for what promises to be a memorable evening of conversation. tonight's conversation would across the generations. we use that term when the older interviewed by the young. we'll focus on something of interest to everyone in this room collect the future. the american dream is a powerful concept. of late, the talk has been of being derailed. people are worried about their

jobs. the are worried about economy. they are worried that we have lost our competitive edge. and the concern that america -- they are concerned the american safety net are framed as a beat and not be there for them when they retire. my good friend has written a book that addresses these concerns. and that to work, i quote, i came of age but the theme that no matter what happened, i would always be able to support myself. it became a crucial part of my identity. it drove me to spend a good portion of my adult life trying to give others the same chance. president clinton goes on to say, it's heartbreaking to see so many people trapped in a web of idleness, debt and out.

we have to change that. we've got to get america back in the future business. president clinton rises as statesmen and dedicated public servant will be joined on stage tonight by one of our brightest youngest citizens, also a champion of public service, chelsea clinton. chelsea clinton is a graduate of stanford, has earned a masters from columbia columbia and is currently pursuing her doctorate at oxford. she is also working with the clinton foundation and the clinton global initiative. her recent professional and academic work has focused on improving access to health care for citizens around the world, on equal rights in education for children. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming president

clinton and chelsea clinton. [applause] [applause] [applause] b. mac thank you. before we begin, i should acknowledge the fact that i am certainly not an unbiased interviewer. i am unapologetically and profoundly biased towards my father. we don't always agree, but i certainly always learn from him, whether in conversation or in the pleasure of reading many drafts of his boat and finally getting a hard copy myself last week. so, i think it would be a good place to start, a bit where

sonny left off, saying that you wrote this book largely because you are worried that for many of the 20 american dream had become opaque and for others it had been lost. and so, i think it would be helpful to hear why at this point in time you were compelled to write this book. it is brief. it is distilled, that is action oriented. >> well, i first was inclined to do it after the 2010 elections because they went out and did, i don't know, more than 120p. i wasn't particularly surprised about the outcome for the reasons i stated in the book. people tend to hire democrats and things are messed up. if you think about it in the last several years. so they hire us to fix things. and they didn't feel fixed on election day.

also, the american people are so deeply ambivalent about the role of government and they have been from the beginning. keep in mind, we were born in reaction to unaccountable government power. i just had my picture taken with the stamp act. last night and posed by the british government under king george. and it's the first time i think the stamp act sever left the parliamentary archives in london. it is here for an exhibit that will be here at the new york historical society through april. so we always wanted -- we didn't want to much government, but we won enough. and what is enough and not too much is the source of cost and debate. and so, all of this stuff happen with us. what bothered me as the election was almost completely fact free. and i think that's not good for

us. and i started thinking about the last 30 years in american politics, how the unpaired mounted paradigm hump letter sent to one blind alley after another, arguing only about whether we should always be against more taxes and always be against more regulations and government would always mess up the two-car parade. instead of going to the end and working backwards, how to rebuild a country that is a country that promotes spirit prosperity and new opportunities and broad-based educational opportunities for people in the 21st century. and then, working back from that, how do you get that? if you look around the world at the most successful countries, they have both a strong economy and a smart and effective government and they work together. so that is what propelled me to write this. i've been saving all of these articles that i had gotten out of the newspapers, blog sites,

magazines and 2007, since the recession started in about the economy and everything and all the books i had read. i finally decided i should just try to distill it and say, here is a political and economic history of america for the last 30 years and here's what i think we should do now to put our country back in the future business. that's how i did it. and i thought they would do be a good thing if every american who care to have a slim volume with enough facts in it they would prove the case about how we got where we are and then i could make the argument about what we should do going forward. >> one of the things you clearly articulate in the book is what come in your estimation, it's just the right amount of government and what the role of government should be. one thing you don't articulate in the book is what should the role of the private or be and what do you think is just the

