i would look at some of the thresholds you have put end to mass casualties. ..

>> comprehensive cyber security legislation we're talking about today. i thank you and the administration for incorporating my suggestions to the work force provisions of the bill. employees of the department of homeland security are on the front lines of conquering this cyber threat, and we must make sure the department has the appropriate tools, the tools to attract and retain the work force it needs to meet these complex challenges. stake holders raised concerns about the privacies and civil liberties of certain provisions of this bill. i want to commend the bill's authors for making progress in addressing these concerns. it is important for the final product to adequately protect

american's reasonable expectation of privacy, and i will continue to closely monitor this issue. fbi director robert mullen's recent statement, the danger of cyber attacks, will equal or even surpass the danger of terrorism in the foreseeable future. there's a stark reminder that strengthening cyber security must be a key priority for this congress. cyber criminals and terrorists are targeting our critical infrastructure including our electricity grids, final markets, and transportation networks, and these have been mentioned by the panelists. american businesses face constant cyber attacks that seek to steal their intellectual

property and trade secrets; however, cyber security policy has been slow to adjust to these ever-increasing and sophisticated cyber threats. the cyber security act of 2012 gives the federal government and the private sector the tools necessary to respond to these troubling threats, i feel. finalizing this important legislation is a pressing priority for the congress, and i look forward to working with you on this. my question is to the panel. as you know, the bill continues hiring and pairing authorities to bolster the civilian cyber security work force and has provisions to educate and train

the next generation of cyber security professionals. i'd like to hear your views on recruiting and retaining cyber security professionals, and the recommendations to the bill that you may have to address in the growing work force challenges. mr. baker? >> [inaudible] >> it is very challenging to find well trained cyber security professionals, even in the private sector. this proliferated far faster than educational institutions could educate people to manage i.t. security and manage the security. as a result of that, microsoft has actually committed considerable resources supporting programs like stem

education or elevate america where we provided over a million vouchers for entry level and more advanced computer basic skills, but it's a big challenge, and if it's a big challenge for the private sector, you can imagine it's a large challenge for the public sector as they do not have the same pay scale that i have available to me, so this is a big challenge. it's a challenge in just both education and in proficiency of the work force. in fact, the commission issued a report on the challenges of getting an educated, cyber educated work force. >> and i would just add to that that indeed dhs had particular difficulties in attracting people and working through their personnel hiring procedures. anything that makes that smoother and more responsive to the market is useful, but finally, most importantly, for

every student who is watching this wondering what he's going to do when he graduates from college, these jobs are waiting for you. you owe it to your country, and you owe it to yourself to pursue these opportunities. >> thank you. >> senator, two years ago at the end of july, we had an event here on the hill, csis, on education for cybersecurity, and i was kicking myself because i thought no one's going to be here, like july 29th, that's stupid. i said cut back on the food. we had standing room only. we had to put chairs in the hall. people love this topic. on the government side, we have to have a clearer career path for people to get promoted upment on the private sector side, the education we have now needs to be refined and focus. a degree in computer science may not give you the skills. in fact, it probably won't give you the skills for cyber

security, and so some of the provisions in the bill like the cyber challenge and other programs tap into this real enthusiasm among teenagers, among college students to get into the new field, and i think this is one of the stronger parts. again, doing the education piece is important, but it will not protect us in the next few years, which is why we need the other parts of the bill as well. >> thank you very much, panel. my time expired, mr. chairman? >> thank you for the contribution you made to the bill as indicated by your questioning on the cyber work force. it was very important. senator collins. >> thank you, mr. chairman. the hour's late, but i just want to thank our witnesses for their excellent testimony. hearing some of our witnesses on this panel raised some legitimate questions about whether we've gone too far in trying to accommodate concerns

raised by the chamber and other groups makes me think that maybe we've gotten it just right since the chamber's still not happy and you believe we've gone too far, but in all seriousness, your expertise has been extremely helpful as has the input from microsoft, the chamber, the tech industry, from experts to academics, we really have consulted very widely, and it has been very helpful to us in trying to strike the right balance. this is an enormously important, but complicated complex issue for us to tackle, but tackle it we must, and that is something i believe units all the witnesses from whom we heard today, and i

don't know if this is a response to a 9/11 like attack or a katrina. i just do not want us to be here after a major cyber incident saying, "if only," and how could we have ignored all these warnings, commissions, all of these studies, all of these experts? i can't think of another area in homeland security where the threat is greater and we've done less. there is a huge gap. whether we got it exactly right on chemical plant security, port security, or fema reform, at least we acted and we have made a difference in each of those areas. they are not perfect, but we bagged it, and we have made a difference. in an intelligence reform, i

think we made a big difference, but here we have a vulnerability, a threat that is not theoretical. it's happening each and every day, and yet we've seen today, by the comments of some of our colleagues, this is going to be a very difficult job to get the bill through. i'm confident we can do it, however, and that in the end, we will succeed, and finally, i do want to say to our colleagues, to those listening, to those in the audience, that we need your help. if you have other good ideas for us, by all means, bring them forward, help us get the best possible bill, but for anyone, for anyone to stand in the way and cause us to fail to act at all to pass legislation this year, i think, would just be a

travesty. it would be a disaster waiting to happen for our country, so, mr. chairman, i just encourage you to press forward and i will be at your side, your partner, all along the way. we've done it before. >> and we'll do it again. thank you. that meant a lot to me, and it's just expressive and characteristic of your independence of spirit and your commitment to do what you think is right for our national security, and so we're going to press forward, and the majority leader, senator reid, is going to press forward too. as i mentioned armyier, he got a -- earlier, he got a couple briefings on this cyber security last year, and that really troubled him. he felt there was a clear and present danger to our national

security and economic prosperity from cyber attacks, and that's why he's devoted time to get us to this point that we reached this week to have at least a foundational consensus bill and why i'm confident he's going to push this, bring this to the floor with the authority he has as majority leader, and i'm optimistic that that may well be and will be in the next work period which is when we come back at the end of february and into march. the three of you added immensely to our work here. i want to continue to work -- i don't want to ask a question because senator collins has brought this to such a wonderful ending point, but over time, as we take the bill to the floor, i want to invite you, and particularly dr. baker who expressed concerns about the so-called carveout. people in the administration

still think with the authority we have left in there, the language allows the government to develop performance standards that require owners of systems to protect those systems even if they might include some commercial products, but i'm not resting on what we've got, so i invite you to submit -- we hear your concerns, and we invite you to submit thoughts to us on how to do this better, and we promise we will consider those concerns. any last words from any of the three of you? thanks very much for what you contributed. i thank senator collins again. it's true, we get very stubborn, the two of us, when we think something is really right and necessary, so we're going to plow forward. the record of this hearing will

be held open for ten days for additional questions or at the same statements for the record. i thank you very much for that. this hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations]

>> it is our cause to dispel the foggy thinking that avoids hard decisions in a dilution that a world of conflict will somehow resolve itself into a world of harmony. if we just don't rock the vote or irritate the forces of aggression and then this is

hogwash. [cheers and applause] >> as candidates campaign for president this year, we look back at 14 men who ran for the office and lost. go to our website, c-span.org/thecontenders, to see politicians who had a lasting impact on politics. >> this is not the time to turn away from overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation. america must be restored to her proper role in the world, but we can do that only through the recovery of confidence in ourselves. >> c-span.org/thecontenders.

>> host: our last hour here of the "washington journal," and turn to "gq's" 50 topmost powerful people. this is the biannual piece put together. why do you do the list in the first place, and how do you come up with the issue -- the power issue, i mean, how do you define power? >> guest: well, you know, not all of our readers, in fact, and, of course, most of our reader are not in washington like you and i are, and there's a constant running conversation here about who is powerful and who is not, that often runs contrary to what you might think who is really powerful and who is not, and so every two years, the magazine takes a look at, well, let's cut through the hype and talk to insiders, talk to journalists, talk to practitioners, and look at who is making a difference in the

power they have. we have input from all sources, and our editors go through the list and decide who goes where, and, you know, who is important right now. it's also important to note this is really a snapshot. if we did this list right now, it would be different and in the summer, it would be different too. there's a weekly power list on the website on the death race 2012 blog, of who is important this week. as you know, it tends to change. people are up, people are down, and we enjoy watching certainly. >> host: this is a snapshot then. when did this list take fruition, and what is the criteria for making the list? >> guest: well, we started over the summer because it's, you know, showed up in the printed edition of the magazine. there's significant lead time there, but the conversations of the fall and changes were being made.

there's not firm criteria for making the list, not surprising, but we were looking for who is interesting, who is, in many cases, the person behind the person? you'll notice eric cantore is number one. others said, why is the speaker not number one? you know, i think a lot of people in washington would say actually that's right, not that speaker boehner is not powerful, and he is, and he's on the list as he should be, but mr. cantor has interesting ways of deploying new tactics in the leading phase of saying no to president obama. in our view, that is, you know, that deserves the number one, but it's all, of course, subjective, and it's meant to be a subject of discussion. >> host: talking to the insiders inside the beltway folks about eric cantor, you mentioned in the piece whether or not he becomes house speaker

or wait for speaker boehner to speak down or get power from him? is that something you heard from the sources you talked to? >> guest: yeah, well, ofng, you have to -- of course, you have to keep in mind, particularly when it comes to the hill, everybody wants to act like they know what's going on. they say, i'm hearing, x, y, z, i can't say that that's true. i heard it. people around here heard it. it may or may not come true, but, as you know, in washington, just having that thing said about you can be power in and of itself. >> host: boehner makes the list, not in the top 10, but number 12. why? grg -- >> guest: when you look around, there's power centers here, and certainly the house is one of them. something tells me i don't think speaker boehner is not upset.

he understands his power, and we do too. when you see the key moments in the house, day-to-day, there's a lot of eric cantor, and at the key moments, boehner comes out of the white house or oval office, and he's very powerful. i think we, what we try to do is certainly with the top 10, provide a representative list of not just house and senate leaders, but white house, military, ect.. >> host: number two on the list, ?afort mitch mcconnell, why? >> guest: same reason that eric cantor is number one, overthrowing president obama's agenda. depending on who you talk to, they are doing a good job of it. mcconnell is a smart guy, people like him, but they know he is extremely tough, and he's not shy of saying no when he wants to, and particularly, when you're in the minority, in the

legislature, your ability to say no and stand up in front of the cameras and basically be announce your intransigence is a powerful trait, and not everyonements to do that. >> host: top two slots for republicans, why is that? versus a republican and democrat maybe. >> well, you know, as we note, no one with the last name of obama or biden is included on list. >> host: there's a tweet about that. so president obama is not in the top five? amazing. that negates the list. >> guest: right. well, rather than waste a bunch of slots on the president and vice president and the first lady and second lady, whom are extraordinary powerful, we are looking at everybody who is not the vice president or president and how do they stack up. given that we have a democratic president, as you often see here, it's the minority leaders or the leaders of minority

congress that are in power. >> host: third is david plus. >> guest: david's been with president obama for a long time. he was campaign manager on the obama's 2008 race, and now he's a senior adviser in the white house. he took the place of david axelrod, and as you may have seen in the "new york times" profile that ran over the weekend, the chief of staff said if there's one guy the president listens to, it's david. he's the gut check guy with tough decisions. >> host: is that why bill daly left? >> guest: there's immense turnover in the white house, and daly came with a lot of thorny challenges and departments look great to them. >> host: four is leon panetta, the secretary of defense, and five is hillary clinton. >> guest: yes, so pa panetta is one of the guys who's done

about everything in washington, and, you know, he willed a tremendous amount of power in the clinton administration, and now he's back, and after killing bin laden, he's at the secretary of defense where one of the thorniest challenges to oversee is slicing the budget, not popular with anyone, but he's someone familiar with pulling the strings and budget levers, and secretary clinton, of course, you know, as we say in the piece, hard to imagine a time when secretary clinton won't be on the list as the most powerful people in washington until she's fully retired. she's done, by all account, she's been a very powerful secretary of state and just by nature of going from chief rival to president obama to chief allies, i think, that's something in and of itself. >> host: the insiders you talked to for the list, is that what they say on both sides of the aisle about secretary clinton? >> guest: yes. i have not heard anything,

