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>> i think this is a little bit too loud. little bit of an echo. anyway, we've been out here for a month now, and we've had dinners. we've had protests. we had teach-ins, teachers from ralph nader and dick gregory. lots of good people come out. what we are doing today is something we think is important because there's a debate going on in congress that we think is off track because we're dealing with a corrupt political system, really corrupt to the core, and it can't deal with the real problems that this country faces, and so this so-called super committee up on capitol hill, i would say is an occupied super committee up there because they are occupied by corporate power. they are occupied by corporate power. now, we're calling this is occupying super committee, but i think we're liberating. what we are is a liberated center in an occupied city,

occupied by mass wealth and corporate power to limits government. welcome to freedom plaza. that's what we are here, and we had here with not by ourselves, but there's another occupation in mcpheerson plaza. i thank both for staying out for doing incredible citizen work to change the debate. occupations are happening across the country, and people are finally stepping up and taking responsibility for the direction of the government and the economy. it's refreshing to see, and it's great to see people doing their constitutional duty. we, the people, in order to form a more perfect union. that's our constitutional duty, and we're exercising our freedom of speech, right to freedom of assembly, and in doing that to show us how far we are off track, 2700 people have been arrested, not violently protesting across the country to

just redress their grievances. we have serious greechtions. this country is way off track. we have an empire economy that works around the world in wars. we have a domestic economy that's dominated by big business wealth where the people's voice is no longer heard. we are here to redress the grievances and build an independent movement. this is just the beginning. this is just the beginning. what you're seeing happening in freedom plaza and your own cities around the country is the beginning of an independent political movement to hold both parties accountable and if necessary run can dates ourselves and take this government for the people. we believe in participating democracy, and that's what this is about. participating democracy versus concentrated corporate wealth. we'll announce plans on our website. you can go there and sign up even if you can't come here, you can be a part of it.

occupy washington, d.c. is announcing big events. among those events are a bus tour, for example. planning to go out into the country and build this movement. we'll have people put on events, teach people how to do occupations, teach people about the issue, and that's starting in the future. we'll also planning with a bunch of occupations around the country, national occupation of washington, d.c. next spring, the american spring is going to bring the occupations together into washington dc beginning march 30th. join us there. now dc. national occupation of washington, d.c.. put that on the schedule and plan to be here for that. that's tens of thousands of people camping out in washington, d.c.. what we're going to do today is we told the speakers, we have great speakers as they get prepared to speak. we told the speakers is we do

not want to be limited by political reality in washington. political reality in washington means what the corruption requires, what the people who fund the campaigns require. we are breaking free of that political reality, and we're going to go into reality reality. reality reality is two things. it's evidence based solutions to the problems the country faces and believe me, there are solutions that are easily put in place, and they are not being put in place because of the political reality that limits choices here. the second reality is we want solutions, and we want to confront the problems and solve them. you know, president obama's faced health care, but not solved it. it's worse. he's confronted the financial crisis and made the big banks bigger rather than broke them up. he made the federal reserve powerful, bailed out the banks over and over through the federal reserve and trash ri, there's bailouts, and main street is struggling.

the problems have been raised, but not dealt with. we'll put forward solutions to solve the problems. the problem with the super committee on the hill is their members have raised tens of millions of dollars from entrenched corporate interests. in fact, a report -- cut 1.2 frl, and that's something that's doable between a combination of tax changes, cuts on military spending and other efficiencies. it's easy to reach the 1.2 trillion mark. it's not impossible at all, but unfortunately the committee on the hill exemplifies what's wrong with congress. a report came out last week from the public campaign, national people's action, that compile the amount of donations received on the deficit committee. $41 million from big finance over their careers. $41 million from big finance. do you think that big finance will be challenged? of course not. they will not be challenged, and you also see a revosming door.

at least 27 former aids of the super committee are lobbying now on behalf of financial firms. they are hearing from their former aids coming back as lobbyists, as well-paid lobbiests. they received money from jp mar -- jp morgan, chase, and since 2000, the finance energy spent $4 billion trying to influence the direction of congress through lobbying and elections. the ten biggest contributors, the first is club for growth. thars a group that advocates low taxes for the rich, corporations, and cuts to social spending, cuts to the social safety net. a lot of candidates are now called tea party candidates because they were co-oped by the republican party. we're facing up to that. we're not going to let the democrat front groups co-op that movement. we're going to stay

independent. we are not co-oped. you won't see them called occupy democrats. that's not going to happen. the club for growth candidates are tea party candidates. other donors, goldman sachs, 519,000. citi group, $630,000 to members of the committee. i hate having papers. jp morgan chase, bank of america, general electric, $340,000. these are the people who control this committee, and we've seen last five years 1.7 million in donations from political committees with ties to weapon contractors and the health care try industry. those are two of the biggest issues on the block up there. if they fail to meet their deficit reductions, there's automatic cuts to the military and to health care, and their lobbying aggressively up there, and our view is that a bad deal

is not worth making. if they will make a bad deal to please corporate interests, it's not worth making. let the cuts go in place and fix it as the 99% take more power. we're not going to get anything out of the committee or the cuts. they are too corrupted to make it happen. they are limited in their choices. they talk about cuts to social services, cuts to medicare, medicaid, social security. that's where they are going with this. they are not going to cuts because of the military or tax increases on the wealthy. you'll hear a lot of views on that today, and i welcome you to that, and from a week from now, we'll put out our own report with real reality reality recommendations on how to really solve the deficit crisis and get this economy going, and the critical thing is to solve the deficit, we have to get the economy going. it's a critical ingredient to solving the deficit. when you have people paying taxes, less people using services. you win on both ends -- income

and spending, and so solving with jobs crisis, this economic downturn is a critical step in order to solve the deficit of problem. i'll introduce our first speaker from the economic policy institute, andrew fieldhouse discusses how to raise revenue through change of the tax structure and create a fair tax system and raise sufficient revenue and close the divide and get the economy moving. andrew. [applause] >> thank you for that introduction, cell phone. the united states suffers from an unwillingness to pay the bills, not inability to pay the bills. all too often, there's prominent policymakers make views we're broke or compare the united states and greece. like last summer's artificial debt ceiling crisis, 24 is nonsense. the united states is not broke. income per capita jumped 66% over the last 30 years, and it's

projected to grow another 60% in three decades. on the corporate side, inflation adjusted profits in connection withed 7% -- increased 7%. while productivity surged 73% since 1973, median income rises only 15%. the market distribution of robust productivity and national income gains is incredibly skewed while regressive tax policies have simultaneously exacerbated a trend of quality. since 1-9d 79, the top 1% of households saw average tax rates fall from 37% to under 30% even as their income more than doubled. that calls for restoring a greater degree of productivity to the tax code rather than dismantling government. the long term challenges stem from political disagreement over the size and role of government and the financing of the social contract. to clarify, much of the concern

about the deficit has nothing to do with the deficit and everything to do with opposition to taxation particularly taxation and raising revenue from upper income households. the u.s. experiment with trickle down economics failed the vast majority. the top 1% of households captured 65% of economy-wide income gains leaving the bottom 90% with 13% of gains. trends were exacerbated by tax policy as the bush tax cuts gave gains to those at the top. in 2010, 38% of the bush tax cuts went to the top 1% of households, and roughly half to the top 5%. yet the bush economic tax cuts never trickled down as they were promised. the bush economic expansion proved # to be the worst since world war ii in terms of economic growth, employment, and wage and salary growth. real median income for working

families has fallen 10% since 2000. 24 is a cost -- this is a costly experiment. the bush tax cutted added $2.6 trillion to the public debt, half the debt accumulated over this period. last december, congress paid another $670 billion for a two year extension of current tax policies. increased borrowing increased the need that ensued last summer. the bush tax cuts are partially paid for with roughly $1 trillion in domestic spending cuts and defense cuts enacted year to date. continuing the bush era tax cuts costs $3.8 trillion. this represents the difference of the fiscal outlook over this period, an extension of all current policies costs $6.5 trillion, more than the

bowles-simpson plan cuts over the next decade. this leaves revenue levels at grossly inadequate levels in the coming decades because the tax code defunds government. this was aptly demonstrated by the house republican 2012 budget proposing financing of the tax cuts with $4.7 trillion to cuts in domestic spending programs coming from low income programs. this dismantling social programs is a choice, however, not a necessity. the tax code was more progressive in the 1950s and 60s when the fruits of growths were shared. the cut off has fallen from $3 million to just $380,000 today. simultaneously, the top marginal tax bracket fell from 90% in the 1950s to 70% in 1970 to just 35% for most of this past decade. declining corporate taxation,

born by shareholders and business owners contributed greatly to progressivity. the share of economy fell from 4.8% of gdp to 1.8%. tax policy must be reformed to raise revenue fairly. here are a few principles for the corporate and individual tax reform i'd like to see. first and foremost, income derived from wealth and investments should be treated the same as income derived from work. the single most regressive future of the income tax is a preferential treatment of capital gains and diff deppedz. the top 1% of the earners will pay 70% of gapes this year, but pay a rate of 15% well below the 35% rate paid on wages and salaries. similarly, additional tax brackets should be restored to the income tax. consolidating tax brackets and

tax rates at lower rates and revenue levels maybes no sense given the distribution trends of the last 0 years. similarly, bolstering the estate tax makes sense with wealth disperties. it's thee most progressive tax, but it's been entirely e vis rate the over the last decade, another trend to be reversed. progressive tax reform falls in the 1% of earners, the top tent of 1% because that's where the gains have been, but the 99% has to pay more too. the bush tax cuts were unfair and ineffective, but their reach expanded beyond households making over $250,000 a year. letting the upper income tax cuts retire is a good first step, but adequately funding government maintains three-fourths of the tax cuts as president obama proposed presents quite a challenge. tax reform and simplification benefits from limiting or

wholesale eliminating tax expenditures like the home interest tax deduction. they are divorced from the policy objective, and their benefit increases with filers marginal tax rates if filers receive any benefit at all. any reform of tax expenditures, however, should maintain and expand a refundable income support like the earned income tax credit we have today. 234 a different -- in a different vain, carbon should be priced. it makes sense to tax something harmful than work and savings. a dividend to take the sting and renewable energy and trade deficit benefits from pricing the extraalties of carbon. financial speculation and leverage poses a prime target for corrective taxation. small taxes on financial transactions dampen trading volumes ending the high speed

training adding no value, but increasing risk as we saw with the 2010 flash crash. dean baker is pushing a transaction tax for year, and it looks like the european union is moving in that direction. financial transaction taxes can recoop the societal costs imposed by the financial crisis and raise revenue upwards of $800 billion in a decade according to the tax policy center. senator harkin and congressman defasio introduced the fill to have a 3% tax on every $100 traded raising $350 # billion over the next decade. that's enough to finance a meaningful jobs program or fund programs for a decade. lastly, congress seems to be moving towards complete tax reform to lower loopholes. without raising revenue, however, corporate tax reform rewards all businesses for decades of successful lobbying

by some. as noted earlier, the share of revenue extracted from corporations has fallen dramatically for years. should they embark, the taxing of interest should be reconsidered and limited. the current tax treatment of interest encourages high degrees of leverage in the finance sector although this could be addressed directly by taxes leverage. in summary, tax policy can and should be used to alter the market distribution of income, tempering inequality and alleviating poverty and correct social externalities and increase financial speculation. tax reform has to raise more revenue in the coming decades. america is not broke. we can afford economic security programs, public investments, and a serious jobs program. putting people back to work and

creating taxpayers is the first step in a reduction strategy. conversely, premature spending cuts, the recipe for deficit reduction strategy with fiscal balance remains as european nations are discovering. ignoring prolonged mass under employment or turning medicare into a coucher comes to mind. taxation is the price paid for a civil society. by restoring a higher degree, we can ensure that price is born fairly and raise adequate revenue to fund our government. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] thank you very much. what we'll do as far as participation of the audience, at the end of the speakers, there's a question and answer session, but in between each speaker, there's time for a two to three questions or comments. if anyone wants to do that, go to the mic up here now if you want to participate. if you don't want to

participate, we'll go to the next speaker. any questions or comments on tax policy or impacts on you and your circumstances? >> go ahead. let's keep it moving along. anyone else, get in line behind her so we can keep moving forward. >> my question is are taxes -- if there's a chance to reroute, i'm worried about how the environment is being affected by corporate greed. will there be a possible change how tax rates are paid to positively affect the environment. >> absolutely. ten minutes with a challenge.