right amount of engagement and action, particularly at moments like these that private actor. and certainly for my edification, they do hear you answer the former and the latter together so that there is sort of a clear and coherent vision of what should be rendered under government and what should be rendered under the private here. >> well, i think in general, the terror should do the work of the country. basically the areas that are a big competition coming building building businesses that work, hiring people, creating jobs. the governments should set the rules, the boundaries, what kind of how we have clean air, how do we it's safe, clean water. how do we have seafood? how do we produce energy in a way that maximizes a positive impact in preserves the

environment and should do it anyway that leaves the largest number of how questions to the other as possible and still get the good result. when i was president, we had 43 million more americans breathing cleaner and we had to pass the chemical rights and not law, which favors transparency. but we try to set up a system where the deer was incentivized to meet these incentives at the lowest possible cost in the short amount of time. and so -- but it changes over time. we privatize some of our management of nuclear start bio, non-on making material. over time, they would be more and more functions that government used to do that might be profitably done by the other,

just as the government should do things that help us to get into new areas of economic opportunity or deal with new problems that are broadly shared, that the market won't solve. i will just give you one example of something that was done in 1880. that is probably more relevant today than it has been in decades. in 1980 with a bipartisan majority. the congress passed a law that president carter signed, which provided for federally funded research to universities that resulted in commercially valuable findings to the license through the private sector on terms determined by the university because it was recognized that the two evil to make the most of the commercial development and that most colleges couldn't run their own businesses, shouldn't be starting businesses and doing

it. that tech transfer system has worked pretty well for 30 years. one of the things i argue in my book is all the colleges in the country doing this, and at a young cousin who does this work at texas a&m university. >> who does get a shout out in the book. >> work? >> who does get a shot on the book. >> yeah, what the heck am i crazy care of my family. last night but the best tech transfer program is probably m.i.t.'s because they never take any money. they only take stock of the new family. they will give a professor a year off to work in the company, but the professor must promise after a year to bring in a professional business person to run the company. and they've got a lot of other things. but anyway, it works really

well. and there's some other models, but in general, i ain't this question chelsea asked me something we had to waste because delhi asking ourselves. should this be privatized and should it not? but if you have a doctrinaire position either way, you might wind up with a bad decision. i'll give you another example. the united states is virtually the only country that does almost all of it large infrastructure with 100% public funding. other countries don't do that. so the president actually has asked the congress to adopt the infrastructure bank proposal that has bipartisan support in the senate to have the governments even infrastructure bank with a relatively modest amount of money. but a 10, $15 billion. i suggest in the book ways to get it. and then allow the bank to sell bonds to allow american citizens to invest in it and also to take

money from overseas interests and from pension funds, but also from sovereign wealth fund, from governments all over the world because he infrastructure projects yield a very high rate of return. and i think we've been a little too hidebound. we shouldn't be the only country in the world that's ready to take credit sector money to build our infrastructure. and i don't mean roads and bridges. i'm taking about ed send electrical grid. faster brought and connections all over the country. it should bother you to south korea's broadband download speeds are four times hours. and so, having good government policy does not preclude some being done by and with the. >> one government policy discussed in a few different places in the book and i know you're personally advocating the

6003 green tax credit, which is particularly germane to the title of the book, "back to work." as you articulated in her book are roughly billion dollars invested in a new qualifier power plant yields about 187 jobs and a billion dollars invested in building retrofit deals but dream somewhere in the order of 7000 to 8000 new jobs. so maybe you could talk a little bit about the green tax credit and why it is set to sunset in 2011 and sort of parroting back to the first part of your book of political history and how those of us in this room could try to help change that dynamic for 2012. >> when the president and the congress were debating after the 2010 elections whether the bush tax cuts would be extended

because of the recession and whether it be a bad idea to raise anybody's taxes in this tough economy, one of the things that republicans said his tax cuts are always wonderful in a down economy, but spending cut don't hurt at all. which is self-evidently crazy. for instance, there's really no difference from an economic point of view other friends in the u.k. are finding out when they went for posterity response to the current circumstance. one of the other things to get rid of was the 1603 tax credit. they said it was a spending program. this is a kind of argument that ought to be held in a seminary over some obscure provision of scripture in my opinion. you be the judge. the republicans say we have to get rid of 1603, a spending

