airlines understand the importance of nextgen. they are deeply engaged in it. airlines also recognize that we cannot wait for what is over the horizon. improvements are within our reach and are needed now. we believe the tangible, near-term benefits that improve customer satisfaction with better on-time performance and that save fuel and reduce emissions can be achieved. the faa should, therefore, focus on insuring that needed policies, procedures and training are implemented to insure that the benefits of existing navigation technologies are maximized without delay. our priorities for this modernization are to accelerate the development and approval process of prves-based navigation procedure cans, the approaches that were previously referred to, streamline the national environmental policy act review process to expedite the development and implementation of pbn and other next jeb procedures and -- nextgen proceed you ares. -- procedures. we appreciate that each of these

objectives was addressed in the faa reauthorization reform act of 2011, h.r. 658, which this committee and the full house approved earlier this year. we also commend the house and senate for resisting any increases in commercial aviation taxes in their respective faa bills. airlines and passengers are already subject to 17 federal taxes and fees which total nearly $17 billion last year in our city. in our industry. as a result, federal taxes now constitute $61 of every $300 domestic round trip ticket putting commercial aviation at a higher federal tax rate than so-called syntaxes on alcohol, tobacco and firearms. we urge house and senate transportation leaders to resolve their differences and send a final multiyear faa bill to the president's desk as soon as possible. we also ask that congress reject aviation taxes included in the white house's debt reduction plan, a new $100-per-flight departure tax and the tripling to have passenger security tax to $7.50.

these taxes would cost passengers and airlines an additional $3.5 billion annually, a 21% increase in our annual federal tax bill. the results of which would be devastating to our industry, our passengers and the u.s. economy. u.s. airlines have lost $55 billion and cut 160,000 jobs since 2001. the new taxes would result until another 10,000 airline job cuts next year and permanent reductions in service to less profitable small and medium-sized communities. in addition to holding the line on the tax burden of our passengers and airlines, enactment of a long-term faa bill will help advance nextgen. nextgen offers the potential to further improve aviation safety and deliver environmental improvements. the national air space system, despite being the most complex system in the world, is extraordinarily safe. that remarkable safety record reflects the determined efforts of the faa, airlines and its employees as well as other stakeholders, and we appreciate

the support and oversight provided by this committee which has played a key role in helping shape that success. however, as the committee knows all too well, the national air space system relies on safe but outdated technology. an faa commission study published last november estimated that the total cost of u.s. air transportation delays was over $31 billion in 2007. without significant modernization of the system, congestion and delays will worsen as traffic increases, thereby undermining not only the viability and global competitiveness of u.s. aviation industry, but the economy as a whole. concern about the future of air space management as these data show is not a parochial consideration. aviation is one of the principle drivers of the u.s. economy. commercial aviation drives $1.3 trillion in annual economic activity or 5% of u.s. gross domestic product and ten million good paying jobs. in this context the need to improve air space management is immediate and pressing. we cannot wait for all the

pieces of nextgen to come together, we must get the most out of the technology investments already made in our aircraft. this means that the faa should focus resources on expediting the introduction of the most cost beneficial elements of nextgen that are available, most notably, pbn procedures. these will pay immediate dividends for passengers and shippers by reducing delays, lowering fuel burn and decreasing emissions. we commend the faa for launching its so-called-and-a-half lean program to expedite the deployment of procedures. unfortunately, implementation is scheduled to occur over five years. we need a leaner navlean program, and we need it now. costs have spiked by nearly one-third this year which will cost the industry an additional $15 billion. u.s. airlines have already invested billions in new equipment, infrastructure and technology to maximize fuel efficiency. we're doing our part, and we want to work with the faa to insure that procedures, policy and training are updated so that

we realize the benefits there this investment. i'd be happy to take any questions from the subcommittee. thank you. >> thank you. thank you all for your testimony. i, one thing that's, i think, been done more formally in the last year was the appointment of a fairly senior stakeholder, if you wish, or industry and other involved people advisory group to work with the faa to try to help move nextgen forward more efficiently. is that process working, mr. scovel, or are there ways we could strengthen that? and i guess, also, i wonder if -- it's a complex process, and it involves decisions by the private sector, but the government sector's in the captain seat at least in the

short run because if they don't provide the infrastructure, the industry has stranded investment, and that's a great deterrent if they don't f the government doesn't meet its guidelines or the faa with nextgen. so you talk about trying to set better benchmarks or ways not just for congress or other, or your agency, but for the private sector to calculate their own lead times and investments they need to make. how can we strengthen that process? ..

on the efficiency, the economy and effectiveness of the programs and that's what brings us to nextgen. we've been looking for a number of years and i'd be remiss to my duties if i did not point out areas where the department has been successful as well as those areas where suffered execution have been less than fully successful. so that's what our objective has been with this testimony in every other appearance before my security. it goes to my view is that the effectiveness of what is now called the nextgen advisory committee. i would relate our views, our assessment of that back to the

rcc task force five, which last-in 2009 in september of 2009 with her due to recommendations across number of crosscutting areas to include one that faa has chosen to focus on first as the most beneficial to users and therefore to the american flying public, that's the metroplex initiative. faa adopted recognized, approved those recommendations in january 2010 and has been moved out of a sense. to his great credit, the agency recognized it needed a vehicle in order to continue to solicit input from the industry primarily, but also to serve as a means for labor and other stakeholders to have a voice in the development process. so it established the nextgen advisory committee. we have examined it, not in great detail but our preliminary assessment is that it has the

most hope to the agency in driving the process forward. the agency has referred to specific questions to the nextgen advisory committee to get more detailed input so that the agency can formulate its approach. u.s., mr. chairman, specifically about metrics. that has been an area that has been a matter of great dispute, frankly, between faa and the industry and to use as a case study what has been discussed at length this morning, the development of required navigation procedures. arnaz and rmp procedures. fas worked on our math and rmp procedures, but only to the extent of trying to develop quantity over quality in the views of the industry. it has developed procedures to overlay existing readers and those that are raised that industry assesses a most valuable to their needs.

and they have repeatedly asked faa not to simply shoot for a quota and consider metrics, such as recited in a statement by a senior industry official where he spoke of the percent of the airline's total operations that could be governed by rmp. the clearance rate for traffic control system that brings into trina's air traffic controllers aircraft don't have rmp, the next equip each environment so they can safely make things operation in the comedy industry needs as well. that is the kind of detailed discussion that has to take place now between industry and fas or is developing a common language on metrics so that they can together to bring nextgen to reality will take us here this morning an effort for

governments and industry. >> i'd be remiss if i didn't follow up with mr. hendricks. you have been here before and i think the last time you were before this committee were talking about kind of a cloud out there having to do with all of this depends on a lot of it depends on communication and using part of the spectrum. and we were lucky not the impacts the aspirations of light squared with the on a gps-based communications. they have come out with the testimony indicated they were thing in about part of a spectrum and come out with now some proposals about equip its

comic you have any evaluation of how realistic any of that is? >> sure, thank you, mr. chairman. i'm happy to report the laws of physics have not changed since i last testimony in june. light squared proposals have been studied carefully by a special committee of the rt ca. as you recall from the testimony, there to 10 megahertz bands below the gps spectrum impacted by this. stipulated they will not utilize the upper 10 megahertz band. the lower band causes some concern to the industry and that is validated in rct eight special committee report. we believe the upper five megahertz of the lower band causes problems for aviation gps users and precision gps users a farmers. the lower 10 megahertz bands may be available, but the so-called filters that my square is to have not been certified to my

knowledge or been manufactured in the certification standards to put any avionics system on an aircraft are extremely high. that's one of the reasons we have an incredibly safe system in the united states. they may be solutions. it is very rigorous and we need to maintain the highest levels of safety possible. am i screaming cannot come it was a little opportunity for the proposal to be successful. >> thank you. mr. costello. >> thank you, mr. chairman. dr. dillingham, i wonder if you might give us a brief assessment as to the progress that the faa is making concerning nextgen. >> that's a big question, sala. i think there were a lot of

starts and stops and both false starts. over the last couple of years and this is the most complicated undertaking we've done across the u.s. government. i think we're beginning to turn the corner. we are optimistic and it is because what you have heard this morning that for example the rtca brought together all the players, even the industry and employment great if you do these kinds of things, then everybody's on board. another first for faa is then mapped to help them implement the recommendations. again, we are optimistic in its implementation where it all falls down and we are watching

this for the committee. this committee and other committees. >> one of the problems that i think everyone identified in the past was that the faa had a tendency not to include all of the stakeholders. the fact or will bring them to the table to get the benefit of their knowledge and input that they will all be using a benefit by. it appears to me the cooperation is working well, is that correct? >> i would agree with that, mr. costello. it is the work of vicinity and willingness to cooperate between the two parties. >> and i appreciate that. i appreciate your comments because chairman petri and i when i was the ranking member and he was chair, i think we both agreed that it is the responsibility of this committee to continue to hold the faa

responsible in the more pressure we put on them the more they would respond and hopefully that's one of the reasons why we see some progress as well as a number of other things. final question you may ask i believe you're in the room and heard me ask earlier. we all know we have a budget problem. all of us want to address the deficit spending issue and get to a balanced budget in some time. we also know that there's some things that should be may be deeper than others and we also know that some of the money we invest in fact will reap benefit and nextgen is obviously one of those investments. my concern is trying to figure out both in talking informally and at hearings as we go forward and there are cuts that are proposed, some 5%, some 10% operation maintenance also in

sub 10, how that is going to effect a nextgen. as you're busy earlier comment not all about money. there's a lot of things that have to come about. you have to have the money to bring the private sector in contractors same. what is your assessment of where we are from a fiscal standpoint, i mean, as far as the budget is concerned? and what for instance a 5% cut would do as far as delaying nextgen as to where we are now? >> thank you, mr. costello. we did some preliminary book when the discussion was taking place about moving back to 06 and a weight and a lebanon that kind of thing. basically i think everyone would agree that a shortage of finding almost automatically in the implementation of programs. as delayed so the cost for various reasons. we've seen it in the past and we see it now.

you heard the discussion of dram and the 310 million a month to maintain the old system. so delays are costly. and i guess as important as delays, it is confidence. as we said, credibility for faa is beginning to rise, but when you see situations, it brings back the thought that maybe they can't do this. >> thank you very much, dr. dillingham and general scovel, thank you for your testimony. >> mr. cravaack. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for being here today in the information you provide us. i would like to thank mr. scovel, you and your team for all the work you do, the information you gave us today was very thorough, very informative analogy thank you and your team.

one thing i could ask you this nextgen has never suffered a lack of funding. would that be a correct statement? >> historically served, the congress has taken good care of nextgen. we have looked at the congress of funding ffa programs across the board for many years now, dating all the way back to the congress has been generous and appropriately so in taking care of faa and its capital needs. >> okay, thank you. it's a funding insufficiency or demanding issues leading to the delight of nextgen supplementation? >> as it currently stands to date and i'm not looking forward. i'm not looking ahead to whatever budget cuts may lie in the future, but i am looking at the agencies posher today fiscal wife and execution lies. i would have to say that it relates to the departments inabilities along three lines of

the will. one when it comes down to program execution, unstable requirements. requirements along the way in the development process that increases cost and incurs delays. for a program and contract management and decision-making also contribute to that. the third area of its site is is the inability of the faa to bring to bear all of the sources of information that it may need to make proper decisions along the line, whether that's industry, stakeholders, labor, all of those voices need to be heard for the faa to make proper decisions. >> thank you. it's interesting you bring that up, bespoke a the faa contract management problems. could you elaborate on that? >> yes, i could. and let me use the case study

because eram was referred to as the chassis on which all nextgen functionalities must be bolted and that is an interesting image. i would say the vehicle, that chassis is not up on blocks, but certainly not banning. it sat idle. it may be a part in. faa has recognized the problems. they then attempt team at great speed to try to fix those, but asleep to deeper into eram, we had to come to the conclusion does a program that was hobbled from the start. it never had a clean start out of the gate. we looked at the contract structure and we signed a definitive contract element and that means basically faa was going to be billed down the line for work that it couldn't identify that it had required in the first place. we also saw that this is

essentially an i.t. contract, sir. best practices for i.t. contract called for rather small segmented divisions so that the agency can quickly identify where problems may arise and make corrections. with eram company contracted large segment large segments so when the problem ultimately erase later, faa had to engage in and pin down the sources. the testing process is nr testimony today. faa sent to attack senator and lobiondo's district and it is a state-of-the-art facility. but the contract for santana and complete software package. it turned out the tech center capability was not up at any rate to testing this operating

along all the functions to exist out in the field, but the program was approved. it was accepted by the government and the present to the 20 obverse ventures and that is when the problems began to be identified as they rose as the controllers began to work with this estimate. that process needs to be fixed. faa cannot go ahead with the mindset of eram to the tech center workers can compete version or may require capabilities with the tech center and expect to to do his best on the mission was sick not to does feel the controllers identify problems. they identified workarounds. those are able at salt lake sinners, but asked the project now will rule out to far more

