quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from utah. a senator: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. a senator: mr. president, today i rise with a heavy heart to mourn the loss offin ogden polie officer jared frankem. mr. lee: earlier this month, on the evening of january 4, 2012, agent frankem, whm was senselesy gunned down defending his fellow officers as they attempted to serve a search warrant in ago den, utah. five other officers -- shawn crogen, casey perrell, michael ronkels, nate hutchison, and jason vanderwarf -- were wounded in the gun battle. a week later, a crowd of roughly 4,000 family members, friends

and supporters, including more than a thousand uniformed officers, gathered at a public memorial for jared, to say goodbye to one america's fallen heroes. the sentiment from all who knew him was the same -- jared was a devoted family man, a dedicated father to his two young daughters, a fun-loving brother and son to his family. at the funeral, which i attended, i heard jared's brother ben say that he -- quote -- "taught people to care for each other and taught others to change the world like he was doing on the streets of ogden." commenting on the outpouring of support, jared's brother travis said, i know my brother would be proud because we are all always family. achieving a goal he'd set for himself as a young boy, agent frankem became a member of the ogden police force seven years ago and was assigned to the

wieber-morgan narcotics strike force. jared's sacrifice should be a reminder to us of the incredible risks our brave law enforcement officers all take as they protect the people that they serve. i have a deep and unwavering respect for the law enforcement community. and as a former assistant united states attorney, i have seen up-close how these men and women serve with honor, integrity, and dedication. jared frankem was no exception. he will be remembered for giving his life in service to the people and to the community that he loved. thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. schumer: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. under the previous order, the senate stands in recess until 2:15. 8:30 to

proceed to the house of >> mr. president, for generations this was the american promise. if you worked hard and played by the rules, success would be within your reach. we call that success the of the american dream. turn a decent wage, buy a home, put your children through school and retire comfortably. for many people in this country that dream has drifted, further and further from reality. the recession caused many americans their jobs, homes, savings, and basic economic security. many are still struggling. although the economy made slow progress toward recovery there is still much more work to be done before every american who wants to work can find a job but the terrible recession is only part of the problem. the same wall street greed that caused the financial collapse is fueling the

greatest income disparity since the great depression. in the last few decades average ceo's income multiplied 250 times. meanwhile ceos employees watched their incomes barely creep up at all. so america is at a crossroads. as president lyndon johnson said in 1965, and it is time to ask that now, and i quote, not only how to create wealth but how to use it. not only how fast we're going but where we're headed. that's what he said. and the path we choose will determine what kind of a country we will be. we can choose to be the kind of nation where hard work, of many, pays off, only for the richest few. or we can be the kind of nation where every man and woman shoulders a fair share of the burden and reap as fair reward of that. i'm sorry, a fair share of that reward. we can be the kind of country where the rich get richer and poor get poorer

or we can be the kind of country where middle class families share in prosperity and opportunity of the president obama called this choice a make-or-break moment for the middle class. tonight he lays out a road map that sets up a path to fairness instead of inequality. i look forward to hear president obama's vision this evening. it begins with and economy that works with every american regardless of size of his or her checkbook. i expect the president to slay out common sense ideas to spur american manufacturing, create jobs and help small business create growth. it is time to stop spending american dollars on foreign oil. it is time to hire american workers to build wind turbines and next generation vehicles. the president will propose a thank you plan to make sure today's students are ready for tomorrow's jobs and today's workers remain competitive in our global economy. i expect the president to include ideas from democrats and republicans. for three years the president has reached out to republicans. now is the time to work with

them on common ideas to boost legislation, not stalemate. i ask my republican colleagues to give his bipartisan vision the consideration it deserves. in 1947 president truman delivered the first televised state of the union address. truman was the 20th president to govern alongside a congress controlled by the opposing party. first with george washington. he said democrats and executive branch and republicans in the legislative branch could and should work hand in hand to shape the nation. this what he said. there are ways of disagreeing. men who differ can work together zinserly for the common good. i hope republicans in congress will keep those words in mind tonight. despite all our differences we can build and economy that works for the good of all americans. mr. president, i notice the absence after qor roum. >> -- quorum. >> tonight the president of

the united states will come to the capital to give his sense of the state of the union. this is venerable tradition and we welcome him. yet it is hard to feel a sense, it is hard not to feel a sense of dispointment even before tonight's speech is delivered. while we don't yet know all the specifics, we do know the goal. based on what the president's aides have been telling reporters, the goal isn't to conquer the nation's problems. it is to conquer republicans. the goal isn't to prevent gridlock. but to guarantee it. here is how the "new york times" summed up the president's election year strategy in a recent article entitled, obama to turn up attacks on congress in campaign. here's the quote. in terms of the president's relationship with congress in 2012, the president is no longer tied to washington, d.c. according to the story,

winning a full-year extension of the cut and payroll taxes is the last, the last, must-do piece of legislation for the white house. and here's how a white house aid described the president's election year strategy a couple weeks ago, presumably just as tonight's speech was being drafted. referring to past displays of bipartisanship he said, quote, then we were in a position of legislative compromise by necessity. that phase is behind us. so as i see it, the message from the white house is that the president is basically given up. he got nearly everything he wanted from congress for the first two years of his presidency. the results are in. it is not good. so he is decided to spend the rest of the year trying to convince folks that the results of the economic policies he put in place are somehow congress's fault and

not his. well my message is this. this debate isn't about what congress may or may not do in the future. it's about what this president has already done. the president's policies are now firmly in place. it's his economy now. we're living under the obama economy. the president may want to come tonight and make it sound as if he just somehow walked in the door. a better approach is to admit his three-year experiment in big government has made our economy worse and our nation's future more uncertain. and it is time for a different approach. that's the message the american people delivered to the president in november of 2010 and they're still waiting. the president will tell the american people tonight he has got a blueprint for the

economy. what he will fail to mention we've been working off the president's blueprint now for three years. for three years. and what's it got enu.s.? millions still looking for work. trillions in debt and the first credit downgrade in u.s. history. now the president will propose ideas that sound good and have bipartisan support. if he is serious about these proposals, if he really wants to enact them, he will encourage democrats who run the senate to keep them free from poison pills like tax hikes on job creators that we know from past experience turn bipartisan support into bipartisan opposition. the president wants someone to blame for this economy he should start with himself. the fact is, any ceo in america with a record like this after three years on the job would be graciously

shown the door. this president blames the managers instead. he blames the folks on the shop floor. he blames the weather. well, you've certainly within your rights to walk away from the legislative process if you like, mr. president. you can point the finger all you like but you can't walk away from your record. i saw a survey the other day that contained a number of sobering findings. it was a poll of small business leaders. it said more than eight out of 10 of them now believe the u.s. economy is on the wrong track. eight in 10 said they would rather have washington stay out of the way than try to help them. nearly nine out of 10 said they would rather have more certainty from washington than more assistance. and it said nearly a third of all those surveyed they're not hiring on

account of the health care bill. a third of them said they were not hiring on account of the health care bill. what this survey says to me that the policies of this administration are literally crushing, crushing the private sector. they're stifling job creation. and they're holding the economy back. americans want washington to get out of the way. and yet this president continues to have the same two-word answer he always had for seemingly every single problem we face. more government. and this is the economy we've got to show for it. last week the president had an opportunity to do something on his own about the ongoing jobs crisis. the only thing that stood in the way of the single-biggest

shovel-ready infrastructure project in america was him. the keystone pipeline was just the kind of project he had been calling for in speeches for months. and he said, no. that one would eight -- wait. here's a project he knew would create thousands of jobs instantly. he said no. a project that wouldn't have cost taxpayers a dime. he said no. it would have brought more energy from our ally canada and less from the middle east. he said no. it all came down to one question. was the keystone pipeline in the national interest or not? he said no.

as one columnist put it, his own standard wasn't the national interest. it was his own political interest. americans want jobs and the president is studying an election that took place 60 years ago to see how he can save his own job. he sided with the liberal environmental base over the energy and security interests of the american people. and that's exactly what we're now being told we can expect for the rest of the year. in last year's state of the union the president talked about how we need to win the future, win the future. this year he just wants to win the next campaign. the president can decide he is not interested in working with congress if his party only controls one half of it. that's his prerogative. he can give up on bipartisanship

but we won't. our problems are too urgent. the economy is too weak. the future is too uncertain. the president knows as well as i do when he has called for action on things for which there exists bipartisan support republicans have been his strongest allies. last year in the state of the union he called for free-trade agreements. we worked hard to get them done and we did. since then he called for an extension of the highway and faa bills and the jobs that come with them. we did both with strong bipartisan support. the president asked for patent reform. we got that done too. the president knows as well as we do we're happy to work with him whenever he is willing to work with us. if he turns his back on that good faith offer as we expect he will this year, we'll remind people that the problems we face aren't

about what congress may or may not do in the future but what this president has already done. what's already happened. let the president turn his back on bipartisanship. let the press cover every futile speech and every staged event but we intend to do our jobs and we invite him to john us. >> homeland security intelligence. >> president of the united states. >> tonight president obama delivers his state of the union address. live coverage begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern including the president's speech, republican response by indiana governor mitch daniels and your phone calls, live on c-span and c-span radio. on c-span2, watch the president's speech along with tweets from members of congress. after the address, more reaction from house members and senators. throughout the night go online for live video and to add your comments using face pock and twitter at

c-span.org. >> next week the senate intelligence committee hears from u.s. intelligence chiefs about global threats to the united states. appearing before the committee, national intelligence director james clapper, cia director, david petraeus, fbi director robert mueller and the heads of the defense intelligence agency, the national counter terrorism center and homeland security. live coverage next tuesday morning, 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> republican presidential candidates are back on the campaign trail after last night's debate. at this hour newt gingrich is making a couple stops in sarasota. mitt romney was in tampa this morning and heading to lehigh acres. it is halfway between tampa and the bottom of the state. rick santorum is finishing a event in stuart, north of west palm beach. ron paul returns to texas after the debate and doesn't have any public events today. we'll show you that hour long debate right now,

courtesy of "nbc news.". >> tonight's gathering of the candidates, this special edition of rock center comes after what already has been a long campaign. it started in iowa. it continued in new hampshire. >> we made history. >> but after a bruising battle in south carolina the fight comes now here to florida, the first big state to have a big say in the gop contest. the issues? a stubborn 10% unemployment rate. for seniors, real concerns about the future, medicare, social security, high foreclosure rates, education, immigration and 90 miles off the florida coast, cuba. that and more on the agenda tonight. the debate starts now. ♪ . >> this is the nbc news republican candidates debate

in partnership with the "tampa bay times" and the "national journal". from the university of south florida in tampa bay, here now, brian williams. [applause] >> and good evening to you. welcome to the university of south florida. the audience is in place tonight. the candidates are here. lord knows everyone knows each other by now and so we get underway tonight, as again, this republican primary battle finds itself at a critical stage and the voters here in florida and across the country are dialed in and paying attention. we want to get right to it. so a quick explanation of our rules, again familiar by now. 60 seconds for answers. 30 seconds for rebuttals or follow-ups at the moderator's discretion. we asked our invited guests here this evening to with hold their applause, verbal reactions what they hear on stage so to insure this is about the four candidates

here tonight and what they have to say. as for topics, it's a wide open evening so let's begin. first of all, since we last gathered three of you on stage have enjoyed victories. an unprecedented moment in the modern era. three separate candidates, three separate victories. congratulations to you. in all three contest the voters made it clear to pollsters and elsewhere, electability was a crucial element to them, a crucial argument this year. and so speaker gingrich, on electability to begin with, your rival, your opponent on this stage, governor romney was out today calling you erratic, a failed leader, and warning that your nomination for this party could perhaps result in what he called an october surprise a day. so given the fact that he went after you today, on this topic of electability, your response tonight,

mr. speaker? >> well, in 1980 when ronald reagan started the year about 30 points behind jimmy carter and when the republican establishment described his economic ideas as voodoo economics, reagan just cheerfully went out and won the debate, won the nomination and won the general election carrying more states than herbert hoover, than roosevelt carried against herbert hoover. i would suggest that a solid conservative who believes in economic growth through lower taxes and less regulation, who believes in an american energy program, who believes in a strong national defense, and who has the courage to stand up to the washington establishment may make the washington establishment uncomfortable but is also exactly the kind of bold, tough leader the american people want. they're not sending somebody to washington to manage the decay. they're sending someone to washington to change it. and that requires somebody who is prepared to be controversial when necessary. >> about your problems, your departure from the speakership in the 9's,

what's the case you make to the american people and voters and republican primary contests about how you changed, mr. speaker? >> well, first of all the case i make when i was speaker we had four consecutive balanced budgets. the only time in your lifetime, brian, we had four consecutive balanced budgets. most people think that is good. we were down to 4.2% unemployment. 11 million new jobs were created. most people think that is good. we reformed welfare. people think that's good. i left the speakership after the 1998 election because i took responsibility for the fact that our results weren't as good as they should be. i think that is what a leader should do. i took responsibility and i didn't want to stay around as nancy pelosi has, i wanted to get out and do other things. i founded four small businesses and i'm very comfortable that my four years as speaker working with democratic president achieved the kind of conservative values that most republicans want to have in a president. >> governor romney, for his part the speaker said about you you were dancing on eggs

during this campaign. a good salesman with a weak product. even chris christie, one of the most popular politicians in this country, speaking on your behalf, said this weekend, your challenge is quote, going to be how to connect with people. same question to you about electability? >> well i think this will come down to a question of leadership. i think as you choose the president of the united states you're looking for a person who can lead this country in a very critical time, lead the free world and the free world has to lead the entire world. i think it's about leadership and speaker was given an opportunity to be the leader of our party in 1994 and at the end of four years he had to resign in disgrace. now in the 1970s he came to washington. i went to work in my first job in the 1970s at the bottom level of a consulting firm. in the 1990s he had to resign in disgrace from his job as speaker. i had the opportunity to go off and run the olympic winter games. in the 15 years after he left the speakership the speaker has been working as an influence peddler in

