>> later, in the book the real romney, co-author and "boston globe" investigative reporter explores mitt romney's early years in michigan through the 2002 winter olympics and his tenure at bain capital. part of our booktv weekend on c-span2. >> earlier this month a former congressional budget office director said congress is likely to put off decisions on tax increases and budget cuts, known as fiscal cliff, as long as possible. he went on to say that certain policies at the alternative minimum tax should be dealt with soon. perry anderson spoke to the american institute of certified public accountants for just over an hour. >> good morning. of my name is ron longo, and i have the pleasure of introducing our. next speaker, who is very -- who

is barry anderson. barry is a treat to hear. he is currently the deputy director of the national governors association. he previously was a senior budget official at the organization for economic cooperation and development in paris, and at the international monetary fund.active in dgetin for over 30 years, he's been active in budgeting in the united states as the deputy the whit and acting director of the e congressional budget offi, as the senior career official please welcome barry anderson. [applause] >> thank you very much. i have had the opportunity to speak at a variety of different conferences before. i just wanted to mention my good friend paul. i am looking up to see who will next speak so i can defer all

the really tough questions to him or her. i look forward to your questions after this. this is a good time to be talking. i will be talking about the fiscal cliff. i did this speech a while ago, about a month or so ago, and that had a different view. i had a view at that time that we did not want to be in that blue '58 thunderbird. now i think our leaders are trying to get a seat in the car. i will explain that to you in a minute. in the past month, things have changed here. i want to get to that. the way i look at our current budget situation, we seem to be following movie titles quite a bit. we have "the perfect storm." the fiscal cliff. what i fear is that we are going into the year of living dangerously.

perhaps some of the statistics we have seen recently on growth and unemployment and on investment indicate we may already be in that because of the uncertainties because of the fiscal situation we have. what i'm going to talk about today is our fiscal future. i will try to talk about it from three different perspectives. the near-term, the perfect storm or the fiscal cliff, and what we are facing over the next couple of months. the median-term, the next year. but importantly, the long-term. our major fiscal problem is that the u.s. faces a problem of fiscal sustainability, not an immediate problem of borrowing money. quite the contrary. right now, the treasury may be lending money at interest rates.

people are wanting to lend us money and are willing to accept a very rigid very long returns. -- [to accept] very low returns. i would like to begin with talking about quotes. the first one i want to do is paul simon. a song from 30 or 40 years ago. when i think back on all the stuff i learned in high school, my lack of education has not hurt me none. what i hope to do this morning is help you read the writing on the wall just a little bit. if you found it confusing before in terms of budgeting in general, do not be surprised. that was my intent. i have traveled all around the world.

i have been to paris. our system may be the most transparent system in the world. i believe it is also perhaps the most complex. complexity trumps transparency every time. what i try to do is help you read the writing on the wall. my next famous quote is, budgeting is the art of saying no. there is an art to it. it really takes some skill to determine why the governors decide what to say yes or no about. there is never enough of anything to satisfy all that want it. the first lesson of budgeting. i confess i am an old-time budgeteer. i want to spend one more moment on my background.

you have already been told i have been in paris for five years. i had 30 years doing the trifecta here in washington. the thing he did not mention is that i was a member who is not an accountant. i may be the only in the u.s. i think they learned quite a few things from me. paul mentioned some of them about the value of the balance sheet or what it can do and what it does not do. it did give me a perspective. when i went to paris, we had a meeting of budget and accounting people. of the meetings we ran in paris, that was by far the

biggest attended. i am very proud to say the budget people and accounting people stopped physically attacking each other. mentally, they still did. they began to listen to each other a little bit. i hope we got some progress. one more thing about me, i am not a republican. i am an s.o.b. i can criticize both sides. sometimes at the same time. as this picture indicates, it reflects my views, it seems to have become very lonely at the middle of the road now. the people on the right have gone further on the right and the people on the left have gone further on the left. people on the left and right are so far off the middle road, i am not sure they can see us or care about us.

there are some trends in the u.s. i hope will repopulate the middle road. i think most of us who are independent and take a look at both sides can hopefully produce a better situation than going to one side or another. i am going to start at the back. i said i would do it short, medium, and long. let's start with the long-term situation. here are budget projections. they go out as you see until 2085. the reason i am doing this is because i believe doing these long-term projections is a very good thing. i have found in my experience that if you make a forecast that goes out 18 months, you will be held to whatever that forecast is.

if you do one for 75 years, nobody will know. [laughter] that is not a major reason. if you go out 75 years, it paints the picture of where you need to go, not exactly what amounts need to be, but where you need to go. this chart does it. it is not mine. it comes from president obama's omb. if you can see, the nature of the problem we face is primarily in that line. medicaid. the fact of the matter is, our long-term fiscal sustainability problems are because of social security, medicare, and medicaid. primarily, the health issues. as you can see, as a percent of gdp on these projections, that is what is driving those deficits. the deficits are what is driving the debt.

the debt is what is driving the interest costs. the bottom-line gives a debt as a percent of gdp and shows we are at a percent of 35% just 12 years ago. under the omb projections, there are other folks who might say these are optimistic, but under those projections will be the 77% in 2020. a fellow who was a chief economist and an economist at the university of maryland did a study a year or so ago. what they tried to do is take a look at debt as a percent of gdp. and say, how big can it get or is there a relationship between the size of the debt as a

percent of gdp and our economic growth? they did over many decades and over many countries. a range. 60 or below is clearly good. countries who had debt at a percent of gdp at 60% or or below grew faster than others. 90% or above was clearly bad. 90% or greater clearly had a worse economic growth than others. between 60% and 90%, it was more muddled. this was a very good study. it gives us some benchmarks. in the sense that, maybe we do not want to go above 90%. maybe we want to get toward 60%. this chart here shows clearly what our direction is. it is what our problem is that

we are facing, not borrowing money to finance the deficit today, but really the long-term fiscal sustainability. with that, i want to move on to say, ok, now that we know what the problem is, what are the solutions? i did this chart a few weeks ago before congressman ryan was named as vice-presidential candidate. here are some numbers here from omb, congressman ryan's proposal. i am focusing on the long-term. look at what the final right- hand column says in 2015. it emphasizes that the nation -- the nature of our problem is medicaid. that drives up interest rates and pushes -- puts our debt at clearly unsustainable levels. what does president obama and congressman ryan propose to do about it?

what president obama proposes to do is to hold medicaid and medicare spending considerably below the 12% of gdp. can he do it? i am going to address that in a minute or two. let me leave that as a question mark. as you can see from congressman ryan's proposal, he is even lower than the president's budget. he does that through a premium support mechanism. i am trying to help you read the writing on the wall. that is a budget. it is the limited amount the federal government will contribute to medicaid and medicare programs. it is clearly a budget. ryan's number there is accurate in the sense that this is what

he will spend. what does that mean for the consumer and how much he or she will have to spend? that is another matter. there is something truly under listed about congressman ryan's budget. you can see two dozen 50 has 40% gdp. defense right now is nearly 40% gdp. what happens to the rest of government? that may be a step too far for congressman ryan. i do not know that number is a realistic number. i am not trying to endorse the obama budget. i commented on the ryan budget being unrealistic numbers. let me talk a little bit about the obama budget. let's take a look at the u.s.

relative to the rest of the world. this chart indicates that we spend far more than anybody else in the world on health. but it also indicates that we do not necessarily get better results. the dot usa on the far right all by itself. you can see under one measure, life expectancy at birth, we are only at eight years. look at all the countries that spend considerably less and yet have higher life expectancies. life expectancy is not the only measure. it may not even be the best measure. but it is one legitimate measure. other measures such as infant mortality would indicate similar problems. the viability of certain cancers after it has been detected, the united states

would yield better results. the u.s. is not worse in every case. but it is very, very clear that we spend a whole heck of a lot more than anybody else. the next chart, and i apologize for being 2007, but they have not updated it yet, to me is one of the most significant i have seen in my years in doing budgeting. it shows how much more we spend. we are spending 16% in 2007, of gdp. the next highest country, france, in which i lived for five years, and i had french health care while i was there, is at 11%. 5% difference. i got a lot with the french government when i was there. they are very concerned about

the high level of spending they have. when looking at what we have, they cannot understand how we can possibly be spending so much this was the nature of the problem a few years ago. it is still there. now we move to what president obama has been doing. this chart, which is done by the centers for medicaid and medicare services, that is the obama administration just a few months ago, indicates what the health care situation for the u.s. will look like over the next eight years. we are going from about 18% of gdp to merely 20%. let me state that another way. they're all kinds of benefits from the affordable care act. from the obama administration's own numbers and from the long- term sustainability issues, it has made the problem worse. if you will notice, i only have

one column with numbers on here. i could not find another column that said what would have been the growth and health expenditures in the absence of the affordable care act. might have been hired. it may be that the obama administration actually helped save us money. i do not know. i cannot say that. i can put these numbers out. with respect to long-term sustainability, it made the problem worse. should that be a surprise? i do not think so. we added 30 million people to health care. when i was in paris, all three of my kids lost their jobs. all three of them found new jobs. during that time, you are looking at their health insurance. i was very happy to hear about where we are going here, personally with respect to our long-term sustainability problems, there is not any

doubt with respect to health he is the major issue, and we have not addressed that issue through the affordable care act. we need to do much more. that is the situation we are in. now i will jump back to the long-term where i hope i have laid out some of the issues we are facing. now to the medium-term. i am frequently asked, what do you feel about continuing the tax cuts that came out of the bush administration? do you think we should continue them? i answer, it is the wrong question. i cannot answer the question because it is the wrong one. i can say this. i have heard concrete public announcements from both the administration, from the republicans, from the democrats, from virtually everybody, that our tax system is broken. it is inefficient, complicated, and it does not produce the

right results. president obama has been instructed. we need to have fundamental tax reform. that is the focus we have. lower the rates. if you take that as where we should be headed, this little chart might be worthwhile. with respect to tax reform, could we get agreement on this? one thing i like to point out is that, if you take a look at your taxes, you have income taxes and you have fica. your employer matches it. how many people who pay taxes have higher fica taxes than income taxes?

when the start was done a number of years ago, as you can see, four out of five households pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. four out of five. yet you hear no discussion of payroll taxes at all. the lower incomes pay more than the higher incomes. yet we do not hear anybody talking about that at all. i will go into that a little bit more. this is just a chart that indicates in 2009, any pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. i will go into this a little bit more. the top two levels are 33% and 35%.

we go back to 36% and 39.6%. there have been a lot of criticisms. on whether we should go back to that. president obama has made that one of his signature moves and the congressional republicans are resisting that. the reason why has to do with the curve. laugher -- laffer is one who said there was a relationship between the tax rates you have and the amount of money you collect. i believe that and i will show that right here. here is what the curve looks like. he says at a certain tax rate, you will maximize the economic

production of the economy and therefore maximize government revenue. this is one of the major theories on the part of the republicans and i want to state my biases. i believe in the curve. specifically i believe in three points in the curve. you see that point on the bottom left where it says the zero tax rate. i believe in that point. you see that point on the right side? 100% tax rate. i believe in that point. and there is some point in between that i believe is there. i've tried to do some research to identify where it was because of the incredible difference is we have between the republicans and democrats about what tax rates are, i have been able to find something saar with share. not just this theoretical presentation of the curve but what it looks like. it took a lot of research to

find this but this will help simplify the political debate we have here. i'm going to go back a little bit. going back to not getting off the curve, taking a look at tax rates in shares. we should be doing in there has been both sides been talking about we should be doing tax reform. what we're doing tax reform it is a good idea to take a look at what they tax rates and shares are. i put this together here. using cbo data. as you can see, how our system -- our income tax system is very progressive. the highest 20% pay 94% of the share of income. the top 4% pay almost 40% in two dozen 9. i had some people think you made a mistake. you have some negative numbers there. you have the lowest people having an income rate of -9.2%.

