they rely and occupy wall street. it is consistent with what i talk about in this book. >> chris christi has endorsed mitt romney. >> yes. i hang on everything. i think it is going to be mitt romney. i'm going to write about that i've had it with the upstarts he isn't ronald reagan. we know ronald reagan isn't running. he's been passed in the debate and he has a demonstrated ability to track liberals into voting for him. >> book tv interviews former president bill clinton about his recent book back to work why we need smarter government for a strong economy. >> president bill clinton in your book back to work you talk

about the fact the u.s. should get back in the future business. what do you mean by that? >> i mean we should have the strategy to build a future of share prosperity and shared responsibility is based on a cooperative relationship between the strong private economy and a smart government. i fink this battle we've been asked whether the government is the source of all of our problems and there is no such thing as a bad tax cut or good tax or bad regulation were good regulation has obscured what's really going on out there in the world. we still have a lot of the enormous advantages in america but we've lost ground relative to a lot of other countries and the percentage of the young adults with college degrees and half performance in standardized tests and the competitiveness of

the health care system what we get for what we pay and our ability to generate manufacturing in plant and ability to export and research and development capability in the area we know are growing in the years ahead. and i think it is because we've been asking the wrong questions. we need to dhaka how can we build an economy of shared prosperity what does the government to demand the private sector, how can they work together? >> what happened in 1997 about of time in your book talking about, i'm sorry, 19 eda the last three years what was the fundamental change was made? >> president carter had a very successful two years in office. i can look to the midterm elections his party did quite welcoming and we had about 10 million jobs in the carter years because we would like to have that 10 million back now. but at the end of his term we had this stagflation, high inflation, a stagnant growth, problems with managing our

foreign oil crisis, the iranian hostage crisis, trusting government was slow and president ronald reagan was elected on the government as the problem and then he said let me cut all the taxes i will cut off the light support of government and shrink the government, but it turned out either the white house for both parties in congress really wanted to shrink government very much, so we began to work to run systematic structural deficits for the first time in history coming into was the beginning along with some deutsch of and in the private sector of a slow erosion of our competitive positions but if we were going to have tough time any way to cut other countries with people just a smart as we are we obering to start rising so we have to be on our game to maintain america's position in the way, but by taking our ally of the ball which is doing what works in a modern high interdependent world and the same argument we had in 2010 all over again, the

government is the source of all the problems i think has caused a lot of trouble so but i try to do is talk about why the strategy didn't work, by what we did in the 90's worked better, and why it will work again and why i essentially have supported the positions that president obama has taken on energy and a number of areas because i think it is taking us in the direction we should be going. >> when you talk about solutions, your solutions to how we can get the economy back and talk about this and symbols commission and some of their recommendations. if you had been president and that commission had come out with its report what would you have done with it? >> i believe what i would have done is to say that this is a great piece of work, and i think that in general it is going in the right direction. i think we should use it as a blueprint and were also. i don't agree with everything in

the report for example i see in the book that while i agree with them that we are taxing at 35% of corporation taxes and we're the only major country still taxing overseas income which is keeping the money from coming back here but the tax take is only 23%, but like to see broadening the tax base and half the dow's close to 23% rate which is what we are taxing at any way as possible, but i would leave the r&d tax credit and. in other words, if we use it as a framework, we can always change it. they had a proposal on social security the was quite progressive. the actually gave more money to the lower income seniors, which is really important because as you saw from the report that came out today on the poverty statistics, poverty is actually going up among all the lower income seniors because notwithstanding medicare they still have significant out-of-pocket health care costs.

