to become an eisenhower? and that made me feel good. it was very nice. >> david and julie nixon eisenhower, jean edward smith. this is book tv on c-span 2. this is the national book festival. and our live coverage from the national book festival continues tomorrow. go to book of.org to get the fuel schedule. see you then. thank you, everyone. >> visit book publish book of.org. you can share anything you see on booktv.org by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend. booktv.org.

>> cord lane, idaho, has been called a little slice of heaven by barbara walters and is on the list of the 1,000 places to visit before you die by patricia shut. while visiting the city, booktv spoke to robert carriker about his book. the book tells the story of the jesuit missionary who worked with the native american tribes of the pacific northwest. >> was a jesuit missionary who was the most prominent catholic missionary in the 19th 19th century. he came to the pacific northwest in 1840. he was invited by native people, but being invited by native people is not the same thing as getting an assignment from the

jesuits. theurgies suit superior in st. louis would have -- the jesuit superior in st. louis would have too weigh what this extension of jesuits from st. louis was going to cost. he wad an administrator. so when father found these indians -- in fact they found him. what happened was he was a missioner in moon the indians at council bluff, iowa, and one day he saw a group of canoes beaching themselves in front of his mission. from the missouri river. he went down to greet them, and as he went down to greet them, he heard them speaking to one another in french. french. his native language. how could this be that they were speaking french? he came to find out that they were iroquois indians but the

iroquois indians are from the jesuit area of new france, they're from the st. lawrence river. so, what happened was, when fur trade companies moved across the map of canada, they more or less leap-frogged across each other. in other words, the hudson bay company would trap out a certain area, and the competing company, the northwest company, would leap-frog over them to areas that hadn't been trapped out. and their paddlers, the paddlers for the northwest company, were recruited from the jesuit schools in the st. lawrence valley, and when they reached the pacific in canada, then they were relieved from their job ask they went south and they found a home among the pacific northwest indians. and so it was these iroquois

indians who told the indians of the pacific northwest that there is a new world out there, there is a master of life and there are these men who can teach you about the master of life and the new set of ideas. and so these they were essential for the -- those they said if you don't believe me, we'll go to where the jesuits and are ask them to come to us, and sew that is how those native people, primarily the flatheads and also we believe there was some nez-pearce in that group, and they were on their way to st. louis to knock on the door of the jesuits at st. louis

university. and father desmet. found out what they're goal was and he followed them in a couple of weeks, and then he said to his superior, i can take that assignment. i would be good at that assignment. i've had experience with the -- i am now a full-fledged jesuit priest. i'm ready to take this assignment. what each tribe hoped to game by having a missionary is a complicated story, as you can well imagine. they wanted to know more about this master of life that they had heard from the iroquois indians. but the iroquois indians had oversold the idea, and so the native people of the pacific

northwest, the interior pacific northwest, those native people had a higher expectation that there would not just be to learn the story of a master of life that they had not known before, but they came to extrapolate what the iroquois had told them into believing that perhaps they could now be great warriors because they would have a spiritual dimension that, if not make them bulletproof, -- and they did not believe that -- but it would make them superior warriors. and so the truth of the matter is that when you read the letters of the jesuit

missionaries, after only just a few years, before it. >> utes had been here for a five years, they were writing there were troublesome indications that the native people were taking their christian teachings and believing that it had made them so superior that in fact they were becoming troublesome to they're -- their neighbors. they were no longer negotiating the differences between hunting privileges, between, say, the flatheads and the crows. now they were taking an arbitrary forthright position that they were superior, and you had better not challenge us militarily for we have a secret

weapon. now, the reason i said that becomes very complicated, is because the tribe, just across the border in canada, -- the black feet, that tribe was very military, and that tribe received weapons from canadian fur trappers who did not have the same concern about arming the native people of the pacific northwest. so, the black feet became bullies in the pacific northwest. and the flatheads believed that they were now going to be able to go up against that tribe, for they had learned something about

the master of life. they had a secret weapon. but i said it became a complicated story because father de smet and his conferees, his fell ujesuits, believed that the best way to bring piece -- bring peace to the pacific northwest was to go to the black feet and to say to them, we need to have peace. peace is what the master of life wants us to be. we should meet. we should talk. we should make ourselves friendly instead of hostile. that was the attitude of father de smet, and to that end, father in 1844 and 1845. we north across the 49th 49th parallel into the black

feet territory, to talk to them. but now you see what happens is, when the flatheads find out that desmet has gone to their enemies, they now believe that he is the moral equivalent of what we would call today a arms manufacturer who was arming both sides in the war. and so the native people of the pacific northwest interior tribes, they then had a falling out with the jesuits because they believed that father de smet and his conferees were knew telling the black feet the same ideas they were telling them, and they had suddenly lost their