did you make a mistake? i did not. the reason that is-is because of their earned income tax is that good or bad? i am not trying to make the income but it is worthwhile knowing that the system is progressive. that is a-number for income, not for total. the difference between those numbers and why the total is positive is what i mentioned before, payroll taxes. payroll taxes are regressive and much of the progress of any of the income tax. this is to give you an idea of what the current tax situation looks like. it was not to make a judgment about how it should look in the past. in terms of shares and with the

incomes are. and with incomes are for that. and i get to social insurance tax rates, the regressivity. we are a progressive system. the poor you are the more you pay. some of you might say that is because we cap social security tax and it changes every year. that is part of it. if we took the cap of social security tax it would still be regressive. many of the people in the highest incomes get their money from capital gains. things that are not covered by a payroll tax. my reason for this is to highlight something i do not think a lot of people know and to say this should be part of the debate. ok. we have covered that and the laffer curve. now to the near term and the fiscal cliff.

i think there are nine different elements of it. they are rarely talked about. i will mention what they are. there is this, worker adjustment and prenotification, something like that. i need to know what it means. if you are laying off somebody or fire them we have to give 60 days' notice at least. some states is more. the question is what happens on january 2? the sequester is going to cut the funding that a lot of defense contractors and others are going to get. if you have to give 60 days' notice, 60 days before january 2 is november 2. that is a law right now. whether it applies not, the department of labor says you do not need to issue blanket

notices as one defense contractor did. warn act notices are part of the fiscal cliff. they may be more visible before the election. we talked about the expiration of the tax cuts. there's a series of this. it is not just the top rates. it is also the 10% bracket. if the tax cuts expire, every single one of you like -- will pay more taxes. it does not mean just those at the top of the income. we currently have the payroll tax holiday and extra unemployment benefits, 2% holiday we have had for two years running. that expires at the end of the year. the amt, the alternative minimum tax. i will talk about that. that does not expire on december 31. that is already expired and i will talk to you a bit about what that means to you and to the public but that is another

element of the fiscal cliff. we have something called the docca fix -- doc fix. the department of hhs determines the amount to pay for doctors. there is a law that says as of january 1, the amount paid for doctors and other providers will drop by 30% on january 1. we know these are going to happen. they are in long now. they cannot be changed unless there is fundamental laws to change them. there are some things we do not know the timing of. one is the continuing resolution and that applies to how long the funding for fiscal year 2013 is going to be. that is the fiscal year that begins october 1. the other one is temporary assistance for needy families. that is a welfare program that was was drastically reformed in

the clinton administration. is authorization expires on some timber 30. on october 1 if it is not reauthorize, over 4 million people will not receive welfare benefits. it could be extended but right now it is one of the elements of the fiscal cliff. and finally, there is the debt limit. i think you know something about that. the current estimates are that the current debt limit which is $16 trillion $394 billion -- 16 trillion dollars, and -- they had certain abilities to extend that out. the reality is that the debt limit is going to put -- be with us in the car as we go off the fiscal cliff, too. all right. a month or so ago when i talked about this i was saying, this is unprecedented.

things they're so bad -- things are so bad, cover such a wide variety of folks, nobody will want to go off the fiscal cliff. i put this little chart together. let's take a look at every one of the players here. does the president want to go off the fiscal cliff? no. he wants to continue the tax cuts. the affordable care act is a difficult law to implement. it may not be ready. he may be able to trade a delay of this for no sequester. he does not want the sequester. he does not want to cut entitlements. he more than anybody else will want to increase the debt limit. republicans in congress? they do not want to have taxes

go up, not just for those below 250. democrats like continuing backed supplemental unemployment assistance. everybody wants to patch the amt and do some tax reform. my friends came out a few months ago and said, if we do go off the fiscal cliff, it will produce a recession. how the first half of next year, we will have negative real growth. this is unprecedented. we will have an explicit no fiscal congressional action push us into a recession. we may have done it before inadvertently, but here, we know it will happen. we have been told. they said if we postpone it, with some other kind of constraints to show we are serious to show long-term fiscal sustainability, then we can have real growth.

that is the situation. this set of circumstances is so bad, covers so many people, that we are definitely not going off the fiscal cliff. then congress did a couple of things and now i think we are all riding in that thunderbird together. [laughter] i started getting questions two weeks ago. let's say we actually did the sequester on january 2. does it all have to be taken on that day?

do you have to cut all 10% of the second of january? the answer is no. it can apportion the cuts later in the year. in other words, if you truly believe you can fix it later, you can go along spending at the full rate, not at 10% or less, and not have to take the cuts until the last six months or three months of the year. what about notices? the department of labor has said to ignore them. what about the expiration of the tax cuts? little known fact. the secretary of treasury has the ability to set your withholding rates. so let's just assume on january 1, the tax cuts expire. every one of you owe more taxes.

with a minute. you may say. how does that work? i more >> isn't that going to mean i'm going to have to pay at a much higher rate, withhold taxes or have a much greater liability on the 15th of april the year after that? yep, that's what it means. [laughter]s cawhn that happen? yep, it still can. he can do it. and it's been done before. it's a game of chicken. [laughter] payroll tax holiday? i don't hear any support for that anymore. maybe it'll come, i haven'tred, heard that. amt? well, there is a bill in the senate finance committee, and they wanted to extend the amt. as i said, it's already expired, but they can retroactively extend it, so if they do that,e that gives them another year. in other words, we're in the t-bird going off the cliff, but amt won't hit us right away, wew can fix that later. the continuing resolution, have you heard this?

i mean, they're talking about a six month cr to take us til april 1st. in other words, well, we'll pretend we can get through allne these problems and come back, and the new congress will fix it somehow. we'll go off the cliff. tanf? p no, we'll put that in the cr too. and the debt limit, well, if you let the payroll tax holiday expire, that produces 10 billioi a month, that might help amuch little bit. $10 billion isn't much, but it helps just a little bit. in otherup words, what i havefix heard in the last couple of weeks is an awful lot of people to say, hey, let's fix it later. wow. i hope they are not right. i hope once the election is over, and i expect nothing before it, that markets basically come up and say, there is a deal to be had. here is a deal we almost had last year.

president obama and speaker boehner cut this deal. did you ever buy a car, sit down with the salesman, decide on a price, shake hands? you have been through that, right? he says, i have to go check with the manager. [laughter] obama shook hands with boehner last july. the deal fell apart. i am not trying to say why. they had a deal. revenues $800 billion. entitlements, health, $400 billion.

remember my charts. that is where the major problem is. a good start. chained cpi, the way we index federal programs. $800 billion in entitlements. these are very approximate numbers. these are the deals they settled on. this sequester accomplishes that. the other stuff fell apart. why do i point this out? they had a deal. they shook hands. it is not impossible for us to get a deal. at least to put the process down for a deal. let's not give up hope. so what would a deal look like. kick the can down the road another year. they could use the budget resolution and reconciliation rules to put a restraint on a future congress of about a $3

trillion along the lines of the obama deal. lower rates and broaden the base will, could, maybe have an impact on the economy. could things we have heard help? yes. hopefully it is to put about some credibility so the markets do not go bonkers and we see drops in equity markets like crazy.

that is my situation on the medium-term, here. i will talk about the amt. if you do not know what that is, let me say, right now, today, you owe it. but you do not know it. i am fairly sure i am speaking to everyone in this audience. you all will be subject to the amt. you start off with exemptions. then you take your income. then you go to schedule a. then you come out after that. right? that is what you do at the amt.

you start all over. you start with your exemptions. then income. then schedule a. you come to that thing on taxes. that is the simple way to do it. then you calculate it. that is the simple way of doing it. it multiplied times 20%if you owe more without the reductions, then you pay more. what does this mean? the amt is going to hit "married with children" in states where they pay high amount of income sales and/or property taxes.

with those figures on this table. married with children will be six times more likely to pay the empty than single folks. 45% with incomes between $75,000.100000 dollars will pay the empty. up from 0.4% last year. in addition, at&t does not hit the high earners because they're paying at a higher rate. they are already paying at the higher rate. the amt will hit 94% of those, but only 51% of millionaires. this is a theoretical view. can i fix it? yes. up until about the first or second week of january. if they try to fix it after that, it will drive the system crazy. it is coming toward you very

quickly. that is why i like the fiscal cliff analogy. i will quit their. i was going to get into the night in paris. i think i will stop here and take questions. i was going to do comparisons of why i do not want to end this talk as negatively as you might interpret. i spent the last five years in paris. i think i would still rather be here than anyplace else. i will take some questions, first. a number of years ago my favorite budget director was leon panetta. we were supposed to go to japan to talk about long-term fiscal

problems. this is almost 20 years ago now. leon could not go because by the time he made the commitment he got named chief of staff. so i went and i was there with my japanese hosts and japan has the longest [unintelligible] we're looking at our long term longevity and health problems and i said you know, the did not know my sense of humor. you have a problem in japan and we have a problem in the u.s. and put hours together, we can sell each other's problems. he said, really? what is that. you have a problem with a generous social security system and the longest lived people in the world. our problem is we have to much tobacco. he did not appreciate the joke and i have not been invited back.

life expectancy is low because we do a good job of killing ourselves. we kill ourselves not only by shooting ourselves, by driving fast, but particularly by eating. i must say after five years in paris, i got used to sizes at restaurants that you did not have to bring a dog back or to adjust to to get home. was different way. ok. between the french health system and our system, quality versus care. i with -- i like to use anecdotes. think about the last time you went to a doctor. here in the u.s. trade to go to the doctor's office and you make an appointment and open the door. what do you see? i was just in a redness and shall list. finding out i have a freckle on

my retina. i did not know such things existed. anyway, they looked at it and said it is not bad, you have to have it checked every year. i go in to the specialist and i open the door. i saw six people talk to and had service provided by six people before i saw a doctor. in france i have a problem. i go to make an appointment and they did it on line and i did it and my french was a lousy and my medical french was basically nonexistent. i made sure it had a doctor who spoke english ago to the doctor and open up a door, there is a small waiting room. two or three people sitting there, obviously patients. there's nobody else there. i did not know what to do. i stood there and a door opens

up and out comes a guy in a white coat. i have been waiting for you. come in. i have my procedure and he said there will be 25 euros. i knew this was coming. there is a copayment. you pay the doctor in cash. i said i am in budgeting. i am used to a system where there is assistance. you do this on yourself and he said, i have an assistant, she comes in twice a week. the single payer nature of the french system. they are number two in the world but that makes a world of

difference. no matter who your assurances or we'll get your service. it is so much easier. they're different malpractice things. my wife was there and my wife speaks very good french but she, like i, was afraid of her medical french so she goes to a good friend of ours and says, can you recommend a doctor? can you recommend a doctor who speaks english and my friend who was a good friend looks at her and says, i am amazed to would say that. my wife says why? do you think i would recommend to you a french doctor who has not been trained in the u.s.? a lot of their better doctors are trained here, too. it is not that we have a bad system here. our fee-for-service aspect of it are administrative aspects of it coming our malpractice insurance product liability things, another thing i used to say when i compared my home in

bethesda with my home in france which was near the eiffel tower, how do you compare the two? my neighbor is not bad in bethesda. there is only one thing wrong. there are too many lawyers tread the medical system is high because we keep a legal profession on it. we're so much worse for ready of others. fee-for-service is the biggest aspect. administrative costs and malpractice insurance are there too. ok. freezing annual something of social security for a five-year period. social security is an issue. it is going bankrupt from the accounting sense.