really, i have not heard anything negative about her being secretary of state, which is remarkable. some on each side disagree with obama's foreign policies, but in the way of how she representings the country, people are pleased. >> host: the 50 most powerful people in washington with the contributor of "gq". we'll continue to dig into the list more and get to the other five that made the top ten. cell phone, go ahead. >> caller: yeah, i was wondering where the lobbyists come in on the list. they are the most powerful in washington. >> host: okay. >> guest: good question. we have several lobbyists on the list. we have not mentioned them yet because they are not in the top ten, but if i remember correctly, tony bogs and heather and tony are on the list, and they are some of the most

powerful lobbyists in town. you're absolutely right -- >> host: tom donohue from the chamber of commerce on the list as well. >> guest: right, right. it's no secret that legislation in some ways is bought own sold here in washington, and these are the people who buy and sell power in a lot of way, and it's, you know, depending on who is in office, you'll sort of have republican lobbyists who lobby republican party members, getting a lot of contracts or democrats in office, it goes the other way. we've actually seen both, of course, over the last few years with all democratic control and now split control of congress, but as i think you're catching on, it's always boom time for lobbyists in washington. >> host: norquist's name has been in the paper for awhile now, and he's 18 on the list. >> guest: he's the anti-tax figure head in washington, and

he -- one of the genius of how he operates is he has a pledge that almost every republican lawmaker signed pledging to never raise taxes. at a time like this with huge deficits, there's just two ways to close them, cutting spending or raising taxes and parole a mixture of both. you have huge portions of the legislature pledging they can't vote to raise taxes, and that's all thanks to norqist. >> host: do you do a 50 least powerful in washington or those who have lost influence? >> guest: yes, actually, we do. i believe there was a list of the 50 people who are least relevant. i didn't work on it myself, so i could be mistaken there. it's a very interesting point because everyone gaining power, there's others losing power, but as begin who's been in

washington for awhile, people keep coming back and back. >> host: you can re-emerge in washington. >> guest: yes. >> host: who might -- how -- let me try again. who didn't make the list that would surprise viewers? >> guest: well, you know, i've had people say to me why is harry reid not on the list, the majority leader in the senate, for example, and you can't argue that he's not powerful. we're not arguing he's not powerful, and he made the list two years ago, and if he sticks around, i'm sure there's a good shot to get on the list again, but it's a snapshot, so basically, we've got slots, we don't do 100 slots for a reason. we really want to narrow down on who influences the conversations, whose influence makes a difference right now. the nature of making those choices if you have to leave people off and leader reid is one of those people. >> host: nancy pelosi?

>> guest: no, same situation. it's hard to argue with democrats in the minority in the house that she wills a tremendous amount of power now at large. she certainly has a power over her caucus, and she's a very powerful person, and she's an accomplished legislator, but now in terms of the moment we looked at in putting the list together, you know, -- >> host: not a player so to speak? >> guest: i wouldn't say not a player. there's, you know, hundreds of people who fall into a category who don't fit into the top 50 now. there's a weekly power list every week, and we've had a lot of people, you know, not on this list who are influencing the conversation week to week and day day-to-day. >> host: mike in ohio, thank you for waiting, an independent there. >> caller: hi, good morning. i got six people that are actually running the whole thing. number one is the president of the united states, head of the executive department, the

speaker of the house, whoever it is from what party because they determine what legislation is going to come to the floor for consideration, the senator majority leader who does the same thing in the senate, the fifth person on the supreme court who usually is anthony kennedy who decides every single law that is approved or disapproved by the courts since most of the decisions are 5-4. the other eight people are actually meaningless, and any one of 1 # 00 senators -- 100 senators who is anonymously hold up a law or action in the senate and shut the whole senate down, and the last is the media who controls what the people out in the country here, doesn't matter what's going on, they drive what's going on. we could have catastrophes all over the world, and the media will spend three weeks on

michael jackson's funeral, trial, and then we spend time on whitney houston. they drive the situation, refuse to cover ron paul, made a joke out of the only person in favor of a single payer insurance company. >> host: hey, mike? we got the point. that was six; right? >> caller: yes. >> guest: well, you did a pretty effective job of, you know, that's an efficient list, and kind of what you call the civic textbook list of people who are powerful, and that's all true. good points. i think in many ways, we've reflected your hierarchy in our list. you can't -- rather than saying all 1100 senators because -- 100 senators because they can all put o hold on something, excellent point, and senator demanipulate is on there. there's -- senator demint is on there, i don't believe we have supreme

court justices on there, but as we go through the year, power will be wielded by the supreme court. the media, excellent point. as a member of the media, i'm frustrated as realm, and i have covered ron paul, but i do understand the frustration that you see a lot of coverage of the story of the day and not always some of the nitty-gritty policy issues in washington. >> host: one is chiefed todd and through sheer ambiguity alone says here before sunrise appearances on today morning show, msnbc, the twitter feed, facebook, and todd might be the most important political journalist working today and he's widely liked, not at all flashily, smart as hell, and it's no contest. >> guest: right. well, chuck is a very -- he's a popular and powerful reporter in

washington. he's, you know, some people see him as the heir to tim russert in a way, you know, who passed away obviously, a couple years ago, and he was really the face of the approach to journalism, to go in on nbc, and chuck todd is someone who is doing shots from the white house every day, but also, as we know, all over twitter. he's got his own show, and he's a busy guy, and we felt that was possible. >> host: another media type with a list. here's a tweet from mary who wants to know where the voters fall on the list. >> guest: well, you know, that's an excellent question. the american voter probably would be in the top 50. it would be hard to put thee american voter as one entry on the list, but it's an excellent point. i guess the question is how

powerful do you feel your votes make a difference? one thing we hear when we go out into the country over the course of the primaries recently is you talk to people who say i don't feel my vote makes a difference, and that's one of the frustration. >> host: steven, democratic caller in alabama. good morning. >> caller: good morning, how are you. >> host: good. >> caller: i just wanted to let everybody know in alabama, there's a lot of people that we watch your show a lot of times, it's hard to get through, but, you know, i have for the life of me wonder what our people are thinking. you know, i think everybody just running down obama, but obama, to me, i've been in the situation where i could not get medicare because i was a type 2 di bettic, and there's others in the situation i am, and i honestly think i appreciate him, and all 2800 people working for him will get him back in there. >> host: all right. linda, independent in florida. go ahead, linda.

>> caller: good morning. i'm calling with my own little snapshot. i think this gentleman's -- i don't know if it's just personal snapshot -- >> guest: it's not. it's a team effort. go ahead. >> caller: well -- >> host: go ahead with your question. >> caller: yes. i think the media is number one, and i think his 50 were taken from the media. who is number one? eric cantor. who is two? the majority leader. >> host: in case you just joined us and didn't hear you at the beginning, did you talk to just media types? >> guest: no, practitioners, people inside government, people who work with government. we talked to some reporters, but we really talked to a cross section of people here in washington who they felt was powerful. >> host: another tweet from one of our viewers who wants to know -- let me pull it up here -- where's the movers on

the list? ex-senator chris dodd almost sneaked through very power. . he's on the list though. >> guest: you know, i think looking at who the movers are is a great question and great idea. >> host: what do you think that is? "biggest movers?" >> guest: who is on the way up and down. that's hard to measure because the closer you look at things, the kind of americaier is gets. -- tougher is gets. we know people like senator dodd who, you know, was a powerful senator from connecticut and now is running the motion picture association of america. that's from one great job to another great job, so that's a big move, and someone who deserves to be on the list. there's a lot of reinvolving door action going on every day.

>> host: number six is ben bernanke. >> guest: sure. there's a lot of discussion about the economy, and everybody wants to know who is right and wrong. any time news comes out, republicans point to one and democrats to another. ben bernanke has frfted both -- frustrated both sides to a certain extempt, but is still -- extent, but is still viewed as a truth teller, honest broker, and as fed chairman has the only effective tools to actually impact what's happening with the economy, particularly with congress. >> host: just going through the list real quickly here to know -- okay, let me go to seven, dave petraeus, director of the cia. >> guest: sure. general petraeus oversaw operations in afghanistan, now running the cia. hard to get more powerful than that in the terms of the role america plays in the world. the interesting thing noted in the piece is that general

petraeus now has more of aned inner job rather than being a batter field commander. he's in the oval office frequently, you know, who -- someone whom the president holds in confidence, and that's a different power to what he was as a commander. >> host: general mccarthy, house majority whip. you touched on him. nine is a name people may not recognize, the de facto to the president. >> guest: we highlighted peter rouse, somebody they have not heard it. pete is someone who has been a close adviser to president obama for a long time. he was the chief of staff when obama was a senator, chief of staff to tom daschle before that. he's the insider when it comes to how power is wielded, but he avoids the cameras, seen as a

fixer, assigned to tough problems, and you don't hear about him a lot, but people close to the white house handling business, he's behind a lot of it. >> host: the chamber, president tom don hew is ten, why? >> guest: the chamber of commerce group claims to remit most of american business. you think of it as the lobbying group for big business in america, well funded, and they oppose anything that they think would harm the bat dome line -- bottom line for businesses in america. that's opposing the president's health care initiative and things like that, and it's put tom donohue who runs the chamber on a personal one-on-one contest with obama sometimes in a way that many people say he's won and obama backed down over claims and stances that donohue's taken. >> host: i went through the list, only one female in the top ten and ten women total on the

list of 50, why? >> guest: well, you know, it's a criticism we take seriously, of course. as i said, we really view the list as a snapshot. this is, you know, we took a lot of nominations from a lot of people, wrestled on a cay-by-case basis with who should be in what slot. admittedly, we didn't say we want the overall group to look a certain way. you know, that's something that we do take seriously. we do have women on the list. obviously, there's a lot of women like secretary clinton and others wielding power. if you look at the website's list, there's women there. >> host: back to the calls, democrat in california, you're up next. >> caller: hi. this is just c-span's -- this is great, but this is for the guest, and that is does "gq's" stand republican? it sounds like the comments are against obama. i mean, bush got us all in this

mess, and it takes money to get us out, and, you know, i think "gq" i love the magazine. >> guest: appreciate that. >> host: paul, let me get reed to respond to what you alleged there. >> guest: if the question is whether we lean republican, the answer is no, and i think if you read the list, it's balanced. we don't take a position politically. we're just interested in looking at who is powerful and who is not. >> host: manny, chicago, republican caller, go ahead. >> caller: yes, good morning. thank you, first of all, to c-span, for such a great service you provide us, the people. now, there was a question whether we should be looking at when you ask a single voter what is the -- how do you feel about your vote, does it count? that's not the question. i think when voters go and elect the representatives, the legislation the representatives

pass is is it benefiting the people? is it in accordance with the party that's elected in the majority, and therefore, that voter block, if you will, should feel that they have effectively executed their civil duty. >> guest: that's an interesting point you're saying that basically government seems more responsive to party blocks elected, and i think that -- you know, there's an argument for that. there's a house of executives at the party that's in power, calling the shots, they bring bills to the floor under a rule they write that says who can offer amendments and who can't, and it's not always the most balanced debate no matter whose in power. that's true of democrats and republicans. that can be satisfies for vote ors who wanted to put is certain party in power in congress, but

it's frustrating to others. >> host: washington, d.c., democratic caller, go ahead. >> caller: [inaudible] >> host: you know what? putting you on hold there. we'll try to come back to you. turn your television or radio down. here's maverick tweeting in what about state governors like scott and walker in >> guest: great point. we look at who is powerful in washington, d.c.. that was a criteria, but i think if you look at who is powerful around the country, there's a lot of enormously powerful governors like those two. >> host: nancy, democratic caller, go ahead, nancy. >> caller: [inaudible] >> host: nancy in illinois -- oh, we lost her again. all right. let's talk about after number ten, the list goes on to timothy geithner, not in the top ten, why not? >> guest: there's a lot of people impacts economic policy right now. i think geithner's got a good

lock on the list as he should, but heses, in a lot of ways, a messager for the president on economic policy rather than a direct actor the way that someone like ben bernanke or someone in congress cab, not to say he doesn't have input, but he's often not so far out front. >> host: all right. jay, democratic, in washington, d.c., jay, are you there? >> caller: yeah. >> host: all right. go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: well, i've been a fan of this magazine for awhile, and just doesn't seem like they work hard enough to do the research to find out what goes on in this town. i'm a sixth generation washingtonian, grew up by the capitol, it's not just all politicians. this piece created national buzz for the magazine, and it's totally unfair to the people that live here, unfair to the mayor, unfair to the city council, unfair to the other

restaurant tours. >> guest: well, we do have restaurant tours and sports figures in the list, drawing criticism from other people thinking they should be reserved for policymakers. >> caller: they only played a couple games. >> guest: fair enough. if you argue sports figures should be on the list and i think this satisfies that, but the point is well taken. i know it's an interesting experience being here in washington feeling like a lot of things happen in washington, a lot of challenges here in washington that are local and don't get covers because of the big foots. >> host: where is the tea party on the gq list? >> guest: well, they don't get their own slot, but senator demint is on the list, and he's the stand in as the tea party senator if you want to call him that, someone what who

has the tea party energy in the senate. we see that debate play out in the republican primaries in terms of who has the most juice in the republican party. >> host: he's number six. by the way, 13 on the list is carl rove and steven law, the last guest here representing american cross roads on the list. >> guest: that's right. >> host: bill, independent, go ahead. >> caller: what's the racial and gender makeup of the people who serve on this committee that chooses these people? >> caller: okay, in terms of the people who choose the list? >> guest: i didn't do a survey of the gender and racial makeup, but it's the gq editors. we, the writers had up put, but it's a decision made by a diverse group of editors. i feel good about that. >> host: jeff, republican, illinois. go ahead, jeff. >> caller: good morning. i just wanted to say how come you didn't mention corporations in there?

