special-interest but then have a job back home and work to do that would make more money than what they're doing as a united states congress, and i think it is also a way to it is kind of unnatural term-limit affect on congress as well i don't know what the average tenure here in iowa or texas is. i'm probably going to say it's around seven or eight years to go back some one else comes in i frankly don't -- i'm not too concerned about what the congress loves me or not i'm concerned with the lead this country back on track.

i think i've laid out a plan that does that, and the american people as they look and see there is very consistent in their lives when it comes to these issues and that would fit that bill. you're pushing meshaal bachmann now for first place coming off the straw poll when what you think has happened since then -- we had four people out leading there may be one or two changes before we get from january 3rd and i would readily admit that our campaign didn't go as smoothly and as positively as i would have liked and the errors

i've made whether they were on the debate or what have you and i've asked americans give me a second look let me look at my policy and those were not laid out until the mid september at that particular point in time when they're falling in the polls again. i think americans are starting to an iowa in particular starting to take a different number, taking another look and they're finding out about me i was the newest and on the block on august 13th and 1 of the reasons i got in the race is because i didn't see anyone that

the republican voters were really excited about and i became the person they were excited about for a while. >> i'm curious how you came about making the decision on the hpv vaccine and what does that say about your leadership style? >> we've been in a continuing discussion about what texas state government's role should be defeating cancer in 2003 we passed a constitutional amendment that funded at $3 billion, 300 million so cancer research obviously come to anderson and in the tools we

can use to conquer these diseases that are really impacting people's quality-of-life, taking the loss lives, impacting their families. i've been very intrigued with and supported through the years. h-p was one of those. and as it was brought to me as an effective tool i made a political error and how i took it forward but i still believe that parents and our young people should have access obviously to that. when i put that in place with an executive order it had an opt out. i felt comfortable that the opt

out did speak to the issue of parental rights and subsequently found out that it didn't speak to it in a strong enough fashion. two things i would do differently. i still would go forward with every tool we have to defeat these cancers. i was on to the legislative process and how am often. >> we need to wrap this up. we are about three and a half weeks away from january 3rd and have a debate tomorrow night. the editorial board has a lot of things to contemplate the next few days. tell us why should you heard our endorsement and why should i know of voters support? >> i hope you all are looking for a consistent individual, not someone who would be questioned

about where are you going to be on this issue? i've been in public long enough that i've got -- this is a good story and a bad story, you have a record. people know what i believe, people know how i'm going to respond almost any issue. they know that my record on job creation is i will use the word unsurpassed from the standpoint of many of the other candidates on the stage. and when i talk about job creation this is about understanding the private sector is where the job creation is created. a government can even be an impediment or it can lower hurdles, taxes, regulations,

etc.. that is the key issue for this country. who is it that has the executive governing experience that can go in on day one and put into place policies that will get americans working. i've done that with my energy and jobs plan. i've done that with than having to deal with congress on the taxes, on spending. but a great amount of impact can be with the administrators and the staff goes administrators to bring into the government, and i feel very confident that as iowans and hopefully the board makes the decision of that vision, that track record and that consistency is what you as

citizens in this state and as members of the editorial board and people in the state of audio are looking for thank you for. have a good day. >> we have a good run in the morning. [inaudible conversations]

on this morning's washington journal we talked to the group

third play about the growing influence of independent voters. this is 40 minutes. >> joining us now with the organization third way. she leaves the social policy politics program. before we get started with this third way? >> guest: a moderate think tank and we advocate for a center-left politics both in policy and in politics, so we work on a variety of issues from a national security to culture issues to economic issues and energy and we try to find moderate solutions. islamic the organization just pulled a book on the independent voters especially as we go to next year would lead to an examination of this? >> we know what we were coming into an election year and what was the electorate going to look like in 2012 compared to 2008 and the big take away is it is a vastly different electorate than we saw in 2008 and that is going to be trouble for democrats

because we looked at the battleground states and asked the secretary of state's in each of the other eight that the partisan voter registration what the change in the registration was from 2008 to 2011 and the democratic share of the electorate is done in every single one of them. >> is there any cause to why that is happening? >> where the voters are going is to independent registration, and i think that is probably to do with the fact people are very frustrated with both sides at this point. there was also a decrease in the republicans but not as stark as democrats, democrats lost in those eight states about 825,000 voters, and republicans lost about 375,000 voters but independents gained 250,000 voters, so we think the independent are going to be the key to victory for either side in 2012. >> host: as far as the numbers when you contacted the states you just look at the one partisan, is only eight states

that have spurred some voting? >> guest: either of them have the voter registration, so we also look at the exit polls in the battleground states that don't have a partisan voter registration and michigan, wisconsin and virginia and ohio and the same trend carried their so if we could find out how many democrats have registered their we would probably see a similar show. was to use it democrats have controlled for these numbers if that is the case where are these numbers going as far as they are looking at for 2,012th. >> guest: democrats have their man for 2012, so the question is about focus i think and we can make this into the d.c. election trey turnout election or whether there's going to be the need to be a singular focus on winning and persuading independence for next year we can see the independent will be the key. host when you look at future of the independence look at what is being offered with this president or on the republican

side what is the chance of a third party campaign might emerge as someone who cast their vote towards? >> guest: it's hard for a third-party candidate when the current system. people might look for that and that might be something that pops up and i'm not sure how that would play in taking votes for one side to the other. independents are rented and they are not alone in the system. so if you look at 2008 democrats won by eight points, and in 2010 republicans won them by 19 points. so they've had a huge wild because the looking for somewhere to go in and that means a 27-point shift in just that two years so there would be massive shifts next year as well and we did is look at how president obama what do with the 2008 performance levels or the amount of independence the democrats won in 2010. if president obama wins the 50%

of independent as he did in 2008 they will be fine and only lose north carolina of the states that he carried. but if he performed at the levels that democrats did in 2010 or anywhere near that, they will be in big trouble and there are five swing states that are just off the table already, and then the rest of them really kind of tight enough, so it would be a very long election night. >> host: the role of independence when it comes to voter registration and election 2012 is the topic until 9:15. if you want to ask a question we have a line different for this segment. for those of you that labeled yourselves independent, it is this line, (202)737-0001 for those that identify yourself as an independent and then for all the others, (202)737-0002. you can send an e-mail journal@c-span.org and something on twitter as well.

for our discussion with is an independent? >> guest: we are self-described independent, people registered as independent but different states count different ways so some states the are an affiliate. some states they are registering for the independent party, as we count as the independence as everyone who did not register as a democratic or republican voter but had registered. >> guest: >> host: what drives an independent and how they vote? >> guest: we've done a lot of research on the center, and we've recently done a poll called a drop in a switch which was the obama voters from 2008 to have either dropped off in 2010 were switched to a republican in 2010, and those folks were really driven by concerns about the deficit and the economy, but they were also driven by just a general sense that america is not -- they are worried america will not be on the top but worried about are we going to be able to win the gold medal in the 21st century race

for the economy and that's the thing that drove them overall they were worried that countries like india and china were going to overtake us and they had a deep pessimism about our own country's future and worried our best days are behind us so they had a real concern about that and the was the biggest thing that drove them one of the things was registered independent voters was 2011 to states focused on whether audio with increase and 200,000 plus and in new hampshire what does that mean as we go in to the caucus and the primary season? >> guest: the thing about the caucus and the primary season is this will be focused on republicans obviously and republicans don't need the voters as much as democrats do just because they have a bigger bass especially right now 40% of the century to the country say they are conservatives and republicans need some independence not nearly as many as the democrats do in order to assemble a winning coalition, so it will mean something in the

primary, but likely they will not have a big role in selecting the nominee, so going into 22 of the question is going to be is the republican primary going to drive these candidates so far to the right that the independent source going to be turned off so they can't even when the smallest independent the need to get a victory next year. >> host: the first call was jacksonville florida pat independent line you were on good morning. >> caller: good morning. i have two points i'd like to make. one, when you registered as independent you are basically closing out of the primary. so whatever your voice is it is closed. second as an independent, one of the things that bothers me in florida is this supposedly call of the voter suppression. and i saw in mississippi they have that on the ballot you have to have government issued photo id to vote. that was overwhelmingly backed by all of the people in

mississippi, and i think black voters gave it 90% approval. it concerns me because when we lose the validity of the vote -- when i don't believe that the result that come in that morning are for real like what's happening in russia that as an independent that concerns me. the political parties are using the election as something to benefit their party. >> guest: that's a great question and you are absolutely right about the primary process. the primary process keeps of independent voters. some states issue reform like california to allow independent voters and any voters to vote in a party primary having an open primary system and that's something though we also think is a really good idea because it is a problem when about one third of the electorate or independent have no role in choosing who their choices are come election year so that is

definitely a big problem in florida in particular our study was very stark, so democrats lost about 5% of their voters in florida. that meant about 225,000 democratic voters that have left since 2008 and they have gained four points and independent and lost about two points and republicans as well. so we are seeing a big shift in florida and it is going to make a large difference next year. >> host: from 96 to 27 of the 1.5 million independent voters specifically. >> guest: florida is one of the big places this is really going to matter, and if the independence vote for president obama over the democrats at the level they did in 2010, then we are going to lose florida. >> host: they could vote as well could in the? >> guest: as well. independence could vote. right now they are really disgusted with both parties. when you look at the approval ratings they are even lower than the general population.

the general population isn't happy with either party that independence or even less happy to read about 70% disapproval of republicans and about 67% disapproval of democrats. so, you know, they are looking for a third option or they are looking for one of the parties to step up and say i'm going to represent the middle section of the electorate that's really not being represented at this point. >> host: atlanta georgia. ann, good morning. >> caller: good morning. good morning? >> host: you're on. go ahead. >> caller: i have a question for the leedy. she keeps talking about how the republicans want to -- you have to excuse me, i have a cold -- with the reason they lost is because most people didn't go out and vote in that election. thank you. >> guest: absolutely. that's right. the caller is absolutely right. looking at the 2010 turnout i don't think is a free good understanding -- doesn't give you a very good understanding of what will happen in 2012 because we know that the midterm

elections are very different in the turnout in presidential elections so we didn't rely on those turnout levels and making these predictions. what we looked at was the registration numbers and we looked and assumed it big chunks of democrats are fleeing democratic registration going to independence that means something about where they are intending to go next year in the electoral. that is where we focus for study and we think that means independence are going to play an even bigger role next year. certainly the obama team is going to be focused on turnout for democrats and keeping those numbers up for democrats but president obamacare and when more democrats than he won in 2008. there's not a way for men them to make up that among democrats, democratic voters because he already won 90% of them in 2008 so there aren't a lot of votes to be picked up and he's going to need to pick up that goal of

independence. >> host: satellite for independence as morning. kathy from new jersey, euronext. >> caller: welcome to the great state of new jersey brought down by a fat man. that being said, do you think the other two parties will allow the party to even come up because everybody i speak to, it doesn't matter -- all of the parties want to see somebody different run. do you think the other parties will even allow it and if so who do you think the candidate might be? i like gary johnson from new mexico. they won't even allow him in the the date. she sounds like a progressive democrat and republican page rentals who is the new nominee and i don't like any of them. i like gary johnson. they won't give him a chance. he should run as independent but he's been republican his whole life but i like him. there you go. everybody i speak to a new jersey they can't stand the it yet in trenton. >> host: we will let the guest response to the question.