program. it's not a tax cut. and it is, but it isn't. wind congress did things like loan guarantees for new energy companies, like the infamous felon drug loan guarantee was actually adopted during the bush administration assigned a president bush and supported at the time by almost all the republicans on the energy committee. it is hard sometimes to pick winners or losers. that's not what 1603 does appear to 63 recognizes a lot of people building solar and wind installations or startup companies. so if you give them a 30% tax credit to you would ordinarily give someone for building this new fact or he, it would be worthless because they have no credit to claim the interest again spirit what 1603 does is basically give them the cash equivalent if their startups.

now, if you just don't like solar and wind energy and you want to keep any of the other tax credits for additional energy, you can make that argument. but a very significant number of the new solar and wind projects have used 1603. so my argument is about to be extended because we've got thousands of more facilities in solar and wind power, which are becoming more economic every time. the price drops about 30% for solar and wind every time the battle capacity. solar and particular has had significant technological advances in last two years, which is dramatically one of the reasons to wonder when towns because the other technologies get cheaper faster than anybody figured.

and to the amount of a competitive mix. so i like 1603 and i think it should be continued because i think we should be supporting startups as well as existing company. and the very significant jobs over the last 20 years have come not just an small businesses, the small businesses that were five years old or younger. so this is the kind of thing -- my argument is we should say what we want to go with this country? who shared prosperity, modern jobs and then back up and say, how do we get there? with the government supposed to do? with the private sector supposed to do? if you do that instead of government, no government, you say they 1603 is a heck of a good deal and we have to keep doing it. >> a few mention the end of 2010, give you an opportunity to repeat something he said to me earlier, which is the one part of your book where you feel you

give the president a bum rap is around the debt ceiling debate. since that's been a coverage a lot from it that could directly -- >> i was really upset. i didn't know whether was the white house or congress that resisted raising the debt ceiling in 2010 after we lost the election. >> would restore the majority. >> congress meeting november november, december 2010. i know who waited until january the republicans are dreaded very bargain. and so, i said in a very muted way that for reasons still unclear to me this didn't happen. and gene sperling actually sent me an e-mail, who worked for me and is a scrupulously honest person said we tried. you know, we didn't make a big deal out of it because the main subject was where the bush era tax cut or it's going to be extended.

but i'm trying to force myself to say once a day either i don't know where i was wrong. because i think it would be therapeutic if everyone in washington to death. last night and i want to be as good as them. so here's something i was wrong about. since raising the debt dealing simply ratify the decision congress authority made some money and since the budget is the only thing the senate votes on that is not subject to a filibuster, i thought that the debt ceiling but was not subject to a filibuster and i was wrong. searching sperling sent me a message. he said senator mcconnell said he was going to filibuster unless we agree repents while their budgets. so turns out he couldn't raise the debt ceiling and i was wrong. see it didn't hurt too bad.

[laughter] is one way to get less ideological politics if people find area they makes access up. >> moving a bed of washington, one of the things the you do frequently in the book is to cite examples of where you think this appropriate partnership and shared responsibility between government and the private sector is working. maybe todd lechee theory that an examples from your time as governor of arkansas will work done and would have continued to work subsequently in arkansas. >> well, first i think we americans are used to people at the state and local level, hustling business, trying to save businesses, trying to expand businesses, trying to

locate businesses. it is largely a bipartisan activity undertaken perhaps with varying levels of exuberance dialect that officials. but one reason i was able to stay governor for a dozen years but never got bored with the job and loved it was the whole economic veltman affect of it. and the interesting thing in most everything in the country although it's gotten more partisan outfit 2010, but i think i will settle down. it's largely a bipartisan committee. and so, i tried to save some areas in the book, for example, to give you one practical example, there is a long section in the book about what i would like to see done to clear the mortgage detmer quickly. and i guess i should back up and say, these kinds of financial crashes take historically five