advantage. and so it's very clear that some of the missions will now be closed because there is a lack of ardor by the native people. so this again goes to the idea that father de smet is a cultural broker because while he is in the pacific northwest, there are dynamics that are going on that he could see but not foretell. he could see them after they happened but he did not have the helping of vision to see -- the length of vision to see when he went to the black feet, he was endangering his relationship with the interior tribes of the

flatheads, the nez pearce, the spokanes, and so when de smet left the pacific northwest in 1846, the pacific northwest was in perhaps in all honesty, more turmoil than when he had come. and that wasn't what he had intended there to be. father de smet was relieved of his position by the father general of the society in rome. he was unhappy because he wanted to be out on the trail. he wanted to be in the indian camp. he wanted to be in a canoe, on the back of a mule, exploring. so, he was very unhappy, very

discouraged to be back in st. louis. but in time, he got an invitation from the federal government, the united states federal government, and there was going to be in 1851 a gigantic indian conference at fort laramie in wyoming, and they asked father de smet, who had such a touch with the nate tithe people, would he go and be of assistance, and so his superiors in st. louis said, well, you're not really supposed to be leaving here, going back on the trail, but it would not be politic for us to turn down an i invitation of this magnitude, so, yes, father de

smet can go. so that is how he reinstated himself as an indian missionary. he went to this conference, and from there he received invitations from other tribes, will you come and visit us? ...

superior for the rocky mountain mission, and that is the reason why his statue is outside on the campus right in front of college hall at the university campus, because he is the founding father of the pacific northwest. his legacy would include the university, the highest award

that we can give to anyone. in the northwest we have the dispatch streets and dormitory here on the campus. there is no question that everybody will recognize the name in the pacific northwest even when they don't know why they should know his name. if they do in fact know his name and they know he is a pioneer that they don't go as well as they should, but of course nobody knows history as well as they should. they don't know as well as they should put he was, what he did as a broker of college and the pacific northwest.

in light of the ongoing battle over the federal budget and congress, booktv has put together a program featuring several authors talking about issues surrounding the debate. over the next hour you will hear from former common troller general, former senator jim demint and stanford university. events feature can be watched in their entirety on the booktv website, booktv.org. we will start with david walk or who served as the u.s. comptroller general from 1998 to 2008. he discusses his book come back america turning the country around and restoring fiscal responsibility. >> there is a fundamental difference between short-term deficits and an structural deficits. the short-term deficits largely were inherited by the rock obama

-- barack obama and we need to understand its short-term deficits are understandable because we are in a recession and we have to undeclared wars and a number of bailouts and unemployment is very high. so he made it very clear that he wants to try to take the steps to try to get the economy going on in consistent basis and bring unemployment down. he is going to propose a number of tax cuts or tax preferences as well as spending increases to try to do that and that may exacerbate the short-term but then he pivoted which i think is important to talk about the structural deficit. and that is what threatens the state. it's not the ice that is above the water. it's the ice that is below the water. it's not the debt on the balance sheet, it is what is off the balance sheet that disrupts the future and he talked about three things, he talked about freezing a portion of discretionary spending, less than 20% of the

federal budget for three years. three years is better than one book, and you know, frankly it is a modest first step especially since discretionary spending has increased 20% plus over the last two years in the second we talked about supporting the pedro rule the senate might be voting on right now. there's lots of holes big enough to drive a truck through and on the other hand it does provide some come strains that otherwise wouldn't be there so i think it is a modest step forward. third and most important he came out for the future commission to try to help set the table and make the tough choices for the stuff from a social insurance reform, other spending constraint and tax reform that would generate more revenues and i think that is critically important and i think it is important we do it this year for recommendations after the midterm and a two act before the lender's impatience.

>> it creates the commission, but it's a kind of commission proposing the kind of commission that was an issue as to whether we need a statutory commission that will happen and so forth. >> i have a strong preference for the statutory commission and the reason a strong preference for the statutory commission is because you get the buy-in from the congress and the president. in addition to that in the statutory commission can you guarantee a vote. the fact is the senate passed or have a majority vote for the conrad greg statutory commission and got 53 votes that under the senate rules you have to get 60 so it didn't pass. and while i would prefer a statutory commission i would prefer a presidential commission to nothing. >> one of the arguments you make in the book which i think is particularly interesting in advancing big commission is this is a way to create a consensus

in the country for the action of the fiscal policy. and i think the book to my mind is the mosit is the most importg that stepping back from the details, we have a bigger appetite for public services in this country than a willingness to pay the taxes that are required. how do we bridge that gap? i just want to press you on how much difference the commission might make to that. can people be made to change their status? >> guest: ther >> guest: there are two critical elements that have to be present for the commission to be successful and in addition to having the credible can people on it and everything on the table, there are two other things. this commission has to go outside of washington dc. it has to engage weapons with the fact, the truth, the tough choices, the prudence of acting

sooner rather than later, the consequences to the country and to the families if we don't. and in addition it needs to receive a vote on its recommendations. the president has the commitment of the speaker and the majority leader that they will do everything in their power to assure it will be a vote on the commission's recommendations. so i think we have to make the best of that. people have a big government appetite and a small government taxation. you want to keep taxes as low as possible for a variety of reasons and the truth is we can come back to this if you want, the far right and far left are delusionary and also would get an f. in math. we are not the top 25 in the country. they are delusionary and they would flunk math. >> let's not come back to that. >> you wouldn't let me get away with that.

