hardened the cockpit doors, who cares. you maybe you can knife somebody, but they can't overtake the plane because they can't get to the pilots so we stopped doing that so tsa could focus on other important things than taking rasor. .. in q&a then you can hear jim and

me kind of talk at you, so we would love to open it up for questions at this point. >> thank you jim and thank you matt. i will take the prerogative and asked the first question and matt, you kind of touched upon the store the very end of your comments relating to the cargo security issues but in the summary of our report, we refer to how we have 35 specific recommendations for homeland security while protecting individual freedoms and economic vitality and as we all know, this whole policy area has triggered so many very tough balancing act i guess, between those concepts, economic vitality and individual freedoms on the one hand and the need to protect our homeland on the other. can you maybe address how some of those concerns are fleshed out in your thinking in this report and elsewhere, jim? >> if i could do the economic piece and the civil liberties.

so, that is actually a great question and there is never a better time to do this. right in the midst of this debate about the debt and deficit crisis in government spending and looking at the cuts. i think it is, this report is actually very helpful. first i want to say that national security spending is not the problem. it is to throw homeland spending on top of defense spending and i would say you probably still are spending about half the level of security spending that we spent in the cold war so the level is not what is driving big economy down. we doubled the homeland security spending i would say probably since 9/11 about that. we probably doubled the intelligence spending since 9/11 but even adding those numbers on their historically speaking since the end of world war ii, we are still spending at a relatively modest level. that is not the economic trouble in. you can take national security spending to zero and eden 40

years if entitlement is growing at the correct rate with social security and medicaid they will redo the entire budget. so even if we spent not a nickel on homeland security, don't spend a nickel on the defense department we would still go broke. this is not for growing part of what is called discretionary spending either. if you actually add up all the means tested welfare programs that we have today it is actually bigger than the defense department budget and homeland security is a round area in the defense department area, so looking at the security spending is the problem i think is simply wrong in terms of economics or vitality. having said that, what this report addresses, you think there are clearly areas where fiscal responsibility and homeland security could be better addressed. i mean i don't argue necessarily

for more homeland security. i wouldn't necessarily argue for less but i would argue for inefficiency and this is what we go back to before, the 10 years of experience where we have learned what works and what doesn't. there some things we have been doing that are literally stupid and literally wasting money, and a good example is we spend every personal place for visas seven interview. that is a required by federal law. that is just nuts so we have to create all these resources to interview all these people, and what you mind up doing as you spend a lot of time, very little time talking to a lot of people and not learning very much rather than focusing interviews on classes of people and individuals that truly represent concerns whether it is immigration or security. so we go through the report and they said they were just dumb things that we should stop spending money on because they are not indication.

my favorite one is called the s.a.f.e.r. grants. these are grants to go to small fire departments. these grants are literally in the billions of dollars now where we have poured out this money. and it is demonstrable they actually have no effect. there is a great report done by one of our analysts that looked at the safety net and says if you look at the communities they get these grants in the communities that don't get these grants, there is no difference. their safety record is no better. there is no demonstrative positive effect and yet actually the budget or postal last year, in the budget committee they actually went in and cut operational parts of the department and then they plussed-up this grant program which the only value of this grant program is the press release that people get to send out to say, i got a fire truck or whatever. there is demonstrably no more

ill spent money in and the department of homeland security them this grant program, so the association of fire departments departments -- [inaudible] there is another fiscal aspect, fiscal responsibility which is there are i think, there are subtle drags on the economy that are created by an efficient homeland security programs that i think are also important and worthwhile. they are not going to turn our economy around in a day and they are not going to free up zillions of dollars but they are friction on the back of a free and open economy that are unnecessary. these are self-inflicted wounds and i will just give you one small example. there is something called the visa waiver program which is kind of in ill named program. it is not actually waving anything. what it does is countries that have a bilateral agreement with the united united states under a waiver program, we can visit our citizens can visit their country

for 90 days on the visa free travel and they can visit ours. with those agreements also comes a whole bunch of securities.relation so it turns out that countries that are in the visa waiver program actually give you better data to help stop terrorists travel and to help stop people violating immigration laws. the countries that have the visa so it actually has a security benefit but it also has an enormous financial benefit. the countries that are currently in the visa waiver program are the most vibrant trading partners and when people move back and forthwith that produces tourism and the exchange of ideas or scientific education visits. they demonstrably add to a country the visa waiver program increases the wealth of both countries and so you'd be saying if their countries out there that are qualified for this and that want to join this program better good allies of the united states, why are we bringing them in? the answer is because we have a law that says we can't. it is just nuts. so we actually have a law on the

books in congress that is costing our economy and forcing us to actually lessen our security requirements because of it. so i do think that there is a law in economic freedom in terms of what we can spend a homeland security more efficiently so we can make it safe and not at a respectable amount and we can also stop doing things and start doing things that actually allow the flow of goods for people and services that increase economic security so i think it is something to imagine. do you want to talk about the civil liberties? >> this is what my wife calls the obvious and everyone looks at the political spectrum and i don't mean political in the big sense but political in terms of spectrum as a straight line and is really more like a clamshell as i see it where you are left kind of has closer to the right than it is to the middle.

and the reason i raise that is because this issue is civil liberties both the left in the right have done a fantastic job in the last 10 years keeping those of us that have had time in government accountable. things that have started as good ideas that exposed transparent he and accountability and whether it is the aclu or the tea party to condorcet wait a minute this is going on in things like the total information awareness and things like that the kind of have scary names they may have scary applications but never went anywhere and i think that is what is great. if you step back for a moment we are in a point in history where there is so much transparency still not enough, but so much more than ever before and the ability for folks to find information because of laws like the sunshine act in foia and things like that, the ability of folks to whistle blow, the ability of groups to kind of be

accountable with the use of cell cameras, sell videos, cell pictures, tweet and twitter, all the media that allowed us to hold our government leaders more countable than ever before. related to that, those in government, yes of course you have an occasional bad actor that really does want to run roughshod, but frankly that is more overstated than reality. the vast majority of men and women i've talked to in government and i was one of them, had no interest in degrading or civil rights or civil liberties. we didn't come to washington. work for law enforcement in order to degrade liberty and security. we actually came because we believe that america is the shining city on the hill and we want to preserve those liberties. those folks, they talk to them, go out of their way to make sure that they always have involved and more so than ever before today, folks who are kind of their check. they have groups that argue no task force groups or oversight goods that they occasionally

will ring in an reference and explain what they are doing to get feedback from them whether it is l.a.p.d. has such a unit, whether washington, the entire office and dhs focused on this issue so i think you know, the sincere effort and believe that most people trying to really keep us safe are trying to do so in a manner that really does respect our civil rights and civil liberties. sometimes things go awry. that is human nature and it happens but i don't believe for a moment that many people have an intent to really degrade those. they really are there to secure them. so one of the things that we need to keep in mind is, because of some of the history in the u.s. whether it was the dossier system and the red files back in the 60s and 70s, that most of those things they all got shut down and they are now court orders that are still today active in places like new york and l.a. where the oversight continues to maintain itself and you know we have a think the civil liberties groups to thank for really building that

foundation that allowed us after 9/11 to i think avoid a lot of problematic issues that historically had played in these types of things. i believe we have pretty strong accountability measures in place today but the federal level at both government so we don't have a degradation of our civil liberties. >> i would add to that, we looked at the report and we looked at a lot of the really high button issues whether it is e-verify which is enforcement law, or just real i.d. which is a requirement for standardized information on drivers licenses and secure flight which is a way to screen flight manifest, or we looked at these programs. basically we can to the conclusion -- the patriot act for example where we have counterterrorism investigatory tools. in every case we came to the conclusion that these programs can be managed in a manner which both provide security value and protect civil liberties of

individual so we detailed that about how we can do all these things going forward having our cake and eating it too. that is a lesson we have had over the last two years. >> course there will be occasions but that isn't the norm. that is the exception and i think the systems we have in place to catch that are pretty vibrant. >> thank you guys. that is really the least of the concerns here. now we'll go to the audience for questions and i will ask you to identify yourself. the gentleman in the front row, down here. >> yeah high. thank you mad engine. i have a question in relation to homeland security and the arbitrariness of customs agents. let me sketch this for a moment. i traveled to uae 25 times. people there tell me, don't want to come to the united states and get a visa and then arbitrarily be rejected in either a

businessman or a family man coming in through dulles or dwi or new york and so forth. so arbitrariness. that is from the middle east. the other is arbitrariness of visa applications coming from europe specifically germany, specifically, the past oral visa application that has been misused somewhat. so arbitrariness and looking at how our customs organization are instructed, todd and so forth, not to exercise arbitrary judgment in rejecting visitors to the united states. >> let me address that because there are two key findings in a report they go directly to that. one has to do with the visa waiver program. when a countries in country is in the visa waiver program,

travelers register through something called esta which stands for -- help me out. what does esta stand for? electronic system and travel authorization and this is quite frankly the wave of the future. everybody's going to be doing this. is actually pioneered by the us trillions would have happens under est as you can into your data on line and essentially what you do is get prescreened and what esta does is it significantly decreases the likelihood you will get turned back to the u.s. at the border. if there is an identifiable security issue it is much more likely to get flagged and you will get told hey odo consulate and talk to somebody before you come here so that is i think a significant way in which we can decrease these kind of false positives. and of course dedicated on that is the visa waiver program, the value of the visa waiver program when the country joins the visa waiver program to get better data-sharing and you get much more likely had to reduce

terrorist threats, much more terrorist travel much more likely to reduce criminal travel and much more likely to reduce immigration violation and you kind of increase the value of the traveler. that is going to address part of that because the main point is you are never going to take away all of the agents discretionary authority at the border. you would never want to do that because that is what the threat once. they want absolute predictability of the border so they can figure out how to go around that so what you want to do is allow them to maintain that flexibility but created an environment in which you are less likely to have a false positive, the honest traveler get wrongly identified. the visa waiver program will help a lot with that. at the other end, you raise a great point, i go to the consulate and i applied for a visa and i get turned down, and i have killed a week and 100 bugs and in my country 100 bucks is a months salary. that is bad. again, joining the visa waiver program you don't have to apply for a visa for sure travel so that help solve that problem.

the other initiative that we talked about in the report was a requirement which has never been fully realize which is called a visa security officer, which is homeland security representative that is in the consulate working with the state department that is identifying risk and emerging trends to help them better identify people that should be of concern, should be interviewed, rejected, targeted. this program is never gotten off the ground because there is never been the level of commitment from the department of homeland security which is supposed to by law, speak on matters of visa policy and the department of state which has been reticent and reluctant to accept these as security officers in the consulate. so those two initiatives which are addressed in the report would directly address some of the causes that you just raised. and i just want to add, and that is what this report is really about. this is a boring report.

i mean, it is, because this is about -- this report is about how to make the dang thing work right. this would be like doing breaking news on somebody fixing your car. it is not terribly exciting but you kind of like the car and you would like the four-door. this is about how to make the system work that are. is not about solving every homeland security problem we have. for example is not going to tell you what to do about -- it is about creating a system that is functional and durable and flexible and affordable and efficacious, so it is the kind of thing that if we did the kinds of things this report talks about, homeland security would never make the news because it would be like you drop your car for the mechanic and he fixes your car and gives it back to you and that is it. you pay for a service that you get. >> one other element of the report we talk about is really

doing a better job on the international appropriation front so that those types of stories, we can work through kind of intergovernmental element and figure out what the issue is to address it. you know, because it is hard for i think either of us or anyone frankly to sit in a position on an individual basis and write those kinds of and doesn't say whether that was a smarter bad decision because we don't know all the decisions that person had the time to make the decision they made. so, the point is we have to make sure we have a mechanism in place and we can have that country to country conversation that takes care of that issue so that if someone wants to come here to do business that does not have any nexus to terrorism can come here and do business because my god we don't have enough jobs to begin with so we don't want to slow that down. >> a question in the back there.