the corporations that own the media also lobby the congressman and write the bills, and we end up on the raw end. >> host: justify, there are lobbyists that make the list who represent corporations or other groups. >> caller: yeah, but the reality of the big buildings are corporations getting their way. >> guest: which is why the chamber of commerce is on there. they are a voice for the corporations seeking to write the legislation as you say. >> host: tom donohue coming in at number 10 on the list. washington, ellen, independent caller, good morning. >> caller: good morning. >> guest: morning. >> caller: yes, i want to talk about protecting, we, the other people, from power, such that the grand jury clause, i'd like to see an article on this. the grand jury clause of the 5th amendment does not apply to the states because of in 1984 # for

administrative and media progress, and no 12-person trial juries in states since the case of duncan versus louisiana in 1964. >> guest: well -- >> caller: just a minute, please. the long disenting opinion in california, just briefly, secret machinations which in the mind, however convenient, all arbitrary powers while executed are the most convenient, they gradually increase. >> host: okay. >> guest: well, i'm not a legal historian, and maybe that's an issue i should brush up on, but it's interesting. couldn't follow the thread there, but open to it. >> guest: mark ruboi, possible vp candidate, is 43.list,

2012vp, and 2016, the world. you saw in the florida republican primary, happening a few weeks ago, is enormously powerful, what you call an up and comer in the senate. he's well-liked, he's charismatic, and he is a real coveted endorsement. we'll see if he gets the vp nod or not. >> host: jack has this tweet. what is the net worth of the people on the gq list? all millionaires,? billionaires? >> guest: we didn't take the income into account. i don't have a total for you. >> host: democratic caller, derek, arizona. >> caller: yes, they are millionaires. the power comes from them being rich and from the lobbyists and people. we're tired. i'd like to say you got the republicans up there. name me one policy that the republicans have put in to help

the majority or the american people like social security, medicare, medicaid. you have these people on the list from actually taken away from the people who are paying them in office. the people up there representing, they talking about broke, grand kids and their kids. their grand kids and kids are fine. everybody else -- free, health care, but no, name me one thing -- >> host: we got the point. just. to go to -- what was the aim of biannual list and why is power important? >> guest: well, basically, you have all the lawmakers and lobbyists and potential influence wielders coming to town to see people come out on top, who shakes the agenda, and the goal of the list is to look at right now, at this moment, who are 50 people who are being

able to influence that debate who are anal to shift the way that a policy discussion is going? who is able to get laws passed? who makes the decisions that impact the way your callers, you know, the way we live, and that's the point of the list. it's meant to spark discussion. there's a level of informality to it, but the frustration that everyone who is powerful in washington is a millionaire or billionaire is something we hear a lot, and the idea that the policies passed here don't help average people is an old frustration and one not to be remedied too soon. >> host: find the list of the 50 most powerful people on their website, but also you said you're putting together a weekly list of those powerful at the time. where is that? >> guest: well, we've just lunched a political blog called death race 2012, and you can find that on the main page. qg website, gq.com, and scroll to the left.

that's updated several times, we have a weekly power list. send us suggestions. we love for readers and viewers to send us what they think. >> host: all right. thank you, sir. >> guest: thank thank you. >> more now with a discussion on proposed budget cuts for the federal air marshall service. this is 40 minutes. >> host: every monday at 9:15 eastern time is the feature segment, "your money," and we have a special focus on a mission, who is involved, and how much it costs. we look at the money used to fund the federal air marshall service, and senior washington correspondent for homeland security is here today. good morning. >> guest: morning. >> host: how did the program change after 9/11? >> guest: it changed dramatically after 9/11. on 9/11 itself, the air marshalls were part of the department of transportation, and there were just 33 of them covering something like 30,000

domestic key west flights and international flights operated by u.s. carriers, and that had to wrap up quickly, as you can imagine, as the transportation security administration was formed, the air marshalls were a part of tsa, also part of the department of transportation at the time, and then when the department of homeland security was created, they jumped to over there. >> host: do we know how many are on airplanes? do we know how prevalent their presence is? >> guest: that number is classifyied, and they want to keep the number classified so potential terrorists can't do the math. oh, well, if there's x number of officials flying around at this time, i can game the system. there's about 4,000 of them, and i think one of the ways we know that is by extrapolating, you know, how much money they have and how many salaries, you know, they pay and all of that sort of stuff. it's probably about 4 # ,000

covering, you know, all of the flights. >> host: give us an insight into what the program and service does. we have this idea of perhaps the plane individual being on the plane, but what's the real details? >> guest: that's the primarily responsibility to be a plain clothed police officer on an airplane. if something is wrong, they have the authority to enforce the law, arrest somebody, detain them, transfer them to other law enforcement agencies, and, in fact, a lot of arrests that air marshalls do do involve ore -- a referral where they are to arrest that individual. >> host: looking at history of the program. it was first proposed by president john f. kennedy back in 1961, expanded in 1970 with the sky marshall program, 1700 agents, and in 1974, the faa took over the program.

post 9/11 as the guest mentioned, over 4,000 air marchshas hired. it's a dramatic change. why did kennedy want the program and see the value as being? was it a similar mission to what we have today? >> guest: it was a similar mission. in the 60s, there was a fear of terrorists hijacking airplanes. certainly, we had fears of perhaps, you know, cuban nationals or whatever it might have been from the sowf yesterday union -- soviet union and other hie jack,ings and it's more promountainoused now. >> host: president obama wants to cut the program, and what's behind that proposal?

>> guest: they wouldn't suffer much under that proposal because they are reorganizing a little bit whether integrating into the transportation security administration a little by moving administrative and training functions out of the air marshals's office its into the tsa. i don't think it's going to harm the agency much. >> host: going to the phones, and deborah joins us from springfield, massachusetts, democrat there. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i just want to say that this agency is under homeland security. homeland security has a budget -- well, has no budget. it is funded with a blank check for one thing, and we have so many contractors in that agency, and they are working off the government and making huge amounts of money, i might add, well, you know, ron paul and all

the rest of these republicans are wanting to cut everything else, the homeland security, want to eliminate all regulations and you name it, all that money can be shifted into the military budget. now, tell me that's not true. >> host: now, deborah, before you go, what do you think about the service that air marshals provide though. do you think they should be on airplanes? >> caller: realm, of course, and the idea is, and he was correct when he said that, you know, $36 million is not going to hurt them much. we have enough that they want to grow that agency to where, i mean, we're going to be a military dictatorship with all of these people on these airplanes watching everybody else. >> host: weigh in on what she said in terms of boosting the budget or growing the defense and homeland security systems. >> guest: well, interestingly,

there's a democratic proposal now to grow the service by 1700 people, and the bill, which is sponsored by sheila jackson lee of texas, says we'll add about 1750 air marshals with the idea to cover routes of high risk passengers coming in from various places, you know k -- you know, like the christmas day bombing of 2009 and the high risk routes are not covered as well as they should be, and her bill aims at covering those routes. >> host: play out that senator collins scenario for us, the underwear bomber situation, did the marshals play a role, and sure with us what the track record is. what have they managed to do? >> guest: it's interesting. you know, the underwear bomber,

as he's called, was just sentenced to life in prison. you know, he was actually spotted and detained by passengers on board that plane, flying from amsterdam. he went to am steer dame from nigeria, which is where his family was from. it was the public that captured him, and then he was arrested, i think, by customs agents at the airport in detroit. ..

you mentioned one of the democrats, sheila jackson lee wants to expand the number of air marshal's serving in the skies. what is the general feeling in congress about the value? >> guest: i think congress respects and values the air marshal and understands, you know, they are the law enforcement arm of the transportation security administration. when you go through airport screening and something happens, transportation security officer was cannot arrest you. they do not have that power to enforce the law. they can detain you and issue and crowd you somewhere until a law enforcement are not as the beagle officer arrives but they don't have the power and i think there is recognition that having the federal air marshal service strengthens it. >> host: bill, republican in cambridge ohio. welcome. mccaul hoeven yes, ma'am. on ho the air marshal service,

we have a lot of people coming home from the military will come a lot of the more air force security police or what they call weapons system security forces, which are no faced with nuclear weapons and some of the more secret sites. i myself would was an active duty army and i joined the air national guard into the security police will. we were well trained to take care of any of that system. >> host: so you are saying that you recommend veterans could fill these jobs and serve as air marshal's? >> caller: they could fill these jobs very easily and have a respire because they do now in the military. >> host: let's look at the "washington post" that touches on something bill was talking about. they claim a job by is in the united states. this is a "washington post" stories. positions were lost or withheld

and the laws in the book have to teeth. national guard reserve and active duty troops coming back from iraq, afghanistan or other military duty complain of being denied jobs or otherwise penalized by employers because of their military obligations. "the washington post" says the biggest offender is the federal government. mickey mccarter, is there any talk in congress you hear of trying to have some sort of pipeline to get veterans jobs or training for the marshal service program? >> guest: the department from and security in general was a pretty aggressive recruiting effort, and they are one of the better agencies as far as meeting the mandates they have to hire veterans and put veterans in places of employment and that's actually increasing prominence a little bit lately because the deputy secretary herself. >> host: what kind of training do they go through? we are watching right now.