>> guest: thanks so much, cathy. i will leave it to other people to identify who a third-party candidate might be to really think it is very hard for a third-party candidate to run and be successful in our current system. so, we have this huge increase and independence, but really they are going to be choosing likely between president obama and the gop nominee. and that is going to be the state of the election. there may be ase third party candidate who jumps in, but given the electoral college it's very, very difficult for them to get to victory. so, it's likely going to be one of those two choices. the question is just whether independence are going to come back to president obama, and they do like him personally. independence have a 50% personal approval rating of the president, and they want to like him and i think they are up for grabs still and if they are looking at -- if the president is speaking to them and making

sure that he is addressing them and not just in the base that is a past victory for him. >> host: columbus ohio. jim on the democrats' line. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. and i appreciate you use the word moderate which i don't hear everyone really wanting to talk about the independence like kathy sada truthfully like the are either republican or democrat and a progressive i voted for obama, he kept saying he's a socialist. what can the president do to assert the more moderate squawks

>> guest: to talk about whether independence or real independence there's a lot of folks in academia or in the political sphere there either just democrat or republican so it doesn't really mean anything so one thing we are working on with an academic is a look at of the electorate data over time, and when you look at that you realize that the independent source actually much more likely to switch back and forth in the votes between parties, and democrats even someone who says i'm a democrat plan a week democrat is much more likely to continue to vote with the party and the scene is true for republicans and so people who are independent are actually voting differently than the people who are identifying as partisans in either way so there is a difference there in terms of president obama did a great

job in 2008 making himself a moderate candidate talking it out bringing bringing red and blue america together so there is a market that's done extremely well for him so there's the potential for him to begin next year if the gop pushes itself to the right we've seen the independents are very negative to the tea party about 45% of them disapprove of the tea party. very low approval rating. the rest say they have no opinion, and the more there is this in transient in washington driven by the tea party stubbornness the more we will lose the independent the more the gop was the independent because they just don't have time for that kind of drawing a line of putting your foot down not listening to the other side. >> host: use a could comprise one-third of the vote more than any other e election.

>> guest: self-described independents and the registration numbers we will be at about one-third for the electorate which is a huge and the last time we had numbers like that was in 1976 and ford versus carter said that was also a time there was a lot of dissatisfaction people were fleeing the party because of watergate and the democratic party because of the antivietnam protest and here it could be that occupy wall street and the tea party are doing similar things. >> guest: indian on the republican line, a teaneck, go ahead. >> caller: as a tea party republican, when harry viewed and nancy pelosi were pushing through the health care not listening to the american people for 64% opposed it i don't think the republicans for blocking the come forth with a bill after bill and station rights and so forth and you saw that in the election of 2010 great support

for them and we want them to hold that line of conservatives and so the government doesn't grow so big but now 325 million americans citizens here about 125 million in taxpayer divided into $14.3 trillion to 15 trillion that's $114,000 ahead on the taxpayer. which party do you think is going to help with our debt load in the next election? >> guest: tina that is a great question and i think you are right that the independent store frustrated in 2010 much of the electorate in 2010 and that's why we saw that at 27-point sling from where they were in 2008. but i think the problem of both parties is that when they get these independent voters they think the demand eight and a day, you know, further -- they don't see it as being rent not alone, they think they own in

that group and so republicans have now gone too far and we've seen folks coming back and also leading the republican party in most of the states that we look at, republican registration is also down. so there's a lot of frustration to both sides so there's plenty of blame to go around here for why we are not getting anything done in washington. ..

i don't know if you're familiar with it. but i only voted for obama because i didn't want in a loose cannon, john mccain running for the white house. but i found a perfect one. dr. brezinski who is on the morning show show. and i spoke with him because i listen to it by accident and he shows that we need in the white house. he can really shape things out. he's knowledgeable in every subject from how to achieve peace in the middle east right at to how to bring back economic success. he's a very smart man to be a combination of fdr, president

eisenhower and pope john xxiii, a polish pope. i hope this happens and i hope you for the next election because i turn it off every time they talk about republican candidates. even chris mathews, my favorite show, outside a c-span of course, he is too much, you know, about all these dairy and the other run in spirit i'm bored with it already. i've been bored as before. why did it happen so fast? why can't we have it just about four months before the election? >> sheela, you're right the election season has really extended to what may be trying the american people's patience. we've seen so many debates with these republican primary candidates. i'm not sure but i think it would be an historic level of debate. i think that is actually running a big risk for republicans because the more they expose the extreme candidates, many of whom

probably have no chance of being their nominees. >> why they expose those people to the rest of america, who maybe wasn't paying attention to what michele bachmann was saying before, but now has been on primetime tv every other week, the more they run the risk of making themselves look incredibly extreme as the party and the more they associate themselves with the tea party and a very explicit way. mitt romney has says the tea party at a public and party are essentially the same thing. as i said that's a real danger at independents who don't view the tea party at the positive movement in this country. >> curiouser look at out of balance with voter registration from third way. colorado, florida, iowa, nevada, new hampshire, north carolina. you've mentioned some of what you've seen in a state specifically. what other would you like to highlight that hasn't hasn't been mentioned? >> it seems that colorado where it went up among every curve.

among democrats that one up one point among republicans that went up two points. among independents and went up nine points. so we are seen even in the states increasing their democratic registration, democrats share the electorate is getting smaller because they're more independents registering at a faster rate. >> branyan republican line for republicans. go ahead. >> guest: i'll be brief. you're getting close to my question. but i'll take my answer off the air. after release and election status, we show the electorate as red and blue, it blew been a muscular redbaiting ray. it's plain to see that the urban areas plane left. it is plain to see the rural areas leaning right from the red and blue lines. can you give us a feel for independent? i'd like to know, our independents more rural, mid-america? in the things that you found or

are they more urban? thanks again. >> thanks so much. independent firmness of permanent role. they tend to be slightly more wealthy than the general population. they tend to be slightly more male than the general population and they actually tend to be slightly less religious than the general population. so they are actually kind of an anti-establishment type an anti-maybe institutional type general people. but i think a lot of different people are independents in manchester general sense. >> to social issues sol and independent thinking? >> we haven't seen a lot of pop in the social issues. it's all about the deficit. it's been about the economy and we're a country is going moving slower. but i think social issues play in a certain way because a lot of people identify with the candidate and determine whether or not this person is someone

who they think it's kind of like them. and so we think social issues are really a prism that people can look through to identify a candidate, even if they are not voting on immigration. they can say i think that sounds like my kind of person. >> host: madison, florida. david, independent. >> guest: >> caller: i consider myself independent and most people on a scale of lenin to barry goldwater, barry goldwater been to. it seems like a third way would be a moderate form of the progress party on a scale of one to 10, where would you consider you on that spot? >> thank you so much, david. we do consider ourselves moderate progressives and that is where we focus our policies. and i think you are right that most of the american people are in the middle. we and the trappers and

switchers: mentioned did exactly what you just did. we asked on a one to nine scale, which you put yourself? one being conservative, nine being literal. the trappers and switchers i mentioned who was the obama voters who did not show up or switch to republican in 2010 were right there in the middle. and for the switchers in particular, they were just the right of center, but the real interesting thing was where they put the other parties. so we asked them, what he think republicans on the fine points they put republicans essentially at center ray. and they put democrats pretty significantly to the left. and that meant when he looked at the distance between themselves and those parties, and a solid double the themselves and where they put democrats than they did between where they put themselves on where they put republicans. so that was a big danger because if you go into an election year with people in the middle of thinking that they are double

the distance away from democrats than republicans, then that's probably democrats. >> president obama cannot run as a moderate and has a record to show he is far left and both issues. take that statement with a speech in kansas, especially a populist theme. how does that clear to the independent voter? >> president obama has largely had a moderate agenda. in fact, the health care was a moderate bill. it was one that we supported. it created stability and security for health care for americans. we are just in a very divisive time. his policies have been somebody's been caricatured as something that's very far to the left because there is so much anger from the tea party. so in order to win independents going forward, president obama needs to tap back into a positive vision for our country is going because that's what people are really looking for. independents are not people who see themselves as downtrodden. they are not people who see

themselves as being held down by anyone else and they are not antibusiness. so there is a careful line to walk there because you need to make sure that you are articulating a positive vision and not one that acts as if independent survey comes as some kind of system they can't control because that's not how they see themselves. >> host: elizabeth from carlsbad, california, good morning. >> caller: good morning, c-span. great program. my granddaughter asked me questions she said why do we have to say what they were independent, republican or democrat. when boehner spoke to obama, it seemed like they were on good terms. and then when the republicans turned around and had everybody sign a pledge that they would not go alone or they wouldn't get any money for the coming election, that seemed to change the whole picture of everything. it was an interesting question i really couldn't answer why we ask why can't we go out and vote for the president? why do we always have to have a

party and stay loyal to the party whether we agree with what they say. >> the partisan voter registration has to do with the primary process as we've talked about. so at their current primary process, especially in states with closed primaries, people or to register so they can go. if they don't register as one of the two parties, it means they have essentially no say in deciding who the candidates are going to be that they can choose from the next year. so that is a problem. going forward, i think we'll need to try to figure out how to work together little more. one of the things he did this past year in order to try to help there'd be at least a little more conversation across the party lines was to suggest that the republicans and democrats sit together for the state of the union so that the state of the union address wasn't a kind of partisan cheerleading fest with one standing up and cheering on the other side doing. but that they essentially picked

one person from the other side and said i'm going to sit by you for this one night. i think that was very powerful that actually have been. senator udall asked a republican to sit by him and then it kind of spiraled from there. i think it was powerful for the american people to see that their government, that their legislators could sit together and be pleasant, which is one of the big pieces that i think is missing sometimes from these debates. still, indiana, steve, democrats line. you are on with lanae erickson. >> caller: i'm a democrat. i always will be a democrat. i cannot understand why anybody would cruise the republican party because they are not for the poor and middle class. there is no way. and you know, the kid out there and just like right now, they've got control of the house and

they've actually got control of the senate, to because they filibuster every thing that the democrats try and put out. so you know, they are not doing anything for this country. they are not doing anything at all. >> host: what that means towards the independent voters, sir? what does that mean about independent voters? >> caller: if they vote for republicans this time here, in this country is going to be in such bad shape that will never get out of it. >> guest: steve, you're right though independents are looking for is getting something done. and he was going to really step up and deal with our major problems are facing right now. i think part of the problem with having most of many, many members of congress coming from districts that are tron in order to give them 90% of the vote is that they then end up being very

entrenched on one side or the other. they are thinking about making sure that they don't in any way cross their party for the party orthodoxy that's been around since the 1960s. and we've seen this on things like death as it appears the democrats on the deficit refused to many democrats, refused to deal with the entitlement programs. and that is something i work and i have to fix going to florida for going to make a dent in our deficit. republicans say there can be absolutely no revenue base. that is sent to me now just isn't possible for going to fix our deficit problem. most people in a country say we should do some of both. they should reform our entitlement programs and protect them for the future and make sure they are sustainable and we should make sure we can have enough revenue to invest and make investments in our future that we need to keep our economy going. so if folks like president obama

can tap into that, which i think he's done a very good job both in some of his speeches in the past few months, talking about he offered a big deficit reduction package which took on his own party in several ways. if they can talk about how to get something done and get past the gridlock in the lines drawn in the sand, then i think that's going to happen with these independents. >> host: douglasville, george will, michael on the independents fine. >> caller: my question would be, i don't believe this and all you social security as an example. republicans never liked it. they want to get rid of it. why should the democrat work with them? >> guest: michael, i think there is a lot of support on both sides of the idle for many of the programs and infrastructure we have in our country. and there's certainly a lot of support in america for those things. one of the things that we found in our polling is

overwhelmingly, people want their legislators to work together. and so, that is something that we've seen from independents to democrats. it's actually slower with republicans saying they want their legislators to work together. this something that people overwhelmingly say. in her trappers and switchers poland mentioned, we asked people to describe president obama in one word. but what the people most likely used was trying. people think he is trying to work with the other side. so having the other side refuse to work with him over and over again i think does not bode well for the next year. >> host: washington d.c., tony democrats line. >> caller: yes, i really don't believe that americans -- they take democracy for granted. and the reason i say that it's

