum of them -- simply don't know enough people who work in construction, who work in a retail store, who

work in a diner, who work in a manufacturing plant, who work in a hotel cleaning rooms, who stand up all day as a cosmetologist or as a barber, working in jobs where their bodies simply can't work until the age of 70. members of congress, dressing like this and doing what we do, can often work -- obviously, if the voters say so -- can obviously work into our 70's. it's not that hard for most of us. but while we go to work in a suit and tie, tens of millions of american workers work in factories and mines and fields and diners and hotels and simply -- their bodies simply cannot work until the age of 70. so when i hear my colleagues say that we should raise the social security retirement age, i think of people working in the service industry, i think of people doing demanding work in agriculture and shop floors and construction and hairdressers and all that. why should -- why should they wait longer for their retirement

security, albeit it's too small to begin with in many cases. it's minimal often at best, but why should they wait longer for their retirement security than members of congress? so for those that think about raising the retirement age, think about for social security, think about raising the retirement age for ourselves. if -- and there is simply no reason we as members of congress, no matter how many years of service, should be able to retire at full pension before social security beneficiaries in this country. why, mr. president, should members of congress be treated better than a steelworker or store clerk or a nurse or a hotel worker? mr. president, i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. brown: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. brown: i ask unanimous consent to dispense with the quorum. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: i ask unanimous consent, mr. president, that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on thursday, july 14. that following the prayer and the pledge, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day. that following my leader remarks -- any leader remarks, the senate proceed to a period of morning business for one hour with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees with the republicans controlling the first half and the majority the second half. and that following morning business, the senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to h.r. 2055, the

military construction, veterans affairs and related agencies appropriation bill postcloture. further, that all time during adjournment, morning business and recess count postcloture in the motion to proceed to h.r. 2055. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: mr. president, we hope to get an agreement to begin consideration of the military construction appropriation bill early tomorrow. mr. president, if there is no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it adjourn under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until 9:30 thursday, bastille day, 9:30 thursday, bastille day,

>> this is the great hall here at the library of congress, the largest library in the world. did you ever wonder if you read one book a day in this library, how long it would take you? well, you'll find answers in c-span's original documentary, the library of congress, airing this monday night. we'll tour the iconic jefferson building, including the great hall and the reading room, show treasures found in the rare books and special collections including the original library, and presidential papers from george washington to calvin coolidge and learn how the library is using new technology to preserve its holdings for future generations. join us for the library of

congress this monday night at eight eastern and pacific on c-span. ', and to read a book every day here, it would take over 60,000 years. >> next, an afl-cio forum. it includes al franken and sandra levin. this is about two hours. >> well, i guess we can get started. welcome to the forum today. i want to thank you for coming. thank you to the sponsors, afl-cio, demos, and the economic policy institute.

i'm bob herbert. i sometimes wonder what universe the politicians in washington are traveling in. we have a full-blown employment crisis in the country. it's a true disaster, but that's not the sense you'd get if you follow the comings and goings of the movers and shakers at the white house on capitol hill. i've been talking to people who have been out of work for the longest time, and whose families are really suffering. missing mortgage payments, credit cards, missing meals. one man who was out of work for a year and is married and the father of a 5-year-old told me what it was like last christmas when the family had a tree, but had no presents to put under it. this was a man in his 30s in ohio in 2011, but he sundayed like a figure from one of those old depression era hollywood movies. even though we didn't give gifts

and everything, we still had each other, still had a roof over our heads, so we were blessed in that regard. americans are learning in this hideous economic environment to be thankful for small favors. there was period when he was so far behind in bills, he went downtown columbus to donate blood just to collect the $50 they give to donors. i thought of it as additional income, he said, and we needed it. all over america, people who thought they were anchored in the middle class, are facing an abyss. poverty is one of the few true growth sectors, but the poor are not talked about anymore. there must be close to 50 million poor people in america now, but you hear almost nothing about them from the politicians and mainstream media. the poor are the invisibles in our society. now the poor and the middle

class are competing for the same jobs. when mcdonalds announced in the spring they would fill 50,000 new jobs, most very low paying and many of them part time, more than a million people applied. on friday, we had yet another horrendous jobs report with more than 14 million americans officially counted as unemployed, we created just 18,000 jobs in june, and very few of them were good jobs. the jobless rate grows only to 9.2% because the number of people counted in the active labor force in june declined by more than a quarter of a million, yet another bad sign. the reality, of course, is much worse than the official statistics would indicate. young people in our society are in danger of becoming a lost generation as far as economic well being is concerned. for perhaps the first time ever in the united states, they will

likely earn less and experience a lower standard of living than their parents' generation. college grads are working at jobs that don't require a college degree, thus pushing people with just a high school diploma or less into truly menial work or out of the labor force entirely. men and women 50 and older who lost their jobs are facing the very real fear that they will never work again. millions of people of all ages working part time because they can't find full time jobs in what we used to call fringe benefits, guaranteed pensions, health insurance, paid vacations are going the way of the typewriter and carbon paper. we're in the throes of a long term unemployment meltdown, and the need for urgent action could not be clearer, but what are they doing here in washington's universe?

are they doing all that can to create millions of new jobs? are they in a desperate rush to reinvigorate this faltering economy? no. they are engaged in a mind boggling destructive battle over dualing austerity agendas like they are unaware of the terrible suffering that's out there. pick your poisen. the president's misguided let's weaken the social contract approach or the unvarnished make the richard rich even richer scenario favored by the republicans, and both plans will further weaken an economy already on life support. jerry bernstein wrote in the "huffington post" that, "washington needs to shift from the long term debt obsession to the more immediate jobs problem. to do otherwise at this point

would be deeply irresponsible." he's right, but i don't know if anybody's listening. it's as if our top leaders are incapable of understanding we cannot get out of this terrible crisis by doubling down on the economically druttive policies that -- destructive policies that got us into it in the first place, or maybe they understand that only too well. if there is one thing i hope we emphasize during our program today is that you don't put out configuration by spraying it with what started the fire. we are here to take a more constructive approach, so let's get started. i'll introduce our panelists. [applause] make sure where everybody is. i'm delighted that congressman sandy levin, a real champion of

working families could be with us. congressman levin got a start as a labor lawyer in detroit and now served in the house for more than 30 years, he has never abandoned the fight for working people either here in the united states or abroad. he is the past chairman of the ways and means committee and now its ranking democrat. welcome, congressman. [applause] we are fortunate also to have with us heather boushey at american progress working on labor market issues especially the stunning impact of the great depression on workers and their families. heather has worked as an economist at the joint economic committee at u.s. of congress, center of policy and research, and the economic policy institute. she has always been a powerful and articulate voice for progressive economic policies, and we welcome her here today.

[applause] rich trumka is here. some of you may have heard of him. [laughter] he is the president of the afl-cio and one of those rare individuals who really knows the ways of washington, but also understands from long personal experience the real lives of real working people in the real world. rich came out of the coal fields of pennsylvania and went on to be a lawyer and true policy expert -- excuse me -- he carries the concerns of working people with him wherever he goes, and that includes to the white house serving as a member of the president's jobs council. we're thrilled to have him here today. welcome, rich. [applause] speaking of the real worlds, we also have a couple of workers who will be telling us firsthand what it's like to be out there in this troubled era.

i spent a little time with both of them while i was in ohio where i also got to spend time canvassing with working america whose folks go door to door new yorking on doors and asking people about their experiences. the first thing that amazes me about working america is that anybody talks to them because if somebody came to my door cold, sayonara. [laughter] people do talk this them, so i don't know what the secret is, but i was there, people talk to them, and you'd be amazed at the percentage of people struggling either they're out of work, having trouble making their ends meet or their kids having trouble finding a job and can't pay off their college loans, so it was a real eye-opener spending time with working america, and i appreciate the help they gave to me. so, anyway, these couple workers that we have here, one is shonda

from yellow springs, ohio. in 2009 with no warning, she and several others were laid off from a company in dayton that designed air-conditioning units. she's still unemployed and set to lose unemployment insurance next month. because of impending budget cuts, she could lose the home health care aid who provides crucial assistance to shonda's mom who is suffering from dementia. we appreciate you taking the time, we know it's not easy, but we appreciate you coming out here. welcome, shonda. [applause] >> i am delighted that bob stein is also on the panel, a father of three who lost his job last year. after working 20 years in steals and six as a cues toadian as a parochial school, he was fired

for a cleaning service. i went to a catholic school in jersey, so the nuns would be upset to hear he call it a public school, it's a parochial school. he was fired and replaced for a cleaning service, and eel talk about his hunt for a new job which has not been easy, so welcome, bob, and we welcome you. [applause] the empty chair there is not because anybody feared showing up to debate us today. al franken fears nobody. [laughter] he's going to be here later, and he's going to wrap things up for us. senator franken grew up in st. louis park, minnesota, was a comedy writer, author, and radio talk show host. i wish he'd let it rip when tee comes here and do a routine about the shenanigans he's sense since being in washington. he probably won't do that, but