>> i'm from the hungarian embassy. i have a follow-up question on the visa waiver program. i'm sorry to hammer that issue but it seems to be a very important issue. it has really been one of the only voices in washington pushing for that and as you know poland is still outside of the program and we were ferry and courage and of them during our e.u. -- in one of the recommendations that you seem to highlight is to decouple the biometric exit system that dhs is currently required to implement before expanding the visa waiver program but then you also recommend that the program should focus when expanding the program, dhs should focus on the overstay rates and not be recusal rates. so how do you measure the overstay rates without the exit system? >> right, so the department of homeland security will tell you right now that they can measure overstay rates and their measurement they believe is fairly accurate, so this

actually -- i have to unpack or people perfectly what the debate is. there is a requirement which predates 9/11 which is that the u.s. government should in real time be able to check everybody out of the country like walmart on the air and sea borders. it is called exit and the requirement is for biometric exit which basically means that when you leave the country they get your fingerprint or your eye scan or something, so they can physically prove you are you, and then we record all that data. that is not, it sounds like a commonsense idea until you think about the non-insignificant tens of millions of people that come and leave everyday and have massive that database is and how doing that in real-time is just really a challenge again to put a man on the moon. this goes under the category of wasteful spending. we have spent a massive amount of money studying this problem and you could go to the department of homeland security and they could give you 57 reasons why it doesn't really

work. so this was really a poison pill that was put in the visa waiver law. when the department was given authority to expand the visa waiver program and ring countries on if they met the additional security will carmans and their numbers were coming down, which are technical issues, there was something, by the way i think it was with the 2007 or eight, can't remember, they don't have a biometric exit plan in place and you can do this anymore and of course that kicked in and the biometric exit is not in place and it is never going to happen because it is impossible and unaffordable. and here is the terrible thing. is completely unnecessary. so they are two things you might want an exit program to do. one is to kind of tell you who is obeying the laws or not, immigration laws. well the reality is that the data we collect now tells you that. is a perfect? no, but does it tell you pre-reliable -- pre-reliable trends in who is doing what? which countries are following

the trend, which visas are problematic lexus to give you the information you need to make a decision as a leader and a manager about whether you want to change something or visa program and the answer is yes. we have the data now we don't need that system. it gives us the knowledge we need to manage or visa programs. so then what else would he want? i would want to find a terrorist in real-time and if the terrorist is leading the country, i would want to know that so i could grab it. do you know what? we have done that, right? the times square bomber was leaving the country. he was put on the no-fly list, right? and as soon as he was put on the no-fly list cbp so he was leaving the country and we grabbed him. it wasn't the fbi. the fbi didn't hunt this guy down and attacked the fbi missed him. homeland security grabbed him and they grabbed him because if there is really somebody you are looking for trying to leave the country have pretty good mechanisms to do that. so, you have to ask a question

if we can do both of the main tasks we would want pretty well, right, then why are we going to shell out money for a system -- you know the story the knee in the curb. some point in the curve you get 80% of what you want for a certain amount and then you spend gazillions born to get like one or two more present than efficiency? we are at the knee in and the curve on enforcing these things at the border. and, so the argument is, why are we doing this? why are we keeping from expanding a perfectly good program and holding it hostage to implement a probe ram which you know at the end of the day, we don't want because it is a huge enormous cost with very little benefits of that is why we really argued for changing the law and using the existing data that dhs has in its visa programs. sorry for the long answer. >> i want to briefly comment on the comment that jim made because i think it is made too

often in the context of homeland security. we could put on them -- if we can put men on the moon why can we secure our border or two x, y and z and i would actually argue and someone from nasa will tell me i'm wrong but the challenges that remain of homeland security are harder than putting a man on the moon because that is really thrust in college math, whereas the things we have to do today whether it is to secure the border, there are so many variables that go, including man-made sabotage that has to go whether it is whether come environment, terrain, you name it that you think since we put a man on the men we should be able to do this pretty easily and i think we have done the low and medium hanging fruit in this arena and the stuff we are trying to do now involves complex algorithms and really complex variables and so it is hard and we have got to have the patience to make sure that we are not expecting too much and then you know throwing out the cliché of well you know we can put a man on the moon, why can we do that?

>> the man on them and kept bouncing around and shooting back. there is an asteroid -- so i just think we need to make sure that we understand the true complexity of hardware, software integration and variables that, where there is cargo security or its border security, it is hard and let's not lose sight of how hard it actually is to do. a question right there. >> i am deborah white and i write for --. for the people who work on the sharia law stuff, i wish i had it in front of me so i could recollect exactly the new efforts that are being implemented at dhs to d-link and disassociate the ideology from the events that occur as the fort hood bomber and things like that and their people who are trying to connect the dots so

that we will understand that lone wolves and all that. a nice way to say they want to keep an eye on the lone wolf but you have any comment on you know, this administration seemingly coordinated strategy to try to disconnect the dots? >> this is where i get to go hollywood because that in our counterterrorism strategy that will be delivered so you have to come back. [laughter] >> which is not boring. i think at the end of this week or next week, but it is an issue that we have addressed, but i'm going to make people come back. >> okay. the gentleman down here. >> i want to make you feel good, jim, because i think we are doing a hell of a job in progressing and trying to put our finger on things that are not useful.

i spent 35 years collecting a lot of information and it never got process. no, i'm serious. it never got process by the intelligence community never gave up because they wanted more and more and if you could get a wider band they would do it. i was responsible for wiring up los angeles in 1984. you mention 1984. we had a headquarters there, desktops was running it and it was like where they had the harbor patrol and we had everything, all tied together, but we have the local people that were very professional, working with the fbi and it had been the munich hostage deal that prepped this and put this on a forward leaning west in 1984. then i will when i was in the pentagon is the director of command and control, kept trying to strangle all this unnecessary

stuff that was going on. people wanted everything. they wanted the moon and i got this answer time and again. if i can talk all over new york city why can't i talk over in germany? there are a lot of different things that i could go into on that, but i just want to make you feel good. i think we are doing very, very good in our progression of how we are dealing with this technological stuff. i disagree with some of the people that say we are in the stone age on adp and so forth. i think we are -- we are not in the knowledge area and we are still in the information area that they want you to feel good with the fact that we need more people to say take this out. it is no longer worth what it is going. i watch the of the navigation system at stations all over the country. weiss to not be able to identify anybody the cayman. now they know exactly who you

are, your driver's license and with your plate. you may not be able to match the two up but they have got you and in most cases, so the local people are very very important in homeland security and they will even get that are. my grandson is a on tech in tucson and i guarantee you he is on the job 24 hours a day, so i just want to make you feel good that we have come a long way since 1984, when we had to sort of ad hoc and scrambled to get together and i had to lead a big contract with motorola to get radios that were compatible. we could talk to police, fbi, harbor patrol, so feel good, gentlemen. >> do you guys feel better? >> i do want to put a plug-in. plug in. we have an event later this week. we have done research on plots

that have been foiled since 9/11 which we have the only database in the country the tracks that and also we looked at trends against terrorist attacks against the united states both in home and overseas over the last four years. and i think both of those data sets are very instructive, and a good companion piece to this, talking about what works and what doesn't and in that event, do you remember when that event is? is it wednesday or thursday? thursday. come back thursday. >> whenever you want. >> the front row over there, the gentleman with his hand up. >> terry miller from the heritage foundation. i would like to take you back to the biometric exit program and ask you to go just a little bit deeper. you describe this program that is neither cost-effective nor actually necessary. i think stupid might be one of the terms you either applied to it or would have.

and my question is, we have in congress representatives who are a lot of things but they are probably not stupid, most of them, so why is a requirement like this in the law in the first place? >> well, i think that is partly a reflection of the dysfunction, talking about a different answer part of the reflection of the dysfunctional oversight so what you have, the department of defense you basically have oversight from the armed services committee in the house and the senate, and some other issues in terms of intel and variations that is pretty much it and then you have appropriators. in homeland security virtually every major committee has an oversight authority and many of the subcommittees have oversight authority as well. what you have is, you can have something which from your perspective seems like common sense so if you are sitting in judiciary and you are responsible for immigration reform and you have no real

technical expertise and a whole range of issues there the requirement may seem like perfect common sense, but there is no check and balance on it and the one thing we know congress doesn't do well, right, is congress doesn't evaluated -- when they put system requirements and they have no way of evaluating the system requirements. think about that, right? if they want to say the cost of doing something they can go to cdo, congressional budget office and they will bring you the numbers on the cost of implementing this law. but, they can't tell you from a systemic standpoint you know, how all this is going to work and what this is going to add to. they can't do systems analysis on that and the government accountability office, they can look at programs that are in existence and tell you how well it is going so after they passed the law, the gop right all these reports about how screwed up it is but the gao can tell you beforehand and say well the to do systems analysis and boy this

is kind of a dumb idea. of course there is no real, there is really no technical advisory plan in the and the department. so there is nobody really -- you add all those things up and it creates a perfect storm of coming up with good ideas, and then only finding out it is not a good idea when you actually go out there to try to do it and then it actually becomes -- because you breathe create the requirement which forces the government to do something stupid. the government tries to do it and of course it is a stupidly so then you have been hearing about how stupid they were doing this thing and they beat them up over that so you have this endless thing and you create more requirements. the requirements you layer on forces them to be more efficient and we go through this for years. but here's the deal, because it was your stupid idea to begin with you can't fight the law that says i repeal my stupid idea. that would make you look stupid.

and that is literally, mean if you look at 100% cargo scanning is a perfect example. every responsible homeland security analyst on the universe is this is a stupid idea because the only thing that we are really concerned about is a smuggled nuclear weapon if someone was going to smuggle a nuclear weapon the last thing would -- that they would do is put it inside a shipping container. repurpose were we put this were harmed in anyway and here we are literally years later in the department says this is simply not going to work. >> stupid is as stupid does. [laughter] >> let me add to this because we are running out of time, imagine a fortune 500 company which are vigor than the department from a market capitalization standpoint, having to run it and be overseen by 108 different committees. that is the analogy and we want oversight but there can't be too

much oversight in there because you reach that end in the knee where we are overseeing so much that we actually lose sight of what is really important and needs to be overseen that allows progress. >> but it is actually 108 committees and the board of directors of 535 who actually control and design the budget for the companies in the first place. that is a recipe for dysfunctionality. >> in terms of the last commercial for the day, read the report for yourself. >> we up at the noon hour and unfortunately we will cut off the questions here. thank you very much for being here and please join me in giving a warm round of applause to our panelists. [applause]

sunday marks anniversary of martin luther king jr.'s i have a dream speech. 48 years later dr. kings the more you will be dedicated on the national mall. the 30-foot sculpture of dr. king stands alongside a 450-foot granite wall with more than a dozen of dr. kings quotes. we will bring you live coverage of the dedication ceremony on sunday, starting at 11:00 a.m. eastern.