reinstating super fund taxes makes sense. waste clean up should be taxed based on people creating waste rather than general revenue. that's a change in tax policy of the last decade that made no sense. taxing carbon makes sense. if you believe in free market solutions, you would assign property rights, yet the free marketers don't like this idea. it's not a very hard concept. externalities should be paid for and environmental taxes are a way to do that. [applause] >> i don't see any other comments or questions, so moving on to the next presenter. >> the defense alternatives working on transitioning from a foreign policy based on militarism to a foreign policy based on cooperation and diplomacy, and they apply resolution techniques and this leads to cuts in military spending.

here's carl. >> thank you. [applause] >> i'll talk about problems in the defense policy, but before i begin, i want to talk about why change is difficult. the pentagon is a drop box, and into that drop box every year goes $700 billion, about $450 of the billion leaves that immediately to go to industry. industry, and defense industry and contractors employ about a thousand lobbyists, twice as many people in congress, and in the last election cycle, the top defense industries spent $22 million in campaign contributions. the one question that we need to ask ourselves is what do we have up against that? i think what we've learned, what i've learned, over the past year is that what we have is the most

powerful weapon in the world which is this. right there. that's a place to start. let's take a look at what's the problem we're trying to solve in the area of defense policy. it doesn't take a lot in terms of forensic science. we don't have to call in csi. a few observations will do. over the past 12 years while the deficit and the debt was growing, the pentagon budget rose by nearly 100% in real terms. that's 100% after you take inflation into account. all told in the past 12 years, we've added $2.5 trillion to the pentagon's budget above the level it was spending in 1998 so that was the pentagon money surge. that's brought military spending back up to the level that it was

in the cold war, although, you look around, and today there's no competitor comparable to the old soviet empire, so why spend so much? well, let's take a look at the $2.5 trillion. half of that went directly to paying for new wars. the other half went to developing a new strategy that's evolved over the last 12-15 years. that strategy sets out goals and missions for the military that are far more ambitious than the traditional ones of defense and deterrence. the strategy is aimed to do a number of things. it's aimed to take our incomparable military power and to transform the world's security environment. that's one of the goals. it's aimed to try to prevent the emergence of threats, nip them all in the bud before they can grow if you can identify them, the world over.

it aims to help stabilize so-called fragile states wherever we choose along the lines we choose. it's a system of nation building, and finally, it's aimed to so-called -- to secure the so-called global common, and that's all this space in between states, not just on earth, but in space and cyberspace too, so this strategy has bitten off quite a big task for itself and centered the direction guy dance to here in the united states. in a sense, we prieftized social security and made ourselves the per -- purveyors of social security. it's not surprising our military is active in many more places than before. it's preparing to do many more

times of thing, and up deed, the pentagon is crowding out the state department, and it has crowded out the state department in pursuing goals that used to be the work of diplomacy and development aid. now, today, we only have about 70% as many troops as we did in the cold war, so how does a smaller military manage this expanded task list, a list which included prolonged foreign occupations? well, regarding the size of the military, appearances are deceptive. we've increasingly back filled the pentagon labor pool with private contractors. how many contractors does the pentagon employee? it's hard to say. not even the services can say for sure. it's at least 800,000, perhaps it's as many as a million. in that light, the pentagon's total labor fool may be only 15% smaller than it was during the cold war, and that helps explain

the return to cold war levels of spending. all right. let's try to assess the new strategy. what can we say about it? how can we evaluate it? i think just about all we need to know we can learn by looking at the wars we've waged. despite all the years, all the treasure, all the lives spent in afghanistan and iraq, we've been unable to bring reliable security or stability to either of those countries. between them, they constitute just about 1% of the world's people. we've spent $1.3 trillion over ten years on those two wars, and that exceeds the combined gdp of those countries for that entire period. we could have paid everyone for ten year, and what's the outcome? from a security perspective,

it's uncertain at best. looking at their neighborhoods, iran, pakistan, it's fair to worry that the security situation is worse, not better. what about the war on terrorism? well, it's grown boundless. it didn't end with the death of bin laden, but it seems to have just grown bigger. we have u.s. involvements and investments now in multiple internal conflicts. we are involving ourselves everywhere. the strategy appears not to have mopped things up as much as spread them around. at the end of the tum, there's no light at the end of the tunnel, just another opportunity. what to we have? we have undeterminable outcomes. we don't know how it turns out. we have expanding involvements, exorbitant costs, and these are the tracks of a failed strategy, a strategy that was conceived when the federal budget was in surplus and many thought we had

trillions to burn. it's surprising to discover many defense leaders and dod defenders seem to agree with this gloomy assessment and agree, they don't intend to agree, but look at the debate in congress. congress is looking at the issue of deficit reduction. defense policy leaders have been asserting 245 the pentagon needs a special compensation. the pentagon led the way in the increase in discretionary spending over the past 10-12 years, but now they need a special compensation. secretary defense panetta on the democratic side, head of the house armed services committee on the republican side talk from the same script insisting any defense reduction exceeding 7% would be catastrophic to the armed services and would imperil our nation. let's keep this in mind. america and its allies today

outspend actual and potential adversaries, including russia and china by a margin of 3-to-1, and that's better than was the case during the cold war when things were about even, so when leadership says that despite this advantage and current levels of spending, $700 billion, the pentagon cannot role back any 7% without risking catastrophe. i think it's fair to conclude that we got the wrong strategy. or we got the wrong leadership, or we got both. [applause] what's wrong with our current approach? it's simple. military power is a uniquely expensive thing suited to very narrow purposes, defensive purposes, not transformative ones. it's a destructive tool, not a constructive one. it conserved diplomacy in some instop signses, but it --

instances, but it shouldn't substitute diplomacy. we have been trying 20 use this instrument beyond the limits of utility. look, when we came out of the cold war, this is what we had in greatest abundance. this was judged to be our greatest competitive advantage, but just because you have a tool doesn't mean it's the right tool. it all you got is a hammer, as they say, everything ends up looking like a nail. we are misapplying our armed forces, and that's been costing us and others dearly. positive change begins with thinking differently about international security. look, it's not just a case of using the military wrongly, and it's not just a case of biting off way more than we can chew. it's also a case of misunderstanding what security is. security is not a wall. it's not a wall of stone. it's not a wall of fire. security is not a wall that you build on your border. it's not a wall that you forward

deploy. get the enemy over there as george bush would say. this is not secure. what security is fundamentally is accord,. security is agreements. that's the foundation on which we build safety. it requires dialogue. it requires reaching out and when we understand that, we understand we have to give diplomacy pride of place. what are some changes? well, first, we can restore the traditional bounds in the foreign policy tweeness defense and diplomacy. second, the pentagon. let the penalty gone reemphasize the simple goals of defense. these are appropriate to the instrument which should be an instrument of last and infrequent resort. third, let's concern ourselves less with running the show, less

with being the indispensable power as leaders assert this, and many of being a facilitator of cooperative action, not just cooperation with friends and junior partners, either, but cooperation that reaches across lines of division. this be joining with others, let's join with others to cooperatively invest in global, regional, and security institutions. it means advancing the role of international law and being careful to operate within its structures rather than at or beyond its boundaries. [applause] we change along these lines, and we roll back the size of the armed forces and overseas presence, and we can reduce the defense expenditure. we then up vest less in military power and more in the long term preservation of our national strength, and that's our economy and our people. they form the foundation of all forms of power including military power.

how much do we cut from defense? it's funny. earlier this year the university of maryland conducted a national poll that asked americans that question. it was a unique poll because it told the participants how much we're spending. many polls on defense spending don't tell people what the sums involved are. this one did, and it asked people to correct the budget. respondents settled on $109 billion a year. that's in the realm of 16% of so, and that roughly accords interestingly with the president's fiscal commission last year coming up with very similar conclusions which congress tossed aside. it also accords with the nonpartisan sustainable defense task force that i was a part of. we all said let's go with 100 billion. what might be the effect on the economy? $100 billion spent on just about

anything other than the pentagon yield a net increase of at least 300,000 american jobs. that's not a bad place to start. [applause] thanks. [applause] >> if there's questions, line up. i see people like to talk about the military, yes. okay. [laughter] for those who were just joining us, this is coming to you from freedom plaza, and we're occupy washington, d.c.. sign up, get involved, donate, come down and participate at freedom plaza on pennsylvania avenue. first comment or question. >> okay. well this is a complex question i suppose. >> not too long now. >> i'll try not to. a lot of people think back in kennedy's time, that president kennedy was dragged by the military, whatever complex because he did not want to seek first strike capability. he was trying to reach out to

end the cold war. i'm wondering, and then you look at the new american century, their goal to control the world's resources. isn't part of this, i don't know where it exists, but there is a whole bunch, a part of the government that's not accountable to anybody, the security system, the cia, parts of the first. they are not accountable. isn't there an attitude we want to rule the world and totally control it? isn't that really a part of this whole thing? >> you know, i think it's not the type of thing that's said. [laughter] you can go back in history. this is not the first time the question has risen. i like to point to emanuel kahn who philosophyed the question. he says, you know, every sorch,

meaning every king wants security, and they are most secure when they are in charge, so everyone tries to create a security system that's under their own control, and they say that it is to everyone's benefit. of course, other sovereigns disagree, and that's the genesis of wars, disagreement about who should run things and whose interest is best or who represents the common interest, so i think that plays a part -- it plays a subtle part even among those who don't admit it. we just trust ourselves more, and the real challenge is that others trust themselves more, and that's why the real issue is one of reaching across those lines of division, and the first thing to say in a step towards resolution is to your opponent, well, you've got a point, and to

work from there. >> yes, hi, thank you for your presentation. i was glad you started out taking about the thousand lobbyists, and how this is part of perpetuating the system, and that means with the super committee, we don't have even the kind of possibilities that we'd like to see. i mean, some people would like to see the pentagon budget cut in half. that's not going to happen. frank says cut 25%, that's not going to happen. with the limitations that we have in this corrupt system, is the best that we can hope for in the super committee is that they doarnt come up with a deal, and that there is then a trigger of cuts across the board and how likely might that happen, and would our corrupt congress not allow that to happen to the pentagon, and then within the $100 billion cuts that you talked about, where does most of that come from? there's the ending wars that we shouldn't have been in in the

beginning, there's the cutting out of military weapons we don't need, and then there's the issue of 800-plus bases overseas. i've been told by people in congress that cutting the bases would not lead to significant reductions in the military budget because we've have to keep paying the personnel whether they were there, overseas, or back home. details about where the $100 billion that you suggested would come from. >> sure. there's that suggestion that you gave, and then the super committee. i don't think we should underestimate the capability of congress to fool around the edge edges and change the rules. we may not see this go into effect, that what happens next year is a prolonged fight over redefining it at best with the pentagon defenders. i call them pen gone --

pentagonnists, arguing we need to wall off spending and protect it. let's have where all the cuts go to so-called non-security spending. that's another thing too. they talk two baskets, security, and non-security as though the center of the universe is security. it's security versus national strength and life. those are your choices, but at any rate, i don't think that we can trust that leads to defense cuts, but i think that the problem the country's facing is one that's not going to go away. i think awareness is growing, and people are looking hard at the defense budget. i've seen in the past two years more movement on this issue than i've seen in the previous decade and a half, so i don't -- i think the battle is just beginning. on the $100 billion and where to get it. by the way, that $100 billion is

from the base pentagon budget meaning it doesn't include the wars. you get that savings too. people are expecting that to go down. in addition to that, they are looking for another -- actually it was $119 billion, and that was not exactly the proposal, more in the 100 range, but the point is you reduce the size of the armed forces and tie that into reducing the task list, not trying to do all of these transformative tasks; right? reduce the task list, reduce the size. that reduces the amount of equipment you need to buy, and obviously, reduces payroll, you roll back the reliance on contractors. it's actually not that hard when you're starting out with $700 billion to find $100 billion to cut. >> three more questions here or comments. make them brief because we have a long way to go. >> will rogers speaking in the latter part of last century said

defined diplomacy as good dog until i get a rock. that seem to characterize american diplomacy in the global continuum we live in. the other issue that comes up with a question is there never was a missile gap. misinformation caused the missile gap. we never -- the russians were never ahead of us. we drove the missile gap, and it was driven by the military industrial complex as characterized so well by president eisenhower. i'm an organizational psychologist with 35 years of experience working in the public and private sector and any organization existing long enough, the final stages is corruption. it's the stage we're in now. given the supporting of the political system by money and politics, how in god's name do you expect any change to happen without stopping the machine and starting over again. thank you. [applause] >> one of my favorite will

roger's quotes, i believe he's the source, is one you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. that's good advice to our congress and to the executives as well. i think it's right that we have to have a dpicht approach -- different approach to dismantling diplomacy. we entered the post cold war period with sufficient an abundance of power relative to other people we felt we didn't have to compromise. now, what happens if you take that approach is that gradually others begin to build power as well, and you eventually end up where i lope we don't. we've been through the cold war. we don't want to do that again and bequeath that to our children, but if you don't learn how to compromise and how to build commonty, that's we with end up. we don't have raise a pure competitor today, we'll find one tomorrow. many the threats are spun out of whole clothe particularly now when you hear people saying that

you can't cut by 7% or everything falls apart. you know they are not -- this is not evidence-based approach to security people like to point to china. if i worry about china, before their military. the chinese theory is that the decision about which is the dominant power, the leading power in tomorrow's world is going to be decided in the economic sphere. that's their theory. that's why thigh spend less of their gdp on defense than we do. i happen to think their theory is right, and it's time for us to move this that direction too to understand that what's really at risk here is long term national strength, and what's been happening is that we have been sapping that strength in order to build short term military power. >> thank you.

first of all, just thank you for delineating the source of the problems and many of the problems and what my question is what do you think is the worst case scenario for the -- if there are no changes, if no one can in the entire united states stop this current phase, and we can see where it's going. you showed this clearly, statistically where it's going, where is it going to morph into? as an american citizen, i still love and hold dear the constitution, and once we defeat all of our so-called foreign enemies, do you think there's a possibility that all of this military might might be turned inwardly on the american population? in other words worst case scenario, what do you think that might be?