>> there is a political disconnect the politicians understand that they need to express concern about the long-term budget. you must grapple with this problem. the national prosperity is at stake. but that has to mean at the end of the day either lower public spending or higher taxes and they don't want to hire those things. do you have a sense that politicians are even ready to think about grasping this i myself don't see it. on either side -- first there is no party of fiscal responsibility. there are individuals who are there is no party of fiscal responsibility. second, statistically valid a public resource that we have at the peters foundation and others showed the number two issue that

americans are concerned about our escalating deficits and debt. right after the economy and jobs jobs, way ahead of health care and climate change and other important issues, but way ahead. they believe that congress and washington is out of touch and out of control not making this a high enough priority and 70% of americans support sometime if of commission on the line. the election in massachusetts wasn't a victory for public and. it was a life and independent. i've seen it coming and i've been in 46 states i think i have a very good sense. they are in the sensible center and representatives on the holes. that's why we not only have the partisanship that an ideological divide that creates a stalemate and the stalemate means that you are going nowhere fast and when things are wrong they g takeoveh patches of time. that's a disaster this scenario. so i think washington is an indicator and congress as an

indicator within washington and the people basically have to put the pressure for this thing to happen. and a commission has to set the table for a tougher vot the tous because let me tell you taxes are going up and they are going up about what people than those making $250,000 a year. why? a very simple four letter word. math. in addition to social insurance contract is going to get renegotiated to make sure that when the government has a price they can deliver on their promises. the government has tens of truly an id doesn't know how it's going to pay for it and it wants to make more. we can come back to that on health care if you want and we have to have some tough budgetary controls because i don't think we should send washington one dine without additional tough statutory budget controls, without round one of the social insurance reform come around one of spending constraint repaired position and around one of tax

reform. >> let's start health reform for a second. it's a kind of microcosm of the issue in many ways. it underlines the difficulty here. why is health care reform in such trouble? there are many reasons why it is in such trouble but a couple of the leading, somewhat self-contradictory. they go to the heart of what you're saying. on the one hand i think a lot of people are concerned that this reform is going to significantly increase public spending. so they are worried about the deficit and long-term borrowing and tax in the future all of which is valid but the other thing to think they are worried about actually what we require in order to balance the budget and in order to make the existing health care system affordable and to make it better

where is the opening for the politician? you are not a politician but if you are advising a politician, how would they grapple with this, how do you teach fiscally responsible expansion of health care coverage? in favor of expanding healthcare if you take a somewhat liberal line on that explain how you think we can make it affordable. >> first we have to focus on four brings a confidence of healthcare reform. number one for cost. if there's one thing that will bankrupt america it is out of control health care costs. we've already made $38 trillion with promises for medicare that we know how we are going to pay for. and my view is you can't reduce healthcare costs by expanding coverage. it's an oxymoron. in addition to that, you have to

recognize that the current ultra system if it were a house it is structurally unsound, it is more than its wort it's worth and itd for foreclosure. so you can't say that it is progress by adding the new lane belt out of the same materials attached to the structure that is headed for foreclosure. it's another example of how the government wants to give people their desert before leave the spinach. we have already made tens of trillions of promises we don't know how we are going to keep but let's make more and only have to do is pay for it. the fact is there is for tests for fiscal reform. we have to pay for itself and not have deficits beyond the result in significant reductions of unfunded promises we already have and result in lower health care costs after the reform and before. on the other hand, i do bb thann some level of universal

coverage. i believe we ought to have universal coverage for what i call preventative and wellness and catastrophic. i think we have to change payment systems, we need a cap and a budget on what the federal government will spend on healthcare and look at the tax preferences, look at subsidies for medicare because we have subsidies for billionaires and there's not that many billionaires. my boss is a billionaire. he doesn't take it because of that fact. >> let's talk about that for the second. there are two systems we have in the country which i talk about in the book that we spend double per capita and we get below average results. number one is healthcare. so it isn't about money. we spend plenty on money and number two is k-12 education.