now the fordham institute hosts a debate on reforms affecting teachers and the impact of state budget cuts on their pensions, health care and other benefits. this is 90 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> good morning. good morning.

come on, good morning class. my name is mike which really. welcome for those of you not familiar with ford and we are one of the nation's leading educational think-tanks. we do work here in washington but we also do work on the ground in ohio and specifically in our hometown of dayton so we don't just talk about education reform and promoted, we also do it on the ground in real places with real kids and we are proud of that. i'm excited to be moderating today's session especially when the idea came from rick and randy. my understanding is rick and randy run into each other from time to time and said you know, all this debate and vigorous discussion around some of the big reforms that have been pushed through this here often it is more heat than light so what we can do if we can get together and have a conversation that doesn't paper over differences around some of these key issues that admits there is serious disagreement about which way to go but doesn't do it in a way that it is personal or

vitriolic as the public debates offer so that is the goal for today. again, not to pretend that there are not disagreements about key issues, but identify with those are. idoni to do much introductions for a guess but randi weingarten at the present of the american association of teachers and rick hess with the american enterprise institute. now, my job as moderator is to be fair. i don't think i can claim to be impartial. rick is one of my best friends. we collaborate on a lot of things including the education gaps like podcast which if you are not listening every week you are missing out. not necessarily on thoughtful education commentary but i'm certainly rick's latest musings on the world and pop culture. so tune into that. we did know that we were going to be having c-span taping the so we are excited that rick decided to wear pants for the occasion.

with the oprah style format we have here otherwise he would have been looking at rick's needs the entire time and we were sure that america was ready for that, so thank you. so what we are going to talk about today are they big reforms related to teachers that have been vigorously debated in the last couple of years but especially this spring in states around the country. you know the education reform conversation is talked about lots of different issues over the years from standards to accountability, to choice and charters but it seems like the conversation is getting to this heart of the enterprise. what happens inside the classroom? and directly around teachers professional lives. we are talking about things like evaluating teachers in new ways, talking about laying off teachers based on effectiveness instead of on seniority, talking about paying teachers differently and tying that to performance. talking about curtailing collective bargaining rights. these are things that get very personal very quickly so we want to talk about all of these issues and again have a very

light but vigorous discussion and disagreement. now, i come to this discussion and again we were a little bit recruited into playing this role. i should admit there is some skepticism and i want to read a quote from steven brill just from the other day. just to set the context, k.? i'm sorry randi. by the way after 24 hours with steven brill, pretty remarkable. >> actually that isn't true. but it did feel to me like that. [laughter] a root canal, steven brill. [laughter] >> so he says quote the kumbaya feeling you get watching union leaders sitting on panels with reformers and calmly discussing their joint vision to do what is best for children fades when you read the over-the-top lawsuits they have filed about block reform or their campaign finance filings and seo they continue to

sponsor the politician to take the most hard-line anti-reform positions and punish those who stray to support the mild performance they support. so that is some context here. again, we want to make sure we are being honest and there are significant disagreements. so let's get started. we are going to start with kind of a broad topic about teachers and reform and particularly this idea about teachers feeling under attack right now in this moment in history so let me start with you randi. is your sense that teachers do feel under attack? is this just anecdotal or work do we have polling data and what is it that is making them feel under attack? >> so, first off thank you. i'm glad we are doing this. their people there are people that actually do work in the summer in washington d.c.. this is proof of that. you know, even mike and mike thank you for moderating.

not the question but even the introduction, think about what brill said. as you were quoting back that quote, which is pretty demagogic, i was thinking i wonder whether my walking around colorado a few days before michael bennet's re-election for the senate qualifies as one of those. what ends up happening is this debate, and you said it come, he gets so polarized that as opposed to engaging in a real way, you end up first having to defend yourself which seems silly in a world where we are actually trying to figure out how to educate kids. so, so, this is why teachers feel under attack.

new pdk poll just came out last week. last week, two weeks ago? whenever it came out. losing track of time. as i get older i loose track of time. one of the most interesting results about old said that even though teachers are respected, more than ever before, more than administrators, more than principals, more than policymakers, even more than parents, and i say even more than parents because parents have a really important role in all of what we do. they said that two-thirds of the reporting that they see on education -- so when you have that steady drumbeat of negativity, when people are called names or even the kind of gross characterizations that brill repeatedly makes in the book, people feel badly about it and people feel badly even when

you know like when you are talking about the kind of, this kind of session, about how we are focused on teachers. you use the word evaluating teachers, laying teachers off, paying teachers. my teacher voice, and i taught full and part-time high school in brooklyn. my teacher voice started saying, well what about the tools and conditions i'd need to do my job? and that is never actually in the debate, even though what teachers have said to us, their union, is that a sickly help us get the tools and conditions we need to do our jobs. so, you know you can look at lots of different things, but over and over and over again, that is why teachers feel badly and the economic situation has i think made it worse. >> what do you think, rick? are teachers under attack?

>> yes, i think this is where randi and i come at it from different perspectives. first off let me speculate that randi made to perfectly reasonable points here. one is as we talk about holding anybody accountable for the work they do, it makes sense to talk about making sure they are in a position where they succeed. and i think that is absolutely fair. second, randi alluded to the point about two-thirds of coverage is negative. i'm not sure exactly what to make of that. i don't know about the research on this but as a think about health care, about transportation, about airlines, about ranking it strikes me that two-thirds is probably not an unusual next for negative or positive on anything in the public domain. a couple more specific points point here. one that randi mentioned in the pdk poll we know in 1984, 50% of americans polled gave teachers in a or b and in today to 69%.

in the early 1990s, about 52 or 53% of americans said they would like their child to become a teacher. today it is about two-thirds so one interesting backdrop is for all the talk of the air of choice and accountability for teachers in america, somehow or other future profession seems to have raised pretty dramatically. a more fundamental point i want to make though is this kind of narrative out there that you have got eased mean-spirited, particularly republican governors who are were on are on the warpath against teachers. and i just think, i think that is just an enormously problematic reading up with these folks have said. what scott walker said this winter was he said we are broke and it is time somebody stood up and told the truth. he said i have great respect for the more than 300,000 state and local government employees who work in wisconsin. there had good deeds and hard-working professionals. from our perspective it is about

money. the state of wisconsin is broke. we are out of the negotiating ability and we don't have anything to give any more. governor chris christie said last fall, we have to get realistic and telling people the truth. nobody wanted the teachers laid off, not me, not the school board or the teachers union so i would argue this does not sound to me like demagoguery. i think steven brill is another question but these elected leaders i think -- and in response to be think back to wisconsin six months ago, wisconsin was compared to pre-nazi germany. walker was compared to hitler and mubarak. the speaker of the wisconsin statehouse, fitzgerald was threatened with an e-mail. we have all plan to assault you by writing it your house and putting a nice bullet in your head however this is not enough to win on. senator gil patri that is when she'll broken and received an e-mail we will hunt you down and slit your throat. we will drink your blood.

i will have your decapitated head on a pike in the madison town square. this is her last morning. there were thousands of these reported to the wisconsin state government and collected and investigated. so the notion that somehow it was those pushing to rollback collective bargaining were somehow using the trail on the warpath and as their opponents were somehow responsible is to me at least i think a misreading of the dialogue. >> so, i agree with you, rick that any time to -- i am very concerned about the demagoguery and in fact years ago i got in big trouble when i said that educators have to be -- educators have a right, a freedom of speech but we also have a responsibility in terms of how we use it. and you know, i got in big trouble for saying that i lots of people who said you know, you

should just protect the freedom of speech. are wisconsin federation also got these kinds of death threats. when i have seen people put up signs comparing public figure to hitler, i'd announced it. i think that is wrong. i think we have to be really careful about what the of origins of fascism marguia to be really careful in terms of protecting our democracy. but where a diversion from you is that the facts are very different than what he said in terms of wisconsin and the fact about chris christie are very different. i watch the youtube video of when a teacher said something to christie that he went right at their that teacher and believed that teacher. and that was a public official doing that and a very demagogue in way. i also watched the wisconsin

unions basically tell walker, we will negotiate these issues and he refused. he never met with them once. the issue is not budget. the issue was whether or not they have a right to collectively bargain, and what we saw right after walker was elected was that the contract that the last governor and the state employees had done, which included millions and millions of dollars in concessions, walker found a way to reject using the state senate. this was not about budget. this was actually about getting rid of rights, and i think the piece that you didn't say was that, and the piece that

everyone started looking at and kind of shaking their head about was that, when walker pushed through the budget repair bill initially, he also said he was going to call the state police out because he expected there to be violence, and if you remember that punk call with the koch brothers he went on and on and on with the kinds of things they were trying to do including infiltrate the crowd to try to create that kind of violence. so the issue here in terms of walker or kasich or rick scott is that no one is saying that there shouldn't be a real dispassionate look at what we can do but the unions in wisconsin agreed to the demands and they were not even given the respect to have a meeting with walker.

he wanted to eliminate collective-bargaining. >> let's touch on more about that right now. we will get to that later but let's talk about wisconsin. rick is an educator how can you support with governor walker did in wisconsin? he was clearly trying to support political points. is going after teachers and other public-sector workers. why weaken the public sector and not the private sector unions? i mean what is wrong with this idea that teacher should ever have a right to collectively bargain? >> mad i think they're a couple things going on. one again, to kind of randi's point about it is important how the stuff is presented and address. i thought it was unfortunate that walker carved out i believe it was safety and fireworks -- firefighters. so police and fire. [inaudible] [laughter] >> which is one of those litigations that are now

happening. >> on the other hand you know we think about the president obama strategy on health care reform. there was an interesting array of carbon organizations that have been smart enough to get behind obama during the 2008 campaign. so part of the way dealmaking occurs, like it or not in a democratic society, sometimes these issues are addressed in a manner that is less principled than we might like but the reality is, there are two issues on the table when you talk about wisconsin. one is as randi .2 there was a short-term fiscal crunch and here not only is she right that unions had indicated they were open about going, to my mind, finally going to the table to talk about redressing some of the issues with both health care and pension, but the more fundamental question is those givebacks weren't going to make a big dent in the short-term fiscal kitchen. they just weren't.