>> i think there's one thing that would completely unite the tea party and the occupy movement, it would be the scenario you described. i put a lot of trust in the american citizenry that you can only push them so far so i'm not so much worried about that particular worst case scenario. short of that, what do we see? well, we do see police forces adopting tactics from our armed forces. what we do see is more security functions fielded out to private contractors, domestic security functions. we do see more surveillance on all of us to be used in a number of ways. these are all products of the past ten years and the way security policy is developed. we also see the use or the implied use of so-called anomaly

for weapons, not just tasers, but pain waves, sonic weapons, the possibility that will be used for crowd control here and tested elsewhere. there are things along those lines that i think are real. as far as the ultimate, that's when i think -- that's when i think you bring every man, woman, and child into the streets, and left and right come together, so i'm not so worried about that. internationally, i'm worried we're going to end up in the same type of situation that we had during the cold war which had so many negative effects in terms of development, in terms of sponsoring wars, the worldwide between the soviet block and western block, we may be there with china. this is not a direction we want to go, and it's not a wise direction or necessary at this point. it is avoidable if we are willing to rethink how we use our defense, and if we're willing to rethink deploim se. --

diplomacy. >> okay. last question. >> first, we want to thank god for being with us. if we have god on our side, and we move according to the spiritual forces of our culture, then we're moving in the right direction. i want to welcome you all to washington. we had to do this so many times, but it's an amazing that the collective force and the intelligence that you bring forth and putting forth in these groups and organizations. i was pleased to see the young man there because it was back in rosa parks day, poe is -- rosa parks hit at the problem we were suffering from, and that is a system of white supremacy that causes oppression and the inequitable distribution of the wealth. now, rosa parks and ms. fdr who

was instrumental in forming the new united nations, these were two women of our culture who helped to form a view of how america and the rest of the world could relieve itself of the oppression and the exploitation. i come from the exploitation of the world. i don't know who my family is other than a few here in this system, but if we get back to the business of doing what the young people told us to do back in the 50s, was to turn the pentagon into a day care center and stop war, shut down the industrial complex, and turn the world community into a caring, sharing, spiritual community guided by the spiritual

systems. now, you three -- i didn't hear this man here, but these two i did here, and what you have to say as a young person, i like to know how do you get that message to all of your people, and you in terms was military industrial complex, in terms of turning the pentagon into a day care center, and there is a group from that period that meets at the pentagon every day to hold a vigil to that effect. i come from a military family, from world war i, and i had a nephew 18 years old who just finished a tour of the -- what do you call that -- the associated with the marines srb seals. they are all in the water as

rescues. what are we going to do in terms of stopping the world bank and all the corporate america from running the nation through the banks if you all remember, i think it was president andrew jackson who was very much opposed to the banks and the power that your sign now says to end corporate rule. i think i've said enough, and i want to thank you gentlemen for being here and to find how you can get the diverse global group, not only should we organize locally, but we have to extend that nationally and globally, and i think that we are at that point now where his parents are willing to listen more closely to what he had to say back then about turning the pentagon into a day care center

and what our spiritual leaders such as dr. martin luther king and malcolm x told us about creating a consciousness and an action of peace and justice; then we'll have prosperity and no more foreclosures and no more displacement from our workplaces. i thank you gentlemen for being here, and the next time have some women up there. they are over here, all right? we want them up there. i thank you very much. continue your good work because you're god blessed and directed. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. let's make room for the next panelists. gar -- margaret and ken.

>> you're next, you're coming up. didn't want to ask you to leave, but -- you're going to be after the next speaker, dean. >> can i make just a short comment on last woman's thing? >> no, not right now. next issue. you'll get a chance later at the end of the session there's more time. next is jobs, a central issue, and that's what we have ken here for, an economist of the communications workers for america, serving as a economist of the north cheyenne tribe, and he focuses on what to do about creating jobs. >> thank you, and thank you for the invitation. what i'll do is talking about what to the to do and then go into what to do. i'll start off with a little

story about veer verizon that employees 45,000cwa and -- >> hold it up. >> did people hear what i said before? >> yeah, yeah. >> better now. that's what the goal is. better now; right? [laughter] verizon has been in the midst of a labor dispute. we went on 45,000 workers, went on strike for two weeks in august, and verizon and what it's been doing is kind of like a model of what's happening nationally. it's a very profitable company in the last three years, 33.4 billion in pretaxed profits in the u.s., and they got actually in the last three years $1 billion in took refunds. tax refunds, so $1 billion in tax refunds on 33 billion in u.s. profits.

what do we get for that investment? they should have paid $14 billion in state and federal taxes, but they didn't. what do we get? did we get more jobs? no. those three years, verizon cut 40,000 jobs. did we get more investments? no. verizon cut $1 billion in the capital expenditures. did workers get better wages and benefits? no. because verizon's demanding right now $1 billion in cuts to those 45,000 union representative workers. that's about $20,000 per worker. and verizon is anti-union, preventing the unionization of the verizon wireless. they are 50 workers, they are doing everything to prevent further unionization of wireless going to the point where there's interest in call centers and

they moved them to right to work states. this -- verizon's just a model of of what's going on nationally, and it's basically a corporate agenda whether it's conscious, planned, whatever, it is what is being done, and we know this policy because it's been enacted in bits and pieces, more and more over the past 35 years. basically, that policy, which is being pushed throughout the world is to actually weaken the ability of whatever institutions stand in the way of corporations, so if there's an attack, a frontal attack on workers and unions. the policies are to weaken or reduce the power or eliminate unions and the rights to collectively bargain. we see that throughout. it's to cut labor costs as much as possible, to increase productivity and to globalize.

that hits the power of unions which tradition namely were a boat work against unfettered corporate power. it's also a frontal attack on government. cut government regulations including labor regulations, environmental regulations, trade regulations, financial regulations, and political regulations. politics is now being deregulated so that with the citizens united, corporations can have free reign and free investment, and believe me, it's an investment that they do in politics because they get the policies they want. they also want to cut government spending on non-business related programs. don't we see that? they want to privatetize government services to make them profitable, not to serve the public interest. you can see that throughout, for example, education, what's happening there. they want to allow corporations the flexibility to do whatever they need, and the latest

symptom of this policy a worldwide which is austerity for the many, prosperity for the few, and that's the 99% against the 1% which you all are here, we're here, we're a part of that. it's deeper than just an economic political policy because it affects our values and what progressive movements have won over the centuries in the u.s. and other places. i think it's very important to show or discuss that this is not just a political economic program. it's a counter reformation, and a counter revolution to put power in the hands of corporations and take it away from the 99%. i'll just mention a few things and then go on to what we want to do or what we can do. the revolution no taxation without representation. well, corporations are getting

no taxation with a lot of representation. we're getting taxation with hardly any representation. the civil war, the right to citizenship, the 14th amendment, what's that turned into? the basis for citizens united. that corporations are, indeed, a person.. ..

what has happened there? under attack, weekend. civil rights, equal opportunity and treatment before the law. one person, one vote. and citizens united. women's rights, equal opportunity and reproductive rights, those things are being attacked contingently and environment, the environmental movement, the right to live and work in a clean and healthy environment, not just for us but for our progeny and our inheritance that we give to them. that is under attack and here we have the occupy movement which is just beginning and we will see what happens and how it plays out that contains a lot of these strains that are under attack by the corporate agenda, the neoliberal agenda, whatever you want to talk about it and what we see is what has happened now, the crisis we are in. the massive flow of income from the top 1% undermining decent

paying jobs especially in manufacturing, the lifting of power and rights than any person and the weakening of any political and economic institution to stand up to corporate power. that is what we are up against. that is a the policy that was developed and implemented over the past 35 years and is being implemented over and over again even though it has been seeing -- maxine to fail over and over and over again. just think about the idea of cutting government in a time of high unemployment, firing as a way to get hiring doesn't work. so what is our agenda? there have been some great, i don't know what origin but proposals, right? there have been some great plans put out. the afl-cio has six pillars to creating keep good jobs. is the blue-green alliance and the alliance of unions and

jobs 21, eti economic policy institute putting america back to work, the etr has a lot of very good ideas and plans and what i want to do is just, just put out a conceptual framework for this and not get into the specific -- specifics because they are all there. all these programs are there. one is, the goal is to create 20 some million jobs, right? the chamber of commerce has that is a goal in their programs what i outlined before and that won't work, right? it hasn't worked and it won't work. so there are one, two, three, four elements to this basically. one is improve the standard of living of people. isn't that the goal of what economic development and economic wolesi should read? but how do you do that? we need a living wage. we need living benefits, health,

retirement. that's part of the quality of our life. we want to improve the quality of life. union organizing as a way to improve life, collective bargaining rights, inadequate government safety net. right now extend unemployment benefits that are coming up to expire. these are a sick human decency type of things that make economic sense because the increased demand and increase the demand for products that corporations have so they can make a profit. two, the private sector isn't doing enough for job creation. they are creating some jobs but it is very slow. how many years would it take? just 30 years. maybe it will be 40 or so our whole generation will disappear like go into the desert just to catch up to where we were.