to 10 years to get over and if you have a mortgage component it serves to push about 10 years. we should try to beat the clock. we can't do it in my opinion even if we adopt the president's job plan, think there's a lot of good ideas in there. and they'll give us 1.5, 2 million jobs according to the economic analyses. but if you want to return to full employment economy, to about 240,000 jobs a month, if we average 227,000 a month for years. if you want that commies got to flush this debt and get the funding going again. and so, kenneth rogoff at harvard recommends that since some people say well, if we lower the mortgage rates, if you bring the mortgage down to the value of the house, then the people who hold the mortgages will lose money. who's going to compensate them? and what's it going to be?

rogoff has suggested the debate for the people who ultimately hold the mortgages instead of writing them down, just cut them in half by taking an ownership position in the house so that when the house is ultimately sold, the people who issue the mortgage will share in the profit and you get the same practical result. you no longer have a bad debt on the books. the homeowners got a mortgage that he or she can pay. and i said in the book come i know this will work because when i was governor of the late 70s and early 80s and farmers got in trouble, we have been hundreds of small state-chartered pigs who did not want to foreclose on the farmers. they knew they were just having a couple of bad years and they couldn't pay their farm loans they didn't want to take discussion of the farms, so we

allowed the banks to take a ownership position and then give the farmer and absolute buyback price to take his arm back in the full title once they could pay off the farm loan. that is a sort of practical thing you see done at the state level. the republican governor south dakota called me on the phone and said, he said, this is unbelievable. i wish i had thought about it. send me to love. i said i will, but you know your neighbor in north dakota, which is more republicans in south dakota is the only place in the country that has a state owned rink they've been doing this since the great depression. that's how i got the idea. you get the idea. doesn't matter whether right or wrong at the point is we sit and talk about how to keep farmers on the land, how to avoid putting banks in trouble. nobody gave a thought of it. and even at the beginning of all

of this hyper partisan era in the 80s when i represented the governor's with the republican in negotiating the welfare reform bill with the reagan white house and 87 and 88 and went to designing with president reagan on the white house lawn and had her republican counterpart in democratic counterpart peter but the the committee for democratic chairman and republican minority leader and we went to the white house and there is never a of politics the whole time. we were always talking about how this is going to work, how would affect for people? redo? when the first president bush was in office, i represented the democrats ever wrote this national education goals and i got invited to the state of the address with my republican counterpart. we stayed up all night at the university of virginia writing these. all we talked about was what would work. we need that again. every time the direction ran over we still disagreed with each other enough to have a heck

of a good election. but when the election wasn't going on, we thought we were supposed to go to work for you. god forbid, right? so i could give you lots of other examples of things, this kind of economic strategies that have been developed. andrew cuomo just a quick thing. organizing up into 10 regions and got the legislature to set aside money and the reasons are competing to get this cash. i think $200 million or something. they haven't decided how much they're going to divide it. all of the reasons have to come up with regional development plans. new york is a very diverse state i went in the other day to albany to meet with dozens of people they represent these regions coming up with this

plan. and even their wonders about the plan will be ahead because they are actually talking about what they are going to do and how they're going to do it instead of having some idle political debate. that is the kind of thing i think chelsea is referring to. the government should be doing this. you want to get the chinese and the germans the whole solar market, even though we have greater capacity just in domestic demand and much better venture capital than they do and the price is dropping precipitously. if you don't, what should the government to? same thing with wind. same thing with building retrofits. governor cuomo just had a great bill in new york -- i think it is called on bill accounting. but here's the bottom line. if you retrofit your home or your office building, you can

get financed outlay and then pay it off only from your utility savings because they'll just added to it to your utility bill. so if they just say yes it's done. and it will create 10 or 12,000 jobs in new york and put billions of dollars into this economy within a matter of months, as soon as it is fully implemented. so those are the kinds of things i think we have to do more of. >> having conversations like these and writing books or advocating, do you think this asserted the niche that civil society should tell us conversation, having discussed are applicable to public sector is? and anyways, they stated that of cgi america come you clearly have the unique meaning capability. but i think a lot of us can make these sort of contributions. >> yes, but i'd like to explain.

