tv Book Discussion CSPAN March 31, 2015 4:02am-4:48am EDT
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ve for how hard i work i will never be able to -- i've been able to achieve things in my life and live a life that would have been impossible had my parents not come here had this nation not existed, had america not been exceptional. what we want now is not just for that to continue but to reach more people than ever before. as i said at the outset every country in the world has successful people. there've been other countries that have large militaries and of geopolitical importance. their there nations with large economies and the companies. i truly believe what separates us not just from the other nations on the earth but other nations in history is that here we have been united by the believe that every human being deserves a chance to achieve their god-given potential to go as far as their talent and their work will take them. if we were ever to lose that we will lose what makes us different. we will still be big, we will
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still be important, we will still be powerful and they will still matter on the global stage but we won't be a special. i for one don't want to be part of the first generation of americans that makes us worse off. i don't want to be the first generation of parents that has to turn has to turn to her children explain them why we got to grow up in the greatest country in human history but they won't have the same chance. i know there is a lot of narrative about how divided the republican -- how would divided we are between republicans and democrats how divided we are among our political feelings and ideas and it's true, we have always been a pretty opinionated people as evidenced here tonight tonight. that's the benefit of our field but i believe what unites us is more important. no matter what your voter registration card says are who you voted or in the last election i do believe there's a unifying principle in american is the idea that every single human being should matter that
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everyone deserves the right to achieve the change they have for themselves and their families and we will continue to endeavor to be the country that -- and if we achieve that not only will this be the greatest era in american history the 21st century will also be an american century. that's why took the time to write this book and i tell it to the story of real people and their real challenges. i describe what's gone wrong in their life, all we are doing about it now and what we can do better. you'll notice in the book there are many ideas that are bipartisan. they involve my collaboration with people of another party. colleagues like chris coons of connecticut and cory booker in new jersey. many of our policy proposals are part of it at all. particularly when it comes to higher education. you'll read about how i'm working with mark warner to make higher education more affordable how i'm working with cory booker to provide more access to wi-fi and internet especially in
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disadvantaged neighborhoods. these are important initiatives as well. they are not easy to put on a bumper sticker. they don't win a lot of elections but they are critical to the future of our country. so we still have time and space and we should debate the issues we disagree on but i hope we can come together and cooperate on the essential issues of our time because what we have before us is an extraordinary opportunity and that is to usher in the most prosperous era in all of our history. and that's saying a lot for a country with a history like ours. i appreciate you being here tonight and i his life
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from the audience which i have on these cards. so i will accept or reject them as i wish. congressman frank i was hoping you could say little bit about the two stories that you try to tell political stories you try to tell in this book which is about your life but also about your political world. >> it occurred to me as i started writing that their word to themes. i was a normal teenager in terms of my interest but part of it was my father wrote a television show called making 40. there were many television shows back then. i remember watching in the mccarthy era in 1954 where the republicans stood up to -- when he was smearing democrats.