well with the private sector can do it by itself and we look at the public sector and we look at the public sector in terms of public investment. this is an investment for our future. that includes raising government revenue to fund this. that was talked about in terms of fair taxes. cutting expenditures on wars and things like that, but public investment in terms of infrastructure, schools, roads, bridges, broadband. an economy which is under attack right now is our future. the climate change crisis is not a figment of someone's imagination. it is science-based comment is evidence-based in unless we deal with it we will be gone anyway but our progeny will be gone. thisthis is an existential criss right here. this is an boom and bust cycle. this is the last bust cycle. government services, direct

jobs. the government has done that. and also regulate, govern for the public interest, environmental regulations, fair trade regulations, labor regulations, regulations on wall street, are ways to protect the public interest and to make sure that corporations and individuals are directed towards those basic concerns and values i talked about before. finally, two more. when the stimulate private investment. would have been a mixed economy. it is not all government, it's not all private sector. tax incentives for corporations to do job creation and do the right thing, bring back jobs from overseas, a lot of outsourced jobs. we deal with this is the union and finally democracy and accountability. don't separate economics from politics, its economic politics

and values. all these policies attack all these things all the time. campaign finance reform, senate rules. the right to vote. that is something that was fought for for generations. that is being whittled away. corporate accountability. we need that. and we need to create, to do all this we need to create a general progressive movement. is there money to do this? there sure is. the financial bailout, wall street got $7.84 trillion. money is flowing from all over the world into the u.s. because we are here and we have got access to money at very low interest rates. now is the time to invest into public investment. this is it and cutting that investment and cutting government expenditures right now is the absolute wrong thing to do. so to get all this done we need to create a progressive movement that is independent of whatever political party there is an

pushes both of these groups to do the right thing and it goes back to the values i talked about before that were fought for in the revolution, the civil war, the great depression, the 50s civil rights, environmental movement, consumer movement, public sector organizing movement. all these types of things, we can do again. it has been done and makes economic sense, and is true to our values. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. two or three comments or questions? let's just take three there. tried to keep them short so we can move on. >> hi. direct government creation of jobs, something like the wto. just to give you an example, we could be winterizing a lot of homes and saving a lot of greenhouse gas. i am just wondering whether the

building trades are in favor of this or whether since maybe the government direct jobs would not be unionized whether the trades are actually lobbying against a. >> i can't speak for the building trades but the blue-green alliance which includes building trades unions that support efforts like weatherization, smart grid energy, better use of energy efficiencies and things like that. >> thank you. >> i just wanted you to comment briefly on what do you think happened to the labor unions over the last 40 years? i have pallone to three different units myself and i found them to be largely ineffective and even corrupt in some cases so would he think has been going on and why are they so we? >> that is a great question and we could sit here for quite a while. it is not just in the u.s. the labor unions are weekend. corruption and unions should be snuffed out wherever possible. that is actually -- i have been

with a few unions and i've seen very little of that. that gets a lot of the publicity because that meets the needs of corporations and people who are against organization of working people. but unions have been under a frontal attack a corporations and in every country and in this country it it is almost illegal to organize effectively. and there are a lot of examples, cornell has done great studies that shows what happens and in our own experience in cwa, at&t wireless before we try to organize, no one would join the organization drives were very few people because the management put the fear of god into them. they fought for five years. what had been the ftc, we got a bargaining neutrality and card check, majority vote basically. all you had to do was show a

card. management did not enter into or put the fear into anyone's. singular bought at&t wireless and became the new at&t. within six months we signed up 19,000 people. now we represent 40,000 at&t mobility workers because corporations did not jump in and put the fear of people's livelihood and jobs which is an attack on people's families and things like that. also changes in the deregulation of areas that were strong union, were union strongholds, trucking, telecommunications. they were deregulated and that has had an effect and also the change in the structure of the u.s. economy from more manufacturing to more service where it is difficult to organize. all the thing -- those things put together but i don't want to

under emphasize the impact of the corporate frontal attacks which is also included in policies followed by a whole number of administrations. >> i want to ask, if the budget will be what we are discussing communities, our environment, our language, our homes? thank you or ghosts be okay. well, basic values, back to government here to serve? what does economic development mean? economic development does not just mean gdp increase and that kind of stuff. it relates to quality of life in a democratic society that is both economically and and are

mentally sustainable so i would say here here to what you are saying that the budget should be judged on how it meets our values are good the budget isn't just numbers games. it is a determination of the direction of the country and the values that government serves or does not serve. we should do everything in our power, thank you, to increase our power and to get what we need, meaning that 99% to have a functioning democratic environmental economic political system. that is the bottom line, and the policies that have been passed and the policies that have not been passed in the last session when there was some majority and some really good progressive legislation in the house tells you the direction we are in and that is going over a cliff. so, thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. next we go to retirement, dean

baker who is the codirector of the center for economic and policy research, writes and speaks on a wide range of economic issues and is an important voice in progressive economics who is going to be focusing on social security and making it more secure retirement >> thanks. first i should apologize to kevin who explicitly told me i was on the second panel. i wonder to the second panel and made him look bad so i'm sorry about that. i want to talk about the situation of social security but first as a backdrop that is kind of incredible we have the super committee meeting and everyone agrees, all the serious people here in washington that social security's got to be on the agenda. where are they now? we are sitting on 26 million people unemployed, underemployed or giving up looking for work altogether. you would think we would have the super committee meeting about that at no we are having a super committee focused on cutting social security. what's more, the whole story of

the deficit, you guys just born yesterday? we did not have a big deficit problem until the economy collapse. we are spending too much on the military and the wars. there is no reason for the bush tax cuts to the rich but the reality is the deficit was not large until the economy collapse. it's black and white and thousands of documents you could argue over. the deficit was 1% of gdp. guess how long we could do that? forever. there was not a big deficit problem until the economy collapse of rather than trying to get the economy back on its feet we are trying to get the completely backwards, doesn't work and it doesn't make sense. that is the context of the super committee. it's very warped and it's very much, this is the agenda of a 1% and we have to understand it that way. i want to say in terms of talking about social security, i want to talk about three different areas, first a little bit about the situation of the elderly. listening to the d.c. pundits who think every elderly person

is living in a penthouse is not the elderly i know but i was a little bit about that. secondly the cuts to social security because we are talking about roe cuts and they do their best to conceal that. they are talking about real cuts that will affect real people and i want to say little bit about the cuts both by the super committee and coming up in some of the presidential candidates are suggested. lastly a little bit about the size of the shortfall. we have a lot of people running around telling us the sky is falling. "the washington post" had a front-page story of a week ago sunday saying oh my god look at this, social security is a huge disaster. this is scare stuff and they should know better. i don't know if they do or not but i want to talk about that so people know how to put this in context. first off, the condition of the elderly. this is something we shouldn't be arguing over because there is not a lot of dispute about this. every social security benefit is 13,000 a year.

we are really concerned about that, 13,000 a year. that is the wealthy elderly, the generous, 13,000 a year. that's not go to jpmorgan and asked them how far -- that is not a days pay. that isn't ours. some of those places. 13,000 years the average benefit. that's about 90% or more of the income, 90% in many cases 100% of income for 40% of the elderly so that is what they are living on. this isn't like oh they have all their money in the stock market and their real estate and then they get -- no, 40% or so. it's 90% of their income. about two-thirds is more than half their income. so this is who we are talking about. no one has different numbers. i didn't give it two in decimal so someone can grab a decimal on me but those are the numbers. the vast majority of the elderly are not looking particularly well so that is what we are doing. we are talking about cutting

their benefits. there was a new measure of poverty and our old measures dates back to the 60s. there was a new measure the census bureau came out with and it showed the poverty rate among the elderly a 16%. that should be cause for concern. we tell younger poor people to get a job. that is a silly thing to tell them in a lot of cases particularly when they have the unemployment rate that we have. we are telling 80 roads to go out and get a job? that is a real serious problem. 16% of the elderly are living in property and that is a low standard of living if you look at that. that is a really low standard of living so we are talking about cutting benefits for this wealthy group of elderly, 16% and property. last point and i don't know people saw this. people might've heard of pew. it's a major foundation who put out a lot of work. some of it is good. but they put out a study last week or the beginning of this

week that talked about how comparing the wealth of the elderly to the of -- well for the young. they look at how did things go from 84 and to 2009? those are the comparison isn't it showed for the elderly that their wealth increase by think 40% and then it took the young, people under 35 and their wealth declined by 70%. a couple of things, first off the young get very little wealth even an 84. we are talking about $12,000. i didn't have any money and i don't have much now but i didn't have any then. are they moving up the ladder? that is what you want to know in any serious person would do that so this is not a serious measure of the wealth of young. it was a serious measure of the wealth of the elderly. have people heard it defined benefit pensions? they don't today. this is a slack study. that is not the way look at the analysis ' what is interesting

here this got picked up all over the place. i looked at this and i go that's kind of a joke. the 1% instead of talking about the class war they have been waging on is they're trying to trick it into a generational war. for take away the social security for the elderly somehow we are really going to help the young. that's not the way to help the young. that is nixon's. the other thing i wondered, i always wondered what sort of families they lived in. when i was growing up my mother would do anything for my brother and i in the same thing that she is older and we are in the workforce. oh, so yeah we are going to take away her social security so we can get rich. this is literally not. that is the super committee. let me say little bit about the cuts because again there is a lot of game playing with the cuts. the annual cost of living adjustment. they love to find tricks about how they will cut it. social security, one of the great things about social security is the index for the rate of inflation.

most people don't have incomes that they can count on rising. the index of the rate of inflation, not a lot of money but if inflation is 3% you will get 3% more money next year and 5% you will get 5% more. it is a enormous protections for social security. they go hey, that index is too high. it's too high by 3/10 of a percentage point so we are going to change the measure so you will get pretense of a percent less and than they say change. it's a cut, it's a cut. 3/10 of a percent, three pretense of her pretend --% is not much but it is cumulative. 3/10 of a percent after 20 years is 6% and after 30 years as 9% so we are talking about the biggest cuts will hit the oldest people. someone in their 90s will see a cut and they will be getting less. they go that is not a big deal. actually this is a much larger

share of the income of the people who were affected than the bush tax cuts are on the wealthy. so if this isn't a big deal then why the hell is anyone worried about the bush tax cuts on the wealthy? it doesn't make any sense. so this is a big deal and we should take that very seriously. raising the retirement age. this one is romney and i think many of the republican presidential candidates have been saying they want to raise the retirement age. the argument is we are living longer and we are in better health. there is truth about but it is not evenly distributed. most of the gains in life expectancy are in the top quarter. you take the bottom half the income distribution and there is very little gain in life expectancy and by the way we are de did raise the normal retirement age for social security. it was 65. at 66 now and if he hears it will be 67 so we are to get that. we knew about increased life expectancy and they are the raise the retirement age. they were all sitting around in

very good health and they have good health care. they will live longer but a lot of people come most of the people in the country are not enjoying the same increase in life expectancy. it is not fair to raise, to expect that they will work later in life because the wealthy are living longer. that doesn't make a lot of sense but that is what we are hearing talked about. the other point about that, again i go to a lot of meetings here. they go well we have to get used to the idea that my fellow economists, we have to get used to the idea we will have to work until we are 70. i have the a desk job and that's no problem. i will work and some 70 but maybe longer. let's talk to the custodian and the people preparing lunch in the cafeteria and asked them how they feel about working until age 70. that is a very different world than we did some analysis of this. half of older workers work at jobs that are classified as demanding orrin difficult work conditions meaning they are working outside of day. it doesn't tend to be economist

but an awful lot of people, very large segment of the workforce and that is what these people should keep in mind. the last point when they talk about -- they say we are going to reduce benefits for the wealthy elderly. few people know the p. peterson is? pete peterson is a billionaire investment banker. he committed a billion dollars of his own money to cut social security and medicare and he has a foundation that focused on cutting the deficit and cutting the deficit means cutting social security and medicare. he goes i don't need my social security. grade peat, send it back. their fear people like pete peterson so they talk about oh we are going to cut social security for affluent retirees. everyone who warrants more than 1 million a year, make it 200,000, make it 100,000. we won't have to change of a numbers. there aren't a lot of elderly out there so who are they talking about? what we see is the wealthy suddenly when we are talking about taxes on the wealthy,

250,000, half a million or a million the wealthy elderly get 40,000 a year. that is not most people's idea of wealthy. if you want to get in the money out of social security by means testing, taking away benefits from the wealthy than your definition of wealthy is something like $40. it is not most people's definition of wealthy. it is very middle-class. these cuts are the real deal and they should let anyone pretend the cuts they are talking about are a joke. they will hit real people in a real way. the last point, shortfall. i love these guys. they go around saying it is a $5 trillion shortfall. i was listening to "national public radio" and they said 200 trillion. i could get a prize for coming up with the biggest number but you go okay let's try to put this in the context because they are talking however many years and no one other than a few policy wonks have any idea what this is so let's put this into context. the shortfall in social security

from congressional budget office is estimated at 5800 less than 6/10 of 1% of gdp so in other words if we could find revenue source, it's less than 6/10 of 1% gdp. how big is that? if we look at the increase, the increase in the military budget since 2000 other words in september 11 the increase in the annual budget was more than 1.7% of gdp, roughly three times as much. so again as social security shortfall a big deal? the military budget increased and will increase. is three times a big deal. let's compare to something else. how much of the 1% increase their share of wealth over the last 30 years? that was about six percentage points of gdp. more than 10 times as much so if we are looking at the shortfall in social security and we are supposed to be really scared about it, the increase in wealth going to the richest 1% was about 10 times as much.

so again if that is a big deal to the shortfall in social security's a big deal than an increase in wealth going to the 1%, the share the wealth is 10 times a big deal. the last point again, we are supposed to be scared about this. let's imagine, we aren't in this world but let's imagine a worker got their share of productivity growth. for going to close the gap, we will do something we shouldn't do but we are going to close the gap i raising taxes on workers who pay for social security. we will raise the social security tax in other words. it would take 5% of the projected wage gains over the next 30 years. that is a much it would take. that is going to sound bad to people because we are we are not seeing that money. it is all going to the 1% but this drives home again and again and again, this is an affordable program. there is no big shortfall. the money is going elsewhere and going to things like the military and going to the 1%.

velez but i want to make is if we are being serious about this we should be talking about raising social security particularly for low and earners. it's cheap. the talk of raising benefits and we have al gore back in 2000. no one's definition of a radical. we got al gore to increase benefits for low-wage earners i-10 to 15%. put that on the table, it's not a lot of money for surviving spouses typically women but surviving spouses. currently they get typically two-thirds of the joint and if it. you could do more but my point is these are very low cost thing so things so we can make social security more generous. the idea that we are cutting social security, cut social like this is not something serious people should be talking about. it's a great program. does what is supposed to do. it is protected senior citizens

for the last seven decades and we should make sure it continues and we should make it better, not worse. [applause] >> any questions on social security? those are our three. >> i would like to make a i am getting my social security insurance benefits on april 15 of this year and i put it that way because that is the way that is not talked about. i've been paying into social security since i was 18 years old when i got my first job and it is an insurance program, which the risk is spread over the entire group. talked about is an insurance so another thing that is not talked about is having a social security insurance program that allows people to take risks in their lives, knowing that there

is the safety net. i am so sick of it being called an entitlement which it really isn't. the other thing is that i will just say this under my time to be able to make a comment. my daughter started a business for which he had a plan, beautifully professionally worked out business plan for which the small business association said they would insure the loan and were not able to get a loan anywhere. this was after the bailout. ..