let me explain social security very quickly. it is called the sisson charity -- social security trust fund. it is an intergenerational transfer. and a successful one. in the 1930's, we had some very poor old people. how to help them left out of poverty, the had not set aside money and how to prevent this in the future. it was easy. it had old people -- you have old people. if you taxed money from those working and give it to the old, you lift them out of poverty so you have these people working. the original rate was 1.2%. it take 1.2%, a transfer from this generation working to this generation retired and what did it do? it worked. in the 1930's and 1940's, the number of old people in poverty

significantly improved because of social security. ok. how do you continue to do this? it is the same deal. it is an intergenerational transfer so when these people who paid, you take a little bit out of the next generation and pay them. that seemed to be working, to but along came the and all they 65 million others who are card- carrying members of the baby boom. when they started looking at these relationships, they saw that as said like this or like this, it was like this. you had piles of people entering the work force paying far more than what was needed to keep the basic level that was set up as social security. what did you do? increased the benefits to those retired. you increased the taxes.

the taxes got up to 12.4%. 6.2 for the employee, 6.2% for the employer. did that work? it worked until the next generation came along and then this intergenerational transfer went from this to this. that is, you have this amount of old people paying taxes to this amount of retired. i said the problem with the gen and -- they did not like sex. i was corrected by a young person in the audience say that was not the problem. we know how to control ourselves, that is all. in any case from an economic perspective, you are still facing this and it is going to get worse. i am fortunate. i live with my 9-year-old

granddaughter and we have breakfast any -- every morning and i look at her and say, you got a job yet? i am about to retire and you -- we need the money. we're facing the situation here and it will be such that in order to keep the benefits for which i so justly deserve, those following me will have to pay either higher taxes or they're going to have to cut benefits. we're facing that situation now. how to do it? extending their retirement ages. in 1983 we did it to you and me. my parents were able to retire at 65 with full benefits. i can i get full benefits until 66. countries are facing this and it

may be one of the things. i mentioned the rate at which we used to increase benefits. we now increased benefits on the rate based on wages. not prices. this is something not very well known. what is the difference between wages and prices? a lot of our recent history, our employees become more productive. that increase has resulted in not a perfect correlation, resulted in higher wages. those higher wages are used to increase the benefits of those who are retired. huh? why should better productivity increase the wages of those retired? what if we went to maintaining purchasing power and went to as opposed to increasing it based on wages, we increase on prices. it sounds logical to me.

that is what the chain cpi reference is. it has been imposed by the interest groups to try to protect the interests of the elderly. those kinds of interest can be done. it is better than a holiday with respect to increases in the cost of living for currently -- recipients because there is an awful lot of people who count on social security as their only retirement or a big part of it. ok. on the amt. this has to do with the relationship between the ante in the bush tax cuts. you may know of forbes magazine. and the publisher. he was re big into the flat tax. to heck with this progressive

tax rate or whatever it is. let's have one flat tax and some eastern european countries, russia, latvia, and a couple of others went to a flat tax. they went to a flat tax because they had tax evasion, excessive amounts and the flat tax help them address that issue. my point is that the amt is flat tax. we do not do anything in terms of passing the empty. virtually everybody is going to be paying 28%. and it might take 10 or 20 years, something like that but everybody will be paying. there is clearly our relationship between the current tax system whether it is under the bush system or allowing the tax cut to expire and the empty.

one of the reasons why the numbers are so great that i put up on this chart is because they assume the lower tax rates that are in effect now. the lower the tax rates, the more of the empty heads. if we let the tax tricks expire and fix the empty for one year, the tax -- normal tax rates -- the mts stays the same. it will hit fewer people. complicated, yes. it produces uncertainty, confusion, i do not see that there is any + to it at all. there may have been a reason for the empty when it was originally established in the 1960's. it has not really been in effect except for relatively small number of people for any of the years after that. if we allow it to go into effect now it will be -- have a

tremendous impact on a very large number of basically a middle and upper middle income folks in relatively high tax rates that are married with children. is there a relationship between the two? yes. when we go -- but for tax reform issue, we ought to address it? absolutely. that set up a system that is logical, simple, take a look at those tax expenditures which are more than $1 trillion the year. see which ones are most appropriate and should be retained, but broaden the base and lower their rates. ok. i think that is my time here. thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] >> later today attorney general eric holder will discuss gay,

lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights. he's speaking to the national lgbt bar association's annual lavendar law conference and career fair. that's live at 7:30 p.m. eastern on r span. and -- c-span. and tonight at 8 from the c-span video library, republican vice presidential candidate paul ryan in his own words. we'll have a look back at his comments on some of the major issues from the more than 400 appearances he's made on c-span. >> democracy is a difficult subject to measure quantitatively, but there are ways to do that. there's measures of competition and participation. the most obvious measure of participation is voter turnout. and as it turns out, voters are far less likely to show up at the polls in the united states than other wealthy countries. we had a far lower performance than the rest of the competition. now, voter turnout being low is

an indication of many things. it may be that voters don't trust the system works well for them, it may be that there are higher barriers to showing up to vote than in other countries. it may be some other issues about the process itself. but let's take that as a symptom of an issue in democracy. so we know we have this data point here. the other couple data points we'll talk about come from the world bank. the world bank has a series of measurements of democracy, and in each one of them they have some consistency. countries like australia come out at the top. the united states consistently comes out somewhere in the middle. not the best, not the worst of our comparison group. there's also measures from freedomhouse, and once again countries like trail -- australia and canada are at the top. this is very interesting because just like in health where we used to be a leading country, if

we think back to democracy, we created the declaration of independence. our constitution was a leading document at the time. we were a leader in representative democracies. but if you think about it, we haven't made a tremendous amount of change to our structure. be the way we -- the way we elect people hasn't really evolved much over time. in these other countries, they have used what i call more modern voter technology. >> see howard friedman talk about how the u.s. measures up on a number of different topics including education, health care and criminal justice. watch the whole event tonight at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span2. >> you're watching c-span2, with politics and public affairs. weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. on weeknights watch key public policy events. and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our schedules at our web site, and you can join in the

conversation on social media sites. >> now a discussion on the future of afghanistan and pakistan. steve kroft from cbs' "60 minutes" moderates a panel discussion with the pakistan and afghanistan ambassadors to the u.s., former ambassador to as well as president obama's -- as well as president obama's former adviser to the region. you'll hear about efforts to combat the taliban, drone strikes and withdrawal from afghanistan. from the annual aspen security institute, this is an hour and 20 minutes. >> all right. well, during the last session, of course, we took a look back and a look forward at the iraq war, and in this session we're going to do likewise with afghanistan and pakistan as well. and i cannot think of anyone better to lead that discussion than steve kroft, who incidentally, went to extraordinary logistical lengths to get here today to be with us.

steve kroft has been a correspondent for cbs news' "60 minutes" for 23 years. and, of course, "60 minutes," we all know s the most-watched news program on television. his story on insider trading in the united states congress drove the recent passage of the stock act. he's the only "60 minutes" correspondent to win two peabody awards in the same year, bringing his total number to five. one was for a story on the vulnerabilities of infrastructure to computer hackers, a story and an issue that's of importance to us, of course. and the other was on the enormous amounts of money spent on prolonging the lives of terminal americans. please join me in welcoming steve kroft and this terrific panel. [applause] >> thank you very much. we're following afghanistan or

iraq with afghanistan, and we have a very distinguished group here today. on my left is ambassador eklil ha keymy who is the -- ha keymy who is the ambassador to the united states from afghanistan. next to him is doug lute who is a presidential assistant on the, in the area of afghanistan and pakistan. and next to him is karl eikenberry, former ambassador to afghanistan. and we have on teleconference ambassador sherry rehman who was unable to make it today because of a prior commitment, several teleconferences with the government in islamabad, but she was kind enough and wanted to be

here badly enough to agree to talk to us here by teleconference. so you can see her sitting back there, you can see her in the television monitors around the room. gentlemen, i want to begin this by, with a quote. from a recent article by dexter filkins in the new yorker published earlier this month on the situation in afghanistan. filkins writes: after 11 years, nearly 2,000 americans killed, 16,000 americans wounded, nearly $400 billion spent and more than 12,000 afghan civilians dead since 2007, the war in afghanistan has come down to this, the united states is leaving, mission not accomplished. objectives once deemed indispensable such as nation building and counterinsurgency have been abandoned or downgraded either because they haven't worked or because this

was no longer enough -- there was no longer enough time to achieve them. do you agree with that assessment? we'll start with you, ambassador. >> with due respect, i don't agree. a, because our people, they don't want to go to those dark days of civil war and also to dark days of taliban whoo ruled the country. -- who ruled the country. and now we have strong military, we have a strong police forces, we have vibrant civil society, we have a very active media with the liberty that you cannot find within that region. and economic growth for the last ten years, remarkable.

and more importantly, our own people, they are -- [inaudible] of war, and they're thirsty of peace, and they don't want to go back. and if you look at that in a region context, no country within the region they want that to happen. afghanistan as our history taught us, it's located within the heart of asia. if the heart is not functioning and not pumping the blood within the system, the whole body's not working. and no country within the region as far as i know will want an afghanistan to slip back to the civil war. they want afghanistan to be integrated economically within the region, and also we have

signed strategic partnership agreements with our key allies, with the united states of america, with united kingdom, with france, italy, germany, australia, india and a lot others are coming -- it's in the pipeline. and that will give the assurance for enduring partnership for the years to come. >> doug lute, do you agree? >> i'd say dexter filkins has it wrong on two counts. first of all, the mission is while not yet fully accomplished, the mission against al-qaeda, the core mission that president obama set out which is to disrupt, dismantle and eventually defeat al-qaeda, as we've heard over the last day and a half, is within sight. so it's not yet accomplished, no one's saying mission accomplished, but we are saying that that mission is within sight. the other point is we're not leaving. i mean, people are missing this, okay? one of the major outcomes of the chicago summit just two months

ago was that while we're on a transition the security lead fully to afghan responsibility in 30 months, by the end of 2014, even beyond 2014 we imagine at afghan invitation that there'll be a continuing, sustained u.s. presence, military presence, diplomatic presence, intelligence presence that will also be supplemented by our nato coalition members. so mission's not yet accomplished, but it's within sight, and we're not be leaving. >> karl eikenberry? >> i can't resist. at the outset, i was telling steve i know i've definitely left military and government service when i'm comfortable sitting on the stage with television, with "60 minutes." [laughter] three points. first of all, what do we know about the mission, what we've accomplished? think back to 9/11, al-qaeda is not in afghanistan in any kind of big numbers. and al-qaeda's been weakened over this last decade and was dealt a very heavy blow last

year that was from a base in afghanistan, that that blow was dealt. secondly, in terms of governance in afghanistan fragile, but afghanistan over the last decades has been through four elections, they've been flawed elections, but from an afghan perspective, look back at 1992, 1993. how did power get decided at that point? it was a group of war lords gathered around the capital firing rockets into the city, tens of thousands of people dying, massacres that followed. so from an afghan perspective how do politics look right now? fragile, but better than they've looked in many, many years. third point about successes in the economic social service domain, transformational in terms of education. from 2001 there were a million afghans going to school, now there's over seven million, about 40% of those are women. medical care, health care service has been transformed. we know this. what don't we know?