anyway, senator franken will be with us, so we're looking forward to that. let's gets busy. we'll do some work here. since we're talking about the real world, bob, why don't i just start with you. exactly how long have you been looking for a job this last time, and give us a sense of what that's been like. >> i've been unemployed since may of 2010. my background is primarily in sales, and i think that's where my skill sets bets, so i -- best, so i try to find a job since that time. when you apply for a job that will pay you a living wedge, which i'm not asking for anything exorbitant by any means, there's 60-70 applicants for every job, and it's difficult to rise to a top of a pile like that when there's other people who may be better qualified, have college degrees

or beyond so you do the best you can to make a good impression and answer the questions properly, put together a good resumé that's very professional, and it's just very frustrating because almost all your job applications nowadays are done over the internet through the various websites, and it's, from what i understand, it's very easy to turn people down. i've even been told they go through the resumés mechanically, that a person doesn't look at a lot of the resumés so it's just frustrating, and it's hard when you know you have a good skill set, know you're a hard workers, you know you have the right work ethic, and you can't find a job. it's very frustrating. >> you had mentioned what it was like going to job fairs saying it's depressing. why is that? >> well, it is because you bet the feeling when you're at one of these, they are more for advertising than to find good employees. they make a bike deal of it -- big deal of it, list the people

there, and you go, and you find the jobs are low paying or that they seem like they are not really looking for someone, and you get that feeling when you talk to someone whether they are really engaging you and really trying to find out what you have to over rather than just handing you a bit of information or a brochure saying, you know, we'd certainly like you to apply. it's very frustrating, and i'm not impressed that it's a great way to find a job. >> shonda, how long have you been out of work, and what's your job search been like? >> i've been out of work since december 2009. i've been unemployed since -- >> pull the mike closer to you. there you go. >> december 2009. it's been hectic. when you came out to go and search for a job, i was employed ten years at my last position, and it wasn't the same. like bob said, you have to go over the internet.

you submit resumé after resume. i've gone to job fairs. the last job, you know, i turned in, told them my qualifications, was positive, and i was told that 450 people were applying for one position. >> woah. >> still upbeat, i'm lucky to be that one. you call back, can i contact you, send you more of my reference, and, you know, they said, no, please don't contact me. that's what it is. i can talk my way into a job. all i want is a fair share, a decent job, safe environment. i want to work. i have worked for 20-something years. six months after leaving high school, i got a job in the engineering field, and until

2009 -- it's not like i don't want to work. i loved work. >> what are you going to do when your unemployment checks run out? >> honestly, i'm not a person who lives in the here and now. i've been thinking for this for the past year. i'm scared. i don't know what i'm going to do. i have a mother that i have to take care of. i may lose the benefits i do have. i have a home that i have paid off. i have thought i was living the dream, go to work, you know, get a job, take care of your family and you're going to be okay, and it's not like that anymore. i want the american dream. so many of us out there, i guess i'm going to have to get four to five jobs to make what i was making before, but then who's going to take care of my mom? >> congressman levin, millions of american families are going under in this vast sea of unemployment, and yet it really

does not seem that there is the sense of urgency that's required here in washington, on capitol hill, or at the white house. can you explain that? i mean, do you agree with that, and if so, why is that the case? >> in a way it's difficult to follow bob or shonda, isn't it? i don't think anybody can tell the story quite like you do, and i think the problem is that as you said, you used the word "urgency." there isn't a sense of urgency about the unemployed in this country, and i just want to go over a few facts and figures to kind of illustrate how the two of you really represent millions of people.

14 million, over 6 million have been unemployed for 26 weeks. it's historically the highest number on record, and what's happening is that this program is going to expire at the end of the year for most people. because the emergency fund ends, and those who are on one tier can continue. there are four tiers, but after that you're out in the cold, and as to the state program, the provisions that we put in place until the end of december will go out of existence, and they helped the stage because there was 100% funding, and we changed

the period of so-called lookback from two to three years. that goes away, so essentially you have millions of people who are facing what you're facing. i come from michigan, and i want to be very blueprint to show you -- blunt to show you the lack of urgency, the sense of lack of community -- this is the state of michigan. recently, they changed the basic state program from 26 to 20 weeks. >> what would it take to develop a sense of urgency among our elected officials? i mean, what do your colleagues say behind the scenes when you're just having, you know, random discussions about the employment situation? >> i'm on ways an means, and the majority of republicans passed a bill out of committee that would

have given the 30 billion that was there in the federal program to the states to do what they wanted to in terms of unemployment. they could either provide the benefits, or they could lower taxes on employers and give the unemployed nothing, so you asked me what it's going to take? there's app article i think just yesterday about the visible -- invisible unemployed, and one of the problems is that now the unemployed receive checks through the mail or true their cards. twenty years ago, i went with a reporter, and we went to an office in madison heights, and he interviewed people, and they were in line, bob, and he was able to see -- this was 20 years ago -- that these were a very

diverse group, and he wrote up the stories, and they were on the front page of the news paper, and i would just ask reporters if i might say so, media people, to do what they did. they're going to have to go out and find those who are unemployed, and you mentioned the difficulty. there's also age discrimination. there's age discrimination. because the applications come in in these huge numbers, and age is indicated on the application, and when you get two to three applicants for one job, it's very easy to clearly not obey the law. you just tip the younger ones. what do we do?

i think what we have to do is do what you're doing here today, all of us, and we've got to somehow elevate the issue. when we raised our voices once the bill came out of the committee of ways and means, and we challenged them to bring it to the floor, they didn't do that. because we spoke up. we said to them dare put that on the floor. dare let people vote to take 30 billion away from the unemployed and give it to the states to lower taxes and not give it to the unemployed. >> one more question to sort of hammer home the whole idea of how serious this situation is. so i mean, this is, as we all know, the worst employment crisis since the great

depression, and give us a sense of how it's affecting your workers, and what you're hearing when you go around the country talking to members of the afl-cio? >> well, first of all, let me introduce or executive vice president, arlene hope-baker is here. thank you for being here. i think it goes from mild anger to hostility? a lot of places. workers who have been out of work when first laid off, they have high expectations about getting a job very, very quickly, and that hope as shonda says fades, and as it fades, it turns to anger, and then anger they look around and say who is working for us. right now you have in some areas over 20% of unemployment in the construction traits, manufacturing has been hit very, very hard. our members are getting not only laid off, but they are having their benefits taken away from them, and if you look at the

fights we've seen throughout the states, the republican governors used a budget deficit vice as an excuse to try to take away collective bargaining and the means for most people to be able to climb the economic ladder in any sense of the way. there's anger towards that, and actually it caught fire. you know, we've been trying to have a date about clerkive bar -- debate about collective bargaining in the united states for decades, and we were unsuccessful in doing it. scott walker handed it to us, and we were unsuccessful and 70% of the people in the united states believed they should have the right to collective bargaining as a ladder to increase themselves economically. there's anger, and i think it's going to be difficult for us to motivate our members because i think there's a lot of frustration with both parties. of course, there's no comparison when it comes to democrats and

republicans about who stands with workers and who stands with the rich, but there's frustration that more isn't being done, and i think the time for excuses is about over. people don't care why it's not getting done. they only care that it's not getting done, and i quite frankly happen to agree with them. this is a choice. this is about priorities. this is about will. this is about wanting to do something. we can create jobs if we choose to do it, but so far as a nation, we haven't chosen to do it, and i think that's not only regrettable, but i think we've created a generation of workers right now that'll never recover in their working lifetime for what they've lost during this period of time. >> heather, the big argument in dc right now is allegedly over raising the debt limit, but what's really going on is our competing plans about budget cutting, which amounts

essentially to disinvestment, so given the economic realities, can you just sort of outline for us the differences that we can expect to result from on the one hand investment in the economy if the politicians were willing to do something like that or on the other hand, this budget cutting that they're talking about so much. >> well, thank you, bob. i want to start in my answer to that question where basically rich led off that, you know, this is a choice. the unemployment that we have in front of us is something that policymakers can do something about, and as the economist up here on the panel, i want to lead the audience with one thing which is that if we do -- what we do that is good for workers in this economy will also be good for the economy overall.