>> she has a coffee house that is direct trade, grown organic, she composts everything. she uses only green economic policy items, and is employing people in her neighborhood so that's another benefit of having the idea of the social security. i just wanted to make that comment, thank you. >> want to comment on that? >> very quick. social security is insurance. people have paid for it. you're exactly right. they have a right to it. it's very efficient. if you compare social security, we have prieftized systems, and they hold up khile as a model. it costs 30 times as much to administer the social security system.

it does what it's supposed to efficiently. it's a great system that way. >> i'm ken burke. i wanted to ask you when they came up with the tax holiday talking about the 2.5% of the tax holiday, and yet they claim they need to cut social security, could you explain that? sounds like smoke and mirrors. >> it is. i was annoyed by this. we have a two percentage tax holiday instead of paying 6.2%, we pay 4%. the social security trust funds reimbursed by that, so it leaves it whole. what i don't understand is why call it a social security tax cut? they could send us checks equal to 2% of our salaries and not bring social security into it at all. they did for whatever reason. the social security trust fund in unharmed by it.

>> thank you. i have a comment and question. when we see the party of the people supposedly talking about cutting social security and medicare, that's when we know we have a one party government. i've been reading up on the reserve economy, and there's an economy out there that we don't know about that the so-called deficit that we've got of $13 trillion or 14 or whatever the number they make up next week is going to be. those are numbers like in argentina, just add or subtract a zero when you need or don't need it anymore. there's the treasury securities part, and there's the reserve part, and all of these people,

the billionaires and trillion theirs are secure, still buying treasury securities, and the problem is this is a coo taken on by the 1%. that's my opinion at this time. is this reserve economy true or not true? >> yeah. there's a lot of issues about the economy, and it hinges on with accounting conventions. now, that doesn't mean that they are not real. they are valuable company because of the copyrights. in other words, they arrest me if i make copy of windows and distribute them. they'll arrest me for that. is it real? it's not a physical object in the world, and that's true of the economy. there's lots of things like that that accounting conventions and laws. there's a lot of things done to my view is corrupt or inappropriate, but it's not making something up out of the

blue. it's disappointing you have democrats jumping to the gun that that's what we should be cutting right now. >> am i correct there's a cutoff point in your income after which you don't pay social security? why is that? if we didn't have that, would that take care of the "short fall"? >> glad you mentioned that. i should have mentioned that. i usually do. there is, in fact, a cap. it's roughly at 108,000. you don't pay any taxes on your income above 108,000. if you make 20 # million, you pay the same amount as a teacher who pays. there's a cap. now, one of the important things that's happened in the last three decades is a larger share of wage income is over the gap. two points to make on that. one is if we did not have the upward redistribution over the

last three decades, the program would be balanced. that's a big part of the story. right now, we get to 2038 and not do anything. if we didn't see the redistribution of income, we'd go long, long into the future. the other point is, yeah, raise the cap. there's analysis of this. sanders has a proposal in the senate that says we'll apply taxes -- don't do anything between 108 and 250, tax everything over 250, apply the social security tax. that leaves the program fully balanced in 75 years. the money is easily, easily there. it's just a question of getting it. >> thank you. our -- two mr. speakers 20 go. the next focuses on health, a pediatrician, organizer of this encampment at freedom plaza, and

physicians at the national health program. >> thank you, kevin. you can tell by my twinkles that i live here; right? this is tremendous. i appreciate you for being here today because i testified before congress and the deficit commission. that's not what this looks like. like this is what it should look like. it should be people who are knowledgeable in their fields, the public should be allowed to attend, and the public should be allowed to comment. it should be out in the open and transparent, and not hiding behind closed cooers. i love this as a model. i'm going to speak about the impact of health care on our economy, on our deficit, and an evidence-based solution to improven our health and improve our economy. just want to lay out the field. the united states is number one in one area with health care. we spend the most of any industrialized nation per person per year in health care. in some cases, we spend twice as

much per person per year on health care than other nations that cover practically everybody with better health outcomes. we leave about a third of our population uncovered completely or underensured which means though they have insurance, they still can't afford health care or they are at risk of financial ruin if they should have a serious illness or accident. medical costs are the number one cause of personal bankruptcy. 62% of personal bankruptcies are due to medical cost, and 80% of those people who went bankrupt for medical costs had health insurance, so we call insurance in this country an umbrella that melts in the rain. when you need it, it's not there for you. as i said, our health outcomes are not as good as other nations. for being a nation that prides itself on being number one in many areas, we are # 37th in the world when it comes to health outcomes. of all the industrialized nation, in a study they looked

at the top nations, and the united states was the worst in terms of preventable deaths. they estimated if we actually had a functioning high quality health system, we'd save over 100,000 lives every year. these are people dying from preventative causes. there's widening health disperties, and the infant mortality rates in the country are upsetting. in some areas there's infant mortality rates similar to what we see in a developing nation, and our maternal mortality rates because we don't guarantee prenatal care to all pregnant women and we are sometimes two to three times higher than other industrialized nations. we have a poor value for our health care dollar. in terms of our health care impact on the economy, our health care costs right now over all are rising faster than our gdp. that's not sustainable. if we were comparable, and

actually, this is a study that dean did at the cepr. if we had health care costs that were in line with other industrialized nations, we wouldn't have a deficit; is that right? yeah. no deficit. we wouldn't need to be here talking about this. the legislation passed in congress last year, and i worked really hard to try to get evidence-based solutions on the table. it was not an easy task to do in this environment. that's why i live here. the legislation that was passed is not going to address these issues. it's estimated the health care costs continue to rise faster as a result of that legislation than they would have if we had done nothing at all. it adds more bureaucratic complexity to the health care. the -- it has no proven health controls. it will continue to leave tens of millions of people out without health insurance. there's already a trend of dropping number of employers

dropping health insurance. this is expected to continue under this law. there's an article where big business was saying nobody wants to be first to drop employer sponsored health insurance but everybody wants to be second. it's going to increase our number of people underinsured or left financially vulnerable looking at the health insurance exchanges at the state level. we're driving more people into the individual market, and most people are priced down to the lower level of coverage because premiums are continuing to rise. what is looked at in congress is that they are, as we've said, they are looking at cutting medicare, and that's talk about changing medicaid, too, so that not as many people are guaranteed to get medicaid benefits. that's the result of that going to be? if we cut medicare, there's increasing poverty as already many elderly are bearing a high proportion of their health care costs. there's a decrease in health jut comes. what's amazing is that when people in this nation make it to the age of 65 and are on

medicare, we start to see the health disperty gap close. it closes because everybody now has a single payer system. we're going to increase the costs because just taking away health benefits doesn't make the problems go away. it makes people delay or avoid necessary care, and then they end up with the worst outcome that's more expensive to treat, or they may die which in some cases, some economists say, well, i'm not unsure it wouldn't be you, well, if they die, it's cheaper. i heard people say that, so, you know, that's not how we want to control our health care costs. our social health insurance, our medicare and medicaid, we hear they are under pressure, but they are not the cause of that. they are the victims of the fact that in this country we don't have a health system that works, and so they are under that same pressure of the rising health care costs, but in truth, our social health insurance have much lower administrative costs than the private health

insurance situation, so we could save, if we went to a national medicare for all, instead of a third of health care dollars on administration, it's 3% or 5% saving $400 billion a year to go to health care instead of insurance administrators sitting in the offices or our billing staff as physicians sitting in our offices trying to figure out and work this system that doesn't work. >> we've tried a market model in the country where the only industrialized nation with it's profit before people, 40 years, and we've seen the outcomes. it's an experiment, and it doesn't work. the health outcomes are not good, and we lose good doctors. the burn out rate, and i'm one of them, is 10 to 15 years, and i practiced for 15 years. we see job loss where people are stuck in jobs they don't like or

longer than they like because they need to for the health insurance benefit. we see people who would like to go on their own and start their own businesses are afraid to because they are afraid of losing their health insurance benefit, and it hurts our global competitiveness. physicians advocate for an improved system for all. there's something that's proven to work, been a model for other nations, and we could improve it and make it work better, so what would that be like? national improved medicare for all means every single person living in this country from the time you are born until the time you die, you have health insurance benefits that's paid for publicly through taxes in a way that's accountable and transparent and it means having a health system to plan out the best way to have the resources. we don't do that now or

prioritize our health needs and the best way to use resources. way are the benefits of a national improved medicare for all, and how does that economy? stimulate jobs, improve health, and i mentioned the savings of $400 billion a year. are we getting attacked -- move -- kevin. go the other way. having a national health program would allow us to do something every other country does but we don't. we can negotiate for fair prices, for our pharmaceuticals in our health care services, and we pay the most for the health care services compared to other nations. it allows for cost controls of global budgets, negotiated fees as i said, bulk purchasing, and rational use of our resources. it allows a system to identify

where the outliers are, where the problems are to address them systematically and correct them. it would eliminate the burden of rising costs of health care on employers that's particularly burdensome on our small businesses. it would enhance the competitiveness of u.s. corporations because they compete with other nations that don't have the high health care costs. it would liberate our population to open their own businesses or maybe get more education. it would allow older workers to retire before the age of 65, and that opens up more jobs for younger people that are looking for jobs. i can't tell you when i walk into legislative offices and the staffers are like, well, this is mostly the state level, because up there they are really young, but i have staffers that are like if you had this, i'd stop working. i'm just working for health benefits. it stimulates the economy because families would have more

discretionary spending rather than spending it on high out of pocket costs on handgun. it would improve our overall health, and argue with that maybe our productivity with fewer sick days. there's people who want to work but because they don't have control of their chronic illnesses, they can't work. it would eliminate the spend down that we have right now that's required for people who need to go on medicaid, and lastly, it would provide true health security for our population, something that we don't have now. people would not have to choose between health care and paying their mortgage, paying for food, do i get chee -- chemo for cancer or pay for my children's college. these are real choices people face. [applause] . >> i'll bring up the final speaker to present now, a noted

author, my favorite book is "beyond capitalism" talking about what system works beyond finance, and the system we have with a state-based socialism, and he's working on co-ops and building local efforts of shifting power to people at the local, state, and national economies, shifting power and changing the methods of ownership. welcome. [applause] >> thank you. if i don't get the mic right, raise your hand. i'm a recovering washingtonian. i managed house and senate staffs on these matters. we are largely stalemated at the national level, and likely to be stalemated for a long time. i think we have to fight the battle on all the fronts

discussed. we got -- essentially we are a resistance movement at the national level resisting the cut backs and tendency to throw people out of work and resisting cut backs on environmental protection. we need to do that, but it's very much rem -- reminiscent of the era. you see stalemate and large corporate power. if you look at the local level, if you look at the states where the rubber hits the road, you see pain and development and people in trouble, but you also see out of that process, and i'll talk a bit about that, things the press does not cover because they don't think it's important and partly because they don't have the resources. at the very local level and at the state level, something very, very potentially exciting is happening. i'm going to get back to the national level because i think there's some action there too. let me give you an example.