a nongovernmental organization in america has largely done two things in the modern era. one goes out the way back to before we became a country. the first ngo in the united states is the volunteer fire department benjamin franklin organized in philadelphia before the constitution was ratified. and he was doing old-fashioned ngo work, 18th century style. that is, there's always going to be a gap between what the private sector will produce and the government can provide. we didn't have enough government to afford a fire department and i went to players to make it profitable to be a private business. on the other hand, if that is your building, you thought there were enough fires. so we organize the volunteer fire department.

one of the morning television shows i did today the today show after i left, they had what is fast becoming the biggest family in america. this did you see a? disabling with 18 children about to be maintained [inaudible] >> 19 about to be 20. that guy is a conservative republican and the arkansas legislature and my last year's president. that's the first time met him. 11 years ago. but we're talking to his kids because one of the kids is proud to be the fact that he was a volunteer fireman and it town i live were reestablished the fire department as governor because we set up 700 fire departments. with the highest fire insurance rates in the country. the point is, that is the ngo deal. the gap between what the private sector can produce a public site or can provide.

the new additional unimproved rule for ngos is to basically come hopefully working with the big institutions and private institutions for appropriate to figure out how to do faster, cheaper, better. unlike the business come you don't have to turn a profit every quarter. unlike the government come you don't have to be embarrassed that she failed. you can take a bad story as they try to do this. it didn't work. we're going to do it some other way. and so that is what you do with chess in schools. you go in there and try to figure out how to take otherwise statistically disadvantaged kids to prove they are just as smart as everybody else. they could learn things like everybody else. having the chess tournaments and organize the way you organize them will increase funding levels. so i think what we did the cgi america was a version of the latter. we tried to bring people together to think about what we

could all do to create jobs. and i think there are a lot of things. there's another example, where private foundations are creating employment directly and partnerships with public and private groups. like in san diego, which is now the genomics center at duty in america, has the largest number of nobel prize-winning scientist in any town in the country. they have the university of california, san diego. 700 other i.t. companies. they have all these other things. they have great runners foundation and other foundations that are investing. although mark together on a common plan. that actually works in the modern world. cooperation works in real life. conflict works in politics and news companies. it does. i am not being cutesy here. it does. i'm as guilty as the next

person. i bet three cheap history is for everyone series but i get on the ngo work. but anyway come you get the idea. we need the ngos to fill the gap. and the robin hood foundation fills both kind of ngos. the harlem children's zone does both kind of work. so there are differences. do you get the picture. there's a real important role for ngos because they take a lot of heat off of businesses who had to turn a profit, particularly in this tough time. they take a lot of heat off government who want to try certain things, that may be scared of getting too much heat if it fails. >> says states with the laboratories of democracy in the 18th century? >> the cities are too now. the only difference between now and when the framers wrote the constitution is the cities are

just as much laboratories and democracy says states are. still mike bloomberg data putting up $100 million to build a whole new university lab center to generate high-tech jobs. i don't know who's going to get the contract. i wish the consortium at new york university's would get it. >> as a stanford alum anti-semite -- >> but the point is it's a heck of an idea. it is the way the world should work. i think it's wonderful. los angeles just allowed this vast new consortium to have major retrofit the dollars that include great energy deficiencies in putting up more solar power and how they were going to finance it is going to be the biggest commercial retrofit project countries yet undertaken. they figured out how to do it. full disclosure, my foundations of climate change work with and. but all we did was provide

technical support. they figured out how to finance. the cities can do a lot of things in the congress that leaves should not make decisions, which make those things were difficult. they should power and incentivize it. >> it's an election day today. not a new york city, but in many cities across the country is. mayors have been elected or reelected in san francisco, baltimore, boston, phoenix. and yet, i don't think questions like this have been very central to the coverage in advance of even local elections. so i'll be up what you said earlier is credible, having been a governor certainly that people expect governors and mayors to hustle business. that seems to not be central to the discourse around even local