complex on the sinners. i'm thinking of chicago and l.a., which are supposed to pick up eram center in the next several months as mr. ware testified. defectors are quite small and the tractors are quite dense, controllers will not engage the same workarounds he did successfully. for those reasons, this was a very troubled program from the beginning. it's ugly back to way back to the contract structure along that line. >> thank you, sir. affected us have a little bit of indulgence. outstanding controllers we have boots on the ground that actually make this stuff work and do an exceptional job on a daily basis but none of us know the challenges they do on a daily basis. with that said, mr. hendrix, you commented in your testimony and testimony today that we have capabilities within the aircraft

to go ahead and look at are not an rnp? >> opener management systems and navigation capability in the aircraft itself. so about 45% of the u.s. fleet is capable of rnp approaches right now, about 90 plus% can do area navigation and most of the across advanced flight management computers. optimized results achieved in dissent planning as you are well aware and are unable to take advantage of that. that technology has been around for a couple decades. i have flown rnp approaches myself, one of the ones we've gained great benefit from is in quito, ecuador, where we improve the safety and viability offering. we into the same thing at chicago midway, where he can play an rnp approach to runway after five straight in to runway 31. these are things we can do to streamline their processes for environmental reviews. we need to put the internal faa

process to give us approvals to do this on steroids and crank out some of the benefit to the industry. we will all benefit. >> is the point of light to bring out, mr. chairman. as the pilots i have aircraft that i've found that has the capability of doing the exact same thing and has the capability of having the efficiencies and already in there. and yet because of rules, regulations and restrictions we are not able to capitalize on that. we have the capability of doing that right now. thank you, mr. chairman for your indulgence. i yield back. >> thank you. mr. costello. >> mr. chairman, i have no further questions. i want to clear clarify a point that my friend asked a question to mr. scovel that based upon where we are not that it's not budget issues are funding issues. it is management issues going forward. i just wanted to point out for the record because i asked that question at a previous hearing

and it was addressed in a gao report actually. gao report faa has made progress but continues to face challenges in acquiring major air traffic control systems. gao report 05331 in june of 2005 at our request. and then, the gao the accountability offices contributed and four the other thing listed was budget cuts led to cost overruns caused a 2005 report that the gao. i just wanted to put that on the record. and again, you know, money is not the only issue. in monitoring contracts and i understand that what i want to do is get in the open on the record for members and stakeholders to understand, as

we go forward to making decisions about budget issues, the decisions we make how it will affect nextgen. if you came in and said for the next two years is not a money issue a management issue, then that's fine. but if you said that if you cut 1% or 5% it's going to delay a two or three years, then we just need to know that up front so that when we cast our votes and would make decisions, we know what the consequences are going to be. but the only point i wanted to make for the record. with that, mr. chairman, i think our witnesses for being here and i thank you wrote in her hearing. >> i join in thanking you and we look forward to continue working with you as we do our best to oversee and to accelerate this vital national program. this hearing is adjourned.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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[applause] >> excavators of interviews from layers of network news, government and business. purchase it has been good for nbc news anchor tom brokaw, white house chief of staff, william daley and florida center, mark rubio, hosted by the atlantic and the aspen institute, this is two and a half hours. >> out consume all of our time if i enumerated. i will mention the collective extraordinary nature of the situation they are in, which they are going to explain to us in the next few minutes.

if you're jebusites of american life where people were affected by every single trend underway, technological, political, commercial, business, cultural, you would find the network news executives at the center of development. it's interesting that when people talk about the way america used to be, either for better or worse, they almost always use network newscast, saying that when walter cronkite or have been brinkley or tom brokaw or peter jennings or frank reynolds would gather rest around the electronic cards, they would be a common experience, broad reach come a kind of credibility to what they were saying. we recognize now how many things are different. audiences are fractionated and smaller. they are divided by time segment. the authorities challenge, et cetera, et cetera. challenges news and infotainment and politicized ms. and interactive news and the rest of the things i don't need to tell you all about. we'll have our three network news chiefs tell us how they are

coping. i will start with this question, which i will -- maybe i will start right here with steve, saying that structurally it was seen that the network evening news flagship broadcast should not exist anymore. if it happens at a particular time of day when people like to be there, it assumes they brought credibility. how long can this last summer would it mean if it went away? >> we've been reading and hearing about the demise of the evening news cast for decades now. and i happen to think that will be a sad day if one of these broadcasts are all of them go away. i think they are still incredibly important outlets and forums and i actually think the networks do a fine job every evening. five years from now the discussion will see the golden era was five years ago or 10 years ago.

i think there is some great work being done. i disagree that it should make sense. you look at the size of audiences together every night. there were still substantial in many cases the largest single audience for news consumption on a daily basis. and i hope there's always a place where there's quality reporting and people dedicated to the craft and an outlet that's on the rise as the days news and trust that some sort of context analysis into some sort of perspective. >> i should ask you, david rhodes, is that if you disagree with? connectors and cable for 15 years until february. but i think the one misnomer in this sordid dialogue about these nukes cat for these news divisions is in some way, credibility is become quaint because it is not. there's millions of people who

show up for these broadcasts are not just in the evening, but other times as well. it's a real sense when you work in the division bag you are reaching a really broad-based audience, that just had a line level and working in different parts of this, i know is a different experience for me than being in cable. >> i would add the last year disproves that the evening newscasts are finished. evening news, cbs nightly news and diane sawyer or their audiences, bucking a trend of a number of decades. when i started this business in 1983, i recall an article i want the big newspapers about the end of the evening news. it was over. justis point, these programs are vital. they are growing right now. and also, i think it is something all the anchors have demonstrated that it is not just for 22 minutes at 6:30 the

defense barrister nellis or what news divisions are at the 1340 minutes a day, just on the air for 22 minutes. the other 1418 minutes or journalists who have access to the world wide web into our websites and they are creating concepts very valuable. part of it is a look at those 22 minutes as the center of the sort of were the biggest audience gathers. our operations are 1440 minutes a day and brian and scott and etienne are leading the charge to those other minutes, too. >> costar begin with you, then, going back and forth. we are meeting in washington. all of your well experienced in politics. you heard the set of jokes by both walter and david bradley about how extreme the politics of modern life has become. you are going to over the next year be covering a presidential campaign during the most polarized environment anyone can remember. how are you going to manage these shoals?

how are you going to manage the kinds of debates he run, establishing what is fact and what is not fact. what can you tell us about how you are looking ahead to this? >> we're incredibly excited about 2012 and we have a formidable team, marshaling to do exactly what is always done is come straight down the middle. were going to go down the middle and try to separate fact or fiction. we have all of the usual suspects of the abc powerhouse team and it is dynamic in the charge, george stephanopoulos. it is our gain. and i think that our mission is the same it's always been, to give people the whole picture on what is happening in politics into separate spin from the truth. unlock him with all kinds of ways to do that now. we have the regular broadcast. we also have the web and platforms novices will be able to do the thing we always do. i think just the nature of the

race, the polarization of the race site often complicates the job. i think it makes the job interesting than the gauges are driving season to start tailing it. >> as a segue to you, and many people in the statesmanlike cancelable here played down the middle and say sure, but in this environment, how can you possibly play down the middle when there's basic fact and all the rest? >> the thing is way too much pronouncement of this being the most polarized select trick is better then. sure is polarized. people are polarized. hasn't that happened before? this country a generation ago, people were rioting in the streets over war and election and we had political conventions disrupted by that. i do not see that this is in someway an unprecedented level of polarization and i think in fact in the last election in many presidential elections, there's too much coverage that tries to -- tries to lay out

that this will be the election and fall elections. this will be the argument to handle arguments. it never is. people disagree. part of the world these news organizations to cover this agreement. this isn't something that's newfangled in 2012. >> my figure to the same question for you is do i make it to colleagues at a branch which is a politicized, become nbc. how you navigate the same shoals being seen as having a partisan operation? >> nbc news has an awful lot of platforms. with the network rock cats, msnbc.com and msnbc on cable. there is one support structure is something, but the mandates of the nbc nightly news or msnbc broadcast are completely different. and that presents a set of challenges. but you know, it strikes me

bushell the coffin in the front row that celebrates journalism. people who dedicate themselves to this craft in this profession are trying to get it right. and i believe the people who walk through the doors at nbc news every day want to tries to broadcasters in the true sense of the term. stay relevant relevant. there is a lot of discord and a lot of political debate right now, but that is to mandate that our producers have on a daily basis is to be a part of that. we are trying to put a mirror on what is happening on the country and reporting give context. but i will tell you the competitive nature of especially the cable environment i think does a disservice to journalism because if you want to sit here, our networks are competitive at times, but that pales in

comparison to the cable side. it's harmful to journalism because we need people to support quality journalism. if somebody wants to sit and tear apart these incredible institutions, you can do that if you want, but i don't think it's a fair criticism or pratt does than i do think it hurts all of us. >> witcher and if you like to engage that because nbc has a kind of player in the politicized in the way you all don't respond to the politicization of the cable news time? >> i agree with my old friend, steve, entirely. [laughter] >> does that mean you're getting out of that?

>> is some kind of down on it. >> i think msnbc plays a great service. i think fox plays a great service and cnn does as well. all three of those cable outlets, but i don't think to mandate that say pappert key committee executive producer of nightly news and brian williams is the same as what somebody on fox says it's the same messiah chris wallace does on a sunday morning. i think there is different mandates. >> well, where that absolutely right as we're programming different programs all those different audiences we don't think along the lines of political affiliation or otherwise. i don't think there is anything. i don't think we should be judgmental and i don't think that we are around other outlets

that may be finding audiences that way. >> one.that might be interesting is 35% of the american people are interested in watching news from sources that agree with them politically. and the remainder want news from source is that they consider to be objective, searching for truth, trying as he said journalist to everyday coming to her, trying to find out what's really going on. so there is clearly a market for the 35% to interested in news that agrees with them politically. there's a huge opportunity for folks who want to try to do what i think to come straight down the middle. >> site technological base question and i'll start with david rose's time. any sort of media knows how much our businesses are being transformed by social media, communications technology in abc has sullied with facebook and

cbs for twitter followers and nbc with the coarse msnbc, which would take a social media at its own sort. can you tell us the ways in which you think the reliance or the application of social media is making your coverage better and ways in are fearful of it making it worse? >> first of all from a newsgathering standpoint because that was made that run in newsgathering and assignment desk work. i mean, these are all huge benefit to the journalists in terms of not coming you know, been a substitute for primary source material, but having a sense of what is out there and where to look. as far as how we market and promote our offerings or find new audiences, tractor audiences, these are very affect it. all of these will have as much engagement as possible and they open up new audiences for cbs everyday. so i think camino, the maximum engagement we can have a thesis

but we're striving for. >> is there any aspect you are fearful as being just to get machias? >> look, we announced this week a major new relationship with yahoo! in which we will be the premier content provider on their breaking news, domestic news, international news and political news. that's basically finding 100 million new users of abc news content on the biggest stories of the day, breaking news and politics. it also happens to yahoo! news is the primary provider of exam is on facebook and on twitter. so essentially there's a strategy of for self-evident that if up are the primary news provider to yahoo!, will also become the primary newsletter provider to facebook and twitter. to the point david just made him the news fundamentally social. it's always been social. hey there's a woolly mammoth from the corner for me to avoid it. technology has enabled us to be sharing these faster.