washington. and there during those 15 years i helped turn around the olympics, helped begin a successful turnaround in the state of massachusetts the speaker, when i was fighting against cap-and-trade, the speaker was sitting down with nancy pelosi on a sofa encouraging it. when i was fighting to say the paul ryan plan to save medicare was bold and right he was saying that it was right-wing social engineering. so we have very different perspectives on leadership and the kind of leadership that our conservative movement needs, not just to get elected but to get the country right. >> mr. speaker? >> i'm not going to spend the evening trying to chase governor romney's misinformation. we'll have a site, at newt.org. we'll list everything. he said four things that are false. i don't want to waste the time on them. the american public deserve a discussion how to beat barack obama. the american public deserves a discussion what we would do about the economy. i think this is the worst kind of trivial politics. he said four things that were false. we have an ad which both

john mccain and mike huckabee in 2007, 2008 explain how much they think governor romney can't tell the truth. people look at them. don't listen to me. look at ad with mike huckabee and senator mccain and you will understand understand exactly what you saw. >> governor romney, to your electability. talk about the southern base of the gop among those who describe themselves as very conservative, only one in five have gone your way. how is that going to bode well for the longer campaign? >> had a great record as you know in new hampshire. the new hampshire voters overwhelmingly supported me. among republicans in new hampshire i got the biggest support we've seen among republicans even including ronald reagan that far back. i'm pleased i will be able to connect well with our republican base. go back to what the speaker mentioned with regards to leadership. that is, we don't have to take my word for the facts. they're accurate. i will point out they're accurate but the truth is that the members of his own team, his congressional team, after his four years of

leadership they moved to replace him. they also took a vote and 88% of republicans voted to reprimand the speaker. and he did resign in disgrace after that. this was first time in american history that a speaker of the house has resigned from the house. and so, that was the judgment rendered by his own people as to his leadership. look, don't forget at the end of the speaker's term as speaker his approval rating was down to 18%. we suffered historic losses after his four years in office. and i make this other point. which is, we just learned today that his contract with freddie mac was provided by the lobbyist at freddie mac. i don't think we can possibly retake the white house if the person who is leading our party is a person who was working for the chief lobbyist of freddie mac. freddie mac was paying speaker gingrich a million $600,000 at the same time freddie mac was costing the people of florida millions of upon millions of dollars. >> last week, governor, you

said that you complained that too much of your time on stage lately has been spent on negativity vis-a-vis the other candidates. you pledged to spend your time going after the incumbent president yet here we are again. >> i'll tell you why. i learned something from the last contest in south carolina and that was, i had incoming from all directions. was overwhelmed with a lot of attacks and i'm not going to get back and attacked day in, day out returning fire. i would like not the attacks against me. two ads run by speaker gingrich. outside fact-checking groups said they were false. he continued to run them. run by a campaign and one by a pac in his benefit. he can't control that. those ads were heavy on me. i will point out things people need to know. it was republicans who replaced him in the house. voted to reprimand him. it was the head lobbyist of freddie mac with whom he had a contract at a time when floridians were suffering as a result in part because of

freddie mac. >> mr. speaker, 30 seconds before i move on? >> now, wait a second. he just went on and on and on. making all series of allegations. he may have been a good financeer. he is terrible historian. the fact is the vote on the ethics committee was in january of 1997. i asked the republicans to vote yes because we had to get it behind us. the democrats had filed 84 eg9 thicks charges for a simple reason. we had taken control of the house after 40 years and they were very bitter. the fact is on every single ethics charge of substance there was dismissed in the end. only thing we did wrong we had one lawyer letters, written one letter and it was in error. i didn't pay a final. i paid the cost of going through the process of determining it was wrong. i left two years later and frankly we were right to get it behind us because the tax cut that led to economic growth, the four balanced budgets all came after that vote. so you have all this stuff

just jump belled up. apparently your consultants are not very good historians. you ought to stop and look at the facts. the fact we won the house for the third time in 1998 but the margin wasn't big you have in. so i'm only speaker up to that point since the 1920s who led the republican party to three consecutive victories. by the way in 2006 when you chaired the governors association we lost governorships. in the four years you were governor, we lost seats in the massachusetts legislature. the party builder, 20 years i spent building house republican party stands pretty good as example of leadership. >> senator santorum, you labeled this choice as erratic and moderate. you come in here tonight with one victory in iowa. where is your path to the top here? >> well, i think if you have learned anything about this election, that any type of prediction is going to be wrong. the idea that this was a two-person race has been an idea that has been in fashion now for eight months

and it's been wrong about eight times. and so we're looking at this race trying to paint a positive vision for our country. you asked my path to victory? my path to victory is tell the people of florida and tell the people of this country of someone who is here that presents a very clear contrast with the president of the united states. someone that will make him the issue in this race, not the republican candidate. someone who has a track record of being a strong conservative. someone with a bold vision to reach out to the voters i reached out and successful getting when i ran for the senate in pennsylvania twice. a state we haven't won the presidency since 1988. i won it twice. once in a year where george bush lost the state by five and i won it by six. how did i do it? i had plans that out there that included every of course everybody. plans like manufacturing. talking about things that are touchstone with the reagan democrats that provided that 49-state win. we talked about faith. we talked about family. we talked about jobs.

we talked about limited government. and that message was one that connected in a state, well just like florida, that is one of those key states that we're going to win. that sets me apart from really anybody else on this stage someone who has been victorious with a strong, principled conservative message. >> yet, senator, you are former senator santorum lost your home state 18 points? >> if i was only guy that lost election that year in pennsylvania that would be big statement. our gubernatorial lost more than i did and five congressional seats. it was historic loss. it was meltdown year. we lost 23 senators. unlike other candidates you're running against a headwind, a lot of folks crouch down. they get out of the way of the wind and try to sneak in. i stood tall. stood for what i believed in. talked about issues like the threat of iran on the horizon. talked about the need to reform social security and medicare. talked about the issues that well, now we're all talking about today as i did at a

time when nobody wanted to hear that message. i also was running with a president sitting at about 35% favorable. i was standing by him and trying to reform social security and trying to fight the war and win the war in iraq. i stand by that one of the things i figured out when i was running in that tough election year, there is one thing worse than losing an election and that's not standing for the principles that you hold. >> congressman paul, there is no denying that you have enthusiastic base of support. we can hear them outside tonight. yet there was that recent interview you were asked if, while campaigning you envision yourself in the oval office and you said, not really but i think it's a possibility. so that begs the question about your path and when you will give an honest answer about perhaps your third party plans going forward. are you in this regardless of the outcome to your right here on this stage? >> unlike others maybe they sit around and day dream about being in the

white house. i don't sit around day dreaming about it. i'm in a race. i'm in a good race. you talk about electability. why don't we take on the first three states and take everybody 30 years and under. i'm doing pretty darn well. i'm winning that vote. . . >> i do want to address the earlier discussion that you had about 1997. i had been out of congress for 12 years, and i went back in '96 and arrived there in '97. it was ayotteic, let me tell -- it was chaotic, let me tell you.

newt had a big job on his hands, but he really had to attack the conservatives, and he did it boldly. quite frankly, he didn't not run for speaker, you know, two years later, he didn't have the votes. that was what the problem was. so this idea that he voluntarily reneged and he was going to punish himself because we didn't do well in the election, that's just not the way it was. >> let me come at it this way. if newt gingrich emerges as the nominee of the party, do can you go your own way? >> well, i've done a lot of that in my lifetime. [laughter] >> i should be more specific, will you run as a third party candidate? >> i have no plans to do that, no intention, and when i've been pressed on it they've asked me why, i haven't an an absolutist. when i left congress, i didn't have plans on going back, but i did after 12 years. i went back to medicine. so, no, i don't have any plans to do that, no. >> would you support a newt

gingrich as nominee of the gop? >> well, you know, he keeps hinting about attacking the fed, and he talks about gold. now, if i could just change him on foreign policy, we might be able to talk business. [laughter] >> speaker gingrich, you willing to adjust to pick up an endorsement from texas in. >> well, i got one on friday from governor perry which i liked a lot as a starting point. so i like endorsements from texas. and congressman paul's right, there's an area -- i think what he has said about the federal reserve and what he has said about the importance of monetary policy, the proposal i've issued for a gold commission which hearkens back to something that he and jesse helms help develop, and the fact that we have people the caliber of lieu lehrman and jim grant who have agreed they would chair such a commission, i think there are places we could work on. you know, you build a coalition by trying to find ways you can work together and, frankly, we could work together a lot more than either one of us could work

with barack obama. >> governor romney, a question you know is coming because of what you've set in motion for tomorrow when you release one year's tax returns and your estimates for 2011. we know it's not a matter of producing them, you said during the mccain vetting process you turned over 23 years which you had at the ready because, to quote you, you're something of a pack rat. so prior to tomorrow can you tell us tonight what's in there that's going to get people talking? what's in there that's going to be controversial, what's in there that you may find yourself defending? be. >> no surprises, brian. the most extensive disclosure that i made was the financial disclosure requirements under the law. we each had to do that, and i laid out what my assets are and where they are, and people have been looking at that. it's very similar to what it was four years ago. and so my income tax will show

that that's where the profits and rewards came. the real question is not so much my taxes, but the taxes of the american people. the real question people are going to ask is who's going to help the american people at a time when folks are having real tough times? that's why i put forward a plan to eliminate the tax on savings for middle income americans. anyone making under $200,000 a year, i would eliminate the tax on interest, dividends and capital gains. i'll also bring the corporate tax rate down to 25% as quickly as possible and then begin the process of reshaping the entire tax code. it's far too complex, it's far too intrusive, it's far too great. i'd like to lower the rates, broaden the base akin to what we saw in the bowles-simpson plan which, by the way, the president commissioned and then simply brushed aside. we need to go back to that, get our rates down and get a pro-growth tax policy in this country. >> so across this country tomorrow when people learn the

details of the tax return you release and, of course, you'll be under pressure to release more years after that. nothing will stick out, nothing will emerge that'll be talked about by this time tomorrow night? >> oh, i'm sure people will talk about it. you'll see my income, how much taxes i've paid, how much i paid to charity. you'll see how complicated taxes can be. but i pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more. i don't think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes. so i'll point out that that's the case can and will there be discussion? sure. will there be an article? yeah. but is it entirely legal and fair? absolutely. i'm proud of the fact that i pay a lot of taxes. and the fact is there is a lot of people in this country that pay a lot of taxes. i'd like to see our tax rate come down and focus on growing the country, getting people back to work. that's our problem in this country right now. we've got a lot of people out of work. let's let them start paying taxes because they've got jobs

again? >> speaker gingrich, what'll satisfy you? >> the other day when he indicated he was going to release it, that was the right thing to do. i think it's the right thing to do. the biggest thing will be, and i think you indicated the other day that you pay something like a 15% marginal rate. my position is not to attack him. i have in my tax proposal an alternative flat tax on the hong kong model where you get to choose what you want, and our rate's 15%. so i'm prepared to describe hi hi -- my 15% flat tax, i'd like to bring everybody else down to mitt's rate, not try to bring him i up to some other rate? >> mr. speaker, is the tax on capital gains also 15%, or is it 0? >> 0. >> well, under that plan, i'd have paid no taxes. >> as alan greenspan first said, the best rate if you want to create jobs for capital gains is zero. my number one goal is to create

a maximum number of jobs to get the american people back to work. it's a straightforward argument. >> governor, how about your father's model of 12 years' worth of returns? >> i agree with my dad on a lot of things, but we also disagree. i'm putting out two years which is more than anyone else on this stage. i think it'll satisfy the interest of the american people, see that i pay my taxes, where i give my charitable creations to, and i think that's the right number. >> have you been surprised to the degree which your wealth has become an issue? you spoke rather forcefully in south carolina over the weekend on saturday night about this, about the degree to which you've had to defend, as you put it, your success in business. >> yeah. i knew that was going to come from the obama team. i understood that. we see that on the left. i was surprised to see people in the republican party pick up the weapons of the leavitt ask and start using -- the left and start using them to attack free enterprise.

i think those weapons will be used against us. i will not apologize for having been success. i did not inherit what my wife and i have, nor did she. what we have, what i was able to build i built the old-fashioned way, by earning it, by working hard. i was proud of the fact that we helped build businesses that grew, that employed people. and these were not just high-end financial jobs. we helped start staple les. these are middle income people. i'm proud of the fact we helped people around the country, bright horizons children's center, is the sports authority, steel dynamics. these employ people, middle income people, and the nature of america is individuals pursuing their dreams don't make everyone else poorer, they help make us all better off. so i'm not going to apologize for success or apologize for free enterprise. i believe free enterprise is one of the things we have to reinvigorate in this country if we want to get people working again.