so, i like the social security, the drift of the social security proposal. on the other hand, if the economy were to produce more growth than the estimate, i think we should try to balance the budget sooner than they would by bringing the balance of 2035. on that score the are pretty conservative purity but they do know that we have to swallow the retirement of the baby boomers and they have to assume in their estimates we cannot bring health care costs back in line with inflation. i think it can much it's hard to assume if you run a commission like that. >> one of your 46 recommendations repatriating the tax from overseas when we talk to policy makers everyone seems to support that. why has that not become policy? >> for two reasons. reason number one is in 2004

president bush tried to -- let me back up and say the lull in america is if you are an american corporation your money overseas. if you bring it back to america to reinvest, whether it is in the new plant equipment, new employees or pay raises whenever you bring it back for you would allow it to the american tax whenever you pay overseas. now every other major country has gone to a territorial system which means they let people bring their money back without that tax. so as a result of a lot of the money gets parked overseas and eventually will be invested overseas. but in fairness from 2004 when president bush stressed this in congress and taxed the very modest 5.4%, to the three companies that repatriated not only didn't create any jobs in america and put all the money into the executive compensation,

the e eliminated about 30,000 jobs. my answer to that is this: i think the president should ask the republicans to work on the corporate tax reform and the democrats. i think the goal should be to get them as close to the tax take as possible which is 23%, which would mean you would have fewer people paying less than 20 which i think is not acceptable. that's what about the average american pays. while doing that, i would let them repatriated the following way to avoid the problem of 2004. i would make the same deal on that the president made on the payroll tax. i would say that if you can document that you have added to that employment than the portion used and during that is not subject to any tax bringing back right now for the 15% of 5.4 and

take that money and fund america's share of the infrastructure bank and then open it up to americans to invest in buying bonds to build america and open up to the foreign investors and open up to the sovereign funds from other countries and let america joined the ranks of other countries that are using private influence and public funds to modernize their infrastructure. so that's one problem. the other problem is the joint tax committee is inclined to say what they said in 2004. you can do it now but he would lose $80 billion over the long run. they shouldn't see that anymore. now that every other country changed their system we might as well get the money back now invested and put america back to work. >> also beckham your work you talk about executive compensation and executive compensation levels. do you think it means to be

regulated? >> no i don't. because of a try to take a whack at it by passing along a 93 with the economic plan to limit the tax deductibility of executive compensation. i believe we limited to a million dollars a year. so you can only deduct a million dollars a year. and inadvertently i might have contributed to another trend which has been destabilizing i think which is paying executives and stock they can defer cashing in until that rises in value. the problem with that this it reinforces the stockholders or more important than any other employees and the customers than the communities, and from the

1930's when a lot of the corporate law was made after the mid 70's or the late 70's, corporations were thought to be creatures of the state that got certain privacies like limited liability in return for which they have obligations to the shareholders and employees and customers in the communities. starting in the late 70's and going through the last 30 years, we've created this environment which shareholders count more than the employees or customers or the communities and the irony of this to people with the biggest stake in the long term profitability of the company have the least influence. the people with the biggest shake in the short-term profitability are the customers that have the most influence. i think that the policy should try to rebalanced that. if that happens, i think he would have more corporations running like nucor, and i talk about that in there. whether they would be trying to

take care of the employees, too. >> president clinton, you look at, in your book as well when you are talking about this and symbols commission you also talk about how perhaps we should be moving in that direction. >> i think over the long run the virtues are as follows. number one, you can structure it to be progressive so it doesn't fall on the necessities of the lower-income people. number two is good for exports because the last level of the tax which is basically the leader tax for the various steps in the production chain the last level doesn't fall on a product is sold in another country and the last level does fall on the products. it's one thing to help your exports that does not violate any international trade law.

second, prefers investment overconsumption. so it's more oriented towards the future than the present and that is something we have to do in america. so i think that that is something i think we will have to move to birds. but it is impossible to do now with middle america and in comes the decline in on the cost of living and with this hanging over us in the future and the urgent need to create jobs now, but i do believe that if we can succeed in the corporate tax reform we should take a look at individual tax reform as the sense of the commission recommends and then we should take a look at whether some or all of the taxes could be supplemented or replaced by that. >> do you think the congressional deficit-reduction are super committee should look at fundamental reform of the tax system? what do you think of the deficit

reduction committee structure in general? >> i think that structure is the only practical one with any chance of coming out with a program that will provide cover for democrats to vote for the things they don't like and republicans to vote for the things they don't like. they seem determined, so far, to do with the president recommended and what was reflected in the first budget deal last december which is not to have a lot of budget cuts or tax increases while this economy is weak. even the presidents surcharge on the people on my income group to pay for some of the things we need to do wouldn't trigger to 2013. so why haven't given up on that. it's tough because if you to get to $1.5 million of deficit reduction or a trillion, i'm sorry excuse me, it's hard to get there without any revenue at