we sort of see news be fundamentally social as an essential strategy from the beginning of news, distributing in your neighborhood, town, committee, state. we embrace it. is it gimmicky? is gimmicky if it's not part of the fundamental and natural human behavior. what we are trying to do is provide news to people where they want it, how they wanted and then encourage them to socialize it. to distribute it for bribery. it's basic human behavior we are trying to tap into, not a gimmick. >> are trying to question to add to it is has been social, but in modern times there is a tension between the social and the authoritarian or authorial, we'll have walter cronkite or whoever saying this is important, this is not. just concerned about setting the balance between crowd sourcing and think this matters, this

doesn't? >> of course. the great speed at which everything this is an amazing and it is transformative in many ways. brokaw sent to tweet about the woolly mammoth. [laughter] just kidding. >> sorry, tom. >> anyway, are you an authoritative figure? [laughter] but the fact is, you have to be in all those different places. we did to deal with microsoft 15 years ago to do and i sense the same sort of a model that the abc relationship with yahoo! is built around. and that is getting your news conference to as many people as possible to not offend a very good relationship for us and it's important to be fair, but i do think our reputation and if that is somebody who is a 23-year-old desk assistant who happens to work for one of our networks and hits the send button on a tweet or something, you know, you have to recognize

the reputation is still there, so it is something we absolutely worried about and keep denying on. but at the same time, we are about to launch a news magazine, which is probably a quaint idea, but going back and doing the first launch of a newsmagazine in prime time in decades or not for long time since we've seen a new one, which is not going to be emitted to 140 characters. this'll be an hour of quality journalism every week. and i think both should coexist in a newsroom in 2011 and beyond. >> may be at 10:00 on nbc television network. thanks, dave. >> actually a call, yes. >> one thing i i say about authoritative because they reason that the three of us are here is that these are the news organizations in the broadcast world out of its authoritative

than the sort of discussion whether social is disruptive and i don't do so. just because people consume this information socially doesn't mean that they are not interested in authority. information on that being more important to people so that someone's made a decision about. it is like you have a kid playing high school sports in texas and you go to the game on friday night and you know what happened. why do you go -- when you go to the store next to him by 15 copies of the local paper that is the high school sports section because you want ever to the city to look at the picture of the game. they covered it, they thought it was interesting. the sense that the more interesting to people that someone's made a decision and someone is not validated and next year instead as well. and they better take on it. >> steve mentioned brokaw and when we were coming up in the

business, tom used to tell means to you that you can't be above the news. that's sort of one of tom's actions. that goes to the heart of your question about crowd sourcing and the rest, which is the audience viewers, people tell us, we know was interesting to them. the about different ways and it's not just limited to the nielsen numbers. we can tell what is trending. we can see how people engage in the news. that's useful information into brokaw's axiom of not being above the news. what's not a network news right now as we have much more feel about what's happening in stories and allows us, doesn't dictate what they do, it doesn't drive everything, but it's an important part of her thinking. >> in place like iran is where we have seen some major news events play out. you know, the places where you see at first history some of the social media outlets. >> just a follow-on, ask about

international coverage. in arguably, this is the time of the world offense affects more than ever before is smaller permanent staff overseas than it would've been 20 or 30 years ago. is this on that site are able to use all these other tools if you two were twitter are one-man correspondents, how are you covering the world when it matters more and you have a less permanent overseas presence? >> look, we still have a major overseas presence in places like cairo with a full-time bureau were able to call an earlier this year. but look, i view this as an extension. i think if you can find out what's happening in tehran in addition to the people we have based their, why not tap into that? it makes our jobs -- it adds a level of complication because you want to verify information and images that come out of all of these different places all around the world.

but there is no question that it has -- look him look, news organizations have been built around moving video all around the world. this has allowed it to happen much faster, much quicker get information. i think you have to have an organization that is set up to tap into those different channels to really find out what's going on and then put your, you know, do your traditional job as a journalist to weigh all of that information and try to figure out some sort of context. >> i think reports of our demise internationally have really been premature. scarpelli was in afghanistan this week, marking 10 years that the american military commitment there. i was in london yesterday where we hired a new correspondent, promoted a second one. we still have really good force projection. all of these organizations to internationally. we don't have exact way the physical infrastructure that we

did a generation ago, the technology also means we don't need that in many cases. he donated a physical office to make a phone call. let's face it and some of these places was why we kept physical offices. is that bloomberg, with 147 bureaus around the world and when i left trying to figure out where these bureaus were feared there was one everywhere. but i am not sure that -- there is deadly benefit to that disorganization of having on the ground to cover up entries to their audience. that makes our we put people, including just think that the conflict this week. >> i think this is a glorious time to be a foreign correspondent for an international journalist because the technology means that one does not have to travel with 40 suitcases and to get this case or not. in fact, christiana on poor when

she went off to the world spring but the producer and that was it or maybe a party of two at various points. i mean, our point is one does not have to go with the giant infrastructure of the past. one can go all kinds of places and we can embed this video journalist in afghanistan to reach parts of afghanistan that previously never could have preached. so the idea that the footprint in the way you phrase it is exactly right. it's not as big in certain ways, but the reach is much greater in other ways. we have more happening all over the place and ours being much more around the world in certain ways than we did a generation ago. it's a virtue of the different generations we have a digital journalist to represent all of the world. it's not an actual bureau, but in our home apartments where they are rocking and pretty more content than a pyramid than a generation ago. >> so we are near the end of our time here.

i want to ask you all a bit seriously now question and i really admire organizations should be at it, visionaries and things to get better and better as you outside. i think the tone of many people at least in washington is actually quite -- a bit darker than not about the connection between public information and public affairs by there've been more polarized time, it was first et cetera. this is an area where people think are facts but it's about science about the state and national affairs whatever. are you telling us honestly that you are looking to the next election in the time that did that with confidence and optimism about your ability to reach a broad part of the american public and this is not true and this matters and this doesn't. i'll start with you, steve. >> sensitized about msnbc before, i'll talk about 2008. in 2008, we had an incredibly contentious political debate

underway. we lost our dear friend and political leader, tim russert read in the middle of the campaign and tim was the one who was collecting on for an awful lot of complaints about msnbc that we heard at nbc news and things like that. and what has been? "meet the press" continue to do incredibly well here they continue to grow. and we played an important part in the political dialogue. and i remember people saying, you know, it was. forget it. ill never reclaim the territory and the fact of the matter is that it's an important time. at the nbc takes a rare, cbs evening news did an emmy award for the work that they did not turning the political coverage that year. and everybody feels their way through it. we're not going to sit down and it's impossible, were not going to do it. the atlantic dedicated new ideas. what a wonderful concept.

we've got to continue to dedicate ourselves and say we are up to this task and you to dedicate ourselves to trying to find answers and trying to get contacts. the audience ultimately is going to make determination about whether we are still relevant and capable of doing that. but where i sit, i think the audience is still rewarding us with their viewership and reaching mass, you know, i don't care if it reaches from television or online or on this device, whatever. i'll take them. >> defender? >> last week, we had an emmy award ceremony in new york and the one time in that event a think you could've heard a pin drop was pelley made some comments about how he thinks that no time at the present heavy had as much of the kind of work going on that was recognized recognized.

and the reason it was so sad is because the wisdom on this is not terrible. used to be better, yesterday my money. they said what to buy cars in case the first one breaks, you know, but i'm not convinced of that type of thing happen that the journalism was any -- necessarily any better for it. ..

>> yahoo, in one month, reaches 95% of the american electorate. it goes to a yahoo next site. that means real content about politics has the opportunity to reach 95% of the american electorate. i don't think it's being optimistic looking at the facts that we have a huge responsibility in 2012 to do our best and reach all those people because we know we can get to them. >> i know i feel very good about the leadership of our three major news networks, so please join me in thanking these presidents for being so successful. great, thank you. [applause] >> thank you, jim, david, ben, steve. we know network news is not

dead. reporters have to travel light, and there are no more black cars coming to pick you up. sorry about that, steve. next up we have bill daly who does not need an introduction. chief of staff to president obama, and nora o'donnell, president of american ideas. it's our all -- [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> thank you, margaret. [applause] secretary, thank you so much for joining us, of course, the white house chief of staff. i want to start this off sort of in a little bit of a fun way, get some insight about you and your position and start by asking you, how do you start

your day, and what do you read first? >> i read the post and the "new york times" because they are delivered. i still actually open a paper, and then i go online and begin to read the times and the financial times and the journal and "the chicago tribune" just to make sure i can see what my predecessor's doing. [laughter] so when he calls, 10 minutes later, i can harass him. >> does he call you a lot? >> we talk a lot. >> what does he say? [laughter] >> this is being recorded, isn't it? [laughter] i don't know how he says or what he says, and you don't know if you have to air from somebody else, and then i'm in by seven and start with a 7:30 meeting of the senior staff and then another meeting of about 50 people, the leadership of the

entire west wing, and then the day begins and finishes up, usually i leave somewhere around 7 or 7:30. >> you joined the white house in january. you worked in the clinton administration in the secretary of commerce. how would you say president obama and president clinton are different? >> well, i'll have to think about that. there's lots of ways they are different. the times are very different which i think when you look at president, it's not just their personality or style of management, but the times in which they're in. president clinton was a very different -- he was somebody to expressed himself quite a bit and rather vocally. he was very open in his emotions and the way he conveyed it to his feelings to people. president obama, as people said no drama obama.

he's very steady, controlled, constantly searching for more information. bill clinton also was, but style ly they are very different, but the times really impact how they operate and manage more so than their personalities. >> you were brought into the white house and there was discussion you would strengthen ties with capitol hill and the business community. how's that going? >> oh, it's going great. [laughter] can't you tell, you know? things are just really great. [laughter] no problem, and the community loves us and the rhetoric, and no problems. [laughter] no, look, these are tough times for american people, and the difficulties in this town, politically, i know senator ruboi is on next, is just much more reflective of what's going on out there in america. what happens in the town is much more reflective than we

sometimes like to admit, so the difficulty politically, we have been a divided nation politically for a very long time. if you look back at the elections of the last number of years, 2008, and to some degree was an aberration. 2004 was relatively close election, 60,000 votes in ohio would have been a different outcome. 2000 in which i chaired gore's campaign, and 1992 got less than 52% of the vote, so for the last number of years, america's divided, and you've had e enormous swings, 2006, 2008, 2010. the american people are, you know, stressed out, but it's extremely volatile political season right now. >> there's no doubt there's been a history of polarization, but what would you say about the state of the relationship between the white house and republicans on capitol hill?

>> well, i think it's, i think the republican montra starting in 2009, shortly after the president was inaugurated, basically, you know, we're going to take a very hard line position of no, and that's pretty much been it when the minority leader says my number one goal is to defeat the president. that's a pretty amazing statement, and i mean, we all believe him, and that is his goal, and that is his objective. every day he tries to accomplish that objective. that puts a certain different twist on trying to get the accommodation. the president came to town to try to have a different voice, a less shrill voice, someone who, as he did in previous positions in illinois was very much bringing people together, but it's proven to be much more difficult than i think he or anyone else thought it would be. >> but i was in the press briefing room with you this

summer when the president came in, gave us a five minute notice, came in at six o'clock to announce he just received a call from speaker boehner that they were breaking off talks on the debt ceiling, and the question i asked at that time to the president was it seems like there's an extraordinary break down of trust. are you guys even talking anymore? do you talk? >> sure, i talk to the speaker. the president talks to the leadership, but there's no question, and it's partly because, in my opinion, you got -- it happens every cycle. the presidential elections begin earlier than anyone likes. every cycle we all complain about it, but we all participate in it, so you have that going even earlier than usual, and i think that impacts obviously the hill and the politics on the republican side. we don't have a primary going on, so that's different, and it's well known the struggle within the republican party as

to what is the actual heart and soul of the republican party. you had an election in the fall very much driven by a wing of the party that became much more energized and aggressive. the leadership that came in on that wave was not part of that wave, and so that presents a struggle within their caucus, and we watchedded that play out in the debt ceiling, and that continues to play out in other votes. it's not just us who struggles also. >> the president's been out on the road, blaming republicans, naming names, specifically talked about mr. cantor, but isn't there an issue with the democrats too on the hill? there's currently no co-sponsors of the president's jobs bill, his number one priority, and senator durbin said democrats don't have the vote, and harry reid is reluctant to schedule a

vote. >> the senator said today in a press conference that the vote will be very shortly. we didn't think it would be before mid to end of of october, and that's going to happen as we deal with trade agreements, taa, the congress, which as you may have noticed, z has a rather light schedule lately, but there's a lot of things on their plate, so trying to tee up issues and get them through is difficult considering the schedule. i think the house leaves after three weeks, and they take a week off and go back in district, not imply it's a vacation, but they take about every third week off. they have a lot of time. >> what do you think has happened? as a senator said to me the other night that they spoke more in one day that boehner and pelosi speak in a year. what's happened? >> i'm one to believe that our

politics -- people say, oh, it's not as civil as it used to be, if only the politicians could get together -- the truth is our overall society is less civil to each other. what's popular on tv? reality tv shows, people doing something outrageous or treating somebody in an obnoxious way, and we can't think that somehow politics is separate from that or that's separate from politics. i often think about the incivility that seems to be in politics is reflective of the instability that may be going on in the general society, which is not a positive thing to say, obviously, but there is not -- there's not the engagement anymore that there used to be. senators go home much more now than they used to. not as many live here. congressmen run every two years, and the cost of it, and the fear of being out of a job as opposed

to, you know, if you lose your job, and you don't get another one, it's created a very different climate that even ten years ago when i was hear under clinton, president clinton, you could just feel it's very different. >> just one more on this, and then we'll move to other issues on the economy and foreign policy, but do you take some responsibility for the relations with capitol hill and with speaker boehner? >> oh, i think there's no question that i would -- yeah, i would take some responsibility for the relationship that's part of my job. i think everybody in this room, everybody in media, everybody in this town, everybody in active in politics has to take responsibility for some of the way our political system has gone. it's unfortunate, but it has not only gotten less civil, but there's a whole bunch of changes