because only 42% of the people voted in the last election. so that tells me that 58% of the american people don't care. so you know, the democrats, republicans, independents know that they have the electric paid for and they know it. so you know what it is? the american people get the government that they deserve. >> guest: tony, i think you're right that it is kind of shocking to think about the voter turnout in our country and how though it is. i'm from the state of minnesota where there is much higher voter turnout. and when i moved to massachusetts i was shocked by how few people actually went to the pool. but i think that you can understand why some of those independents might not show up in certain cases when they don't feel like either party represents them. again in a primary system where they are not allowed to

influence or even if they are led to vote the dawn of the biggest influence over who it is that the party chooses to represent them. for example, jon huntsman may be that appeal to a lot of independents, that he is going nowhere in the republican primary. said the independents may be frustrated. they are looking for a home. they're swooping wildly back and forth because they're trying to ascertain who will represent them. every time they vote for one party, the party misinterprets that boat has a mandate for whatever they want to do rather than remembering independents were the ones that put them there in the first place and really attending to the concerns of independence. >> host: "the wall street journal" has a point about how the president would do against mr. gingrich and mr. romney. in the higher the president would win according to a poll in florida and ohio the president would lose against mr. gingrich on this against mr. romney

pennsylvania. and mr. romney. talk about independent vote in the process, especially if the numbers are that close. >> guest: yeah, the very first numbers that have come out shining independent cross tabs on the gingrich versus obama head-to-head came out yesterday. what they showed is that independents are not -- are not looking at mr. gingrich as a serious person. they actually are much more programmed me when you look at the head-to-head in what the latest head-to-head site thought it was from a 53, obama 40 among independents. or for gingrich, when you look in a state like florida or pennsylvania, that support just drops off. so i think that is why a lot of folks on the democratic side are cheering for newt gingrich at this point. >> host: charlotte, north carolina, democrats. are you there? >> caller: yes, i'm here. good morning.

i watch c-span every morning and i enjoy listening to what i hear, but i just don't understand why in the world they could sit up there and keep saying the president obama is the biggest problem. we all knew about this dataset and all this mess before you got there. and now i see and understand things, but why keep not working with command and try to make things better for the country? we didn't put them in for us. they continue to fight and visit between one another, which is very unfair to the american people. and i think the people that are dared me to be left. they need to vote because it doesn't make sense to the american people like that. we're the ones suffering. they are the ones sitting up there with money. we are sitting out here struggling with food, bills, stuff like this so they don't have to worry about it.

>> guest: absolutely. as an obama came out huge problems to address an independent understand that and that's what they give him credit for trying as i said to have some big solutions to these problems. one of the things that people liked most about president obama when they voted in 2008 was a sense he was going to bring the country together. so it was in a red america were blue america, but the united states of america from his 2004 convention speech. something that skyrocketed him to the front of the pack. i think it is the thing people are continuing to look for, but it's very difficult in his dealings with congress and in dealings with the republican party because he faced this very extreme tea party movement that basically drove republicans not want to compromise on anything. it's understandable they don't because the tea partiers don't

want them to. so they are basically saying don't compromise and president of imus tried to, not even in the broom. it's a very difficult situation going forward. i think the pendulum might swing the other way. we are likely to see 2012 look somewhere between 2008 and 2010. that is because people see the stubbornness and the extremeness with which the tea party and the republican party are governing and how essentially in 201013 party candidates pick enough republican candidates. but not every republican candidate is a tea party. look at florida. they're all trying to out tea party each other. the same is true with the gop nomination for presidency. in 2012, will likely see the pendulum come back the other way, but the focus has to be on the independents because they are the ones on the decision. >> host: one more call from wayne, michigan. i went on the democratic line.

>> caller: yes, my question is a heavier toll election and i am wondering what point in the year to most people tend to register to vote? which you expect most people to her to be registered or would they be richard saenz in the summer or late in the fall right before elections? thank you. >> guest: that's a great question, i went. i don't know the answer in terms of statistics and people would register. we are looking at the changing registration will continue to look every single month going forward now because we discussed that this will be a trend that continues to unfold through 2012. we'll keep you updated on that, but i think we're likely to see this gap even current independents getting higher and democrats and republicans suffering. >> host: the reports got independence day 2012 and our >> guest: wrote the study. where can i find it online? >> guest: it is that third

way.org. >> host: lanae erickson, thanks for your time today. >> guest: thank you. >> part of the point of the book is to change the way we think about change and to make us much more worried than i think we are instinctively on the potential suddenness of disintegration or collapse. to make us realize that what happened to the soviet union, what happens to the financial system in 2007 under 2008, but is currently happening to the european union is the kind of thing that can happen to any complex adaptive system. it can suddenly malfunctioned.

>> now, an interview with homeland security secretary, janet napolitano. she recently returned from a trip to delhi, where she signed an aviation security agreement. she talks about aviation budget. hour.s an

privege >> is my privilege and pleasure to introduce her speaker today.o it's a very good time to cringet and napolitano because she just returned to the unitedes. state. janet napolitano is the third dr. ptary of the department ofe. homelandhi security.tment, obvi, founded after 9/11 tasked with keeping us all safe and secure. she's just returned from a whirlwind trip to paris where she was participate anything the g6 plus 1 interior ministers and security ministers meeting and then a trip to the gulf in doe what, dubai and ab -- abu dhabi, and she'd like to talk about the role of international partnerships in homeland security. janet napolitano. [applause] >> thank you. well, thank you very much. good morning to everybody. thanks, terry, ask thanks to the council on foreign relations for

having this session here today. i'm excited to join you. i've just returned, as was said, from a very productive trip to europe and to the middle east where we advanced a number of critical issues with our partners. um, and one of the questions i am frequently asked when people hear i have been overseas is what exactly does the homeland security department do abroad. and the answer is, quite frankly, a huge amount. because in today's world the nexus between homeland security and security abroad cannot be decoupled. we live in a globalized world. it is connected by complex finishes this which -- networks in which the movement of people and goods and ideas never stops. and threats to our domestic security both physical and economic do not recognize national boundaries. it's the interconnected nature of travel and trade and commerce

that means a vulnerability or gap across the globe can impact security thousands of miles away. so whether it's a printer card ridge from yemen -- cartridge from yemen, a traveler from nigeria, an unregistered boat coming from central america, the threats and the opportunities from all corners of the world are my daily work. our domestic security, thus, is inextricably linked to the rest of the world. it is a shared responsibility among governments, the private sector, individuals and communities. it is a global enterprise. and the challenges faced by the united states in this regard are not unique to us. interior ministers, home secretaries and other security officials around the world confront them. the shared challenges present a chance to build mutually-beneficial partnerships and to leverage resources to

strengthen the safety and security of peoples around the world. this is particularly true where mutual economic opportunity can be enhanced by shared security responsibility. let me put some granularity on this. let me give you some examples of multilateral initiatives we have undertaken over the past several years. one, we have been working closely with the international civil aviation organization on an initiative to strengthen the global aviation system against ever-evolving terrorist threats. this effort culminated last year with the adoption by 190 countries at the icao general assembly on a declaration of aviation security which, in effect, laid a new foundation for a global aviation security system. at the same time, for more than a year now the department of

homeland security has been leading a global supply chain security initiative to protect the vast amounts of goods and commerce that traverse the globe every day and that drive our global economy. we work closely with the world customs organization, the international maritime organization and icao. and what do these initiatives look like in practice? it mean that is the wco at the united states' urging has created something called program global shield that enables customs services around the world to alert each other to suspicious shipments of precursor chemicals used to make explosives. we've made dozens of seizures in this regard stopping just last year 33 metric tons. when it comes to securing the global supply chain, our work was already underway when we saw the attempted terrorist attacks on cargo operations out of yemen in october of 2010.

following that incident, the director of the tsa, john pistole, and a team of inspectors immediately went to yemen to assess cargo security and to see how we could help make it more secure. we have provided threats -- or training, excuse me, not only to yemen, but indeed, around the world to help secure the cargo network. along with -- those are just two examples, but along with these multilateral initiatives, we are worked on a bilateral basis with many countries around the world. and as was mentioned, the trip i just took provides an illustration of how these multilateral and bilateral relationships work. at the g6 plus 1 meeting which brings together dhs and our counterpart ministries from europe's top six countries, six largest countries, we made great progress on concludeing an agreement with the europeans on information sharing about passenger travel known colloquially as pnr, passenger

name records. these are records that we use to analyze travelers boarding flights to the united states from abroad and to make sure that passengers are not susceptible to doing harm to aviation or to the homeland. we also made on the same trip important progress on key bilateral agreements with countries in the middle middle east. in the qatar we signed an aviation agreement to strengthen our ability to come bass transnational crime and other threats while facilitating travel and international trade. we established common objectives on security and trade in two unique ways. first, we've agreed with qatar to have the department of homeland security, the united states, put customs and immigrations officers in the dubai airport or the doha airport to advise officials on the admissibility of passengers into the united states prior to

boarding and traveling to our country. if a passenger is determined to be admissible, our agents will provide that information to the qatar officials, and they in turn can prevent the passenger from traveling at all. we have similar agreements with nine other countries, but this is the first of two such agreements now in the middle east. second, we agreed to pilot the use of global entry which is cbp's trusted travelers program to expedite the industry into the united states for a limited number of vetted qatari citizens. again, there are similar arrangements with five other countries, notably canada and mexico, but this is the first such agreement in the middle east. with these two agreements, we will better secure our country and better facilitate lawful travel and trade with qatar. in the uae we met with the crown prince of abu dhabi. this was the third time i've been to abu dhabi, actually, as

secretary. as in doha, we agreed to place our customs and immigration officers at abu dhabi airport to advise officials about the admissibility of passengers. we also signed a letter of intent to commence the process of establishing preclearance in abu dhabi. preclearance allows passengers and their luggage heading to the united states to be fully screened by our customs and immigration officials before boarding the plane in their country of origin. allowing us effectively to push our borders outward while facilitating a more beneficial customer and traveler experience. now, the issues tackled in these sorts of meetings, obviously, represent only a fraction of the work we do overseas. i haven't talked about the work we're doing on cybersecurity, on human trafficking, on emergency

response. our extensive collaboration with a number of countries from if mexico to india. but i think the important conclusion is that there is a new paradigm in how our country engages with our foreign partners. an engagement driven by the mutual opportunity to enhance security and to promote economic benefits at the same time. every refinement on how we share information, every efficiency we gain in screening for high-risk travelers helps us get out of the way of legitimate travel and trade and facilitate the work that must go on around the world. because if perceived security hassles discourage people from coming to the united states to do business and to spend money, we lose out. and in today's world we simply cannot afford to do that. other opportunities for these types of mutually-beneficial

engagement agreements exist across the homeland security enterprise. cybersecurity in particular continues to emerge as a shared concern across nations while combating transnational crime, human trafficking and other law enforcement issues, obviously, requires international cooperations. we will continue to work across the globe, indeed, immediately upon my return i joined president obama and canadian prime minister harper to announce the beyond the borders action plan which dhs has had a key role in shaping and will have a primary role in implementing. canada is our largest trading partner, and this action plan will further strengthen coordination with the combination of security and the facilitation of trade and commerce across the border. so this new paradigm, the engagement at the interior/home secretary level, the merger of

security interests with travel and trade and commercial interests becomes, i believe, the new future of homeland security. and in the end, i think it will help make us even more secure. so i will stop talking there, terry, and let's have some conversation. thank you all very much. [applause] >> well, that gives us a lot to talk about. a new paradigm for engaging international partners on these issues, and i want to ask about that in kind of a general sense. some of the partnerships that you're developing are not with traditional, he is to haveically close allies. you're branching out, it sounds like. what are the benchmarks you look for in an international partnership that you know the governments are going to be able to do the job? let me put it colloquially, how do you know who you can trust? >> well, first of all, we work closely -- there's a lot of work

that goes on before we enter into an agreement. there's, and that work ongoing develops that sense of trust. as i mentioned, this was my third time in abu dhabi. it's the kind of relationship where you know each other by name, you call each other on the phone in between trips. when they're in washington, they visit and like weez, the reverse -- likewise, the reverse. so part of it is at the personal level, part of it, obviously, is at the diplomatic level. we work closely with the state department. and then we often, in these agreements, do a pilot first just to make sure that everybody has a common understanding, that we know what is expected of us, they know what is expected of them. and then we go into full implementation. so, for example, the new agreement with the uae we will begin first with putting immigration and customs officials in the airport at abu dhabi, and then we'll move into

full preclearance. and preclearance, you know, this is, this is a big deal. we don't have preclearance in many places around the world. to be able to take travelers and, in effect, enter them into the united states before they board a plane abroad is a huge step forward and really facilitating that international engagement. >> these issues can occasionally become political issues and even -- >> really? [laughter] >> -- get demagogued. let me ask that. you can imagine parts of our political spectrum who just don't like the sound of that, that we're going to preclear people out of parts of the world which we've seen as sources of violent extremism, international terrorism. how do you put those minds or those arguments to rest? >> well, first of all, the standards and requirements for preclearance are quite stiff. and it's not as if we are not physically there. we are physically there.