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they said this has to stop so these hearings were just fascinating to me. i sort of understood it. i also decided i had to do something about the terrible racism. emmett till who was murdered in 1954 who is my age when he was murdered by a guy from chicago. i'd not i have to get into politics. i was emboldened by that because i was good at debating and arguing when i was a kid better than some adults wished i was. i watch mccarthy and i thought i can do that. the same time i realized this was a terrible complex. dwight eisenhower had propagated an executive order and people were disqualified. it wasn't just because of -- because that could have been
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surmounted by being out of. it was that we were evil. i began to say gee i want to be ample until their government and society but i never will be because i am. they said spoiler alert by the time i retired there were still this disparity between the social acceptability. but the order header first. in 2012 when jim and i got married and i was the first member of congress to have a same-sex marriage somebody told pulled and that turned out to be much more popular than the committee of the financial services reform bill. so as i said the frustration was as i got to be more influential with the government government got to be less influential within a society so what i really want to crusade for now is to have people recognize they
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are undervaluing government and that's a very important wars and that's the part i'm working on. [applause] >> you have a very interesting analysis of who has lost faith in government and why so few could say something about the economic issues that underlie it. >> there are some people who don't look at the government philosophically. we can't win them over. to some extent it's economic. if you are very wealthy you probably have some incentive not to want the government to get involved as you will have to disproportionately contribute. it started in her early 80s with the reagan democrats are the white working-class men working and middle-class men who don't have very high-end skills whose economic position had eroded. now the first response many
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people had was man thomas frank no relation talked about that great i thought that was valid with it there was a social issue. gods guns and gays. guns are still a problem for us. i wish they were but they are but it's clear. i don't know many democrats who have lost because they supported same-sex marriage. and religion has lost its grip. i think the fundamental problem we have is with those white working-class men and they have become anti-government precisely because they believe so deeply in government. from the end of world war ii through the mid-70s if you were a white guy and he didn't have to worry about race and you were willing to work you could get a very good job. you could go to the factory without a lot of skills and by the time you were early 50's to
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have a second home and he had that your kids to college and you have a decent retirement. then changes in the economic situation in the world in the country began to work to their disadvantage. people in that situation now found that they were at the bottom of the economic ladder. i trade policy is to be a liberal state. people like paul krugman and others, the way trade work guess it can enhance national wealth in a way that's distributed unfairly and can exacerbate some of that. i represented for 30 years southeastern massachusetts where there have had been a once thriving textile business. the tie i am wearing by the way, human made suit manufactured in the city of new bedford. [applause] it's made in new bedford and america by union people. so go and buy one if you need one.
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but what happened was this working-class people and whites saw themselves as the short end of the stick economically and they believe in government so for many of them is a problem because the government could have helped them and didn't. so exacerbate being it they inaccurately saw that's because the government only cares about black people, nine people. the prejudice came and not because people started out prejudice but they felt like we were doing this for them other people and not for them. we weren't doing much for anybody given the economic situation in economic situation and artillery to run the government. since ronald reagan began 35 years ago it had been four years since there is a democrat in the house and senate.
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when you have branches of government in the hands of -- it doesn't work very well. we were in a vicious cycle. there are people who think government should protect them. i don't see well put some of you are member. winchester cathedral you are letting me down. you didn't do nothing when my baby left town. you could've done something you didn't do nothing. that's the way these people think about the government. they believed they could have done something to alleviate their economic distress and didn't so they punished this government. gay is not an issue anymore. i think the alienation and anger of white workingmen who continue to read about things are going well. there is one issue and its controversial my plan to pursue it at one issue in addition to guns which is one that liberals
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have to cope with his environmental is in. there are times where there's a conflict between environmental issues and we have to put a hierarchy on some environmental issues that are more important than others. preservation is an aesthetic value and should not overwrite everything in the mix. i think our challenge is that we persuade white working-class and middle-class men that they do have a consistent government and we have to do it by showing how government can affect them. >> is that something the democratic party can do? the issue of income inequality is coming to the floor in the republican and democratic sides. what is the way for the democrats to seize that issue? >> some things are happening in the minimum wage is an example.