that occurred, and very recently. just your business, how people get their news, and what is news anymore is debatable. you know, john stewart news or entertainment? people watch it and think it's news, so those are things you struggle with, i know in your business, but the impact on the political system is enormous. >> on the economy, i want to get you on the fed chairman ben bernanke making news that the economy is close to faltering. how do you respond to that? >> well, i think it's pretty obvious that the expectations of the first half of this year for a stronger second half and a stronger 12 are not going to be fulfilled. that's one of the reasons the president put together the american jobs act in order to try to create economic growth and jobs. i think if the predictions that

had been for most of the spring through the spring had been fulfilled in the second half, i don't think you'd have the pressure, at least the imptous probably for us to feel so strongly that we've got to do something that creates jobs and some economic growth, and that's what the president announced a month ago and is fighting to get a vote in the senate next week or the week after, and hopefully at some point, the house will deal with a job creating bill in order to put some buffer so that the expectation of some that the economy may slip backwards, we have a buffer to try to stop that, and most independent analyst who analyze the president's job package said it would add a point to point and a half in gdp growth and a million to 1.7 million jobs. > there's no expectation the

president's job bill will pass. it's dead on arrival. >> to say it's dead on arrival, that's a political judgment. okay, if it is, what's the plan of other people? the president put a package forward. no one else put a package forward to be independently analyzed and decide whether it creates jobs and creates economic growth, so he's led, put something on the table, don't just say no, have talking points, have something to be scored, not by political inside analysts or think tanks in the tank with whatever side you may be, and there's plenty of them as we know in this town, so my challenge to everybody else says oh, this jobs package is dead, oh, well, what are you going to do about the economy rather than just talk about it? this plan, if passed, outside, independents, will say it will be positive, so let's get it

on. let's call the question, have the vote, and if it doesn't pass, there is a responsibility of those who vote against it to have a plan or else they will just say to the american people that we don't need something. >> given chairman bernanke's comments yesterday, how worried are you about another recession? >> well, i think the general consensus of the experts is that you won't have a recession, another recession, a double dip, or a new dip, but i think what's going on in europe causes, as you can see in the marketplace, great concern. the president speaks to the european leaders quite often, and the expectation is that they will take action to prevent serious negative results that would cause the world to slip back even further than we are, but we follow it. we are very concerned about the possibility, but the expectation

as of right now is that we would not see a double dip. >> i hope you know the white house press core is hanging on every word that you say. >> that's why i usually don't do this. [laughter] >> exactly, it is. >> i don't want to -- >> it's a real treat. [laughter] we're just getting started. >> i know, that's the problem. [laughter] >> the super committee, as many people know, they have to come up with cuts mandated by the debt ceiling deal. they got to do it by#u:

and if that's not going to be acted on, and the committee's going to come up with 1.2 trillion, that obviously is the minimum they should come up with. i think it is well intended. i think the membership are truly the leaders of congress, and if they can't do something bold, then that would be another sort of damnation of the system, and that would be unfortunate. my expectation is, i don't want to give percents, they know it.

i talked to almost all of them, and they are sincere, but they are also finding out how difficult it is, and then to build a coalition either within the 12 to get seven to five or eight to four, i don't think it's a one member of the republican party jumps over with the democrats or one democrat jumps over to the republicans. i think there's got to be a bredder consensus -- broader consensus in order for our analogy in our negotiations, let's all hold hands and jump off the edge not knowing if there was a net, but at least you're holding hands with somebody when you hit the floor. [laughter] >> i'll ask about 2012 in a minute, but i want to ask you about al-qaeda following the killing on friday. back in july, secretary of defense pee -- panetta said -- you were there for bin laden and the news on friday.

>> i think the friday action was a very sub substantial srb has a very substantial impact on al-qaeda and those who want to do harm to a homeland. there are lots of people around the world who are terrorists, but there are a few -- >> how close to stray teemingic defeat -- strategic defeat? >> i think we're very close, but this is the sort of organization that we will be vigilant for as long as we are all alive because they can rear their heads in parts of the world and in ways that we just historically have not been used to, but the aggressiveness of the last three years by this president who, let's be honest, lots of people when they ran, oh, he's a community activist, what does he know about the very complex

foreign policy and military issues? i would say that this president has proven a certain steel without using techniques that are less popular in the world in a way that's been aggressive far beyond any administration that occupied this office in recent times. >> liz cheney is sitting over there. she'll have a moment to respond to that later. >> i'm sure she'll have more than a moment. [laughter] >> 2012, which republican are you most worried about running against? >> christie. [laughter] is he not in? [laughter] i don't know. you know, who knows. >> what do you think of mitt romney? >> i've never met him. look, whoever the republican party nominates will be a formidable candidate because the nation is very divided. we are in a very difficult

time. people are very nervous about the future. we've seen these enormous swings, as i said in 2010, 2008, and 2006, and so we've seen them all over, so it's -- this is a difficult time for america, so if you're in any incumbency, if you're the ceo of a company, if you're an anchor on a network, you better worry about your job every day, okay? so this will be a very close -- [laughter] >> we're still here. >> it's going to be a very tough close election. i don't care -- and that's how we approach it. that's how the president approaches it, and, you know, bring it on. >> okay. margaret has questions from twitter, but one more real quick which is you played golf, president obama played with president clinton recently. you were part of that. who won?

>> i think it was -- to be honest with you, you don't keep score when you play with bill clinton. [laughter] and he's a friend, okay? [laughter] we had a lot of fun. it was a fun day, and the president clinton looked great, and president obama, and he was probably as much time as they've been able to spend together, and, you know, we just kind of all -- all of us literally hacked around the course for four hours, so that's about what we do. >> margaret carleson has questions. >> how many billgans were there? >> i don't play to keep score. if someone says he shot a 40, then he did. >> how big a hole am i with you already? >> pretty deep. >> from the audience, what's

your best and worst day so far? not your whole life, just in the white house, but you can do your whole life. [laughter] >> no, no. the best day, to be frank with you, was the sunday of bin laden. that was one of the only nonnational security person in the white house. the first day i got here, or got the job, they, in the pdb, i don't know if -- anyway, it was mentioned -- >> you can do it, you can do it. [laughter] >> this compound, and i thought, gee, that's interesting, and so that sunday, and they -- seeing the thing progress over the months and the dedication and focus of the intelligence agencies and the military and the way they worked together and to pull that off, you know, there were people in that room

who had, for ten years, had been trying to find this fellow, and so that would be the highlight of -- the best day in the nine months i've been there. probably the worst day in that sense was the -- when the debt -- when we thought we were so close on a deal that i believe really would have impacted our country, on our economy, and it fell apart on the debt ceiling, that was probably the worst day of the nine months. >> well, we only have a minute left, but one of the questions they wanted to ask was how do women get along in the white house? you are good to nora and me here, but how is it in the white house for women? >> you know, -- >> do they complain? >> i guess -- look, i've not

sensed any problem, and i think speaking -- i know both valerie and melanie will be here later on, we have a great staff, and that comes from the top down. the president has, through his campaigns and through the issues he's fought for, obviously, has fought on been on the edge of women's issues, so i don't see it as a -- i didn't read the book, but i did hear that there was some issues early on under predecessor of mine, so i can dump on them for that. >> yeah, right, you phone you tomorrow morning. >> no, he'll phone me. he's probably watching this. [laughter] >> back to you, no ray. >> please thanks the pl's chief

of -- president's chief of staff for being here. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> nora, thank you. the irish charmers. next up, we have major garret of the national journal interviews marco rubio who seldom does interview. we're delighted to have him. major, come on up. thanks. senator, great to see you. >> how are you? >> thank you. >> all right, senator, i know you have schedule a.ment on the hill, so let's get to it. at your speech at the reagan library, you said entitlement

programs weakened us as a nation. you were then called a phony and coward and were told to apologize to seniors in the country for that speech. do you want to respond? >> yeah. first of all, i didn't say that. the said the role of government is assumed in america today has impacted our country in two ways. first of all, i speak with a strong defense of the proper role of government. the government has an important role to play in taking care of those who cannot take care of themselveses. americans have dual aspirations. we want to be prosperous and compassionate. throughout the 20th century as america grew, we said there's people out there hurting, people that are retiring into poverty, people that are disabled, and what we have in place right now is not enough, and so we created government programs to address it, and that's the proper role of government. the problem is two things. first of all, the creation of these programs were intended to

supplement the things we did as a people, not replace it. many communities, and not necessarily the entitlement programs, but the other programs that government's involved in, the mind set is there that somehow because we pay taxes, it excuses us from our individual speedometer as a neighbor, family member, a friend, to help those who are less fortunate. the bigger problem is these programs were created without thought of how to afford them in the future. the startling fact i pointed out in the speech is this is the richest most prose -- prosperous economy in the world, and we have a government we cannot even afford. there's not a society that can afford the level government we have today. these programs are important. we have to get the problemmer role of government that allows us to accomplish dual purposes of both being compassionate and taking care of those who cannot take care themselves, while at

the same time, be able to afford it. >> is it on you that people have to expect less as far as their benefits are concerned or less live with less? they can't ri tire with the same expectations. >> my mom is 80 years old, 81 almost, this month, and so -- she hates when i say her age. [laughter] she's in our 80s -- [laughter] and so what will i ask her to do? get another job to supplement it? of course not. there's consensus. there's real progress that folks on the programs or near retirement who built lives on these assumptions and have paid into a system with these assumptions, no one is expected them to make changes. here's where i think one of the great issues of our time is going to be is whether my generations, people decades away from retirement, are willing to accept the contribution we have

to make or one of the contributions we're asked to make is accept a role of government and government programs like social security and medicare that exist, but look different for us than they looked for our parents. >> less generous, put a fine point on it. >> again, first of all, we have to understand that life has a choice, has to be a choice between real options. he's what's not a option, that we continue to have the medicare we have indefinitely. there's no one in the world with a calculator to determine whether it's sustainable. we know there's changes to the programs. my argument has been that we need the programs and that the sooner we adopt reforms to the programs, it's not easier, but the easier it will be, the more options we have available to us to deal with it. it's powerful politics. maybe that's changed somewhat because people realize the state these programs are in, but it's powerful politics to accuse people of wanting to destroy

medicare, wanting to destroy social security. i think these programs are important for the future. they are a sign of a prosperous nation, but they have to be constructed for the future in a way that they are sustainable, otherwise we won't have them or anything else. >> along the lines of the ryan budget? >> that's one idea. quite frankly, it's the most serious one out there. there continues to be an aversion in washington, d.c. to seriously discuss other options on the table. i think if someone doesn't like the budget, propose an alternative, but we're running out of time to show people how there's a medicare in place by the time i retire, for example, and so, you know, i would hope that we come around to doing that quickly. >> so to capsulize, medicare has to change, you're okay with the ryan budget or as a theory to move from fee-for-service to support, which is a big change. >> i'm open to somebody else's idea if they are better, and i continue to talk to people about what alternatives there are, but

it's the only serious one offered by a person in a position to pass something. we should not take it as an opportunity to attack someone. if you don't like ryan's ideas, offer an alternative, but one that actually solves the problem and not a april weapon. that's the biggest concern about how things are headed. >> how comfortable are you with the contours currently as in-state tuition for undocumented workers in texas and the presidential campaign in your party, and are you troubled about the reports from alabama in the "new york times" and other places about immigrant workers fleeing homes and communities in reaction to the alabama immigration law? >> i've been consistent in saying while states have a right to do these policies that touch upon immigration, i don't think that's the best way to do it. i say that i believe that has to be addressed at the federal level in order to be solved. i'll get to the question about the republican primary in

specific, but a step back to view the whole immigration debate from a 50,000-foot level. america is the most compassionate people in the world in the history, and that includes immigration in terms of we are a nation with a strong legacy of immigration, and americansment a system that is true to our legacy as a nation of immigrants, but we also want a system that's true to the legacy as a nation of laws, and figuring out how to accomplish those two things is troublesome. as the years have gone on, and the issues regarding immigration have gone unaddressed, it's become harder and harder to address these issues in a way that's true to the nation as a legacy? >> why? >> because our legacy as a nation of laws continues to erode in regards to this. people don't like -- here's the pervasive feeling i get from people across the country, and that is that -- and it ranges from some of the feelings perhaps we're taken advantage of to the system in place doesn't work, it's broken, and no one is serious about making it work. you know, i think the existing

immigration system we have has to be reformed, and now you asked about the republican party, here's what i would say, and it's maybe a messaging point, but i think it's also translating to the policy point. we cannot be the antiillegal immigration party. we have to be the pro-legal immigration party, a party that has a good immigration system that's good for americans, good for america, and honors the tradition of immigrants and a as nation of laws. it's best for the economic future, but like social security and medicare, it's a very powerful political weapon, and the temptation in politics to use it overcomes the opportunity to solve it. >> the sort of legislature you were supportive of in legislation were like texas. do you think mitt romney uses the issue in a way that leaves you and other hispanics in the country who are indliened to look at the -- inclined to look at the republican is incomparable? >> when i was elected in 2000