we are not the top 25, we are not the top 25 in k-12 education outcomes so it is not a matter of money you need to reengineer the system and i have a number of ideas about how to do that. >> maybe we will come back to that but there's a couple other bases i want to touch before i turn it over. under this broad entitlement reform, medicare is critical as you say. we also have social security. the other interesting chapter i think on what we should do to fix the social security system, say a little bit about that. >> in the scheme of things that should be easy. in the basketball and now the g8 should be a layup. you can miss the layup but on the other hand, with medicare and health care reform it is a three-point play for the opponent's basket. we have to dribble a little bit

and take a few shots before we will put some points on the board. with social security we would have had competence in 1999 but for the blue dress incident. and it's not just a matter of what the reform ought to be that the process that you employ to get it and it is the george w. bush success on social security and one of the reasons barack obama is not good to be successful is that it's fundamentally flawed. we saw the result of that in the reaction from the public. so, what we need to do is for people that are retired or close to retirement, little to no changes because it wouldn't be fair and it isn't politically feasible. you might want to look at the cost of living index and think about modest changes to everybody is contributing but for people close to the poverty level they want to strengthen the benefit. for people of middle and upper income less of a replacement

rate. we could reform social security and exceed the generations without any tax increases but realistically some might say let's raise the base cap of about 107 to 150 which is below what it would have been if we kept the same ratio that we had back when we started indexing it and very importantly, in addition to having a small but sustainable and secure base defined program because after all that is what the security names and social security, then we need to have a supplemental ad on automatic payroll deduction to the savings account that goes into a real trust fund with real investment and responsibility and reliability when you go to jail and in a circumstance we could have the death benefit and a supplemental post retirement benefit. that is a win-win winner. all we need is leadership.

>> and some courage because of course one way of characterizing that proposal -- and i don't need to tell you you know i agree with that proposal but it's partial privatization of social security. >> here is the key. the bass in my view should be renamed defined-benefit because it is the base of the retirement income security. 50% of americans have a private pension plan and a low savings rate. it's coming up from the standpoint of individual because of what a rainy day is. but the government is seeking faster than individuals and that is a different story. so my point is we think that we have to keep in mind social security is the foundation when it comes to social security into the base ought to be but we have a defined contribution to add-on, not a carveout because frankly the tax hasn't worked. we have the lowest savings rate of any major industrialized

nation. the people who save are the people who have the ability to save and if they get the tax benefit. the only way you will get the rate up is if we employ the principle that my mama taught me. don't let people touch the money because once they touch it it will burn a hole in their pocket and they will spend it more than once in america. >> let's talk a little bit about your tax proposals. we touched on the issue of medicare and as you said it is a simple matter of math that is a five letter word in my vocabulary. [laughter] we are going to have to raise taxes. we are going to have to raise taxes. now in your proposal -- the book looks at this in some detail. just if people the sense how you think this should be done and made politically power double.

>> first you have to recognize that where the taxes are headed without doing anything and what percentage of gdp are we headed to on that basis and that is above the historical tax levels of gdp. a seconsecond i think you have o recognize as to what would end up happening if we didn't end up making reforms sooner or later how high the taxes might have to go in order to stop. in the book we talk about how they would have to double between 2030 to 2040. double. the other thing is you have to recognize political reality. in my view the longer we wait to try to repost the budgetary controls we form the insurance contract and prioritize the constrained spending. the higher the taxes are going to go for three reasons.

one, the miracle of compounding. number two, demographics. more people are going to be in n franchise than the existing entitlement program and the toughest thing to change and political activism. not all segments of society are politically active. for those reasons just for simple logic we need to do something sooner rather than later and on taxes -- but we are going to need more revenue than the historical levels. they aren't necessarily taxes. you can get user fees and premiums, more game related premium. there is a member of things you can't do because taxes and there's an exchange but i think realistically, taxes are going to have to go up. what form it takes matters and we can go further if you want because there are several different approaches some of which are better in the matter

of economic theory than others but others are war likely from the political feasibility standpoint. >> that was david walker from the 2010. you can watch his entire presentation on the website, booktv.org. coming up next in the program on the federal budget is jim demint former u.s. senator from south carolina and current resident of the heritage foundation who speaks about his book now or never saving america from economic collapse. >> thank you for the opportunity to talk about now or never. i will put it in the context of what is going to happen this sunday in the country. two of the best professional football teams are going to meet on the field. they know that this is make or break for them. for some it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. and they know that they've got to give their all on sunday. they know the time.