it's our system that is being deployed. but it's being deployed earlier in the process. it's being deployed overseas. we've had preclearance, we have it in some very unusual places in some respects. i think we have it in bermuda. we have it at shannon and dublin airports in ireland. but this was in terms of us looking across the globe and seeing where we really want to, um, not just facilitate travel, but know who's traveling, these countries in the gulf and in the middle east are key partners. and it's advantageous to them, it's advantageous to us. it allows us to find a smart middle ground or common ground, better said, where our interests coincide. and that in and of itself helps build a stronger strategic partnership. >> how you know it succeeds? >> um, well, we will, i think we'll see, um, travelers move to

the precleared routes. i think that'll be the easiest way to see because they'll recognize that having precleared abroad so that when you get off of that 13-hour flight and land at dulles or jfk you don't have to wait in lines, i think most travelers would view that as an advantage. so i think we'll measure it by how travel routes adjust. >> let me ask you a question that i know the secretary of the department of homeland security always gets, but we're sheer, so why -- we're here, so why not? what keeps you up at night as you look at the raft of endeavors and programs that you're undertaking to address threats and problems, what keeps you up at night? >> well, i think, you know, the things i know about don't keep me up because they're being handled. it's the things you don't know about that can imagine where you're trying to really think

your way through and be proactive. that can engage you in some nighttime thinking. so the known/unknown as has been said before is something i think anyone in a position like this one has to, has to be concerned with. >> privacy. >> uh-huh. >> which was a big issue in the agreement that you reached with the g6 plus 1. and more broadly than that for a lot of people in a lot of countries around the world, there's this sense of encroach ing eyes of government on us at every single stage. you get that all the time. so what do you say as you reach these agreements, push our borders and the united states way of doing things out into countries which have different traditions and values perhaps? is big sister watching? >> i think big sis is my moniker in the drudge report -- [laughter] so i knew i actually made it when i had my own name in the

drudge report. yeah, that's a standard. [laughter] the pnr agreement is a good example of this. the pnr agreement, actually, will be with the e.u., which means we've had to negotiate with the commission, we've now finished an agreement and initialed it. we anticipate it to be approved by the council next week on the 13th, and then we will have to go and have it ratified by the european parliament. we have been the lead negotiator for the u.s. on this agreement, and one of the key sticking points has been data privacy protection which is one of the fundamental rights in the charter of rights in the e.u.. you know, there, you know, one of the key things we've had to do is to educate our e.u. partners that the united states values privacy too, and we value our personal information. we just have different legal systems by which to address them. and in the new pnr agreement i

think we've reached accommodation with the e.u. privacy interests consistent with the way the united states handles privacy and data protection issues. at the same time, by being able to exchange pnr and have that agreement in place we will have one of the more effective and important tools available to us to know about the international travel of potential terrorists, transnational criminals and the like. i could mention new zealand si beautiful la sas si, david headley are just two of the individuals we have helped identify through the pnr data. >> for every one of those, the horror stories are out there that there's a david headley who's not the david headley you want. >> right. >> how long does his personal information, his data remain in

databanks that he might rightly feel violate his privacy? >> under the new agreement, the travel information remains six months, and then there's a tiered system by which it is anonymized but is available to be retrieved on an as-needed basis. so what we've done is kind of look at it from a what do you think from a law enforcement perspective, a security perspective and a privacy perspective. and the, um, e.u. negotiators felt that was a reasonable way to approach the problem. i think it's reasonable as well, obviously. >> and then that gets us to terrorism, violent extremism. the threat is of a different nature now. ten years ago, obviously, al-qaeda had a country to operate from. their capacities have been degraded, and you have almost a kind of spread of the threat down to individual lone wolfs as you said. how significant a threat is

that, the individual traveler, the individual lone wolf terrorist? and what kind of systems can defend against that? >> well, i think, you know, what we try to do is maximize the ability to protect global systems, to protect the global aviation system, the global maritime system, the cargo system. it's obviously something that one country cannot do by itself, that's why you have to have international engagement. you have to have standards. you have to do capacity build anything this regard. it's, obviously, something that will never be 100 percent guaranteed. but to the extent we can strengthen these international partnerships, really deal with the mutually-beneficial common ground, smart security, smart commercial progress, it heightens our ability to protect the global systems. you know, we all know that one plane going down would be a

disaster in terms of loss of life and property, but it also would have a huge economic impact both direct and indirect. thus, you know, that's why you can within nine months knit together 190 countries to come together and say these are the new standards that we are going to abide by and agree to an implementation plan and a set of criteria and capacity building initiatives that countries like the united states can help provide. >> so do you feel that the department of homeland security and the defenses that were established after 9/11 to respond to al-qaeda, a coherent, transnational terrorist organization, do they meet today's threats? >> yeah, because they've evolved. we have not been stagnant in the post-9/11 world. we've built on, the department built on the work of my two predecessors, built on our greater knowledge and maturity

in the whole area of security. i'll give you an example. tsa which was, basically, stood up from nothing after 9/11 had the premise, you know, and had to really that all travelers will be treated alike. and as we have grown and matured, as technology has gotten better we've been able to say, no, it's time to move to a more risk-based attempt. you have to do it slowly because of the nature of our adversary, but you can let kids keep their shoe on, you can start moving toward trusted traveler programs where people can go in different lines. i think we'll be looking at some other efforts to limit the amount of what's known in the trade as divestiture, things tough take off before -- you have to take off before you can clear the airport line. you will all appreciate this as you travel over the holidays. but you won't see that over this holiday, but you will begin to see pilots and things of that

nature as we move forward, and that's a big philosophical change, right? the underpinning has changed. the risk-based approach as opposed to treat everyone alike approach. as we mature, as we grow, we move in that direction. and our international partners do as well. >> well, there is a kind of cartoon version of tsa which you see out there, the don't touch my junk version of what americans have to go through. how big of a problem, how big of a hurdle is that when you're dealing with international partners that they see american air security as too intrusive, as that cartoon version? is that a problem? >> no, it really hasn't been. in fact, many european countries are installing and deploying the same kinds of security regimes we do. why? because they've been threatened. we do it because not only have we been attacked by air, but we continue to see threats threatst

regard. there's nothing that happens in the air environment that's not responsive to a threat. what we're trying to do now is say, all right, we need to take care of security, but we also need to be able to move, you know, 1.5, 2 million people a day through the nation's 400-plus airports. how do we do that most effectively? how do we fund research that will help us over the long haul, the long term speed up passenger travel? how do we make sure that the cargo that's going in that passenger hold is safe and secure? it's a combination of many hayiers. it's information -- layers. it's information gathering, it's analysis, it's intelligence sharing, it's different modes of looking at cargo and people as they even somewhere with the perimeter of an airport up to and including the last step, basically, being the actual gate. >> let's talk about cargo. for years it's been seen as a potential vulnerability, the sheer scale of cargo that goes

around the world and the potential for attacks based in it. let me ask it this way, why haven't there been cargo-based terrorist attacks given how little cargo is actually screened? >> well, there have been attempted. and, um, the next time you see a toner cartridge coming out of yemen, you might want to check twice. and, indeed, one of the risk factors we now look for is, is in the kind of cargo you would anticipate coming out of yemen? and i think there have been attempts. one of the things that we are working toward is literally just as in the passenger environment where we're going to move more toward risk based, cargo as well. emerging -- merging our prescreening program for cargo, a trusted shipper program as it were with european definitions of the same. you know, as cargo moves around

the globe working with countries around the globe in the same tag tag -- fashion. so that when you see cargo palettized from shippers that have been moving that kind of cargo for years, you know, you might put it over here always with a certain amount of random checking just to be sure and, you know, the single drop or the unusual piece of cargo from an unusual place, focusing your security resources there. all the while merging, finding that sweet spot between security and travel and commerce and, again, all countries of the world have an interest in that. so it gives the united states an opportunity to engage an entirely different level. >> and you mentioned the private sector. when your talking about securing the global supply chain, shippers, this has not historically been a concern of that industry. is that a problem at all, getting private corporations onboard to go through these

procedures, to harden up their defenses? >> oh, they're, they're very supportive of this. why? because as we do this, for example, as we work toward a truly global supply chain security system, we can harmonize things. we can reduce paperwork. we can reduce the amount of human intervention that has to occur as cargo moves from place of origin to ultimate place of intended delivery. um, so for them i think they see it as a way to reduce, ultimately, the travel costs, the transaction costs they incur moving, filling out the form in one country that asks for the same information but in a different way just a few yards away as they enter another country. so harmonizing those entry and exit procedures and information, requiring more information to be not only delivered electronically, but well in advance of when the cargo actually is moving so that you,

um, don't wait until something shows up at a border in order to make sure that it clears the customs side and the security side. >> so you haven't seen a resistance on the part of -- >> no. they want us to move faster. yeah. and i tell 'em, we're moving as fast as we can. this is not an easy task to take hundreds of nations all of whom have an interest and a sovereign interest in some of these issues and harmonize their requirements. >> a couple of the other issues that you raised, cybersecurity. this is, obviously, a huge issue for this country and others. how to the international -- how do the international partnerships work in an area where it is so hard, where there isn't national territory in cyberspace? >> you know, after the u.s./e.u. summit in lisbon in november of 2010 one of the deliverables out of that was a cyber working

group and, indeed, there's been a lot of work done u.s./e.u. on cybersecurity since then including participation in some joint scenario tabletop-type exercises involving cyber intrusions, disruptions, attacks. um, so there are some of those international engagements that have begun, but it would be premature for me to say they are where they need to be. we know this is an area of growing, you know, interference, attack. it's not just potential, um, potentially dangerous from a security standpoint, but from a commercial standpoint the effect of inte -- the theft of intellectual property that occurs online is a huge economic issue particularly for the united states where your economy is so based on innovation and creativity, being the first in the world the develop something new. and if that can just be stolen online, that's a deficit for us. so i think that as we move

forward the whole cybersecurity realm will be such a key, key international issue even though we are homeland security. >> and how do you differentiate between the threat in cyberspace from random hackers or even extremist groups and nation states when you think about russia and georgia, when you think about china? >> um, i think the issue of attribution is a very troublesome one. obviously, you know, the department of defense takes the view and rightfully so that we need a cyber command in that when they are nation-state actors, that's just another theater that needs to be dealt with. and we work with them. um, but much of what we see, of course, isn't attributed to nation states per se. at least not at this point. and we have to deal with it as an individual or a group actor that may be located in an

international environment or use the resources that are located internationally. for example, you may have a actor or actors located in one country. they are facilitating crimes in the another. the isp may be located somewhere totally different. so just the whole chain of things that are involved in cyber, in cyber crime, in cybersecurity and cyberspace very complicated, very fast. >> and one of those cyber crimes which you mentioned gets into another area, and that is the exploitation of children -- >> right. >> -- online and, beyond that, human sex trafficking of women and children. this is a problem that president bush tried the to put on the international agenda at his speech at the united nations general assembly, and it just seems to get worse. ..

how high a priority as a aquatic >> it's always a priority. these are terrible cases and that the dems are younger and younger each day. >> and when you look at all of these areas, dou you see -- do you see that essentially exporting the united states standards, the united states way bordersg things borders the united states or is there a new multilateral standard emerging on these issues? >> you know, i think u.s.es? standards can help inform what

happened., but other countries e other ways, sometimes better ways, cheaper ways to get to the same results. so when we think about this we think about it in many layers. with the bilateral and multilateral. we think about not just moving the borders of the united states out word but welcoming people and trade earlier in the global process. >> i want to ask about something in the news. the drill that went down in iran -- the drone that went down in iran. this is a technology which is going to spread by hook or by crook by the nature of technology. and represents a significant homeland security threat. do you look at that at all as the next decade of drone technology and how it might spread? do you think about that?