elections. how do we make that more fundamental sense or not a scalable resource, although almost an inexhaustible one, how do you think about that dynamic? >> coyote got to say was wrong. now i get to say i don't know. but it has some ideas about it. when i was a governor for the association and education and there is a lot of things we did when i was governor arkansas was the first state to require counselors for elementary schools. i was proud of that, but i was always more proud when we were the second state to do something because it showed that we were

too proud to learn, that we were out there on the edge of learning. one of the real problems is an education and health care, i'll use it because they both their own economy, is that a lot of the challenges america faces, for example, providing health care at lower cost and higher quality so we can afford to be competitive in other areas. charges have been met by somebody somewhere, but i just don't travel. i lost every challenge in american education has been met by somebody somewhere. the ideas don't travel. part of that is a complication when you have in the public sector monopoly on revenues and customers than in the tour the status quo has more power, more resources and more lobbyists in the future does. but one of the big challenges i try to talk a little about in the book without admittedly not

have an answer to his how to do that. how do you make these ideas travel? asked yourself how many of you do this. that city in america as the highest energy efficiency standards for new building? answer, the oil capital of america, houston, texas. why a? to which is why it's so important he is elected airfare. >> then mayor who did it, bill white, was to be secretary of energy when i was president. he'd bit my friend a very long time and i knew he knew it about oil and gas, but also wanted to build a modern energy company. the first thing he did was retrofit every home of the 20% of houstonians whose incomes were lowest.

unmanned, he had the highest new building standards in terms of energy efficiency except for vancouver except for the united states. he was reelected with over 80% of the vote. and yet the idea still didn't really travel so well. they do travel better than you think among cities. but we need to think about that in the united states and a lot of this after bubble from the bottom up. the next american economy by way of hosting talks about this prosperity centers. the need to figure out how to have more that enough people people learn from each other on the basis of that. >> wednesday i want to ask about a something out of your book but that came out yesterday. the census bureau announced a new draft methodology for how we

calculate and assess poverty in the united states. and it's sort of early hypotheses out of the new paradigm are that we have 49 million americans living in poverty, our highest absolute number of her. and more elderly americans living in poverty than previously assessed, largely because of higher out-of-pocket health care expenses. because although the vast majority of older americans are covered under medicare, medicare only covers 80% of and hospital expenses. stupidly, although still somewhat challenging given the absolute numbers, children living in poverty is actually lower than had been previously determined largely because of chip and some segmental nutrition programs, chiefly preschool lunches and free school breakfast.

as you think about that new immersion data, how does that impact what you diagnosed as challenges chiefly on social security and medicare sustainability and also your recommended prescriptions. >> will first, the childhood poverty numbers are still appalling, but they are smaller. the children's health insurance program was started when i was president and expand in beginning a saint in 2007. we had 5 million kids. i think there are now 10 million kids can get health insurance under it. and they will be maintained and that number will be expanded, assuming the health care reform bill is implemented. and that supplements the school lunch program and those lower the percentage of people who are

in poverty in fact. what is happening to the seniors is even though the social security checks go up more than the real cost of living exclusive of health care goes up for seniors. the cost of health care has gone up so much that it's really affect teens older people on medicare. 20% of their hospital are not covered. if you are really poor and old, you get medicaid, too. so what has happened is especially since the states are busted right now and are lobbying against raising the eligibility levels for dedicated, what is happening is this money is going. the amount of money pay out of pocket is going up. the number of older people who

qualify for medicare and medicaid is not going up to make a difference. >> stance are commensurately changing their medicaid parameters. >> yes, yes. and because of their budget problems. for example, 2007, 2009 the nadir of the reception, gdp goes down 7.5%. most people were going broke. health insurance profits went up 50%. and 5 million americans lost their health insurance. three and a half million when i medicaid. ironically, the care drove 3.5 million people to the public site are, all this time -- in the public sector. the states didn't have money to pay their medicaid makes the federal government steps were increased. so what do i draw from that? i draw from at the conclusion