however, the more fundamental question which is that wisconsin, like the federal government and like just about every state government has been living beyond its means for decades. their accumulated shortfalls necessary and the problem is that we have had governor after governor and state after state who has been content to kick the can down the road. so the real rationale for trying to both rollback collective-bargaining and to go after teacher contributions, pension and health care was not because i was actually going to help with the 2012/2013 deficit. here i think walker was less than forthcoming because it was to change a trajectory. as you look five or 10 years out in terms of the fiscal condition of the skate. >> rick need to curtail collective reckoning rights to xp because school boards and superintendents in wisconsin and elsewhere have made it clear that they lack the intestinal fortitude to negotiate a

responsible -- responsibly. one example the wisconsin teacher pension system for instance stipulates employers will make a 6.8% contribution to the pension system on behalf of employees. employees were to make 6.2%. the milwaukee public schools in 1996 negotiated away so that they are paying the entirety of the employee share so 13% on top of each employee. in addition to that there was a supplemental 4.2% contribution made entirely by the -- so nps was giving 17.2% of each teacher position into pensions and supplementary pensions and employees from a king zero contributions. is probably not a shock that while the median compensation for teachers were $56,000 fully loaded with benefits they were $100,000 apiece. the school boards and superintendents who are engaging in this over the decades have suggested that they are frankly

probably not to be trusted in these kinds of negotiations. basically governor walker took away local control? >> there a couple of things when we talk about public collective-bargaining -- are getting. public bargaining was illegal in 1992 when pressing kennedy issued an executive order. was illegal until the 1950s. in wisconsin i believe is 59. frankly there is a famous letter from franklin roosevelt to the president of the national federation of federal employees where he pointed out that all government employee should realize the profits of collective-bargaining is usually understood cannot be transplanted into the public sector. it has limitations when applied to public personal -- this is fdr and the reason it has unique and insurmountable problems in the public sector is that the private sector, they give away -- they are too unaffordable competition can come in and knock your block off

in the public sector unfortunately, you don't actually have self -- mechanisms. >> randi. >> there is also a quote i ronald reagan who says, and i don't have it with me, who talked about how important collective-bargaining was including in the public sector. you know, he gets people focused. >> that's too complicated. >> what i'm saying is if fdr were alive today as are his successors, he would have a very different view of it for the following reasons. i think he would have a different view. there is a mental -- fundamental difference of understanding in terms of the workplace and what you can do using collective-bargaining. and so i want to actually go back to the wisconsin situation

for a second. .. >> the negative and the positive. education a lot of times you see districts that are doing quite well that have public confidence

having -- you see a connection between public confidence and districts that are doing quite well. you see an education and the only -- in some ways the only opportunity in a capitalist democracy that is provided to all kids. different in different states, but provided to all kids. you see a service that is really about hope, not fear. there's kind of a disdense between those of us that are in education and those people around that are reporting about it or thinking about it in the kind of negativivity. what collective bargaining does is it's actually the vehicle by which to create not just economic dignity for people, but to actually create voice to enable the tools and conditions that teachers need. and that's what collective

bargaining has done in districts that have actually worked effectively, both here and aboard. and that gets missed in this entire debate. so, for example, in new haven, there is -- they really -- one the most innovative, interesting contracts in a long time because they actually use collective bargaining to problem solve. in toledo in the last few months with the cuts that they had, they used collective bargaining to problem solve. in baltimore, they used collective bargaining to problem solve. now that's different than the whole issue in terms of pensions and things like that, because a lot of that was actually statutory. not done through collective bargaining. my point is when actually the public was confronted with should people's rights be stripped away in wisconsin and ohio?

2/3 of the public in the winter said no. rights shouldn't be stripped away. does it mean that we have to use these rights responsibility? yes. but when you start thinking about what's happened in america these days, and even you said it, okay, we don't trust our elected officials, so let's strip away their right to actually do something. that's not accountability. accountability should then be the next election people are accountable for what they've done. and the same is true in terms of -- and then i'll stop -- the -- separate or apart from the collective bargaining issues around the country, the other underlying issue that's very, very, very disturbing is voting suppression, voting rights. there have been many states that have actually and many of the new republican governors who have actually attempted to change voting rights in a lot of these states. so that is happening at the very

same time people like you and others are talking about pensions, 36 states have changed pension laws to create more contributions on behalf of or on the part of employees. take a place like wisconsin, that was done, but at the same time, there were tax cuts and capital gains. so where is the fairness here? when you have entityies like ge who pay less taxes as a corporation than a wisconsin custodian? where's the fairness when the wisconsin governor says, oh, we need to go after this in terms of benefits whether the average benefit, pension benefit across the nation is about $400, $450 a month. where's the fairness when that

happens and yet no one in this fiscal issue on your side of the debate talks about, you know, taxing billionaires. >> a lot of different things to stick up. i think rick was arguing with taking the collective bargaining off of the table for local school boards. the local school boards are often elected by unions. the unions are the driver in getting them elected. whereas if reforms come into office, they would mobilize. if that is the dynamic, doesn't it make sense to say, well, that is kind of some proversion of democracy and so we have to address it by taking some of these rights away obvious moving to mayor of control or something else like that. >> well, look, we actually -- first off, we now argue using the exceptions to make the case. there have been lots and lots of

elections throughout whether it's school board, whether it's, you know, senatorial elections, where it's other kinds of elections where lots of people have gotten engaged. thethe -- i have often seen the role of the union exaggerated when it comes to elections of school boards or other kinds of -- other kinds of things. and i've watched now the role of money in all of this. totally and completely change the relationship everywhere. now people should have a right to engage politically. that is part of our democracy. but separate and apart from that, take those situations like mayoral control, other than elected school boards. any proof that one the structures work any better than the other structures?

you know, i've watched -- we supported in new york city premayor bloomberg, mayoral control, the union steps up to support that. we thought that we needed to have a more cohesive accountability system. i suspect that when this version of merrill control expires there will be very little support because of the way it was used. and the same thing -- you could say the same thing about everything. if there is -- if a district is not focused on how we educate kids in a real way for the knowledge economy they are going to be called to account. and everybody is going to be called to account. and frankly what we've been saying is let's all step up and try to do far more to deal with the real issues which are how do we as the economy races forward

and the so many differences in terms of the knowledge that kids need. and that's the real issue. >> rick wouldn't say to randi when he says we are trying to balance the budget on the back of the kids and teachers. why aren't we talking on right about taxes and taxing on the upper brackets as a big part of the solution too? >> well, the reality is we've been living beyond our means as a nation in the individual states. >> so the reality is we've been living beyond our means as a nation and these states for 20 plus years. where as of 2009, pension funds were -- pensions were under funded by $1.26 trillion nations

according to pugh. we are spending $1 trillion more than we are raising. we are going to be raises taxes. if we went ahead and did the tax increases that president obama suggested this summer, taxing corporate jets, you know, putting an end to the bush tax cuts for the rich families making more than $250,000 a year, that would raise about $85 billion. given that we are going to borrow $1.5 trillion, that would mean we are only boring $1.4 trillion against the future next year. now, of course, that would also mean that our top marginal pass rates for families making $250 plus in the average state are going to be about 55%. we can certainly take them higher. that's 55% when you add up the federal rate they are paying, state rate, and social security contribution. now if you go ahead and take that higher which is certainly

feasible with 70% of each dollar earned when reagan came in the office over a certain point, there were concerns that you start to discourage economic productivity among people for 50 cents on the dollar to state and local government. but you can certainly go there. the reality though is even if we do the tax increase, it's best to bring in maybe $300 billion a year. which is terrific. expect that it means we're still spending $1.2 trillion that we don't have for the foreseeable feature. i'm sympathetic to the point that we're going to have to generate more revenues. the notion that if we do so, that would alleviate the need to dial back the promises is nothing but a fairy tale. but also need to look at unaffordable promises that had been made by irresponsible politicians over the last 20 or 30 years. that is going to address national entitlements like

social security and medicare and also state level entitlements like pension and health care. so i'm sympathetic to randi's point that we need to talk about all of this, i agree. but the reality is that we are going to have a choice very shortly and we have it right now at the state and local levels, and they were going to pay from the retirement promises in terms of pensions and health care to retire. and frankly, i know which side of that issue. >> we have a -- this is the elite -- this maybe far field and it's used to implement the climate core. you know, as rick was saying that i recollected back to the

pension task force. and the fairly modest pensions and still cost a whole bunch of money. and the issue becomes and the way it's been going right now is how are the pension cores the same in in -- same? one the things we said, let's have a modern pension. no spiking, and the employees that -- this is the point that i think rick is missing in all of this. there have been modest salaries in the public sector. the macro point is this for america.

what happens ten or twenty years from now when no one has a retirement pension? hat you see in the pollingears that we've done ans huge retirement insecurities. so rick is talking about how we solve -- how we actually make the situation in terms of retirement insecurity worse by -- on a macro level by getting rid of it on a micro level. we need to actually think about what happens in this country long term when you have people getting older and older and working until they are, you know, in their '50s or '60s and what happens afterwards. that's in some ways the public sector and bargaining solved that by saying modest wages but

also deferred compensation in terms of pension. and that's a big -- that's a big long term problem. >> one more point, rick, then we're going to turn the page. >> one, i think randi and i disagree to a fair bit on how modest reacher -- modest teacher compensation. medium pay is $40,000. fully is somewhere around $70,000, full pension and cost. it depends on the benchmarks in terms of how do you do comparables. let's keep in mind the typical work year is 290 days instead of 245 or 290. there's a number of issues when we start to talk about teacher compensation and current dollars and in retirement and responsible people can come at this in different ways. the second thing is randi is exactly right. the real issue here is long

term. just one relatively simple way to start talking about getting retiree health care and pensions under control in the public sectors is to take the norm from 30 years to 40 years. so that teachers are expected to retire at about 65 or 67. which is a legacy of a much earlier era as a different demographic profile in terms of how long we expect it to live. i certainly think randi is right, there is good in theory for people to talk about how to build the tuitions in ways that work. but i suspect that if randi were to try to put together before a team of even, you know, admiral aft teachers, the notion that they ought to extent by another decade their anticipation of career longevity in order to

qualify for benefits, then it would not be received particularly warmly. >> so, you know, i'm giggling as you are talking about that. because at the same time as some of the -- as we have seen those proposals, we've also seen proposals that say let's look at experience and let's be fairly negative about experience and let's just have, you know, younger and which i don't actually subscribe to. i subscribe to we need newer teachers and we need experienced teachers and we need that kind of balance and that kind of balance in the school that's effective. so you can't actually on the one hand say teachers should actually work longer, and on the other hand, by the way, we're actually not going to give them the opportunity to work longer. there are a lot of teachers that actually work 34 years. there are also some folks who at their 20th or 25th year say i

have to do something else. or i'm tired, and frankly one the things that we need to do is we need to actually do things like have different kind of career ladders from teachers so that we can do something different with the skills. i do actually think we are losing huge -- i mean at the very same time as skill and knowledge is so important, we need to maintain that kind of experience. but i'm not saying that we don't have to confront pension issues and long term retirement security issues and long term health security issues. but, you know, teachers are not gazillionaires. what they do as part of the benefit bag -- benefit package. if you are saving, that is good for the economy and community.