>> guest: they go through law enforcement training regardless of the level of training a federal air marshal house when they come into the service or when they are hired by the service is a sort of standard eis program at the training academy to sort of understand what to do if i'm really passengers, understand what to do if you encounter an explosive or weapon of some sort what to do in different emergency situations. those are things that are unique to the air environment that the air marshal's always undergo that training whether or not the prior law enforcement experience. >> host: akron ohio. william, independent collar. good morning. >> caller: good morning. now that i see mr. mccarter for homeland security today, i have read some of the magazine's and i am in criminal justice myself and there is a series of articles i commend you for that. i have friends that are homeland security air marshal's and some of them started prior to the tsa

taking over, but i think they are one of the most highly trained law enforcement specialists the pilot flight deck officers that are trained and have the ability to stave off attacks in the deck they are also well-trained and i am wondering if you could even take it one step further, stewards and flight attendants that can double the role and tend to be the undercover. the other law enforcement agencies use the dea and undercover folks that mix and quite well with the program, but they are well trained but to a rest and so forth. i just wondered if that could be expanded. and i do applaud them and i

think the democratic bill in congress would be welcomed. >> host: we lost him there at the end as he started to hang up but let's talk about the flight deck program. >> guest: it's actually been cut under the current proposed fiscal year 2013 budget will be cut at least in half putting in as a hard reali. they are saying we have to cut somewhere. this program is and really something we consider criminal. >> host: can you tell us what it is? >> guest: the flight deck program trains a pile wet with the armed to defend the cockpit if somebody tries to take over his plane. right now as it stands if the president has and there are some

in congress that are upset that the tsa is looking at cutting it because. and it's interesting that the caller mentioned as well airline stewards and stewardesses attendants love because it also been very vocal and would like to see training and assistance as well for them to be able to participate or defend themselves as necessary. >> host: are thus to reduce train? >> guest: not on a large skillet. there's been small limited efforts to provide self-defense training and staff largely budgets and the unions want really not in a large scale. >> host: what is the obama administration justification for proposing to cut the funding for

the federal flight deck program won't. >> guest: the top fiscal environment makes it's tough to expand anything much less keep it at the same level. >> host: is there an argument having the marshals on the plane serve the purpose of as a quilt to defend the plame and they're now in place the heavy doors and locking system. >> guest: would they just interest with the various airlines and various frequent passengers a lot of the traditional security screenings

if we have these different layers going on what would that pilot with the gun inside the cockpit maybe that doesn't need quite as much funding as it would otherwise. mickey mccarter or flies domestically? >> guest: and he's got 4,000 air marshal's working eight hour days there is no way they're going to cover the flights but they try to figure out like what are the dangers flights, you know, like pittsburgh to denver probably isn't a high risk flight, so it probably isn't much of the need, but the flight

from amsterdam to detroit that might be a high risk life and maybe there should be an air marshal. >> host: tom, democrat. >> caller: yes, good morning. what is the take on the fact that the underwear bomber was able to obtain a visa as it starts with? it strikes me that anyone with common sense wouldn't let him in the country. the second comment i would like to ask about is the more and more security in our society is incremental and the real problem is that we are running around on a global the million people. >> host: a million people, tom? let's get a response from mickey mccarter. >> guest: it is generally

recognized as a failure that the underwear bomber was able to get the visa to begin with. the united kingdom raised concerns about him before. his own father called u.s. authorities to report his son was becoming radicalized, and information was floating around in a database but it hadn't sort of severed itself on to the terrorist watch list the way it should have and since the underwear bomber incident the watch list has grown tremendously whereas before it is a effort to sort of make a smaller list, the no-fly listing the vitter terrorist watch list have grown quite a bit. so lesson learned i guess, and i guess as far as the air marshal's are concerned, they are only so many of them available to cover these high-risk flights as the agencies themselves i don't think they are getting to the point they are that intrusiveness in the lives of everyday americans. >> host: alabama, republican. good morning.

>> caller: yes, this is kevin. >> host: good morning. >> caller: hello. >> host: please go ahead. >> caller: i may conservative from california and the guy from minnesota made a great point about the underwriter bomber. they totally botched it. if it wouldn't have, the plan would have been bombing and there would have been hundreds of people dead. >> host: and what does that tell you? >> caller: it tells me the wasteful spending we are spending in the homeland security and we have these people better getting overpaid and there are so many people that are in the offices that are doing nothing but bringing coffee or doughnuts to these people that are sitting behind computers all day. >> guest: the biggest justification for the air marshal service cited by anybody that talks about it is if you had air marshals on the plane hijacked on 9/11, the crisis

might have been likely averted. they wouldn't have crashed, we wouldn't have lost the people we lost, etc., etc.. that said, in the case of the underwear bomber we have to point to the fact there was still air marshal on the plane, it was public vigilance that resulted in the apprehension of the under burr bomber and i think the department of homeland security and any other expert involved is going to say that public the legends is always going to be part of our aviation security and homeland security efforts because we can't possibly have an air marshal on every plane. you can't have a police officer standing buy everywhere all the time and as some of the callers have diluted that isn't necessarily desirable. >> host: don rights and with something we touched on. how many would be needed to have won on every flight and you said there's over 30,000 flights. he said is that realistic? do you have any idea if you would take or the conversation on members of congress or the

administration in the bush administration or obama administration of promoting something like that? >> guest: there are no serious conversations proposing someone like that. the service's budget this year is about $966 million. the obama administration proposed as we said trimming that a little bit to about 930 million in 2013. and, you know, i don't think that anybody is looking at a growing or shrinking the service from where it is right now. >> host: robert, independent collar in texas. good morning. >> caller: good morning. it's amazing the information on the underwear bomber. this guy never had a visa. the gentleman was light on the plane. they tried to keep him off the plane but to attorneys who just submitted said he was led on the plane forcibly. he was denied access to the

airplane two or three times and some unnamed office in the u.s. government -- and you should look this up -- they let him on the plane forcibly. he wasn't allowed to be on the plane and someone put him on that thing. why would a cia agent get that guy on the plane? >> i'm not familiar with the story or anybody attempting to stop him. my understanding is that the petn the underwear bomber was carrying wasn't detected by the screening he went through at amsterdam and that what i heard is he raised no alarm. i wasn't there obviously, so i don't know. >> host: bristol tennessee. chris, good morning. >> caller: good morning. thank you pureed just a quick question on one of the more under looked sectors of the aviation safety is cargo and one of the things i'm looking at is i know that the operators that

the air marshal's do not regularly right there, however, they are people to be a part of the program, and i'm sure your guest knows what that is, that is the federal flight deck officer program. is there any planning along those lines? because the regulation is different from cargo and i think it is an overlooked threat in that if you look at an airplane as a weapon system for a potential terrorist that it could potentially cause just as much damage if there are people on board or not. >> guest: well, the caller raises a valid concern and the center of consciousness a little bit since the printing cartridge plot that came out of yemen in 2010 where and al qaeda fl yet attempted to send, you know, bombs into the united states. on cargo planes. and the transportation security administration has responsibility for making sure

all cargo is screened before it comes to the united states. if tsa keeps it better it isn't going to screen 100% of cargo due to the diplomatic limitations, but they are going to be doubled to screen the high-risk cargo that might have some sort of problem with it. so, you know, that said the air marshal's don't really play a role in that. maybe down the road there is some sort of expand opportunity for them to do so. u.s. customs and border protection which has its own very large law enforcement officers division does, you know, make sure that a lot of those shippers are in compliance with dhs rules, so that's where that stands. >> host: jovana tauter wants to know how the program is related to u.s. marshals. >> guest: there is no relation whatsoever. it's just the name marshall. they both have them. u.s. marshals work for the u.s. justice department and the air marshal's work for the tsa and

they do not interact. >> host: jacksonville, florida. jack on the independent line. good morning. >> caller: yes. my question is we seem to be spending a lot of money on homeland security. has the government looked at freeing up or changing some of the laws to allow intelligence agencies at the cia to do a better job or a more thorough job rather than having their hands handcuffed in regards to some of the intelligence laws that we have in the country? i will hang up now and wait for my answer. >> there is a lot of sensitivity where bolstering intelligence agencies are concerned, and the department of homeland security and the federal government has sort of been viewed as a soldier if you will come a barrier. the public can interact in the department of homeland security, which is nothing more than a collection of police powers and agencies, and they can serve as

a broker to the u.s. intelligence community. people are pretty happy about the arrangement right now as far as the executive branch is concerned, and that's probably the way that it's going to remain for the foreseeable future. >> host: jacksonville florida independent color. good morning. sorry. that's the one to devin. a republican in daring new hampshire. good morning. >> caller: hello there. i heard your guest mention the underwear bomber a little while ago, and i just wanted to mention the attorney general's testimony at the trial last week. he was a witness to the event, and he said that gnutella didn't have a passport and wasn't going to be allowed onto the plant except he was escorted by the two men in suits who plan national security in order to get him onto the plane, and in his testimony he said he was

unable to be a witness to the trial because they got him to plead guilty. what we should be afraid of is our federal government, and the tsa stitching their hand down our pants isn't going to make things better. >> host: don't appreciate that last comment but bringing up the question one of the earlier calls mentioned, the idea that mutallab was somehow forced to go on the plane were was escorted of agents of some kind. >> guest: i am unfamiliar with that story. i can't say it's true or i can't say it's false. my understanding is he was targeted for questioning by u.s. customs and border protection which was operating for the overseas passengers like mutallab and they planned to question him when he and arrived in detroit and if he were successful they wouldn't have been able to question him because he would have blown

himself and 360 people up. >> host: let's look at erie port. there's been concerns over the environment. tell us more about this. this is the story i'm looking at the you reported. transportation security new work procedures that air marshals served as necessary to counter perceptions of discrimination. >> guest: it's true. i think it was a cnn investigation a little while back, particularly in this orlando office that they operate out of there was a lot of feelings of discrimination and retaliation and they found one of the smoking guns if you will with a billboard or this bulletin board with the managers in the office were using and the had a lot of names for various agents and sort of created this repressive work environment. the dhs inspector general investigated this and found that there was no widespread discrimination or retaliation

for what the service but they did find people were having a love of feelings there may be because a lot of the prophecies of you will in the management seemed very secretive and not very transparent to the inspector general recommended basically a dozen remedies and transportation security administration has agreed to employ all of them and it's carried out one would hope that this will ev the problem. >> host: do reporter senator bill nelson of florida who had requested the investigation slammed the air marshal service for its treatment of employees and you said this was stemming from an investigation and the accusation in orlando so the senator said this went over the line as unprofessional. for others joining his call for an investigation over concerns and separate from what the report found were their concerns this could be a widespread

phenomenon? >> three or four lawmakers and putting nelson had been together to request the ig investigation and that was the investigation i think in question and basically it found while there was no discrimination or retaliation that there were a lot of fear because the air marshal service had grown rather quickly and as word of have this i don't know if the right way to put it is a good boy network of we are going to get things done but we are not going to communicate our intentions as well as we should so there are these fears that that is happening and the inspector general basically said is when you've got to do to alleviate the fear and that going forward everyone understands that we are following the equal employment opportunity law. >> host: albany new york, jim on the democrats' line. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i was wondering if the other countries that we fly to and have our federal marshals on and

the security of the different airports and do we hold these other countries and their administrations or their security accountable the same way that we protect our citizens? is this just a one-way street or to be of other countries that have their own federal marshal programs to speed so that it is more of a reciprocal thing and is their accountability to other countries that fly into our country? >> host: let's get a response from mickey mccarter. >> guest: interestingly enough, again, since the underwear bomber and other transportation security incidents in the past several years there's been a movement to grew international consensus, actual binding agreements if you will with other countries

through the international civil aviation organization which is a part of the u.n.. so janet napolitano has taken this under her wing she is the homeland security secretary and has been doing a lot to make the sort of regional contact if you will. we had an agreement with countries in asia and countries in europe. we had an agreement with countries in south america to sort of bring up the aviation security levels in general and these are supposed to be two-way streets. we all agree and we are going to hold each other accountable, and if one country were to step out of line and these agreements that we could sort of seek some remedies. the idea isn't to be punitive, the idea i think is supposed to seal in the gaps of security whenever they are perceived. >> host: mickey mccarter is a washington correspondent for homeland security today. he's got more than a decade of experience reporting on military affairs and information technology and after 9/11 haven't come he shifted into reporting on homeland security matters, specifically focusing

on that. he's also worked at the veterans business journal, stars and stripes congressional quarterly, he's reportable federal news radio, also the military information technology and special operations technology. i have a question coming in from one of our speed. are the air marshal's a deterrent or a solution to the crisis on the plane? what can they do against the three terrorists? >> guest: that is a good question. no, one would think that they're less of a deterrent because there's been an effort to serve make them less visible if you will to the public. part of the idea of the air marshal was you won't know if there is an air marshal on your flight. they're supposed to be wearing civilian clothes etc., etc.. theoretically if the rest of our security apparatus have been working one on the air marshal should be able to handle two or three different assailants in the perfect world. and of course we count on the

pilot, the crew and alert passengers to be able to assist. >> host: in that kind of scenario is that sort of an example of getting flight attendants trained so they can assist? >> guest: i think they would agree and that is an argument that's been certainly made more crewmembers, more pilots, more people in general associated with airlines need that training and flecha said it occurs on the 16 stores. >> host: who knows when an air marshal was on the flight? to the pilots know, to the flight attendants no? >> guest: the pilot certainly knows. whether the flight attendants know i honestly don't know. i would assume in many cases they would and that even that they need to assist that they would be aware that the person with law enforcement authorities on the plane. >> host: and not just waving a gun on the plan. let's go to mark and wayne on

the independent line. good morning, marc. >> caller: good morning, c-span and america and mr. carter -- mickey mccarter. >> guest: good morning. >> caller: i have a question about you claiming that you had no idea about the underwriter bomber being held on to that plan. i live on disability, and i even knew about that. if you have seen the evidence that i have gathered about this individual, and about the warehouses that were completely filled with all of these body scanners and no airports were bodying them so than this underwear bomber came along and every one of them got sold immediately this is how they work. highjack the federal government are using it by use of the media, buy lobbying to the people. >> host: you see there is an infrastructure geared towards making of these persons so it is

a generated crisis to help the businesses make money. >> guest: i have to say after this pergamon kind of interested in talking to my colleague who specializes in intelligence to see if he was aware of the stories that somebody might have helped the number were bomber on to this plan because i certainly am unaware of them. as for a lot of accusations of the government being in bed with the industry on various issues, known as a matter of policy that the bush administration had actually had a plan for the whole body imager to be ruled out and there was under consideration by the obama administration before the bombing incident and that just sort of exhilarated that plan and put it into public view we're this is always on the paper because there is the realization that the metal detectors can only detect metal and we've had these problems before where people bring illicit items on the plans because they are nonmetallic.