we don't know then going forward will these gains all hold? will there be reversals? what we also do not know and probably historians will have to tell us and maybe the panel will talk about this is, was the ends, ways and means that the americans at least adopted for the campaign in afghanistan, were they sound? the third would be just to agree with what doug had said. that mission is not over. the mission is now being redefined. it's going from one where the international community has very much been in the lead in afghanistan to one in which the afghans are in the lead. so we're going from a position of lead to a position of support. so it's a change of mission, not an end of mission. >> i want to hear what ambassador rehman has to say about this. what is the perspective from afghanistan -- or from pakistan? >> can yeah, thank you, steve. i hope you can hear me. i certainly share the hope and the vision that members on this

panel have articulated very carefully, that afghanistan is looking to a future where war finally comes to an end. clearly in the region. pakistan is committed to, unequivocally committed to maintaining the peace, security and stability, but we look toward to a time where there is a modicum and measure of sustainable peace in afghanistan. we hope to support all efforts in that endeavor, and, you know, very quickly i'd like to say that most important in all this is that afghanistan belongs to -- [inaudible] which is an effort that we all have to bring capacity and resource to, and i say all because the united states of america with its big foot print will be next door and through

every difficult time and challenge we have supported afghanistan. we still hold the world's largest population of refugees of our afghan brothers and sisters. and i said the position -- [inaudible] by saying one of the primary concerns of women all over the world, and i speak not just for pakistan s the status and position of women in the future where we hope that there is not a security vacuum in areas where the ansf or local forces are not strong enough or consolidated or cohesive enough to bring to bear the level of force needed to maintain the fragile gains that we've mentioned here. there certainly have been gains. and we are, obviously, going to do our best to insure that not

just our border areas, but there's a security vacuum there very often, those become -- they don't remain sanctuaries for terrorists. we have sanctuaries on both sides which is troubling for pakistan because it signals to our perhaps -- [inaudible] in the days ahead of -- [inaudible] where 30 years ago we joined the war against the soviet union in afghanistan, and, you know, really we -- i think that we lost the peace. we may have won the war, but we lost the peace there. and now we need to be in a position where we think that we have won the war, then we certainly need to worry about protecting a peace that will show the way forward to a secure, stable and economically viable afghanistan that can meet it own needs. we may be with a few miles -- we

may be a few miles away from that, but i think our job here is to without meddling in afghanistan, to insure that it is able to remain stable, cohesive and as inclusive a government in the future days to come as possible. and, certainly, pakistan is engaged in important bilateral meetings at what we call the core group which means the united states, afghanistan and pakistan. we will continue to face the intensification of the dialogue at all levels, and we really hope that, um, the level of interdiction at our border, the international border between afghanistan and pakistan goes up because we are beginning to feel a little bit of blowback from redeployment isaf, redeployment away from the border in afghanistan. i do hope that a great deal of

what we look towards in the future is, are going to go beyond the planning stages. execution of policy is crucial, and as i said, maintaining the gains made by nato, isaf and afghanistan in these 12 years with the amount of blood and treasure spent should not be wasted. that should be our main goal right now. and to preserve the security and stability of all components of the population which is -- [inaudible] women. >> okay, i have a question for general eikenberry. i want to go back to the figures mentioned here. i concede that we killed osama bin laden. i would concede that the deterioration of that organization, al-qaeda in afghanistan, has been severely damaged.

$400 billion. and we are leaving a situation where the taliban still has a very robust defense. they have sanctuaries in afghanistan or in pakistan on the borders. there is still -- i'm sure the ambassador would agree -- a great deal of corruption. and i don't think anybody believes that the taliban is going to be defeated in the next two years or that the government of pakistan is going to be a functioning western-style government can. i guess what i'm saying is are we in effect cutting our losses right now because it has proven to be too difficult to do all of the things that we had talked

about doing? and too expensive both in life and blood to continue this for an indefinite period? isn't that the reason for this, these decisions and this current policy? >> well, steve, look at the gains that we have made. i won't repeat those. and i think this audience is sophisticated enough to know what the baseline of 2001 in afghanistan looked like. going forward, i think that the transition strategy that's been outlined by nato, by the united states and, too, by the afghans sanctioned by the united nations is a solid way ahead. is it risk-free? no, absolutely not. there's challenges with pakistan right now. if pakistan is not on side, so to speak, this transition becomes much more problematic in terms of treasure and more lives. there is challenges with the afghan national security forces, with their sustainability and their capabilities. there's challenges on the economic domain that as the

level of international largess and aid starts to decline over the next several years, it's going to have a very severe shock effect on the gavin economy. -- afghan economy. there are problems with corruption, there's problems with the accountability of the government. but to say that at this point then we need to continue to double down on our efforts, steve, i think we're at a point in the united states now where look at our own economic problems. something that really struck me coming home from so much time overseas is the extent of our economic problems. we've got infrastructure problems, we've got education problems. i don't think that the united states can afford to continue to invest in campaigns like iraq and afghanistan as we have over this past decade. so, no be, i think that transition has a reasonable possibility of success, but we've reached a point now in terms of our own means that are

available, and i think, frankly, in terms of the afghans that it is time for this transition to take place. i'm reading right now ron chernow's washington of life. and i came across as he's talking about now dealing with the french. the american revolutionaries dealing with the french. washington saying that if we're going to win our liberty, we -- the american revolutionaries, our army -- has to be the one to win the battles. we need the french, but it's ours to win. and so, yeah, i think that we've reached a point where we've done a lot, there's a good foundation. we're going to continue to do more, but it's over to the afghans at this point. >> steve, if i may -- >> yes. >> -- just to add a thought. if you ask americans in the wake of 9/11 what price would you be willing to pay to buy a decade without a recurrence, and remember those days. i mean, you all have your personal memories, i have my personal memories, everyone here

has personal memories of what happened in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. who would have bought ten years of safety without a major, without another repeat, another significant attack from al-qaeda? who would have paid ten years ago for the dismantlement, the disruption that we see that largely this conference codifies and has acknowledged over the last day and a half of al-qaeda as a movement? so not only have we been safe, and those significant losses in terms of treasure and lives and so forth, but it hasn't been a, it hasn't gone without value. we have been safe for ten years, we've really gotten after al-qaeda. they're on the, they're on the edge of defeat, and quite frankly, as a ten-year investment as at least one american here, that sounds like a pretty reasonable price to pay.

>> do you think it's worth all the blood? >> no, i'm never going to say that because any individual life there, i mean, there's probably someone in this audience who lost a loved one. and for that individual, for that family it's never going to be worth it, okay? but i'm talking, the question had to do with america as a nation. and america as a nation bought ten years of security from al-qaeda and has bought ourselves -- brought ourselves within sight of defeating the movement. the core of the movement in pakistan. and in the afghan/pakistan border region. and to me, never negating or never trying to belittle the individual losses that got us there, it seems to me that that's a national price worth paying. >> doug? >> if i may -- >> go ahead. >> go ahead. >> go ahead. do you agree,al, that it was worth -- also, that it was worth it? >> i agree with the way that doug framed it. again, steve, the years in iraq

and afghanistan, well, they conclude that we needed to -- as many -- try to -- however, having said that, i do think that the united states. you know, several brief points about this. for instance, a starting point of our counterinsurgency strategy, a good first principle stated. we're there to protect the populations. we accept that. but what does that really mean, protect the population? against insurgents? yes. against drug cartels? i'm not sure. against the tribe that's on the other side of the hill that's been at war with the tribe that we're aligned with for the last

500 years? so these are the kind of questions that we develop a doctrine, and without questioning that doctrine then we start to accept that as a strategy. and there's one other point that i think needs to be examined in these wars that we've fought. we've had a contract in the united states over the years between an unspoken contract between the civilian leadership and the military leadership of our country. it's sam huntington's objective military control. over the last decade, our military has started to get in more and more areas that go far from the huntington model of the military is there to manage violence. and we give them autonomy and oversight in that domain. my concern is over the last decade in the wars that we fought our military has gotten into development, government, anticorruption. and then as that starts to erode

from the most specific definition of what a professional officer corps does, manage violence, i think accountability begins to suffer in the military ranks as well. >> well, i think that's about time to remind to american public why u.s. engage in afghanistan in the first place. after september 11th. and that was because the u.s. security receives threat from that part of the world. and terrorrest groups -- terrorist groups, they use that against u.s. and 3,000 innocent americans here in new york, they lost their lives. because of that. all this treasure, all this blood invested there. and also in soviet invasion --

one million afghans died and 1.5 million disabled, and we defeated soviet union. at that time, also, afghanistan abandoned. and again, ten years after u.s. reengage. so i think we should, we should be honored to say that the security of afghanistan, how it links the security in the region and also here secure in the u.s. >> general, you made reference earlier -- >> can i come in? >> yeah, no. i have a special question for you, sherry. you made the statement -- >> yeah. >> -- that without the cooperation of pakistan this was going to be extremely difficult to do. now, for ambassador rehman,

there was a protracted period of time when the united states and pakistan -- [inaudible] that seems to have ended. friends and allies. that seems to have ended. sixty, i don't know, i think three out of four people in pakistan right now according to a pew public opinion poll consider the united states an enemy of pakistan. and millions of american people are asking the question, is pakistan friend or foe? what's the answer to that question? >> very quickly, i think pakistan and the united states have been through an extraordinarily difficult time over the last seven months. you know that the nato supply lines that ran through pakistan for 12 years were suspended. it was suspended not in a fit of pique, they were suspended because we had 24 soldiers killed at the border by nato and

isaf forces. those were unlocked when an apology freed up both sides -- [inaudible] to prevent it from spiraling down. yes, you have talked about the pew polls, etc. but i think that it still is very strong will and commitment on both sides. and i can certainly speak for pakistan that we see very little value in not rebuilding our ties with the united states and, of course, with afghanistan. we are, as i said, intensifying our engagement with all our neighbors on both sides. and the united states has been an ally and a friend through many phases of our history and relationship. i sympathize with ambassador hakimi who says afghanistan was abandoned. there is a baggage issue, there is a problem. and pakistan is very clear.