the last thing that i want to say is this on economics. i think there's a fundamental misstatement that happens. we saw it in the debt ceiling debate about debt. last -- the last democratic president in the united states of america actually ended his presidency not with a debt, but with a surplus. and that was, i don't know, a decade or so ago. what is the fundamental reason that we have the debt that we have right now? we have three wars that we are engaged in right now. we have tax cuts that were never paid for, and we have prescription drug benefit that was never paid for. so there's a bunch of different reasons why we are in the crisis that we are in. a lot of it is not because of the education spending that we have done over the course of time. and frankly, what's happened is

that we will actually disinvest from our kids at the very same time as the economy is changing as then say that the promises that were made deferred pensions to people who actually worked in this field when there was moderate salaries should not be paid. something is just fundamentally off about that. >> just two points here. one, i think randi makes a nice point. which is one. i think reformers offer the short trip. which is that teachers have entered the profession with an understanding. this also coming up when we talk about how we're going to treat seniority in school assignment and class assignment. teachers in the field, 10-15-20 years entered the field with understandings about compensation, benefits, randi is right. i think any of us when we think we have one set of deals on the table and people come in and self-righteously tell us that

doesn't work. there's absolutely, you know, any of us would feel that we were being dealt dirty. >> and just a second point though here, you know what, i can't remember. let's leave it at that. >> we need to get back to some of the other issues. this is helpful. some of the things i'm hearing in agreement so far, you are both against demagoguery. you both agreed that we act in wisconsin's case that there was some evidence that they were willing to deal, though rick's point that would only have an impact on the short term and longer term was used. and this that retirement situation is a big issue in that, i think we're -- perhaps we both agreed there's concerns that to solve the debt crisis there's going to be disinvestment from kids. there's the sort of intergeneration concern going on that we might be continuing to transfer wealth from the young to the old. >> that was the point that i wanted to make.

just real quick that i think unfortunate because we have made the expansive promises, we are in a position that we are having to dial back, both dial back investments in all kinds of areas that we care about, infrastructure, school, kids, and partly that's because we have made a set of loaded and, i think at this point, unwise commitments to the elderly. frankly, when we started medicare 45 years ago, poverty rate among the elderly was substantially higher than it was among america's children. today the poverty rate among the elderly is about half of what it is among american children. what we are doing is we have tied up substantial resources in spending dollars on the over 65s and i think the pension and health care conversation and education is part of it. i agree entirely with randi that, you know, if we are serious about doing right by our kids in educational improvement, we want to be putting more dollars into the kids partly because it's a good investment,

partly because it's the right thing to do. we need to have the fortitude to say that we can't do everything in the world that it would be swell to do. one the things that this requires is we have to take a hard look at what we have promised we're going to do for the elderly. >> all right. i don't want to get into it, social security and medicare debate. there's clear disagreement. randi's point about the race to the bottom, versus race to the top. the concern that says let's not get to the point where we are saying let's have retirement insecurity for everybody. >> right. i mean look, there's -- this is a really -- this is a really interesting economic discussion we're having. on a macro level. and it wouldn't surprise rick that i come from a belief that you have to actually create jobs and try to figure out ways of filling those jobs. you know, one the things i'm

haunted by right now is at the same time as we have this, you know, 9, 10% unemployment, 9% unemployment rate regardless of what the effect of unemployment rate is is for folks, there are three million jobs available in the united states of america that are not filled. because of the skill mismatch. and that's the kind of thing that we should be working on on a micro level right now. it's the kind of thing that if we actually had in different communities, you know, what are the business needs. what are the skills of people, are there ways of kind of creating a match or is there a role for community colleges and others to create maybe some wrap around services around schools in order to do that. these are the kinds of problems that america should be able to solve right now as opposed to, you know, ultimately simply thinking about the big macro

problems. and that's the -- because at the end of the day, when you have an economic downturn for the likes of which we've had now which most americans did not create, recklessness in my hometown, on wall street, recklessness in the housing market created it more than basic america. but when you have this, you also have the safety net kicking in for more and more people so it means that there's more and more of a burden on state and localities, food stamps, medicaid, all of the other things, unemployment, they kick in when people have less and less jobs. when there are more and more jobs available, people are paying taxes. there's more revenues, there's more surplus and less debt. i get @ debate saying jobs, jobs, jobs, and we have in the

labor movement says jobs, jobs, jobs for a long time. in fact, one the proposals in terms of pension funds is this is a whole -- the tremendous amount of capital for pension funds, let's use it for infrastructure and create jobs. let's do things differently now that america used to do. we are so timid about doing kind of new big things. so that's one of our ideas and that's one the things that we've talked the pension funds around the country about. >> okay. bit way, for those of you watching online, you can send us questions. we're going to get to questions in a little bit. you can ask a question on twitter using the hashtag wrtt, when reform touches teachers. i moved back to the question about teachers feeling under

attack. fundamentally, let me ask you this, randi, is there any way to -- for reformers to promote the kinds of changes that we are talking about here? curtailing pension benefits and health care benefits and changing evaluations and making jobs less security? is there any way of reformers promoting that agenda that does not going to make teachers feel under attack? in other words, is there the policies they are not going to like or communications failure? >> well, mike, if the policies are how can we take something from you as opposed to how can we make education better, but if it's framed as we're going to take something from you, then, of course, there's going to be reaction to that. if it is -- these f these are policies that say let's start with what do kids need to know and be able to do in the 21st century and how are we going to help all kinds, not some kids

get there? this is an engagement strategy that everyone should want to be involved in. and -- >> isn't that stephen brill point? we all love kids. we love teachers. >> i did bring one prop. i am really -- it's actually hard to create a trusting innovative environment. i've been a boss for for -- i've been a boss, you know, in the uft, i was the president from 1999 to 2008. and at the american federation of teachers, we've been the president from 2008 to now. i've managed a lot of people. i've been a boss for a long time. it is much harder as a boss to try to build a culture of trust and innovation and

collaboration. it's much easier to bark and order. it's much less effective to bark and order and much more effective to do this. this is not kumbiya. so the issue in terms of teachers, they are on the ground actually being the ones who implement all of the high minded policies that we talk about. the question is how do you engage them in the implementation? the implementation is often the hardest even things that we would all agree on. teachers should be qualified. whether you call it effective or qualified? how do you make that happen? how do you ensure that's real. take another policy. i think on this stage we probably -- i'm not sure, i think we agree there should be high standards for children.

and i think we should agree there should be high expectations. that's good. get the scandals on and the guitar. i think we probably agree. there should be -- there should be some curriculum. some of us may agree there should be common course. some of us may not. how do you ensure that happens? if we engaged in the conversation that way, that would be one thing. but if we engaged in the conversation saying i'm about to tell you that you have to work harder and, but, you know, i'm lopping off 20% of your salary because nobody can afford it, and you should be just happy that you have a job. that's not going to be a pleasant conversation with anyone and worse, it's going to

be demoralizing, and i think it's going to be a step backwards, not a step forwards. >> i think randi is right. when you tell people they are not going to get as much as they are used to or entitled to, they are going to be upset. unfortunately, i think that's a position that leadership has gotten us to. there's two strands of reform here. one strand is the kinds of things that are directly centered on instruction, ped goa dee and anybody that's on the outside looking in. there it makes all of the sense to approach the things in a collaborative fashion where we are giving teachers opportunity to lend their expertise, shape what we are doing, and holding them accountable. >> by the way, would you support when randi was saying about getting that stuff into the collective bargaining agreements? >> no, absolutely not. i think it ought to happen outside of the framework of collective bargaining.

because i think collective bargaining frame it is in a way that is unproductive. so one -- one important kind of disagreement there is whether it's useful to do that in terms of collective bargaining or not, friends of ours, julie, chuck, have talked about, you know, united mind workers and the new unionism. i am deeply skeptical it works out the way it's supposed to. randi obviously has a different opinion. >> right. >> i think the one the things that i wish to god that we could do more effectively is recognize that smart thoughtful people can look at the same facts, look at the same experiences, and come to different conclusions about the promise without imagining that the other person must have motives. so that's said. so there's one strand of reform where i agree on principal very much with randi, even if i disagree on how we would go about it. i think there's a second strand, when it comes to staffing

ratios, when it comes to benefits, when it comes to compensation structures, where, you know, what we are doing is talking about saying to the teachers we have increased nominal spending threefold since the early -- excuse me, after inflation for people spending threefold since the early '70s, most of the money has gone in to hiring, we have gone from a 23-1 teacher-student owe ratio in 1923 to 3-1. more hiring, benefits, lots more body that is we can't train. i would see it us have fewer educators, pay them better, but at the end of the day, educators may or not feel there is a good tradeoff. these kinds of policy determinations, you know, are going -- frequently going to have to happen. >> look, i think on the economics, i actually -- i'm

actually troubled by some of the global spending conclusions that i hear all the time. because when you impact the numbers, you see what that spending is for. we've had a 50% increase. and the special needs children spending is higher on the children that don't. is that an important value? probably so. but that's what -- that's what some of the number is. also what's interesting that in the countries that out compete us, when you unpack their spending, retirement and health benefits are not in their equation. that's about as rick as said, that's about 13%. so it's an apples to oranges comparison. when you take that out of the

comparison, the numbers as a percentage of gdp, excuse me, look more similar. the issues is what is the actual spending on teachers for? and what we've actually seen on the ground is class sizes having gone down so that if you are a high school teacher, for example, you are working with 150 to 200 kids a day. and how are you going to have the engagement to ensure, again, i'm going back to what do kids need to know and be able to do in the global economy? how are you going to create the environment that creates innovation and creativity and critical thinking with the kids. when we hear the, what we are

seeing on the ground. an increase of people who are engaged, an increase in those kinds of things as opposeed to the things that i'll go back to the tools and conditions. this is part of the reason why if you use collective reasons, i also think that rick is right. the contracts become unflexible. the biggest challenge that we have is something that they said a long time ago. i've said in 2004 or '05, sheldon, one of my successors, mark tucker has just said recently, how do we actually change schools to -- and to change schools from this industrial model to a knowledge model. and how do we use collective bargains in a craft model? how do we do these kinds of

things? what i would like to see is one the experiments. green dot is one of those in sees how you connect. in the accountability system, a lot of tools and conditions that teachers need, as well as the accountability that mike and others are talking about, how do you mesh this? and i think given that we have this, you know, huge -- this 15,000 school districts in the united states. 100,000 schools in the united states. we could try some of the experimentation to see. can we build a new system? not the entire new system. but can we bill the new experiments? >> sounds a lot like charter schools. >> it was postto be a lot. look at what chatter schools have become? they look like the regular system without contracts. in so many different places.

i'll stop here. take something that was mentioned here today in time. luis and chris gabrielledid something about talking about the middle school. the way in which they use extended time to create. i've been at the school to create a shared leadership school. there's the union is very engaged in that school. they use the extended time to engaged kids and to use data correctly. the point here is how do you use collective bargaining to try to breakthrough this industrial model, come up with different kinds of models, and get the kind of tools and conditions, but use collective bargaining as an accountability and leverages agent to do the betterness. >> okay. i want to get to one issue and get the audience in here.