the coach knows and the players know that the other team is there to beat them. no coach sending their players out for the super bowl is talking about the need to cooperate and to work with the other guys because they understand something. they understand the other team is there to beat them and their goal is on the opposite side of the field. that's not the way politics are supposed to be back in washington i'm afraid that's where it's come. and we hear a lot of let's work together and stop the gridlock. but we are in a situation now as conservatives on the other team has a different goal and they are here to beat us. i can't tell you one compromise with democrats over the last ten or 12 years that i've been in the house or the senate that didn't result in more spending, borrowing, debt and a bigger

federal government. and importantly, more concentration of political and economic power in the hands of a few people. that is a lot of what no is nowr never is about. i do delete this could be the last chance to turn things around and i know a lot of you and a lot of folks around the country are cynical when they hear a politician say this is the biggest election were this is a crisis but if you look at the numbers and i look at it as a businessman still looking at a balance sheet because that is what i did most of my life. the nation is effectively bankrupt at this point. if you are at the point you can't pay your bills without borrowing more money every month, your totally in the hands of your creditors. we found out last august during the debt ceiling debate the president said unless we can borrow more money we won't send

out the social security checks. we can't pay our bills. so we passed this crazy debt limit deal that did nothing but kick the can down the road and pushed us further into debt that we don't have a sense of urgency across the country that we need to solve our problem. that's why i wrote this book. it's really my last effort to sound the alarm, to tell americans where we are, but to tell them there's still time to fix it because this country is at the point where the data is larger than the economy and the plan is to keep adding a trillion dollars a year to that debt into the foreseeable future. and when we talk about balancing the budget, which means we are going to stop spending more than we are bringing in, that idea was called extreme by the president of the united states and put down by the democratic

leader in the house and the senate as essentially a ridiculous idea. even a fifth grader can tell us that if you have more debt than you can deal with and you keep spending more than you are bringing in that something bad is going to happen and it really already has because our own federal reserve and central bank has brought over half of our debt over the last two years. that means we are monetizing our debt which is something we are not supposed to do. that's a bigger problem in the desk itself as our electric. and i talked about that in the book. we are at a point you've got about half of americans getting something from government and the other half are paying for it. this is the situation we were warned about when the country was formed that if you ever get to the point that the electorate can vote themselves without paying for it you were in trouble as a democracy because

widespread dependency undermines democracy. the problem we have now as americans and republicans is that the other team has pretty effectively organized all of those in the country dependent on the government who want more from government. that's what the party is about today. they can't work with us on balancing the government. their whole platform is based on moral promises from the government and more government spending. the balanced budget amendment to the constitution would effectively put the democratic party out of business because campaigns can no longer be based on what promises the government is going to do whether it is partnering with businesses or redistributing wealth it doesn't work and it's an area. what it would do though is put all politics on the same page.

we would at least have the same goal. we could compromise. we could do date whether to raise taxes or cut spending or combination of both that it makes no sense. but i try to do it now or never is we start out with a chapter of america in peril and just get some of the details. we are in a hole that we have never been in before. but the next chapter is remembering american exceptionalism and this is maybe the most important point in the book. this country is different than any other country in the world for a reason. we grew up as a bottom-up nation. very individualistic thinking their own decisions about what

they want to do and what they valued. americans were entrepreneurs by necessity. there were no programs to support them. we had no social systems. there was approved mobility, downward mobility, anyway people wanted to go. we were the only country in the world that wasn't a top-down country. and even though initially there was the king separated by the atlantic ocean and americans were very autonomous and their families and local communities and the volunteer organizations it was a bottom-up country. and that's what we found in business over the last 20 years if you want to improve quality, reduce cost and be competitive you push decision-making down. that is what america was about in the beginning, decentralized and individualistic. the constitution was put in

place to guarantee that power wouldn't concentrate in washington because the founders knew that when political power concentrates, so it is economic power and that's when you get the corruption. that's when you get crony capitalism. that's when you get major corporations coming to the politicians to help them compete rather than compete in the marketplace. and what's happened over the last several decades in america is that decentralized concept has changed in the fact that more and more power and control and money has come to washington. that's why you see the exponential growth of lobbyists here from the business world and all sectors because this is where the money is, this is where the power is and where we can change things that was never the way that it was supposed to be. as of the principles of american exceptionalism that began with individuals, individual liberty and decentralized political and

economic power has been changed with policies and we detail it back to fdr all the way up to what we've done. both parties with all good intentions have fundamentally changed the concept of america. but this is not a doomsday for us and that's what i recount in the book. we are at a point in a country where we can still control our own destiny. we can pull ourselves away from a cliff. we don't have to balance our budget this year but we do have to put the country on a course towards a balanced budget. we have to show ourselves and the world that we are committed, we are determined and we have a plan to move towards a balanced budget and begin to get our fiscal situation under control. we can do that under a ten year period in a transitional way that did not cause hardship except for maybe some federal

government employees that would need to seek other employment and i detail in the book what we call freedom solutions and heritage helped develop a lot of those of what we can do with our tax code to get people more freedom and prosperity, what we can do to open our own energy supplies not only creating jobs, but the revenue to the federal and state governments to deal with our debt could be extraordinary. there are good ways to solve the social security medicare problem. we don't have to cut benefits for those that paid for them their whole life and are retired but we can offer better and less expensive solutions to younger workers who would choose four o. one k. style plan and a second rather than stay on the same plan they had because there are not many young men americans who believe they are going to get anything from social security. if they are actually offered real savings i think a lot of them would choose it.