and 2003 and 2004, the immigration issue wasn't a big issue -- 2000, very few people, especially at the state level talked about it. here's what happened. as the years have gone on in the immigration debate and the issues are unresolved and many have gotten worse and it grew from 8 million to estimates as high as 11 million, it's become harder and harder to find some of the solutions, so i think by and large, here's what i would say. as a general rule, okay, people in the united states who are here without documents should not benefit from programs like in-state tuition, however, here's a real world situation. >> even though you supported that in the past. >> on the one hand, americans think, yes, we're a nation of laws. if you are here in violation of the laws, you should not benefit from the programs. this is tricky. here's a kid who's 18 years old, arrived when they were 2 with their parents. their parents brought them. they are illegal, but the visa

expired, parents didn't renew them, they grew up here their entire lives, they are 18 now, and they can't go to college. if he's six foot seven and can dunk or throw a 95 miles per hour fast pitch, we'll try to keep them, but if the kid has a 4.0gpa, you'll send them back to a country where they can't speak that language? here's the problem, as the years go on and the immigration issue is unresolved and people feel we're not addressing the issue in a serious way, the ability to carve out exceptions has gotten harder and harder. in florida, we try to accommodate that without creating a mag innocent for other people to do that. what happened overtime, if you look at the evolution of the bill in the florida legislature, every year that went by, the exception was narrower and narrower where now politically it's nearly impossible to

advocate for things like this. i think that will remain the case unfortunately until the federal government and federal policymakers give people in this country assurances through both action and word that we are serious about bringing under control the illegal immigration problem and creating a legal immigration process that works. 12k3w4r two statement, and -- >> two statements, and then the question. christopherchris christie said it's also no until you say yes. you would have asked -- a if you did, it would have guaranteed a victory for a republican presidential nominee. how much do you crave the presidency? >> i don't crave it. i didn't get senate for a launching pad for another job. people have come to the conclusion that united states senator is not enough. the united states senate is

still an important, i think, a very important institution where if you dedicate the time and are serious about learning the way the process works and get things done, you can accomplish economic policy. throughout american policymaking, the united states senate provided the genesis for some of the greatest things this country east ever done, and -- country's ever done, and if i dedicate the time to it and seriousness to it, i can be a part of that. you'll never get to the stage if you look at it as a launch pad. >> would you turn it down if offered? >> i believe so. i'm not going to be the have vice president reel nominee. i'm focused on my job now, and the answer will probably be no. the answer will be no. i left the door open. [laughter] >> a few weeks ago, you were involved in a dispute only between and now it's a larger issue, four or five republican candidates said they are not participating in a sponsored debate because of the tussle

between you two. is that the right decision for them, and do you have a comment on that dispute or what's now a larger political issue? >> i think it's unfortunate. the whole thing is something i don't want to comment on. i didn't want to comment on it when it happened. people read articles, they speak for themselves. they are accurate, and i know you have to ask, but i really don't want to address the whole issue on any -- i don't want to give that thing oxygen because it doesn't deserve it. >> is it a miss opportunity for republicans not to participate in that form and debate? >> i think the final turn is -- i don't think there's shortage of televised debates including on "saturday night live." [laughter] >> are you on the mystic about the super committee? >> i think the united states and congress is a supercommittee. very few americans have the privilege to do what i get to do. i understand the reason behind the super committee, but i wish we would be able to solve the issues. you don't have to solve them in one day, but more than anything

else what people are looking for is -- what people are hoping the answer is yes. let me answer it this way. we have problems that are moving very fast, and one of the great questions of our time is whether our republic is still capable of moving fast enough to answer the questions, and the answer for me has to be yes, and ultimately, i believe we'll solve many of the issues. it's not easy. i think it will take time. there's bumps along the road that get us there, but i ultimately believe, i still believe that this republic, as difficult as it may be along the way, is going to solve issues that we face. >> senator rubio, thank you very much. audience, thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> okay. moving right along. do i see -- tom brokaw and david

gregly back there? i did. what did we learn? we learned that -- first he's probably not running, and then he's not running, and if his mother sees this broadcast, she will be getting a really good birthday present. now we're going to have an unusual conversation. tom brokaw who wrote "the greatest generation," he will be interviewed or talked to by david gregory who can choose whatever generation he wants to claim, anchor versus anchor. welcome tom, welcome david. >> thanks very much. [applause] >> other books, i forgot boomer. >> "boom" actually. >> oh, boom.

>> good afternoon, all. before we start, i've got a breaking story. there's a mammoth around the corner, and you heard it before from nbc before you heard it on abc news as well. [laughter] steve will pay for that for a long, long time. [laughter] >> that's a good place to start, tom, about breaking news, about the news media, what's changing and what you hear as you go around the country from audiences you speak to about us. >> well, almost always the opening question these days wherever i appear and whatever the interest of the audience is is what's happened to american journalism. they always flip that question first to me, and i try to engage them in a dialogue, if you will, about their responsibility in terms of what it is we do and where they get it and how they use it, and i say there was a time not so long ago when you could be in america and just be a couch potato when it came to

being a news consumer. you went to the porch in the morning, got the paper, watched the "today" show, went to work, came home, turned on walter cronkite, and then later that was true with dan, peter, and me, but that's all changed. now you have to be proactive, and the simple formula i deviced is you have to pay as much attention as to where you get your news and the reliability of the information as you do to buying a household appliance or giing an insurance -- buying an insurance policy. you do research, talk to friends, compare notes, and then you determine whether all of this information that's coming to you from every conceivable direction is reliable and useful. the fact of the matter is is there's an enormous amount of very substantive, important sophisticated information out there.

i mean, when i was a kid growing up in south dakota in a small top, you know, there was the local radio station and a not very good daily newspaper, and i got the minneapolis newspaper on sunday, and that was all. now i get up in that same top and i can reach the world, read the financial times, the economist, read foreign ministry policy papers from the middle east, check in on what was going on in the financial markets around the world, check "politico" to find out the political gossip of the day, and go online to the local newspaper and find out how i didn't win the game the night before once again. >> isn't this not influenced by the difficulty of consumerism, but that individuals are seeking out news that validates a particular point of view in the world? >> well, there is that, but that's always been true. if you look at how newspapers were arranged and the great ones have specific audiences in new york or chicago, they play to working class, what paper was

held on the subway by what readers and writers, and so on, and now, of course, it's much more sophisticated and much more directed of them. i have a friend in montana who is not particularly sophisticated by choice, very confident woman, but she doesn't pay attention to the national political scene. she comes to me twice a week wide eyed and says you're not going to believe what i read on the internet today. i said, i'm not going to believe it actually. [laughter] you know, i have to kind peal her off of that. she gets pulled in in a way by what's out there, so that's why you've got to put up your own guard system. you have to have a filtration system of some kind which you pump that information through it and put your own common sense testing and own experience through it. i described this in other places as the second big bang.

we are creating a new universe right now, and we don't know how it will turn out yet. there's planets drifting too close to the sun, they disappeared, others got together and formed new life forms, how reliable are they going to be? it's chaotic yet, and it will continue that way for some time, but if you're a consumer and you're excited about it as you should be by the reach and the range and the breadth of the information, then, you, too, have to take an active role in it. >> journalists still play a role. >> they do. i also say, you know, we can't forget that the culture of journalism remains critically important no matter the form in the future. every society will depend on a place where they can turn to to find out what's going on that they need to know about making decisions about their lives, and so we can't give up on the

culture of journalism and the place of journalism in public policy and in public life, and it ranges from everything from amanda knox trial in italy, debt limit negotiations, and what's going on with monetary policy. you have to have a place to turn to. people say to me, you know, i can't stand what i saw on the news. i said, why were you watching it if you can't stand it? they are drawn to it, and they need a place they can go together. >> how would you try to break into the news business now? >> i think i'd get into medical school. [laughter] it's tough. i grew up in the age -- i came of age, it was kind of interesting. i grew up in a working class environment in south dakota, and i was a political junkie at an early age. i didn't see a television until 15. think about that.

we moved to a town where we got a signal. it was magic to me. i could see things i never expected to see in my lifetime, and i suppose it began to form in the back of my mind that that's maybe what i'd like to do. the night of the 1960 election, i was up until eight o'clock in the morning watching, and that very close race between jfk and richard nixon, and at the end of that long, long night, i thought, this is what i want to be. i want to be a network correspondent. maybe i can get the network to pay for me to see the world, and then i realized later in life that i overwished on that. [laughter] >> you didn't want to see all those places. >> in those days it was easy. you went to a better affiliate in the country, you hoped the network noticed you there, and then maybe get you a job or get you on the air from there. in those days, the affiliates were bureaus. i worked in a good station in

ohm ha that produced a legendary news by the name of hoyt, who later went to chicago. we did news on the air, and at 25, i moved to atlanta in the middle of the civil rights movement, and i raced off and chartered airplanes to anyville, alabama and other places where all hell was breaking lose, got on the air, and eight months later, abc wanted me to work for them, go to los angeles, and that's how i got there. >> i always believed to make it big in journalism or to have great national influence, you had to be from the heartland of the country. i mean, south dakota, you got johnny carson, and i was worried being from los angeles that i had a real limit there, and you said, in fact, that was true. >> that's right. [laughter] there are parts of the valley that represent our land, but you

just didn't happen to be there. [laughter] i think there's something to that. people asked me about that. i think for one thing when you live in those areas, you're looking over all the horizons because there's not as much going on around you in the great plains. [laughter] the other piece of it that that part of the world was settled by primarily northern europeans and scandinavians, and they came with education being important, community, and faith, obviously, and they were political, 10 we grew up in that -- so we grew up in that kind of political culture, and most of all, i suppose, because we come from that part of the country, we're not regional in a way. we're not eastern, southern, or californians. we are a cross section of america, and then, two, if you had ambition, the whole community kind of helped you along.

they would say go for it. you know, you grow up in a small town and think, good god, maybe i can work in new york, and that turned out to be possible. >> let me shift a little bit and talk about something else you think a lot about, and that's what we're lacking now in the country is a shared sense of national purpose. >> i have a book coming out in november, a cheap way to promote it in advance. [laughter] this one's called "the time of our lives," and it's a past, present, and promise. it occurred to me two years ago as a grandfather, i was looking at my grandchildren and very excited about the lives, and then somewhat terrified about the lives that they might have and and anxious about what we will leave for them. i was born in 1940, i'm the boomers as well. what are we leaving behind, and what do we need to address?

we have a view at the moment of the united states and our place in the world. you know, this is not a cycle. we're in an entirely different passage now. you know, when ronald rage p's recession ended, he was not dealing with china and russia and brazil and india and oil was $10 to $15 a barrel. we're in a different kind of competitive field, and so one of the things that i've been feeling very strongly about is the place of national service in america. i've talked about this almost everywhere i go including on opera that less than 1% of the population takes 100% of the bullets with the two longest wars we've had, and there's a terrible disconnect of where we live and where they are making the sacrifices and what their families are going through. how do we reignite the idea of public service in in my book i'm proposing, and this is a hail mary, i grant you that. i'm proposing a big idea, and

the big idea i think might work is that you have six public service academies attached to schools across the country, post graduate and not just for medical degrees, but also medical technicians and nurse practitioners and are private-public partnerships. you have the caterpillar fellow in energies and road construction and emerging markets in the third world, the johnson and johnson fellow in the third world and there's contracts where you get paid by them and the government stipend. they either go out in the world or stay here where the needs are great, and relieve pressure on the military. when you have katrina, it's the 82nd airborne go in. you have peace corp. plus. a diplomatic special force. we've got to change the face of america around the world. at the moment, the burden is far too great on our uniformed

forces, and all the those states in america and those countries are lock and loaded weapons, and goggles, and i've been with them in iraq and afghanistan on many occasions, going into those villages, trying to win hearts and minds, and you can just see the resistance wherever you happen to be. you know, one shopkeeper in a real remote village in afghanistan, very primitive village said to me when i took him aside to ask him, he said we don't need more people with guns telling us what to do. that's a summary of what a lot of people see, but simultaneously, the chinese without military investment around the world, are everywhere striking deals for natural resources and extracting natural resources all throughout africa and south america. i was with the president of rwanda a week ago and that's a poor country with not a lot of natural resources. i asked him about the chinese.