so often here in washington, and that's how the deficit conversations are going, there's as though there's this big difference to deal with the deficit because that's good for the economy, but dealing with unemployment isn't, and, in fact, that could not be more wrong. until we get americans back to work, we will not be able to get our fiscal house in order. your question about what the difference between investing in the economy versus addressing these budget woes, it's not a -- it's such a false -- it's such a false choice. you know, for starters, we're in the situation today because of the collapse of the housing bubble and ensuing financial crisis and all the big acronyms and words we learned so much about over the last few years, but that collapse of the housing bubble left a really big gap in our economy. i'm sure many of you here in this room today know that the middle class has been squeezed for decades, and one of the ways

that people ended up dealing with that squeeze was by taking on more debt. a lot of that debt was made possible by deregulation, so there's two sides of the coin there, but as middle class families were squeezed and took on that debt, and after that bubble collapsed, we have a big gap in our economy because people don't have the money, they don't have as much home equity lines, and now they don't have as many jobs, and until we fill that gap with investments like in education, infrastructure, or as an economist, i don't care what you invest in, let's just start doing it. until we fill that gap, we're not going to be able to get back to full employment, and until we're back at full employment, we're not actually going to be able to deal with the budget challenges because as i'm sure bob and shonda know, if you are out of work, you don't pay as much many taxes because you don't have that income, and you need benefits, those unemployment benefits. that's a big piece of what's going in the budget right now. until we push through that, get

folks back to work, get the economy back on track, foe sussing on the deficit will only further push our economy in the wrong direction, and my biggest fear right now is if we do -- if the things sort of work out in the way it seems to be every morning when i read the paper and get really mad over my kitchen table, if things keep going that way and cut back on spending and don't invest in unemployment insurance, if we have some deal to address the debt ceiling crisis that cuts spending too quickly in the short term, that's only going to raise unemployment. it's only going to lead to a worse ping of our situation -- worsening of our situation that exacerbates the budget deficit. it's a downward spiral unless we push it. it's thanks to the leadership of congressman levin and senator franken and others to see we

need to go in that direction. >> can i give just a couple quick examples? >> sure. >> there's build america bonds. over million dollars in bonds have been used in its infrastructure, and, you know, somebody got up on the floor of the house and said the problem with that program is that the money goes to the states and local governments. yeah, i mean, that's where construction money goes. [laughter] they want us to bid out all the contracts in washington? [laughter] and they've refused to renew it. it went out of business. at least 25% of the construction workers in southeast michigan are out of work, and it's probably closer to 35%-40%. that's -- that hasn't happened since the depression.

another example -- i was in fraser, michigan, and we went to a program, and the money came through a federal program to the state's reinvolving funds for water projects, and it put people back to work, and it was interesting because it's a nonpartisan group, but there were republicans and democrats in terms of their affiliations, city officials there, who were saying what a wonderful program. we could not have done it without the federal government, and i stand there and i said, telg that to washington. tell that to some of the people in your own parties. those are two vivid examples of the need, and now they talk about bringing up a highway bill that has $50 billion less than provided the last time we passed

it. if we don't have growth, we will not solve the unemployment problem. it's just -- it has to have that ingredient. >> rich, i'll double back to you. you have all these construction workers and manufacturing workers, jobless at the moment, and we have, if i understand it correctly, something like a $2 trillion deficit in terms of our national infrastructure needs now, i mean, to me, this seems like a slam dunk, but apparently it doesn't seem like a slam dunk to policymakers so talk a little of what we could be doing in terms of infrastructure and what your members are actually ready, willing, and totally able to participate in. >> yeah. first of all, the infrastructure deficit, old infrastructure, stuff that's existing according to the society of american engineers is $2.2 trillion, and

then we have another $2 trillion deficit for 21st century that's going forward doing smart grid high speed rail and things like that to get us into the 21st century and keep us competitive, so you're looking at a $4 trillion deficit, and what was the republican response to that? cut 30% out of an already anemic infrastructure, so if we come together and a number businesses, the chamber of commerce agrees with us, labor agrees, virtually everybody agrees that we can, should, and must invest in infrastructure in order to get the country going. it's a job creator. if we have strong by-american provisions, it has downstream implications because you have manufacturing, transportation, design, all of those things that get pumped from this stuff.

now, we're also looking at doing a couple of things. one, the labor movement itself. we're talking about doing a $10 billion fund from our pension funds that we can leverage five or six times and a $20 million re-infrastructure thing for buildings, to do buildings. in fact, we're going to do this building to make it more green, make it more efficient, so we're taking our pension money and doing that, but we can't do this without the federal government leading because we can't get up to scale, and what you have is on one side, you have the republicans saying we will increase any tax -- we won't increase any tax whatsoever. now, think about that. if that's the case that we never increase taxes again, america is at its zenieth. it must start down. infrastructure continues to decay.

the more the infrastructure decays, the less competitive we are. the less competitive we are, the more jobs go overseas. the more manufacturing jobs go overseas, the more research and development goes overseas. the more research and development leaves, the less competitive we are, and we're in a death spiral. we need to break that out, and break the ideological strangle hold that the house extremists have on the house. infrastructure's good for the country. it creates jobs. it makes us more competitive. it does everything that's right about this, and yet they're saying no, and we find that very, very disappointing. we're trying to do stuff privately. we're working with a federal infrastructure bank to create that, leverage federal money with private money to get these projects going on the scale we need it done with to make our economy competitive and create jobs. >> right.

congressman levin, on the infrastructure bank, there's been a number of proposals on the hill to establish such a bank. one, are you in favor of establishing a infrastructure bank, and two, are any of the proposes going anywhere? >> answer is yes to the first and no to the second. >> oh? >> i'll tell you why just very briefly, bob. we're in a crisis that has to be resolved, and the basic issue is whether we essentially say to everybody go it alone or we have a public-private partnership. that's really the basic issue, and the infrastructure bank is tieded into this because what it means is the kind of partnership, rich, that you were talking about, and it's interesting that groups come and

say to us, this is in the private sector, do something about this stalemate, but when they go back home, they don't raise their voices to help us break it. >> bob, i want to go back to something that congressman said about age discrimination. older workers who have not been hit the worst in terms of layoffs and firings, but who are really up against it if they are out of work trying to get back into the labor market. now, you're 60 years old. what are your views about what's going on with older workers, and what are you hearing from others whether they are friends, colleagues, neighbors, or anything else who may be 50-55 or older and out of work? >> bob, the thing that concerns me more than anything else is that for a long time e heard over and over again that its illegal to discriminate with

regards to age, and you believe that when you are younger and working, but when you hit that age and go through difficulties, it's obvious that it is a factor, and what makes is frustrating is i read article after article about how businesses are losing older workers, and it's really affecting their bottom line, losing a brain drain, losing people with experience, and people that have experience to come up with solutions to problems, yet -- that's why a lot of older employees don't get laid off maybe as heavily at some other people, but when you're unemployed and you're older, that doesn't seem to apply. it works against you because if you're applying for a job, and there's 40-50 applicants, and 15 of them are under 40 and have college degrees or maybe advanced degrees, and then there's bob stein, guess who gets the job? it's frustrating because you

know your life experiences, you know you're experienced in solving problems. it should be a real factor, and it should be an asset to an organization that has a lot of younger employees that don't have a lot of experience because i can remember 20-30 years ago, that was a huge factor, you know, having someone up older in the chain that's a sales manager or vice president with experience so pass that on to younger employees to make them better sales people. it doesn't seem to be a factor today. >> and, shonda, is does seem that -- it does seem that workers in general are being treated -- excuse me -- with less respect than we have known over the last several decades. you were let go, and you haven't done anything wrong, your employers made it clear you didn't do anything wrong, and yet, explain to us how it was

you were dismissed and how quickly you were off the premises. >> first i also found out i was old, part of the group of the classification of being older. >> old is really relevant. [laughter] >> trust me. >> you're very young. [laughter] >> i found out that if you've been unemployed for over a year, no one wants you too, that's another point that i want to bring up, totally unfair, but on that day, i walked in, sat down, i was told i was going to be put on a big project so i was going through the process of transferring and getting stuff ready, and my supervisor knocked on my cubicle and said, could you follow me? i looked at him and said is something the matter? i'm trying to get this all set up and ready to go, and he says, no, shonda, follow me, and i look at him and i said are you going to lay me off? he didn't say anything.

i remember coming out of my mouth going, wow. i followed him, and went down and the hr was on the conference call, and i didn't hear half the things that she said, all i heard was you're going to be laid off. you know, you need to get this ready. i turned around, my supervisor said a couple few things to me, we went upstairs, i was gathering a couple of my things, and i was walked out the door. >> on the spot? you were not even allowed to come back the next day or -- >> no. >> it was over? >> it was over. it was basically over, and, you know, i gave them ten years of my life, my loyalty, and i was just scooted out the door, and i've heard worse. people not even, you know -- i

don't understand. lots of company have lost respect for their employees. there's no reason for it. ..