teacher evaluation in the larger issue of finding a way to weed out and terminate them if you are not doing your job. this is what the discussions come down to. we have a discussion that's not timely or cost effective way reform ineffective teachers from the classrooms. i mean would you say that this is what the whole teacher evaluation push at the end of the day is about? >> yeah, i think in large part. and i think it's been driven by the fact that -- and again, you know, much like with the problems with district giveaways in terms of benefits and restrictions, that reformers have got spoon the habit of scapegoating unions while letting school boards and superintendents off of the hook. i think once again this is a case of that.

look at the widget work. thatthat is on the unions and te school leadership post and superintendents who are failing at the first obligation which is to identify the effective educators and either see they improve or they are no longer in front of the classroom. when reformers throw it on the unions, i think, a) they are mistaken. b) i would love to see i do think they have seen it and wind up sharing some of the accountability and i see them calling out the superintendents. and i don't think they do so. i think that's because there's too often a convenient horses compromise amongst school boards, superintendents, among principals, and teachers in which everybody agrees that nobody should be called to account. and i think in that way, everybody winds up owning responsibility.

sure. as we talk about the teacher evaluation system, there's two ways to go about it. one is to me a robust sensibly articulated system in which we are building room and taking into account full evaluation and how much they contribute and how much they work and how much we are soliciting information on what they are responding promptly and supportively to parental needs. but unfortunately, i think policymakers are deeply concerned that they can't trust school or district leaders to make good or responsible judgments. and we've heard from the unions that they are concerned that school leaders are going to make politicalized or capricious judgments. we have wound up with my mind a problematic compromise which is relatively simplistic, one side fits all state level evaluation systems which turn very heavily

on simple calculations. i don't think anybody thinks it's a particularly good or elegant situation. it's just one solution where we default to. because few people like the status quo and nobody seems to be in a position or comfortable trusting the judgment of school leaders. >> it's not perfect. we're still in early days. and the tweaked budget, in a sense among the greater community that we finally have accountability in schools. >> the last superintendent or the last concern second to last, no, no. the superintendent before michelle ray, chris cheney, --

cliff cheney, actually fired more teachers than the impact system has done. and yet that factoid never gets out there. but let's -- let's take this back. first off, evaluation systems have been broken. for a lot of reasons that rick said before. which is it's really hard to actually fire people. and so what happens is people don't, and they blame something else. they will blame tenure, other things, it's hard. it's a hard thing to do. and -- >> you mean it's hard enough, people don't like to do it. >> it's hard because people don't like to do it. people don't like to look somebody else in the eyes and say you are fired. >> or you are doing a lousy job. >> right. and there are some people who do like that. but most of us don't.

[laughter] [laughter] >> right. right. i do -- and so -- >> they rather enjoy it. >> so let's not go through the list of the people that do that. so -- but actually what the union did, what our union did and you both know this is that we actually spend some time in the last couple of years saying, okay, how do we do this right? and so we saw that you can't just take -- we used to actually do what rick suggested. finger point at administrators. say you are wrong. say you haven't done what you need to do. and actually we've stopped that. what we've started doing instead was saying let's figure out what is the right way to do this. and number one, we know that confidence matters. any school teachers that you talk to will tell you that they

want teachers teaching side by side with them who know their stuff. and know how to engage kids and love kids. and so, you know, the first iteration that our union tried was through a peer review process. some school districts did it, and some school districts didn't. the second iteration in this generation that we've tried to do is that we've said in january 2010 after a lot of work with our leaders and looking at evaluation systems is that the drive by evaluation of an administrator staying in the classroom once a minute -- once a year for twenty minutes doesn't work. the generation of test scores don't align to what kids need to know. having said that, we need to have evaluations that both measure what teachers are doing in the classroom.

how they engage, but also whether or not kids have learned. what am i teaching, and whether or not kids have learned it. and so we've actually tried to come up with a framework that does that. that includes to some extent, you know all this, because this is the only thing that got any attention, that includes student learning and test scores. but also includes practice. and there are about 100 districts, including, you know, pittsburgh and hillsborough and others that are using this kind of evaluation system, it's very different than impact in two respects. number one, the system that we're talking about is not simply about sorting, it's primarily about supporting teachers to grow their craft. and number two, it is something that was done with teachers, not to teachers. >> so if you got your ideal system in place, randi, in one of those cities, at the end of

the day, it goes through and doesn't just support that, at the end of the day, there's going to be teachers that don't make the grade. >> absolutely. frankly if i came up, if i said any percentage like that, the blogs all around town tomorrow was going to be weingarten says x percentage of teachers should be fired. >> so and -- the answer is? [laughter] >> look what happens if you have a really good evaluation system that has credibility and all of the sudden two teachers are fired in a district or 2,000 teachers are fires. the real issue is there credibility for the system? that's what we need. we're in a huge r&d process right now. i think the bottom falling out of the economy and of school, state, and local budgets is actually going to make it worse, not better. about a year or two ago, i was much more optimistic to do this.

this is really time intense i have. any principal that doesn't say that is not telling the truth. if you want to spend some time really going good evaluations, principal has to to to -- or whr the mentor or evaluator, you sit. you watch the lesson, sit with somebody after the lesson and say did we accomplish that. then you talk about what else. you look at student data to say did i actually -- did kids when get what i was trying to teach? was there that kind of engagement? the real issue, the issue that's never on the table here is if we want to have really good evaluation systems like they do in singapore, which is about continuous improvement, yes, it's about sorting people that ought not to be in the profession, and that due process procedures have to be really quick. but if you really want to do this right, it takes a lot of

time and that kind of time costs money. and that is where we are going to find that investment to do that. >> let me get right to it. [laughter] >> so -- okay. two points. one i think the issue here is like the one that we raised before. when it comes to evaluation as a formative tool, there's a huge role for dealing teachers in. i think systems in which which w to especially use todays value-added metrics, incorporated that so that the systems rest on that is smart and healthy. but i think just like we talked about before, there are also things teachers are going to resist. i think when we start talking about using those even thoughtfully constructed systems to terminate teachers, the nature of the union if it doesn't represent the good teachers, it's legal responsibility to represent all teachers who are members.

and it's simply difficult to convince all teachers that to be enthusiastic about removing low performers. i think there's going to be much more room for collaboration on the formative side of it than on the removal side. >> that's why we have embedded in the process. i'm not saying this is easy. but our union and our membership at our last national convention adopted this evaluation framework. and when we actually put all of the pieces together, our executive council adopted this. i'm not saying it's easy. but we represent all teachers. we have to make sure the teachers are treated fairly. but i think it deserves teachers as well as communities in which they live and work when one says that the unions job is only to deal with the back end. the union's job it to help them get the tools and conditions that they need that they would

not be able to get alone. bill gates can represent himself quite effectively. same with eli burrows. i'm not saying, rick, you are wrong about this in terms of how hard it is. i'm saying there are unions all across the country, new haven, baltimore, abc, toledo, who have actually, new york city, who have confronted this and said, look, we have to be about fairness, but we have to be about quality. >> okay. let's get some questions. we're going to start with the press. we have a couple of members of the press here. and on the first amendment, we will give them priority at first. any members of the press that would like to ask a question? yes? no? anybody? okay. we will open it up more broadly. >> we have a question from twitter here. this is from greg who is

twittering, and this question is for randi. if unemployment is at 9% in three million jobs open, due to skills mismatch, doesn't that point to the need for college and career ready standards? >> we are, it of courses points to that. but frankly i want to wait 12 years to try to figure that out. let's figure out how in a community right now where there are jobs available, how we see, how we can reskill people to get to those jobs. >> okay. we have a question in the back. by the way, please tell us who you are, where you are from, and if you can keep your comment to 140 characters or less like we do or twitter that would be excellent. >> let me just say for the record here, i am also for reskilling and also for getting people matched into good jobs. >> excellent, we have a long policy agenda now. >> okay. that's a challenge to me, mike; right? linda mckay, international learning services.

i'm going to direct a question to randi. in working with teachers, one the things i hear is they want evaluations beyond the test scores. especially some of the things that you mention includes the culture for learns, students coming to school, doing their work, believing they can learn, people call that the soft skills. teachers are saying that's a huge piece. does your evaluation that you've developed speak to that? >> we are. >> could you elaborate? >> look, the framework that we have spoken to are also about creating a culture and a climate for innovation and for opportunity to grow? and so there are things that need to happen. which is how do you actually have the tools and conditions so that -- let's talk about time. how is it the time to ensure that kids are engaged with one

another in productive work, doing teamwork kind of work, things that are not tested. doing the kind of critical thinking and problem solving that is so necessary in this very fast paged knowledge economy that we are in. hard of the framework is the environment. is there opportunity to create that kind of environment. we have 360 accountability. it's not just accountability up to down, but it's accountability down to up. do people have the tools and conditions they need to have an environment for kids? the best way i can explain it, most people go to it as saying our schools are safe in places.

are there -- you know,er -- are there the services that kids need. i'm delighted that one the columbus schools that you are doing. the first question was whether or not wrap around services were important. i'm delighted that one the schools is going to have the services in columbus. but so -- dealing with the kind of answer, or how do you deal with and teach the soft skills? that's part of our evaluation system. last the last thing i'll say. people get this in business. i watched them give a greeting. it was about chicago and the role being to create an environment that was conducive to grow business.

a principal and superintendent's role is to help create the environment that's conducive to learning. that's part of our education. -- evaluation. >> you mention superintendent. stephen thinks he should be superintendent of the new york city. >> i've heard. i have a great job that i love right now. >> it's going to be called the weakness link. i'm going to ask you what i think is the weakest parts of your argument. start with you, rick. we should trust principals, give managers were discretion, yet in most places they have full discretion today to terminate untentured teachers and they almost never do. isn't that the problem? >> yeah, huge. this is why we have the one size fits all systems. because school leaders haven't

earned anybody's confidence to go ahead and use the discretion that we have given. reformers and policymakers rather than default are saying heck with it. we're going to right the relatively automatic triggers into state law. and teachers, whatever kind of the complicated factors in the site are going to be evaluated and even removed based on relatively simple measures. >> okay. randi, forward, last in, first out. indispensable; right? >> seniority with proxy for fairness, one the things that evaluation systems will do will be to make last in, first out. the only regret that i have in the way in which the debate has gone on in the last six months is just got the whole impact of

large amounts of layoffs on children. and what we're starting to see in school districts this -- first off, we saw a bunch of unions. actually kind ways to mitigate the layoffs and the cuts to student services. whether you are toledo, new york city, throughout. >> okay. >> but it mitigated -- it got the fact that there are real impacts with this level and magnitude of layoff. in the absence of this level of magnitude, real evaluation system about performance will mean that experience matters to some extent. you are not going to have an impact of less than. >> they are saying that nobody

is going to call that question anyone. >> there's no question that there are laws saying you must use last in, first out. >> so the question is there, if there are familiarly situated people who have actually performed well, similarly situated that have performed well, in that situation experience should matter. that's what i'm saying. if people really believed that teachers were all effective and there are an effective evaluation system this issue would be moved. that's what i'm saying. >> got you. all right. let's do one more from the audience. why don't we go over here? >> my name is lindsey. i'm from the house committee on the education force.