that one of the best things about the so-called thin symbols commission, the bipartisan budget commission is it recommends not only savings in the social security program, the 200 billion over a decade sounds like a lot of government to you and me, but to the government budget it's not. but they recommended a programmer designed to offers more income to low-income seniors so if we don't fix the health care to a problem, elisa's people have enough money to be lifted out of poverty again. it can be done and still save money. >> one of the things that you say you believe in the book but don't go into detail as the united states could move from spending 17.8% of our gdp on health care to spending 11.8% of our gdp on health care, which is why france and switzerland approximately spent on health care.

i would say this about $187 billion a year. how would we do that? >> it would save the federal budget $187 billion. it would save you a hundred $50 billion a year. that is, every year the charitable trust is an analysis of health outcomes in both the countries and they generally conclude that america ranks about 30 in the overall quality of health health care. that's not fair. it's too low. but what is true is germany and france are normally ranked at the very top. and it is true they get better health outcomes for spending less money. and it is also true that even if you had -- if you give us more credit for being, for example have been the longest breast cancer survival rates in the world and the greater her

surgery otherwise someone also be giving this talk tonight. >> thank you. >> you still have to face the fact that we are not getting what we pay for. and it is triggered primarily by the way we finance health care and fee-for-service. chelsea used to work for mckenzie, so i'll give your entitlement to discount. >> i didn't get the stanford credit. >> mckenzie issued a three volume study trying to analyze differences between what we sent for health care in america and what other rich countries spend. and they essentially concluded that the biggest deal was the fee-for-service medicine instead of pain and overall enrollment plan, which dartmouth and other

people say has led to about 40% of the american people getting health care likely to be more expensive than they should get it not been optimum care. the second was that we finance it with private insurance companies, which has massive amounts of the energy cost of not just the insurers, but also the insured. and if you have insurance on the job, then it's more paperwork for the medical providers, for the employers and for the insurance companies themselves. it's about a $200 billion item that we wouldn't pay if we had the administrative cost of any other country. the third thing was we pay more for medicine than anybody else. but if we park and more for bettis said, we could do that. that is about 75% cut 85% of the

difference. in the biggest chunk less, about $150 billion is because we have higher rates of diabetes than any other country in the world with its antenna consequences, which is why a childhood obesity is the number one problem and then a thousand other little things that make up about 5%. >> so given that we are almost out of time, if you wanted to ensure people left here with one either declare and call to action pursuit of one fact that would help lead to more fact based debates as we move tomorrow from this election day, looking towards the next election day next november, what would it be? >> well, if i could only say one thing to mice would say everyone should at least be involved with a list and trying to support

state and local initiatives that do bring government into the private sector and ngos together to do what we did at the cgi america meeting. start with where you are. look, this is still the biggest economy on earth. as much as i worry about retirement of the baby boomers and i'm the oldest one of them, i worry about this. you should so good about this. 10 years ago as i was about to leave the presidency, made then hometown of little rock, arkansas had a terrible tornado that ripped up his oldest part of the city. a little african-american community next-door was virtually leveled where i'd worked for 20 years trying to help. say what down and get this. at the end i had a dinner 20 people. i ate barbecue, back when i could do that, i ate barbecue at 20 people to high school with. besides me, only two others have

finished college. besides me, only to have made more than $50,000 a year. but their number one goal was their retirement was going to imperil their children's ability to raise their grandchildren. so whenever you give up on america, you'd just rather that. it's still basically a good country. people make rational decisions based on what they know. now, in spite of all of that, our average workforce ages still younger than europe and japan, the other long-standing wealthy place. canada may be a little younger than us, but not much. it is easy to start a small business here than almost any other place. we still have all these laboratory supports for r&d that most countries have. we have a lot of indigenous strengths here.