what we see each and every month there's a survey done by the federation business is by no means a left-wing organization they represent small business owners all across america and month after month for years now as the survey these business owners our biggest problem is a sales and in fact and fair june survey, they actually finally brought that point into their summary and start saying hey people are really worried about demand and sales and they're kind of things i think you need to do if i were clean and could do whatever i wanted what really focus on demand coming and you could do that in a whole bunch of ways, infrastructure investment, more investment in education, keep more money out there, aid to the states, keep teachers and state and local government workers at their jobs. we of course need to be pushing back on the cuts being made to unemployment insurance as

congressman levin mentioned. there are 19 states that have cut back on their unemployment benefits not just michigan all the wood was a vanguard, a leader in this and open the benefits expire in december, the long-term benefits i injury concerned there's a lot of political will here in washington to continue those benefits for the long-term which are so important and these are important for maintaining demand. there's also a number of things we can do to help people who are in their jobs just simply keep them. we know each and every month while we report the headline numbers, 18,000 people gained a job last month what's really going on of course millions of people are losing their jobs and gaining jobs and 18,000 is a net number so to keep these people who have jobs on the job that could clear long way toward solving some of our problems. there is a new work sharing but not reintroduced by senator reid

that was just reintroduced this week that would allow workers who would allow employers they need to cut back to cut back on the powers and allow people to get unemployment benefits to make up for some of the differences in their incomes so there's a bunch of other policies we can go through on that. there's two other points i want to make on this. number one as i look out in the audience i see the faces of many people and many organizations that have very long and fantastic and well thought out jobs agendas because we've been doing this for years now. this has been a crisis that's been here for quite some time. so there's a lot of great ideas of things we can do. one of the challenges we've given ourselves of the center for american progress is to come up with ideas we think can create jobs would also be politically possible. and these are very difficult meetings that we are having

because the bandwidth for what is politically possible basically means you can't spend any money. it's not clear to me how you increase demand but not spend money at the same time, so we are putting out this list of ideas and the long and the short of it is there are things you can do on the margin, wanting to talk about helping students out of debt, let's lower those interest rates. it would increase demand a little bit. there are some things these are going to be on the margin, they are not going to solve the problem and so i think the challenge is we continue to have this big problem we've had for quite some time, and it's really the economists appear to be in some agreement on what we need to do, but it's really up to the world of politics to make that happen. >> speaking of politics, you made a comment that really has political the implications. you say it's going to be difficult to motivate your workers in this environment. now, that especially his implications for president obama

and the democratic party. so, can you talk about that? >> i think we saw a little bit of this in 2010. it was to get people motivated we did it and we were successful getting them out by telling them there was a major difference. the problem right now is that of a debate on the deficit is sort of subsuming everything. no one is talking about job creation. the president's not talking about it. they are talking about job creation and the senate has begun to start talking about job creation but when we go back into the field, we are -- our political organization program runs on volunteers, and the was volunteers can either be enthusiastic or non-enthusiastic. the more enthusiastic the more the better the turnout and they become the more effectively become, and it's going to be a little more difficult this time.

when you have people talking about extending tax breaks for millionaires but not being willing to protect social security or medicare or medicaid, and that has as heather said wide-ranging implications for the economy because we have a demand problem if you take benefits away from any one of those, money gets diverted from the mant into just let me and they have less money to spend. so it spiracles the economy down and the fact that that's the central debate right now is almost ludicrous. it will be tough i think, not impossible, it will be tough to motivate our members across-the-board and it will not be with a party message. it will have to be each candidate specific because there are friends out there and acquaintances out there and the acquaintances say to us we love

you, good luck. this session we are going to say we love you, good luck. [laughter] [applause] >> but to our friends it won't be hard to motivate them because our members know congressman levin stands up for him day in and day out and fights on everything. they know that should not brown stands up for us and fight for us every day. those are friends, so trends we will be able to motivate them for acquaintances will be far more difficult to stem down. >> you may want to cut us short. others want to participate. can i just follow up with one minute of facts because i think rich, you've now included a note of the importance of opportunity and the importance of fairness

and in a sense the importance of communities from 1976 to 2007, 58% of the income growth in those 30 years went to the top 10 percent >> 58%. >> one after it went to the top 5%. 20% of income growth in those 30 years went to the top 1%, and nearly 10% went to the top one-tenth of 1%. and so, we need to talk to our fellow and sister citizens. this is the land of opportunity, but when income growth is so

tilted in favor of a small minority, it really challenges the growth of the middle class of the united states of america. without collective bargaining, i come from michigan. there would have been no decent wages, there would have been no decent health care, there would have been no decent pensions, and now the challenges with the way the income is being distributed these attributes that were part and parcel of what made america a strong middle class countries remembering those who were not yet in it. that's really the challenge i think we face this year and next. >> those are fantastic stats and i'm glad you brought them up. i want to add two more. one, you talk to that income,

but of course we know that along side that you have seen this divergence between wage growth and productivity growth workers used to get and use to see the same increase in their wages as they were seeing in what they were producing and productivity. and of course that diverged just a little about the time i was born, so it's been quite some time and that is a big piece of the puzzle. what we need to remember when we think about that is that america is a very rich country we need to get richer but it's the middle class to have an chariton and so as we are thinking about the conversations of what we as a nation can do and should be doing we need to remember also there's a lot of rhetoric around belt-tightening and hard for families are of the country it's not hard for everybody and there is wealth being created to giving out how we can make that work for everybody needs to be part of this conversation so that's what i think about when i don't want to get depressed

about all of this is that we are creating value and it's just going to the top. we have to figure out a way to share it with the middle class again. >> i would like to build on both what had their and the congress said from 1946 to 1973, productivity has doubled and so did wages as heather indicated. the interesting thing about that was the people in the bottom to quintiles their wages were rising faster than the people of the tops of the wage gap was collapsing. during that period of time the labor movement represented about 40% of the workers so we were driving wages for the union and nonunion workers and they were getting their fair share. about 40% of us and that's what collective bargaining did. from 73 to date, productivity has continued but wages have actually stagnated. and so all of that gap if you look at productivity that way

and the wages this way, that that is increasingly going to the people of the top and of course down to 11.5% of the people we represent and sandy gave you the figures for 30 years. let me give you the figures the last 20 years because they are accelerating. in the last 20 years the top 20% is caught in nearly all of the income games. the top 1% in the last 20 years got 56% of the income gains and to top ten of 1%. that's one person in every 1,000 has gotten 30% of all the income means in the last 20 years and it's getting more concentrated in the dissent by accident. it was in the mid 70's ronald

reagan and maggie thatcher and a group of other people did a thing called neoliberalism and they understand it has something to do with being a lot of liberal when it isn't. its exact opposite. everything gets in the way of the market you eliminate some any kind of regulation that distorts the marketplace. get rid of it. collective bargaining, that distorts the marketplace. get rid of it. and they went after all of those regulations and use of a result of that. we have an economy that wasn't what they said, wasn't self correcting, it wasn't fair or adjusting and a will get back to that if we don't change this and get more of a share of the income that's created in the country going to average everyday people so that they can spend the money and create a demand that actually grew this country and that's not happening right now.

>> heather, i would ask you the right wing and the conservatives and right wing will tell you that there is no reason to be concerned about this concentration of wealth, economic inequality, there are winners and losers in the society, so why should anybody care? tell us why we should care about that. >> we should care for two sets of reasons. one is that, you know, we live in a society we live supposedly in a democracy. so just on that alone we should care about it, an economist, not a political scientist so i will leave one you can all talk about on amongst yourself. carrying about inequality is certainly important for the economy and for economic growth. you know, one of the things we've seen is as an economy has widened in the united states, there are reasons to believe that has an impact on how well our economy performs over all and let me just point to a couple of things.

certainly, as we saw a holding out of wages in the middle, especially for men in the 1970's and 1980's, you saw families increasingly then putting the women, having wives work, so use of this increase in the dual families which of course as these implications for what happens inside families but that is one of the ways be dealt with a greater inequality is the had more women working. by the time you got to the 2000's, the families are still experiencing this wage stagnation. wages still were not giving up even though they were working longer and harder which of course has of these implications for children's wellbeing, the wellbeing of the sick and the elderly and they took care of it so back to the moral on those kind of issues but also then created the opportunity in some way for families who were trying to keep up as weedy regulated our financial markets and said you can go out and do what ever

you want in terms of finance you have a lot of families as they were struggling to keep up who were unwilling to and wanted to take it vantage of some of those things which of course is how we got to this economic crisis, you have families taking on too much debt and a large part just to keep up with their standard of living. and that of course is implicated in this crisis. so there is this interconnection and this is for the economists to be thinking about the interconnection between the inequality and how we got to this economic crisis and how unstable we have become. there's a great new research that's been done at the imf by some economists who pointed to countries that have more equality, have longer spells of economic growth, the growth periods last longer, it creates more stability and launder periods of economic growth, so those are some of the reasons we should care just in terms of economic growth, but then back

just one last point on the sort of politics there does appear in this interesting -- my second favorite former "new york times" columnist. [laughter] did this really wonderful speech of the luxembourg income study. i believe it was last summer looking at this intersection of inequality and why should we care about, why should a, scare, and so he -- he highlighted all this very interesting research from political scientists that focused on how well as we become more unequal in the united states in terms of income that has also led to the polarization in terms of politics. now, i'm not the political scientist, but i do think that there is certainly appears to be something to that, and i feel we should be thinking more about how that is playing into what's going on in washington and who's getting elected and how they are getting elected