>> host: fairfield connecticut the last call, go ahead. >> caller: yes. i heat to keep hammering you with this underwear thing but there has to be a lot of news about this and it is televised on c-span and congress undersecretary of state of management patrick kennedy says the gentleman was allowed to get on the airplane because they were tracking him which is troubling in either case knowing that he had a bomb on him and allowing him to get on the plane in the first place. >> host: mickey mccarter washington correspondent for homeland security today thanks for joining us this morning. >> you are watching the communicators on c-span. we are at the consumer electronics show in las vegas at the convention center. this week we caught up with the commissioners who are taking tours of the exhibits at the

consumer electronics show. first mignon clyburn. >> we have new mascots, new web sites, we've got new everything. you put this in one room and the others in the other room. we take it into the next level in terms of the features and you will see the high definition. most of them are sluggish. you see the diet, high definition by the congenital logo goes back and forth. this has a dvr made it really easy to find what he's looking for. one of the cool things we did is prime time any time. when you look at the statistics

of how people watch tv between the hours of eight and 11 in the prime time hours about half the people that are watching abc, cbs, nbc and fox. once a customer enables the future you can automatically record all the networks using only one satellite to an air so there's a lot of technology that went behind that and will give them access to all of the prime time shows for eight days. so anything that errors i can go in and watch last night hawaii five-o or mike and moly. allows you to watch tv on your phone or laptop and you can do the same thing. you can watch on any of the devices. >> did you hear from consumers? uses this? why this?

>> one is the number of high-definition tvs are increasing. people used one high-definition and the rest and now people have the minute you watch one tb in high-definition you have to change every tv in your home so high-definition on every tv. we know that consumers want prime time because that is what they spend half the time watching so we made it easy for them to do it and we start looking at the consumption on the mobile phones and it's still a small portion of the video consumption but it's growing. and people have already paid for this continent and want to watch on their own devices. you go back one week in time. -- >> so you do have that option. >> longer than eight days but for eight days you basically get all of the shows and i've been discovering new shows which i

wouldn't have watched otherwise. >> and what would that be? >> there was a pretty impressive one called my teenage daughter hates me or something, it was really funny. in the morning i have something to watch now. i never have to worry by record something, did something new comes out, i can click the prime time holder. we also do a lot of work with broadband streaming. if you have access to the internet you have access to thousands of movies and some of them are available for $10 a month. if i pay $10 a month to get access to the 10,000 titles of the movies and tv shows and some of them are new release that he would pay $6.99 to watch. >> the improvement and energy efficiency. >> also what happens is because these are what we call the inlines they don't have a general satellite tabare so when that is off, the box is doing

nothing it's just sitting there. so in a typical for tv home if you have four boxes like this each of them always on consuming a lot of energy now you have only one of these boxes and three of these lightweight boxes typically 50% energy. >> that's good to know. thank you. appreciate it. >> let's start with smart tv. the concept of smart tv is something that about three years ago we were the first ones to put netflix into a blue ray players about the first connected device. they connected to the internet. there wasn't a computer. now you see everybody has a smart tv. that means you connect directly to the internet. we have wi-fi and built into all of our new screens, but it only

works if it is simple enough taxes and there is so much content of their we want to make sure that consumers are able to access it. let me show you how we do that. we develop a special device holiday magic remote. very intuitive. i will let you run it. it's sort of like a rick controller. it's very intuitive the way you move it around the screen. for the first time we've also integrated voice control. so instead of having to type in to find all you have to do is begin to the remote and would find it automatically for you. >> and you said i would do that? >> can't do it here because there's too much millions but it actually works with american english, spanish, french, and curry and of course, so it's pretty amazing.

but there is so much content out there now that if we want to help consumers find easy ways to access it and the magic remote is a big part of that. from the policy standpoint, we are also looking at how this is going to affect cable operators with over the top tv, so we are working on how you're going to deliver their content and we are showing the first application with bios and friends from the bisons we have to have an application that instead of having the box for vios you can get it through your smart tv. >> that's great for the consumers. >> i heard you talk about energy it will help reduce the energy use in your home. all of these new sets, the ldp sets are very energy efficient. lt was the first to support the new energy star of sufficient

category. we have eight tvs currently more than anybody else and that sufficient category and in 2012 we will have more. i will show you the more energy efficient product in the world and you may have heard about organic light emitting. this is the new 55-inch. we have been showing it for a couple of years, 15-inch to years ago, 20, last year. the technology has matured to the point that it's really big and it is a real product. >> and it's really thin. >> its 4-millimeter. that is less than 316th s of an inch. if you look at another tv screen at this angle you wouldn't even be able to see the picture but it has such high contrast resolution and color saturation you get the ultimate high definition experience. >> and you talk about energy efficiency. when i'm seeing this and i am seeing the resolution on an

automatically thinking that we are going to consume more of that. >> it's the opposite. you think of those big sets that we replace, the first tv sets. these are energy efficient. eyeball have the rating on this yet but on a 55 change lt backlit lcd, it's about 8 cents a day to operate. it's the kind of revolutionizing free the experience. conventional 3-d tv uses active shocker glances which means you have to plug them in. these are the same kind you would get in a movie theater, lightweight, and expensive. >> compared to two years ago these are extremely light weight. >> we would have designer glasses. this is the alterman definition screen so this is four times the revolution of the conventional

tvs. so ten adp times for this is when you get. a very large screen, a 84-inch, for model 3b experience. but if you actually turn around and look at -- i don't have room for this one in my house but i've already picked out my new set for the super bowl. right on top there. first thing you will notice is we call this cinema screen. the border pretty much disappears, so it's all picture. all of these have smart tv capabilities, and we really enhance the three d capability this year to allow you to adjust the 3d affect so if you are watching a sporting event and want to see more you can buy let up. if you are watching a movie that might have too much, you can buy a letdown so it is more for your personal preference. >> that's good to know because my first year here i felt scared. [laughter]

i want to give you the ultimate free the experience as we walked out. we have a 3d application now on the smart tv, so you get more. i mention the conversion. i wasn't believing in this a year ago it really didn't look that good and the new technology has been fantastic. if you are in to classic tv and want to watch nash u-turn on the converter and you will be able to watch classic television in 3d. as my i guess i'm showing my age. i don't think i could do this for all shows. >> if you are watching in your living room and are able to adjust it and i think you could watch everything.

but for that special movie or special sporting yvette it's a phenomenal experience. i might have to keep them. >> so glad you came. enjoy the show. >> what is the input incurrence of joining on three dtv? >> i think we need to stay in touch with the consumer experience. we need to know this is the demand, this is where the consumption is and we need to make sure that our policy, the things we consider are in line with the consumer interest to read that is important. we are always reinventing ourselves as you see on the floor. >> the was commissioner mignon

clyburn as she took a tour of the exhibits of the consumer electronics show pity on your screen is the grand lobby of the las vegas convention center which is where the show is held. about 140,000 people attend the show every year, 3,000 plus exhibitors. we also caught up with republican commissioner robert mcdowell as he toured the samsung booth. >> what do you hope to learn here? >> of the consumer electronics show from the perspective we find everything is going wireless so tvs are communicating wirelessly through the consumers broadband networks it's for the need to bring more spectrum and to the airwaves for the consumers to be able to use them and probably more so that is one of the takeaways.

>> how do you make that happen? >> we need congress to help for starters. they can do a few things. we do have some spectrum lighting around that we have at the auction the the congress right now has been working on the incentive legislation to get tv broadcasters to relinquish some of their sanctions and channels to use for things like this. and that of spectrum, the neighborhood on the body was great for high bandwidth, high-resolution video that you are seeing here. >> one of the themes here is td everywhere. how does that affect what you do if the fcc? >> it's information overload. but tv everywhere has a lot of public interest policy and legal issues but number one is there enough spectrum defeated and a

bunch of devices and a lot of public policy issues on of them is the supreme court argument made yesterday on the issue of why the image is being sent through wi-fi versus over the air broadcast and they said no at this point but -- >> so what we have going on here at samsung? >> we're looking at the greatest latest technology. this is the super tv. it allows -- >> what does that stand for? >> you stumped me there. >> [inaudible] >> you knew. >> it allows you to turn off each pixel by itself. each has its own light source which allows you to provide better energy efficiency and

brighter pictures. so this is a 5-inch. >> and it has the money pixels? >> this is a standard high-definition tv which is about a million pixels. >> what we will get next is the super high-definition with four times the number of pixels. >> when using each one gets turned on and off, >> each pixel is its own lt with three colors and each can be turned off individually. so what allows you to have barred blacks and bright lights, so if you get a picture is a very vivid picture. >> so the black is actually on. >> the black is off and white would be with all of the pixels on the. >> how long do you spend at

samsung putting a display like this together? >> they spend the entire time developing this technology to planning. we are in the process now of requiring next year's space. >> how many pixels is this? >> this is four times the pixels we just saw. this is a development as you start to see the three d because of the high resolution image and the vivid colors that come through. >> asad matter of physics and engineering will you be able to achieve a full three be affected by packing in more pixels supply for ten years from now you won't need the other technologies?

>> a conventional application early in development you start to see the 3d affect spirit as you know it is dependent on the user to read some users can't breast the 3-d concept very well. you may not be able to see three be. >> some people get motion sickness. >> it's better for some people and worse for others. you say this might help that as they can live in a free the world? >> you see the content moving around on the screen and you see the vivid colors without having the will images being sent to your brain. the spirit. >> an image of a football coming towards you -- >> you're not going to dodge it.

it has promise but it has a long way to go because it produces a higher resolution screen. >> how many years did it take to develop the technology? >> this has been developing for quite a few years to recant give the exact number but it's four to five years. >> how much now? >> this is a one-off so this is many years. >> so it's not going to be in the market anytime soon. but this is where we are innovative innovating in the next step. >> how many people, how many engineers does it take to produce something like this over four or five years? >> we have hundreds of engineers working on this technology for how to do the imaging process to help you increase the density of the pixels in the screening itself. >> and it's very thin.

>> it looks thin from here. >> it is generating very thin. >> okay. what's next. >> we will go over to the family share, a way for us to share content with your family through pictures and wireless technology to streaming pictures to videos and what we are seeing here is we call with family stories. family story allows you to take a picture or to give video and share it with your family. will be shared through whatever devices there are. if you are on the tablet, for example, if you want to share with your brand on and new jersey, share a page with her saying here is content i would like to share with you and the content would be than shared with her as you see right now we are sharing a picture and you

are taxing back and forth about the picture where your account but what's great about this is it will allow you to do things like i met my daughter's ball game and i can say look at this great shot. it will streamline that future treacly to granma. it all travels through the internet. its nda high bandwidth type of application. wealthy hd video so you are using the latest technology like verizon, at&t. now you have the data connection , so it's very important to have. >> you have your image and then you pull this up and this is in your family room or living room and what it's asking is a very fancy high powered monitor.

stat you can send it to your phone and your computer. we may not know what laptop or device but it will go out to wherever you are not confined where you are at and say commissioner mcdowell -- weld you probably don't call yourself commissioner mcdowell, but it will say here's a picture of like to share with you and you would say yes. and then you start an interactive sharing picture or video. >> and it doesn't have a camera on it? >> these are the new tvs and 2012 we are putting the deal cameras on the tv and audio cameras on the tv so yes you will be able to do a video conference between a hand held in nebraska and grandma in new jersey. estimate you must be from nebraska. >> i just thought i would pick some place far from new jersey.