we have a better sophisticated venture-capital networks and other things. and we know we need to do. there's plenty of money out there to bring the economy back. we can figure out how to unleash the money and corporate treasuries and banks. so i'm not pessimistic, that they are doing this kabuki dance in washington now are at the same old thing we have been debating since we were told in 1981 that government is the problem. it isn't. i mean come it may be, but it's not the only problem. and it's got to be part of the solution. some might view as if i could tell you to do one thing, it would be, for some thing to support in your community state here and use that as evidence to try to change, break the logjam on washington. because there is not a single -- one of the most important points in this book as i could all these other countries that are now a hunt of us in certain

industries after broad and download speeds. more modern infrastructure. higher percentage of young people with college degrees. less income inequality. faster job growth among lower and the planet. there is not a single example on planet earth of a successful country that got there on an antigovernment strategy, which says the most important thing you can ever do is never taxed somebody in bill clinton's income group over again. never, never. not one. of the 33 oecd countries, we rank 31st in the percentage of national income going to taxes. mexico and chile are lower than we are. we ranked 25th in the senate should national income going to spending because of all this money we had to come up with before the calamitous

consequences of the financial collapse. so i want you to change national policy, but we have to somehow find a way to break the psychology of. and i find i am happier if i is something to look forward to in the morning so i don't just gripe all the time. and so if you ask me what you can do, make something good happen. go hire somebody. i have a friend in a company called axion and which is the largest mass mailing company in the country. if you "sports illustrated" every month, you got it from them. and most other magazines. a november 1st, they challenged every country in the united states with 50 or more employees to hire one more person. they said if everybody can't even wal-mart just tired one more person come everybody with 50 or more people could afford

to do it, there would be another million people working within a month and it would change the psychology of america. just do something and then you will be able to tell the members of congress what you did and ask them to follow suit. >> thank you all very much. i hope you'll do that. and by the book. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] [applause] [applause] >> for more information on president clinton's book, "back to work," go to try and to double date.com. >> well, on your screen is a well-known historian, stanley weintraub, whose most recent book is called pearl harbor

chris smith, a world toward december 1941. mr. weintraub, and i was 70 years ago it is time. what was christmas 1941 mike in this country? >> christmas 1941 was a very quiet time. people were stunned by what it happened at pearl harbor. and this was the first christmas after the event. so wrote about the aftermath worldwide. but it was light throughout the country, what it was like around the world. it was still the time when people would like their christmas trees. there was an official blackout, but no one paid attention. rationing hadn't begun yet. so the seriousness of the word hadn't really and. >> what was washington like at that time? were they gearing up?

>> washington was gearing up, but in a very strange way. there weren't really any aircraft guns available in washington although we never did have an air raid. but there were wooden mock aircraft guns on the roofs of buildings so people would feel they were being bid is a strange christmas. >> had a draft started? >> the draft started in 1940 before the war began. president roosevelt had a difficult time in october 1941 renewing the draft because there were so many isolationists in the country, the draft has by one vote because general marshall the chief of staff to the congress has pleaded with him. he says it is essential to be prepared and they were prepared by one vote. >> stanle weintraub, what was president roosevelt's christmas light?

>> president roosevelt had a visitor from england. prime minister churchill. he took churchill to the boundary methodist church in washington for christmas morning and churchill for the first time in his life heard a little town of bethlehem song. he was not a churchgoer. >> stanley weintraub, this is your third book on christmas time? >> i think it may be my fourth. silent night, about the chris smith in 1913, world war i, was the first. i did one about these evolution. george washington coming home at the end of the war and actually arriving on christmas eve. i did another on the battle of the bulge, 11 days in december that was a wartime christmas and is still of course co-general

chris smith in the civil war. >> what is it about christmas? >> it is a remarkable time for families as it was a remarkable time in our history over the years. i hope this'll be my last christmas book. >> "pearl harbor christmas" a world toward december 1941 is the book. stanley weintraub is the author. >> jennifer granholm recounts her time is the first female governor of that state. she recalls the challenges her administration dealt with as the eighth largest in the nation faced an economic recession coupled with a depleted manufacturing sector in multiple infrastructure issues. this is about an hour 10 minutes. ..