>> senator santorum, governor romney has said he expected these attacks from the other side, he's been taking fire as he would from the democrats from the group on this stage, that means you, that includes you. >> i didn't mean to include -- >> no, i -- [laughter] i have not fired at governor romney on his work at bain capital. in fact, i've been maybe unique in that regard that i haven't. i believe in capitalism, i believe in free markets. i believe governor romney can go out and earn whatever he can and, hopefully, he creates jobs by earning that money and investing in companies. my only question with governor romney is that, you know, to be a great defender of capitalism and talk about the importance of capitalism, free markets and in the case of bain constructive capitalism and destructive capitalism, my question to governor romney and to speaker gingrich, if you believe in capitalism that much, then why did you support the bailout of wall street where you had an opportunity to allow destructive capitalism to work, to allow a failure of a system that needed

to fail because people did things that, in capitalism, pay a price. and we should have allowed that, those financial institutions to go through the bankruptcy process, and we would have had resulted not what we're seeing here in florida with this lengthy recession/depression of a housing market, you would have seen the effects of what governor romney advocated for and advocates today at bain capital which is allowing companies that do not do their job, cannot be competitive, make mistakes to fail and pay the price instead of having government come in and prop them up. >> speaker gingrich, two hours ago, in fact, you released your '06 contract with freddie mac. we alluded to this earlier. your company was paid $25,000 a month, $300,000 for the year, but it didn't provide a further explanation of services for freddie mac. why one year's worth? governor romney today used the

expression work product, he wants to see your work product, and can the word lobbying's been thrown around, and you strongly disagree with that. >> first of all, if you look through the contract, we had to work through the process of getting approval because this was a confidentiality agreement. but if you read the contract which we've posted, and the center had the permission to post, it has very clearly i'm supposed to do consulting work. i've never suggested the governor's consulting work was lobbying. so let me start right there. there's no place in the contract that provides for lobbying. congressman j.c. watts who for seven years was ahead of the democratic watch committee said flatly he has never been approached by me. the fact is the chairman of the housing subcommittee said he has never been approached by me, and the only report in the newspaper was in "the new york times" in this july of 2008 which said i told the house republicans they should vote no, not give freddie mac any money because it needed

to be reformed. >> you never peddled influence -- >> what? >> you never peddled influence as governor romney accused you of tonight? >> you know, there's a point this process where it gets unnecessarily personal and nasty, and that's sad. fact is, i had a very long career of trying to represent the people of georgia and, as speaker, the people of the united states. i think it's pretty clear to say that i have never, ever gone and done any lobbying. in fact, we brought in an expert on lobbying law and trained all of our staff, and that expert's prepared to testify that he was brought in to say here is the bright line between what you can do as a citizen and what you do as a lobbyist, and we consistently for 12 years running four small businesses stayed away from lobbying precisely because i thought this kind of defamatory and factually-false charge would be made. >> well, mr. speaker, you were on this stage at a prior debate, you said you were paid $300,000

by freddie mac for an historian, as an historian. they don't pay people $25,000 a month for six years as historians. that adds up to about $1.6 million. they won't hire you as an historian, and this contract proves you were a consultant. it doesn't say you provided historical experience, it says as a consultant, and you were hired by the chief lobbyist at freddie mac. not the ceo, not the head of public affairs, by the chief lobbyist at freddie mac. you also spoke publicly in favor of these gses, these government-sponsored entities, at a very time when freddie mac was getting america in a position where we'd have a massive housing collapse. you could have spoken out aggressively. you could have spoken out in a way to say these guys are wrong, this needs to end, but instead you were being paid by then. you were making over a million dollars at the same time people in florida were being hurt. >> as a businessman, you know that the gross revenue of bain

wasn't your personal income. we had a company, the company had three offices, the company was being paid. my share annually was about $35,000 a year, and the fact is i offered strategic advice largely based on my knowledge of history, including the history of washington. of government-sponsored enterprises include, for example, rural electric cooperatives, federal credit unions. there are many different kind of government-sponsored enterprises, and many of them have done very good things. and in the early years before some people, particularly jim johnson and other democrats began to change the model, you could make an argument that in the early years those housing institutions were responsible for a lot of people getting housing. >> there's no question about that, but we're talking about one. we're talking about freddie mac. >> right. >> and that one did a lot of bad for a lot of people, and you were making -- there, making over a million dollars. owned by you. and you said it was 300,000, it

was a million six, what's the difference? >> what's the gross revenue of bain in the years you were associated with it? >> very substantial, but i think it's irrelevant -- [laughter] >> did bain ever do any work with any company which did any work with -- >> we didn't do any work with the government. i didn't have an office on k street. i've never worked in washington. you were working -- we have congressmen who also said you came and lobbied them in -- >> i didn't lobby. >> we have congress that says you lobbied them with regards to medicare part d. >> whoa, whoa. you just jumped a long way over here, friend. >> well, another area of -- >> no. now, let me be very clear because i understand your technique which you used on mccain, you used on huckabee, you've used consistently, okay? it's unfortunate, and it's not going to work very well because the american people see through it. i have always publicly favored a

stronger medicare program. i wrote a book in 2002 called safing lives and saving money. i publicly favored medicare part d for a practical reason. the u.s. government was not prepared to give people anything -- insulin, for example -- but they would pay for kidney dialysis. that is a terrible way to run medicare. i am proud of the fact, and i'll say this in florida, i'm proud of the fact that i publicly, openly advocated medicare part d. it has saved lyes, it's run on a free enterprise model, it also includes health savings accounts and medicare alternatives which gave people choices, and i did it publicly, and it is not correct, mitt -- i'm just saying this flatly because you've been walking around saying things that are untrue -- it is not correct having public advocacy as lobbying. every citizen has the right to do that. >> they sure do. >> i did it out in the open --

>> here's why it's a problem, mr. speaker, and that is if you're getting paid by health companies, if your entities are getting paid by health companies that could benefit from a piece of legislation and you then meet with republican congressmen and encourage them to support that legislation, you can call it whatever you'd like. i call it influence peddling. it is not right. it is not right. you have a conflict. you are being paid by companies at the same time you're encouraging people to pass legislation which is in their favor. >> governor? >> this is, you spent, now, 15 years in washington on k street, and this is a real problem. if we're going to nominate someone who not only had a record of great distress as a speaker, but then has worked for -- >> gentlemen, we've let this go because of the state of the race and certain about this conversation i guess had to happen. this also has to happen. we have to go to a break. we'll come back, we'll talk about foreclosure, we'll talk about foreign policy, we'll welcome in the other two

gentlemen to this conversation when we continue from tampa. [applause] ♪ >> the nbc news tampa bay times/national journal debate continues inwomen -- in partnership with the florida council of 100. once again, brian williams. >> welcome back to what has already become an interesting night in tampa, florida. gentlemen, welcome back to you. and senator santorum, let's begin this segment with you. since we've been nibbling around the edges of the foreclosure crisis since, what, 40% of homeowners in this state are underwater, 53% of the homes in tampa, florida, are worth less today than before this crisis. was with it too easy, did vehicles of the u.s. government make it too easy to own a home in america? >> well, the answer, unfortunately, is yes to that. there were several of us in the united states senate back in

2005 and 2006 who saw this on the horizon, who saw the problem with freddie and fannie and tried to move forward, i was on the banking committee. we voted a bill out to try to constrain fannie and freddie, and there were a lot of people fighting that including harry reid and his minions on the other side of the aisle. i signed a letter that said stop the filibuster of this bill, harry reid, barack obama, joe biden all of whom were in the senate at this time, to allow reform of fannie and freddie. we said if we don't con train these two behemoths from continuing to underwrite this subprime mortgage problem, then we're going to have a collapse. unfortunately, that proved to be true. problem now is what are you going to do about it? as you heard me say before, let capitalism work. allow these banks to realize their losses and create an opportunity for folks who have housing to realize there's

losses and at least help them out. that's what i proposed this my tax plan. i talk about five areas where i allow deductions. one of them would be able to deduct losses from the sale of your home. right now you can't do that. you have to pay gains depending on the amount, but you can't deduct the losses. this is important to temporarily put in place to allow people the freedom to be able the to go out and get out from underneath these houses they're holding on to and at least get some relief from the federal government to do so. >> congressman paul, should that be any role for the government? are those folks owed anything for being under? >> well, the government owes them a free market and a sound monetary system, but they didn't give it to 'em. they gave them a mess. they gave them a financial system that literally created this problem. it was compounded, first the line of credit to the federal reserve, it was excessive. everybody now admits in washington interest rates were kept too low too long. but not only that, in addition to that it was an insult to injury because they kept interest rates especially low

with freddie mac and fannie mae, and there was a line of credit there, and it was a guarantee. matter of fact, i had introduced legislation to eliminate that line of credit ten years before the bubble burst. but the community reinvestment act added more fuel to it, forcing banks to make loans that are risky. so the whole bubble was easily seen, the consequences were anticipated. it was all government manufactured. but the question is, what do you do after you come upon a mess the government and the politicians created? the best thing you can do is get out of the way because you want the prices to come down so that people will start buying them again. the politicians can can't allow that to happen. our policies in washington still has been to try the stimulate houses and keep prices up. but this whole thing about how we get involved in this low interest rate to stimulate the economy, almost everybody in washington now and almost all spectrums of the economic sphere do not believe in wage and price controls. but they believe in controlling interest rates.

that's one-half of the whole economy, and here we have a bunch of guys getting in a room in secret deciding what interest rates should be, and they create this mess. so, yes, we need the get out of the way, but the debt has to be liquidated. the mortgage was a monster. a lot of of people made a lot of money, but guess what? federal reserve to the tune of trillions and trillions of dollars were used to bail out to people that made all this money. guess what happened to the bad debt that should have been wiped off the book? dumped on the taxpayers, and the taxpayers still have it. as long as you maintain that debt on the books, you're not going to have growth. this is why japan hasn't recovered. it's going to continue until we understand who creates the business cycle, how it happens and what you have to do to get out of it. >> gentlemen, 30 seconds with this starting with governor romney. to help these homeowners or not? >> of course we help them.

pam bondi here in florida is cracking down on fraud. number two, get government out of the mess, government's created the mess. number three, help people see if they can't get more flexible from their banks. right now we made it harder for banks, and finally you've got to get the economy going with people having jobs. with florida with 9.9% unemployment and 18% real unemployment in this state and underemployment, you're not going to get housing recovered unless you get jobs created again. >> speaker? >> if you could repeal dodd-frank tomorrow morning, you would see the economy improve overnight. people don't realize, this builds on what congressman paul said. the fact is dodd-frank is crushing independent banks, it has an anti-housing bias, federal regulators are slowing down and making it harder to get loans, and it is crippling small business borrowing, all those things the punk of a bill -- the function of a bill called

dodd-frank. >> you really think the financial system is overregulated? that's the second mention of dodd-frank tonight. >> yes, of course, it's overregulated. of when you put that much power in the treasury under geithner, it's an invitation to corruption. when you have a bias in the bill which makes the big banks get bigger, exactly the opposite of what a rational policy would be, it's a bad bill. when you have regulators walk in small local banks and say do not loan money on housing, it's a bad idea. >> governor rollny, was it overregulated prior to the collapse? >> it was poorly regulated. you can't have everybody open up bank in their garage. you have to have regulation. but it's got to be up-to-date. they didn't have capital requirements put in place, they also didn't have regulation properly put in place for mortgage lenders, derivatives weren't being regulated. you these to have regulation that's up-to-date. they had old regulation, burdensome. then they passed dodd-frank which the speaker's absolutely right.

it has made it almost impossible for community banks -- i was with the head of one of the big banks this new york, he said they have hundreds of lawyers working on dodd-frank to implement it. community banks don't have hundreds of lawyers. it's just killing the residential home market, and it's got to be replaced. >> golf romney, there was a lot of of talk in the last presidential campaign about that phone call. of let's say president romney gets that phone call, and it is to say that fidel castro has died, and there are credible people in the pentagon who predict upwards of a half a million cubans may take that as a cue to come to the united states. what do you do? >> well, first of all, you thank heavens that fidel castro has returned to his maker and will be sent -- [laughter] to another land. [applause] number two, you work very aggressively with the new leadership in cuba to try and move them towards a more open degree than they've had in the past. we just had with william villar,

his life was just lost in a hunger strike. this president has taken a dangerous course with regards to cuba saying we're going to relax immigration, open up for travel. we want to stand with the people of cuba that want freedom. we want to move that effort forward not by giving in and saying we lost, but by saying we will fight for democracy. >> mr. speaker, as a practical matter along the florida coast, though, you know the policy so-called wet foot, dry foot. what do you do if folks start arriving in the united states? >> well, brian, first of all, i guess the only thing i would suggest is i don't think that fidel's going to meet his maker. i think he's going to go to the other place. [laughter] [applause] second, i would suggest to you that the policy of the united states should be aggressively to overthrow the regime and to do everything we can to support those cubans who want freedom. obama's infatuated with an arab spring. he doesn't seem to be able to

look 90 miles south of the united states to have a cuban spring. so i would try to put in place a very aggressive policy of reaching out to every single cuban who would like to be free, helping network them together, reaching out to the younger generation inside the dictatorship and indicating they don't have a future as a dictatorship because a gingrich presidency will not tolerate four more years of this -- >> overt and covert, are you talking about engaging the u.s. military? >> i'm talking about using every asset available to the united states to maximize the difference. what ronald reagan, pope john paul and margaret thatcher did to the soviet empire. minimalize the survival of the dictatorship. >> congressman? >> i have a little bit of work yet to do on him on foreign policy. [laughter] no, i would do pretty much the opposite. i don't like the isolationism of not talking to people. i was drafted in 1962 at the height of the cold war when the

missiles were in cuba, and the cold war's over. and i think we propped up castro for 40-some years because we put on these sanctions, and this only used us as a scapegoat. he could always say anything wrong, it's the united states' fault. but i think it's time to quit this isolation business of not talking the people. we talked to the soviets, we talked to the chinese, and we opened up trade. we're not killing each other now. we fought with the vietnamese for a long time, we finally gave up, started talking to them, now we trade with them. i don't know why the cuban people should be so intimidated. man, i don't know where you get this assumption that all of a sudden all the cubans are coming here. i would thought they're going to celebrate and they would have a lot more freedom if we would say we want to talk with you and come visit. sometimes they can't even send packages down there. i think we're living in the dark ages when we can't even talk to the cuban people. i think it's not 1962 anymore,

and we don't have to use force and intimidation and overthrow of governments. i just don't think that's going to work. >> senator santorum -- [applause] an admittedly cynical question. if there was a strong lob by of chinese dissidents living in a state as politically important as florida, do you think we'd have a trade policy with china that looks more like the trade policy with cuba? >> not if they were 90 miles off our shore. this is an important doctrine of the united states, to make sure that our hemisphere and those who are close to us are folks that we can and should deal with. and right now we have and have had for 50 years a dictatorship in cuba. we've had sanctions on them. they should continue. they should continue until the castros are dead, and then we should make it very clear that if you want mountains of aid, if you want normal relationships, if you want to improve your economy, if you want to have the

opportunity for freedom that the united states stands ready now to embrace you now that you've gotten rid of these tyrants who have controlled you for these 50-plus years. that's why the sanctions have to stay in place. because we need to have a very solid offer to come forward and help the cuban people. and you're right, ron, it's not 1962. there are now with the cubans, vens wail lance, the nick rag want, there is a growing network of folks now working with the jihadists, the iranians who are very, very excited about the opportunity of having platforms 90 miles off our coast just like the soviets were. very anxious to have of platforms 90 miles off our coast or venezuela or nicaragua or other places. this is a serious threat. it's a threat i've been talking about for about six or seven years, and it's one that's not going to go away until we confront the threat and, hopefully, are able to convince the cuban people that through what newt and others have suggested to change their government at the appropriate time. >> governor romney, last night

the abe lincoln u.s. aircraft carrier and a couple of other navy vessels passed through the strait of hormuz into the persian gulf. if iran was able to fulfill, carry out that threat to shut down the strait, would you consider that an act of war? what would you do about it as president? >> of course it's an act of war. it is appropriate and essential for our military, for our navy to maintain open seas. we have control of the commons, of space, air and the seas. our navy has the capacity to do that, or did, in the past under this president and under prior presidents. we keep on shrinking our navy. our navy is now smaller than anytime since 1917. and the president is building roughly nine ships a year. we ought to raise that to 15 ships a year not because we want to go to war with anyone, but because we don't want anyone to take the hazard of going against us. we want them to see that we're so strong they couldn't possibly defeat us.