what is the federal role in a lot of these reforms that you are talking about, teachers evaluation, collective bargaining, what is the federal role here? : these kind of systems the

redesigned to when we have no way to identify a good future for me that feature. when we were pretty uncertain as to what effective school out comes look like and when we can frankly get all the talent we wanted because college-educated women for the coming teachers because nothing else was open to them so we didn't have to worry much about competing for talent. since the world has changed i think states and districts need to reengineer their systems and i think frankly in terms of how to get their and we have some point of agreement, and i'd like to see the federal government providing their opportunities for states and districts that reach forward with the most ambitious, the boldest plans to focus on quality, to focus on smarter use of the talent they've got and focus on removing in effect as educators could lead to see them in a position to compete for dollars to support plans to their of iseminger rather than see them coming forward which pledged

they are going to be able to fill the conditions that the federal government is going to leave out in a particularly prescriptive fashion. >> i think we may disagree with what those look like but what is right about that and i think that there is one other role that the federal government has come and if you look at what kennedy thought about johnson in the fda is that the esea is about kids who are being left behind and how do we create equity and that is a really important role because we have to come and if we actually believe the opportunity for all we have to actually act like that. and so there is that role and the role of trying to create opportunities to create evidence

based systems of things that work because ultimately if we have evidence of what works, then we can do the kind of sustaining and scaling up that is so important. i see one of the toughest things in education these days is that we never scale of that which works. we rarely sustain it and we never scale it up. and we don't know how to balance between the local autonomy that is essential in education, plus the need to ensure that all kids have a certain foundational base of knowledge so that they are prepared for what is left. >> i'm going to give you each one minute of for some common ground if we were going to have an agenda to say here's where we can march hand in hand off into the sunset. rick, you first.

>> 30 seconds for that. there's no way that we should be able to sing. the founders believed in serious and vigorous debate and disagreement. james madison was essentially a paean to the value of the faction and hauer in a free country we check and balance each other not just the institutions but because the good reasonable people are going to disagree about important questions of our time, and i sick to death of this notion that if you were doing something for the kids that there is one right answer that is a multiple choice. good, smart, reasonable people should be engaged in these debates because the of honest disagreement of what is in the best interest of the kids and how to get their and i think we should be able to disagree vigorously but with respect for one another. a couple points of agreement i think are pretty clear. at least one is i think people

who are reformers have a massively overestimated how technically skilled we are at this point in terms of using tests to measure effectiveness and trying to build complex systems of evaluation and pay to relate more or less on top of the scores as currently measured. i think this is an error we made a century ago when the progressive era and we have overshot the mark once again. second, i think there are enormous opportunities to professionalize the need to identify the weak performers and help them improve to recognize people who are terrific and systematically move out people who still get this work and i think we can agree on that. third, we agree we can use talent much smarter and a much more creative way and using technology in the system as a process and i think that randy agrees with me more or less

there. fourth, i think what we need to do is to get large look at the large existing commitments on the pensions, structures, how we spend dollars, and i think the priorities we go in with and how we do that to defer but i think randy frequently said over time that she is open to the need to rethink these industrial era of arrangements. >> we may not agree on what the machinations of what rick's last point look like but what i think what you're seeing here is there has to be an openness of not the goal of helping all kids achieve not only their god-given potential to create opportunity for them to face the life they are going to face. in an economy that changes come in a democracy that needs to be

rekindled that is our goal in public education and we may have a vigorous disagreements in terms of how to get those but what you see here is an openness to explore different ideas. that is the end of the biggest agreement we have and there are certain agreements underneath that which break, the exception again of how you get there in terms of changing the model to the cleric model i think federick actually said those are some of the points of agreement using people differently trying to focus on evaluations in a way that do actually promote continuous improvement but also deal with issues if people are not cutting it they cannot be in the profession. we want to deal with it fairly but we have to deal with that. we may disagree with the other ways in which schools look and act, but we have to be open to new ideas and to doing things differently. having said that, the one place

of real disagreement is in washington, d.c. we can debate the issues vigorously and i agree about the madison and democracy and i really focusing on how we ensure and enshrine our democracy and have those checks and balances are very important and they are not any demographic weight. at the ground level though, you have to find common ground because at the end of the day, if you don't find common ground in terms of how you quit teachers with the tools and conditions to do their work they are going to have to do this alone. the one thing we have learned in terms of education is no one can do this alone. it does to give a lift to raise children particularly in this complex world and we actually on the ground have to find common ground both in terms of as much in terms of policy but in implementation to ensure that

teachers, parents and others have the tools that they need to help kids learn. >> please join me in thanking our guest today. [applause] we've had fdr quotes, ronald reagan, hillary clinton quotes. >> she wasn't president. >> yes, first lady. thank you for disagreeing without being disagreeable. this is a model ligon at how we can have some of these debates and fight things out without going to personal attacks. thanks for joining us. we will be sending information about future events. this event will be broadcast on line shortly after www.edexcellence.net where you can find our blog and other materials. until next time thank you.

with the 35 - martin luther king jr. memorial will be dedicated in washington near the jefferson and fdr memorial. lots of defense going on this weekend ahead of the dedication including tomorrow at noon on c-span with a look at the civil

rights leader's past and present to the speakers to marland would eric holder the attorney general, marked of the urban league and that gets underway at noon eastern on c-span. and the dedication on sundays 11 a.m. eastern president obama will speak and many others, to mike and this is the 40th anniversary of the i have a dream speech. we will have coverage on c-span and also c-span radio and c-span.org [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] ♪

notice the color of the bourbon, that pretty color that you see is all coming from the char on the inside of the barrel.hhh this char is where bourbon gets all of its collar, and a lot of its flavor. currently, they've discovered over 200 chemical flavors just from the char from the barrel.

we are taking a look at medicare. next come a discussion on how the privately of minister to drug plans work and the effect of the affordable care act and changes on the program. this is 45 minutes.ues. >> host: this week at this time we have been doing a series looking at various aspects of medicare the government health insurance program for people me. over 65. monday we looked at the at the f medicare yesterday.

the medicare advantage program. we wrap up our program tomorrow with proposals to bring down medicare costs. it today will focus on medicare part d with mark mcclellan from the brookings institute. expand upon the world that you played. guest: great to be back with you. we were the agency charged with getting this important new benefit to senior is on schedule and hopefully under budget. host: what have we learned? guest: access to up-to-date coverage can make a big difference for seniors. the costs have comment lower-

than-expected from the beginning and that has happened through competition. seniors have a lot of choices. i was working around the country on helping people find out about the benefit and sign up for it. they can get the drug they needed at a lower-cost. we have seen the cost of the drug benefit has gone up much slower than expected. the impact of drugs has been a very important. there has been a recent story which found getting part d coverage to seniors lowered their cost of other medical services. it is an important way to get more up-to-date care. we involve beneficiaries with

the choices and it does help them get the coverage they needed. host: what does the average senior debt in terms of prescription drugs? guest: it is around $30 a month. it provides coverage for a broad range of prescriptions. typically singers sign up for a plan that gives them access to a generic drugs. for preferred-brand name drugs for things like high blood pressure and cholesterol, there are a number of drug plans available. $30 a will be $25 to dollars month. they get to keep most of the savings. host: the kaiser foundation had

these statistics. host: do those numbers track what you follow? guest: it was capped at $1,000 or $2,000. it helps keep costs down. host: what goes into the lowering of costs? guest: one thing people like to focus on is the price of drugs. it seems high, especially for some of the new brand-name drugs that, n come out.

prices came down something like 8% or 10% on average. people can switch when they find they can get something else to meet their cost. something like nine out of the top 10 most common medications now are generic and there as safe and effective but the cost less. seniors can get that savings. if you switched from a brand name to a generic drug company $70 asave $60, 7dollars month on that prescription. that is been a big part of the

savings in this program. use of generic drug has gone from 55% to close to 80%. host: 80% of the financing comes from general revenues. is that fiscally a good place to be? guest: all the medicare benefits have this mixture of premium payments by beneficiaries. something like 25% of the cost comes from premiums paid by beneficiaries. congress has changed that a bit. low income seniors pay almost nothing for their prescription drug plans.

higher income seniors pay more and that will probably increase in the future. host: our guest has is a bachelor's from the university of texas and a ph.d. in economics from mit. first call is from minnesota, and ginger on air democrat line. caller: what i would like you to know is that -- can you hear me? guest: i can hear you just fine. caller: we heard about part bdm, and people to not get it or understand. he made out like a ban dit. my medicine cost me $72 per

month. after part d came through with the doughnut hole, between five $600 a month.$500 and that is a bad, bad plan. guest: you are a good example of just how important medicines are for people, especially seniors with chronic diseases. as you probably know, the recent health care reform legislation that was supported by democrats than republicans like the previous medicare bill was, didn't do anything to change the structure of the program.

overall, satisfaction rates of this program are very high. the costs are much lower than expected and it is having an impact on getting access to medicines and keeping costs down. congress thought the cost would be much higher, so there was not coverage provided in the doughnut hole. what the 2010 legislation did it was fill in that don't conut ho. that will get better and better over the coming years. it is essential that we take steps to make medication as affordable as possible for people like you. it does have such an impact on your health. host: medicare part d is the topic today.

it costs about $50 billion for 2010. she mentioned the doughnut hole. we have this break down as far as the cost. host: why incorporate a structure where there is health first than the cost to the consumer and then help later? guest: people get subsidized $5 for a typically the $5

brand-name drug, then there's the gap in coverage. there is a lot of controversy around passage of this law. congress felt that they could not provide a subsidy for beneficiaries all the way through. the costs of the program have turned out to be much lower than that. the 2010 affordable care act provided an extension of coverage for other americans and it did not change the structure of this program. the democrats did not want to change that. it seemed like it was working for most people. they did fill in that coverage gap. that will provide changes in the

numbers you just described in the years ahead. that does come as an additional cost. it more government spending on subsidies for medicare. we're looking at increasing the federal budget deficits. we have to continue to think hard about ways to get medicare costs down. host: good that come under cuts from the commission now will look at that? guest: it could. they are making medicare part d more income-related and making it even better integrated with the rest of the benefits. if you use drug coverage effectively, you can keep down lots of other medical costs, like pkeeping people out of

the hospital. medicare needs to be -- they need one payment for doctors and one payment for drugs and there is some good ideas on how to do that. host: this is one idea on twitter. guest: part d covers drugs that are administered by doctors. both programs all-out pharmaceuticals to be bought in bulk. part d is drugs that you pick up and your pharmacy, with a few exceptions. the drug plans to negotiate a bulk programs. medicare part d has a price

based on medicare based on the average price the drug plans are charging now. it does not help give seniors the benefit when they find less costly ways to meet their drug needs. most of that money goes to you. get toart b, you don't keep much of that savings at all. that is not a good recipe for getting everybody engaged in what we have to do, to make medicare work. medigap is the supplemental insurance for part a and part b. it allows people to fill in the big gaps. it keeps people from being able to save money, like they are

able to do with part d. host: chattanooga. caller: when my mother was living and she was an assisted living and she was on drugs, but then the assisted living and nursing homes where it there on the continuous drugs, they cannot take evanish of the 90- day supply -- they cannot take advantage. some states require these drugs to be blister packed. none of these suppliers provide this service. you have to go to the local mom- and-pop drug store to get it. according to the laws in part

d, you take the 90-day supplies. i do not understand why you have the different tiers between the different suppliers because you have to look at real close in making your decision. you may have a cheaper premium, but there is value for the drug insteadmay be at tier 2 of a tier 3 and it could raise the cost. guest: thanks for the question. this has been challenging because those patients typically take a lot of drugs and it's not like going to your pharmacy and getting a 90-day supply.