the state of ohio, in the city of cleveland, in the neighborhood where the average income is $18,000 a year, there is a developing series of worker-owned companies that are pointing at the buying power of the hospitals and at the universities, and they are real companies, not small companies. there's an industrial scale laundry owned by the workers, a solar installation effort, just broke ground on a very, very large 3.5 acre greenhouse which will provide up to 5 million heads of lettuce a year, and they are producing one or two more companies a year under worker ownership, and in a way that's real, not token. it's a way that a linked to the development of the community itself, so there's a non-profit

corporation in part owns the companies so they don't run off once they make money, but help develop the neighborhood, and it's very serious business. they found a way to do that. what is interesting is because of the failure at washington, because of the losses, this pain is driving people to innovate and note carefully they are changing the ownership of capital. these are the 1% owns something of 50% of the investment capital. the 5% own something like 70% of the investment capital. the top 400 families have more net worth, different measure, than the bottom 60%, so a lot of what we talk in corporate style capitalism is who owns wealth, the means of production, who owns that? what you're seeing at the grass roots level, the cleveland example is one of these, is people beginning to say it's not

just taxes and benefits. the name of the game is power and power comes from ownership from a way that's democratic. that's one form of it. it's very exciting form, and it's not happening only in cleveland. what's happening -- it's going to be a whole series of development in this area, by the way, several developments planned following the cleveland model. pittsburgh is also doing it. there's a couple developing in oakland, more in texas. why? because the existing arrangements don't work, and people a light goes on, we have to do politics wherever we can. that's absolutely necessary, but we have to build from the bottom up also and change the nature of who owns these institutions. who owns the institution? we just heard a very, very solid discussion of medical issues and health care. the name of the game there is half the medical system is

socially owned. that's called medicare. that's the half that works, sort of. the other half is owned by the private corporations, so changing the name of the institution, not simply policy is changing whose got power because the insurance companies as long as they are there, they use the power not only to run the system, but to oppose anything else. there's a breakthrough happening. i tend to be -- i wear two hats. i'm a economist and a historian. there's a breakthrough happening i have never seen in the modern era in which people understand building from the bottom needs to move both politics and changing ownership. now what i've suggested so far sounds -- there's a couple happening around the country. here's a feel for it. there are 120 million americans who are members of co-ops in the united states. that's more than a third of the population. you probably didn't know that because the press doesn't cover it.

we just saw the power of that credit unions. we just saw hundreds of millions of dollars moving from the big banks to the credit unions. [applause] now that's a very interesting, if you think about it politically. they are saying no to the banks, but if you think about it institutionally, they are saying, no, let's build up cooperatively owned democracy institutions. we call them credit unions. you don't have to be fairy about the language, or wild in the rhetoric. the institution called a credit union is a non-profit publicly owned institution, and we've got them all over the country. there are 7500 neighborhood banking institutions. we call them financial institutions that are devoted to neighborhood development. you probably didn't hear about that. same thing. non-profit, but owned and directed of that neighborhood. there are 4500 neighborhood corporations that are developing. some of them very large scale. in newark, there's one that

employees 1400 people in super markets and laundries, and so forth. there's a ground work that's developed over time. there are land trusts in which land development is going forward so the profits are captured for some social purpose. many parts of the country, including part of washington. for instance, the government here builds mass transit. at the exit signs, there's a huge increase of values of land and housing because people come in and out there. who makes the money? it's all public investment in. washington, one of the areas that got ahead of the game, but you don't see reported in the press, that money is pickedded up because the ownership is public and through various forms of land trust and the money goes back into the public coffers. what i suggest to you is if you look beneath the surface, there's a lot going on that has very interesting long term implications and secondly, it's developing because of pain, and

it's beginning to be politicized and we have to move this direction, almost all of it is green, and almost has an environmental political aspect, and almost all is steadily building up in this trajectory. it's not only the local level where you don't have coverage. there's 20 states, now we're at the state level, 20 states that introduced legislation which is for single payer health care program. some will pass, some won't, but there's a build up if it doesn't happen at the national level, we build it up at the local level and again at the state level and again because the pain is growing. the same is true with state banks. there's 14 states considering legislation for state banking, publicly owned banks like the bank of north dakota, a publicly owned bank that's been there since the beginning of the century, so it's a popular owned structure, highly efficient, highly popular, ect.. my own state of wisconsin is the state where there is a small

publicly owned insurance company that can be built upon as well. just trying to give you a feel -- i have 5 book which is called "america beyond capitalism" coming out, but it reviews this underbrush that is building up. i am not interested in experiments. i'm interested in the developing trends that begins to build power at this level tieing it to new strategies, and that's what is intriguing about the developmental trend. let me come at it at a different way. what you're seeing is a change in the metaphors and a change in the ideas about what an economy is. most of what we do so far is a corporate economy with an attempt to hedge it in, regulate it, and we didn't talk about trade and restricting trade, but the central institution is the corporation, and what you're beginning to see is a different,

different model, that it's democracytized ownership of different kinds at different levels. that's important both because it begins to give people an idea, and it's slowly building power, slowly and steadily, and in my judgment, likely to continue to build power as the pain continues. if you look at it historically, the great historical movements had something going on at the grass roots level. most of the things in the new deal were developed in exactly the way i'm talking about. they were developed at the state and local level first. they became the models and principles when the moment arrived politically to move it to the national level, so when you think about what i've been talking about all of these models emerging and discussed, find it at a website called community-wealth -- it's important to see it not only as models, but as the elements of what if you do larger extensions are likely to become the basis

of national movements when we get that kind of power built up over time. it's not simply grass roots stuff. we're generating principles and strategies and people who know how to do new things are also being developed in this way. let me give you something further. how many people know that 25% of the electricity generated in the united states is done by either municipal ownership or co-ops? 25%. that's an extraordinary value, again, you don't see it in the press. another example, these are not marginal efforts already, and they can be seen as a building up of powers at that level. let me make a couple more suggestions. i think we're getting close to the time where we should cut back, but historically what you saw in the early popular and progressive era is that institutions are critical to political power, and to the build up of political power. what do i mean? small farmers as institutions,

they were the way the farm economy was built with the basis of pop pew lism and without small farmers, you didn't have popularrism. until recently, progressive politics was based on unions. sadly union structure and power has gone down from 11%, and in the private sector, 7% that's hold the line and build, but that institution up against corporate power will be a declining power, so either we build new institutions, not just politics that begins to open the way for a new direction, and a new vision, democktizing ownership is implicit to the idea of 1% and 99%, a new vision, but hard-headed examples and policies that over time begin to build. i sometimes say you want to play -- if you're serious about this game, the price is a couple

decades of your life. that's what the progressives did. that's what this is all about as a stagnation and decay goes on building these new trends both politically and institutionally. let me open up another dimension for a flavor of it. when the next financial crisis comes, i said when. no serious economist disputes what i just said. it is almost certain we're going to have a further financial crisis, and the big banks are going to come back to the trough for more money. when that happens, we're going to break them up, maybe. we had # 3 -- 33 votes in the senate. when we break them up, they'll get back together and try to do it again. they will assemble. at some point we say we bail them out. they'll become public banks. what in the united states companies with joint ownership by workers? that's what we had until recently, still have throughout parts, and when the next big crisis happens, then the money was put in from the taxpayers to

make them profitable at a loss to the taxpayers, and they were sold off to private investors. next time around if the ground work is laid and the development of the ideas and the politics, there's no reason we ought not to take those all, keep them in public, and start building mass transit, build high speed rail, and put the people to cork. i'm suggesting a longer term vision that both stops what's going on as best we can, but we -- rebuilding from the bottom up, and what i suggest to you, this is the hard place for all of us. i'm suggesting to you if you think about it historically, there's a realistic possibility, not a fantasy, of building because it is being driven by necessity and pain as the old system decays. one of the problems is us. we don't take seriously what we understand we want. we simply try to resist rather than saying how do we actually

build to change the system? really? so one final word, and i think kevin's beginning to get a little nervous about time. one final word, and it's the way i think about this. my heros in all of this are the civil rights leaders in mississippi. in the 1930s and 40s. i have great admiration for people in the 1906s, but what happened in the 1930s and 40s in the dark difficult times in the state like mississippi was laying the ground work for what came later. it's very easy to join a a social movement when the movement's moving. the hard work is building things that become the preconditions of the next new deal or the next transformation or the preconditions of an america truly beyond capitalism and also beyond the state socialist models which we know are also decadent. we're creating something very new, very decentralized, very exciting at the grass roots level if you peek at it.

a couple reminders -- www.community-wealth -- they cor veigh this stuff, a website we run, and hopefully my book gives you more detail on the things i'm saying all too briefly, so thank you very much. [applause] >> we don't have time for questions, sorry about that. i think this is a central part of what we're working towards. it's a participating democracy versus concentrated wealth, and that's what it's about. another website, itsoureconomy.u.s.. if you put that in there's stuff by garr, and there's a conference in wisconsin where there's panels on what this economy would look like. there's details there. on freedom plaza, there's a lot going on in a few days. tomorrow we have first in action. this will be used in this

forecasted house. part of an action tomorrow of fha calling for reducing mortgages to the real value of homes. 28% of americans are underwater right now on their mortgages. bankers are still profiting from the housing bubble. the bubble burst, and people are city paying the price. the bubble was created by the bank, and the people are paying the price for it. let's advocate for reduction of mortgages to real housing levels. that would do a great deal to solidify the economy. that's one thing we're working on. tomorrow also we have an action against the epa, just across the street. we have two whistle-blowers coming in who, one went to jail for blowing the whistle on epa abuses, and they'll give a rally here at noon. the foreclosure thing starts at 9:30. at noon, the epa rally, and then protesting at epa to signify the people who died from the refusal of the obama administration to be aggressive on the smog

rules. sunday, we have stuff on alternative banking. banking when you get credit for volunteering, and then you can then seek volunteers to take care of work you need to get done, so that banking system as well as a local economy, local currency. we have be more notes in baltimore, all sorts of local currencies around the country, having a session on that sunday as well. there's a lot going on. it's on our website occupy washingtondc.org. sign up there. get involved there. there's a lot of information at the information table behind here if you are now to the plaza. take that out, take it, and i want to thank you, thank you, panelist, and thank you for coming out here to participate in the occupied liberated super committee hearing. thank you very much. we do have one more -- we do have one mr. speaker who came in from michigan. he was not on the agenda, but i want to add him.

it's john, an environmental activist who is trying to uncover the michigan oil cover up. he'll have five minutes to speak and participate in that way. thank you for coming. >> thank you. i'm the whistle-blower for the michigan oil spill. kind of like erin, i worked for a company called embridge, and we were told to cover up oil, put grass over it, dirt, rocks, and i couldn't sleep at night, so i reported it to the epa. the epa did nothing. two weeks later aft i kept documenting this stuff, i went to the press, and then i went to the head of the company that i had in front of me, and i told him i wasn't going to let them do that. that was my hometown of battle creek, michigan, and i was fired the next day for it. i'm a union worker. i'm a navy veteran with a bronze

star, and i will never work for a tar sand pipeline. this is why. [applause] thank you. the tar sand pipeline, we just have 12,000 people just circle the white house the other day, and it was not on the main national news. it was the most important story in the entire world yesterday, and it wasn't on the news because a lot of these reporters and news stations are bought by these oil companies. i've had two death threats, four slashed tires, my brakes were cut twice, i have a scar on my head from assault, and even one of the assaults, the forman told me he's got more money than i can sue for. i will not quit. i'm in michigan right now videotaping hundreds and hundreds of sick people. we had dead people. we've had children born with deformities. we had many people with seizures after the spill and never had

them before. we have people with respiratory problems. it's horrible, and i tried to tell the public in my -- i've been on every news station in michigan, but it's not gone national, and i don't understand that. they don't want to tell people about what these oil companies do and the sick people. tar sand oil is 80% more toxic than normal oil. i'm not against normal crude oil, but tar sand oil, it takes 400,000 gallons of water a day to abstract it from canada. you can never reuse that water again. it's done. done. then they are trying to build a pipe right now through north dakota, south dakota, nebraska, oklahoma, and texas. if there is one leak in an aquifer, you're done. there is no more water in texas if you have one leak in that aquifer. i mean, it is that bad. their own msds sheets says this kills you. if you breathe it in, it kills

you, if you swallow, and they are about ready to open up the kalamazoo river in michigan, and kids will get in there and oil pops up. i know that for a fact. [no audio] there's videos on yiewb, and i'm going around the country now trying to tell the word about what's going on there because -- i need people to tell their friends, go to youtube, watch the videos. you don't have believe me. i have documented proof. i have 70 edited videos on there. i have put 2200 hours of my free time, sold everything i own to do this, and i have not gained anything other than losing a $2300 a week job because i