so we ought to have an aircraft carrier in the gulf, an aircraft carrier -- and, of course, a task force with it in the med train ya yang. we want to show iran any act of that nature will be considered an act of war, and america is going to keep those sea lanes open. >> speaker gingrich, if you accept that definition that it is an act of war, how do you gauge the appetite on the part of the american people after the better part of a decade of warfare fighting dual wars overseas for something like that? >> the american people have no interest in going to war anywhere. we have no interest in going to war with the japanese when they bombed pearl harbor. we had no interest in going to afghanistan when jihadists destroyed the world trade center. the fact is we've historically been a country that would like peace, we'd like stability, but we also have a historic commitment to freedom of the sea. and i would say that the most dangerous possible thing which, by the way, president obama just

did, the iranians are practicing closing the straits of hormuz, actively taunting us so he cancels a military exercise with the israelis so as not to be provocative? now, dictatorships respond to strength. they don't respond to weakness, and i think there's a very grave danger that the iranians think that, in fact, this president is so weak they could close the straits of hormuz and not suffer substantial consequence. >> governor romney, how do you end a war in afghanistan without talking to the taliban? >> by beating them. by standing behind our troops and making sure that we have transitioned to afghan military a capacity for them to be successful in holding off the taliban. our mission there is to be able to turn afghanistan and its sovereignty over to a military of afghan descent, afghan people that can defend their sovereignty. and that is something which we can accomplish in the next couple l of years. this president, however, has

done, made it very difficult for our troops to be successful in that mission by, number one, announcing a withdrawal date for our troops, number two, drawing down our surge troops faster than the time the commanders on the ground felt was necessary. you don't draw them down during the middle of the fighting season. and finally, by not overseeing elections in afghanistan to insure that the election of the president was seen by the people as legitimate. he has failed at policy in afghanistan that would optimize our success. >> go ahead. i was just going to ask any appetite on this stage? congressman? >> no, but i wanted to get involved in the discussion. >> go ahead. >> because the question was would you go to war, and mitt said he would go to war. but you have to think about the preliminary act that might cause them to want to close the straits of hormuz, and that's a blockade. we're blockading them. can you imagine what we would do if somebody blockaded the gulf

of mexico? that would be an act of war. so the act of war has already been committed. and this is a retaliation. but besides, there's no interest whatsoever for iran to close the straits of hormuz. i mean, they need it as much as we do. i mean, so you have to put that in a perspective. but this whole idea that we have to go to war because we've already committed an act by blockading the country, and i don't see, and i think newt is right. i think he's wrong about world war ii. i think the people were ready because we did it properly, we delareed it, and we on who it quickly. the people are not ready. we have too many wars, we don't have money, the people want to come home, and they certainly don't want a hot war in iran right now, and i think that'd be the most foolish thing in the world right now, take on iran. >> for us another break. i'll welcome two colleagues to the stage when we continue from tampa right after this.

[applause] ♪ >> welcome back to panel that. i am happy to welcome two fellow journalists to this stage, happy to be joined by our partners in this debate, in fact, the testimony pa bay times and washington journal. adam smith covers national, state and local politics for more than a decade. one of the very best in the trade and besides a lot of people just thought a gop debate should have adam smith present. [laughter] beth reinhart is a political correspondent for national journal, she is a florida native, was a veteran political reporter at "the miami herald" for 11 years. senator santorum, i didn't get you in on what we'll call the iran round because you've talked about this a lot, specifically as a last resort if you'd said, as you said, taking out iran's nuclear program.

the problem with that so many in the military tell you is the target list. where do you limit it? the area strieks that some -- the air strikes that some estimate would begin at 30-60 days sustained, taking out air defenses. all of that familiar language that the american people have just been through for a decade. >> the contrast is what happens if iran gets a nuclear weapon and the entire world changes? iran is not just another country or a little, small country as president obama classically said during the campaign. obama's iran policy has been a colossal failure. it's been a failure because he's not been true to the american public about the threat that iran poses to the world, not just to israel, but to the world and to the united states. bottom line is the theocracy that runs iran is the equivalent of having al-qaeda in charge of a country with huge oil reserves, gas reserves and a nuclear weapon. that is something that no president could possibly allow

to have happen under any circumstances, and when you ask the question, brian, are we -- is this an act of war, well, let's look at the acts of war. they are holding hostages, they are attacking our troops, their ieds that are killing our troops in afghanistan and killed them in iraq and maimed so many were produced, and people were trained and funded in iran. specifically, to kill american troops. you look at these ships that have been attacked by iran. embassies were attacked by iran. iran has plotted to kill the saudi ambassador near this country. it's a long list of attacks, of war-like behavior on the part of this regime. and to believe that if they have a nuclear weapon they're somehow going to come into the community of nations is a reckless act on the part of a president. it would be reckless not to do something to stop them from getting this nuclear weapon. >> senator, thank you. and to interests of local and state politics, beth reinhart

will take over the the questioning. >> senator santorum, here in florida bp is still airing apologetic appeals on television, but there are proposals to expand offshore oil drilling. the state's most optimistic estimates say more drilling would create 5,000 jobs, but an oil spill would threaten florida's tourism industry which employs nearly one million people. is that worth the risk? >> what threatens the tourist industry in florida as we've seen is a very bad economy. and a very bad economy that became l a bad economy why? because of a huge spike in oil prices in the summer of 2008. so energy is absolutely key to keep all of our country healthy, specifically florida. which is a destination place. this is a place that rely upon people being able to travel and afford to be able to travel to come down here. relies upon an economy being strong. i was at a manufacturer in sarasota county, today, and was talking about them as a manufacturer and that, you know,

the importance of manufacturing jobs. yes, even here in the state of florida and the price of energy for them to be able to be competitive. it is absolutely essential that we have as much domestic supply of oil, that we build the keystone pipeline, create the jobs that that would create and provide oil from domestic sources. pipelines that run on the floor of the sea or pipelines that come l through america are the safest way to transport oil. it is tankers that are causing, that cause much more problems. pipelines are the safe way. building those rigs, piping that oil into our shore is the best way to create a good economy for the state of florida. >> all of you favor making english the official language of the united states which could mean that ballots and other government documents would not be available in spanish. but, speaker gingrich, you're sending out press releases in spanish, governor romney, you're advertising in spanish. why is it okay for you to court voters in many spanish but not

okay for the government to serve them in spanish? speaker gingrich? >> well, first of all, you immediately jump down to a very important language, but not the only language. the challenge in the united states is simple, there are 86 languages in miami-dade college. 86. there are other 200 languages spoken in chicago. now, how do you unify the country? what is the common bond that enables people to be both citizens and to rise commercially and have a better life and a greater opportunity? i think campaigning historically, you've always been willing to go to people on their terms in their culture whether it's greek independence day or something you did for the irish on st. patrick's day, and i'm perfectly happy to be on radio -- [inaudible] and i'm perfectly happy to have a lot of support in the hispanic community. but as a country to unify ourselves in a future in which there may well be three or four hundred languages spoken in the united states, i think it is essential to have a central

language that we expect people to learn and to be able to communicate with each other. >> so to be clear, you would only have ballots in english? >> i'd have ballots in english, and i think you could have programs where virtually everybody would be able to read the ballots. >> governor romney? >> i think speaker gingrich is right. in my state we had a tradition of teaching people in the language of their birth, so we had people being taught a whole range of languages. and we had to have teachers that could teach in cambodian and vietnamese and other languages, and our kids were being taught in foreign languages in our own school, and we found they couldn't all speak english well. it made absolutely no sense. so we campaigned for english immersion if our schools and said kids coming in will have a transition period, then we're going to teach them in english. look, english is the language of this nation. people need to learn english to be able to be successful, to get great jobs. we don't want to have people limited in their capacity to

achieve the american dream because they don't speak english. so encouraging people through every means possible to learn the language of america is a good idea, recognize at the same time we want people coming here there other cultures that speak other languages. that trentens america. it's a great thing. but having them learn english is also a great thing for them and for their kids. >> may i -- >> congressman paul. >> yeah. my answer is similar but a little bit different because at the national level, obviously, we have to have one language. we can't have multiple languages, so for legal reasons we would have one language. but our system really gives us a way to be more generous because if florida wanted to have some ballots in spanish, i certainly wouldn't support a federal law that would prohibit florida from accommodating, you know, a city election or a local election or a state election. i think that's the magnificence of our system where you can so only of these -- some of these problems without dictating one answer for all states. nationally, we should have one language. >> speaker gingrich, i wanted to

move on to a slightly different topic, the dream act, which as you know would provide a pathway to citizenship for children who have been brought to the u.s. legally. if they attend college or enroll in the military of governor romney and senator santorum l have both said they would veto this legislation. would you do the same? >> no, i would work to get a sign bl version which would be the military component. i think any young person living in the united states who happened to have been brought here by their parents when they were very young should have the same opportunity to join the american military and earn citizenship which they would have had from back home. we have a clear provision ha if you -- that if you live in a foreign country and you're prepared to join the american military, you can, n., earn the right to citizenship by serving the united states. i would have that part of the dream act i would support. i would not support the part that simply says everybody who goes to college is automatically waived for having broken the law. >> questioning continues. >> i just note that's the same

position that i have, and that is i would not sign the dream act as it currently exists, but i would sign the dream act if it were focused on military service. >> thank you, governor. questioning continues with adam smith. >> governor romney, there's one thing i'm confused about. you say you don't want to go and round up people and deport them, but you also say they would have to go back to their home countries and apply for citizenship. so if you don't deport them, you have to send them home. >> the answer is self-deportation which people decide they can do better by going home because they can't find work here because they don't have legal.com use tail to -- documentation to work here. people who come here illegally would under my period be given a transition period and the opportunity to work here, but when that transition period was over, they would no longer have the documentation to allow them to work in this country. at that point they can decide whether to remain or whether to return home and to apply for legal residency in the united states, get in line with

everybody else. and i know people think, but that's not fair to those that have come here illegally. >> isn't that what -- if somebody doesn't feel they have the opportunity in america, they can go back anytime they want to. >> yes, we'd have a card that indicates who's here legally, and if people cannot determine they are here legally, then they're going to find they can't get work here, and if they can't, they're going to self-deport to a place where they can get work. ultimately, with this transition period in place, we would allow people to get in line at home and come back to this country after they reached the front of the line. but i just don't think t fair to the people who have loved ones waiting in line legally and be saying, guess what? we're going to encourage a wave of illegal immigration by giving amnesty of some kind. >> senator santorum, self-deportation s that a valid concept? >> well, happening now because they can't find jobs because of the lack of employment opportunities. the bottom line is that if you

do enforce the law and say that people who are here illegally, who are doing illegal acts and that is working which you're not allowed to do, and if you're working probably you've stolen someone's social security which you're not allowed to do, that's another law that is broken, that we should enforce the law. it's not someone who's come here illegally in the first place and they've only broken the law once. they continually break the law in this country, and i don't think that's something that should be rewarded. my father came to this country, my grandfather came to this country, he left my dad behind for five years. my dad was without a dad for almost the first five years of his life, and there are millions of stories across america people making sacrifices because america was worth it to do it the right way. the first thing you do is respect our laws. if you want to be an american, you respect the laws of america, and you do so continually while you're here. we reward that kind of behavior. we don't reward behavior where you don't respect our laws in your initial act and then you

continually break the laws in order to stay here. >> speaker gingrich n iowa you were a big supporter of ethanol subsidies. here in florida sugar's a very important industry, and it's subsidized as well with import restrictions quotas. there's a conservative movement to do away with these programs, and in the case of sugar critics say it adds billions of dollars to consumers' grocery bills every year. what would you coabout that? >> i kept trying to figure out how to get away from the sugar subsidy, and i found out one of the fascinating things about america which is which was that cane sugar hides behind beet sugar, and there are just too many beet sugar districts in the united states. it's an amazing side story about how interest groups operate. in an ideal world, you would have an open market, and that's -- i think that would be a better future and, frankly, where cane sugar would still make a lot of money. but t very hard to imagine how you're going to get there. i spent a lot of time trying to reform ago chen when i was speaking, and it was one of the two or three hardst thing toss o

too -- things to try to do because the capacity of the agricultural groups to defend themselves is pretty amazing. >> governor romney, you're getting support from growers, what's your view? >> my view is we ought to get rid of subsidies and let the market work properly. you both know what's going on here. i spent time this morning with eight different individuals listening to them talk about their circumstances. there are a lot of people in florida that are hurting. you've got a lot of homes underwater. this president came into office saying he'd turn this economy around, and everything he has done has made it harder for the people of florida. we have 25 million americans out of work. we have, in florida, 9.9% unemployed, we have 18% of our people in this state that are underemployed. home values, 40% are underwater. this president has failed miserably the people of florida. he has no plans for nasa. the space coast is struggling.

we have to have a president who understands how to get an economy going again. he does not. he plays 09 rounds of golf when you have 25 million people out of work. he says gasoline prices doubled under his presidency, he says don't build a keystone pipeline. we have 15 trillion in debt. we're headed towards a greece-type collapse, and he has another billion on top for obamacare and his stimulus plan. this economy needs -- >> congressman paul? florida's everglades provide one in three floridians with their drinking water, it effects thousands of jobs. right now there's a joint federal/state program to save what's left of the everglades. would you continue -- commit to that -- >> sure, i don't see any reason to go after that. i would still look into the details on whether that could be a state issue or not, but with all the wars going on and the economy's in shambling as it is and the unemployment, to worry

about dealing with that program, we could do it in a theoretical sense, but i see no reason to, you know, complicate things. but i wouldn't have any desire to interfere with that. >> at this point, we'll take another break. we'll return to tampa. [applause] >> the nbc news/tampa bay times/national journal debate continues in partnership with the florida council of 100. once again, brian williams. [applause] >> we are -- [inaudible] as the conversation continues. once again the questioning continues. adam smith of the tampa bay times. >> thank you. senator santorum, 2005 florida was in the middle of a huge national debate about terry schiavo, whether her feeding tube should be removed after the courts had ruled she'd been this a vegetative state for years.