>> in the last few minutes, i completely agree on the inequality thing. societies that are more equal to better and in a range of areas in the societies that are more unequal. the united states is among the most unequal with the advanced nations out here. but in our last few minutes i'm going to go back to politics and turn to you. first i'm curious as president obama a friend or acquaintance? [laughter] [applause] he's a second cousin. [laughter] >> we put him in the category of a friend that it's delusional. >> what i wanted to ask you about is if you could talk a little bit about the obama administration's approach to the

employment crisis in general, and to the employment crisis specifically and the concerns of labour. >> i guess i have to go back a little bit and go back to the original stimulus program. the original stimulus program is too small. of course back that we have to remember most economists are saying 8.5 per cent unemployment would be the bottom. we went over ten at one time, so no matter what, we would have been under on matt. the second thing is even at 8.5% the program was too small at that time and was probably structured the wrong way. you have a one-third went into infrastructure, one third went into the state and local governments and one of third went into the tax cuts. the tax cuts generated about a

dollar and 4 cents of every investment. now, to give you some scale for that, a dollar of investment in food stamps will give you a dollar and 74 cents in economic activity that the income tax breaks if $1.4 of economic activity. so, what you had is a stimulus package that was too small, and then it was drained away by one third because it went into these tax cuts that most people didn't even know they got a tax cut. i used to go to meetings and say how many people know they got a tax cut and two or three people would raise their hand. the republicans if they had done it they would have had a neon sign that jumped up when you open the door chip and is a tax cut, tax cut from the republicans. but obama didn't do anything. so, it went -- it started creating some jobs that were shuffled ready and some that

were slow. there was a structural problem because they said the jobs had to be done, the infrastructure jobs had to be done in 18 months. that meant they were small jobs. they should have been none of the big jobs would have been big job creators were included in it and so that slipped back on staff and then i think he made a very strategic mistake whenever one started talking about job creation and deficit reduction in the same sentence because people got them all jumble dhaka and here we are talking about deficit reduction with no talk about job creation right now, so i think that was a strategic mistake and i think he should have extricated himself you still should instead of talking about debt is only going to spiral was downward, and i will give you a classic example. all the cuts, austerity programs welcome a year but he did that to greece and the more they pushed austerity, the deeper

their depression goes and the higher their debt. now this was supposed to be a program to get them out of debt and out of recession, and it's pushing them in the opposite direction and that is precisely what is happening here. although gibber jabber about debt reduction at a time we have a jobs crisis and 14 million people out of work for the longest period ever. the longest period ever. you made history. laughter can he needs to focus back on jobs and let people know that he is going to create jobs. he's really talking to chandra and bob. let me get this off my chest if you don't mind. >> i don't mind. [laughter] >> i absolutely resent the fact some of these politicians, scott walker is in fact, are trying to say this is the workers' fault. [applause]

>> somehow america's workers were unable to compete in the world and they caused this crisis we forced those nasty bankers to make all those billions of dollars. we forced them to do that. i think that's the most ludicrous thing i've ever seen and for any of the press to get any kind of credence or any kind of legitimacy to that argument i think calls their credentials into question as well. >> and then i think congressman levin, que made the final question here. the republicans really seem to have captured the narrative that the stimulus failed, that monetary policy failed, what we need are more tax cuts, that spending is of any kind going to be harmful, etc., etc., etc..

is it too late now for the democrats to counter that narrative and if it's not how do you begin to counter it? 2012 is getting closer and closer. >> well, i think we are trying and it's not easy. the republicans have had a very simple message. all tax cuts work, and if you touch the tax cuts for the very wealthy, it will impede growth. and i think we have one thing going for us, those who don't believe it. most people in this country don't believe it. most people in this country, not all, since that maintaining the tax cuts for the very wealthy and does not encourage economic

growth but is misplaced in terms of economic growth. so we think we are in very difficult position because of the rise in the deficit. i think it is up to us to try to paint a clearer picture and injected into this debate the basic fact that most economists agree with and that this if we do not promote jobs, we will not be able to get a hold of a deficit. >> can obama get unelected of the official rate is 8.5% or 9% next year? >> yes. >> that's not a reason -- i think so -- but that's not a reason for one second to accept it. because e.p.i.c. and i fink maybe this is a good place to close, if i -- i don't know where you want to close it.

>> i don't know what cameras are here. i don't know what reporters are here. i have no idea where you're from. but look, sanda if i can call you by your firstname, represent the challenge facing this country. you really do. you have burkhardt. those who say that unemployment compensation is an incentive for not working, they should talk. the challenge for the country and for the president is to illustrate that we have millions and millions of people in the country who have worked hard many since they were in their teens who have been laid off through no fault of their own and it is up to us to provide

the balance as we face the deficit to build an economic growth so that you can get back to work. if you don't go back to work, it won't work for america. so somehow if we could just have you go on tour. [laughter] i don't know what we would do, but we have to have some confidence -- we can get this message through in the meetings like this. i have a sense of optimism but i'm not sure what the unemployment rate would prohibit free election. i think the president must be reelected but we also must take the steps now to get america back to work. >> thank you, congressman and panelists. [applause]

>> we are going to open things up to questions, hostile and otherwise. [laughter] right in the front, starting here. >> what the interest of all this is probably one of the best presentations that i have seen since we have been suffering and that is exactly what the country has been going through. shanda and bob, you described to us where the american dream has gone, straight down the pot and it's not about the dissemination of the middle class. it's just to those who are working are now working poor because of peace that you described with your mom and as well as the piece that you described with the difficulty of having to be able to really struggle and put your self-esteem to decide in looking for new employment. we salute you for speaking out. second of all, we want to say

thanks to richard trumka and heather and representative levin for giving that fight, that kind of spirit and direction for what we have to do. you all have given this morning through your direction, bob, at least a clear understanding and with the body is press has been doing for the last year-and-a-half, and to be able to think after this is the focus we got from the sessions i want to say thank you. >> thank you very much. yes? >> this is really to president trumka, but mr. herbert, thank you for all you've done writing about these issues. it's been encouraging to all of us. a great panel. [applause] since 2001 the united states has run $6 trillion worth of trade deficit, to trillium with china. congressman levin, you had a very interesting hearing last

march in which the professor from the university of chicago said the peace trade deficits are a key part of contributing to the budget deficit because the more outsourcing, wealth creating a part of our economy. so to me, dealing with the trade problem is a very important part of dealing both with the jobs crisis and the budget crisis. and yet, we don't get the media focused on the trade deficit as a part of this problem in any way, and i think we have got to understand that when you are running neck export deficits, year after year to our training wealth out of the economy and you are not creating jobs in this country. [applause] >> do you disagree? >> i am tempted to say amen and walk away. my internal being won't allow me just to do that. it's also not just an attack on the trade regime, but for eight

years under george bush, even feeble laws that we had weren't being enforced. president obama at least is trying to enforce some of the laws come and look what happened. we took a case on pipes that said china was cheating, openly cheating, and there were sanctions against them, and we created a couple thousand, 3,000 jobs immediately. tires, china was cheating. we created 10,000 tiger workers because we were playing on a level playing field. so what we need is a trade regime that really does create jobs here and treats us in a fair way. but it's also tied into the tax code. because the tax code encourages people to take the jobs offshore and then to keep the money offshore, and at some point maybe we will get to comment on the folly of the things they call a tax holiday which ravee

would be another disaster for america, but of course triet is an important part of it, but the tax code as well because as we lose those manufacturing jobs we also lose the r&d and so since 2000 as of last december 31st we lost 24,244 manufacturing plants in this country as of december 31st. those were good paying jobs that have a job creation multiple year of between four and five so when you lose a manufacturing job you lose four or five other ones on the road, it takes tax code as well as trade. >> different part of the room. how about in the back over here. >> his thank you to get my question has to the pending free trade agreements in panama and colombia and the question is for mr. trumka, heather and

representative levin. do you think a final approval of the free trade agreement will help job growth, job creation in the united states, economic growth in the united states and are you for or against it and why? as currently structured the answer is no. per you would lose 159,000 jobs for columbia and i think it's 40 some thousand combined its 214,000 jobs we would lose as an estimate but columbia is a special category. forget about the economics. 50 million trade unionists were assassinated last year in colombia. the most dangerous place in the world if you are a trade unionist assassinated and i frequently asked him and groups like this the question if 51 ceos are being assassinated last year, you think we would be clamoring for a free trade agreement or for the rule of law?

congressman levin fought to try to get the work plan put in the preliminary language so it had enforceability because as it is right now, colombia either lacks the ability or the will to enforce the rule of law and to protect the trade unions. the work plan the president agreed to was an improvement but after the agreement signed there is no way to enforce it. nothing. taken literally from their nose at us and there's nothing we can do. economically it is a bad deal, morally it is a bad deal and the people and the workers, the working class on both sides of the borders disapprove and will fight against them and that includes us. >> heather? >> i would just add to that comment that there is new work by economists. i would point to a new paper by david otter was a professor at mit and co-authors the same seascape me and i apologize for that.