reported this. my entire family has not workedded since this. anybody who working in the oil industry that's related to me has not worked. this is how powerful they are. this is how bad they are, and they don't even want you to know -- they didn't evacuate the people in my community. we have 40 miles of river that was contaminated. it's supposed to be a 1,000 foot mandatory evacuation. it did not happen. they did not evacuate anybody. these people breathe in these chemicals, and some of the chemicals it takes an entire year before you even start to see signs of sickness. then the companies go around and get you to sign off for $2500 or some of them are $250 for an air pure fier. you sign off, and now you lost your rights because they trickedded you. we went to congress, and we had hearings, and they said that these oil companies should not

have done that. they lied to them, and i'm trying to do something about that. i'm trying to change some policies. i'm trying to stop the tar sands pipeline because whether you believe it or not, china has bought a big stake in the canadian star tandz, and we're going to build the pipe to go to the gulf. it's going to texas. we said our military will not use the oil. the emissions and carbons are too high. if our military is not using and our cars are not going to use it, we're going to send a lot to china because it's easier. they use it for their military because they don't care about emissions and the carbon, and now we increase their military, and some day they are so big, well over a billion people, they'll run out of area, and they are going to say we need some land for our people, they will -- we're going to have a

war because of it. what do we do when we supplied them for ten years of a major source of oil because drks and then when we have the pipe coming through our land, it pollutes us and kills us slowly. there was a pipe i worked on last year for the transcanadian pipeline that had 12 leaks in one year. 12 leaks, 400 gallon leaks. i had a million gallon leak in my town. oklahoma had a spill, new york had a spill, chicago had a spill, michigan had a spill. i mean, it's traveling around the country. these, the tar sand pipeline is like sand pierp through the pipe, and that's why they break. we need you to just watch the video, spread them around. i'm trying to help the environment. i'm trying to help the union members with jobs in other sources because i -- as i said, i 4r not work for -- i will not work for a tar sand pipeline, and anybody who does

is going to kill america slowly over the years. i'm trying to do something about that. i love my country, and i will do anything. i -- i'm telling you. i have a bronze star for saving a man's life. i'll do anything to protect my country, and i'm right now doing everything i can to protect my country one person at a time. thank you. [applause] >> again, thank you all for coming out today. we try to do education as well as resistance, so tomorrow is resistance, the federal, fha will be doing an mortgage underwater action as well as eta whistle-blowers here and going across to the environmental protection agency how weakening of the air standards is killing people in this country, and then this weekend on sunday, we'll have workshops on time banking and local currencies, another

way to democracy the city. check the website often and join us on the plaza whenever you can. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> coming up next on c-span2, senate foreign relations committee holds o hearing on u.s. policy in syria.

>> at this senate foreign relations meeting, assistance secretary of state of near eastern affairs said he believes syria president bashar's days in power are at at end and how the u.s. should proceed in syria. also testifying was the deputy

assistant treasury secretary for terrorist financing. this is an hour and a half. >> the hearing will come to eared. i want to thank everyone for being here. i'll have an opening statement, and then we'll go to the statement from our witnesses, and then we'll go to questions. i want to thank everyone for being here. the senate foreign relations committee meets today own subcommittee on near eastern and central south asian affairs committee meets to examine u.s. policy towards syria, and we know that syria men, women, and children have courageously, and that's an understatement, courageously engaged in demonstrations for more than six months in their country. they seek basic democratic reforms and protection for human rights, but the asad regime in syria responded with terrible,

unspeakable violence. the united nations estimates that more than 33500 people -- 3500 people have been killed since the unrest began of march of this year. over the past week, syria's third largest city was engulfed in the worst violation seen in syria this year. more than 100 people have reportedly been killed. all of this coming -- all of this coming, i should say, during the muslim holiday of id and all of this coming after months and month of of repression and violence, and most important of all, this violence comes one week after the asad regime agreed to a deal for reform. in direct violation of this agreement, the forces have not removed their tanks and armored vehicles from the streets of towns across the country.

violence aimed at demonstrators has not stopped or even slowed. political prisoners and reportedly tens of thousands of them have not been released neither international journalists or human rights monitors have been admitted into syria. they made it clear to the world that he has no interest in or no intention to pursue democratic reform, and, in fact, he's proven to the world that democratic reform is now not possible while he remains in power. for months, i, and others, have spoken about this grave situation in syria. i've shared acts of a regime whose brutality affects 22 million serians as well as by constituents in pennsylvania. i told the story before the dr. hasam halic, a sere

yan-american who lives in philadelphia. he was visited by his brother earlier this year. he, who is also a doctor, was not engaged in politics of any kind. upon his return to syria after visiting his brother, he was tortured and killed by asad's forces just for having visited the united states of america. the press' reported accounts of school children arrested, parents, and community members murdered, dis appearances and mutilations all across the country of syria. in august, "washington post" op-ed, he must step down from power. we, who recognize the horror in syria, have a responsibility to bear witness to the truth, the truth of this slaughter and to work against it. ambassador robert ford has taken on this critical task and remitted the united states with

-- represented the united states with honor and distinction and with remarkable courage. i applaud the work of his am ambassador and topnotch staff. we are grateful for their sacrifice and service, but we must continue to take specific and visible actions to support democratic reform. first, we need to make it clear to the regime supporters that their behavior will not be tolerated, and they will be held accountable just as the regime will be held accountable. the administration working with our european allies should sanction more individuals within the regime who are come police sit in the re-- come police it in the resistance of protests. the 17 vimtion and 18 -- 17 individuals and 18 entities have been sanctioned. the world needs to know their name, and they need to decide whether they, those who are come police sit, whether they will

continue to aid and abet a regime which has killed thousands. this week, i've sent a letter -- this week i will send a letter, i should say, to the treasury department to urge the administration to expand the list of individuals to be sanctioned by the united states. the administration can do this by executive order and should do so as soon as possible. that's first. second ors -- second, the u.s. must continue to isolate the assad regime. in october, i called for the establishment of freps of the syria people contact group. this contact group can serve as a main point of international engagement for the democratic opposition and the syria people. the arab league, the gulf cooperation counsel and others can form the core of such a group which would send a clear message of international solidarity in support of

democratic change in syria. i hope that this -- this suggestion would be seriously considered by the arab league when it meets to discuss syria this saturday. the u.s. should continue to fully support these regional efforts to pressure the regime. in its agreement with the government, the arab league committed to sending international monitors to see firsthand the situation in syria. those monitors are needed now, not days or weeks from now, but know. the arab league should send them today. if they block the deployment of these monitors, the arab league should suspend syria's partnership in the organization. they have to push to pursue a resolution condemning the asad regime at the united nations. strong international opposition and commitment to isolating the asad regime is the key to

bringing about democratic reform. the united states senate as well should also support these efforts to isolate the regime. through our regular interaction with embassies here in washington, individual senators can express concern for the ongoing violence and show their support for democratic change in syria. third, the courageous syria political opposition must work to communicate a unified vision for the future of syria. this opposition faces many disadvantages and other protesters -- that other protester, i should say from across the region did not face. syria does not have a tahrir square to gather large members, and they do not have open borders to leave at will to find a safe hap. they do not have the attention of the international media that

have been barred from the country. despite these challenges, i believe the syria opposition will be involved directly in the country's future. it is imperative that the syria national counsel answer questions about its composition and its intent. who are the members of the syria national council? where does it stand on the role of the international community in stopping the violence and supporting democratic reform? most importantly, how will minorities be treated 234 a post-asad see -- syria? we have yet to hear a response. the council should commitmented to protecting all groups including christians. the syria national council must speak with one voice and make it clear they advocate for minority rights in the new government it hopes to create. the serian people deserve answers to the key questions

that in large part determines the degree of support the opposition has inside and outside the country. secretary of state hillary clinton said in a speech monday that asad, "cannot deny his people's legitimate demands indefinitely. he must step down, and until he does, america and the international community will continue to increase pressure on him and his brutal regime." so said secretary clinton. my questions today will center primarily on how we can and will increase the pressure on this regime. i look forward to hearing from our witnesses on a number of key issues. first, what can regional powers including the arab league and turkey do to play a more cruetive role in supporting the -- constructive role in supporting the democratic process in syria. second, what is the impact of current u.s. sanctions on asad regime? third, how is the united states

working yiewn unilaterally and with the european union to strengthen sanctions on syria? another question is how does the u.s. assess the current state of the serian national counsel? what are the criteria by which this movement should be judged in order to gain international legitimacy? finally, what are, i should say, the assessments of our witnesses of growing sectarianism in syria and whether it could lead to a civil war. we're fortunate today to have with us two witnesses who can speak about u.s. policy in syria. the honorable jeffrey feldman, secretary at the department of state, and we're grateful you are here, and luke bronan, deputy assistant secretary at the treasury department, and grateful you are here as well. these witnesses have extensive experience and expertise in the region, and i look forward to

their insights as so why our policy is not yet produced the desired results, and what more we can do. we're grateful for their witness here today, their testimony today, and grateful for their service. i say in conclusion before turning to senator for any opening comments is this is a matter offing, i think, basic justice for people of the syria. without justice, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers 1234 the people of syria for a long period of time, but over these last horrific months were robbed of a lot of things. robbed of their dignity, sometimes their life, robbed of their freedoms, and we have to speak out with one voice on a matter of basic justice for this country, and i know that there are a lot of americans that are deeply concerned about this issue, and we're grateful that we have so many people here to

listen today to this testimony and to listen to the questions of our witnesses, and i'm grateful for our colleagues being here, and i wanted to ask ranking member if he is any opening comments. ..

>> do everything that we can to isolate this regime. mr. forbes, i agree with the senator. mr. ford is the right person. i disagree with the ambassador because a side had been sober with his people. having said that i agree with the president's.

the right person for the job. i think it is in the interest of every american and indeed the interest of the civilized world to isolate this regime as much as possible. this is a bipartisan issue. it is an american issue. damages to your the suggestion that we get from the panel in here but the efforts remaking in that regard, and all of us can commit to move forward to do our best to isolate the regime which hopefully will reach the results of all this want to see. >> thank you. who will start with the opening statement, and the move will go to questions. i spoke to both of our witnesses , and they agree to try and keep it. both of your full statements to much of course, will remain part of the record for this hearing, and we'll start with the assistance secretary. >> wrecking member, the distinguished. thank you for inviting is to appear before you today to

discuss our goal with regard to the strategy that we're implementing to achieve it. destroying syria and destabilizing the region. as secretary clinton said two days ago, the greatest source of instability in the region is not the legitimate demand for change but the refusal to change. an orderly democratic transition that removes the leader from power and restore stability to the stability is clearly in the united states interest as in the interest of the syrian people and will support our goals of greater stability in the region and undermine the iranian influence. our message can be summed up briefly. step aside and allow your people to begin a transition to democracy. with like to see the transition proceed as quickly as possible. we should be prepared for the process, unfortunately, to be long and difficult.

much has already changed since the unrest began eight months ago. a large and growing number of syrians have concluded that assad must go. protests that started in the remote village of dora now take place in nearly every city and major town in the country. for the regime to retain power the syrian army has had to occupy its own country. but the regime's overwhelming use of force has not been ill to suppress the courageous and street protesters demanding the universal right. internationally syria is increasingly isolated as the international community loses patients with the of brutality and broken promises of assad. nearly all of the series neighbors recognized that assad is dangerously unstable. that is why we see this unusual arab league on the country consider to be very important politically and strategically. they want assad to stop

destroying syria. the gulf cooperation council described the regime as the killing regime. after several years of strengthening ties turkish prime minister said those who repress their own people will not survive. totalitarian regime of disappearing. the rule of the people is coming. the coverage of the regime's brutality has also destroyed his standing in the streets. he has become a pariah in the arab world. almost all of the arab leaders and foreign ministers and i talked to said the same thing. assad will is coming to an end. it is inevitable. some of these have even begun to offer up a safe haven to encourage and to leave quickly. we welcome the efforts of the arab league to stop the violence, but the regime must be judged by action, not by its words. the killing, as you said to the chairman, has continued

unabated. condemned the regime and a similar career role in international pressure, including at the u.n. economically tough u.s. and the use sanctions on financial mismanagement -- mismanagement by the serious regime argentine the calculus. oil revenue is now almost non existent. the regime's assets in the united states and european banks had been frozen. syria is cut off for most of the international financial system. as cash charge to dry up more syrian see that the regime is not sustainable. complementing our international efforts, the foot forward, as you mentioned, and his team are doing courageous work. thank you to the committee for confirming him. he is currently on leave and we expect him to return to post sent. we are following in delivery of course of taking into account the unique circumstances and do not want to see the situation descendent of further violence.