you were at the center, at the front of advocating congressional intervention to keep her alive, you even came down here to her bedside after a fundraiser. why should the goth have more say in medical l decision like that than a spouse? >> thurm one, i didn't come to her bedside, but i did come down to tampa. it so happened this situation was going on. i did not call for congressional intervention, i called for a judicial hearing by an impartial judge at the federal level to review a case in which you had parents and a spouse on different sides of the issue. and these were constituents of mine, the parents, that live in pennsylvania. they came to me and made a very strong case that they would like to see some other pair of eyes look at it, judicial eyes, and i agreed to advocate for those constituents because i believe we should give respect and dignity for all human life, the

irrespective of their condition. and if there was someone there that wanted to provide and take care of them and they were willing to do so, i wanted to make sure the judicial proceedings worked properly, and that's what i did, and i would do it again. [applause] >> do not resuscitate direct is, do you think they're immoral? >> no, i don't believe they're immoral. i mean, i think that's a decision that people should be able to make, and i've supported legislation in the past for them to make it. >> speaker gingrich n that case the courts had ruled repeatedly. how does that square the terry schiavo action with your understanding of the constitution and the separation of powers? >> look, i think that we go to extraordinary lengths, for example, for people who are on murderers' row. they have extraordinary rights of appeal. and you have here somebody who was in a coma who had on the one hand her husband saying let her die, and her parents saying let her live. now, it's right to me that having a bias in favor of life and at least going to a federal hearing which would be automatic

if it was a criminal on death row. that is not too much to say in some circumstances your rights as an american citizen ought to be respected, and there ought to be at least a judicial review of whether or not in that circumstance you should be allowed the -- to die which has nothing to do with whether or not you as a citizen have your right to have your own end of life prescription which is totally appropriate for you to do as a matter of your l values in consultation with your doctor. >> congressman paul, you're a doctor. what was your view of the terry schiavo case? >> i find it so unfortunate. so unusual, too, that situation doesn't come up very often. it should teach us all a lesson to have living wills or a good conversation with a spouse. i would want my spouse to make the decision, but it's better to have a living will. but i don't like going up the ladder. you know, we go to the federal courts and the congress and on up. yes, difficult decisions, will

it be perfect for everybody? no. but i would have preferred to see the decision made at the state level. but i've been involved in medicine with things similar, but not quite as difficult as this. but usually we defer to the family, and it wasn't made a big issue like this was. this was way out of proportion to what happens more routinely. but i think it should urge us all to try to plan for this and make sure either that one individual that's closest to you makes the decision, or you sign a living will, and this would have solved the whole problem. >> governor romney, this is a state that put the first man on the moon. america right now has no way to put people into space except to hitch a ride with the russians. meanwhile, the chinese are ramping up their space program. at a time when you all want to shrink federal spending, should space exploration be a priority? togovernor romney? >> it should certainly be a

priority. we have a president who doesn't have a vision for space, and florida itself is suffering as a result. so what's the right way forward? well, i happy to believe our space program is important not only for science, but also commercial and military development. and i believe the right mission for nasa should be determined by a president together with a collection of people from those different areas, from nasa, from the air force space program, from our leading universities and from commercial enterprises. bring them together, discuss a wide range of options for nasa, and then have nasa not just funded by the federal government, but also by commercial enterprises, have some of the research done in our universities. let's have a collaborative effort with business, with government, with the military as well as with our educational institutions. have a mission once again to excite our young people about the potential of space and the commercial potential will pay for itself down the road. this is a great opportunity. florida has technology. the people here on the space

coast have technology and vision and passion that america needs, and what the president is actually willing to create a mission and a vision for nasa and for space. we can continue to lead the world. >> speaker gingrich, would you put more tax dollars into the space race and commit to putting an american on mars instead of relying on the private sector? >> well, the two are not incompatible. you, for example, most of the great breakthroughs in aviation in the '20s and '30s were a result of prizes. lindbergh flew to paris for a $25,000 prize. i would like to see vastly more of the money spent encouraging the private sector into very aggressive experimentation. and can i'd like to see a leaner nasa, i don't think building a bigger bureaucracy and having a greater number of people sit in rooms and talk gets you there. but if we had a series of goals that we were prepared to offer prizes for, there's every reason to believe you'd have a lot of folks in this country and around the world that would put up an

amazing amount of money and would make the space coast literally hum with activity because they'd be drawn to achieve these prizes. going back to the moon permanently, getting to mars as rapidly as possible, building a series of space stations and developing commercial space. there are a whole series of things you can do that could be dynamic that are more than just federal government bureaucracy, they're fundamentally leapfrogging into a world where you're incentivizing people who are visionaries and people in the private sector to invest very large amounts of money in finding very romantic and exciting futures. >> speaker gingrich, i have another question for you on another topic. you've talked about the millions of jobs created by the reagan tax cuts. if tax cuts create jobs, why didn't the bush tax cuts work? >> well, in a period of great difficulty with the attack of 9/11 actually stopped us from going into a much deeper slump. i think we would have been in much, much worse shape, and i think most economists agree in 2003 and 2004 we'd have been in

much worse shape. the reason i called for repealing dodd-frank and obamacare and repealing sarbanes-oxley is you now have these huge lay we ariers of paperwork and bureaucratic micromanagement that are crippling the american system and making it much harder for us to create the jobs we want. in north dakota today we have a boom in oil development, unemployment's down to 3.2%, they they've had seven straight tax cuts at the state level because the oil was on private land. if that oil had been on public land, the environmentalists and barack obama would have stopped its development, and north dakota would be mired in 8 or 9% unemployment. so get the regulations out of the way, get the tax incentives right, and you can get back to creating an amazing number of jobs very fast. >> so my fellow questioners, our panelists tonight, my thanks. so ends this section of our conversation. the final bit of our debate from tampa tonight coming up after this last break.

[applause] >> welcome back to our tampa, final south section of our conversation. we're back down to the fife of us here on stage. i thought we'd talk a little bit more big picture. in addition to this unprecedented primary contest the gop is in the midst of, this has been called a battle for the soul of the republican party. governor romney, the question is about that soul, what have you done to further the cause of conservativism as a republican leader? >> well, number one, i've raised a family. and i've, with my wife, we've raised five wonderful sons, and we have 16 wonderful grandkids. number two, i've worked in the private sector. the idea that somehow everything important for conservativism or

america happens in government is simply wrong. i've been in the private sector. i worked in one wiz that was in -- business that was in trouble and helped it turn around, another i started, and we were able to create thousands and thousands of jobs. and then i took the opportunity to become golf of a state -- governor of a state that was slightly democrat. we cut taxes 9 times. we balanced the budge every year, put in place a rainy day fund of over $2 billion by the time i left. we were also successful in having english immersion in our schools, driving our schools to be number one in the nation. that kind of conservative model in a state like massachusetts was a model in the many respects that other states could look at and say, okay, conservative principles work. we were able to reach across the aisle to fight for principles, and now i'm taking that to the presidential campaign. >> mr. speaker, you've been talking a lot about conservative principles in this campaign so far, is that enough for you? is that good enough?

>> i don't want to spend my time commenting on mitt. i'd like to just tell you that i went to a goldwater organizing session in 1964. i met with ronald reagan for the first time in 1974. i worked with jack kemp and art laugher and others to develop supply-side economics in the late '70s, i helped governor reagan become president reagan, i helped pass the reagan economic program when i work with the the national security council on issues involving the collapse of the soviet empire. i then came back, organized a group, spent 16 years building a majority in the house. the first reelected majority since 198, developed the conservative opportunity society, talked about big ideas, big solutions. so i think it's fair to say i've spent most of my lifetime trying to develop a conservative movement across this country that relates directly to what we have to do. and i think only a genuine conservative who's in a position to debate o obama and to show how wide the gap is between obama's policies and conservativism can, in fact, win

because he's going to spend a billion dollars trying to smear whoever the nominee is, and we'd better be prepared to beat him in the debate and prove exactly how wrong his values are and how wrong his practices are. >> which, senator santorum, gets us back to electability. the gap between the republican party and the president. some of the newspaper headlines about this gathering we were going to have tonight, in florida romney seeks to link gingrich to foreclosure crisis. and here's a second one. the verdict is in, mitt romney's bain capital problem is real what's the net effect of all this, of the tax release tomorrow, the freddie mac release tonight on your party, say your candidacy as you try to go forward? >> i would say there are more fundamental issues than that where there's a gap and a problem with the two of the gentlemen who were up here with me. one is on the biggest issue that we have to deal with in this election, and that's obamacare. governor romney's point in

massachusetts was the basis for obamacare. speaker gingrich for 20 years supported a federal individual mandate, something that pam bondi is now going to the supreme court saying is unconstitutional. speaker gingrich for 20 year, up until last year supported an individual mandate which is at the core of obamacare. if you hook at cap and trade, governor romney was proud to say he was the first governor to shine a cap on co2 emissions. the first state in the country to put a cap believing in the global warming and criticized republicans for not believing in it as did, by the way, speaker gingrich who was for a cap and trade program with incentives. business incentive, but was for the rubric of cap and trade, not specifically the cap and trade bill that was out there. again, huge, huge differences between my position and where president obama is, but not so on two major issues. you go down, and you look at the wall street bail outs. i said before, here's one where you have folks who preach conservativism, private sector,

and when push came to shove, they got pushed. they didn't stand tall for the conservative principles that they argued that they were for, and as a result we ended up with this bailout that has injected government into business like it had never been done before. they rejected conservativism when it was hard to stand. it's going to be hard to stand whoever this president's going to be elected. it's going to be tough. there is going to be a mountain of problems. it's going to be easy to be able to bail out and compromise your principles. we have gentlemen here on the three issues that got the tea party started, that are the base of the conservative movement now of the republican party, and there is no difference between president obama and these two gentlemen, and that's why this election here in florida is so critical, that we have someone that actually can create a contrast between the president and the conservative point of view. >> congressman paul, these who men in the middle, are they insufficiently conservative for you? >> well, i think that the problem is there's no easy way to define what being conservative means. >> go ahead.

>> i think that is our problem. conservative means we have smaller government and more liberty. and yet if you ask what have we done, i think we've lost our way completely. our rhetoric is still pretty good, but when we get in charge, we expand the government. you talk about dodd-frank, but we gave them sarbanes-oxley. you know, when we're in charge, so if it means limited government, you have to ask the basic question, what should the role of government be? the founders wrote a constitution. they said the role of government ought to be to protect liberty. it's not to run a welfare state and not to be the policeman of the world. and so if you're going to be conservative, how can you be conservative and cut food stamps, but you won't cut spending overseas? there's not a nickel or penny that anybody will cut on the conservative side overseas spending, and we don't have the money. they're willing to start more wars. i say if you're conservative, you want small government across the board, especially in potential liberty. what's wrong with having people, the government out of our personal lives?

so this is what -- we have to decide what conservative means, what limited government means, and i have a simple suggestion. we have a pretty good guide, and if we follow the constitution, government would be very small, and we would all be devoted conservatives. >> governor romney, again tonight -- [applause] so-called romneycare and so-called obamacare have been positioned very closely, side by side by your opponent, the senator, and again you've been called insufficiently conservative. >> you know, i have a record. you can look at my record. i just described what i had englished in massachusetts, there's -- accomplished in massachusetts as a conservative governor. i didn't beat ted kennedy, but he had to take a mortgage out on his house to defeat me. i believe the policies he put in place hurt america and helped create a permanent underclass in this country. my health care plan, by the way, is one under our constitution we're allowed to have, the people in our state chose a plan which i think is working for our state. at the time we crafted it, i was asked time and again, is this something you would have the federal government do?

i said, absolutely not. i do not support a federal mandate. i do not support a federal one size fits all plan. i believe in the constitution. that's why the attorney general here is saying absolutely not. you can't impose obamacare on the states. what i will do if i'm president, i will repeal obamacare and return to the states the authority and the rights the states have to craft their own programs to care for their own poor. >> speaker gingrich, i know none of you believe in polls, but as we came in here tonight of the numbers in the known world, your numbers were on the rise. what scares you about the presidency, if you made it to the job you want? >> i actually agree with what rick santorum said. i believe that whoever the next president is if we're going to get america back on the right track is going to face enormous, difficult problems, some of which have been accurately diagnosed by dr. paul. the fact is that we have

tremendous institutional bias against doing the right thing and against getting things done, and we have huge interest groups who would rather preside over the wreckage than lose their favorite position by helping the country. so i always tell audiences i never ask anyone to be for me because if they're for me, they vote yes, go home and say i sure hope newt does it. i ask people to be with me because i think this will be a very hard, very difficult journey, and i find it a very humbling and sobering thought that one would have to try to get america back on the right track despite all of our elites and entrenched bureaucracies. >> governor romney, you talk about restoring america's greatness. given that in your view when was america last great? >> america still is great. but we have a lot of people suffering. we have people that are underemployed that shouldn't be, unemployed that shouldn't be, home values continue to go down, we have the median income in this country has declined 10% in

the last four years. we're still a great nation, but a great nation doesn't have so many people suffering, and i'm running in part because i have experience in how the economy works, and i want to use that experience to get people working again, to get our economy working again, and the idea to get our economy working is not to have the government play a more sprucive role, but instead to do the seven things that are always going to get the economy going. get taxes competitive, regulation as modest as possible and modernized, get ourselves energy independent, open up trade with other nations and crack down on cheaters, make sure we don't have crony capitalism, that's what we have going on right now, build human capital through education and also, finally, balance the budget. people will not invest in an economy and create new jobs if they think we're going to hit a greece-like wall. i will do those seven things and get america working again. >> i want to thank all of our candidates and our hosts, of course, here at the university of south florida. we are only dated at this point

to say go bulls for -- [cheers and applause] for our viewers here on your nbc -- >> mitt romney talked in the debate about releasing his tax returns. you can read his returns for the last two years on c-span.org. the returns show that he paid about $43 million in taxes over the past two years and donated about $7 million. find the full reports on c-span.org. also on our web site, newt gingrich's consulting contract with freddie mac, referred to in the debate we just showed. today mr. gingrich called mr. romney's comments on the contract outrageously dishonest and pointed out that mitt romney owns freddie mac and fannie mae stock. again, all this on our web site at c-span.org. now, a look -- >> only newt gingrich can beat

obama. >> more people have been put on food stamp by barack obama than any president in history. [applause] >> if that makes liberals unhappy, i'm going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job and learn someday to own the job. [cheers and applause] >> i'm newt gingrich, and aapproved this message. >> while florida families lost everything in the housing crisis, newt gingrich cashed in. gingrich was paid over $1.6 million by the scandal-ridden agency that helped create is crisis. >> and i offer advice, and my advice as a historian -- >> an historian? really? sanctioned for ethics violations, gingrich resigned from congress in disgrace and then cashed in as a d.c. insider. if newt wins, this guy would be very happy. >> i'm mitt romney, and i approved this message. >> today the candidates are back on the campaign trail.