we were at chicago, we were at the summit to unequivocally declare our support to the project and to say that we offer afghanistan security to say that, you know, we don't want a repeat of the '90s, we don't want another security vacuum again, we don't want afghanistan to slide into civil war. we have a very high stake in afghan security. insecurity would surge right into pakistan, and as it is we stand -- [inaudible] and in 12 years when you say, well, you know, al-qaeda has been defeated, it's been defeated with pakistan active and constant not just attention, but cooperation in the field. we have, i think, captured and brought to, brought to justice or certainly handed over to the americans over 250 high-value targets of al-qaeda.

we now are looking at a degraded core, and we hope to be able to defeat them with american cooperation but without impossible demands such as, well, you know, you've got to do more. everybody's been fighting -- [inaudible] and they're very tragic, and we empathize and sympathize, but where's the strategic sympathy for pakistan having lost 42,000 lives in the last the years wince -- last 12 years since we've committed ourselves to this war? ..

that can take on what we hear. for instances we hear the 11% of the -- [inaudible] insurgent violence and the anxiety and it really is an important part for us to cooperate, but we do look to the united states to not make what i call an irresponsible exit and i hope that is the way we will look at it in the future. >> let me just comment. first of all, underline what the ambassador just said about a common interest between the two countries pakistan and the united states. that's the ultimate achievement of the core goal, to defeat al qaeda. as she rightly says there have

been more al qaeda leaders and operatists captured and killed in pakistan than anywhere else in the world. the other core interest, though, common interest she highlights is the stability in afghanistan. there's no stability in afghanistan that doesn't involve pakistan, and there's no stability in pakistan that doesn't involve afghanistan. we have a common interest to get this right on both sides of the d.a. ram tear. >> secretary of defense panetta indicates he has no intention to end the drone strikes across the border. a question for you, general iraqer berry. is a pakistani doctor in prison sentence to 33 years for trayson for assisting americans in the

search of osama bin laden. what does it say about our relationship with pakistan where it would seem they have more loyalty to osama bin laden than they do to the united states? , i mean, you're talking about an international fugitive wanted all over the world, and someone goes to jail and prison for treason for trying to turn him in. >> yeah, steve, i defer to the ambassador on that, but in a word, i call it outrageous. >> can you explain that decision. and i think, this is one of the problems with the relationship right now, ambassadors, that americans look at this decision, and they say what's going on inside the pakistani government. what's going on inside the courts? they clearly see it. >> if i may interject here.

i don't think there's any question of -- [inaudible] in pakistani are right now in a place where they're looking or we're looking to democratic -- [inaudible] on civilian for democratic. and our institution this is a model that [inaudible] working with we have recently lost a prime minister to the action in pakistan. we are working according to a constitution of law. and when you talk about it -- let me say clearly the doctor had no idea he was looking for osama bin laden. before he -- the actions understand that pakistan on the ground he was contracting with a [inaudible] agencies without anybody's permission. he was contracting with militant groups that are heading up

soldiers, or doing so. he was with many people on the ground. he no clue he was engaged in the historic fight against or looking for search for osama bin laden. i i also like to point out that if you remember president obama's speech when osama bin laden was found, he very cleary mentioned pakistan's cooperation in the events leading up to osama bin laden's death. you know, event -- killing even such. it pains me to hear that pakistan is put in a category that is looking to preserve osama bin laden. people -- work with pakistan's [inaudible] cooperation. that is not the -- [inaudible]

of a country that is looking to [inaudible] we were all excited when osama bin laden was found. but then we discovered it was without their participation. it was assistance from the group, and that unfortunate incident didn't -- [inaudible] represented a strike in to pakistan which we would have certainly cooperated. we would have shared the [inaudible] with that and we were after him. we do not need to [inaudible] if he may and that is really a choice he has got make. to tell us the whole, you know, [inaudible] sent to court a doctor who has

put into jeopardy thousand of our children who are now faces a lot of, you know, critical -- [inaudible] than others in that category what the doctor has done is he has launched a great deal of our workers on the ground. he put them in danger, our workers, our vax nay or its, as well as w. h. o. officials. he has endangered people's lives. we are not a country that is looking to be fully pandemic. this is one of the charges that holds up against him. it's not about who assisted the united states to find osama bin laden. we have been assisting the united states to find osama bin laden, and i have to say with due respect, quite outrageous to say that pakistan has been

harboring people who will ability against the united pakistan that all the sacrifice and treasure $78 billion of pakistan spent in tell of years. >> i think the general has something to say. ambassador ambassador eikenberry. >> another good thing you get your first name back. [laughter] karl is very good. three quick points, and not to disagree with our pakistani ambassador. point number one, the u.s. approval rate -- popularity ratings in pakistan are about 7% right now. it's lower than u.s. population favorability ratings for our congress. [laughter] it's that low. it's not entirely due to pakistan. those ratings are like that. second point is, i think for the

united states we're simply over the last ten years, we simply aren't clear what pakistan's interest are. i'm not sure that the pakistan i ares are clear and unified in this. on the one hand if your pakistans and you're part of the national security apparatus and looking at the potential for a weak afghanistan, then staying aligned with the afghan taliban makes good sense. it's a good hedge. afghanistan, if were to collapse, it's going to once again become the playground of great games. and so there's an argument may want to hedge. on the ore hand, you can have the view that the pakistani that afghanistan is going to succeed bril lantly and be well aligned with the united states and india. you might want to hedge with the taliban as well. it's simply their calculus remains opaque to us. the third point, i think what

ambassador rayman said about the transition the first hopefully civilian transition that's critical for the united states and the long-term relationship with pakistan stepping back we will come to the conclusion that pakistan needs to get a strong civil yab accountable government that controls the military. the nature of the relationship with pakistan has been one in which the urgent has been trump what we know to be the long-term strategic important and the urgent is most recently the war on terror. then comprises, deal directly with the pakistani military deal directly with pakistan isi it makes sense for the united states of america as doug talked about with the consequences of 9/11. but i'm not sure that is a strategy which twenty years from now is going to makes any better off. >> i have one more question: the

united states has been critical and the press has been critical of pakistan, and particularly for giving sanction sanction area on the border. i'm guessing most you have been to the border region, as i have. been. it is a difficult place to defend, a place politically the pakistan government has almost no power and very little influence. is it fair to blame the government of pakistan for making that area available when in fact they don't control it? and they have sent troops in there, a number of different times and sustained very heavy casualties. is -- i guess what i'm saying,

is pakistan then unfairly attacked for the border issue? >> no, steve, the way we look at this sovereignty has privileges with that comes with responsibility. it's true on both sides of the border. you can't control that border as far as i can tell any other border international border from one side alone. it has to be an effort on both sides of the border. we have been quite deliberate with our support to the afghan government to do so on the side of the border. we believe it's pakistan's sovereign responsibility to do so on the side of the border there. even perhaps the hedging approach which may be outdated now, even if you can make the case it was in pakistan's interest at one time to sport the afghan taliban by way of permitting them sanction ware

and so i forth. i would argue today the the pakistani taliban presents such a significant threat to pakistan itself to the state of pakistan itself, that whatever that hedging strategy might have meant sometime ago no longer makes any sense. there's no way to discriminate effectively between the african taliban and the border region and the pakistani taliban who threaten the pakistani state itself. it may be a hedging approach within but it's a hedging approach that is out of date. >> ambassador, what do you think? >> well, this is something that we have been arguing for quite some time that from the safe haven on the other side of the line, our opposition forces they receive financial support, they receive equipment, and also they receive training. initially nobody wanted to admit

this. now everybody agrees. our partners initially didn't want to acknowledge, but now everybody is -- pointing the finger that's the area we should deal with it. this is a fact. you can't ignore it. >> it's being channeled but through the isi and the intelligence agencies. >> he clearly mentioned in the last days of his office that [inaudible] inevitable art. we have been receiving [inaudible] from our pakistani friends that they will do something, and we're hopeful that they -- there are some practical steps toward that. it's not that difficult to say that taliban are not welcome to

use pakistani soil against afghanistan. publicly and do something practically to stop that, which is not happening. there are a lot of promises but it's were the to be underpromised and over-- [inaudible] >> yeah. >> steve . >> excuse me. may i just add to what ambassador eklil hakimi is saying. they unequivocally said we would be happy to assist and nato forces. we have not seen any serious interdiction on a this border, for instance, if i may say that we have question of sanction sanction ware. we are not clear about what u.s. policy over the last few years where going there is

[inaudible] we are ask to assist in, you know, the reconciliation of the things that are going on. we are assisting at every level [inaudible] but we -- at the heart of this and you mentioned this, steve, at the heart of this, you know, assumption here, is that, you know, 49 nations with their $400 billion have been not been able to accomplish x goals in afghanistan, and somehow pakistan should manage that with the $850,000 committed to the border and the american military here. we get some level of sympathy. they are very clear that as they said, pakistan is maxed out on the national border with afghanistan and for instance, we have given the border operations on military land, extensive

antiterrorist operations. i'll give you two examples. [inaudible] displays hundreds of refugees shifting them out of area. what do we get and the terrorist we have -- [inaudible] on the other side and we are not only able at the hear of this the argument isn't broad assumption that pakistan's capacity is limited. the war is our commitment to fighting terrorism is open-ended. our military is our own as well as the civilian government. the united states can walk away. others can walk away to some extent. we can't walk away from it. we're in the trejs on the frontline. i'll give you an example over the last eight months when we have been constantly firing at deck, and these are critical

masses of people that come in. [inaudible] lots of people going across the border and coming back. we have -- [inaudible] u.s. and nato ports at least 52 times from the longitude and lad attitude where the terrorist run from the area. we need [inaudible] if we're going to operate on the border to some effect and manage to interdict those we need to interdict. we shouldn't be getting this constant message that pakistan is just has to do everything on the side of the border. we clean out people, they sit there in, you know, and come out. what we don't say it's active. we assume it's a capacity problem. we assume it's a issue. we assume it's that amount of strategic sympathy be given to pakistan. that's why -- [inaudible]

you see that american the public messages which is constantly assuming that pakistan should mop up where everybody is. we can't do this alone. we -- that's why we need a partnership. that's why we need to focus on goals that are concrete and deliverable. we need our militaries to act in compliment to each other, not in areas where we are -- if we're operating the south if would be a good idea if they operated in the south. we shut off our communication areas, it's a good idea if the other side does that. one of the ways to triang late the terrorist is -- [inaudible] and i'm sure all these stops can be achieved. nearly 1,000 [inaudible] on our side of the border. we are also [inaudible]

here is the question of what is a priority? we had over 250 in the [inaudible] in the area. it is sitting there and we are unable to get them out. . >> ambassador, we have -- we want to tush it over to the audience for questions. i have a couple of more areas, couple of more questions i want to raise. >> i have to just reply to ambassador. there's no comparison of the pakistan-taliban relatively recent small-inscale presence inside afghanistan. in particular the remote. to the decades long experience and relationship between elements of the pakistani government and the african taliban. to compare these is simply i think unfair. >> steve, if i can.