>> sure. it goes into what keeps you up at night question that you asked earlier which is to say that we no new technology devices are developed each day. they have been used to great effect by the united states abroad, but you have to anticipate the reverse could also be true. so we work not just among the community of nations but across the federal government as well with all of ours -- agencies with problems at the door. >> we are going to go to questions now. what i would like to ask is wait for the microphone and when you stand up to speak, introduce yourself and your affiliation. let's get some questions. we will start right here. >> madam secretary, mark

question is down in the weed. reasonable european friend of mine related a horrible experience he had coming in to jfk airport not so much the procedures themselves but the fact that only four out of 14 were functioning of all proportion to the number of travel. a year ago there was a similar experience covered by a column in the financial times related to dulles airport. .. this less disagreeable? >> that day he was traveling, here is the problem, simply put from a management standpoint. these airports were built and designed well before current security needs and well before the big white body plane.

and what we have, we have huge rush hours. all the planes arrive around the same time. they fled area and there's a dead period. from us staffing perspective that is difficult but we know it and we need to staff appropriately. we now get daily readouts of what the wait times are. we have worked to increase staffing at jfk, dulles, lax is another airport with wait times we think are unacceptable. so we are doing our best and we will continue to work on those. but again, to the point, when we can do clearance for example, any time we do pre clearance, anytime we expand global entry which is the international -- a card you can get which allows you to circumvent the line here

and go right on through. every time we expand those programs we take pressure off of those lines and that will be the advantage to us all. >> right here. >> good morning. david truly, senior fellow of homeland security policy institute. i wonder if you could share with us your latest sense of counterterrorism cooperation with india and the challenges going forward. >> that goes to india, out of the meeting between the prime minister agree will the president was a homeland security dialogue. so we have campaigned to work jointly on passenger travel, counterterrorism, police training, all of those

developments, cybersecurity being another one. i would venture to say there is a lot of work left to be done. part of it is the nature of india, big complicated country. different bureaucratic structure than we have. but i think as we saw with the attack on mumbai and other issues in india they have key terrorism issues that we can, i think, provide assistance from and when we talk about finding that difference between security protection and commerce, a great example where we can have a more robust relationship that we have right now. >> christopher graves with ogilvy. beyond the discipline and rigor of security it must demand more creativity and innovation. two questions to that. you may speak more freely. what country or countries do you

think are absolutely leading the way in security, creativity and innovation and why? what are they doing and how do you foster that? >> we are one of the leaders in creativity and innovation. one of the questions i get is why don't we do things the way israel does them? for example at the airport? we do some things that are common. we look at what they do. but realize that israel has basically one international airport and they process 50,000 passengers a day. we have hundreds that we process in the millions. scaleability issues are quite different. because we have a more large and complex system we have to be thinking differently all the time but in the sense of innovation and creativity, we are constantly looking at ways to better enable us to identify

who may be a traveler or what may be a piece of cargo that is at risk to us. we sponsor basic research and support it in terms of screening, sensing devices and the like. also in terms of how better to spot the haters that could be indicators of potential violent activity. one of the regrets i have in the budget process that we are in is the support for this kind of research that is consistently getting cut down because it doesn't produce an immediate effect. the research cycle is longer but i believe as we continue to knit together commercial and security issues, that technology and that kind of creativity is going to be necessary moving forward. we have really been in a fight

over on the hill with congress explaining why it is that a department called homeland security has to have a heavy research budget associated with it. >> let's go to the back. back there. >> madam secretary, your department deals -- fox news. obviously your department handles issues of fact shooters. wondering what your assessment is of the virginia tech responds yesterday and do you think anything can be done about these? >> first of all let's take a moment to extend our sympathies to the family and colleagues of the officer who was killed. a horrible crime. i saw them when i was a prosecutor and as a governor. too soon to assess the response

at virginia tech. but it really goes minute by minute. at least superficially it looks like it was very strong and very effective and i am not sure there will always be things you can do better. on the outside at least initially it looks very good and strong effective response. in terms of prevention, one of the things we constantly work on is how do you identify what are the behavior's, the techniques, things that would enable the local police officer to say is this person is getting ready to go nuts? we have for example the gun shop owner killing in texas who saw the odd behavior of a customer and what he was buying and alerted law enforcement and probably prevented another massacre at fort hood.

in this instance who knows what tipoff there would have been? but one of the things we focus on when i talk in my little preparatory remarks about shared responsibility and nationally, security is a shared responsibility with in the united states and a shared responsibility with local police officers but also a shared responsibility with the citizenry at large. that is the genesis of the see something say something machine. you are trying to at least increase the likelihood that you can pick up somebody before they start shooting. it is very difficult. >> great. >> thank you. ted baldwin with c f r. i went to second the pre clearance which very much is a big break for which is a long time coming. a lot of resistance historically

from customs and border protection to expansion and pre clearance. the concern over the rest of 40. what do you do when you have someone probing. they come into free clearance, custom's agent begins to ask questions and get nervous and i change my mind that don't want to come in to the united states and began to probe the potential weaknesses at entry. if you don't have the authority to arrest or detain that kind of person what is the level of risk or how did you get around it? it is a big concern about expansion and pre clearance despite the benefits you regulate. >> from a security standpoint if they don't come into the u.s. that may be a good thing. but part of it is exchanging information with the authority of the country of origin. and what makes pre clearance work is good information sharing

their goes along with it. >> back there. >> good to see you. i thought from what i read in terms of the u.s. canada, be on the borders action plan there were some major breakthroughs with respect to the mutual security of canada and the united states. there i say perimeter security will be enhanced. i had a specific question that is about reverse inspections at the land borders between canada and the united states. something that has been very difficult to effect to 8. i understand that is contemplated within the action plan that there will be rivers inspection where usc beat the officers will be in canada in terms of people and goods heading for the u.s. border and

the canadian border agency will be in the u.s.. my specific question is how does it look in terms of actually getting reverse inspection implemented? where do you think it might be implemented initially and what do you see as the time line? >> first of all i think the notion of perimeter security is a huge deal taking pressure off of the actual land border itself, working closely with canada which has been a great partner in this effort. in fact the meeting i will go to right after this will involve rail travel between the two countries and how to facilitate that. with respect to the particular issue you raised the vancouver quarter, that will start shortly. we will see how that goes and look at expansion in the other

major moves. i hesitate even to give a firm timeline because everybody will write it down and if you don't need it you are late but got to take it one step at a time but the vancouver area is frequently a traveled area so it is a good place to push. >> yes, sir. >> kevin shea, multiplier capital. the intelligence community, dod and the rest of government getting very well organized to confront the cyberthreat it is difficult for the private sector to achieve the same level of organization. could you speak about the private partnership programs that are in process? the i s ps and where those programs like to go? >> there is a lot going on in the cyberworld with the i s ps and other private sector

partners particularly in the a -- the 18 critical sectors of the economy that have security implications and economic implications, telecommunications and utilities and the like. i could give you the alphabet soup of partnerships. there are a lot of them. i would like to see some of these things over time consolidated because they are atomized in my judgment. what we all are striving for is again that sweet where the business interests of the private-sector merge with security interests of the department of homeland security. so we will continue to worked in that regard together because the united states like many other countries, the actual critical infrastructure of the nation is not controlled by the government but is controlled by the private sector. >> is there a special challenge dealing with that industry because of the culture, very

libertarian? wide open culture? >> cyber is first of all hiring personnel as a challenge. the and fiber -- d-backs if i can use that term, don't think about working for the department of homeland security of the first employment opportunity. i like to make it as attractive as possible. they don't have to wear a tie. they can telecommutes and all that stuff. i think right now there is a huge demand on the defense and civilian side for cyberpersonnel. there will exchange so rapidly. by the time we talk about a particular phenomenon it is already out of date. from the management perspective my number one thing right now is hiring. >> right in the middle.

>> thank you. i am from a japanese multinational. korea and panama, colombia, transports partnership for a bit of -- people and commodity and money. is named twenty-first century highest conduct. how is your department going to have a say in the standard in terms of the security commerce and also if you could, exchange with china in terms of security and commerce? >> on tpp r anticipate primarily but also t.s. l.a. --tsa will

have a vital role in standards moving forward as will similar global arrangements the united states has. with respect to china we have done some bilateral operations and bilateral initiatives and haven't reached an agreement on intellectual property protection with china. remains to be seen whether and how that will be implemented but at least on paper we have one. we have done some exchanges. we have done some things that are training exchange in nature. but i would venture to say there is a lot more we could do at the bilateral level with china. >> okay. all the way back there. >> thanks for taking our

questions. after the turner conference friend about a year ago, dhs announced a goal of 100% inbound cargo on inbound international passenger flights for the u.s.. that goal has been changed. has the goal been changed -- dean lind tend to inspect 100% of inbound cargo or screen at? will that comply with congressional requirements? >> what we are doing obviously is inspecting 100% of high risk cargo and screening 100% of all cargo on international passenger flights. we could give the exact time lines and things of that nature. the whole 100% label initially required in statute is something we have been talking with congress about not just in terms of air cargo but cargo in

general because it really is not practical and there are other ways to issue the same security objective. we have a security objective. the issue is there is 100% screening mandate actually further your way to media objective or by doing layers of security and others things, can you reach the objective more quickly? we think the latter. but it does require congress to rethinks the statute a bit. we are working with them on that. >> okay. right up here. >> madam secretary. herb richardson. let me compliment you on running one of the most complex and difficult organizations in the government. a riva is an international engine company with people all over the world.

one of the initiatives is to reach out to industry such as ours and offer an opportunity to evaluate the vulnerabilities that exist in various locations in the u.s. which is an excellent thing to do. the question i have is will that exist for those individuals bleaker still u.s. citizens we are sending overseas such as india. will you be providing or will dhs provide the same assessment from a physical security standpoint to protect our u.s. citizens in countries overseas? secondly, now that the obama administration has appointed dhs as the lead in cybersecurity will you be also providing vulnerability assessments for cybersecurity? >> the answer is i don't know. i think we are interested in doing so. i don't know that that will be the first thing that we do.

right now our key initiatives are based on securing the u.s. government networks and making sure that they can be free from intrusion or intruded upon with the ability to detect patch repair or whatever. with respect to vulnerability assessments i cannot tell you whether there will be product or initiative in that regard in the near-term. >> we have time for one more question. i would like to remind everybody this meeting is on the record. at the conclusion of our meeting secretary napolitano -- stacey did so she can get on to -- the next interview. that is it exactly. one more question. that is all we have time for. here is the lucky one. there we go.