there are better ideas that don't cost the taxpayer money. good solutions. but we have to have the right messengers running for public office and we've got a chapter on that. now or never talks about picking candidates into doing it in a way that is better than we do now. it's not just about getting a good speech, but it's about people who have the character, the competence and the courage to lead the most complicated and largest organization in the whole world. we discount skills and capabilities, management, we are picking a president of the united states this is not just about picking the salesman. we have got to pick someone who really understands how to lead a great nation and in this case how to turn it around. and i think we are going to have that one way or another as president but he also needed for the house and the senate to

elect congressmen and senators that understand american exceptionalism and we can call ourselves conservatives or whatever we want to leave old to be but i want people to tell me face-to-face they understand how america is different and that if you understand the goal is to decentralized political and economic power the solutions become pretty simple because you don't want the government to run your healthcare. you want the individual to have the right and access to the past and the most competitive health insurance plans in the world. all of your policies would focus on how do you help the individual own and control their own health care? but if you belief in centralized power as i think the man in the white house and the people controlling the senate right now do, they are automatically towards universal solutions. they are towards the collectivist policies that don't work. if they worked, we could argue about it.

but the war on poverty hasn't cured poverty. it's subsidized and created intergenerational policy that has encouraged folks to stay dependent on the government. it's taken away their dignity. we are not helping people by making them dependent on the government. but the point and now or never is that this may be the last chance to turn things around. if i look out into the future where we are from a fiscal standpoint, from a policy standpoint and a cultural standpoint, four more years of what we are doing now i don't know how america could survive in the form that we know america. but the good news is we saw in the last election that if only a small number of people get active and get involved -- and we think it was a big turnout in 2010 but less than 30% of americans over 18 even voted in the elections. what if we got 40 or 50%?

what if we got all those people who were so busy raising their families and working and living life they don't get involved in politics, what if we got them engaged in this years election? that's what i hope we can do is sound the alarm, create urgency, what people know there are good solutions and let people know what made the country great in the first place and how we can get back in a reasonable way that doesn't put people out on the streets as we are often accused every time we come up with a good idea. but i hope those of you that are here and watching will realize that we have a chance to make this country better than it's ever been before. the things that make us great harm still at work today. you don't have to travel far or visit many businesses, go around the country very much to realize that it's still there and america is still very

exceptional, but we cannot go down the wrong road much further and expect to be that same country. we can pull ourselves away from a cliff. what we have to do though is hold up the right ideas. that's what the heritage foundation has been doing for years and insist that people who are running for office and who were in office about those principles that made us great and that is decentralized power based on individual liberty and constitutional limited government. and i think we are very close to that. we have seen in some of the things that happened in the senate i think the mere majority republicans are tired of the status quo and ready to change things we just need a few more. i'm going to keep working on that on the senate side and hopefully we can change things in the senate and put someone in the white house who understands what makes america great. >> of a portion of the event with senator jim demint. you can see the entire program on the website, booktv.org.

we concluded the block of programming on the federal budget with stanford university sanjay basu with the body of the economic the politics of life and death. >> it's often been either you will spend and maintain your safety net or you will recover faster. either you will go into inflation and bad things will happen or you need to cut down for the future and this is showing somewhat of the dichotomy. why was that? the answer was really written in the 1950s and only recently reiterated which is that when countries are in these sorts of liquidity is that means businesses can't get the loans and they need to maintain their stafstuff and continue their business. the government needs to do the opposite.

you don't want to be in debt as a household or in individual and a crew interest owing people more and more. but the government needs to do precisely the opposite to go with the economy out of its current -. also quite evident as the safety net of those that spend less proportion of their income and as i was show you a lot of safety nets preserve the cycle to pay off the long-term debt. they recognized this after the crisis occurred they issued a formal apology. it took five years but it was one of the most dramatic apologies from an international institution. getting out of the current

recession we see the divergence across the country. you might have heard recent report that alcohol drinking has gone down in the recession in the united states. it's actually alcohol sales and drinking has diverged across the country. a smaller population, about a million people particularly young men have either had trouble finding work or were unable to maintain have started frequenting ching you see the divergence from the population and among those whose emergency rooms visits, and other alcohol related harm. on average you see the decline in overall drinking rates but what is going on behind the decline is a sort of two american phenomenon and it shows

you the dangers of using the aggregate statistics. similarly we see the detergents within europe. people are commenting on it being a universal recession and that is not true. everyone is talking about greece but before we were talking about greece everyone was talking about iceland and then we sort of forgot about iceland which was the first country to experience the major part of the recession and a relative to the size it experienced the largest recession in the global economic history. all of its collapsed. they invested in the mortgage-backed security. but iceland strikingly has recovered while greece has not anended the situation between te countries really quite different. i think those depend on the members of the euro zone or assistance restricted by the politics of the eu and what was rather dramatic they said okay