>> reject. you live with how difficult the terrain is, i think, ambassador, you steve, doug open and i and probably ambassador have all been up there and look. it's like telling a young of bunch of young captains or majors going to fight up there. welcome to the outpost on the moon and defend this. it is extraordinarily difficult terrain. we understand that. but again, my second point is that let's take the headquarter in my ram shaw about a kilometer away from the main activity is a headquarter of the ninth infantry division of the pakistani army. pakistan suffered great losses on the war in terror. i don't dispute that. that due credit needs to be given, i have to say from my perspective, a very good start for pakistan unambiguous saying

we're not going to go in and fight. it will be a tough fight. what we will cois call in the afghan taliban leadership and tell them you have several choices to make right now. you can stop fighting, and begin peace negotiations. you can't fight from our soil. you can put down your weapons and see if we can integrate you into pakistan or three, you can go into afghanistan and don't fight. but not from our soil. >> we would be happy to do that. i -- [inaudible] we don't welcome sanction fighter. they challenge our state as much as they challenge life in islam. that is clear. there's no question right now of hedging bets. we are not betting on everyone. we -- [inaudible] with the entire populist is not

one group. [inaudible] meet with everybody we make sure that we are engaged with the afghan government and could believe is -- kabul is in an constant conversation. moving security transition to darfur there needs to be less of a mixed signal. we need to be tolded -- [inaudible] bring so and so to the table. [inaudible] we ceabtd bring everybody to the table. i'm not sure we can. but also -- [inaudible] we have a high stake in we have a take in that. there's is clear that is something we would like to be

invest in. we are not making -- [inaudible] there is no betting on the taliban. the taliban challenged us as much as they challenge the afghanistan. they must do so according to the constitution of pakistan. there are certain areas -- [inaudible] people all on our own while others hang back. so i think it is question of priority being developed on both sides and this would be a constructive dying to do so now that the nato supplies are open.

of our trade and other conversations with india. this is new pakistan -- [inaudible] >> i want to -- [laughter] >> what are the realic chances of some sort of meaningful notions between the taliban and whoever? afghanistan, the united states, pakistan, some combination of those? to bring about some sort of a political resolution or a ceasefire -- some sort of outcome that might end this for the african people? what do you think? >> we'll start with you, ambassador. >> peace probably. it has two tiers. one is the integration, and one

is the reconciliation. in the reintegration front, we have achieved a lot. reintergracious design to bring the foot soldiers out within the system with with that in mind those denounce violence, cut tie with al qaeda and -- [inaudible] more than welcome to integrate. so more than 4,000 taliban foot soldiers already joined us program and they enjoy the facilities that we are providing. on the reconciliation front; however, there is a lot of discussions. this is a process. -- we have open different channel of communications with

them. most recently in qutar taliban represented for the first time in one room was engaging with a high peace counsel from our government. it was not a negotiation, but at least exchange of views everybody made their points clear. so we think that support of pakistan friends, they have been saying they are supporting afghan peace process, which we appreciate, and we are willing to see some practical steps that they have something in stake and they can play a crucial role. so it's something that is going on. this is one of the tough

priorities in our government's program to succeed. within taliban, also there are moderators they want to join, and there are some that still insist on the military operations; so, there are sign that's makes believe that things that we have initiated that will bring some -- [inaudible] >> doug? >> i'm interested in what you think of this. first, answer for me the question why would the taliban want to enter into negotiations at the time when the united states is scaling back and withdrawing the troops and by the end of the 2014, we'll be down to no combat troops. why wouldn't they want to take a chance and see how good the afghan army is before they start thinking about some kind of a .

>> right. they may want to take a chance. what president obama maded clear is the door is open to another possibility, and that is the negotiated political process that could lead for the afghan taliban the leadership who are outside afghanistan itself and not subject to the pressure of the military campaign. we have opened for them a door back into the political process in afghanistan. that's not -- they have to be meet three conditions. they have to break ties with al qaeda. they have to stop the insurgency, stop the fighting, when they come back too afghanistan they have to do so within the framework of the afghan constitution. there's end conditions here to the notion of reconciliation or the top down process. why would they think about doing this? first of all, the movement is being hammered everyday and every night by not only 100,000 nato troops but now approaching 350,000 afghan forces.

so there are extreme military pressure is on them. this is one of the design feature of the military campaign. to put sufficient military pressure on the movement so that the door that president obama has opened to political process looks attracteddive. another reason they might is increasingly as we transition from our being in the lead to the afghan forces being in the lead. the taliban narrative of counter occupation or the taliban narrative of jihad against the west begins to erode because now increasingly they're -- fighting afghan forces fellow afghans not american forces. finally, we believe that by way of partnership with afghanistan, which ambassador eklil hakimi outlined. not only the u.s. but the eight other countries signals to the taliban they can't get us out. that f they like the current situation living in some sort of safe haven, probably a second

class citizens in pakistan, if they want to continue another decade of this, and if they want their force to continue to be hammered every day and every night by afghans, the door will remain open until they see otherwise. >> steve, go back to how we opened talking about progress that has been made. if you go to the big urban areas of the afghanistan things have transformed since 2001. a lot of young people that have different world view. ic for the taliban for to believe that they could claim all of that back again and impose their order, i'd say that is a stretch. does that mean that as we go forward with transition there will be problems -- won't be problems of insecurity and bad governance in the urban area. no, it doesn't. i'm talking about taliban here. three point going forward with the talks with taliban and the importance of them and what can

be achieved. number one to agree with what doug had laid out, and that is that very importantly if we get the frank sinatra -- transition right, taliban's narrative is evaporating every day as the afghans move to the lead. number two, it does make the point then, drives home the point we have really got to get this enduring or the longer term presence right. because that longer term presence that we have after 2014, security assistance may be counterterrorism what does it add up to along with a mount of developmental assistance? reassurance to the afghans which gives them political confidence for dialogue. also, the right to sentence the taliban we are not leave, and the right to sentence pakistan. it and the third and final point, we talk about a political settlement. i think we sometimes overstate this as a question of taliban versus all the rest.

taliban versus the rest of the afghan taliban afghanistan written large going back to the trouble times of the mid 1970s, the afghan body politic needs reconciliation among themselves. i recently look at the taliban dialogue perhaps of a subset of larger dialogue that has to take place. remember, let's be clear the taliban when if advanced in the mid 1990's to take control of a lot of parts of afghanistan. they were welcomed as liberators. liberation from the -- vicious war lords. also being clear, some of the war lords lead to the rise of the taliban occupied positions of informal power in afghanistan today. so the problem goes beyond just the taliban. >> one last question then we have to go to the questions from the floor.

there are people that believe the whole situation could fall back into -- that after the united states leaves and the stability that it is provided there in terms of security anyway that you run the risk of the war loads and triable groups that had been at each other's throats in cases are centuries are going reimmerge and people are going to leave the taliban and everything is going to go back to the way it was. is that a real concern? >> first of all, if i may. trying to keep it short. >> in afghanistan soviet innovation we lived with each other peacefully. if you see the history beforehand, we had a constitution, a modern society, a rule of law, a proper justice

system, an afghanistan active member of international community, and this perception that afghanistan was afghanistan was fighting with each other, i think that's not right. when soviet innovation happened -- for the last thirty years so, imposed on us before that we were a peaceful society. we lived side by side for years. and from now on, also, that something that we believe, we, i mean, afghan people that we don't want to go back to the dark days, and we are looking for a bright future. and if i may, one point i want to make about corruption, that most recently we had a -- any

countries came and place afghanistan for the next 40 years for $16 billion. and there we agreed about accountability. certain things with the international partners will do certain knicks. most repeatedly, like two or three days ago, our -- [inaudible] already issued a decree with 23 very ambitious measures to fight corruption drastically across the line. and judicial system, and all the others to the points that we should give [inaudible] to the partners and the people. >> the former u.s. military people. do you think that's a realistic scenario? >> several points i'd make, the

first is i agree with the ambassador eklil hakimi the afghans are tired of war. they have many adults whom in the lifer time have seen the tragedy of civil war and taliban occupation. secondly, there's no neighbors of afghanistan that are pulling at any of the 0 domestic groups with, the ethnic group of afghanistan. afghanistan is blessed in that way. a fact use set of ethic groups. with a sense of nationalism underlying. third, a quick one yet. in 2006, i went to -- where the national afghan army headquarter was located. i went there with a national security adviser. steve asked the question through an interpreter. what are you most proud of? i'm most proud of the staff officers in the room. the personnel the intelligence officers and that operations officer.

and we're fighting each other about ten years ago. receive asked the quo what do you worry about the most? that you americans will leave before it's time. i had been in afghanistan a lot at that point. i thought he was say before we got all the equipment to them, before the barracks were built. he explained it and said go back to what i'm most proud of. we are not ready yet to work together. we don't have the level of trust and confidence. we need you here far longer period of time for us achieve that. my view is you don't need 100,000 united states troops in order to achieve that. you can be clever. i think the afghans want us to have a smaller footprint in the country than we do today. steve, i've only add that begin the level of development that the afghan political structure, civil war might be a risk if we didn't have a deliberate transition process over the next thirty months and if we didn't

beyond the transition process plan today for a sustained supportive role along side the nato alliance and some fifty other countries who have said essentially we're not going to reply 1989. 2014 is not a twenty-five year break from 1989, and we're going to repeat the tragic history when the russians left. we want to take some questions from the floor. we have people with microphones. >> good afternoon. formally with the dea. yes for general okayen berry. if i understand you correctly you at least questioned the utility of engaging the narcotics traffickers or the drug trade in afghanistan. my question is, follow the games we have made with such blood and treasure without dealing with

the narcotics trade that fuels the insurgency, promote -- undermines public confidence and general challenges rule of law. >> yeah. thanks for raising that point. i didn't mean to communicate that the war again drugs in afghanistan is not vital for afghanistan's success and stability. and important national interest of our own. i was talking about the loose definition of the military doctrine. but the approaches the dea had in countries like colombia and has in afghanistan, they must be continued. they must absolutely be continued. still afghanistan produces 90% of the world's poppy. we think of every say, $10 of -- corruption that exist with the poppy dollars inside the afghanistan seven of them are going to the police of afghanistan twobt government of

afghanistan, to informal brokers. three of those are going to the taliban inspect is a serious problem that because of the existence of the drug trafficking and the perversion of the economy and politics, i don't know how you can eventually stabilize afghanistan unless you continue those efforts. >> over here. >> mark [inaudible] i have a question regarding lessons learned from afghanistan. we choose a strategy in last four or five years in afghanistan the heavy footprint coin. with a lots of troops and nation building strategy. looking back it would it have been wiser if we diminished the role of using small footprint strategy and not promising nation building. it looks like we overpromised and underdelivered?