>> it's a new interface we are having with the tv now we can do such things as talk to the tv and say term on the. tv channel two, t, channel five. you can also have gestures and wait for the tv and will pull the menu and you can grab that menu and go off of that so you have a new way to interact and control of your tv. >> how does that work with a malfunction like you are watching a sports game or presidential debate will that do something? >> it might, it might not. there are certain gestures. you have to waive first and it will bring up the menu. if you wave and then go like that, or you can default and say channel up the list again this is your own proprietary software. >> we have an app that runs in the smart tv platform that we have currently 500 developers

developing app on the samsung tv and this is a very robust application. >> the mobile app for any device? >> it will run on any of our devices, a client on the tablets or cellphone. >> another application -- >> when you start talking about video, video will probably be the killer application. >> hopefully it won't kill the wireless network. >> more spectrum is always a good thing that we are innovative. >> that is the key is the special efficiency and what can we do with the spectrum we have more efficiently and innovation will come around. >> thank you. >> we can go onto another

streaming content. it's the fundamental transport mechanism to get content throughout your home. you have content on your phone currently it works within your home network. this year it is the ability to pull content from your laptop you have a video on your laptop he want to share in your mother's home while you are visiting some you will be able to pull that content and show it on her tv. >> it's come a long way from those tvs with the rabbit ears, haven't we? >> we are bringing them back on the systems and they have been very robust. they are coming back in the audio system. the device just announced with at&t is called the galaxy and it is a device that bridges between a cellphone a tablet.

>> the naim galaxy is very ambitious. >> the galaxy has been our flagship brand and for a while now. this is a lt enabled device that is running on the platform. its 5.3 so it's bigger than a sulfone but it's not as small risk and again it is wi-fi enabled. and lte to be a disconnect lte aníbal. so the latest with at&t. >> they might every gsm chip? >> it has the 3g technology. >> the battery life is about eight to ten hours. >> what makes this device different from the competitors?

>> one of the things we have added to this you see the pictures -- you can hold that. i'm sorry. >> it allows you -- >> so what am i doing? >> it allows you to write on the device. what is unique here it allows you to since the pressure that you are pushing and provide a high-resolution image. behind you you see some of the artwork that has been produced by artists that are sitting over -- >> see you can write a message, you can draw a picture. isakson just write a message? >> royte in message. >> you still have the eraser on.

picture color. so you could do that? >> that's right. very good. >> bad penmanship i need to work on. now can i save this or send it to anybody? >> you can save it or send it to anybody want to send a picture to. where does it send? >> hit save. spec and then what do i do? >> your image is saved. >> i want to send it. >> tappet. >> and then what?

>> there we go. >> is it commercially available yet? >> it will be commercially available through at&t. >> i need to spend time learning to use it. it's been a couple your artwork will be good. >> we have tablets that are 10.1 come 8.9, 7.7, 5.3 and a bridge between the 4.3. >> and this is for the retail on how much? >> the retail price -- >> we don't know. the at&t web site in a few weeks estimate into the community is serious from the consumer electronics show in las vegas continues next week. to watch this and past communicators online, go to

c-span.org/communicators. >> we got started because there's a lot of conservative thinking that works across the issues, but the forecasters had been no single prevented organization, progressive thinking that works on economic policy, domestic policy, national security. >> we think that there is often an ideology behind those made in washington with very little fact behind them, and a part of our job is, you know, to make the argument, the factual argument, and the evidence based argument behind hour own and views, and i do think that sometimes when the facts don't argue for our position we examine those decisions because we fundamentally believe the most important thing is to be right

>> we host this in the store each year. part of what we consider our central mission, which is not just selling books

if you're new to the store and want to find out more about what we do, you can sign up later at the information desk back in the center of the store. to receive our weekly e-mail news letter that con tapes the calendar of events, listing of classes and programs, staff favorites, and other useful information, or go to www.politics-prose.com, and please, keep in mind, too, that you can purchase e-books from us online, and if you have an e-reader, you can download e-books from our website. we're delighting to have our guest here, david unger. he makes a living by expressing opinion. the editorial opinion of the "new york times". he's been on the editorial board

of the times for more than 30 years, and if you've read a times editorial about the military, foreign policy, or international finance, there's a good chance david had a hand in it. he's brought a historian's training to the journalism having earned a ph.d. in austin, and his provocative new book, the emergency state, america's pursuit of absolute security at all costs offers a broad historical perspective. it surveys 70 years of u.s. security policy to argue that the united states has gone terribly awry trying to make itself safe. david's basic point is that the institutions we've built and policies we've established to ensure our national security were originally designed to fight nazi germany and wage cold

war against the soviet union. they were not conceived to protect us against today's international terrorism and other 21st century threats. he argues since the time of roosevelt and truman, we shritched into a "permanent renewing state of emergency." marked by excessively secret agencies in a kind of imperial presidency that our constitution had never intended. the result has been an increasingly complicated, costly, and ineffective security system that's damaged democracy, underminded economic strength, and ironically, david argues, left us more vulnerable. now, david just doesn't describe. he also prescribes. the final part of the book has a blueprint for the future. as you might imagine, his sering

critique, solution for revitalizing american democracy would require radical changes in our approach to national security. some of the things he recommends even have a kind of back to the future quality like requiring that the wars we fight be declared by congress, not the white house, or that we become more selective about what government information is classified. david writes with a lot of passion in his book even if you don't accept all its premises. it will definitely make you think, and i encourage you all to read it. he plans to speak for 20-30 minutes to take question, and then he'll stick around to sign copies of the book. if you have a question, just step up to the microphone in the center and ask because we do

record our events, and, of course, we have the c-span cameras here. now, please join me in welcoming david unger. [applause] >> thank you, all, for coming out on this balmy february evening to this great washington institution. i'm glad to be here. the most important part of the evening are your questions and responses to them, but because the book just came out and he gave an excellent summary, i'll give you a chance to tell you what's in it because you have not read it. the title. what is the emergency state? it's not -- i live in europe most of the time, and i have to, it always translates to state of emergency, and it's not the safe thing. the emergency state is a set of

procedures, practices, institutions that we've developed, constitutional shortcuts we developed over the last 70 years to fight world war ii, fight the cold war, and fight the war on terror. without the intent of building a system parallel to our constitution, but with that effect, undeclared wars is one of them, budgets of agencies not reported to the congress like the cia, congress can't exercise its power over the purse, over classification of informationment we can't have democratic debate on policies if we don't know about them, and even president obama can't tell us what happened with the drone strike on al-alawaki. this didn't start under george w. bush, but the experience of the bush-cheney administration made us see in a clearer way

where we've been going. as i researched the book, my feeling was the bush administration invented little that was new. it built on old practices. it turned renditions into extraordinary renditions. it undeclared war with avengeance, but nothing new. this book is not just about the sorry tales of the recent past, but things to get ourselves back on track, the 10 ideas i offer at the end of the book with the purpose of the ten ideas, i'm not qualified to give a blueprint for returning america to the constitution. none of us it. the constitution was deliberated over four months by the educated elites of their day, their input, ratification conferences, and we need that process. i'm trying to start a discussion. i'm being provocative with the proposals, but the analysis is

straight. it's vetted as carefully as if it was going too a "new york times" editorial where we never like to have to run embarrassing corrections because we overstated our point. what kind of changes? war and peace, certainly, how we recruit military forces, how congress passes and dliblghts military budgets, changes in the way we deal with the world as a whole, how we ratify agreements because the emergency state is not just about foreign policy, but how the american democracy shapes or ought to shape our place in the new global economy. it's not hiding from that economy. it's facing it the way our constitutional democracy can and should with all the assets available to us in our system. it's not just about what we decide to do. more important, it is how we debate and decide. namely, in daylight with

information, not in closed lairings, but hopely and publicly. making our constitutional democracy work again. that's the main point. the concept of the title is that on the one side, we have the coherent plan of the separation of powers, checks and balances, all of them have an apt -- antiquated feel here, but nay were done for a reason with the tyranny of british colonial rule with the fate of earlier republics, italian renaissance republics before them, which had failed, which succumb to the military leaders. they particularly understood that the greatest danger to the survival of the republican democracy was unchecked war powers in the executive. they knew from the sorry experience of the articles of con confederation they needed a stronger national constitution. they were determined to build

one with the executive authority could not go to war unchecked. they divided the war power deliberately between the president and the congress. why were they afraid of war? war, for one, is a source of taxes, that a government, which wages constant war, is going to have to levy heavy taxes, which will get a sour populous resisting that and changes the relationship between the governed and the government. it was a government that was meant to be opened. they were concern about the war power. finally, as authors will tell you, authors of any kind of book, the concept is a narrative frame. it's the author's choice of some way of organizing the massive data out there and making sense of it. it's not the only way of organizing it, but it's the way i chose to organize it. most of the material in the

book, there's some primary source research there. there's some reporting i've done in the course of my times' career, some documents i look back at, but most of what the book is based on is the very rich secondary source literature we have, the good histories and analysis of recent history, and what i've done with that is i've gone back into the data that we all know, that i all know, and i looked at patterns that come out of it when you ask the questions of 2012, and that's the way good history works, or else the history of the revolution, the war of 1812 would have been finished in 1830, with no reason to go back to it. 1860, a different set of questions, roosevelt era asked questions, the depression era, and our era, too, has to ask a new set of questions of our shared american history in order to make it better, in order to modify it for the needs of today.

i tried not to -- i tried to be clear, but i try nod to oversimplify. reality is complex and multifaceted. it goes in different directions at once. there's no pure heros for villains in the book. we have to honor complexity, but not surrender fatally. it's so complex, i can't make sense of it. we can make sense of it. if we don't try to make sense of it, we walk from our democracy. our democracy counts on our trying. the average lay citizen, serious citizen, wanting to inform themselves, trying to inform themselves, and if the government is not giving you the right information, demanding that the government give you that information. we have a, not a direct democracy, not an assembly. we have a representative democracy. the way a representative democracy works is we have to demand of our representatives to tell us what's going on to be accountable for their decisions,

not just to campaign donors, but the voters who ultimately have the say of putting them back in office or not. there was always some good rationale that presidents in the last 7 # years could -- 70 years could find for going outside the constitution and taking emergency state measures like we've mentioned like undeclared wars, presidential wars. fdr had an isolationist congress. as the executive, he sincerely and accurately saw the need to keep britain from going down before the nazi onslaught, and the master politician he was, he chose not to face a congress and a public, which still had within the shadow of the first world war and isolationism, he wanted to run for a third term, pile up a big majority, he thought he could handle it all. he went astray there, but the

threat is real. the motives were sincere and good, and roosevelt did this in wartime, and this is is common in wartime. abraham lincoln playing with habeas corpus in the civil war, and the second world war and japanese, and normally when america strays in wartime, the war ends, the peace is declaredded, the party who won the war are thrown out, amends are made. a peacetime emergency state is different. well, when does that end? when does the emergency end? what we entered into in the truman years was the peace emergency state. they were not terribly calm years, but we were not in declared war. the last declared war then was the second second world war. the constitution is a bit unhinged here doing the emergency actions constitutionally and otherwise justified by a declared war, a

presidential war power the country signed on to, the congress endorsed, but we're doing it in peacetime and indefinitely, and we're building this layers of emergency state ad hoc emergency state. tru truman and eisenhower talked about the nature of soviet communism. we recently heard about islamic fundmentallism, and then we heard this is a unique threat. america has to act like the enemy to fight the enemy. it can't afford to be america, follow its constitutional rules. we have an enemy who lies, who is whatever, and, you know, not to discount that that was not the behavior of stalinist russia, but then after eisenhower, in the late 50s with the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles where either side could

annihilate each other with 20 minute warning. there's an argument for adjusting the rules to use the power the president always had under the constitution to respond to an actual or imminent attack against the country to give him a little space to respond on that different clock, but we didn't choose that route. we chose the route of presidential decision making, secrecy, cutting ourselves off from the debate indefinitely, and then when the emergencies passed, when world war ii ended, we had a peacetime emergency state. the cold war confrontation ended. we didn't inherit a safe world, but we didn't have 18,000 warheads pointed at us after 1991, and yet the shortcuts remained # in place. more worrying that they changed the place, i missedded the public debate about do they need -- did it happen? i mean, i was for the daily