but they chose places that have had increased imports from china, looking specifically at trade with china and its lead to job losses and wage declines in those communities and it was an important work because for a long time they had been ambivalent about that and so there is an area of research that shows the trade is not necessarily always good for employment and wages here in the united states. on these come to know, you never know what's going to happen but it seems that the estimates of whether or not we would create jobs with panama and colombia there doesn't seem to be a lot of sound empirical evidence that would show that would be an outcome. >> congressman? >> let me focus for a minute it gives me an opportunity why we are concerned so much about workers' rights and trade agreements. and this relates to the columbia agreement, the action plan that i think had and has real promise, but why i and others have insisted that it must be

part of the free trade agreement. this hasn't been understood widely enough. why is the american labor movement interested in workers rights provisions applying to workers in other countries? i think there's a basic issue here is that people that care about our workers need to care about workers elsewhere. that's a basic premise but also to and understand why it's so important and this relates to the struggle we have had in terms of trade agreements with latin american countries. there needs to be the basic international standards in the trade agreements and forcible for these reasons. first of all it's important for the workers and other countries. second, it's important for the development of middle class is in those countries.

the countries that haven't paid attention to the development of the workers rights in the middle class in most cases have in the up with authoritarian regimes because the mass of the people do not benefit from the economic benefits. it's also important for our companies because they need middle class people and others to buy products. it's also important for the workers in this country. there's a basic principle the workers and our countries should not compete with workers in other countries whose companies suppress their rights. so for all four aspects, its vital that there be meaningful meaningful and enforceable rights provisions in those agreements. i think there is in panama. and curry and it was never an

issue. there are other issues. with columbia, the new regime sits down an agreement with our government on an action plan and workers' rights, violence and impunity, and there is resistance to placing that clearly within the columbia free trade agreement, and in my judgment that is unacceptable. >> another question. can we go to this side of the room? >> right here in the front and then we will go to you next. >> first, i have to state my neutrality. while working, i was both in the public and private sector. my question is this. how old do we stop the habit, maybe it is a disease in this country for debasing the public worker? it makes it much easier to cut the public program, very important programs because we are cutting public workers and we have already debased them. the misery starts as shanda and

bald know when your job is lost we need to put as much emphasis on saving jobs, preserving important jobs as we do in creating jobs. but first and foremost, it seems to me we have to stop this country is horrible habit of defacing without challenge the public worker. >> excellent question, very sympathetic response on this panel and sure. i'd like both of the congressman and then rich to respond. >> very quickly. i will do this very quickly. i was a labor lawyer and i called wayne state university, the trade union had the both workers, just to workers. eventually they said to me we can't recognize the union. why? we will find ourselves. >> when you constructed building

you find yourself. why can't you find yourself as to representation by the union? the finally came back and said to me it's based on english law that king can do no wrong. [laughter] that's what i was told. and so, on a chair of the labor committee and we wrote the first comprehensive public and polemic relations act in this country, and all i can say is we need to address these issues, but if public employees have not have collective bargaining all of these years, they would not be such a vibrant part of the middle class of america, and we should stop covering the public workers of this country, period. [applause] >> there's no question about that and they've been used as a

scapegoat in the issue after issue in state after state from scott walker to governor christie in new jersey. so the first thing is to get out the facts. the facts are that one, public employees are not overpaid. in fact, in wisconsin for instance, the higher your degree, the more underpaid you are. if you have a ph.d. you get about 35% less than a ph.d. in the private sector. that the pensions they had we were told about the outrageous pensions. the pensions averaged about $19,000 a year. and quite frankly, i find it america stood on its head when we look at a group of workers that say they have something and other people don't come and they say well, in america we should take it away from those that have. remember when we work in our hasim at when people didn't have something we looked at it and said why not?

how can we get it for them, not how we take it away from those that do have it and have there will tell you about the implications of that. the lower that you slash people's retirement, the less demand, the less demand, the less growth, the less growth, fewer jobs, less growth to a spiral continued downward and downward. so that's one thing. talking about preserving jobs, and i should have said this when you asked me what we are doing on infrastructure and i didn't get to it. one of the things we are doing on infrastructure is training 40,000 people from the community to be able to do green jobs, retrofitting and things like that and we are retraining 100,000 of our workers, of our members in the construction trade, 100,000. there are skills accretive. so that they can do not just one thing and agree in the economy but everything in the green economy and make a career out of

it, not a single job, and people also don't know that the labor movement is the largest provider of adult education in this country. we provide for skills training and education than anybody else in the country for just that reason, to try to preserve those jobs. and i would ask you, i would ask everybody here when you hear people making jokes about public employees, i wish he would stand up for them because they are the ones that make the world go round. the are in your hospitals, the your in our towns, to protect us and rushing to a burning building, they take care of your sick mother, your sick dad, they are there every single day. >> the teach your kids and grandkids and plow the roads to get here. >> [inaudible] >> easy there. [laughter] spread i didn't say great grand kids. [laughter] >> this woman right here.

>> [inaudible] i don't think i needed that. i do? okay. >> that tells the story that there are influences -- the same people but the financial crisis and i don't agree with heather that it was people borrowing more than they could afford to my feet was the whole financial system beginning with the repeal -- of the glass-stegall act that led us down that path. but any rate, those same people are the people currently fighting raising the debt limit. both of those events have the same effect, and that is damaging, seriously damaging the american economy. and that same group is taking the money and investing in overseas, and so the dynamic is that their interests are not in

the strength of the united states economy. it's an access to profits wherever they can be found, and a strong america doesn't give them that kind of access. and that's a huge white elephant in this conversation. >> we need a question. >> here comes the question. the other side of that claim is that there are real financial structural changes in our economy. one of them is that a dollar of gdp as fewer workers associated -- >> seriously we have to have a question. >> the other is there is a bifurcation of the work force in terms of high-end and low-end -- >> man, i'm going to cut you off. can somebody tell me if we have an l. frank and siding in the house. [laughter] >> why you're looking for all

frank and -- the question is in days gone by what tonnes -- one of the things we've done is increase the mandatory age of education. and that takes people out of the work force -- >> seriously, please. >> the question is what is wrong with doing that now? increasing the -- someone said earlier invest more in education. in addition to investing more in education and giving all the workers access to -- >> i don't know what your question is. >> the question is as a solution to the one solution -- there are others because it is a herd of white elephants, not just one -- that we expand the minimum age that's now 16, take it to 18 and at four years of college -- >> all right, i'm really sorry. i'm really sorry, you have an opportunity to make your statement and i think people understood what you said, but i've got to stop it.

next question, right here, please. >> hauer important is it to fixing the job crisis in america that obama would be reelected in 2012? >> that's a good question. [laughter] >> congressman? >> well he's already said that its essentials. rich, do you agree? >> compared to the seven dwarfs on the oversight. [laughter] whenever -- if they get elected we would be in a depression. i mean, keeping some coherence he and some reality to economics is important. each one of them simply says cut, cut. when you ask them with the jobs program as it is cutting. cutting doesn't create jobs. it doesn't. and so, i think it's important -- i think it could be more important if he focused more on jobs from the run up and afterwards and said i'm not going to listen to your chatterer, i'm not going to listen to your sound bites, i'm

going to focus this country on job creation and put 14 million people back to work and we will solve your deficit problem, a whole bunch of other problems. that's what i'm going to do. would be more important if he would say that. >> over here, gentlemen in the red shirt. >> three quick questions and this one mostly is pertained to the representatives since you can take action on this. it's to no surprise that there are critics on wall street so i'm wondering when you are going to fight to get glass-stegall past sooner rather than later, and i know marcy kaptur has been very strongly attacking some of the ideologies behind that. anyway, the other thing i wanted to point out, since obama has blatantly come out and said he wants to butcher social security and medicare which is a

right-wing thing to do and has basically betrayed the american people will the congress put up resistance against that? >> just in all fairness i think the president has said that social security and medicare are on the table in these discussions. i'm not sure you can say that he said he's going to butcher them. but anyway. >> i was going to say that i'm not sure what group you belong to. i think we need to be careful to be accurate. the president has ever said to butcher social security. and in terms of glass-stegall, i think we need to focus on trying to enforce dodd-frank right now. and let me just say what's happened in the house so we have a perspective. not a single jobs bill has been presented to the house of representatives. second, we have a debate on the

agricultural bill, and there was an amendment that not a single dollar could be used by the agricultural department which has jurisdiction in part over jobs for the enforcement of dodd-frank, and that past, and virtually every republican voted for it. that shows the difference we face in the house of representatives, and i don't think that it's wise to obscure it. whatever complaints there may be, the differences between the two parties, those differences are deep and wide. so darn it all, when it comes to the reregulation where necessary let's fight the those who say the answer is to deregulate everything and allow -- [applause] you know, what side are they on?