>> what -- the two lessons that i carry around in my notebook, which are overwhelming for me have been someone filed in afghanistan since 2004 is the first, the overwhelming importance of understanding the situation on the ground. i am still dissatisfied with the level of our understanding, the meets the road in a counter counterinsurgency approach. we don't adequately understand the language, we don't understand the culture, we don't many times understand the history re. if you're a american diplomat or american soldier. one year at the time. the odds of that diplomat or soldier ever going back to the same area in afghanistan is almost zero. so when we enter a campaign like this, the overriding lesson for me is we better understand what

we're getting into and what it's going take to be successful. and the second thing i add is the point that spills off something john edward mentioned. that is as soon as we begin one of these campaigns, we have to begin to invest immediately in the indigenous security forces because the tolerance, the level of tolerances for all presence and the kind of numbers we've had repeatedly will only go down over time. the only investment, the smart investment would have been in the years from 2001 to 2006, for example, would have been a much more heavy and concerted focused effort on afghan security forces. not just the kind of focus we've seen in the last couple of years. >> steve, i would say that the approach that we have tried in iraq and afghanistan and use their, which again, only

historians twenty five years from now will be able to fairly evaluate. it hasn't been resources -- yeah, i've heard some people describe it as trying to achieve revolutionary aims through colonial means. we need think about it. you think about the colonial ways & means we have adopted were not sufficient at all. again, back to what -- i read more than that book, but he's talking about the experiences with raising the troops, raising the colonial troops and he said in frustration in a letter to the continental congress, i spent in the one year enlistments i spend six months getting troops ready and how to demobilize them and our approach in afghanistan. military and civilian, we can go on with the long list. the second would be that we better need to, i think, as

before we plunge deep into iraq or afghanistan have a more frank debate about ends ways & means, and, you know, do we need go back and dust off the wine burger doctrines? i'm not sure hoar. and perhaps a third point about the kind of conflicts, let me ask people in the audience, we have an all-volunteer force which is absolutely magnificent. they have performed brilliantly. it's not a conscript army. if we had a conscript army good enough to do the job raise your hand if you think we would have invaded iraq. raise if your hand if ten years after the intervention in afghanistan we would have had 100,000 troops in with a conscript army directly connected to the american people through the populous and the congress. if the answer to that is no, maybe there are some hands that would go up. i think the majority would stay

up. there might be something wrong with the republican if over the last ten years we have been heavily engaged in war with voluntary forces that are not politically owned by the american people. >> over here. [inaudible] thank you. kim. about to make two enemies with the question. general lute, will you lute really a u.s. drone stranges continue and ambassador, rehman what actions will pakistan take if the drone strikes continue? thanks. >> so our cooperation with pakistan against al qaeda leaders today in the border region continues. obviously i'm not going to talk just as no one else in the conference has talked about the

sphesks. and the reason they continue is that united states and pakistan have a common interest here. i think as ambassador eklil hakimi outlined clearly. we have no more active partner in the fight against al qaeda than the pakistani. that common interest continues today, and that -- those level of cooperation across different programs across also continue. all i'll let sherry speak for herself. >> thank you. very quickly, i appreciate what you said. i think that in pakistan, the view is -- [inaudible] manage al qaeda support -- or

eliminate. it also, they now radicalize most ways of the population civilian strikes -- [inaudible] i don't want to get into the specific. [inaudible] how to fight. but they do now what is add to the [inaudible] that they're fighting against. and this is what unfortunately is [inaudible] public sentiment despite the drone -- [inaudible] it opened up all kinds of questions in a number of countries do it. and there's a lot of questions that open up. my position is that it is a problem. and there is -- [inaudible] a large footprint. i'm not saying this is because

they don't -- they have a assisted in the war against terror. the point is that they now have diminishing returns. that's a very clear point, it could be speaking in drone strikes and -- [inaudible] comprise on that. thank you. >> that's -- i'm sorry. that's all we have time for. i want to thank the panel lists and -- panelists and ambassador for joining us today. she knew she was going to get some heat, and wanted to come and take it anyway. and have the opportunity to present her government's views. thank you very much for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [applause] [inaudible conversations] lighter today attorney general eric holder will discuss lgbt lgbt civil rights. he's speak together national

lgbt bar associations annual career conference. it's live at 7:30 p.m. eastern. tonight at 8:00 from the c-span video library paul ryan in the own words will have a look back at the comments on the major issues from the more than 400 appreciates he's made on c-span. >> i'm not the habit of breaking my promises to my country neither is governor palin, and when we tell you we're going to change washington, and stop leaving our country's problems for unlucky engeneration to fix, you can count on it. and we -- [applause] and we have to record of doing just that, and the strength, experience, judgment, and backbone to keep our word to you. [applause] [cheering and applause]

>> you stood up one by one and said enough to the politics of the past. you understand that in the election, the great risk we can take is try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result. you have shown what history teaches us. at defining moments like this one, the change whether he need doesn't come from washington. change comes to washington. [applause] [cheering and applause] >> c-span has aired every minute of every major convention since 1984 and the count down continues with less than a week to go with the republican national convention and democratic national convention live on c-span, c-span radio and streamed online at c-span.org. all started next mongd with the g.o.p. convention and chris christie. also 2008 presidential nominee senator john mccain jeb bush.

and san antonio mayor. and first lady michelle obama and former president bill clinton. all this week on washington journal, we have been looking at online media. today our gust neil monroe from the daily caller. it's about forty minutes. monday we talked with nbc sophia nelson from there. guy ben sonst was here tuesday. amanda was the "huffington post" was yesterday. and tomorrow is akil. but today neil monroe of daily caller is joining us. mr. monroe, what is the daily caller?

how long has it been around? give us the basics? >> guest: just over two or three years old. very new. free market publication. our readers are not political full timers. we do over things including on culture, guns, and such of the like. politics is a daily caller does politics. >> host: what do you do at the daily caller? >> guest: i'm supposed to be a white house respond. it keeps me busy. >> host: why? >> guest: there seems to be a lot of descra ma emerging and the election, you may have heard

of it. >> host: how long have you been doing the white house? >> guest: a little over two years. >> host: what were you doing prior to that? >> guest: i used to work with "national journal" doing a lot of stories and angles with science reporter, telecommunication support, "national journal." >> and what was it like going from a "national journal"-time publication to a more opinionated public indication? >> guest: i'm shocked. really shocked. a breathe of fresh air. you have to understands the daily caller works and most media works. sub scrix public indications are distance from the community because the reporters and editors at headquarter and write articles they each think the readers will be interested in. in the online world, we know precisely what they're

interested in. we feel the hits, which means we're in closer contact with the readers. but in turn that means we focus on what they want. which is true, interesting stuff. we're not the fake drama business. that's hollywood. we focus on interesting, political, true news. we have accurate and -- our readers don't want bad, skewed, or unbalanced information. progressives will say we're biased, fine. in contrast, publications with sub -- they don't feel the customer's interest. they don't feel the owners and shareholders desires. they tend to be on the own. so in general, reporters write about what each other thinks is important. if you're in the "washington post," "newsweek," "national journal," your take your queues about what is important from each other, which means the

reporters -- the collective self-interest reporters guides the content of the publications in a way that does not happen in online publications nap means the daily caller is far more -- fairer, more ak rate, more middle of the reason, more concerned with giving the leaders what they want. it's a breath of fresh air. if i may give you an example. i was a science reporter at national journal which meant i covered stem cells that is accurate and true much better than any other reporter. way better than any other reporter in town. when it come to political matters, i was the tea party group started, and u knew a map showing plan meetings in april in i didn't -- '09 and i showed my editor. that's strange.

what's going on there? focus on that over there. a couple of weeks later there was a lot more stuff planned for april. let's write about it. it's something. and the instructions were, no, no, focus on that. it'll be taken care of by someone else. by sheer luck i was in south carolina, and on april 15, i covered the meeting. i wrote an article. it was an accurate and true and very balanced article with crude correct for two years afterwards. it it was the first national journal article on the tea party. i was the science reporter, and i wrote the first national journal article on the tea party. because the editors guide each other what is important. you'll sigh that all the time in "the new york times" they laugh the way they cover some american politics. >> host: you talked about kind of the getting the cues from each other. do you find the white house

press corp. there's a group-think mental think there >> >> guest: not so much group-think. this is a common interest among reporters in the white house for many drama. that means more appearance by the press and more exciting news, more good for them hits and finds. but the white house beat is a terrible, terrible, awful beat. most report user conot have -- do not have the clout or independents to to argue and push with the white house. if part one major publication and you put up a fight and a stink and you push. the white house can turn to somebody else and give thefnl a stoop. it makes you look back in front of your editor and the editor look bad in front of the boss and the boss look bad in front of the owner. it's hard to fight in front of the white house. are it happens all the time, very constrainted, they may be

individually good reports. very few of them have the clout and to argue back. beyond that it's a terrible beat. >> host: you had got the president's attention on june 15th. we want to show that to the viewers and talk about it. >> a permanent fix. this is a temporary stop-yet measure that lets us focus on resources wisely while gives a debris of relief and hope total ended, driven, patriotic young people. it is the right thing to do. excuse me, sir? it's not time for questions, sir. not while i'm speaking. precisely because this is temporary, congress needs to act and the answer to your question, sir, and the next time i prefer you let me finish my statements before you ask that question.

it's the right thing to do for the american people. i'm not asking for an argument. it is the right thing to do for the american people. here's why. here's is the reason. thank you very much. everybody. it. >> ruled it last year. what about american workers that are employed while you employ foreigners. >> host: you were watching that here with me, you reacting a little bit. was it uncomfortable to watch. it was making you angry? ..

it's an astounding growth, an amazing list. and how many questions has he taken on at? >> host: did you enter the president while he was speaking? >> guest: i just listened again when his voice is going down, i thought okay, this is a period before going into that and the press conference with dhs, they wouldn't take, napolitano would take questions on the record. they were trying to get this announcement there with as little fuss and bother before the weekend before the summit in mexico. so the only way to get in to answer questions sent as many walks away from the podium, when

it was the trayvon martin thing. i thought okay i'm going to get him. he turned away. i thought maybe elements are questioned. otherwise were not going to get anything. his whiskers and i'm thinking this is going to be a very short speech. it's got to be a short speech. he's got 800,000 people being rejected by congress voters for years. he stood on the campaign trail. it's entirely obvious that the campaign trail pitch. not as sure as i thought. his voice goes down as he says young people. i thought now. so i asked the question i wanted to ask him to get him -- he asked a question -- i'm sorry, i ask, why do you prefer for a nurse to americans? is a dramatic questions that

immigrants can easily ask because americans are very coy about this kind of stuff. and he declined to answer and he still hasn't answered the question. >> what was the reception you got from your fellow white house correspondents after that and currently what is the reception are coming from the white house itself? >> guest: i got to the end of the conference and asked the question again and he still didn't answer. walked away. the video, the campaign video appeared on the campaign site very quickly. it wasn't on the african-american site. it appeared on the spanish-language site for for several days. anyway, as i turned to what process got my knee. doesn't take questions. i thought i'm okay. and then people for my crowd around me. who are you? i was surprised.

then i sort of walked quickly away because i never expected any of that to a large crowd of endurance. a lot of interns packing up the crowd at this event. and then just walked back to the office. when i got back to the office, i explained to the guys at work, sometimes he asked a question too early. this is not an interruption. it was in the stands question. and so i wrote up a story. it was a good story. the unemployment rate for african-americans is 50% among young african american men. it's an extraordinary story that he should bring in this many guest workers in the grips are so amazingly badly damaged by the economy.

and this gets to why is he -- why does the white house press club -- why are so many reporters -- why do they not see a story here? and in part, you've got to go back to what makes journalism in this town were. people ask him are the media right-wing or left-wing, pro-democrat or antidemocratic. the answer is we are neither. we are pro ourselves. without drama and excitement. we left work for a while and candles and shop. we are for us. that is our primary bias, and collect and institutional group of reporters. it's pretty obvious pro-government party gives us more drama. the republicans give us more drama and theoretically they reduce power with lower taxes.