newspaper. we talked about a lot of things in the early 1990s. okay, now we can go back to the constitutional democracy because we're not living under -- we didn't have the debate. there's no reason, i would argue, that the undeclared wars we fought since world war ii, korea, vote -- vietnam, first persian gulf wars, iraq, could not have been declaredded wars. there was no time pressure, no need for surprise, long run up, we read about it in the newspapers, but they were waged as presidential wars, not constitutional wars, not national wars, not the foreign policy of a democracy. for the past 60 years, our wars have been only as popular as the presidents who waged them and only stayed popular as long as the presidents stayed popular. korea was enormously popular from june of 1950 until the chinese came across, and then it was not a cake walk anymore, and

it was an choke hold around his neck. it was then one that nobody owned an invoked -- i'm not going to change the policy i enhearted from six presidents and so on. they became an often war. think about what that does to the soldiers we send to fight this tome whether it's a conscription or volunteer army. you set out with your life on the line to kill and die for your country in a war that has no constitutional authority, does not have congress signed on to it, and we all have an image i lived in, i don't think it happened that way we spit on returning vietnam vets, i never saw it happen, but nevertheless, people came back to not the kind of welcome they deserved for the sacrifices they made, the risks they made in good faith for their country because we had these very irregular kind of wars or at least that's one main

reason, and soldiers still die today in afghanistan, but the country doesn't seem to care much anymore about how it ends as long as it ends. why is it that we come to think of world war ii as the good war? could it perhaps be because it was the last properly declared war? a national war? not a presidential war? this is worth at least thinking about in an era where because the nature of our dangers are not coming up on us by surprise from another high-tech super power. we can delight. we can debate about wars. we can go back to the constitutional way that worked, that led us own our previous wars, not like our current wars. our new way of undeclared wars is not good for anyone. i argue in the book, it is not made us more secure. most of the things we've done since 9/11 and 9/11 was a real attack on this country and a real threat, but it didn't -- it

was responded to in a way that made jihadist terrorism is popular cause in the middle east that diminished our reputation as a law-abiding nation, that divided us internally. it has made us more secure and less democratic. it doesn't need to continue that way. we can go back to the constitution. it still works. it's the emergency state that doesn't work. i've been harping on war powers because it's the obvious example, but the emergency state is a bigger package than that. there's been books, as i've been in the business, about the imperial presidency, the invisible government, the unitary executive, the national security state. the emergency state reaches more broadly. it's -- it reaches to a bigger problem, a problem that was put together for reasons of national security, but created solutions

that shortchanged our democracy in other areas as well, economic areas, federal budget areas, tax areas. the way we put together our military budgets. i work for the "new york times" on analyzing the military budget each year. much as i'd like to say to you that this current budget of $525 billion regular baseline budget and $80 billion contingency funds for iraq and afghanistan, why we could cut that in half and be just as safe. we could be safe spending half of that, but we can't cut it in half. once you build it, there's contracts out of there, and you pay a price for terminating the contracts. we built it up wrecklessly, we have to tear it down carefully. what's the result of building up wrecklessly? what's the result of a last decade, including obama as well as bush, of 30% real increases, of higher defense budgets in real terms more than the reagan

buildup or the cold war confrontation? i would say it's part and parcel of what's being debated in the presidential campaign. military spending accounts for roughly 50 cents of every dollar of discretionary federal spending. last year, it was equivalent to one-third of total federal tax receipts. we spent $3.2 trillion last year. our taxes were $2.1 trillion, which is why we have a $1 trillion deficit. of the $2.1 trillion of taxes, $700 billion went out on the military. what does the public see for taxes they pay? interstate highway bridges that don't fall down? a world class health care system? does it see shorter lines at the social security office? no. it sees the world's most powerful military and the world's biggest budget deficit. this is poisenning our system

and our political debate. how can those of us who believe that there's a place for an activist government in maintaining a safety net and improving the quality of life in america make that case when the math is the numbers i just described. this is not the only thing we get for the tax dollars, but it's the most visible thing, and it's sub tracted from the -- subtracted from it numbers. i live in europe, it's not a happy place at the moment, but at least their tax dollars do not disappear before they turn into services. it's because of a corrupt or overlarge bureaucracy and things to be addressed in the democratic system. we have ourselves in a deep hole with our military spending, and we're there now, and we volted for change we can believe in. i know it's not done overnight, but it's 2012 #, and wii there now. it's the international economic

policy the emergency state waged without telling us. i'm not saying they kept it a sinister secret, but, okay, i've been a member of the counsel of foreign relegalrelations for 23 years. i go to the meetings, read the literature, and it's taken -- it's unstated that the underlying strategic purpose of american foreign policy 1 expatchedding the space of -- is extending the space of markets, promoting not just free trade, but a specific brand of globalization and free trade. stealing a line from my colleague, i call it project flat world; right? american foreign policy is designed to make the world flat, and then one day, oh, mountain mid-1980s, wall street for its own reasons tilted the flat world, and all the high paying

factory jobs slid off somewhere, not here. you heard echoes of this ?t state of the union. if president obama believes, and he's right, that tax incentives and regulatory incentives can bring manufacturing back, then it must have been prior to tax and regulatory policy that facilitated the departure, that governments can act in ways that rebuild our lost industrial economic base, and it must be something other than a service, retail, financial sector economy, which we learned the hard way, we have to be. there's just not enough jobs for a country of 300 million, and they are not great jobs. if you read about apple's production in china. what comes out is that what made the late steve jobs feel he had to do it in china was not the low wages. you know, we're talking about sophisticated technology equipment of which labor costs,

and it's the fact if he wants a new iphone model in six months, he only has the infrastructure built up in china. it's why when they had floods in thailand, your hard drives doubled in cost. it's physical location. that used to be the strength of this country. when the midwest was the industrial belt, when our coal and iron went to our auto plants, our railroads, our eerie cam and seaways, this is the stuff of industrial power, and we've been living under the illusion of the past 20-30 years that all jobs and products are equivalent. they are not. you wake up one day and china says, sorry, we don't want to do it that way, and we have the power not to. what is our power that we've overinvested in military toys and under invested in economic policy. i go on too long, but we'll get back to the subject. i don't want to get overly

simplistic here. the world economy is a complicated place, but the narrative hook i've just given you is not wrong either. american military power has been used to spread -- i'm going to use the jargon word, sorry, a word i would not use in the "new york times," a neoliberalism. it's the particular form of globalization we've chosen to press on the world and confuse with the word "globalization" which who could oppose, and 23 you oppose it, who could stop? it's the way of the world. we chose a particular form of globalization. neoliberal globalization is a policy of choice, a war of choice waged against the 99%, paid for by the 99%, and waged in their name, our name, but without their informed consent. what do i mean by neoliberal

globalization? briefly, a globalization divorced -- it's capitalism divorced from democracy essentially. the very opposite of what we embarked on after world world war ii, the first model brings 30 years of upward mobility, rising income, prosperity, at least to the part of the world we used to call trilateral -- japan, europe, and north america. it was a defect that it was only part of the world, but its success didn't depend on the fact it was just part of the world. the trick is to do the same trick for the whole world now that we did for it then. why did the model not produce neoliberal globalization? why did it produce generalized prosperity? lessening income prosperities? one reason is it was shaped largely by two men, cains of the british treasury and dexter

white of the u.s. treasury. they were the chief architect. kaines was a cainsian. he made room in the new international monetary system he created, which is the imf, the world bank derives. he left room and understood one thing that was crucially important was to leave space for governments to temporarily impose capital controls. why did he need this? living in britain in the late 1940s having had the experience of britain in the interwar period, having been the inventer of the anti-recession policies, he knew that in a completely flat financial world, with no capital controls, the economy that tried to stimulus out of recession would be subjected to

this -- it would be self-defeating. in order to have this world, he, over the objections of economic purists of the day, insisted on not permanent forever capital controls, but the ability of governments in time of recession to invoke capital controls. it sounds technical and economist talk, but it's the crucial link which allowed governments, democratically elected governments in the trilateral world for 30 years to dampen recessions and converge income to follow these policies. neoliberal globalization leaves no room as we see now in europe and the crisis of the euro, as we see in the pointless debate as to who the obama's stimulus policies were enough or not enough. in a flat world, in a neoliberallized globalized world, the government has the capacity to create as much

demand as it wants in tax cuts and government spending. it just can't call into being or be sure the production its called into being by that demand will be in the united states. we can be stimulating chinese and german industry while they free ride and don't have budget deficit and look down at us for running red ink and give us lectures. it's a crucial point. it's not the only point, but it's one. it's characterized by the relatively free movement without the movement of labor. that doesn't mean only immigration in. we call the agreements that constitute it free trade agreements. not quite. you don't need 600 pages, but you just need there's no tariffs, both countries agree,

and there's no exception. 600 pages, under fast track, congress doesn't see or debate, just votes up or down. what's in the other 599 pages? i'll use provocative language to say an undisputed fact. what's in the other 5 99 pages is padded protectionism for the groups, lobbies and others on capitol hill who write the trade law that congress is not allowed to deliberate. example, inteemght -- intellectual property rights. here i am, talking down intellectual capital rules. i'm not the electronic frontier foundation or the internet should be free. i'm saying that all the stuff that microsoft and apple and hollywood get written into trade agreements in the name of intellectual property are a protectionist measure for us,

and that form of protectionism is not questioned. the form of protectionism that slows down dismissals in detroit and cleveland is a sin against the market. what else? agriculture. not exactly a free trade sector in the united states. i love the family farm. i love to drive in the countryside, not see development, see farms. i don't think the cost of that has to be huge payouts to the producers of specific crops, sugar in the mississippi delta, business running away with a lot of money and distorting world trade and agriculture so that countries across the third world, which have comparative advantages in agriculture can take advantage of that, accumulate the capital to move up the industrial food chape. that's protectionism. why, as another colleague said, dean baker, asks in his book, why is it that american retirees, a state i'm

approaching, cannot use medicare for medical services abroad; right? you got medicare, you can live abroad, get your check abroad, you want medical treatment? you have to come back to the united states. what's that got to do with protectionism? everything. everything. imagine if an american retiree who earned medicare could use it for a heart operation from those skilled indian doctors that are here there or in thailand. why can't they? it would make it easier for the retirees, but more important, how often have we heard about the unaffordable entitlements? why not reduce the cost of them? why take them back through a protected american ama that's not subjected to price competition? why? why is it right that an auto worker or a computer programmer has to face the music of globalized wage compensation and

a doctor doesn't? it doesn't make sense. it distorts our policy and our budget, and we never debate it. so we have protectionism for the well-healed few. that's an example of neoliberal globalization. so is fast track. i don't know if you know the shorthand here, but starting in about the 60s or 70s, it became accepted fact in the town that you could not get a trade agreement negotiated with a foreign power if the president had to come back and then explain it to congress, all right? instead, we got into the habit, this is an emergency state habit, this is not the -- the constitution says rather clearly that the sole power to regulate international power belongs to the congress, but now the congress is expected and pillar pillaried if it does not.