nursing homes can get in the way. medicare is sorting through a lot of these issues now. the long term care pharmacies at the nursing homes and the nursing homes themselves have done a lot to try to address the problem you raise. it is important -- if you're on part d, it is important to look at the option and see where your drugs sort out. there are tools at medicare.gov. they work with paging companies to help -- they work with aging companies. it is more work.

the advantage has turned out to be much lower cost. people have been able to look and switch when they find plants that lower their cost for the drugs that they personally need. it can deliver those drugs and a much lower cost if everybody was cynne one size fits all program -- a one zize fits all program. by your being involved in helping your mom make those choices, you then responsible for helping keep the cost of this program down and to help make sure it develops -- to make sure it delivers the drugs that people need. patents are not shorter for drugs overall. there are some special rules for

the newer drugs that are designed and are based on a more complex structure to target specific kinds of cancers. congress have tried to deal with this. on the one hand, you want to encourage the new product that can help people live longer and better lives. you want to make those affordable. so this is it that trade-off. there is a continuing debate in congress about whether its a bit longer were shorter. we need some patent protections so we can get these new drugs. it takes a lot of time to get those drugs developed. the patent protections are an important part of making this happen. that is a good question.

the cost increases have been lower because of competition between the plans and seniors taking the time and effort and working with doctors and friends to make different choices, to use generic drugs more and to compare tiers. the veterans administration has not done as much of that. the cost growth has been different between the two programs. host: jaime on the republican line from texas. caller: good morning. i am 65 years old and i am on disability. i am a lincoln republican. i want to know, why should we

have to pay -- why should a black man have to pay anything -- we have put in a lot of work. why we have to pay anything. guest: the way the program is set up is that most of the cost comes from subsidies by medicare. people are worried about the country being able to sustain. more people reach the age of 65 and there are more medical treatments available in the years ahead. that is true for people with limited means. people from different social economic backgrounds -- you have a tough family history. people get all of the cost paid by the medicare program because it is so important in keeping

people healthy and avoiding those other costs. the general view is that we probably cannot afford to pay those kinds of subsidies for everyone. we need to focus the most health on the people who need it the most. those who are least able to afford the medicines they need on their own. this will be a big issue as we try to make the medicare program sustainable and affordable. host: a question from sasha. guest: the states pay part of the cost for low-income beneficiaries. the coverage for people who are over 64 and not medicare have low-income. the states make a payment for a portion of the costs of the drugs for those dual-eligible beneficiaries.

some states have programs that wrap around or add to the medicare part d benefit. plus these are these contributions from the beneficiaries. host: next call is from iowa. caller: mr. mcclellan, i would like to ask that we do little short order inspection of insurance companies and how they are handling this tier business. i am on medicare part b and i take a drug for diabetes. when i first went on medicare part d, it was tier 2 drug. that drug should go generic a year from now.

on july 1, they have you by the nexck. they said the drug will now be a tier 4 drug. the retail price is over $300 a month for 30 pills. the copiague will be -- the co- pay will be 60 bucks. some of the pan drugs are not included in anybody's insurance. it is not covered in part d. i take a lot of that. it is due to the physiological

and not mental disorders to control and the regular card. -- to control and irregular heart beat. guest: the second issue about that drug he mentioned is a good one to write your congress about. the legislation did exclude those drugs from the usual partd d coverage. those drugs are typically not covered. they are not part of the medicare program and it goes back to the with the legislation was set up. i think this is something that people should think about generally when they are taking medicine and one that is on a higher tier. the plans do have some

restrictions on when they can switch from a lower to higher tier. if you are on a plan that has a drug that you need and i hired tier, you may have to do some shopping for your medicare plan this year, but you will be able to find one that puts it on the lower tier. if you were unlucky to have a drug in this one size fits all plan and put it on a third or fourth tier, you would be stock and not able to get the drugs you need at a lower cost. this will go down to $5 on the part d plan. caller: this plan -- my husband

became disabled in 2002 with a pituitary thing which is sort of a rare occurrence. he takes 16 pills a day and could have been disastrous for us had not been for medicare day. my suggestion with the previous caller is that you start now getting on line and call in numbers. that is the only way to get a better price. we have united healthcare and it costs us $30 a month, my husband and i. it is a lifesaver. host: how many options did you

have? caller: we had several options. we moved here from georgia about four years ago. our plan continued from united healthcare and we didn't have to check out any state regulations. host: there was a map and some had -- guest: 30, 40 choices and that is not unusual. this work a lot of health care spending is and the drug plans know if they do not compete, they will not be able to keep people like katie. she made a couple of good points. the cost of the program being much lower than expected and it is easy to meet those needs is why the program is as popular as

it is today. the satisfaction rates in part d is over 90%. you need to be involved. you have to look at the choices. it is more work. you can save a lot more money this way. there are lots of places to go for help. medicare.gov online. lots of resources in your community that can help you out in getting the drug that you need for you or the person that you love. host: wichita, kansas, cliff. needs toost per peill

come down. it is -- we saw a special. we pay for all this. we save 40%. i know that we should be able to $2 pills down to 20-lls cent pills. guest: there is a lot of bulk buying going on now. that is one reason why cost of this program is lower-than- expected. i think there are going to be more steps as part these drugs go generic.

branding drugs are expensive here because the united states is a financing most of the research and development for the world for the benefits that these drugs bring to everyone. not just for people in the united states. i hope that is an issue we can keep working on addressing. there are some good ideas for making the process go faster. that means more lives saved and a lower cost. that is an issue that is not quick and easy to develop in medicine. it is an important issue to distract -- to address. host: $185 billion. part c, $116 billion.

guest: we do consume a lot of drugs and that is not necessarily a bad thing. there is more and more evidence that getting people on recommended treatments for all kinds of chronic conditions -- high blood pressure, diabetes -- can improve their quality of life and could help get our cost down elsewhere. as you mentioned, part d is a small part of the overall medicare spending. we need to focus on squeezing down prices for hospitals or four physicians. it doesn't work. we have a big problem without medicare is paying physicians. this causes problems in quality of care.

we need to get beyond these silos. prescription drugs can be a big help in lowering the cost. that is the way to go. host: it was put in under the bush administration. guest: the main thing the new health-care law does is to make it bigger. the new legislation provides additional federal government subsidies to people in that nut't hall -- in that do hole. that percentage is going to get lower under the new law. that will add to the cost of the medical part d program. the cost is running about 45% lower than projected. those costs have gone up a bit

because of the new subsidies. preventing health problems -- there is much more work that we need to do it there. host: elaine from rhode island. caller: i have two questions. i have supplemental through united health. we belong to a group. i have injections every three months. they are over $3,000. i am paying approximately $4 a mon00 a month for the supplemen. i have to have it. we went to united health and

they said i had to pay the whole thing and then they would reimburse me. it.y do pay a i have to have the highest in order to pay $2,000 a month for this medication. i have one other question. on medicare and medicaid, are they allowed -- you pay for the nursing home and everything. if a person has cancer and has never been told by her doctor that she had cancer until it was too late, the lawyers captain don and i just settled. medicare and medicare have settled. it was kind of a shock for her

children that they were being sued. is this the right thing to do? guest: it sounds like a complicated and very sad situation. there are some people who can help with that. medicare has an ombudsman line and you can get the information at medicare.gov. it is designed to help beneficiaries sorts through issues like who pays for wihat. many states have health programs for sorting out how benefits. maybe those steps would help. on the first issue of additional payments that you have to make to get a plan to fill in the donut hole, it will shrink down over the next few years.

it will not make a huge difference in your cost this year. they will get lower next year and the year after that as it eventually gets closed down. keep looking at alternative plans. even though you're in a plant that seems to work, there are other plants out there and some come up with new way -- even though you are in a plan that seems to work, there are other plans out there. take another look. this.ve money writing baridingn make sure you're on the best plan to meet your needs. host: we have a post on twitter

from maverick. guest: that is different from a single payer. seniors are banding together and choosing the plans they like that year. i administered the program for quite a while. it is diverse -- the singers are diverse. they range from 90 years old and healthy to people with the most complex and ill patients with five, six, eight conditions and on many, many medication. this plan has to work for all of them and it has to stay up-to- date. price regulations for that. it has the drug benefit. the more that we can get seniors

actively involved in making this program work for them, which they can do it in part d. it is not perfect. everybody would like to pay less for their medicines. it has made a big difference in keeping costs down and improving the quality of lives in singers. i like to see seniors building on what they are doing in part d. host: marysville, washington, on our republican line. caller: hello. host: go ahead. caller: this gentleman -- well -- host: i will put you on hold.

west chester, pennsylvania. caller: i am calling about the obamacare, or the if the fact that obamacare had on my personal insurance. i paid $100 deductible instead of $300. i was paying $6 more a month for my coverage in 2010. i paid $100 deductible for generic drugs and whenever the tier was, $600. i am paying 25% + $300 on the generic drugs.

i am only getting generic drugs now. he donutached te hole, the only help a would have gone was 75% off the tier drugs. it ended up costing me more. guest: that sounds about right for the experience with the new feature as a result of the affordable care acct. -- act. it will have a bigger impact on donut hole in the years down the road. it is a trade-off. great job on looking at your medications and talking to your doctors and finding a way to lower your costs. you're saving a lot of money under part d.

it has helped you keep your costs down, it sounds like. there will be more help in their later. that means there will be more federal spending. medicare spending for part d went up a lot and that is a challenge we will have to deal with. host: 1 recall, georgia, north carolina -- one more call. caller: the medicine was a ford dollarsfor -- that medicine was $84 for 30 pills. it is not a pain killer mind- altering medicine, i could get 86-month supply -- i could get a

six-month supply. i called american pharmacy. surprise, surprise. it went up to $87 for 30 pills. congress is talking about how to pay for medicine cost. guest: brand name drug costs are higher here than in canada in most cases. generic drug prices are much lower in the u.s., and people use them more often. they have had a chance to save money when they make those switches. there's a problem in a fairness and in who pays for research and development.

people made the same complaints about national security, keeping the world safe. we pay more than all other countries combined. it is important to keep developing those new medicines that can keep -- that can make a difference in the lives of people like you. by no means is this issue over. making the medicare program prevention-oriented and personalized just like health care should be in the 21st century. we have more work to do. host: dr. mark mcclellan, the senior fellow at brookings institution, thank you for your time. guest: 1-800-medicare can

unworkable.