we've been recommended by the imf and others to undergrowth the austerity and short-term deficits and maintain your current fee and reduce your obligations that you can recover faster. a number of ministers including the health minister resigned on the universal health system and a number of other social safety net. a rather dramatic move for the politician. for the first time since 1944, iceland did something incredib incredible. they used social media and all these other interesting things do have a constitutional amendment and even though the debt was more than 800% of gdp, they asked for something simple and said a small group of people in charge have invested all of our money and mortgage-backed securities and it's dropped. we have two options. one is to cut the cd because social safety net obligation and use government taxpayer money to

pay back the foreign creditors. the other option is to do well in repayment programs, pay it back slowly over time while preserving the safety net at home and most people understandably voted for the second one. when we investigated the effects on iceland publi public-health, everything was essentially flat. some health indicators were slightly improved like sleep quality but there was no increase in suicide, alcoholism, we couldn't find anything among the different groups of the scientific investigators. there's only one book in week 52 of the recession there was a sudden spike in respiratory emergency room visits and it turned out that a volcano erupted and had pretty much nothing to do with the recession. i can't pronounce the name of

the book came out confidence greece went a very different route, so greece under this idea at the debt must be able to help us quickly get a this should. because the public health by the degree that ultimately ended up having higher public-health spending can of people. but it's not confusing to get the tying trend. the short-term kind there's been so many complications they end up having to pay much more from the epidemics. for example when there was a 40 to 50% on an claimant rate, the new drug hits the market which was a dread of methamphetamine. at the same time there was an exchange program with hiv and drug rehab programs were cut one was a tenfold rise in hiv infection that resulted in subsequent spending to take care.

similarly, the malaria epidemic has broken out for the first time in decades as the mosquitoes program was cut and that is of course by ten times more to control than it does to prevent. it was quite amazing for the state department that had a conundrum because for the first time they had to issue a warning to american travelers about taking malaria prophylaxis to the country that produces all sorts of problems for the trade agreements. now we see the same trend in the u.s. needs. in the u.s., alcoholism and suicide we see the spikes overall even above the pre-existing trends that they are very heterogeneous. it isn't across all of the cities and counties and states. similar cities that faced unemployment and in some way wae the suicide of spikes and others we don't but it seems to relate strongly to a certain extent of social programs.

those are the answer to the major question which is why unemployment doesn't always correlate the suicide rate should and that is precisely the point why we went to investigate what the correlation doesn't occur for example in spain and the u.s. unemployment rates are refolded by suicide rates as shown on the left had with sweden and send link sweden for example in 1990 when they had their own thinking traces the rate continued to decline so how do we explain this, what are they doing is it just that they are so robust? my swedish friends would like that but it's not true. it turns out that investigate a slew of different programs. one set seems to be particularly effective at preventing the recession with suicide, although some and other health related

problems and it's not in spite of there's nothing to do with healthcare insurance it's not health care spending with something called active leader market programs programs are sort of. when someone becomes newly unemployed they get an unemployment check but only on the condition that they also n. roll in this program and this program involved a person to assist them with everything from job retraining to actively working at the firm to require to participate at least finding part-time reemployment and re- integrate them into the workforce. it turns out that the preemptive spending on these programs actually results both in economics to mail us and ends up paying for itself in downstream cost. there is a question of what if it's just the swedish. and number of us have worked on

these multi-site randomized controlled trials in the u.s. including recently in detroit people are randomized programs you find the office and get benefits, good luck to you or this kind of active leader program. all of the cit cds now in four different continents the same results have been found reducing health outcomes as a side effect of what is ultimately the economic job stimulus program. we were seeing this and commented across the u.s. and in much of the u.s. the economic recovery seemed to correspond to the stimulus whereas the uk that had a recession at the same time underwent an austerity program and then they clipped to the recovery now that they are starting into a triple digit

recession. this ended around the time of the sequester when we started flattening out in terms of the recovery. and around the same time be issued a working paper major policy document and public statement from the chief economist which basically counted to 400 pages. and it's a fascinating document if you can get to the rhetoric what it amounts to is the following that all of the advice previously during the crisis was based on the assumption about one member and that assumption is for every dollar of government spending how many dollars do you get back? the assumed th assume that the s about .5 and a little footnotes to the document you can find that the reason for .5 is because it was a nice round number. four different groups including us calculated that in the prior