they just need an up or down vote from congress on it like the president wants for appointees for 90 days. there's a better case for trade agreements. in a globalized world, trade agreements have tremendous consequences, and the 600 page ones have more consequences than the one-page ones would. we are off into a world where trade specialists, trade lawyers, nothing against trade lawyers, but, anyway, they created a world where all the questions, at best, go to secretive arbitration panels of the wto and elsewhere, and they decide just which of the democratic laws that passes that congress could sign, not debate, and which they apply, all right? the infamous case that brought this to some people's attention was the marine mammals protection act, dolphin free tuna; right? wto practiced -- it's not a law

that can't be changed, it's nothing that can't be negotiated. practice says that when a commodity, a can of tuna enters the international marketplace, it's a can of tuna. it doesn't matter if it was made in mexico or the united states. that's good. it doesn't matter if it was made by people forced to work at gunpoint and union leaders put in jail. that's not good. it doesn't matter if it was made by a factory who pours arsenic into the rivers of mention cor or those who abide by the clean water act, well that's pretty bad because that means worst conditioned producer has a competitive advantage, and even the well-meaning american producer has got to meet that or die in the market place. it's not a good thing. we have to look more carefully at how we shape the trade laws. why can't the decisions p be made in the light of day? why can't the united states

follow the united states' constitution? i quote from the constitution, "congress has the exclusive power to regulate commerce with foreign nations." do we follow that? i don't think so. a little more? >> a couple minutes. >> okay. read the book. it's all there. [laughter] i'm bipartisan in my criticism of the book. we had 13 presidents since 1940. seven or six democrats -- seven of one part, six of the other, none come off very well. there were recognizable differences in the beginning of the period. the republicans were generally a little more fiscal conservative, a little more restrained on foreign wars. that evaporates and there's the period of nixon, reagan, and they are all pretty much peddling the same forms of emergency state without knowing it, you know? we all signed on to this without

knowing this. it was -- just one preview. when you look at the book, i offer a new way of sees richard nixon. every book has to have a hero or anti-hero, and it turns out nixon comes off as an anti-hero in the book, a tragic anti-hero of a certain sort because, i mean, when richard nixon is elected in 1968 with 43% of the vote or whatever, the country's in a mess, you know? waging this war in vietnam, which he knows is unwinnable, but he's afraid to go to the people, and he's afraid that who lost china, who lost vietnam, whatever, he can't figure out a way to get out of it. he knows it's hurting america's position in the world, hurting america at home, hurting the great society. he's trapped in the logic of the emergency state. he doesn't know how to get out.

he's trapped in the lomingic -- logic that began with truman saying the world faces a choice between two systems, but if you make that the defining element of your foreign policy forever forward from 1947 to 1968, you're going to have a zero sum game. if the united states admitted they hurt themselves in vietnam, withdrew, it goes up on the moscow side. the problem every politician faced in 1968 was how to liquidate the disaster of vietnam and how to defeat the cold war which would have hurt other areas. along comes nixon, and he figures it out. first of all, the democrats were saddled with losing china

because the republicans were not there. he had a freedom of action there. he realized that what was the clock running out on him domestically was the draft, all-volunteer army. richard nixon is too smart to think a war that 500,000 americans were sent into because vietnam was losing it would be successful. he was buying time, buying political space, and what he did with it, how early he came up with this, is he got out of the zero sum trap and played the china card; right? suddenly, you can do it. you can step back in vietnam and not hand a worldwide prestige victory to the soviet union because you made this deal with china. it's not the whole of nixon. it's not all the things he did. it's not the plumbers. it's not the pair --

paranoia, but we look at it from our own time. it's an interesting fact. if you look at the 70 years of the emergency state and then he is, of course, done in by his paranoia, the secret government, trying to plug the leak of the pentagon papers, but the well known facts. a new way also of looking at the 1970s, the emergency state -- the 1970s for those of you old enough to have a memory of the 1970s was a painful time whether we talk about the last days of nixon, the saturday night live lampooned presidency of ford, the cardigan sweaters around the hostages of the carter hostages, and even the music was good, but

vantage point of 2012, things were so bad, they were almost good. people were so convinced that a succession of presidents was leading them down the wrong path that they put heat on their elected representatives. suddenly, the need of people in both parties to get relegislated in this atmosphere made congress wake from its long sleep, pass the war powers act, start having some scrutiny over the cia, and put a whole structure in place. it was hard to get control of the american state, hard to construct a better monetary trade system and come to grips with economic reality in the world, and then we stopped. we might have stopped because it was so hard and the fires were not burning our feet, and we got tired, but we might have stopped because reagan came along and told us we didn't have to do

that, that it was morning in america again, and that everything would be fine, and just shoot right to the end, reagan, and i'm in the middle of reassessing reagan. when i see bruce and larry and other distinguished members of the administration say intelligent things about the policy mistakes today, i realize, let's not make a cartoon of the reagan administration. it was many different things to learn, but what the presidents learned from reagan is don't make carter's mistake and say our energy addiction is a problem, but we have to decide whether we'll be a democracy or imperial power in the middle east. just keep smiling and saying we can do everything, and there you go again, and they all have, vice haven't they? [laughter] clinton, bush, and obama, all differences, we're living in an electoral democracy of the

reagan presidential template and all the republican primary aspires a looking to grab the template, and obama says, no, i have it over here. [laughter] i can stop. yes? >> [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> paint an oblique picture, i don't disagree with it, but it sounds like you're over and ron paul is the only solution? >> ron paul says a lot of smart things. ron paul is a consistent constitutionalist, not a consistent libertarian in that he would send the police into the bedroom on various issues.

to be honest, i was not planning to vote for ron paul or speak at his rallies, but if i want america to debate the issues, i have to be happy that ron paul raised them and got the response he's gotten particularly from the people. i think he was to be allowed in the debate. it's healthy for him to be in the debate. whatever he's doing now in the romney santorum maneuvers. >> thanks. >> i have a question. >> yes. >> what about thinking about international security, about the lack of violence as a public good and international public good and what the u.s. decided to do is assume the man tell of pain for a public good, which is

usually costly, and in the 1970s, we tried to expand that under carter to human rights, another public good, and i feel reagan and other people sense then have decided, you know, we can't afford everything, let's focus on the most tangible, and it's costing a lot, and we are thinking about or you suggest giving out paying for the public good now. i was wondering, like, what your thought is on that. >> well, i think to govern is to choose, and you can't do everything. you can't afford to do everything. i think public peace is public good, a collective public good. it's something that the united states should aspire not to unilaterally deliver to people whether they ask for it or not, but to operate in the international arena as it sort of imperfectly did in the libya episode to mobilize international forces for -- it

is our tradition, after all. we slipped into saying in the beginning of afghanistan, rumsfeld was explicit. nato offered to help. we don't want you. we want our forces. we trust our forces. let us do it. you go in the quiet areas. i think i have an article coming out in the will policy journal in a few weeks that takes on this very question, which is to say, you know, i'm not an isolationist. i think that the unfortunately named liberal internationalism is not the only kind of internationalism on order and that there can be a better internationalism. there can be one worthy of us that takes on things like the development goals affecting billions of lives, billions of children, and are cheaper than the wars we wage. there is somewhat more stand-up posture on global warming from the world's biggest disproportioned energy emitter.

i think that, you know, we can't do everything, no power in history ever succeeded in doing everything. the united states never tried to do everything before the emergency state. it always understood the debates were always about where do our interests stop, where does it become collective? where is it someone else's responsibility? what's better done by the u.n. or league of nations? the unilateral self-appointment to do everything keeps us from doing anything well and keeps us from multiplying our force by attracting our thatch rail ally -- natural allies to our side to behave in a more collegial effort. i'm not saying it's pretty out there and countries don't have national interests and there's not jealousies and the hedge amount is the target of envy and the rest of it, i just think we can be doing better and set

priorities saying here we are, the richest nation in the world, not the richest people in the world anymore, but the richest nation in the world history, the most formidable military power with global reach, all right, how do we want to use our lives, our power, and treasure, make this a better world for us to live in, for others to live in, and to complete and perfect or democracy which is always a work in progress. that's my answer. >> okay. >> i was wondering about the emergency things, about i saw once on the it will terntive newspaper that somebody was saying that some building collapsed and was still standing, and people said there were dynamites that might have caused the buildings to crash,

but i was wondering, do you -- when there's a show called coast to coast, not top hits, but do you necessarily believe everything that people might say about the september 11th, 2001, about the government -- like you see the parallels of the emergency state, but what about the conspiracies and things? >> trust and verify ronald reagan said. as a journalist, i'm willing to listen to things i want to see evidence behind it. i've lived too long to see accepted versions of things revised, camelot, for example, we learned later camelot was not what we thought it was. i don't -- i have not seen evidence that makes me feel that there was some alternate reality

9/11 that was radically different. what is staring us in the face is that our government failed us on 9/11, that we had catastrophic intelligence failures coming in and catastrophic policy response failures going out. that's the area of my special expertise. that's what i focus on. why did our government fail us? how can we ensure our government is less likely to fail us in the future because things like that can happen in the future? what can we learn how people slipped through the cracks on 9/11? what can we learn that was wrong about the way we went to war in iraq and afghanistan? let's learn and prepare for the future. i don't rule out anything, but i have no reason to believe it unless i have evidence to believe it, and so far, i don't. it's -- journalism is an imperfect field, but it's one rule of thumb that gets us

through the day is if there was a relatively simp straightforward explanation without holes in it, don't go looking for more complicated ones. it may be a mistake, but it's how we get through every day. >> okay. >> i wonder if you have a sense if time is running out on us and failing to deal with our problems? >> in some sense it is. [laughter] no, i'm an optimistment people say a gloomy view, but what i'm saying here is american constitutional democracy still works, that the good sense of the american people are there, listen to it more often. yes, it's true, we have more people on a less sustainable planet than ever before and global temperatures are rising, and we don't seem to be headed in the right direction for a lot of things, but as long as we live, as long as there's a reason to sell the book and talk about it here, there is reason for hope. you know, i don't think it's too

late. i have not written a gloomy inevitable decline of the west, we had our day book. it's a book calling for a revitalization of the energy and spirit i know in the country from living here and being part of it and having seen better moments. >> hi. >> hi. professor unger, former psychology student. i heard china lends more money to africa than imf does which buys them access to resources that fuels their economy and the economy is state run. people call it a new form of authoritarian capitalism or state capitalism. what's your opinion how that ogres the next era of the emergency state? is there a combination of the military minded emergency and also an economic emergency where

like stalin and bin laden, the chinese way of business is not exactly playing by the rules. >> we have to give more thought to china and calm thought to china than we usually do. buying resources, i don't know the growing economy that didn't do that. we, in part, got to world war i and in a sense, world war ii thinking of the japanese oil embargo by a sense countries locked that up at the expense of other markets. like iran thinks, well, you know, you say we could get enriched uranium globally, you put sanctions on, we have to develop our own capacity. it's not to say the believer is innocent, or good or dangerous, but it is to say it's interactive which is that if the scramble for resources is competitive and zero-sum, if the

chinese oil company is not allowed to buy chevron, and if they sell for national security reasons, who can be surprised when china makes its own rules where it can. what worries me most about china and africa is not that. there's enough resources for all. what bothers me about china and africa is that all of the imperfect efforts that non-chinese donor nations have created to create some kind of performance guidelines, anti-corruption transparency guidelines, goal guidelines, putting aide money to good use is rendered worthless if china feels let's grab a per rye ya. they need us.

they can't say no. we'll give them aid, no strings attached. no one else can attach strings and we all lose. we have to find a way to deal with it other than asserting our own virtue and tisk the chinese when they go a different way. >> [inaudible] >> great to see you, professor. >> thank you. >> i have a follow-up on the last question. do you feel that the rise of china will be used it perpetuate the emergency state here. >> it would be hard to have watched the january 6th national defense strategy roll out and not feel that way. >> i mean, that was the first part of the talk with foreign politics, and the trade imbalance, manipulation charges, seems to speak to the things you talked about tonight. >> it does. way worries me to get specific and not use shorthand on january 6, one way of glossing what

obama and panetta and dempsey said on january 6 is no more iraqs, no more afghanistans, not making that mistake again, not going to have mass wars and nation building, wind those down, get a dividend, spend a large fraction of that billing up in another part of the world against a chinese threat which at this moment militarily is hypothetical and perhaps building up would encourage the chinese to respond the same way with an arms race. what scares me as someone who analyzed defense budgets for 25 years is that a lot of the things we buy are most wasteful for the wars went actually fight only make sense with a high-tech enemy. they made sense with the soviet union, cold war, fighter jets, sub a marines, -- submarines, itself, they make no sense for those living off the

land. we lose those wars with investment in the wrong things. these are the profit centers of military industry, and we know that they have not liked what congress and the president has been handing them in the way of cutting the trillion off the 10-year budget. the only response would be a legitimate national strategy that says we have to build up against a high-tech enemy with china. all right. i'm not -- the information's classified. i can't tell you what we know or don't know about china in the south china sea, oil, sprouts, taiwan plan, anti-ship missiles. i'm not saying it's not justified. i'm just saying -- well, coi understand didn'tly, iraq and afghanistan didn't work, but now we're going to spend that money repositioning ourselves in australia, in the