he said they are all over me, in my office constantly. i never hear about america and economic development, chie chinese, i hear from them every week. one of the ways to change that is find a new form of universal service that has an incentive attached to it. >> the nature of a public-private partnership being a hail mary pass gets to our challenges now which is the role of government in our lives, something that apparently has to be settled in next year's election. >> well, it will be, and the fact that the government is not going away, and we have to acknowledge that, but i really honestly believe this is a discussion that ought to be much more about reform and change and improvement rather than just cutting and slashing. you know, i said on your broadcast that we got in trouble in part because we didn't manage our way up, the enormous amount of spending we did was not managed. it was just pull the trigger and

let the money go. you can get in the same trouble in not managing cut backs if you just think you're just going to hammer down on everything and not do it in a systematic way, and any cooperation, any family that tightens its belt tries to set real priorities and how to invest in the future so it works for us. what you're saying in states, not just mitch daniels in montana, but all across the country, and that's going to be a big theme going forward where you'll have municipalities doing compacts with companies that manage waste water, for example, or garbage pick up. there's a big debate going on with rom in chicago over the weekend, and it looks like he's moving towards daily garbage pickup through a private company because they do it efficiently and at a lower cost basis, so we're at a time in america where

we have to reinvent a lot of the ways that we have been doing just routine everyday business. in los angeles, there's ten retired city employees, and their pensions range from $320,000 to $200,000. at the $200,000 level, the middle management and water district. they retire with more money than david petraeus will, and that's going on across the country. that has to be addressed. it's going to be hard, and it's going to require the best efforts of everybody, but we have no choice in my judgment. >> maybe we can end on this point. in our coverage of the decade after 9/11, you said something that really struck me. as you've always been captured by the broad chapter headings in our history, and you understood that 9/11 represented that, and

the decade after 9/11 was about the reaction to a huge problem facing this country. we face another challenge now about what's happening at home and people out of work and that sense of america losing its way in the world. how do you put a big chapter heading, how do you understand these times? >> well, because we're in the midst of it, it's hard to know how it turns out. turned out after 9/11, i wrote a piece for the "new york times" until they sent it to me in which i said this will change us. we're going to war, likely to have a recession, going to be in afghanistan. no outsider has been successful in 2,000 years, is immuneble change coming to us? we have to think now about how to manage it. i think it's the thought of all of us that we didn't. it's not a partisan issuement i think that president bush fumbled an opportunity to rally the country behind the big issues, but i also think that democrats were in on that. i think that we didn't do a very

good job of holding public officials accountable for the changes that were coming and the sacrifices 245 needed to be made. we went to war on a credit card again, after vietnam. you know, it's cost over a trillion dollars so far and counting. from this point forward, one thing to keep your eye on, i've been looking at young people, and in my commencement speech last spring, i said there's many of you in this audience, i'm sure, who began your college career in the fall of 2007, before the recession really took hold in america. your parents both probably had jobs, and you were secure in your house, and you were told in few went to college, you'd have a job in four years. now, many of you come from homes in which one of the parents has lost a job, the value of the home may be worth less than the mortgage, and you're coming out of here with a degree in mass

marketing or in mass communications or english, and there are no jobs. that's having an impact on this generation already. a lot of them move back home because they feel they can rely on their families and almost nothing else. they are trying to decide how they can manage student debt which they've accumulated and it's considerable. they are living with less than earlier generations not so long ago in terms of toys and other things. ..

one of these monuments out here, but for people to raise that question tells you i think with greater clarity than almost any other signs you see about the anxiety in the country. >> tom brokaw everyone. [applause] in global conversations in all the conversations thanks to tom that actually is

wonderful but it left me a little sad about the country and david will be back with us to interview valerie and a bit. we have a change in the schedule. we are going to google now. eric schmidt is joining us from google and he will be interviewed by gwen ifill of pbs. gwen? hello. come on in. nice to see you. [applause] >> hello, everyone. we are here with of the executive chairman of google and i have far more questions than time will allow. >> you testified on that senate

judiciary subcommittee. how is it being hauled before congress and basically being told that you had cooked your search result? >> i assure you we have not put anything was my response. i think in many ways at least so far who has made the company how we make our decision in particular publicly described to focus on consumers, so so far i think it has over all been positive and i should say by the way that the government has a rule here this is their job to do and so we have to respect that. >> let's talk about the government role because a lot of members of congress who were calling you last week made it clear that on some level the democrats and republicans that google scare's them. why shouldn't it? >> my answer which i said at that time is decisions algorithm likely. we believe in the power of the of rhythm and so forth on

whether or testing indicates consumers want in the global search engine. i do understand that google links information and others winners and losers and those decisions have significant impact on people. so the word scare is their word, not mine. on the other hand, we provide a free important service and take pride in doing it right. >> questions about search dominance and copyright, questions about privacy. how old do you begin to tackle those when you are obviously the subject of a federal trade commission investigation? >> so far our answer has been the principle that we founded the company on seem to be working and brought in open access to information to be as transparent as possible, all the things we have said over and over again. on privacy we've taken a pretty strong position that privacy is important you should have as

much control over privacy and we understand in an awful lot of the debt is being connected, collected about you so in each of those cases i think my personal reaction is this is the right thing for an antitrust committee to be doing the should be asking these questions but it's also important to remember there haven't been in the accusations about google from the europeans or the ftc yet. this is the beginning of listening if you will. and so i think we should reserve judgment until we actually hear if there is any alleged violation of any of the rules. >> do you get the sense that you are being heard? >> i can tell you that with the regulators we absolutely are. what happens is the regulators are very thorough and basically give you either voluntarily or if you don't like them they will give you under a subpoena so we ship them enormous amounts of data about how we make decisions what we did in this case and what we did in that case in the european commission they sent a number of hundreds of letters of people asking them and so forth.

the process takes a pretty long time. i think it's going to be weigel before we hear back. >> the political process and the regulatory process. which you like least our best? >> so far the political process has not been particularly aside from a hearing there hasn't been very much. the regular process i think we should reserve a judgment and honestly from our perspective, you know, we've always understood the role that we took and way back when when the company was small we sort of wrote to the equivalent of the memo saying how can you be dig without being evil we have adopted what we think are the principles so far exceeded what you are a consumer and you don't like our service we make it easy for you to take the data from google and take it to a competitor. other people don't do that. >> so it's easy if you are doing a search on googled to decide i don't like this so it's likely that a consumer would then say i will just go and search on bing.

>> we are also seeing quite a competition emerging in vertical applications. look at the rise of twitter and facebook and search is on mobile devices. so my guess is that the market expands to the competitors in that way and that two primary competitors will be google and microsoft for a long time. it's been a key made a conference about microsoft in which you said you actually describe them as someone who used to be your competitor. was that a joke or was that real? >> i was referring to it in a different context. if you look at it at the next five, ten years there is a set of companies establishing whole new platforms on the internet. they are sort of - the discussion forward, and i named them as the way apple, amazon, facebook and google and the question is why do not mention microsoft and i will see them play that role. the search is no question that

bing is our primary competitor. >> i noticed you had an error on the table in front of you at the hearing last week why not one of your own products? >> the mac air had everything i needed in case somebody asked me a question because you might as well answer a question with the at. [laughter] >> let's go back to the regulation. we are in the middle of the discussion in washington which is basically put on party lines. republicans say this administration is interested in regulation and is regulating business out of business and democrats are more likely to be in favor of the idea of increased regulation. you are famously a supporter of this and ministration. where do you come down on that? >> the people in favor of regulation or only in favor of regulation to the degree that it's the correct regulation. if you look, there are many markets where additional regulation would save us from the financial crisis and some

cases regulation can promote new industries like the green industries which are to some degree the future of american energy independence which everybody here knows. so i think it is in that context people support it. regulations that are cronyism or whatever serve to preserve specific are not what people are in favor of. my guess is that these are sound bites that are really long paragraphs and what happened in the the date the date compress the and if you sit down and say there is general support in the cafe standards, one of the quickest ways to improve our energy independence is to raise automobile efficiency which can be done 03 period of time in an international way. >> there's much more agreement in washington that's visible to our naked eye. >> my perception, i am not sure about washington but my perception is there's a much more optimistic view how america should proceed which goes

something like some reasonable consensus around or at least compromise on a longer-term structural and in the short term some reasonably short term specific stimulus issues for example around building of infrastructure and so forth which benefits all of us and we will use it to create new jobs. >> is agreement about infrastructure. >> the people i talk with where you actually ask are you in favor of for example putting the lead of construction workers back to work to try to sort of help build roads most people i talk with say that they are. >> who are you talking with? >> if the answer is no, then so be it. but from a country perspective the country will be better off if we can forge a path through this. there's lots of reasons to be optimistic about america. you don't hear them here. if you look at the rate of new industry created, the new technology that's possible, the things that science and technology invented in america

can do that story isn't being told and needs to be talked about. >> one of the reasons i impressing you about the debate in washington is because they don't think from what i read and the people i talk to who are outside of washington that it's generally agreed upon that there is any area of agreement on anything that like what you are describing. >> let's say that there isn't. we still have to do something. we have to come to some kind of an agreement. >> as a businessman what agreement is double? >> what business would like -- this is a general rule once predictability so this flirtation with the debt issue was not a good scenario. a native redeemers received people had enough problems running their business, so anything we can do to provide predictable outcomes from the way the government works, government spending we are in a situation where the continuing resolutions are now allowing us another week or two weeks in the government spending. that's not good for spending more good for america so i think if the government can sort of organize itself with a slightly

longer-term perspective the will be helpful. with respect to specific programs it's clear to me that you need to simultaneously solve some agreement around the long-term structural issues which are perfect. look at some symbols commission and something in the short term which helps create additional demand. it will come from additional government spending and for the targeted government programs to be hispanic there has been a discussion going on here for some time about whether the tech industries get washington or washington gets the tech industry. it took microsoft a while to realize bill gates before the committee may be a dozen years ago. now google is. the word is that you resist the idea coming here to actually testify. how important is washington to google or the industry and vice versa? >> washington as the government therefore they can score was up so that is the simple starting point. historic we the high-tech industry is largely ignored washington and the last ten years after microsoft experience everybody sort of figured out

that it was important to have representatives here and so forth. most of the companies including it google have tried to stay in the lobbying for ideas phase as opposed to lobbying specific sentences written in specific bills and that seems more palatable to the way we operate. and most of the companies agree, for its simple, with the kind of things i'm talking about most agree with the importance of broadband policies accelerated help america, things like x-rated or a tax credit and those things these oral export business and they are all growing. is to get caught my ear that washington's can screw you up. how? >> there are situations where the unintended consequences of the law, the classic example of the telecom act a provision that would have eliminated business cashing in the way the data is stored would have broken away their doubters work so we changed it. every once in awhile people write a law that has a sort of bizarre unintended effect and what we ask is if the government

needs to regulate something regulate the behavior, but the underlying technology because the technology moves so quickly. and why would we want that? well, technology industries contribute about 15% of gdp growth in the last five years. we have an outside contribution in terms of both the growth and profits to the country. so, i think it's worth -- it's worth less continuing to do well. >> when you took over at google ten years ago, you said that you came in because googled needed an adult day-to-day supervision. you are a washington native obviously spending a lot of time here now speaking to a lot of important people. it does washington need adult day to day supervision? [laughter] >> i think the sooner we can turn washington over to the next number generation, bright young people coming out with the kind of hope that i deal with and work with the next generation understands the social context

better than my generation ever did. they are smarter in many ways. they have a more global perspective. so i think with respect to leadership. >> what could be fixed here first to you think? is it leadership? >> i think it's a math problem. the problem we largely have is a result of redistricting and i think that there should be a constitutional amendment would require them to be parallelograms, just basically straight lines. it would solve all the problems. estimate the response? >> it would work. [laughter] speech by the way it really would. >> use it the business can create jobs if consumer demand comes back. that is the basic problem here. does government have a role in that? >> government has a huge contribution to the economic situation in america. government is opposed to the to both purchasing as well as a regulator and so forth. it's important to understand we are stuck at the moment growing

at one to 2% in economic growth. that growth is not enough to overcome the improvements and business productivity that are currently without additional jobs. what happens is you say maybe this is only a couple% but in getting that out of the and permitted process improvement and manufacturing improvements and occasionally offshore. i want to hire more people. so as a -- in my view as a national emergency we need to get the growth of the country as measured by gdp or something like that growing faster. that's something which we all participate in. the jobs are created by the private sector, the wealth is created by the private sector. we've proven as a country we can create enormous numbers of such companies and wealthy and so forth that's been the mainstay of the post war of the united states. so, we need to have that conversation and instead of the conversation is about a lot of other things. that is the central issue. how we get a retreat to three or four or 5%? it should be possible. there's lots of examples.