recession. how many dollars do we get back? when you invest in a food stamp for the job security program how much do you end up stimulating the economy and getting back in the joofthe job growth and busis growth and overall gdp clicks the multiplier is greater than one you get back about a dollar 70 cents for every dollar that you invest editors for different groups not watching each other that ended up in the same number. the irony is that they sol thout of this out a while ago. while they were recommended to undergo the austerity they calculated this number call to fiscal multiplier for themselves and decided to undergo the stimulus internally while commending the opposite for greece. we aren't the first ones to figure out either texas figured out a long time ago california, massachusetts helped bail out texas which no tax in public vision have found they

remembered. so we see this manifesting as the changes in government spending during the recession has correlated to the changes in recovery over time across a number of countries. of course this begs the question of our we are just going to spend forever and it affects older players that go beyond one for example 97 would have been a good time to cut down on a variety of government spending but it argues for the data-driven approach of deciding when to undergo the spending increases. food stamps are a good example. a number of people have concerned welfare would be permanent and people would be writing the system forever and will be cheating the system and so on so there are good studies. one recently by the editor of the journal of economics that found there was no data to support the notion. in fact quite a bit is the

opposite on food stamps and general welfare assistance people will come off as the economy recovers and furthermore, the multiplayer programs like food stamps aren't particularly high because of people who are eligible and often not spending on other things when they are unable to get food stamps its call to the heat or eat conundrum that people can either spend on their heating or they can spend on food and during periods they are able to get food stamps, people are able to stimulate the local economy to more than the foodstamp expenditure costs so you can if you didn't care about public health just as an accountant of the net result is a deficit reduction. it is important to recognize it is a difficult to find funding in the recessionary period so medicaid and other programs are

classically programs where you have less of a tax base during the recessionary period so how are you going to fund a safety net when you need money for them the most. but is there a better way as well? some of us have been working on this international initiative that which the goal is to simultaneously find the type of programs that we need when we have a recent amount of money and finding novel source and at the same time discourage the kind of things that lea led to e recession so we all know that risky investments limited to the recession but very few of us actually participate in these investments and i doubt any of you bought a bunch of mortgage-backed securities or so on. so the idea is to place a small fee, .005% which is based on the idea if any of you have heard about that on the highest risk

commodity, those that others are participating in that the fee seems incredibly small but when you are transacting hundreds of millions of dollars in separating on the order of 5 billion or more with the stock market volatility encourages heavy transaction. because of the mechanism that will increase in the highest risk time as people are undergoing an engaging in the highest risk transactions you wind up with the most money to put th a safety net and vice ve. the reason why i would argue for such a system while we may be in a unique time it isn't that unique if you look at the periods of recession over the last several years or decades we haven't had a recession this large but we have had many recessions. it's actually somewhat surprising when we are not in

the recession. my favorite -- it strikes me that we have price bubbles and a variety of commodities all the time and so i will end by saying essentially what i have learned from understanding this is that if you are to adopt the mantra first do no harm and then apply it to your social and economic policy we might be better against the economic shock and we understand the safety nets and what they mean for us. i will conclude by offering this quote i know it's long but i think it is worth going through the speech from robert kennedy back in 1968. he says the national products now is over $8 billion a year but that gross national product if we should judge the united states of america by that it

counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear out the carnage and count the special locks for the doors into the description in the loss of the natural chaotic sprawl accounts and compare warheads and armored cars for the police and the cities. it comes to televisio counts thn programs or by violence and the gross national product does not allow for the help of our children, quality of education or the joy. it doesn't include the beauty of the country with the strength of the meritage or the intelligence of the public the date or integrity of the public officials. nor are neither the wisdom or learning, compassion or devotion to the country. it measures everything in short except that that makes life worthwhile and they can tell everything about america except why we are proud that we are

americans. here's a look at the books published in 2012. booktv 14th year on c-span2. >> it's very important for the 13 rules and it links up to the first one also that says things will get better. and i start at the description by saying that is not necessarily the case but it's the attitude you should have.

things are going to get a better. it is within your rights to make things better and if you end up with perpetual optimism as a force multiplier it is a military term. we are always looking for ways to enhance the power of the force whether it is by communications or supply lines, whatever it is, that we look for things that make more effect if so what i found in working with human beings, i found a few as a leader or manager can the be the attitude of perpetual optimism, we can do it, then that will in fact the entire group global organization and it is a force multiplier that can do more than they thought it could do that also, coming to the question as i go around the country i see all of the problems that are discussed here in washington so very often, the unemployment

rate, the fact that the economy is starting to come back, the problem with the overseas adventures we have been involved in and other crises around the world but i also see people who are hard at work, people in business and i talked to business leaders, financial leaders, i still find people are optimistic about the country. they have confidence in who they are. and almost a reagan confidence if there's one thing that against them they seek that the leaders in washington don't understand how much confidence and optimism is still out there and they are waiting for the leaders in washington to cut through that conflict and the lack of compromise to get the country moving. ..

[applause] >> good afternoon, everyone, and i'm sure you have any number of welcomes to the book fair but i'm going to give you one anyway.