all unless you can bring the health care costs more closely in line with inflation and the best thing to do that as i point out in this book are changing the delivery system to health care, and those things are hard to score. president ronald reagan signed a bill that he worked for the congress on the advice i dillinger work with the republican congress on to save money in medicare and medicaid. the bill president ronald reagan signed signs 15% more than was estimated to and eventually 15% more. the belli signed actually saved 50% for the first year, and i don't claim full credit for that. we work together democrats and republicans. we try to figure out what will work. but the point is i am convinced there are tons of things that can be done that wouldn't interrupt the quality of health care or leaving people feel their health care had been cut and bringing this inflation rate down. but it's hard to get the congressional committee to, quote, score because you can't know in advance exactly how much

money is involved. >> this is president bill clinton's fourth put back to work while we've smart government for the strong economy. mr. president, in this book you refer quite often to andrew hosting's next book of the american economy. >> it is a good book. and americans who are pessimistic should read it because it will get you out of your pessimism. it's good in two ways. first it shows that there are places in america that are learning into the future with confidence, and second, it describes what they do so that you could imagine wherever you live adopting some of that and putting the and where you live. not everybody seemed to become the silicon valley or the technical cluster around mit or have 100 dissimulation companies the way that orlando does. i was their last night talking about it.

not everybody can be the center of the genomic research the way san diego is. but everybody can do something. when we get the global initiative meeting for the united states last summer, the company called on shore said they would create a thousand jobs in joplin misery which had been devastated by the tornado with services ulcerous to other countries in the smaller community and more rural settings and if they were going to 12,000 more jobs in the next two years those are the kind of things we need to look at. so if people read the whole book it will help to break their pessimism. >> if you were president and you had the opportunity to be the infringer and chief how would you make it that the ipad is manufactured in the united states? what policies would you say?

>> i don't know that we can now because apple has invested a lot of money and their infrastructure but in general that and we ought to do is look at the overall structure which is rising in china, and then the u.s. to address the products are going to be made there and sold in america you have to look at the cost and the productivity of the work force not just the wages, you have to look at where the materials come from and i would be analyzing all of the high and manufacturing done in the world today not just in the ipad, and figure out which of those things could be made in america if we had a good generous research and development tax credit if they could have their labs on with the manufacturing and then i would organize instead of the tax incentives if the chinese

want the solar and wind jobs so that they put another $34 billion of incentives in with retraining, free land, the 20 year tax holiday they are determined to hold onto this as the key to the 21st century manufacturing. we don't have to do that much because we have the venture capital because we have a lot of laboratories doing this work because our capacity for solar and wind generation is staggering. we rank first or second in the world in the ability to do this to the fourth dakota alone could generate enough electricity for 25% of the use of america. from the wind if we had a national grid and you could see the power where the people are i would design a program of the kind of test jobs we can get. >> stevan martin and his review

of trouble today in "the wall street journal" lamented what he said was you going from being a new democrat to the back to big government and this is about the big government cutting back with a roar. what is your response to that? >> it's not true. when i was president, and as i pointed out, we spent less than 20% of gdp -- we spent less than 19% of gdp and we taxed less than 20% of gdp but at or under the post world war to leverage. when i was a governor we had the second lowest tax burden in the country to be i raised the taxes to fund education and economic development incentives and lower the taxes to provide tax incentives to create jobs and to reduce the income tax burden. i got rid of the income tax on 25% of people, so that's not

true. but i do what i want to do the way that we would disagree is he would like to keep on cutting the government and think everything would be wonderful. if you look at this book i call for the public-private partnership and infrastructure. it's nothing that america has never done. i have no objection to privatizing certain things. but on the other hand, if you look at the facts, it's not public versus private. it's what works best. for the simple we have privatized health care financing system that in 2009 in the deficit of the reduction raised health insurance premiums so much under the guise that costs were going of the health insurance profits went up 50% and 5 million people lost their health insurance. 3.5 million of them went on medicaid because they had no place else to go. on the government program. so the policy is that he would support or increase the government maintenance and so i