mitt romney started the morning in tampa and is lehigh acres about halfway between tampa and the bottom of the state. he has that stop this afternoon. newt gingrich visits sarasota, fort myers and tampa this afternoon. rick santorum finished an event in stuart just north of west palm beach. ron paul is home in texas and has no public events today. >> for more resources in the presidential race, use c-span's campaign 2012 web site to watch videos of the candidates on the campaign trail, is see what the candidates have said on issues important to you and read the latest from candidates, political reporters and people like you from social media sites at c-span.org/campaign 2012. >> mr. speaker, the president of the united states! [cheers and applause] >> tonight, president obama delivers his state of the union

address. live coverage begins at 8 p.m. eastern including the president's speech, republican response by indiana governor mitch daniels, and your phone calls live on c-span and c-span radio. on c-span2, watch the president's speech along with tweets from members of congress. and after the address more reaction from house members and senators. throughout the night go online for live video and to add your comments using facebook and twitter at c-span.org. >> the senate is about to gavel in to session. no bills are scheduled today. senators will spend much of the day on general speeches. they're back in session. they will recess and head over to the state of the union this evening. going to be a very important week for voting on the president's request to raise our debt ceiling.

mr. president, our debt is $15.2 trillion. the president is going to ask for a $1.2 trillion increase in that debt these are astronomical numbers. anyone looking at this can see that we are spiraling out of control in very short order. just to put it many perspectiv perspective -- put it in perspective, the gross domestic product ratio to debt has been in the range of 40% debt to our gross domestic product. today, mr. president, we are surpassing 100 burst. now100 -- 100%. now, you don't hear numbers like that except in certain places in europe. this is untenable. when president obama was sworn in to office, the federal debt was $10.6 trillion.

in just under four years, the u.s. has accumulated more than $5 trillion in new debt. let's place the president's request in context. the $1.2 trillion that he is asking to increase the debt ceiling will not even cover last year's deficit, which was $1.3 trillion. we are in an untenable situation and we must do something about it. i think most people who are focusing on this believe that. but instead, attempts to cut the deficit are met with proposals to do, what? increase taxes. taxes to pay for current spending and even propose new spending on top of the levels that we -- where we are now. in the coming weeks, the

president will unveil his fiscal year 2013 budget. last year the fy 2012 budget that the president put forward totaled $3.7 trillionmen trilli. and he proposed over $1.6 trillion in new taxes over a ten-year period. these figures demonstrate the fundamental problem that we have in this country, which any small business person looking at this can tell you, and that is we have chronic deficit spending. now, we must accept the fact that mandatory spending accounts for more than half of all federal spending, and the entitlement spending is open ended. the reality is that social security is currently operating in the red. benefits are exceeding the payroll tax revenue. the programs that are in the

entitlement section of our budgeting are in dire need of being updated. we must gradually reform social security to meet current life expectancy rates. i have introduced a bill to do that, along with senator kyl and senator graham. it is very important that the president take the lead on entitlement spending, and yet, from all of the things that we have heard from the president about what he is going to propose at the state of the union message and what he is going to put in his budget, there is no entitlement reform included. instead, it is more spending and more taxes to cover the spendi spending. the fact remains that we must change the course of this country. if we fail to do so, we're going to be at the same point this

time next year, because that is when we could reach the new debt ceiling of $16.4 trillion if the president's request is granted by congress. the precedent here is vivid. look how quickly the initial $900 billion request set forth under the budget control act last august has been exhausted. $900 billion has gone since august. this is january. that is a stunning figurement -- figure. a coherent, comprehensive policy regarding our nation's debt ceiling is not with us, it is not existent. in order to correct our current spending programs, we must align spending to match our revenues. american businesses and households know this.

they too it every month, every week -- they do it every month, every week. why shouldn't our government be held to the same standards? we have not had a true debt limit set by this administrati administration. the president continually requests increases in the debt ceiling without addressing the core problem, which is spending. while the budget control act included discretionary spending caps and a 2013 sequestration, it did not go far enough. no targets were set and there was no debt limit put for the annual deficits in the future, and we didn't have a ten-year plan. we could only get two years of agreement. we need to take our caps on spending further out. each year the caps should bring us closer to a balanced budget. we -- we should have a ten-year trajectory of lower spending. we should have a target to

achieve over ten years the debt down to a specific level which we should be able to set with leadership from the presidentmenpresident.this yearn cutting our deficits and aligning spending with revenues. we are going to have this vote on thursday, we are told. we have the time and the means to implement a sensible reform for our entitlement programs. mr. president, that's not going to happen in a vacuum and it's not going to happen with just the president or with just the republicans or with just the democrats in congress. we have to address entitlement issues together. the social security bill that i have introduced, it gradually increases the age at which social security would be

available to retirees. we all know that people are living lone longer, they are wog longer, they are healthier longer. the actuarial tables don't match the social security that was put in place 50 years ago. will not work. we've got to take therein ns if the president would work with congress to do that, my bill increases the date of retirement three months a year. so it is a very gradual increase. so if you are in the 66-year range and we increase by three months, you could retire three months later. no one would be affected under the age of -- over the age of 55

under my plan. so if you're 55, you wouldn't have any effect at all. but if you're 54, it would be three months later. so it is a plan that can work. and with that minor adjustment, we could make 75 years of social security solvent, along with a small decrease in the cost-of-living increase, but nothing on the are core benefit. there would be no cut in the core benefit, only a 1% cut in the cost-of-living increase. if inflation goes above 1%, there would be a cost-of-living adjustment. i think everyone would rather have a sound social security system and know that it is there for them as a cushion. as we know, social security was not supposed to be a retirement plan. it was supposed to be a safety net, and it is a safety net for many people in our country. we are also trying to encourage

more saving for security in retirement by people. that's why when we're talking about the 15% tax on capital gains and dividends, it's because we're encouraging people to save for their retirement security. we are a country, unfortunately, that has a very low savings rate compared to most other countries in the world. americans save very little. the 15% rate is meant to encourage savings and helping people to plan and support their own retirement, in addition to social security. if we made social security solvent, it would also bring down the deficit and we could do it in a gradual way. if we and the president don't take the reins now in a bipartisan way and we just keep marching along the same path,

we're going to have drastic cuts in the actual benefit, in the core benefit going forward. and that would be a tragedy. it would be wrong for our children. it would be wrong for the next generation. for us not to be able in a bipartisan way. i hope the president will mention that in the state of the union. i hope he will make that a part of his efforts in this last year of his administration before the elections. i haven't heard any talk of th that. in the previews that i've heard of the state of the union, we're not hearing anything about entitlement reform, and yet it's half the budget. and we know we have to cut spending if we're going to actually bring the deficits down and start peeling away this cancerous debt that we have

accumulated in this country, $5 trillion in the last three years and $10 trillion accumulated up until three years ago. so, mr. president, it is my hope that we will start a leadership in the administration tonight at the state of the union, a leadership that we haven't seen yet,because all we've seen are the same, old tax-and-spend proposals that we're used to seeing. it's nothing new and nothing fresh. but the people of america know that we have to change course. the people of america in the polls say, by huge numbers, that we're going in the wrong direction in this country. 0% of americans have said --

70% of americans have said that in the latest polls about how do you feel about where we are now of the 70% believe this country is going in the wrong direction. so, mr. president, only we can do something about it, along with the president, and i hope he will provide the leadership. but i don't think raising the debt ceiling with no plan for the future to cut spending -- and that's going to happen this week -- that's not leadership, mr. president, and i hope there will be a change in direction. thank you, mr. president. and i yield the floor. and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mrs. hutchison: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mrs. hutchison: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mrs. hutchison: mr. president, i just want to correct the record. my staff tells me that senator graham is not a cosponsor of the social security reform bill. it is senator kyl and myself who are the cosponsors. and the age at which you would not be affected is 58, not 55.

thank you, mr. president. the presiding officer: without objection, the record will be corrected. mrs. hutchison: thank you. and i yield the floor, and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from florida. mr. rubio: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be suspended and that i be recognized -- the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. rubio: i ask unanimous consent that i be recognized to speak as if in morning business for up to 15 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. rubio: thank you, mr. president. it's good to be back, good to be back at work here in washington, d.c. we have the big state of the union which is the beginning of the legislative year. we look forward to the accomplishments that we will have together both in this chamber and in this building in

the coming year. as we prepare for the state of the union, i think it's a good time to reflect on where we are as a nation and where we hope to be and where we have been. i think all of us can look back at the 20th century and say it was truly the american century. i was blessed to be born in that century and to be the beneficiary of so much of america's greatness. i think those of us who have been the beneficiaries of america's past have an obligation, especially those of us who serve here to be defenders of america's greatness in the future, and i think that at the core of everything we debate today are these issues about america's future and how we make the 21st century an american century as well. now, we examine some of the things that have really distinguished us from the rest of the world that has made america and life in america different than life in other countries, there is three things that come to mind. the first is this concept of fairness. we are a people that strongly believe in the concept of fairness. and for americans, fairness has meant equality of opportunity. in essence, the belief that it doesn't matter where you come from, it doesn't matter if your

parents are poor, it doesn't matter if you grow up in a disadvantaged background. every single american should have the quality of opportunity, should have the same opportunity to succeed and accomplish their hopes and dreams. now, maybe we take that for granted from time to time but that is not a universal concept. multiple -- in multiple societies and economies around the world, i would dare say a majority of them, there isn't a strong belief in this notion. in fact, people believe that what you are going to be in life should be determined by the circumstances of your birth. not in america. this chamber, the membership here, basically anywhere you go in america is a testament to people that were born in a very different place or into very different circumstances than the ones that they live in now and the things they have been able to achieve. we believe in fairness. as americans, we have always embraced the concept of prosperity, the ability to accomplish your economic dreams and hopes. sometimes that means people make billions of dollars, and sometimes that means you make enough money to provide for your family and give them the opportunity to do even better than yourself, but we embrace

the concept of prosperity. and last but not least, we americans have always embraced the concept of responsibility. the responsibility that each of us have as individuals, as neighbors, as members of a community, as family members, and deep in this concept of responsibility is the notion that while we want fairness and equality of opportunity and while we want prosperity, we are also a compassionate people that do not want to see people left behind. in essence, we do not want the price of our prosperity to be leaving people behind, and to that end, americans as i outlined in a speech earlier last year, have always struggled and have fought for the notion of balancing those two dual, important goals, being a nation of prosperity and also a nation of responsibility. so these are the things -- this is the core of our values as a people that define our greatness in the last century, and therefore they must remain at the core of who we are as a nation if we want the 21st century to be an american century as well. so let's examine some of the challenges to those three

principles that are so important to our future. on the issue of fairness, on the issue of equality of opportunity, what are the things today that are standing in the way of equality of opportunity in america? in essence, what are the things today that are keeping some people from climbing up the ladder, from doing better than their parents did, from being able to pursue and fulfill their dreams as they should in a nation so deeply committed to the notion of equality of opportunity? in essence, there are a few things that are standing in the way. the first is skills. there are some americans right now that do not have access to the kind of training they need to build up the skills they need, for example, to create or to have a middle-class job. and part of that is our own doing as a nation. he have, for example, stigmatized career and technical education. for the life of me, i do not understand why we have done that. why do we not -- not every kid wants to go to a four-year university. not every kid wants to graduate with a ph.d. some kids just want to grow up and fix airplane engines or

build things. that's good, important, necessary work and yet we do not train our kids to do that. a growing number of middle-class jobs in america require more than a high school education but less than a four-year degree in college. why can't kids graduate from high school with a high school diploma and an industry certification and a career that will employ them right away? that's one of the impediments that's standing in the way of growing middle-class jobs. if we're truly committed to the principle of fairness, we should invest in that, we should encourage that particularly at the state level. this is another thing standing in the way of fairness, equality of opportunity, and that is the playing field is not always even. and there are two things in particular that stand out -- our regulations and our tax codes. look, it's not me saying it. it's the job creators, it's the small businesses, it's the people trying to make it. let me tell you what i mean by that. we have a complicated tax code. it's broken. here's the deal with that. if you are a large, major fortune 500 company, you can afford the best lawyers and accountants in the world to navigate it. you may not like the complicated tax code but you can deal with

it. the people who cannot deal with a complicated tax code are the people that are trying to make it, are the sole practitioner, the entrepreneur, the small business starting out in the garage or the spare bedroom of their home. they can't deal with the taxes and they can't deal with the regulations because they can't hire the army of specialists that it takes to navigate these things. unless you say that somehow we're making this up or somehow this is coming out of nowhere, let me tell you the u.s. chamber of commerce did a survey of small businesses earlier this year. here's what they found. 86% of small businesses -- which by the way is not just the backbone of america's economy. it's the backbone of america's prosperity. 86% of them said that they are worried that regulations, restrictions and taxes is hurting their ability to do business. this is a fact. so in terms of there not be a playing field that's even in america, in my opinion, the single greatest contributor to making it more difficult for people who are trying to make it to make it is some of the governmental policies, as well-intentioned as they may be, that are being implemented at

the governmental level. so we need to invest and commit deeply to this notion of fairness, which is defined in america as equality of opportunity. the second thing we need to continue to believe in is in prosperity, and prosperity in america has and must continue to mean private sector economic growth. the private sector growth creates private jobs which employ people and turn those people into parents that can send their kids to college and consumers that can spend money into our economy. the creation of middle-class jobs as i said earlier is not just the backbone of our economy, it's the backbone of our prosperity. how are jobs created in the private sector? it's six. someone has an idea, they have a business or a product they want to invest, they have access to money whether it's their own money or someone else's money, and they use that money to put their idea into practice, they start a business and it works. and as a result people get jobs and people are employed and the cycle repeats itself.

the job of us here in washington is to make it easier for people to do that at every level. number one, making it easier for people to have ideas and that's the easiest one of all. because americans haven't run out of good ideas and americans haven't forgotten how to create jobs. there are plenty of great idea. the great businesses of the 21st century, a bunch exist in the minds of hundreds of thousands of americans who are waiting for the chance to put that dream into practice. the second thing we have to do is make it easier for them to get access to the money they need to start these businesses and that means encourage investment which means for the life of me i do not understand why we would punish or discourage investment. why would we raise taxes on people who want to take their money and invest it in businesses to allow these businesses to grow and hire more people? so it's important that we make that easier as well. and i would just say that -- let me talk again about the small businesses.