>> thank you, my name is gene. would you elaborate how the department? >> we're still waiting for our f y 12 budget. my understanding from the appropriators is they are near an agreement for us. one of the areas that is likely to the most impacted and the grants we can provide to states and localities or things like disaster response, first responder training, i have real concerns about that because states and localities are cutting the budgets. this is really a national capacity we need to have which is to say if there is a disaster anywhere, be it mother nature or major earthquake or hurricane hits land for a terrorist

incident, we need to be able to have that security safety net. but i do think the grants are likely to take a hit. another area that i think and hopefully will be restored from the house was the whole area of research as i mentioned earlier. i believe that technology is going to help us solve some of our more difficult problems in the area where we are trying to have security and commercial operations coexist. that research cycle needs constant feeding. so i would hate to see that cut off in the name of the budget because i think that would be a little foolish. we have to do a better job educating the members of congress about why it is that this research is valuable for the taxpayer. we are working on that but hopefully the f y 12 budget will

do that. with respect to f y 13, we are now in that process with omb and those budget numbers will come out in the normal course of business and you will see them shortly but we are all under the same pressure and that is in an era of constraint, fiscal resources making sure we are spending dollars wisely and well and that goes back to the program today which is to say that in the area of homeland security, the more we can smooth business processes the more we can work globally, the more we can harmonize requirements, the more we can reduce burdens on travel and commerce but at the same time enhance our security that is a net positive in the united states. it is a new way to engage with

countries around the world and i am hopeful and anticipate that the budget will support those efforts. >> quick follow-up. how much was sequestration should it happen? >> we're not talking about sequestration. >> there you go. there it is. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

mayor cory bookers summit trip to new hampshire to campaign for president obama. today he spoke of the new hampshire institute of politics. this event was organized by the school's college democrats and the dnc group organizing for america. this is just under an hour.

[inaudible conversations] >> good morning, everybody. it's an honor and a blessing to have mayor looker here to speak this morning. he's taken time out of hisand bl schedule to be your the college of graduates. i want to provide everyone withe a little bit of background.. ae's a pound stanford alum st grudge meeting with a b.a. inng political science as well as mouth and sociology and heas a s earned a scholarship after stanforsd in which he continueds his education at the queens college of oxford universityoxfe acquired his bachelet said history and he also played varsity football while a stamford and made academic team. following his education, mayor booker created his degree at yale university involving himself in such programs as big brother and the students' association. after completion of the degree booker spend his remaining year as a newark resident taking an active role in the community he became the program coordinator of the newark youth project.

it's a pretty man such as mayor bricker speak about the president has done for us and how we can become changemakers and our own community with the obama 2012 campaign. mayor booker can relate to such issues as creating jobs, restoring security where he's currently taken on such tasks himself. mayor booker and his team have appealed to several businesses and convinced them to move their national headquarters to newark. this allowed over 50 businesses to start and expand. also he is credited with a nursing educational reform efforts in public schools. these efforts leading to opportunities for the youth of newark. mayor booker also manages to make time for people of newark as well as people from all over about concerns that arise through the city over social networks like woodring and facebook. he cares a great deal about change by the way he exemplifies his actions and speech so on behalf of the democrats organizing for america it is a

great pleasure to welcome cory booker. [applause] >> i had to retweet. she said she tweeted me. how are we doing? are we in the sestak? are we excited? not for me though. i'm thrilled to be here. i'm looking at my time. i want to manage it appropriately. i have to agendas. one to talk about obama and the issues and i open the question and answer we can get into that as much as possible but really what i am hoping to do is exploit the folks that are here especially the students to get involved in this campaign. i was interviewed by the campus reporter who's actually on the mitt romney campaign, and i actually encourage that. at the end of the day you have to understand democracy cannot be a spectator sport. we can't sit on the sidelines. i always say we as americans are getting caught up in a

educational where we are getting so upset about what is going on in the world we are not getting off of our technical anatomy is tookises and getting it in the game doing something about it. the problem today in america we are going to have to reprint for is not the tree all the words and violent actions of the bad people, the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. when i came out of school before i graduated was a great introduction i appreciate that but i'm hoping next time i get introduced in new hampshire will be from a jury out of shape individual who was not an athlete like i used to be. please close your eyes and imagine me because i used to be chiseled. now i just jiggle. [laughter] i hear the cameras are back there. tmz. arthu tmz? no, not at all? [laughter] if i started dating kim car - iain, tmz would be here. [laughter]

when i came out of law school before i came out of school i really wanted to start getting involved in what my parents talked about as being a conspiracy of love. ultimately the united states of america our history can be summed up as a conspiracy of love, ordinary americans willing to do extraordinary things. more than was asked of them were required of them to come deutsch, continued acts of decency and love to make a difference and i am a product of that. into the town i moved into because of black and white americans who came together in an organization called the fair housing council that allowed my family to be the first black family to move into an all white town, as my dad called us in a tub of vanilla ice cream. allowed my parents coming out of college to find their first job to order the chicago urban league and many were not hiring african-americans. was a conspiracy of love in the small town of south carolina where my dad's mother, a single mom, couldn't to take care of

them and the community came together. the conspiracy of love to in power might add not only to be raised but when it came time to go to college, recently over thanksgiving he broke into tears talking about these people whose names he can't even remember who put dollar bills and envelopes to enable him to afford college, and to me this is the beautiful thing about america. i know i stand here now drinking from the bells of freedom and liberty and opportunity that i did not bid. lavishly like wheeled in from the banquet tables prepared to us by our ancestors and what frustrates me now is that so many of us are sinking into the sciences and, surrendering to it as opposed to realizing we have a choice model how tough times are we can just consume the blessings we were given or we can metabolize them and put them to work so i landed in the ward new jersey from my state going to the biggest city to try to make a difference. i was still a law student. the first person i met was this amazing woman named virginia

jones. we named a street after her this year and she passed away in january but she was a president from a high rise low-income housing that eventually towers. i'm cory booker from yale law school and i'm here to help you. she looked at me you want to help me? she almost looked amused by it and she said okay and closed her door. you need to follow me. she walked me down five flights of stairs, through the courtyard into the middle of martin luther king boulevard, cars going back and forth and said if you want to help me tell me when you see around you? why c? yeah, described the neighborhood. okay, i see graffiti and i just described the more i talked more she shook her head and she said you can't help me she turned around and walked away. i chased after her and stopped her from behind and i said what are you talking about? she looked at the heart and she said the way you need to

understand something and problems, that is all there is ever going to be but if you are one of those people that opens your eyes and sees hope and possibility, sees promise, potential, love one newark, jersey and michael to where i first met ms. jones and it was two guys talking about our nation and hope for what could happen in the country and at

that point i said what ever he doesn't want to follow him. i want to be part of what his vision but a part of the vision and understanding he has about what the real story of america is, a place of inclusion, we believe that everybody has something to contribute. when people join the military they shouldn't have to lie about how god made them. we are a nation that believes, and i found out this just sitting at the dinner table, people who do good hard work, the same job as others should get paid the same amount of money and barack obama by passing legislation making changes to ensure that women wh werea doing this did work get paid the same amount of money it it was things we talked about abou understanding the fundamental fs economy to lead into the future we cannot have a first rate

economy if we have a second rate education system. if college education for example gets more and more out of their reach of other americans and that is what happened and we all understand this america went from being the number one country in the globe and percentage of the population there were college graduates now we are down to eight or nine and so to see obama now as president obama charge liberal on many of these things, greater e. delusion, greater affordability helping young people achieve their dreams for their lives that i had for mine, the dream of contributing, the dream of country living, giving back, being part of the conspiracy. and so i stand here on a college campus so proud in my city i see what's happened president obama doubled the funding for things like pell grants to enable more of my citizens and newark to afford to go to college. president obama has helped figure out ways to actually get more funding for kids when it

comes to the student loan program. in fact he took little people collecting money and he reinvested into our student loan programs. when i came into yale law school and didn't feel golden handcuffs because they said if you go into public service we will forgive your loans overeaten year period. after ten years of making your payments if you still have money you go to yale forgive it. i thought was the greatest thing in the world. one of the reasons i chose to go to yale law school. i turned around, and president obama that went to a former interior wall school hertford [laughter] has now created a national program that is the exact same thing. so i stand here pretty proud. i've seen how credit card companies use to set up these things in my campus at stanford, and signed kids up offering them all kinds of things and have the time we were like a free t-shirt, for is be? i can get a frisbee.

sign up for credit cards the would be all these hidden things and before you know it you'd be leaving college in your university and in debt to credit cards president obama said that shouldn't be the way and he's reformed those programs. i've seen a tough economy this is what makes -- i did use to have this big afro pull out all of my hair and in a tough economy i have seen ideas that are not republican or democrat in fact they come from many republicans. my first fund-raiser was this incredible guy named jack kemp republican back in those days in the 90's who drew a fund-raiser for a democrat running for the mayor in a place like newark because we shared the same ideas. they were not republican ideas. jack kemp believe if you give the right tax incentives and urban areas, like empowerment zones which were a jack kemp idea to create that opportunity. malae have a president for

dhaka, saying the same kind of thing let's give businesses tax incentives to reinvest in our economy. i love the fact is we of programs to help small businesses i can tell small businesses over the last three plus years in the administration they've cut taxes 17 times he is now proposing things like giving businesses tax incentives to hire people giving businesses tax incentives to hire people coming home from iraq and afghanistan. ideas to increase buy here this ridiculousness coming out of congress people are interested in taking partisan fights the in doing what i know can help my community today. but yet we've still succeeded. we've succeeded in getting in my city as well as all across america payroll tax cuts and now i can't believe congress is fighting over it because i had a residence in line getting a

thousand dollars more on average in their paychecks and people to struggle to provide for their family to make ends meet what do they do? they don't sit on it and hold it to the invest in to our economy. president for dhaka, understood we can stimulate jobs says he's taking tremendous criticism but in my city thanks to the stimulus fact, he built roads and affordable housing and provided jobs and thousands of people in my city got opportunities in the toughest economy of our lifetime because of the actions of our president. and so i stand here pretty psyched right now. in my generation, every generation will face great crises and it is unavoidable. my parents' generation faced the big battle of creating a more equal nation of civil-rights for all. my grandparents' generation face the great depression and world war. america is not defined by our

challenges. every generation is defined by how we beat post-religious. what will we stand up for? and what will we do? so this election again is about i'm not a partisan politician. a large percentage of my supporters and new work new jersey come from republicans who didn't stop at jack kemp because to me i'm not about ideology and about pragmatism will get the job done what will educate more people, what will give businesses moving, what will get banks to invest? what will provide more security for families? i'm a pragmatist and i am proud of my country right now. i'm proud that in the deep depths of the crisis despite the cameras on to focus on all those rendered in washington there are leaders standing up and getting things done. i'm the first person to tell you health care legislation was not perfect. it wasn't perfect and we have a

severe problem. america cannot spend close to over 17% of its gdp on health care costs when our closest competitor nations are spending about 12. we are not going to put one thing right now what he did to me was heroic. you know there are millions of children in america that couldn't get health care? because they had something called pre-existing conditions. do i want to live in a nation where you have a child born with a disease or disability that can't get coverage? that's not the america that i believe in. i talk to college students all the time and i see kids graduating from college and they are worried because they are being kicked off their health care coverage. to me that is not the america that i want to be the incoming and i see that now we have laws in place kids can stay on their parents coverage until they are