what side are they on when they say not a single dollar to implement dodd-frank? not a single dollar to address the swaps problem. whose side are they on? and i must say i will fight anybody who tries to obscure those differences because we see them every day on the floor of the house, every day. that's where the battle is. >> rich? >> very briefly, there is a fight going on right now on dodd-frank because we are trying to reach the regulations and if they are doing everything they can to weaken those regulations. and i've got to tell you the secretary of the treasury way than on the wrong side recently a and exempted before and derivatives which is a big chunk of that regulation that need it to happen and now they are exempt because of secretary

dr. mer said the definition shouldn't include them. i've got to tell you that was a setback for all of us, so if you want to have glass-stegall back, dodd-frank is the substitute in the regulations that are being written are either going to be broad enough to cover the situation or contracted so much that they are neutered. so i urge you to weigh in, every one of you on having of those regulations remain strong. there was a lot of fighting going on over that right now. >> question way in the back. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> i think we started the discussion with the deficit. and i think if we look back to right after the depression and world war ii, our deficit

related to the size of the economy was about 125% of gross national product. we are looking at about 77% right now. we came out of the 50's and 60's by manufacturing, by having a booming strong economy. with that, i have to ask -- i've heard a lot of good stuff about columbia, but i have to ask, south korea trade agreement will worse the content standard to 35%. that means 65% of a good can pass through from china, north korea or actually from mexico into the united states and be called the south korean good or

in american good, and gives up our supply chain, and that's where the jobs are. we don't need a model that is modeled after the global auto industry. we need a model that is modeled after the american aviation industry. thank you. >> by the way, this isn't the time to discuss that the we will be discussing that -- some of your facts are not correct, but we will have plenty of time to discuss that. >> de want to -- >> no, i don't think we need to get into a long debate. the reference north korea is simply incorrect, and some of the other facts are there are differences of opinion about that, but i think it won't help if there is a distortion of the

facts, and i will be glad to discuss it with you and we will have plenty of time. >> yes, ma'am. >> i have been following american history especially since 65. i think we have to really restore our fairness and the good concept and i think you are talking about a way to compare to the nonprofit measurement and i think one thing about those profits is they are really not a good measurement because those who can say there is a negative productivity. and that's why you have the labor problem, the unemployment problem because those people who have a high income who are going to take our people's house, people's jobs so we have to change in a way the productivity

on the - predicted become so we want to help create a job we don't just say we want a job, we want to send the money to where the jobs are needed and not to a state or local government because those people who create the job is to destroy our economy. so what i try to say is we have to have a multi prong where the jobs should be and where the benefits should be like you build a bank that is not a job because they take away people's homes so if you can -- in the humanity you give the money and high year the people and if there is a homeless problem. >> we have to wrap it up here. i appreciate your comments. i appreciate the panelists one and all.

i hope you can give them a round of applause. [applause] and then if he would be kind enough to welcome senator al franken. [applause] >> i fought the panel was brilliant. [laughter] i'm sorry, i didn't hear a word, but i can imagine some of the themes we will probably in the preceding a number of folks on the panel said. have directly testified to the committee the chairman harkin of the health committee has had a couple of hearings on the middle class and they have been overshadowed by some other stuff that's going on. this current debt crisis which

is upon us on whether we are actually going to be become a defeat nation -- deadbeat nation and some of us feel we are currently in a situation where we have certain -- the republican party holding the president and democrats in congress hostage, holding us hostage with the debt ceiling, knowing that in a game of chicken that who got irresponsible and dare i say your national player has a distinct tactical that vantage over the irresponsible and irrational player and i it's very dangerous and very unfortunate. i am very pleased to be here at

the afl-cio. i am a member of the afl-cio and of the four unions and am proud to be a member of the writers guild first and foremost of the american federation of tv and radio artists, the screen actors guild and the directors guild when i walked picket lines and understand, i still get -- i still get some residuals that were negotiated, residual payment schedule negotiated by the union and i walked the picket line to make sure we got those and trading places shown i get about $12. [laughter] that makes the public service that i am doing possible. [laughter] ..

>> it's created demand, the entrepreneurs, the small businesses that are the engine of our economy. i'm a middle class kid. i grew up -- my dad didn't graduate high school. my mom didn't go to college. i grew up with a two bedroom one bathroom house in the suburb of minneapolis. i considered myself the luckiest kid in the world. i was. i was a middle class kid growing up in america in the 50s and 60s. what else could you want?

i felt i could do anything i wanted to do. i could -- i felt that i could be a comedy writer and do comedy and become a senator -- in that order. [laughter] that was always my plan. [laughter] you know, we -- there's a lot of talk about where we are in terms of debt. we have -- and we have a serious debt crisis. the question is how do we approach it? we have 93% of our gdp, our national debt is 93% of our gdp. that's a scary number. we've been here before. in world war ii, it was worse. we had 127% of our gdp.

we had something to show for it. we won world war ii. we also had some distinct advantages we don't have now. we had europe and asia had been destroyed, so we had markets -- actually, no markets right away so we despite our debt, we started the marshall plan so we could help europe and create people to buy things. you need people to buy things, folks. rich people can only buy so much stuff. [laughter] at a certain point ring they just run out of stuff to buy, even rich people. there's only so many of them, you know? and then think save their money, and it sits on the sideline. we see that, a couple trillion on the sidelines. why?

there's not demand. why is there no demand? because people are unemployed. people are underemployed. people are not being paid enough. median wages have gone down. we know this. i'm repeating -- i know i'm repeating stuff that's been said. i mean, and it's not because i'm like a mind reader. it's because i know what we said. what had to be said. i know these people, i know what had to be said. the idea that those at the very top who now are richer than anybody's ever been, you know, we now have people who are richer than any people have ever been in the history of the

world. there is -- why they can't pay a higher percentage of their income and taxes is crazy. [applause] listen, i, you know, those of us in the senate who are democrats, we talk to people who are rich. we go to fundraisers and talk to people who are rich, and, you know, there's some of them who say well, i don't know of any of them i meet who say i'm not willing to pay higher taxes. i really don't. i know the republicans go to the same fundraisers and hear different things from their peoplings and i respect that -- people, and i respect that, but there's no evidence -- there's no evidence that that works.

my goodness. in 1993, the deficit reduction package -- i know sander remembers this. i know probably everyone on this panel remembers this. >> very well. >> president clinton said let's raise the top two levels. 180 go to 36 and 250 you go to 39.6. every republican voted against it. every single one. passed by one vote in the house and one vote in the senate. every republican -- not every republican, but every republican who said anything said that this would cause a recession. newt gingrich said this will be the democrat recession. he meant democratic recession. grammar is not -- [laughter] they don't know adjectives and

things like that. [laughter] or maybe they do, and they're just deliberately being rude. i don't know. he said it would be the democrat recession. phil grahm said this is going to kill jobs. john caisic said this is not going to work, and if this works, i'll have to become a democrat. [laughter] which is why we now have a democratic governor in ohio. did you know that? [laughter] it worked. i'll tell you why it worked. i'm just going on his own logic because we had the longest period of uninterpreted expansion in our economy that we have ever had in our history

when we increased the margal rate on the people at the top, so it worked, and not only that, but it turned a record deficit into a record surplus which he took from one bush, a record deficit and turned it over to the next bush, a record surplus. after george bush became president, after he became president, five days after george w. bush, that after is important, five days after george w. bush became president, alan greenspan testified to the senate best of my budget committee and said we're in danger of paying off our national debt too fast. we're on a projected $5 trillion

surplus going in over the next ten years, and we very well may pay off the debt too fast. the federal government is in danger of having too much money. we're just going to have too much money, folks. he said that what would happen as a result of that is, because there's some people holding on to their bonds, won't be paid off at the right time so actually we'll have to take our excess money, the united states government, has to take our access money and invest it in private equities that will disrupt the markets and make them inefficient because of the united states government having too much money. now, this is after bush became

president so understand that after bush became president, alan greenspan was warning us about this dire problem, and, you know, now i don't get their economic theory. here's their economic theory. if you cut taxes, you'll automatically raise revenues. right? you hear that all the time. whenever you cut taxes, is raises revenues. they always say that. you hear that all the time. watch fox sometimes. [laughter] every time we've cut taxes, it doubled revenues. that's sean hannity. google that. he says that every day. they also tell us that, you know, you have to cut taxes so the google doesn't have too much money to spend so in other

words, you know, rage p said it -- reagan said in 81, yeah, tell your kids all your want that, you know, not to put away their allowance, the only way to do it is cut their allowance. [laughter] he said that, you can look it up. his thing was you got to cut taxes so you cut the revenues so they won't spend the money. that theory is you cut taxes so you cut the government revenues, so understand that their theory is based on two mutually exclusive contradictory theories. every time you cut taxes, you increase revenues, and when you cut taxes, you decrease revenues. that's fun to hear.