the same survey that i just outlined a minute ago, 78% of the small businesses say that taxes and regulations coming from washington also make it harder for them to hire more employees. so in addition to making it easier for people to make money available to these as investors to allow these ideas to go into practice prak we also have to lower the cost of doing business. the barriers to entry. and the equation is pretty straightforward. if you're an employee working for somebody and you decide i think i can do this job better than my boss can, i'm going to start a business like this one and compete against them, if the regulations that impact that industry and the tax code that applies to that industry are too complicated and too burdensome, you can't do it. and if you're a small business that's trying to grow, no matter how much money you have invested you may not able to deal with these things as when. once again that's why these things matter. there are two industries i hope we'll look at as growth opportunities, real prosperity creators in america.

one is energy. we are an energy-rich country. and advances in technology have made certain deposits of energy that were once inaccessible to us accessible. natural gas is a great example. we need to stop punishing investment in the energy sector by raising taxes on it and we need to stop passing regulations that not only make it difficult to access our energy deposits but in fact take entire areas of this country and put them completely off-limits. so energy is one that we should motorcycle and the other is manufacturing. and there is no reason why as the rise of labor around the world, rise of labor costs around the world, more and more manufacturing can't return to the united states but it isn't going to happen, again, if you regulate people to look to do manufacturing, if you regulate them in the way they decide america is not the place to do this and again if the tax dreams treatment puts us at a competitive disadvantage. let me close by saying the opportunity before us all is really real. the 21st century holds

extraordinary promise, promise that has no parallel in all of human history. i don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we can see the kind of economic growth here and around the world that we have never seen before. that's how promising the 21st century is. but it all comes down to a choice. we have to make a choice. are we prepared to abandon the principles and ideals that made us unique and special? are we going to reembrace those principles and ideals and in so doing make this new century an american century as well? when i hear some of the talk in this building, it concerns me. people telling the american people that the way to protect your job is to raise your boss' taxes, i think that's counterproductive. when i hear policymakers in washington pitting the american people against each other, telling people that the only way you can do better is if someone else is worse off, i get concerned. because not only is it not true, that type of thought has never worked anywhere in the world. in fact, people flee from countries that think in that way.

the american experience has been something very different. the american experience has been that this is a country where everybody can do better. or the people that have made it can stay there and the people that are trying to make it can join them. we've never believed that the way for us to do better is other people having to do worse. we've never believed that in order for us to climb the ladder, we have to pull somebody else down. and to me this is not theory. it's the experience of my life. my parents raised me with middle-class jobs in the service sector. my dad, for example, was a bartender and i thanked god every night there was someone willing to risk their money to build a hotel in motorcycle why he where he could work. i thank god there was enough prosperity so people could go on vacation to miami beach or las vegas and people could leave tips in my dad's tip jar. with that money he raised us and he gave me the opportunity to do things he never had a chance to do. now, we had help along the way. i had student loans and grants

from the government to help me get my education, went to our public school system. that's an important role for government to play. but let's not forget that we cannot have more government than our economy can afford. and that's why those of us who desperately want to see a country that continues to have prosperity but also compassion who believe in safety net programs, that should exist to help those who cannot help themselves and to help those who have fallen to stand up and try again, that's why we believe we have to have a strong and robust economy. and what's startling is we, the largest, most prosperous nation in human history have built a government so expensive and so massive that not even the richest country in the history of the world can afford it. and we cannot continue on that road either. so i will just close by saying i hope this new year, this will be the beginning of our work towards a new american century. because i know that it worked in the past. i know that this idea of a nation where anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything

is not just something i read about in a magazine. i've seen it in my own life and no reason it cannot continue here if only we do the right things. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. sessions: i would ask that the quorum call be tkeuts pensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sessions: mr. president, i would ask consent that i be allowed to speak for up to 18 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sessions: mr. president,

today the state of the union day marks 1,000 days since this senate has fulfilled its statutory responsibility of passing a budget. this is not a little bitty matter and it implicates the leader of the democratic-controlled senate and their willingness to address the american people honestly and effectively concerning the very significant financial threats this nation faces. as every witness we had coming before the senate and predicted the budget committee, of which i am a member, has said. indeed president obama, april 29, 2009, when we last had a budget, said this: "a budget serves as an economic blueprint for the nation's future." that is true. it's not an insignificant

document that just has a bunch of numbers. it's a blueprint for the nation's future. and you either have one or you don't. he went on to say, "a budget is necessary to lay a new foundation for growth and to strengthen our economy." close quotes. and i believe that's certainly true, because the whole world, economy in the united states, business and investment and american people, are concerned that we don't have a plan for our future that gets us out of the debt path. some would say an economic growth death path that we're on. they want to see if we have a plan to do better. we'll have a speech tonight. i suspect it will be grand in sound and have some popular phrases. but the question is: when it's over, will we have a plan that

can be examined? will we have a plan that will lead us on an improved, dramatically improved debt path? or will reremain as business as usual, in denial? so a budget resolution is legally required by the congressional budget act of 1974. required by law. it passed because congress hadn't been passing budgets effectively, and so the congress passed a law and said we must do it. and we're going to require ourselves to do it. by law, the president must submit a budget to congress by the first monday in february. the president has submitted one. he submitted one last year. he sent it to the congress. it was not a good budget. it was what i had called the most irresponsible budget ever submited to congress. i chose those words carefully because we have as a nation

never been in a more systemic danger from debt as we are today. our population is aging, our growth is not solid. the number of people on medicare and medicaid, on social security increased. and we need growth and prosperity. and it's a danger out there if we don't change it. that's why the rest of the world is worried about the united states. that is why europe is in such a serious problem. so it is important that we have a budget and we lay this out. so the law requires the president to submit the budget to the congress by the first monday in february. we did last year. it was not a good budget because it increased spending. it increased taxes, but increased spending more than the taxes. and over the ten-year budgetary window or plan, it increased the

debt more than if we had not had the budget. if we had gone on automatic pilot of spending growth in our country. that's why it was a failed budget plan. when the senate finally voted on it, i brought it up after the house budget was brought up by the majority leader to try to defeat it. i brought up the president's budget and asked the democratic colleagues did they support their president's budget. it failed 97-0. not a single senator voted for that plan because it was irresponsible. it put us on a worse course than we were already on. nobody wanted to be on record as voting for it. now once the president's budget has come in, the senate budget committee, by law, is required to report a budget resolution to the senate by april 1.

congress is required to complete action on a concurrent resolution on the budget no later than april 15. it's a challenge. in the past it's been a real challenge, and people worked hard to meet that goal. last year while the senate did not act, the republican house met its requirements under the act to consider and pass the budget resolution in both their budget committee -- congressman paul ryan's committee -- and in the full house of representatives. the chairman of the senate budget committee did not even offer a budget for consideration in committee, which precluded its consideration before the full senate. the budget process exists in one respect to compel the president and congress to set forth a plan for the disposition of the taxpayers' money for the

upcoming fiscal year and a minimum of four fiscal years. the budget has to be a five-year budget. often is ten years. the president submitted the ten-year budget which i think is preferable than a five-year budget, most people agree. setting forth such a plan requires setting priorities, does it not? the household does a budget. a city, county or state does a budget. they have to choose with the limited resources priorities they can fund. how to use those scarce dollars between, in our case, discretionary spending, which is subject to the annual appropriation process, and the mandatory spending programs, which is provided under rules set forth in permanent law. those programs include food stamps, medicaid, medicare, social security, and a lot of other programs. so mandatory spending programs

currently comprise almost 60% of our spending. they're on automatic pilot. if you reach a certain age, if you lose your job and your income falls below a certain level, you are entitled to certain benefits. you can walk in to the government and you ask them for that food stamp or you asked them for governmental assistance, and if you qualify, it must be given to you whether the government has any money or not. if those programs are out of control and growing too fast and are not properly managed, congress has to change substantive law, not just change the budget to deal with it. so this is almost 60% of our budget today, the mandatory part. so the budget process, through the use of reconciliation, is the only mechanism available for congress to compel oversight and review of mandatory spending

programs. without the discipline provided by the budget process, these programs proceed on automatic pilot. and i would just note that's the fact that we are at the so-called budget control act top number does not deal at all with this 60%. so, important, the numbers that were deemed by the budget cot act which was passed last summer in the wee hours of the morning just to avoid a budget governmental shutdown, that budget control act, not subject to any amendments, not brought up for debate, set the number for spending. but it only could set the number for discretionary spending.

so the budget control act effectively told chairman conrad to provide for discretionary spending at the levels of the budget control act caps and for mandatory, the 60% to stay the same. and revenue policies, taxing policies the levels estimated under the congressional budget act baseline. so, mandatory spending and tax increases and tax policies would be controlled by the congressional budget office baseline. business as usual. the definition of business as usual for 60% of our budget. so the so-called deemed budget is not a real budget, and it's not -- and the process used to adopt it is not the kind of process that's legitimate. not the kind of process that's

required. in the budget act, you must have a committee markup. you must have 50 hours of guaranteed debate on the floor of the senate, an unlimited number of amendments can be offered. a public, open discussion about the dangers facing this country and how senators are going to deal with it. and they have to vote. and they have to vote multiple times. and t democratic leadership did not want to go through that process, and that's why the democratic leader, senator reid, said it was foolish to have a budget. he didn't mean it was foolish for america to have budget. he meant it was foolish for them to have to vote publicly and be accountable. one of the serious challenges facing this country. and i think that was a big reason for the shellac ago lot

of members of congress took in the last election. the american people want congress to be accountable. congress works for them. we're not on our own up here to do whatever we want to. the american people are watching us. 40 cents of every dollar we spend is borrowed. are the american people not legitimately unhappy with us? why should they be satisfied with congress? why should we be looked up to as someone who's leading the country effectively? we won't even bring up a budget? i just want to say, the republicans fought for a budget. i'm the ranking member of the budget committee. we pleaded with them. we protested. but the leadership in the senate has the power to set the agenda, and the minority can't call a budget hearing in the budget committee, nor can they require

a real budget to be brought forth for full debate on the floor of the senate. so this is where we are. i just have to say it because our colleague, who i really respect and like, senator conrad, was saying we really don't need a budget today. apparently they're not going to produce one again this year. that's not accurate. we do need a budget. and we need to go through the process because the american people need to know what the debt commission told us, which is that we don't have the money to keep spending as we're spending today. so a real budget would have required a weighing of the spending demands placed on the federal government and the available revenues and reached a consensus on what activities the governments would pursue and how the government would pay for it, including the amount that would be added to the debt, how much

debt are we going to be increasing and how much will be left to future generations. so the failure of our democratic leadership in the senate to seriously and credibly address our mandatory spending programs, which all experts and observers tell us is on an unsustainable course -- everyone tells us that, what we're doing today is unsustainable. for example, the budget that the president submitted called for deficits every single year for the next decade. it goes from about $1.3 trillion now. it was going to drop down to the lowest single year, a deficit of $740 billion, and in years seven, eight, nine, ten it would be going back to almost $1 trillion. we spent this year $650 billion on social security. but the tenth year, according to

the congressional budget office, analysis of the president's budget, the interest we would pay on the debt alone -- just the interest -- would be $940 billion. today it's $240 billion. this is how you get into the european crisis. this is why experts and economists have told us our spending and debt situation is unsustainable. that's not frivolous wor a frivd word. thso we're told that deeming a f budgets or spending caps for fy 2012 and 12013 -- by the way,

these so-called spending caps and deemed budget only covers two years, not five, not ten, just two years and only discretionary spending. so the saying that those two years of maintaining spending at levels determined in secret, brought out in the 11th hour before the senate for an up-or-down vote without amendment to avoid a government shutdown, to contend that that meets the requirements placed on this chamber for responsibility and fiscal rectitude, it just cannot be sustained. passing a real budget is indeed not easy, particularly now because we have such a serious financial crisis. tough decisions are going to have to be made. perhaps our democratic leadership don't want to show the americans how much their

big-spending agenda truly costs. that's what a budget shows, over ten years, how much we plan to spend, how much we're going it cut, how much we're going to tax. maybe they don't want to know -- the people to know how much they intend to raise taxes and how much of that falls not just on the rich but on the middle class. i can show you the budget that the president submitted. it goes beyond the rich. it was a big tax increase. well, the failure to propose and debate on the floor openly a detailed long-term fiscal plan may be considered by some to be smart and not being foolish, but it is sending our country toward the fiscal cliff. our democratic colleagues wish to pretend to the nation that they have an actual budget plan.

if they want to do that, they must find in their files the secret document they produced last year and finally once and for all make it public. senator conrad said, i have a budget, and he was -- said we were going too have a committee markup and i'm going to present our conference's, the majority's budget plan where he has a majority of his members. and he was prepared to do that. he was prepared to do that i thought. i was ready to have the hearing. so when we got ready, it got put off again. in the days that followed, we had a fuss. senator reid essentially said, basically, i made that decision not to have a budget. it's foolish to have a budget.

so we never saw this budget. he said publicly they had one. why -- are they ashamed of it? were they afraid to bring it out? did not anyone want to see it? we were prepared with our little calculators to see how much taxes were going to increase, how much spending was going to increase, how much debt was going to increase, were we going to change our debt trajectory and make the country better, put us on a sounder path? that's what we wanted to know and we were told we were going to get it. we did not. insad of an open, accountable process where the public votes are taken, our constituents can hold us responsible for the leadership we provide, we got at the 11th hour deals, months of secret meetings and political man iewfertion. the primary aim of the process, it looks to me like was

political advantage, not the advantage for the people of the united states. so i believe that when the majority leader and his majority colleagues chose to block the lawfully mandated budget process and not bring up a budget, not have committee hearings and actual votes, not have 50 hours of floor debate, not being able to allow amendments that deal with the budget and spending, they put politics over the nation's interest. they rejected a duty they have by all just deserts and logic and also by law. they did so for their political convenience. and i think if they continue to fail to produce to budget, to allow it to be discussed, to show what their plans are for

the future, they have forfeited the leadership that they have asked for in the united states senate. if you can't produce a budget and you don't have the gum shouldn't to lay out your -- the gumption to lay out your plan for the future and have numbers that can be studied and examined, added and subtracted, you can't do that you're not willing to face up to that responsibility, you don't deserve to lead the united states senate. because that, at this point in history, i think, is the most significant matter we face. our economy is not doing well. our debt is surging. this year, the debt came in, as of september 30, another $1.3 trillion, three consecutive years of deficits over $1 trillion, average $1.3 trillion. can you imagine that? the highest deficit president

bush ever had -- and it was too high -- was $450 billion. but for three years we've averaged $1.3 trillion. the debt is surging out of control and the budget control act that purports to make a change in that trajectory only reduced spending by $2 trillion -- excuse me, only reduced the deficit, projected deficit over ten years, by $2.1 trillion, when every expert before our budget committee told us, you need to have $4 trillion over ten years in reduced deficits, because under the projections we have, under the congressional budget office, we're on track to add $13 trillion more to the debt in ten years. $13 trillion more, doubling the $13 trillion now -- now over $13 trillion we have.