26. so this is a complicated time. there are no easy ways to success. in fact a precondition to triumph is great frustration. it is. i know this from calculus and college. [laughter] the precondition to success is great frustration. but i do believe this nation has a destiny, and i do believe also with the great american leader frederick douglass said you don't get everything you paid for but you have to pay for everything that you get. our nation is not just going to ease out of the crisis. a politician that tells you that they don't want anything from you but you don't have to sacrifice anything or give anything, do anything, they are selling you something you shouldn't buy. america did not get to where it is on it an easy road. we have to make tough choices. we had to make sacrifice, and

that is the only thing possible to get some of the challenge we have now but i have faith. king said change will not relent on the wings of inevitability of must be carried on the backs of people willing to struggle. and frankly when i do stop and college campuses because i see that tradition continues the traditions of my parents to end up in college in the early sixties involved with lots of people who went to the movements and freedom rides and marches the tradition continues from me in my generation when i saw my friends from jail or stanford or the colleges i went to giving up the luxury is wonderful jobs being offered i'm going to go and served. i'm going to do teach for america in fact my generation like when the cops found the organization. i'm going to go to the united states military come serve my country. as it empowers me to continue in my life. and now it's your generation of college students, and the

wonderful thing about this generation is you are in my opinion the millennials generation. you'll be the defining generation the country pays. and so, as i conclude and begin to open for questions i just want to end with where i started with the young lady who witold you. in 2002i ran for mayor and lost that election and there is a documentary dhaka called street fight and if you see somebody pumping your fist in the back -- it's like now one of the current tv documentary is to watch before you die. it won the film festival, the canadian film festival, and it was nominated for the academy award but it lost to a film called march of the dam penguin's. [laughter] that was the official title. i'm not making it up. that was the official title. they dropped the damn to be marked acceptable. i thought if morgan freeman was

married in me shading in the morning and would win an academy award. [laughter] i make exceptions for pain gwen's. i hate those little flightless rodents. i'm not bitter or anything. it was a painfully election. i hope you go to netflix if you have a chance. esquire magazine comes to me and says we one you to be in our issue of the 40 best and brightest in america and like a what are you talking about? i don't feel like the best test or the brightest on anything i just lost and the election. let me write an election about real american heroes that we don't often see in the tv cameras or newspaper articles. let me write an article for esquire about one of the best and brightest and they said okay, editor and mark warren said absolutely. i went to interview ms. virginia jones, one of my heroes in the nation. people stand in the trenches and front lines of the american dream and do whatever they can

to make this country be real, makes a promise real, standing there interviewing her and she tells me this story that shocked me. i've known her a long time at that point. served in the american military and was amazing and she it's a knock on her door and it's not an arrogant guy like me saying he wanted to help it was just a woman crying, couldn't speak to her. a greater by the arms and said follow me and it dragged her down five flights of stairs to the lobby and ms. jones comes to the lobby and sees her son lying on the ground with bullet holes and she's telling me the story. i wheeled into the lobby, fell upon his chest and immediately he was dead. you hear a story like that and it is the most unnatural thing for a parent to have to bury a

child and i remember putting down my reporter's hand looking at her and the first thing that came to mind was a stupid thing to say. no one tells you how to deal with situations like that said the first thing that came to mind -- i know where she works, she makes decent money but she chooses to live in what then became public housing. she and i actually paid market rent to live in these buildings. i said ms. jones, i know where you work. i know the money you must make. i said why do you still live in these buildings and have to walk through the lobby every day your son was murdered and she almost looked at me insulted by the question and she folded her arms and looks at me and says why do i still live in brick towers? i said yeah. and she goes why do i still live in apartment 58? i said yeah, why? she looked at me harder and said why am i still the tenant president in these buildings and have been since the day they

were built in 1969? i'm thinking that's electoral longevity i need to find out what's going on there. laughter career and i said yeah, why? and she stood up st. -- she's a woman that is 5 feet but at that moment i was looking up to her and she said to me because i am in charge of homeland security. and i hugged her. each and everyone of us must understand that we are stronger than we know, more powerful than we believe, more why is the and we will ever understand but especially us that are coming out of school. you really can make a difference. you really can make change. you can transform this world but it starts with taking action and taking responsibility. this election will determine the destiny of the globe. there will be decisions made in the next four years there will have global impacts. i for one have faith in the

president of the united states of america. i believe he will be a good steward of the nation, and most of all i believe he believes in us and our leadership ability the matter your political beliefs i hope this is a campaign that here's more from the american people than ever before because it is that important and i hope that you here today will choose not just to vote but to leave the vehicle we as we go into next november. thank you. [applause] >> q&a. will you run around with a microphone? yes, sir. you have a shaved head. it's a good look. i trust a shaved head man. [laughter] mr. obama said you have any advice to give me? i said shave the head. didn't do it. i think he would have gotten ten more planes.

mitt romney needs to shave his head. that man's here is to perfect it defies gravity. [laughter] all right, in the back. >> were you able to have school choice? >> i will repeat the question because -- anyplace in new jersey but especially in newark. >> the question just in case tmz didn't get it did we have school choice in the work new jersey, do we have abundant options and the answer is no we haven't gotten there yet because there were a lot of forces the resisted in the past but i have a weird alignment. really i think the most and talked about greatest achievement of the administration are because of a guy named arne duncan that the secretary of education and

president teamed up to do transformative things and one of them was to create greater accountability in schools because union accountability that greater access to laws that may in power school choice everything from charter schools to alternative school models and i've talked to the secretary of education a lot. it takes awhile to scale up. yesterday i was at the ribbon cutting for another new school model in the ward new jersey. we've opened up a lot of different types of schools ranging from charter schools to schools you could graduate having to years of college credit by the time you graduate from schools. schools for disaffected youth who wouldn't otherwise drop out, schools for kids coming out of incarceration. we are trying to create what you said the empowerment so they can get up and look at the world and say i've got five, six, seven schools to choose from all i can figure out what's best for my kid if i can flip a switch and get their overnight but in newark new jersey watch us.

we've brought together a combination of local law activists, national philanthropist's some of you might have heard about market zuckerberg. i quit on him and he said you are my millionths fall were you get he said if you invest in philanthropy it can leverage change so this year we opened up five new schools this year in newark we've expanded a large percentage of the schools to longer school days. we just started a literacy program we watched the kids are not only getting books but they are getting books to yonah, ten books just little kids when the owner books they take pride in reading. we are doing a lot of initiatives to get where you want to go and i encourage your buddy interested to go to the foundation for york's future you can see what we are doing with the philanthropy to get on the

competitive guy like we all should be and i want to work to be a national model for reform and amazing in the time of partisanship i've got a republican governor you have probably never heard of him he is very soft-spoken but a republican governor in new jersey who is 100% on board with what we are trying to do. >> president obama could have made the single largest example of freedom of trees and education by declaring washington, d.c. as a starting point for universal rights such as trice but he did not do that. in fact there was quite a public effort to continue a certain program and he more less denied the continuation of that program and the question goes back who

and why is blocking choice in education not only in newark and d.c. and new hampshire here in fact. i submitted the legislation and 92 for choice and education, but i will tell you it was hijacked at the state legislative office services for rewriting legislation and it a rout in such a way that when it came out of the legislative services i could not even recognize the freedom of choice in education. >> let me say two things, that is a substantive question you obviously know a lot about education in the nation it's very obvious to me so for those of you who don't know washington, d.c. had a program that was a three sector strategy the bus started under meir williams which said we are going to try to expand the charter school base and get more federal funding for public education and

stirred a scholarship program for kids in the disadvantaged to go to any school you want to and be as a democrat and other democrats put this was great. senators like dianne feinstein came out and endorsed the program. washington, d.c. is however the only place where the federal government has the control and the sense over the funding of the schools so you're right. right now i've talked to the senators and people in the administration about this that took about one of those prongs' which is a scholarship back and you really can agree on that but i will tell you this when it comes to federal policy to the rest of the united states people say you have a lot in common with barack obama. a lot in common? he went to a privileged wall school in a nice neighborhood. i went to yale. he started out as a first job as a community organizer. i was a neighborhood coordinator. he was born in the united states of america. i was born in washington, d.c..

d.c. is different. federal policy -- i tell you this again i deal with a lot of people all over the political spectrum when it comes to federal policy of barack obama has done to in power choice is more than any other president and i will give you this example the race to the top fund basically says states have to do better in change in their laws to change after the fund that made it easier of listed caps on charter schools, one of things the guilaume administration was able to do and they would move their caps so when it comes to federal policy it really is a state-by-state battle but this federal government gave a lot of incentives where there was this barrier to the education reform but provide a lot of state houses to clean up their act and allow for more school choice so

i agree with you the program for the 40,000 plus kids in washington, d.c. for a fraction of them really but i disagree when it comes to the obama administration doing better than in getting criticized for arne duncan to get booed by the teachers' union when he went to speak their shows you this is why i love obama is a centrist jogging attack on both sides of the trial because what he was doing to liberalize educational chollet said for the urban communities especially that serve a lot of minorities and to me this is the greatest. i want to think the greatest national security threat is in america? the greatest national security threat. i asked this once of a republican after he talked up the war in iraq and talked about the nuclear proliferation which concerns me obviously as we know with pakistan's weapons right now it was after he talked about terrorism. i was in an audience smaller than this and i was one of those guys it's annoying they raise their hands and then the defense

speech before the question. i asked the question at the end of my speech what is the greatest in the next years and he didn't miss a beat he just said the greatest threat is the fact we are not educating our children in this nation. think about this. there's a wonderful mckinsey study if you have a chance to mckinsey 2,009 disparity study. the look of the impact of in such low graduation rates and if you can close to the disparity between minorities in this country in terms of high school graduation rates you can increase the gdp by over trillion dollars but what is even scarier is the work force is getting more diverse. the majority of the work force in the decades ahead in your lifetime are going to be minorities and if we continue to fall, failed to heal the gaps of the majority is less and less educated and we continue to fall, not retreating nearly enough people from the science and technology engineering and math, falling on the people they graduate from colleges what's going to happen to the

competitive, what's going to happen to the globe so this is what i say when i talk with barack obama i was on the phone yesterday not talking politics talking policy and when i see their conservative agenda to make k-12 education more successful in america and again this is the only area that republicans many who are staunch republicans as opposed to ideological who have the ambition say they've done an incredible job, k-12 education moving the country better in the right direction but more importantly the college students because i school is not enough. the unemployment rate for college graduates is around 5% for people who don't have a college education are not 25% so what we do to make college more affordable? right now the stark difference between all the republican candidates but i've been watching these debates and the president with a proven record and there is obvious. dewaal -- and this was in the last congressional will come a

congressional budget, the pell grants to read the we want to see a nation that makes college less and less affordable or do we want a nation that has call which more and more affordable? this is what i say that i see what's happening right now and i will give you tomorrow examples because it is giving me the chance to pick it to something i'm passionate about and i passionately support the president. you cannot during times of fiscal austerity -- and we need to cut government spending -- what we could repeat that we need to cut government spending to revive a big city mayor. we need to cut federal spending. we cannot continue to spend at the rate -- you can't balance your budget by saying i'm going won'end more .. but listen to me right now. when they need to go on a bill yet they could not a pound of flesh and what i mean by that is

that in times of fiscal austerity it cuts education, cut taxes to hire your education. i'm the first mayor to tell you with a high-profile expenditure in my city money is not the answer. it's a necessary but not sufficient. investments in high your education are the answer to see a system like one of the greatest public education systems on the globe continue to cut their budget spending more on prisons in california than they are in the university system and the system that was launching more and more engineers, doctors, scientists, the illusions and artists, inventors to see the system and what is happening to it right now because of budget cuts and budget cuts and more and more out of the reach of regular people that is a crime in this country so we will never be able to fuel our economy unless we have systems to prepare the used to not just compete but lead in the 21st century.