the best way forward is to continue support for the non-violent opposition while working with international partners to further isolate, for the pressure the regime. this creates an environment in which the syrians can take control of their own future. you mentioned the syrian national council. we welcome the establishment of the syrian national councilman, a blunt to a broad coalition. when you consider the past 40 years syrians had been prevented from engaging in any political activity, plus the opposition has already achieved. we in the united states have not endorse any particular opposition group, but the syrian people alone will decide who will represent them. the opposition must continue to expand and consolidate its bases by convincing more syrians of the legitimacy of the decision and a transition plan to demonstrate that there is a better alternative.

we understand assyrian people's need to protect themselves. violent resistance is counterproductive and will play there seems hand, divide the opposition, undermine international consensus. to create better protection for civilians in the near term, human rights monitors. we will relentlessly pursue our strategy in support of the opposition, and diplomatically and financially pressured the regime until assad is gone and the syrians are able to complete the democratic transition. assad may through his brutality enable the delay or impede the transition. he cannot stop it. we look forward to working with the syrian people as the chart a new democratic future. >> thank you very much. >> chairman, ranking member, distinguished members of the

committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. i am pleased to join the assistant secretary of state. we have a great partnership. in my testimony today alan like to review the role of financial sanctions. the syrian uprising began in march of 2011, president obama issued three new executive orders. the first signed in april targets those responsible for human rights abuses. the second signed in may directly sanctions president assad and senior members of his regime. the third signed in august imposes a full government blocking program prohibiting all transactions with the government of syria freezing regime assets, banning the export of services to and investment in syria and banning dealings in syrian origin petroleum. each executive order delegates to treasury the authority to designate additional individual

and we have made full use of that up toward the target regime insiders and denied the regime the resources it needs to sustain its continued repression. since the uprising began we have designated more than three dozen individuals and entities. our actions have targeted insiders and officials such as assad and kaiser, foreign minister and a prominent businessman and front man for corrupt officials. we have imposed sanctions on the largest mobile phone operator in syria and owned by assad. we have designated an international group and syrian military intelligence, syrian national security bureau and syrian air force intelligence kamal deeply complicity in liberal use of violence against peaceful protesters. demonstrating the full range of serious illicit conduct, we use

pre-existing authority to target the commercial bank of syria for providing financial services to syrian and north korean entities that facilitate weapons of mass destruction proliferation. we have used our authority to highlight the role, designating the head and deputy head of the islamic revolutionary guard corps fours and a round law enforcement forces for assisting the regime fertility. iran plans solidarity, but perron's real policies plane. exports to syria the same repressive tactics employed by the iranian government against its own people. as we have steadily increased the pressure on the regime we have done so in close coordination with our allies in europe and around the world. like the u.s., the you has designated numerous regime officials and insiders comprehended new investment in the syrian energy sector, frozen the assets and commercial banks

of syria and most significant, and lamented the band on the implementation of syrian oil and gas in europe. impact the store did multilateral measures has been profound. today the government of syria finds itself increasingly difficult, increasingly difficult to access the international financial system. its ability to conduct trade in dollars has been severely constrained and has been deprived of its most significant source of revenue. the previously accounted for more than 90 percent of the crude exports as a result of the ban that market has effectively been eliminated despite the aggressive efforts to find new markets. they appear at present to the few willing buyers. and well-run may seek to provide financial assistance to damascus, jen and suffers under pressure from wide-ranging international sanctions. in short, working in concert with our allies we have used our

sanctions tools to send a son and his regime is clear message. your reprehensible actions have consequences, continued repression from popular dissent will only deepen your isolation. as long as a sub maintains it a legitimate hold on power it will continue to identify individuals and entities that are complicitous in the a sun regime abuses. we will expose, target, and disrupt the regime source of revenue and support and will continue to engage our partners around the world, urging them to block the syrian access to alternative oil markets, asking governments and the private sector to join us in imposing aggressive and comprehensive measures against the regime. i look forward to continuing our work with this committee in a happy to answer any questions you have. >> thank you very much. we will start with one round of questioning. i wanted to ask you first of all about the region and in particular we can review a

couple of countries in the region the play can and will and should play no role in this. let me start with turkey. in your statement, your full statement you read -- mentioned some of the parts of the statements that prime minister has made. you sit in your statement that he has said he believed the opposition will be successful. the ongoing resistance to the government crackdown. certainly helpful when you have a neighbor saying that. and then what he has said in a visit to libya. those repress their own people will survive, and he goes on from there. and ask you a couple of broad questions and more specifically. number one, on this idea of a contact group how do you assess that, and is there any effort to

be undertaken by the state department or the administration to move the ford? that is the broad question. the second more specific question is what about the role that turkey has played and can play? what can we do to move them from being somewhat constructive so far to being even more helpful to put pressure on the regime and to help in the region? does that make sense? and of the second question is not as specific as a marijuana. >> chairman, banks preview welcome your proposal. in fact, we are running with this idea, talking with others about it. i have a very senior colleague who is working on coordination with our european allies pretty much full time. i am in touch. but the with like to do is try to get the error of some cells

to play : this. one of the propaganda tools is this is just an outside plot. he needs to see that his brother is also participating. so we are exploring, pushing, we take the ideas as a very positive. >> let me interject. the fact that the arab league has now made an attempt, kind of thumb his nose at it for lack of better description, i realize that a couple weeks your months ago might have been a sequencing problem, but i think now that the arab league has taken some action i would hope that that would set the table for what could be. that is just an opinion and interjecting. >> we agree with you, and the committee, the arab league committee that is dealing with the issue headed by the prime minister includes the state.

there me on friday it did before the arab league is meeting. the committee on friday will be discussing a number of options. and we hope the -- we are encouraging them to a look at issues. we would very much hope a clear rejection of their proposal that there will help the security council on things like that. we agree with you that the arab league is playing an important role, and now they take action. you raise a really important issue. and it is worth remembering that one of the families foreign policy successes from their own few would be first the father and then the sun were able to have from 1998 moving forward. if you looked at the relationship a year ago, there

were close friends, they developed an economic tide of political tide, diplomatic tight, very positive relationship from the perspective. it is in tatters of this point. the prime minister of turkey, such as the ones i quoted and you described, you can see what happened. turkey has played an important role in a couple of various. first, they have provided basically safe havens on turkish soil for syrian refugees, posting somewhere between 7,508,000 refugees roughly on turkey's soil, protecting them from the brutality of the regime that they applied. second, turkey is providing facilitations for opposition to organize, the opposition's. very little ability for these courageous acts inside to get together because they clearly have no rights for a peaceful protest, right for speech,

freedom of expression. so turkey is providing space for the organization, the opposition forces to meet and discuss to try to lay of vision. is an extremely important role, and turkey has in essence put on a defacto arms embargo to make sure that arms are flowing through turkey back to the click around the shower of card to use against his own people, so we think turkey is playing an extremely positive and important role. there are a lot of economic and trade between the two countries. a lot of merchants flying across the border. that is all dried up because of the instability. the we are in close contact. >> i guess a follow-up to that question, but would you hope that they could do in the next couple of weeks to be constructive?

>> first of all, continue what they're doing because it is having a real impact. the opposition ability to come together because of the turkish facilitation is a tremendous accomplishment. also, given the fact that the economic trade between the two countries is dropping, we would like to encourage them to join the european union, join japan, join canada, join us in formalizing the economic sanctions between turkey and syria. >> that's very helpful. senator. >> thank you. in your comments i guess at least the hen was that we need to all but a lot and get ready for a long haul. is that a result of the assessment that the people are going to have a difficult time in as much as essentially i'm in their attempt to overthrow the government?

>> well, part of it is just my own humility. i have been assistant secretary during this year and have learned not to predict things based on what happened in the arab world. part of it is based on my own awareness that predictions about what will happen in the arab world don't always been out. the part of it is this question of the protests the you mentioned. it is incredibly courageous with the syrian opposition figures, the protesters are doing every day. they're facing incredible brutality from a government that is basically a family led mafia that has hijacked the state, and yet they come out every day, day in and day out, more demonstrations now than there were at the beginning of this. they are in every town, every city across syria. but what he is trying to do is turn this peaceful protest

movement into an insurgency. he knows how to deal with violence. he uses violence against violence. what confounds some is this phenomenon of protesters yelling peaceful, peaceful, shopkeepers closing their shops and solidarity with the protesters. that is what really puts bashar al-assad in a bind, and that is why we have been encouraging the opposition despite the tremendous brutality they are facing to keep to the peaceful principles to which they have subscribed. right now if the opposition were to turn into a lightly armed movement, we think it would first of all frightened minorities, it would frighten the minorities in syria to believe that the propaganda of bashar al-assad about chaos after him with come true, probably divide indigenous community. there is no consensus, even

among the opposition themselves. none of these questions, the desire by the syrians to exercise their self-defense against the kind of brutality they are facing, but we believe that right now their strength is in the peaceful protest. they deny bashar al-assad the ability to claim that he is really facing an armed insurrection because he is not. he is facing people who are demanding the legitimate rights for great courage. >> how long can they hold on? >> i don't know. goes back. i don't know. it is one of the reasons why i think that the arab leaders have really taken such an active role, because they don't want to see him destroyed. he can't survive when you have this sort of isolation that look described. you see the parade has become, but you can certainly cause a

lot more death, do a lot more damage before he finally access. the best thing for him to do would be to exit the scene, and that's what we're trying to find a way to do. >> thank you. how would you compare the sanctions we have in place to the sanctions we have in place in and ron on a scale of one to ten comparative so that we can give a feel as to how those to match each other? >> i think in both cases we have imposed comprehensive and broad measures to isolate the regimes. >> comparable. >> i would say they're comparable. >> and how about comparing those then to well we did in libya when the chaos started there? is a comparable to what we did then? >> also comparable. i note that in libya an important distinction is that the action we took followed

action in the un security council which meant that the action we took in libya was accompanied by action globally which amplify the effect and obviously in both the cases of syria and ron we are seeking to develop as a broader multilateral coalition to increase pressures begin. >> what can you tell us about -- and i'm not asking for anything, but what can you tell us about your expectations? we have all seen year after year of sanctions. you know, a regime seems to be able to stand a whole lot of pain in order to hang on to power. how the u.s.s. where we are headed as far as the regime's ability to survive just as serious? >> like us said, i would hesitate to speculate on a specific time line, but i would say that there are very clear indications that the financial resources are strained.

there in financial straits. they are dramatically cut. not only as a result of the action against the energy sector, but also the impact on the tourism industry as a result of the violence. they have seen a dramatic drop in revenue, and that think it's clear that they are drawing down their foreign exchange reserves much more rapidly than it would like. >> thank you. >> thank you. thank you both for holding this important area. really is a moment in time. i hope that some of our forces will be heard by the people of syria who that was just mentioned, every single day just keep on keeping on. dispel the therein.

president of saab, instead of respecting the voices, the un estimates that more than 3500 people have already lost their lives, and thousands more injured. the syrian government has ordered the syrian troops, orchestrated the torture of prisoners, some only children, and president obama prayerfully said that the time has come for president assad to step aside. that was a clear message from our president. the above the administration also moved to implement a range of cuts in sanctions that we discussed a moment ago. i had teamed up with senator demint to call for the sanctions . the transactions between americans and the government of syria banning u.s. services to new investments in syria and banning the implications.

after all, the human system banned imported petroleum. since they purchased 90 percent of all syrian oil that is a big deal. unfortunately other members of the international community have stand up against the presence of sod. and i wanted to talk to you about one of those countries, russia. it is my understanding that the vigorous efforts, unable to secure a united nations cancer resolution condemning the government crackdown because of the russian and chinese veto. russia led the opposition. susan rice said that the united states was of raced, and she called it as a cheaper is by those who would rather sell the syrian government. so i guess the question is would use the -- you speak to the

russian opposition to any combination? is this that they want to sell weapons? is a something more not? >> i will have the deferred to the european assistance. it's out of my area. the part above syria. they won a peaceful solution. fine. they say they want the violence to stop. fine. they want the violence to stop. i would say for the purpose of this argument, let's try and take the russians at their word. they are sincere for the purpose of this argument. ..