in the success, that's important. les schama, lower status. so they are rational interest to just not go up close late. they make government bigger. they make us more important and increase our status. the washington reporter can the democrats democrats are our ally. we are allied in the same way that general motors was cars, people who live in hollywood like video and such and in this context, the majority of the media just naturally, inescapably pro-democratic, pro- we have this amazing story furthers many amazing stories that are just getting ignored.

so just the other day the president had a press conference and questions including the drama of the day. for example, nothing of it. >> host: neil munro is our guest beauty is the white house correspondent for the daily collar started by tucker carlson two years ago? >> guest: three years ago. posts go our first caller is from nantucket, new york. kathy on the republican line, please go ahead. >> caller: hi, thank you for taking my call. i would like to thank neil for coming on the program, especially following the previous guest. i want you to know that the old adage, if you believe what i'm telling me or do you believe your lying eyes is something that i've kept in mind for several years now.

i think the daily collar, when you put clips of what is actually going on on the internet, how is anybody able to believe anything else? i mean, the daily collar puts danny is that of politician and other police saying things and many skype and media denying that he actually said those things. >> guest: thank you very much for sameness. i do not know what particular thing you are referring to. but in general, we write, as tucker wants, we write interesting and true drama. we tell readers all across america was going on in washington. we don't cover the war front. there's so much going on, but we provide true, interesting stuff and she won't get elsewhere.

post go and just want to show some of your stories. i want to show your front page of "daily caller" on the website. and hitched, is that your story? >> guest: yes. >> host: marital personal ties on the commission on presidential debates. >> guest: well, no, the commission on presidential debates picks the moderators for the presidential commission. and in so many ways it is just a bombay special interests in conflict of interest. the two guys in charge are democrat, former spokesman and a business related. why are reporters allowing this group to pick people for the presidential commission. when you go to the board

members, it mostly democrats, often with activist groups. wow, let's be serious here. friends and reporters allow business insurance with politicians in washington allow them to take questions for some of them. but this is lots more in this particular issue. the republicans by the way, three or so republicans, they are not considered very prominent in the party, the hierarchy. >> host: some of the stories neil munro has run available on the website, obama tops $1 billion in career political contributions has become the first political politicos to raise over a billion dollars. >> guest: it hasn't been picked up anywhere else. maybe i should have spelled billions in capital letters. that may have made it.

>> host: do you think he would've put this in the national journal or "the new york times" would have been picked up elsewhere? >> guest: absolutely might've been. in "the new york times" the might of been a record-breaking haul of money. they don't want to advertise that. just a white household, we can't wait funds promised for years. the administration as predictor years, seven months to implement. the weak have a process that directs the appropriations and funds. the way to lace spending 11 weeks prior to the november election. this is another neil munro story and the "daily caller." robert on our democrats line, thanks for holding. you're on with mr. monroe. >> caller: thank you for listening to my comments, both the moderator and the cast. what i would like to have your just as i am a strong democrat

in many ways. i would like to have your guest take my ideas on government and policy politics. yes, my first point would be the ongoing war that we must all pay for. as i understand at the end of world war ii, corporate taxes than they do emphasize corporate tax as were 93%. everything was paid for every industrialized and when a job similar programs put in by the democrats because we had been believed from a depression caused by the republicans i believe, by the business faith at all costs and situations. i would like to have him critique that. 1.2 i would like to have him

critique in answer to me how it is that abortion got to be such an issue considering that abortion lines got to be under a republican at ministration as i understand. but that didn't know if he knows much about the voting on that and how it got to be law. also -- >> host: you know what, we're going to leave it there appeared neil munro, your response to that caller. >> guest: i could talk about various aspects to that. the public memory of many things is distorted. for example, the great depression. you're an american. you get to vote. we at the "daily caller" if you want to get a different perspective from "the new york times," "washington post," cbs, abc, et cetera, et cetera find interesting stuff. are american enough to make up your own mind.

>> host: mobile, alabama, sandy on our independent line. >> guest: thank god for you. you're a breath of fresh air. i send you asking us questions to obama and i'm so proud of you. you just don't know how proud i was. as a black person in the deep south, please don't let them intimidate you by using the race card. we need you. we don't have people such as yourself standing up, asking real questions and trying to get at them. we're going to lose this country to obama. and that is what i'm so afraid of. it worries me to even look at barack hussein obama on the television because he has to see this country in a strange take this country down.

i want people to see their spirits are thank you, mr. neal. keep up the good work. and again, please don't be intimidated. do your job as you have been doing. post or just a follow up on sandy's point come is intimidated to stand up there? >> guest: do your job come the thank you very much. this is our job, provides you information that you decide. you're american. you don't have to rely that the washington reporter and thank you so much for saying that. i am an immigrant. at japan make green card. i am the very -- the more people do say that the better. the "daily caller" is going to work. >> host: following up on the question. is intimidated to stand up there in any way? >> guest: is going to be

broadband blaring. you're trying to ask questions. even i press conference. >> host: has he ever called on you voluntarily? >> guest: it would make sense for him to do so. "the new york times" guy is going to get a better question and it's going to get more to his friend and two similar friend. as rational for him to do what he does. he's a rational guy. >> host: merrie tweet said to you when you realize that if they miss timed question you can't rudely interrupting instead of waiting your turn. >> guest: mary, did he take any questions on it? none of that. having asked a question, i wanted to answer the question. we were going to get a question

out of him. on this really important issue, so there's no way you can actually say i calculated this to work it out. forget it. i just made a mistake. post got a couple two stories available at "daily caller." if you want to type in a search, obama's early chicago bears brought african-americans foreclosures and bankruptcies. >> guest: i have no idea. >> host: is the headline on this story. sent home to delaware to start weekend earnings is a story from august 16. so if you're curious you can go to the daily caller.com and follow the stories.

i'm afraid to discuss everyone. mr. monroe, had there been any articles you regretted writing or had to withdraw? 's >> guest: as a pure question. i've had my share typos and misspelled words. the worst thing i ever did, but i've wrote an article years and years ago. i wrote up a correction and printed a correction in the article turned out that the correction was strong. post your next call for neil munro. by the way, how many callers? >> guest: distaff, 10, 15 reporters plus freelancers plus support staff. >> host: derek, democrat. >> caller: two quick questions in a comment.

your statistics about unemployment, especially new york at historically black unemployment has always been much higher than the standard national unemployment. nobody seemed to care about that before president obama went into office. and i use it as a late been right to strike every black person in america. now also the same thing about imported workers in this country and most specifically the past 50 years have there been under every regime and why are you specifically make and not a bad thing under the obama administration? also, when you are distressed as thoughtful and and i'm really upset about the way you guys disrespected the president of the united states. i've never seen that in may 53 years of living. and when you were disrespect all to the president of the united states, was that of your own volition or did the general managing which you laugh in the

cali political newspaper put you up to it? >> guest: know, the tough guys were not happy at all. they did not want us to behave badly, to be rude. but now, straightforward a mistake. my timing was wrong. i did not wish to disrespect the president of the office. and your point about african-americans is perfectly relevant, but should we care less because the president is also african-american? or should we care more now that the rates climbed even higher and immigration has continued higher? by the way, this is not insignificant. this is directly with african-americans even before more and more waves coming in, displacing workers. this is not the time to be

importing low skilled workers to compete with the existing low skilled workers are having difficulty getting jobs now. as for the disrespect, fit perfectly relevant. you can't disrespect. >> host: greg is a republican. you are on the neil munro. >> caller: hey, how are you doing? maybe albeit with a helping out on this. i believe that wesley president bush to keep giving questions from helen. i can't remember her name. he finally just quit calling on her because he refused to answer and answer questions. but one other thing as well as are you associated in any way with rupert murdoch? and my last thing as are you en masse? do you do math? >> guest: i would make a joke

about meth. that's a bad joke. no association with rupert murdoch. i once read an article and to compare me to helen tomas, you wound me. which is worth, to set three or the helen thomas comparison? >> host: the helen tomas, you say don't compare me, but she would stay points of view and her questions. >> host: okay. there's a firm line between sort of facts. the sequence of numbers or crashes. all questions applied perspective. they are direct and cleanest possible. by last question is to choose to

go home. i do not like that comparison. >> host: catherine is a republican in oklahoma city. please go ahead, catherine. >> guest: gap, went to see thank you, neil for which you do. we all know obama cares about people who are not working. he has to know that a process in worse shape and he doesn't even care. he only cares about people that donate him money like stalingrad and gm because gm sent seven of those jobs, 710 went to china. he took the gamble so he should have to pay the money back. it's not his money. it's a taxonomy. the lady before find some women are republicans. we believe if you can afford to take care of 10 kids that you shouldn't have them.

make the taxpayers pay for them. we pay for her own. thank you again. >> guest: wild and wonderful present to you. who, what, when, where? real newsman spare us their opinions unless they are clearly presented as commentary. >> guest: that is sweet. what planet is he on? we try to stick to facts at "daily caller." we ask direct questions. we try to come up with an interesting news mixer lender, fast and furious, decisions in the white house, spending national security. >> caller: >> guest: please go ahead with your question for neil munro. helps if i push the button. sorry about that.

please start again. >> caller: my comment is making remarks that we all understand where you're coming from. he is a republican and that's what they would have been doing. now we understand he's probably going to be reelect bid because he is a black man and the way people don't feel that he should be able to run this country. i have to speak the truth. they don't think lack men should be zero to run this country. i think he's doing a job. when they run this country, it was bankruptcy. >> guest: mr. munro.

>> guest: ottawa to argue, but just try to imagine mr. romney was a black eye and he was seen republican things, free-market beatings. you don't think the republicans would be impacted with joy and delight that they have a black guy who believes in right of center, free-market, centrist policies? they love us. this is not a racial issue. when you have blacks voting for or against the plum color, that's a racial issue. the dislike of the president's policies is not a racial issue. >> host: we have a few minutes left. >> caller: hello. yes, i am listening to mr. munro speak about the injustice of the latest action the president took on immigration. i noticed that mr. munro himself

as an immigrant as you specified and his accent revealed and i've also noticed a media and journalism, a proliferation of people are not native american. you are wanting to attack the president for taking jobs. you know, there are hundreds of thousands of educated black people able to take jobs. there's the irony of that impinge upon your attack on the president? >> guest: there is no irony there. in fact, it is a useful thing to explore. americans are very deeply reluctant to say anything disagreeable about immigration.

when i signed the paper is where loyalty is to other groups. i'm an american now. on issues important to americans turturro and current light the daily collar would produce new, interesting that many american leaders are interested regardless of color. it's true and accurate and interesting news you won't find because you exist to provide interesting stuff, true stuff that the others don't want to produce. >> host: neil munro, did "daily caller" have any trouble getting white house credentials? are they easy to get? >> guest: yes and no. you have been established,

recognized publication and use sign-up for the right has frequently. at some point you can argue the guys at the white house cannot a permanent path i can walk in. when you want to go to the white house, he started e-mailing and say it like to come to the press conference tomorrow in the fisher. so i don't particularly have a press pass. i am a reporter for specifications. but to get on the right has been leading on the same terms as everyone else. if you work for a publication any kind of the white house, they let you in to cover the press conference. the area you can go into is a small little room. there is a must room. you don't get to walk the halls of the white house. when i was covering the pentagon years ago, you'd be let in. you could walk around the