the last thing i will see which is something i know obama believes as well and another reason i follow him is another lunacy in the nation we take kids into the country sometimes as early as a few months old we educate them k-12. they get their college education. i was talking to the president of the samford of university just last month in october. educate them, get them graduate degrees and as soon as the fenech will kick them out of the country. you know how many people in the nation graduate from graduate school? their student visas are done and we try to drive them out of the nation? i can point to so many of the industrialist inventors and the nation that for immigrants. our immigration policy is still forming and that's why obama and others support the gerry. we pay for people's education and support that. if they show they are great citizens of america and want to become job creators as i hear the term all the time while we kicking them out of the country?

i use that to answer to questions. now on the immigration? no problem. other questions? yes, sir. >> [inaudible] >> are you a junior or senior? [laughter] >> you talked about the idea of important issues relative to national security. without addressing and global security? and the issue which barack obama seems to have swept under the rug he refuses to even acknowledge the terminology in speeches relative to global climate change or global warming better called a global warming because it does sound like the catastrophe that is in progress if nothing is done. the important -- i will be like you and give a little speech

before i ask the question. >> i can't criticize you, you can criticize me when i get a stick in my eye. >> like policies like equal rights for citizens or equal pay for women were being able to have any sexual identity you have and not be condemned, all of these important social issues that are driven by your conspiracy of love, which i love the term, they don't have a timeframe associated with them. we are experiencing a ticking time bomb with climate change and the fuse is growing shorter down to now about maybe a decade to 15 years before we have to take dramatic action before

tipping point scientifically acknowledge and on refuted tipping plants are realized such as the permafrost releasing vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere. our leaders are feeling us. i would contend that they are feeling us is almost too warm of the term. they almost should be subject to crimes against humanity in my mind. every academy of science from every industrialized nation all agree global climate change is happening and to a large extent it is almost irrefutably due to -- >> what we take your point and let me -- you're point is a very good one, and you talk like my mother does when i would get bad grades. it's a crime against humanity

must develop your mind and serve your country. but look, you are saying that we are a ticking time bomb running out of time. i'm telling you right now the explosions are already starting. i live in a city that has been impacted by our neglect. i've got epidemic asthma rates from air quality that is horrendous. my city is one of the hottest places in the state because of lack of green space and so much paved roads to buy half epidemic obesity rates for my kids and that is an environmental issue and high unemployment rates. you and i both know that is an environmental issues. why? because as we have taken incredible investments from the federal government, programs the obama administration made to deal with climate issues, what

have we done? retired disaffected youth and put them into programs to retrofit city building because i was last night at an awards ceremony where may become a year michael bloomberg got an award and he's given me the best political the vice - forgotten. it's one simple thing and i advise any young people coming into politics to follow, he said if you were going to go into politics if you were going to be a major, first become a billionaire. it's incredible advice. [laughter] so we read the league of conservation voters award ceremony. i gave the keynote speech and mayor bloomberg received the award because 50% of the world's population lives now in cities and by 2015 it will be 75%. if cities to more like mayor bloomberg has done while my state has pulled down the goals mayor bloomberg has pushed his up. my state got out of the greenhouse grass agreement which

includes, mean to jersey my state has pulled out of them and other states like new york have stayed in. but mayor bloomberg and others have done is incredible things with retrofitting buildings. he has a goal by 2017 to reduce the carbon emissions of all of the city buildings by 30% to would already 12% of the way there and he only started in 2005. when we first started doing it and mayors like him and me had conversations with president obama key found ways to make funding available for cities where the majority, 80% live in cities directly in the suburbs to start taking action. so i agree there is a rhetoric problem in the country. democrats get very shy with rhetoric sometimes because we have the other side always trying to twist our words. you are ever to lead to over regulating business and costing jobs. when i sit down with barack obama he gets it right away.

so there will be young people coming yes, retrofitting buildings. we've done programs for senior citizens with federal dollars creating union jobs by the way with benefits and pensions and the like, stockholm folks by retrofitting senior citizens, lobar their energy costs 25%, lowering their carbon emissions, creating jobs. so i am a guy telling the white house as i mentioned have a lot of conversations back-and-forth and the last conversation we talked about tone and rhetoric because it does matter but i know that when it comes to the epa standards the head of the conservation voters yesterday was going on about what one side says denying science that human beings have -- this is an irrefutable evidence now that these things have an impact and you have another side that says we accept responsibility.

we may not be moving as far and fast but we accept responsibility and a lot of things that don't catch the national attention people don't like talking about regulations but the administration passed a lot controlling emissions from factories and cleaning up kohl not to where we want it to be but taking steps to change standards in the united states of america so we can discuss how we can encourage the obama administration as a lot of us do to partner with us to find ways to lower carbon emissions and a deal with this already exploding bomb but right now there is a stark choice i can have obama who has proven to his actions as he was called last night a champion for the environment versus somebody from the other side and we have a lot of choices the believe the government should get out of the way and drill and do with the have to do. to me it is clear what the choices for americans and those of us who know as you said i love how you phrase it and i will steal the common good speakers borrow from great

speakers, the issues don't have times on them that the environment will return to the point unless we move and the people most affected by this are the poor and vulnerable populations. kids right now to respiratory problems for the rest of their lives driving up health care costs for us all because we've allowed the air quality to get so bad. so we have work to do. federal level work i have work to do in new jersey as we continue to retreat from environmental collisions and lawsuits and the like but ultimately right now the choice is so clear if you are a champion given the choices we have i would choose barack obama a thousand times before i would choose somebody on the other side of the aisle. one more very quick question. >> the last question has to move and inspire the room. if somebody doesn't cry i'm coming after you. [laughter] i put you on the no-fly list so there's a lot of questions.

[laughter] >> i'm a freshman here. >> i from chester new hampshire about an hour from here but i have a younger brother who has sarah will palsy. you talked earlier about education and seems to me like more and more lately children like him are sort of falling through the cracks. we don't pay attention to them as much as we should be so my question is what you think this is our obligation is and how should we educate them and treat them and things like that? >> i can try to find out and i'm sure there's obama folks here who can find out. i know arne duncan from my conversations with him as passionately concerned to make sure every child in america has abundant pathways towards education. and a lot of the hidden learners in our country people with special needs do often fall through the cracks, and so i know from our president of all local level we are doing a lot to make sure that we create a

real solid educational pathways for every one of our kids coming and i've heard this have more conferences than i care to remember. the special-education as one of the greatest areas we waste money in america. we make investments that don't get a lot of return but they are becoming the best practice models in the country for special needs education so i know that is what the ad fenestration said. the answers are not going to come from me when it comes to education we will find the best practices and create incentives for people to follow in those best practices. so again, i am so confident arne duncan as a guide is dealing with these issues and talking about these issues specifically things they are doing but i can't tell you who the city of newark new jersey we try to reinvent our practices to make sure we get returns when we invest taxpayer dollars and prieta environments that are nurturing to the children and at the end of the day as i saw

already kids from california to work n.j.-based and up and give a call to the conscience of the country that we may one day be a nation with liberty and justice for all for everyone. i want to thank everybody tonight. it's a privilege this is my first visit to new hampshire. you guys need a and a year in this town? >> yes camano? i have to go back. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

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sometimes you have to be courageous at the meeting to say i think i have lived depredation different perspective

>> how did you come away from palm springs california? [laughter] nice to meet you. one sandy weill? >> hour you? nice to meet you. >> the publication team. you must have listened to other republicans it must be kind of tiring of. [laughter] how are you jennifer? she sits in the back row and hides out.

>> you look much slimmer than four years ago. >> memory is tata cemetery fits. >> i have weighed about the same since high-school which is very a strange bridges perception which i hope this reality. maybe it is gravitating as we get older. [laughter] but i still do my best to keep the weight off.yo >>u. you have been running years?the past five >> i have got the chance to write a book which isr something i wanted to do in part with the last campaign the become frustrated the

positions you have not are necessarily with the one minute answers describe your views' why have the chance to write a book. hired a ghostwriter we didy the interviews then he took a draft of the first chapter and said this will never work. i will write it myself. that turned out to be a great experience. >> another member of the team. i will shake your hand on the way out. how are you? >> you may want to introduce your team. >> andrea is my press secretary.t on the road with me this weekend at although specifically at headquarters it is not bad today. sunny and clear with noith

precipitation it is a nice day. >> nice weekend by i was standards.rea are we ready to go?a i am the editor vice president of the "des moines register" here and i will we welcome you to join us for our live editorial board meeting today with governor mitt romney seeking the republican nomination 2012 public in days republican nomination. if i remember correctly we have 45 minutes? just to give you to three minutes to talk about the campaign issues that are most important to you to frame why you're seeking the nomination. >> having lost last time i thought i would not be running again. if wrote to a book early on in the president's term describing what i thoughthat the country needed to do. in the ensuing months mys m wife said you have to do it

again. i said i am not so sure butre she continue relentlesslyi because the president does and get to america or what it takes to make america and to make our economic engine that kind that keeps america strong to provide for our future for the kids and grandkids for the we both believe having spent my life in the private sector and taking that experience, am i carrier rather to the olympics in into government gave me the leadership experience that the country needs. i got in again and in the issue, the choice the americans face is whether as at nation we continue the fundamental transformation with the president callsr which in my view makes us more like o poor's say europe is not working in europe is time to restore the principles that made

america the economic powerhouse of the road toa make america morem like america with a mara basedas society where individuals the new education, hard work, risk-taking to build a better future for themselves and their families and lift the entire nation. i say this is a very clear choice for the american people. do we continue to move toward europe for a turnaround america? i have spent my life political and volunteer and business, private sector having the chance to run two different businesses to guide the state as the governor and the olympics i think that is what america needs at a time when we're headed a very unfortunate direction which is tending to weaken us and the president's direction has slowed down the recovery in my view to make the downturn

deeper. he has not put forth a planry to reinvigorate our economy in at the same time not only not on the near-term basis has made it more difficult for america to remain theand economic leader of the world over the coming century. the consequences of us falling behind in the global race is freedom itself could be in jeopardy. short-term and long-term i am concerned because i don't think the president understands how this country works. the individual level, the private sector level and governmental sector. i don't think he has that experience for joy think he has a leadership capacity to the than a time of difficulty. hers continues to complain about congress. that is their rampart of they have been there a long time they need a leader who can get america back on track and put americans to

work. so with the introduction i guess you have a couple of questions. [laughter] >> you made the cover of "time" magazine this week. a the headline is why don't they like me? you have been running five years and you know, the numbers and i was a. why do seem to be stuck in this number and newt gingrich soaring so high above you and what is your take on your perception? >> so far as i can tell i have been to the top of the polls of not number one for most of the last year which i consider to be pretty goodcahd news. >> but i have been toward the top number two or number e or was i never three? t by one point*? 2.? oh well.

[laughter] i have watched surges of the various people over time butants they take a look at someone to project on them a sense that they are exactlyelem conforming to their own views. as they dig in deeper and watch them more carefully they decide they have the elements i don't agree with or a background issue that is not consistent with my own views so people come down. my guess overtime speaker gingrich will follow a trajectory that is unique to him and by the time we are finished would get the nomination. if i did not think that i would not battle like i am. i expect to get the nomination and a face tough competition. but i am pretty pleased with the factrethn i have been at or near the top of the polls in most states over a long period of time. that is a good thing and there is a lot of competitors.o a long time and that i

recall somebody got 50 or 60% and held on to that and then it begins to consolidate. last time john mccain, fred thompson, rudy guiliani, mike huckabee, myself we were all bouncing around between 10 and 25%. now being in the high 20s low teens it is good news. now final analysis i have to get 35 percent of the delegates in the first two states than 45 then 55 and that gets me the nomination. >> you have not spent as much time in this state as the other candidates. why is that? >> we th track number of days for all the candidates there are some like bricks santorum focusing a lot ofni time on i was but as we look person 9% from a we're pretty competitive.p santorum and newt gich