rebuilding america's energy infrastructure. you want to take all of these are unemployed construction workers who cannot find jobs because their previous jobs were basically manufactured out of the credit bubble. hi year them to employee federal buildings. but some categories like that. there are new industries on materials science that could revolutionize manufacturing in america with american engineers. they're all all sorts of new synthetic foods, all sorts of other science being invented the next ten years can provide large global in the streets. we need to focus more on that. that's where the growth will come from. >> with the administration says that it would actually like to increase taxes on the wealthiest , is the job destroying position as republicans argue? >> looking at the math, that particular component does not matter very much in my argument. i'm not going to get political argument that number is a

relatively small number compared to the overall tax policy issues addressed the matter 98%. that is more of a justice and political question than a set of questions. in other words it doesn't matter compared to the of routings we are talking about as much. >> would you like to see your taxes? >> in my case it isn't a particularly big issue. >> because? >> it wouldn't change my behavior but for other people, it might. but i -- my personal view of that is not very important. what is important is how do we get the productivity parts of america working harder with a realtor exports with more investment and the things that will grow the economy. that's the only conversation that matters. everything else solves itself with growth. revenue solve all problems. it's true of countries as well. if you are in china during eight to 10%, turkey, they have problems. they don't have real problems. real problems is when you are not growing or if you are in the

countries in europe where you have negative gdp growth, extraordinarily difficult to go back to people and take all that stuff away. >> where there is growth right now if the business economy, it is in the tech sector how do we know we are not in another technical level? >> the growth and talking about is real revenue growth. the bubble is typically a term for the valuation on the stock market. the trees to give the company is the typically are not really on the credit markets as all. it doesn't matter what their stock price is. what matters is what the revenue growth isn't part of the reason that you see such a very high valuations and technology is because there is an assumption that when these things grow, they will grow very dramatically because of the scale and size of the internet and there is evidence that's true. these become massive business is so let's reward them with optimism. >> if there is going to be growth it seems it is in social media and google is placing on that field as well. if the social media has the

potential of completely transforming the way that we communicate? >> in many ways it has. one of the questions is what are we going to do as a society with all of those 16-year-olds posts with people over 36? it's pretty clear to me there is sweet to the law that says you cannot discriminate against people based on the pictures below age 18. [laughter] there will be additional sort of civil rights acts around teenagers. >> one can only hope. >> there's going to have to be a semi personal inspection. [laughter] we already know it's transforming and if you look at facebook which we think is arguably now the most successful of the online sites in that regard will get the level of activity it's a really extraordinary how much time people spending. >> did you get the vote on ceo at google? >> we were leaked to this. we were focused on other things and you say like why did we focus more on that?

we were focused on the sue dear switch could freely well. and so now we have a group called googled less which looks like a worthwhile competitor in a different space with more privacy controls. >> sue you can beat facebook at its own game? >> it's very hard to beat a fast moving incumbent in the same game and technology because it changes so quickly. what you have to do is find a new problem and do it better than the art and that's what we are trying to do. if you do that you can ultimately win very large. >> on a twitter and i try to be on the stuff kids are talking about, but i wonder the degree to which social media enhance his what we already believe and even searches rather than expanding the conversation. >> that question has been raised the last hundred years on the technology and i've learned to not have an opinion on how people choose to spend their time we just want to see how they are spending more time on

google doing it which is pretty simple. we are not going to make a decision as to whether this is good for people's time or not. it's alarming to the people don't talk on the phone anymore. and people have forgotten how to leave a voice messages which is shocking. >> they forgot to check them as well. [laughter] >> so this is the norm of how society moves forward. i would say overall this is extraordinarily good and i want to push it very hard on the critics of this and say look, you were worried about where your teenager is, now we know where they are. they are in their room online. it's a much safer place than teenagers can be. point number one. >> there are those the would argue that point. but okay. >> lock the door. trust me. we at least know where they are. the second point i would because communication is what humans do. and a sense of community, the sense of reach and wonder that

you can build our these communities is very nice. in terms of discovery and knowing the things and so forth, we add google can use that information with your permission and on the basis i might add to give you a much better recommendations of rick sable lit utility your kids are we can give you a better recommendation. >> but if we tell who your friends or you can give it away. >> we choose not to and we state we want and it is in our privacy policy. you should inform yourself when you give that to a company what are they going to do with it? >> the cloud is that also going to transform? are we going to throw away our desktop and pc? >> the simplest answer is i'm sure everybody here has had a situation they might have dropped their computer words broken it had something important on it. the cloud keeps that information on servers run by somebody else, google or one of our competitors on fast networks and then software the last few years has been to bringing software down

to your computer like the program used to install. for me it's remarkable. i use the googled locks which is our word processing software and i don't have to use the products anymore which is always good for my perspective. [laughter] and it's really convenient. jerry and i are writing a book together. we sit next to each of your typing away on the text of the server which is perhaps in another country. tooby is the most remarkable thing. cloud computing is in many ways a business efficiency benefit like every company including all of our competitors are moving to it. and it also allows you a classic example would be amazon. if you mention amazon without the clout, then amazon would keep your local sales history on your mac or pc but wouldn't be able to give you recommendations because it would be able to look through the data and give you the recommendations of what everyone else bought pizza by properly building the cloud services you can get the benefit of the clout they have to be anonymous and not privacy and things like that which amazon does correctly.

>> this is a final question but i have to ask about politics. you were an obama supporter and are still in a obama supporter. who would you say is his most formidable potential opposition, or is he running against himself? >> incumbents like companies are always running against themselves. that's always the first answer. once you get into a certain position of power and you have the tools to play with you really do have control over your own destiny. you certainly have the opportunity to lead them. and i think that there is a consensus among my republican friends that romney will be the most likely candidate, and the governor is simply someone i've known well is an able governor. >> so how do you beat them? >> i'm not running the campaign. >> but if they were to ask. >> i think presidents from on their records. and they run on the things that

the fund and the things they are going to do. and if you will the electorate has to sort of decide. this president has to say as a supporter inherited the world's worst configurations. it's impossible to imagine what these guys inherited and i think that they have done well. >> when in doubt as a voter you can google the information, write? eric schmidt, thank you very much. >> [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] thanks to eric and gwen. we are now -- david gregory is going to revert to his ""meet the press,"" role and will be interviewing white house counsel valerie jaret. [applause] >> welcome. >> hello once again. it's nice to see you. >> it's a pleasure to be here. hello, everybody. >> so when you came to washington you have business experience, you had chicago

government experience, and you had barack obama experience. when you didn't have is washington experience. so what have you learned? >> well, that i had a very good reason to want to live in the midwest. it is a tough town and i knew it would be a tough town and one of the lessons we have learned over the last few years is we should spend more time out of washington and connecting directly with the american people and what i love most about my job is it gives me an opportunity to do that with this regular everyday people as well as the state and locally elected officials. i worked for mayor daley in chicago and soa understand the importance of meeting googled the local level and so, my job is to stay connected with them and i think what the president intends to do and has been doing over the last couple of months is to spend more time out there as well. >> the president would like to do that because the pressure cooker that is washington. they can campaign for a piece of

legislation or literally campaign for office. in your travels what is different about the conversation of america and the conversation in washington? >> that's easy. the conversation in america is about issues that affect everyday people and it's not so much about politics. people have ideas about what we can do to move the economy and our country forward and provide better opportunities for their children. people still care about making things and to giving out how to invest in our country and people that the local level are caring about their community. there is a sense of shared responsibility that you find that the local level just as we find in our neighborhood. that's what you find when you leave washington and across the country and it's not everything to a short-term political plans so it is quite refreshing. >> but there is a lot of anxiety. >> of course there is. our country has been through a devastating period. you think of what has happened over the last several years. we have seen throughout our country almost every family has been touched by this in some

way. and so there is frustration, there is anxiety come in and i think people recognize as you traveled around the country we are not going to come out of this overnight. we didn't get into it overnight we are not going to get out of it overnight. in that process, there are people who are really struggling, and those folks give us energy and courage and determination to keep fighting on their behalf. >> this is a consequential time for the country this is an inconsequential presidency. how do you think history will regard the first term? >> it's too soon to see. that's the magic of history. obviously the president inherited a mess and i think that he will be well recognized for bringing the economy back from the brink of disaster including the rules of the road to avoid a similar financial meltdown. the land market legislation such as the affordable care iraq and important civil rights legislation such as repealing the mask "don't ask, don't tell" and a wide range of initiatives

that are geared towards investing in the country and preparing us for the long haul but also by taking immediate steps right now to get us on track and so i think that his first term will be one where people will look back and say my goodness, our country together, the american people went through a really tough time. they are resilient, tenacious, innovative as you were just hearing from eric and we will be back on top. spec that's a long list but if you come to the office and its deep financial crisis and after that list the economy may be slipping back into recession. >> that's why the president is pushing the americans jobs act and we are heartened to hear the senate will be taking up next week. we have to do everything we can to told our economy because it is fragile right now. it think about what shapes we might be had it not been for the bold initiatives the president took a very early on. we were in detroit over labor day and my goodness if there's a

synergy it would be devastating had it not been for the enormous investment in the automotive industry something that wasn't popular controversy of the time and people wondered whether it would work now we have our automotive industry robust again not only are the hiring folks lead off but we've recently were moving people back from mexico and the work to develop the fuel efficiency standards so we start looking at it as the local level and you see the impact of some of the president's initiatives he has improved the quality-of-life for many americans that doesn't mean that there aren't those who are suffering the unemployment rate far too high and we are at a pivotal time and that is why we have to pass the american jobs act now. >> you have a vote for that? >> we will see. i am heartened to hear the senate is going to call it up and people have a choice and what is terrific process is its transparent and every body gets to see where folks stand. the president has been very clear that he did not come up with this act and a vacuum. a lot of what we did over the

course of the summer is traveling around, talk to small medium large businesses, labor leaders, people who are responsible for creating jobs as well as the economic team he has both in the white house as well as the range of people who may be in this room and he crafted this plan in a way that is historical the bipartisan in terms of the initiatives it has. one that will create jobs right away with your teachers or veterans or putting construction workers back to work or extending long-term unemployment, cutting the payroll tax through the small business for average americans. a whole host of initiatives that will create jobs right now. there is no reason not to pass it and he also says there are a third lady is out there we want to hear them. we are traveling to pittsburgh for the president to meet with of jobs and competitiveness council and they will have a host of ideas as well. what we can do the administrative leave to move the country forward and so it's an

extraordinarily important in for the country and time to be very serious and focused on our economy on creating jobs and we have to put the short term political calculus aside. >> you can say that and it may frustrate you and the president, but it appears as if the conversation about what the government can do in this economy has effectively stopped and the disagreements about cutting spending, raising taxes have effectively halted both sides of the corners and we need an election to resolve it. >> i don't thinks so i'm not that pessimistic. i think we of the social committee that's going to be doing their work and the american people haven't stopped having this conversation and as we traveller of the country they are concerned with doing something right now and not waiting for the election. just as you said people are frustrated and scared. they don't want to wait 13 months or 14 months. the one the government to do what it's supposed to do right now and i don't think that we should lose confidence in our

officials to do the right thing particularly when we hear directly from their constituents. >> if congress doesn't act on a jobs bill what the consequences, what will the economy look like next year? >> i see what we know is if they do act we are going to see growth and job creation. if they don't act we don't know. we won't know it's when to be as good as they don't act. i don't want to give up on them and we are not going to give up because of the old act next week we are still going to keep pushing. there are so many important elements in the jobs pact we need to get it done and we also need other new ideas. the president has always said if you need a new idea let's hear it, put it on the table. let's see. let's give the american people an opportunity to see different visions but right now he's put something on the table and he's waiting to see with the other side wants to offer but will likely create jobs to respect as the president feel after the debacle of the debt debate that he doesn't have a partner here?