believe that i just don't think it is a public-private thing i think we have to have a cooperative attitude. i think there are a lot of things the public sector does better than the government will ever do. for example, i prefer tax credits to the government subsidies, taking the particular companies to win and lose, but i liked the section 16 of three program which i talked about a lot because it gives the equivalent of a tax credit startup so that we encourage start-ups as well as existing businesses. so, i know mr. more would like to see us continue to shrink the federal government more or less indiscriminately. i have no objection. when i was president we had the smallest federal government since dwight eisenhower's last year, smallest percentage of the federal work force since franklin roosevelt was president. i wouldn't mind doing that

again. but i've been there are some things that the government has to do. the government is good aggregating capital for the modern infrastructure for example, but i think that we need more private investment. so i would like to see the debate, and the committee could do this, you asked about the committee. they could say okay look the government is to do the national security committee have to help people through no fault of their own can't support themselves. we have made a decision that in their retirement years people should have a decent standard of living. we have a whole wealth of things that support economic development and if anything we have to do more because our competitors are. same thing with scientific research, same thing with technological expansion of access, same thing with education. what we need to do is to identify those things which the government should do and do them well but that no greater cost than is absolutely necessary. and then those things the private sector should do and

figure out how we can have a closer partnership. >> you are well known for your era of big government is over address to congress. you have 46 policy recommendations in this book. is this book consistent with that? >> i never said that bureau was over. what i said is the era in which the big government bureaucracies would deliver services and it would on an industrial model was over. keep in mind when i was the president and the social security administration won a national award for customer service we began to let people file their tax returns electronically. i tried to simplify the government and make it less bureaucratic. we got over 16,000 pages of government regulations on people. i think that we should continue to try to modernize and

streamline government. but if there is something that we need the government to do because we have a generally shared interest the market won't fix like clean air, clean water are because we have to do it to be competitive. manufacturing jobs in high-tech areas. then we ought to do that and do it well. >> finally and mr. president could you have written this book while in office? >> well, it deals with a lot of the things i've been concerned about since before i started running for president including the dramatic upsurge in the income inequality and the shrinking of the middle class prospects, which i was concerned about. but i know more about that now, and i think we have now more historical evidence. we have the 12 years before i was president, my eight years after and then the effort to struggle out of the financial crisis with president obama first two years and essentially

before he got to the new congress. and so i couldn't have written this exactly with this book is consistent with my philosophy. >> and we'll hear the new york historical society with president bill clinton talking about his book back to work. there is an even tonight with chelsea clinton. >> she's going to ask me questions about my book i hope i can remember. [laughter] you know one of the great signs of success in life is when your children know more than you do about everything so i am sure there will be on display tonight. >> thank you for your time and we will also be covering the event with chelsea clinton. >> now former president bill clinton's chief of the presentation from the new york historical society. [inaudible conversations]

>> good evening, ladies and gentlemen. on behalf of all of my colleagues at the doubleday publishing group, i would like to welcome you to the new york historical society for what promises to be a memorable evening of conversation. tonight's conversation will reach across the generations. we use that term in the old review of the young and focus on something of interest to everyone in this room collective future. the american dream is a powerful concept of being derailed, people are worried about their jobs, worried about the economy, they are worried that we have lost the competitive edge and concerned that america -- they are concerned that the american safety net will not be there for

them when they retire. my good friend president clinton has written a new book that addresses these concerns. in the back to work the president rights, and i quote, i came of age believe in that no matter what happens i would always be able to support myself. it became a crucial part of my identity. it drove me to spend a good portion of my adult life trying to give others the same chance. president clinton goes on to say it's heartbreaking to see so many people trapped in a web of idle dent and doubt. we have to change that and get america back in the future business. president clinton rises to face them in a dedicated public servant would be joined on stage

tonight with one of the brightest young your citizens also a champion of the public service, chelsea clinton. chelsea clinton is a graduate of stanford, has earned a master's from colombia and is currently pursuing a doctorate at oxford. she's also working with the clinton foundation and the clinton will win initiative. her recent professional and academic work has focused on improving access to health care for citizens around the world on equal rights and education for children. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming president clinton and chelsea clinton. [applause] ..