[laughter] bush, of course, came in and said we're in danger of having too much money, and it's your money so let's cut taxes because it's your money. we're running a surplus, cut taxes; then as soon as, of course, we started the recession, he said, well, we're in a recession, we need, you know, we need to cut taxes because the economy's bad so in addition to every time you cut taxes you increase revenue, and every time you cut taxes you decrease revenue, there's also every time the economy's doing well, you have to cut taxes and every time the economy's bad, you have to cut taxes. this the thee most income presenceble --

incomprehensive theory. there's another theory provided by dick cheney when paul o'neill went up to him when the deficit started exploding under bush. he said this could hurt the economy, and cheney say, oh, don't worry about it. reagan proved that deficits don't matter. [laughter] bingo. [laughter] so what does he do? bush takes the biggest surplus in history and turns it into the biggest deficit in history and hands off a $1.2 trillion debt, projected deficit to obama, and an economy that, here it is. i've done my job, here it is. we're shedding 750,000 jobs a

month. i've done my job. i'll go watch some ranger games. [laughter] i can't believe these people have actually paid anything attention to anything, my colleagues. so now we have all this money sitting on the sideline. you know, if, you know, we have to -- look, we have to look at what we did. robert, one of these hearings, what country should we model ourselves after to get out of this to build the middle class again? he said, well, united states of america. [laughter] we did this after world war ii. we invested in ourselves in the right things.

in education, we invested in infrastructure. we, you know, we invested in science and technology and innovation and education, science and math education. i was a sputnik kid in 1957 when sputnik was launched, i was 6 years old. my brother was 11. my parents, we were scared to death because the soviets were ahead of us in space now, and they had nuclear weapons, and my parents took us into our living room in minnesota and said, boys, you are going to have to study math and science to beat the soviets, and i thought that was kind of a big burden to put on an 11-year-old and 6-year-old. [laughter] but we were obedient sons and studied math and science, and

what do you know, my parents were right, we studied math and science, and we beat the soviets, my brother and me. [laughter] and the benefits from the space program were just -- i was watching debate during the last campaign, and the republican candidate for senator said that the government had never created a job, and i noticed that ironically the debate was carried on satellite. [laughter] we built the interstate highway system. this is -- i just, you know, and now i know that we're not going to get, you know, we're not going to get a big stimulus package so i'm looking for

different ways to, different models to build jobs. you know, why aren't we retrofitting residents, businesses, universities, buildings? in minnesota, we have our people in building trades who are just hurting, hurting, hurting, and let's put them to work. we have a company in minnesota, mcquay, they build huge air-conditioning systems. they with building the air-conditioning systems for the new world trade center. because they're such a big successful company, they are credit worthy, so they are able to borrow money, and what they do is they just lend it to their customers and say buy our -- here, we're lending you this at almost no interest, buy our

air-conditioning unit, and within three to five years it pays for itself and the rest is profit. why aren't we doing that? we know we can pay for investments in energy efficiency. if we got $2 trillion on the sidelines, let's do it. let's do it. you know, let's think of models like that. put people to work. that doesn't cost anybody any money. it's just win-win. mcquay sells its product to an industrial manufacturer, some kind of mother and mother and manufacturer. they pay it back like a mortgage, and they save the

money and in three to five years, everything is gravy. everybody wins. people are part to work. on foreclosures, you know, we've done this -- we haven't done this foreclosure thing at all, and we've done it in an id yodic -- idiotic way i think. we should be helping people. i passed something called the office of home owner's advocate. if any of us go back to our districts or states, we find people in the hamp program, and they are trying to deal with their servicers. you can't get a person's name, they lose the paperwork, we should have someone in the treasury on your side working for you. these are the things we should be doing up stead of what -- instead of what's happening now in congress. it is very frustrating.

i feel like i've gone on longer than i should. we -- it -- i find the current situation sad. i find that senate leadership, senate republican leadership has said after the election their number one goal is to see that president obama is a one-term president. they didn't say it's to put people back to work, get our kids educated. they didn't even say it's to balance the budget. they said it is to see that obama -- it's to win an election, win the next election. this came out immediately after the last election. i'm sure sandy, i know sandy didn't come here thinking like, you know what i'm going to do? get legislated and work -- elected and then work on the

next election. that's not what the american people want from us. they want us to work together. they want us to work to improve their lives. they want us to work to make sure their kids are educated. they want to make sure there are jobs. there's jobs. they want to make sure that we have the american dream, the american dream is to have a good place to live, make sure your kids are educated to have health care. have a secure retirement. that's the american dream. that's all it is. it isn't -- and by the way, during the clinton expansion, medium income went up, poverty was diminished, made more millionaires than ever. good for them. we need a totally different approach, and we need to not be playing high stakes game of

chicken with the -- in which not only the american economy is at stake, but the global economy as well, so i don't know -- i'm sure i've repeated -- i'm sure bob told many of the jokes i did -- [laughter] he's famous for that. [laughter] >> nobody can do that. [laughter] >> so thank you all for being here, and thank you -- [inaudible] >> senator al franken. thank you, thank you very much. [applause] and thank you, everybody for coming. it's been great. really appreciate it. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> the consumer financial protection bureau begins supervising the nation's largest banks on july 21st. the house oversight and government reform committee will

hear from bureau adviser elizabeth warren thursday. live coverage online at c-span.org. she testified about the bureau's role in an oversight hearing in may. this portion is a little less than 10 minutes. >> my understanding that -- >> we had two additional members with questions, and originally this hearing was at two o'clock. are you not able to stay? >> congressman, when you asked to change the time four times in the last 12 hours including waking people up at home last night to change the time again -- >> ms. warren, let me be direct with you. i never made a single phone call about this. be clear about what you're saying. we have two additional members. we have eight minutes remaining on the floor to vote.

if you won't stay around for the questions, then we're going to stay around, and we're going to finish this out. >> congressman -- >> i never heard that you had to leave at 2:15. >> then congressman, you might want to have a conversation with your staff. when they asked us to move the hearing, we said the only way we could do this is if i could leave here at 2:15 for a meeting that would be -- >> all right. we're going for questions now. you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and i want to say for the record that i apologize to the witness, dr. warren, for the rude and disrespectful behavior of the chair. the snarky comments of a race and the veer rasety that you are truthful, this is impugning you because people are afraid of you and your ability to communicate in very clear terms the threats to our consumers, the threats to

our constituents, and possibly very, very effective ways to combat them so i think this one respect i congratlate you for instilling such fear in the committee, the majority side, and in some aspects or segments of the business community because they understand how effective you are in getting the message out to the american people that there are better ways to do things. now, that being said, one of the major questions asked here is whether there's a need for your agency or the agency that you conceived. in light of the fact there's seven related agencies, all of whom have some authority in this area. these seven agencies have been around for some time. during the time that those seven agencies have been around, have financial products, disclose sure statements and so forth got easier to understand, has the type got bigger, slunk, or, in

fact, have they gotten much more incomprehensive? >> i believe financial products have become more complicated and much more heavily laiden with fine print that effectively make it impossible for consumers to compare risks and costs. >> in respect to the question that ms. burkel asked regarding the comparative salaries, would you be willing to speculate on what the average salary is of the people who are writing financial agreements, mortgages, and credit card agreements for the major corporations compared to what the consumer financial protection bureau would be paying? >> congressman, i couldn't begin to speculate on the difference between the salaries of the government officials who will be hired into the new consumer agency to try to oversee the market and the salaries of those

who are writing the financial products particularly for the wall street companies. i suspect though, sir, there is a large difference. >> i suspect you'll right. i yield back the balance of my time in a second to get out of here, but i just want to say that the question of accountability -- >> if the gentleman would yield, another went to vote and will come back to ask his question, and mr. wall much is coming back. you have 20 seconds. go ahead. >> that's quite all right. the title including accountability of your agency. i just want you to spend a couple seconds on what accountability there has been in terms of the credit card companies, mortgage writers, and so forth over the last decade or so because it seems to me that that's where the real accountability issue has been that the consumers have no way to hold those companies accountable for the products that they offer. >> congressman, we've seen very

little accountability among the largest financial servicers, providers, and among the regulated finance servicers both before the crash of 2008 and after the crash of 2008, and i just want to point out that it's been really hard on american families. it's been hard on them directly when they have their feet tangled in payday loans that were decementive. it's hard on them what they thought they were doing sensible things on mortgages only to learn they were going to lose their homes, but it's also been hard on others in the economy, people who did nothing it get involved with financial services, but lost their jobs. people who -- the small businesses they work for, their markets have dried up, and it has also been hard on community banks, credit unions who work so hard day in and day out to work with their customers, to be the relationship lenders, to be there over the lock --

long haul and getting crushed in a financial turn around that was not their fault. the problem of lack of accountability is one that is squarely on the industry, and this consumer agency is going to do its best to help turn that around. >> i congratulate you on your work and thank you for your was service. i yield back. >> my understanding is that your staff meeting agreement with ms. warren is she would be available to the committee for one hour. if she accompanies your late breaking request made by your staff at 9 p.m. last night, she appear at an earlier time than previously scheduled, you allow her to leave at 2:15 p.m. in keeping with the agreement. it's 2:15 now. she kept her side of the bargain, and now it's time to keep yours. mr. chairman, out of respect for her and her schedule and the flexibility she showed