we need a plan to change that. instead we got a minimum reduction, i guess, from approximately $13 trillion to $11 trillion out of the budget committee. so we'll add $11 trillion to the debt over the next ten years rather than $13 trillion. that's not enough change. $4 trillion in my opinion, based on the studies and the hearings and the testimony of the witnesses i've heard, is not enough. we need to do a good bit more than that. the house proposed a better plan by far that would have changed our debt course, but it was never -- the senate did not do its responsibility to meet that challenge or the position of the house. mr. president, i appreciate the opportunity to share these thoughts. we look forward tonight to the president's state of the union. i hope that he will do more than

do his normal eloquent processes and lay out a real plan, a plan that can be studied, a plan that can be evaluated, to put this nation on a sound fiscal course, because until we do, jobs will not be created, and we've got to have growth. there is a lock of confidence in our economy and the greatest foundation of that lack of confidence is the debt. and i would just add briefly, there are things you can do to create growth and jobs without an increase in spending and without an increase in debt. how do you do did? you eliminate every -- how do you do it? you eliminate every single roalings that's unwise, you create a growth-oriented tax code as much as possible to enhance growth. you produce more american energy and stop taking policies and actions that prohibit the production of american energy,

creating american jobs, creating wealth in the united states, stopping to export that wealth to venezuela or saudi arabia or other places like that. we've got to end this health care bill that was passed. already health care premiums for average americans have gone up -- a family of four $2,400. already? it was supposed to bring those costs down. that is a horrible blow to the middle class. so we're talking about jobs, growth, progress. those are the kinds of things we need. we can do it without government debt, without more government debt and the more government spending. that's what i'll be looking forward to tonight. i thank the chair and yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call: quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from new hampshire. mrs. shaheen: i ask the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. shaheen: i ask unanimous consent that the period for morning business be extended until 5:00 p.m. with senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. shaheen: thank you. i ask that the senate go back into a quorum call. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. reid: madam president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent that the call. quorum be terminated. the presiding officer: without

objection. mr. reid: now ask unanimous consent that following the leader remarks on thursday, january 26, the republican leader or his designee be recognized to move to proceed to the consideration of calendar number 294, h.j. res. 98, which is joint resolution relating to the disapproval of the president's exercise of authority to increase the debt limit. that the time until noon be for debate -- the time until noon be for debate on the motion to proceed, with the time equally divided and controlled between two leaders or their designees. at noon, the senate proceed to vote on the adoption of the motion to proceed, if the motion-to-is successful, the time for debate with respect to the joint resolution be equally divided between the two leaderred or their designees. upon the use or yielding back of time, the joint resolution be read a third time and the senate proceed to vote on the passage of the joint resolution. finally, all other provisions of the statute with consideration of the joint resolution remain in effect. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. reid: #eu ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to s. res. 353.

the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 353, congratulating the north dakota state university football team for winning the 2011 national collegiate athletic association division i football championship title. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, there be no intervening action or debate, any statements placed in the record as if read. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: ask unanimous consent that the homeland security and government affairs comet be discharged from further consideration of h.r. 1791 and the bill be referred to the committee on environment and public works. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. reid: i note the absence of after quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

[inaudible] mr. reid: ... upon the dissolution of the joint resolutions, the senate adjourn until 9:30 on thursday, january 26, 2012. the hour be deemed expired and time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the daism the senate begin the motion to proceed to s.j. res. 98 under the previous order. madam president, before you rule on that, the reason we're not

going to be in session tomorrow is the republicans are having a retreat and these are normally done at the beginning of every congress. we're going to do ours in the next week or so, week or two we, i should say. and we'll be out of session on that day also. so this is why we're not working tomorrow. we have things that we are going to complete thursday, and next week we have some legislation that we're going to start. the reason we've been not working real hard this week is the i.p. bill, which we expected to work on this week and next week, things came up and we were unable to do that. so i'd ask the chair to rule on my request. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: madam president, the next vote will be on thursday, at 12:00 p.m., the motion to proceed to h.j. res. 98. if there is in further business to come before the senate, i ask that it recess under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands in recess until 8:30 p.m.

8:00 eastern on c-span. several senators offered their foster they and what should be in the speech. we begin with senate democratico leader harry reid. ame >> mr. president, for generations this was thened american promise. if you worked hard and played bd the rules, success would be within your reach.

we call that success the american dream. are decent wage, buy a home, you with your children to school, and retire comfortably.ly. for many people in this countryy that dream has trip the third -- further and further from reality the recession caused manyic americans their jobs, homes,and savings, and basic economic ma security. many are still struggling, and all of the economy has made sloh progress toward recovery, there is still much work to be done but for every american who wants only part of the problem. the same wall street greed that caused the financial collapse is fueling the greatest income disparity since the great depression. in the last few decades, average c.e.o.'s income has multiplied 250 times. meanwhile, c.e.o.'s k employees have watched their incomes barely creep up at all. lyndon johnson said in 1965, and

it's time to ask that now -- and i quote -- "not only how to create wealth but how to use it. not only how fast we're going, but where we're headed." we can choose to be the kind of nation where hard work of many pays off only for the richest few. or we can be the kind of nation where every man and woman shoulders a fair share of the burden and reaps a fair share of that reward. we can be the kind of country where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer or we can be the kind of country where middle-class families share in the opportunity and the prosperity. president obama has called this choice a make-or-break moment of middle class, and tonight he'll lay out a road map that sets out the path to fairness instead of inequality. i look forward to hearing president obama's vision this evening. it begins with an economy that works for every american regardless of the size of his or

her checkbook. i expect the president to lay out commonsense ideas to spur american manufacturing. his vision is fueled by homegrown renewable energy. it's time to stop spending american dollars on foreign oil. it's time to hire american workers to build wind turbines and next-generation vehicles. the president will propose a new plan to make sure today's students are ready for tomorrow's jobs and today's workers remain competitive in our global economy. i expect the president to include ideas from democrats and from republicans. for three years the president reached out to republicans. now is the time to work with him on common ideas to boost legislation, not stalemate. i request my republican colleagues to give his bipartisan vision the consideration it deserves. in 1947, president truman delivered the first televised state of the union message. truman was the 20th president to govern alongside a congress controlled by the opposing

party. the first was george washington. he said democrats in the legislative branch and republicans in the legislative branch could work hand in hand to shape the nation. this is what he said. men who differ can still work together sincerely for the common good. close quote. i hope republicans in congress will keep those words in mind tonight. despite all our differences work together for the proceedings une quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. tphoeup tonight the -- mr. mcconnell: tonight the president of the united states will come to the capitol to give us his sense of the state of the union. this is a venerable tradition and we welcome him. yet it's hard not to feel a sense of disappointment even before tonight's speech is delivered because while we don't yet know all the specifics, we do know the goal. based on what the president's

aides have been telling reporters, the goal isn't to conquer the nation's problems. it's to conquer republicans. the goal isn't to prevent gridlock, but to guarantee it. here's how "the new york times" summed up the president's election-year strategy in a recent article entitled "obama to turn up attacks on congress in campaign." here's the quote. "in terms of the president's relationship with congress in 2012, the president is no longer tied to washington, d.c." according to the story, "winning a full-year extension of the cut in payroll taxes, the last knew tph*u piece of legislation for the white house." here's how a white house aide described the president's strategy a couple of weeks ago, presumably just as tonight's speech was being drafted. referring to past displays of

bipartisanship, he said -- quote -- "then we were in a position of legislative compromise by necessity. that phase is behind us." so as i see it, the message from the white house is that the president has basically given up. he got nearly everything he wanted from congress for the first two years of his presidency. the results are in. they're not good. sew decided to spend the -- so he decided to spend the rest of the year trying to convince folks that the results of the economic policies he put in place are somehow congress's fault and not his. my message is this: this debate isn't about what congress may or may not do in the future. it's about what this president has already done. the president's policies are now firmly in place. it's his economy now. we're living under the obama

economy. the president may want to come here tonight and make it sound as if he just somehow walked in the door. a better approach is to admit that his three-year experiment in big government has made our economy worse and our nation's future more uncertain. and it's time for a different approach. that's the message the american people delivered to the president in november of 2010, and they're still waiting. the president will tell you american people tonight that he's got a blueprint for the economy. what he will fail to mention is that we've been working off the president's blueprint now for three years. for three years. and what's it gotten us? millions still looking for work. trillions in debt. and the first credit downgrade in u.s. history.

the president will propose ideas tonight that sound good and have bipartisan support. and if he's serious about these proposals, if he really wants to enact them, he'll encourage democrats who are in the senate to keep them free from poison pills like tax hikes on job creators that we know from past experience turned bipartisan support into bipartisan opposition. the president wants someone to blame for this economy, he should start with himself. the fact is any c.e.o. in america with a record like this after three years on the job would be graciously shown the door. this president blames the managers instead. he blames the folks on the shop floor. he blames the weather. well, you're certainly within your rights to walk away from the legislative process if you like, mr. president. you can point the finger all you

like, but you can't walk away from your record. i saw a survey the other day that contained a number of sobering findings. it was a poll of small business leaders. it said that more than eight out of ten of them tphoup believe the u.s. economy is on the wrong track. eight in ten said they'd rather have washington stay out of the way than try to help them. nearly nine out of ten said they'd rather have more certainty from washington than more assistance. and it said that nearly a third of all those surveyed said they're not hiring on account of the health care bill. a third of them said they were not hiring on account of the health care bill. what this survey says to me is that the policies of this administration are literally crushing -- crushing -- the private sector. they're stifling job creation and they're holding the economy

back. americans want washington to get out of the way, and yet this president continues to have the same two-word answer he's always had for seemingly every single problem we face. "more government." and this is the economy we've got to show for it. will have the week the president had an opportunity to do something on his own about the ongoing jobs crisis. the only thing that stood in the way of the single-biggest shovel-ready infrastructure project in america was him. the keystone pipeline was just the kind of project he had been calling for in peaches for months. and he said, no, that one could wait. here's a project he knew would

create thousands of jobs instantly. he said "no." a project that wouldn't have cost taxpayers a dime. he said no. that would have brought more energy from our ally canada and less from the middle east. he said "no." it all came down to one question: was the keystone pipe lynn in the national interest or not? he said, no. as one columnist put it, his own standard wasn't the national interest, it was his own political interest. americans want jobs and the president is studying an election that took place 60 years ago to see how he can save his own job. he sided with the liberal

environmental base over the energy and security interests of the american people. and that's exactly what we're now being told we can expect for the rest of the year. in last year's state of the union, the president talked about how we need to win the future. win the future. this year he just wanted to win the next campaign -- he just wants to win the next campaign. the president can decide he's not interested in working with congress if his party only controls one half of it. that's his prerogative. he can give up on bipartisanship, but we won't. our problems are too urgent. the economy is too weak. the future is too uncertain. the president knows as well as i do that when he's called for action on things for which there exists bipartisan support, the republicans have been his strong eflt allies. last year in the state of the

union, he called for free trade agreements. we worked hard to get them done, and we did. since then he called for an extension of the highway and f.a.a. bills, and the jobs that come with them. we did both with strong bipartisan support. the president asked for patent reform. we got that done, too. the president knows as well as we do we're happy to work with him whenever he's willing to work with us. if he turns his back on that good-faith offer, as we expect he will this year, we'll remind people that the problems we face aren't about what congress may or may not do in the future but what this president has already done, what's already happened. let the president turn his back on bipartisanship, let the press cover every futile speech and every staged event, but we every staged event, but we

here on c-span2 you will have the president's remarks as he tweeds for members of congress during the speech, plus interviews with house and senate lawmakers on capitol hill. that starts at 9:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. the cato institute had a discussion earlier today on what they expect to hear from tonight's state of the union address. it is little less than an hour. >> hi, everybody. we are going to go ahead and start to get started what you're

fighting your seats. thank you so much for coming, everyone. i am lauro with the cato institute commented the move will be discussing the libertarian state of the union. i will briefly introduce our panel and end of the podium. our first speaker will be a catalyst to senior fellow who researches a variety of domestic policies with particular emphasis on health care reform, social welfare policy, and social security. he served as director of research at the public policy foundation and as was the director of the american exchange council. under his direction kilowatts the project on social security choice which is why we consider him deleting impetus. following that will be dan mitchell, senior fellow at top expert on tax reform and supplied tax policy. prior takeda dan was a senior fellow at the heritage foundation an economist for the

senate finance committee. he also served on the transition team and was director of tax and budget policy. third will be the senior fellow and constitutional studies at the cato institute and editor at that supreme court review. he was a special assistant an adviser to the multinational force of iraq, rule of law issue and also lectures regularly on behalf of the federalist society and has been adjunct professor at gw baltimore. before entering private practice the clerk for judge at the u.s. court of appeals for the fifth circuit. wrapping things up will be the director of financial regulation studies. he's been six years as a member of the senior professional staff on the senate committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs and before that was the deputy assistant secretary for regulatory affairs of the department of housing and urban development and held a variety of positions of the national association of homebuilders and the national association of

realtors. with that i will turn things over to mike tanner. >> well, thank you very much. appreciate you coming out. tonight, of course, you will hear the president's campaign speech -- i mean, the state of the union address. we are here to present something a little bit different than what you will hear either in the president's speech or in the republican rebuttal following that. if i could sum up my view of the state of the union in two simple words it would be we're broke. the fact is that, once again, this year, we will spend more money than we have, borrowing about $0.40 out of every dollar that we spend. we have just passed the $15 trillion