disappointing period because particularly the stakes are so high if hee-haw for the first time in the history the united states would be full and not on our the world investing in u.s. treasury we are supposed to be the safest investment in the world because it never happened before so it was a very low point. so hopefully as a result of that situation people will wake up and say look we have a responsibility. when we are travelling a run of the country but you hear from people of all walks of life is to have a high expectation that they are making ends meet, they are struggling and doing their job and people in washington need to do theirs and the president has prepared to continue to work and feel a responsibility to those people each and every day if and from just everyday people who are sharing their struggles so when he wakes up in the morning has

the speed limit and that's what he encourages cooks in congress to do as well. >> the president says he confirms when people hear him say that deutsch they sense a weakness? >> i hope not. i hope with the sense is somebody is willing to fight on their behalf. it isn't a sign of weakness adel tebeau he's always been the underdog. my goodness someone with a neighbor of usian obama got to be the united states president this a long shot. you and i met early in the president's campaign and told me with a straight face you thought he would win. so no eight weeks to work harder because he also appreciates how high the stakes are not for him but for the country and how important it is to keep the country growing in a positive direction and one that believes in investing in our future and so he's going to fight like the dickens to win this election tebeau >> my question is the president of the united states thinks he's an underdog after being swept into office having defeated

hillary clinton with so much enthusiasm and such high expectations what went wrong? >> because our country has been in a really tough period. i mean, my goodness, david. the last six months of the bush administration we lost 4 million jobs in this country and the first six months of the obama administration before any of the initiatives could take hold we lost another 4 million jobs. we have had really, really tough times and so as long as people around the country are suffering and they are scared and nervous, of course people are going to look to the president. people wish he had a magic wand and could turn things around overnight and we can't come in and i think part of our process is to tell the story of how hard this is going to be and it turned out to be much harder than any of the economists would have predicted. as we look back we are finding out now that our growth rate was a - 9% of - 6% so the whole was much deeper than anyone expected

so when you have been through tough times like that certainly you start out as an underdog i think it is to be expected. >> the leadership is what got him into the presidency in the sense that he was up to the challenge. >> and he is and he has been and i would remind you to think about how things would have been -- >> you said that now a couple times the country is making the evaluation. the approval rating is steadily at 32%. there is disappointment i know you must hear among his supporters, and a judgment is being made at this stage of the first term he is not up to the job. >> i don't completely disagree with you categorizing it like that. i think supporters, of course supporters are concerned because the nation as gentry tough period with the election is a long way away and is awaiting -- elections are about twice as and when you compare the presidents track record with whomever the opponent will be if you compare his vision for the country and the direction he wants to take

us to whomever his opponent will be it will be a stark contrast and i have every confidence in the american people that when we get to that point which we are not yet -- >> i didn't say concerned. you said supporters are concerned. what i hear is disappointment in him. >> i think people are disappointed that the country is not further along. if the economy was doing great right now i don't think he would hear that disappointment in him. the fact of the matter is when the economy is suffering and when people feel that their jobs are at risk and concern their children are not going to have the future, a better future than the future they had and the lives they've had people feel absolutely shaken not and so i think it is a natural sense that we want the president to be able to lead us out of this. i think people also recognize and i hear this a great deal around the country she needs a partner. there are limits to the president can do unilaterally particularly when you have republicans in congress to say that their objective is to stop

him from doing anything the would be a victory for president obama. what a victory for the american people? that's something that is absolutely in the atmosphere i hear when a traveler of the country. >> how do you balance being such a close friend and also such an important adviser to the president? >> what do you mean? >> the roll but nobody else has. somebody is close to him as you are and who can advise him from the point of view as a friend who knows and knows where he's coming from and can spend time with him and private family time and someone who is saying as a liaison of the business community here is how you ought to approach this strategically and from a policy point of view? >> his expectations have made clear as they are of everyone on the team he expects us to tell him what we think. he doesn't expect that we will always agree with one another but what he really looks for is for me to advise him based on everything that i have heard a

around the country as i reach out to a wide range of constituencies and as i get him my best counsel that's what he expects of everyone's whether we are friends or not his expectation of me as a senior adviser is the same as it is for everyone on his team and i think that for every one of the real strengths on his team is he has a management style which puts people at ease and makes you feel comfortable telling him exactly what you think. he wants you to follow through. he doesn't want you to just shoot from the hip but he listens to not the loudest voice in the room but the person making the most amount of sense. someone asked me the of your day with people who had influence are changing in the white house. i said the person with influences the president he listens to all voices. when someone whispers something in his year he is listening to see whether that is right for him and so i asked what do you mean because people often ask the the question how do you balance the friendship with the role and i think a good friend is one who tells their friend exactly what he thinks.

>> can you say things to him other advisers cannot? >> i probably do but everyone could. [laughter] does that make sense? i mean it. everyone should feel comfortable doing it. i've known him for 20 years and i understand the fact that he loves nothing better than for someone to disagree with him and give them -- give him his absolute best. make your case. he enjoyed is that because it makes him make better decisions on the oversight of the argument very clearly and sometimes it changes his mind. and i think let's face it he's the president of the united states. as much as he puts people like these it is a little intimidating but the folks on his team who've gotten to know him over the last two and a half years recognize everyone should feel that same level of comfort because pushing him to make a better decision is good for the country and ultimately that is to whom we are accountable to

the spirit as i have read accounts of him being reflective the last several years the question that is kept coming up for me is he seems to be someone who is interested in the right answer, interested in the marriage of an argument about the right solutions to a problem that are ultimately the best thing you can do as president of the united states. he seems to like politics a lot less than those other things. is that fair? >> i don't know exactly what you mean by politics. i think if you mean the kind of part of the game of it she is more concerned with the substance and the merit and i think that -- >> but he is the game, president of the united states. >> i think that part of the frustration that you might cents, and i sense this even in the early days of the state senate is that these are such serious times and so much is at

stake we shouldn't waste time with the kind of nonsense but unfortunately you have to deal with the nonsense and i think he does but if you ask what he rather be having a conversation about what are the right ways of the bible that we can turn up the federal level to create and foster an environment for investment and growth versus the kind of political maturation he would rather deal with the substance. >> it's interesting during the health care debate i remember a press conference when he was dealing with the merit and ended up getting most of the attention was his answer of the skip gates controversy of harvard, and he seemed to be both frustrated and surprised by that perhaps not understanding that a war responded because pressed response on what happened to be a racially charged incident was going to have more resonance with people than frankly a draw a conversation about health care policy. >> health care that would cut hundreds of millions of americans and improve their lives and i think that part of

what our challenge is to do is to not get distracted by the kind of sensational story of the moment and keep people focused on what's important. that's hard to do in washington. it's hard to the 24 hour news media cycle and the reality tv being as exciting as it is. but again, when you go out and you are talking to people and they are telling their stories a gentleman came up to me recently i was in south carolina and he gave me a card and i thought it was a business card but it was and it was his health insurance card he said i have cancer and i couldn't get this card before. he was holding on to be thanking me for the affordable care act people want us to deal with these serious problems. >> but you can't help that person if you don't effectively communicate a message about getting health care. you did get it passed, but the argument hasn't been one yet and effect of the supreme court may ultimately intervene in the policy. >> we are confident when they do we will prevail but as the act is implemented there are

millions of young people know who have health insurance because they can stay on their parents' insurance. my daughter is 25 and for her gap between the time she graduated law school and started practicing she was able to go on my plan and that meant a great deal to us as a family. and so as more and more people actually feel the impact of the affordable care act i think ahead they will tell you that the way that we value it so our focus should say on substance. that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do better job of telling our story and begin human. i think in washington you talk about billions of dollars and you talk about the huge programs and our challenge is to translate that into a way that really touches every day people so they can see the impact. i think the american jobs act does that and the president's speech before congress when he said this is what is at stake this is what the act will do for you small business, and you veteran who served the country and you schoolteacher who might lose your job and you students who come in a classroom renovated that makes it real and

that's something we didn't do as well as we should have the first couple of years. >> but now? if you look at history, no democratic incumbent has been reelected without unemployment higher than 8% so the chances are you will have to buck history on that particular theory. so what is the case to bring to the american people to earn their reelection? >> first it is going to be the track record of what we have accomplished and just how really productive the first few years were and then it's going to be a vision for america and an optimistic vision. it's going to be one that believes that we can to be globally competitive but in order to be globally competitive we have to take some steps and invest in education and not cut education. we have to invest in innovation so we can have more durable and sweeter and facebook. we have to make sure our children are prepared to compete in the marketplace not just against each other in the

classroom but in a global marketplace and we have to rebuild our infrastructure and another important part of the jobs act is that moly does it put people back to work, but people do the companies can choose to locate anywhere now. if they are going to locate in the united states we have to provide infrastructure that's solid and they can get their goods around the country and around the world, and that is a very optimistic and clear vision that's a very different than what we are hearing on the other side and so i think that is what the election will be about and that is going to be the accomplishment in that vision is what is going to give him a second term. it's going to be hard work and he has toured every single vote and he is prepared to do that we estimate about fuel with optimism as a leader after what he has been through, with the country has been through the next four years would be yes we can to read >> yes we can and yes we will. if you look of the nation's history, you were talking about history as a country that's been

through tough times before. this is not our darkest moment and we have been resilient and innovative, we have bounced back and by a confident that we will bounce back again under president obama's leadership to this account as he size of the republican field against it? >> he's focused on getting the americans jobs act. there will be plenty of time to focus on a -- >> that's what he said a few weeks ago but now he's been on the campaign trail and says things like are you watching these debates? there is a guide the naim climate change whose state is burning. so he is engaging the field against him. spikelets just say he is free to have commentary as we go through the process. ultimately she might make a comment from time to time but he's the incumbent. the republicans are going through the process now and then the country will have a choice and there will be plenty of

opportunity for the double line. right now she is focusing on the crisis at hand and that is getting the economy going, creating an incentive for business to invest and bring jobs back to invest in america. >> i want to ask before i lose time with you of the business community and i try to talk a lot of business leaders around the country who still have a lot of hostility toward the end fenestration and i wonder why you think it is and what can be done to bring business back to be a public-private partnership. spook first of all the business community as people know in this column isn't a homogeneous group, and we have terrific private partnerships on everything from education to innovation to science to working with our universities and devotee and manufacturing so there are plenty of models of the private public partnerships working very well right now. i think the business community

has been through a tumultuous time just as the american people have been through a tumultuous time if our economy is going gangbusters he would be much more popular with parts of the business community. he took a very tough stance, necessary against putting rules of the road in place so that we didn't have another financial crisis on wall street to read some of that wasn't very popular with a segment of the business community. that isn't a broad brush that strikes everybody and it's not even a broad brush that gets everybody on wall street but there was a lot of money spent flexible to impose the dodd-frank bill. there has been a lot of opposition to our terrific nominees for the consumer financial protection bureau designed to look out for consumers but that isn't a fair way to describe the business community because i have seen so many of them working with us. the jobs council meeting next week, these are extraordinarily busy leaders with a lot of their plea and yet they are spending hours and hours each week working hand-in-hand with the

president's economic team to see what we can do to move the country forward. so i think that there is ample evidence of a partnership between the president and the business community. but that doesn't mean to say that there aren't going to be folks crumbling. >> to take a majority of business leaders in the country would vote for president obama over the republican? >> i certainly would hope so. because he's the one saying let's invest in the country. let's not just say that we are going to solve all our problems by getting rid of every regulation but you're going to prepare our work force and this started when i worked in a local level of city of chicago when i did the economic development every business leaders i've ever met with when you say what is the most important thing we can do the talk about education. this is not a time to be cutting of education budget. this is not a time to be walking away from investing and science and research and technology. this is a kind to double down and that is what i hear from the business community. >> james carville, president

clinton's defense old political hand said recently that there ought to be panic within the white house. >> i think he said we should all be fired, too, white? >> i was going to get to that. [laughter] >> not new. >> i am assuming there isn't panic. what is the tone he sets during a very difficult period right now? >> there is nobody stronger in tough times than this president. people joke about him being, you know, no drama obama but the reason that he's like it is because he likes to keep people focused and so the meetings that we've had with him, all of his energy and effort is geared towards the task at hand, and he has a very calming affect on his team and i got away to tell you there are not times people don't read the new speaker and a hertz a bit and he says look no one is beat up more than the president of the united states and if i can wake up every morning in your choice into enthusiastic and passionate about my job everyone here can, too said he has a good strong team and a lot

of confidence and we will weather the storm because again the stakes are too high. we can't afford to get distracted we have to keep focused. >> added that we are monitoring some of the digital conversation happening and may have a conclusion. >> we have one minute left from the audience. i would never ask a question this easy. [laughter] >> the white house is to focus on the tight communications and doesn't use its team of cabinet officials and people like you enough. what do you think of that? >> i did that we are all pretty much out there a great deal. but i think that it is a fair point to say that everyone on our team needs to be part of delivering the message, and again the same, and i know the president has made of himself to hundred on in washington because when you are going through a crisis where every single day

counts and we are right on the press of this, people forget how close to the edge we were when he couldn't spend time travelling round the country the way he wanted to, delivering his message. the thing that goes for many members of the cabinet also focused on the challenge is at hand, and i think that going into this next year is going to be important and we are all out talking more and telling our story because one of the frustrations i have meeting with the small business recently and i said we cut taxes for small business 17 different times and there are new incentives in the american jobs act and they didn't know and so everyone should know what we've done. our records should be transparent and clear and we should have messenger's out there all of us have a responsibility for doing that every day,. >> one last thing given the condition of the country and the crises that he felt it has the president ever gone behind the bleachers and have a smoke? after her >> no, he hasn't come he really hasn't.

when he makes up his mind to do something, he does it. and his ability to just kind of kick that terrible had it is terrific. i don't think that he has been doing any sneaking. >> i think you for coming and leaving the smoke-free white house to come and talk to us. [applause] >> david, thank you. [applause] >> [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> of course i am delighted but not surprised by the appeal of the amendment. when this manner was properly submitted for the rank-and-file of our people they would readily state that it had no place in our constitution to be a >> he served as governor of new

york four times though he never attended high school or college and in 1928, al smith became the first catholic nominated by a major party to be nominated for president and although he lost the election he still is remembered to this day by the alfred smith dinner and annual fund-raiser for various catholic charities and the stop for the two main presidential candidates every election year. owls smith is one of the 14 men featured in c-span's new weekly series the contenders life from the state assembly chamber in albany friday at the pm eastern. watch the officials the occasion of the memorial in washington, d.c.. live coverage begins at 9 a.m. eastern on c-span.