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it helps everybody. one of the things i think you are saying is a renewed democratic recognition they unions are an important piece of this and there is a direct causal, not just correlative relationship between the assault on unions and the erosion of equality. an example in this hasn't got enough attention. volkswagen tells its employees in tennessee that is prepared to support a union because they have had good relations with worker councils in germany. tennessee republicans led by robert corker has a mainstream conservative, not a tea party guide threatens volkswagen and the workers and people say to him what he upset about, the union and the company the company wants the union. they threatened the people at volkswagen that if they voted for union state money that was
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supposed to go to volkswagen for the expansion of the plan would be withdrawn. they extorted them into voting so the union lost by a small margin. people said what do you care and here was his answer. if volkswagen gets a union they will push up wages. for while unions don't help the wages they just take your money. corker said that the tennessee republicans behind them if they get a union it will push up wages and up wages go up at volkswagen it will cause of birth pressure on wages throughout tennessee and the wages go up through tennessee that would diminish our ability to award industry from other states. scott walker is pushing right to work laws because he said michigan has got one in indiana has one so one of the things we can do is to recognize unions. the president is talking about -- short-term and long-term. when you make it easier for
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people to go to community colleges and to get a higher education that's another way that you do it. infrastructure there isn't some progress in the construction trade that people out there banging and digging are going to be white men more than any other group so that's another factor. >> when you say when you give what senator corker gives us his argument about tennessee it seems so absurd. how can anyone who is a working person in tennessee agree with that argument? and vote for him? >> by the way we have these great liberal traditions from justice brandeis of the states and laboratories. the problem is you can't do good laboratory experiments when the subjects of the experiment can
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can -- to the laboratory lavatory be better fed. one of the most potent -- dwight eisenhower puts forward this interstate highway program to unite the nation to help business because they use these things. the current republican majority is not looking to raise the money needed to keep the highway system going and some of them say like lawrence could go on cnbc in the states want more highways let them do it create give them back some money. the problem is the concerts perfected a nice two-step. first you send things through this day. paul ryan's budget making medicated state block grant you send things back to the state and then in the state the conservatives say we can do this. we will be a competitive disadvantage with the other states don't. if you sent it back to the states you have this race to the bottom. one thing we can do is to say
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okay federalism in some areas work but when it comes to things that involve the expenditure of significant money forces purposes federalism state-by-state becomes a corrosive or of our values. >> medicare is what you would say is a legislative solution to that because i was struck when they can't you give of your for sharon congressman tip o'neill was the speaker bauserman reagan became president. you correct the misimpression and you say tip o'neill liked ronald reagan or thought well of him on a personal level. you also make the point that he did not feel tip o'neill did not feel it was possible through parliamentary tactics to work against the president's agenda because it would undermine our system of government. not only the political party but that the system. >> best an advantage.
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people ask what happened to bipartisanship? in the first place bipartisanship come sometimes -- many times i've said i'm a member of a minority group that is picked on ridiculed and undervalued. i am a partisan democrat and partisanship is essential to democratic government. the people who founded the institution did two things regarding parties that they denounce them and they form them them. hamilton and jefferson formed political parties. unique political parties representing a more general tendency. we have had two big parties in many western democracies either a single party or a collection of parties that recognizes you need a private sector but still thinks the government should be expanded and others to say you need some government that we want to expand the private sector in politics is the push. for the first time with the
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group in america that does not believe in the public sector and here's the advantage they have paid as a republican president yes we democrats have an incentive to give them grief for her -- for political reasons but we also sent them to cooperate. we have to help people. as you have seen with obama with the current republicans they have zero incentive to work with the president. they want to undermine him and find them at the government breaks down especially since paradoxically since we are seeing democrats correctly as the party people identify with government if they cause problems in the functioning of the government we can't complain. take bailouts. bailouts are very improper there. people think a lot are terrible. all the democrats will tell you they are always doing bailouts. there were five bailouts from 2008 into 2009. every single one was initiated by george w. bush. two of them he did all by himself. three week or operate with him
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on fannie freddie, the t.a.r.p. and they are those. people see what happened to bipartisanship? bush is president and in 2008 he it comes to harry reid and nancy pelosi to bury partisan and able people. he said the economy is going in into the tank. they said let's work one out. it would have been worse for government so they worked with him on that. a year later when obama asks obama did not ask for a stimulus because we had done focus groups. you know what a focus group is. together people who don't have firm opinions. the problem with that is very often people don't have firm opinions. if you look at the focus groups
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in october of an election-year only in the sighted people in october can be in a focus group. who is undecided between obama mccain or bush and gore or bush and kerry. maybe if you have three of this or for bad. anyway the focus groups reported that stimulus was a bad word. the negative connotations of that is why it was called the economic recovery act. my leadership decided recovery was a more attractive thing. i said that was a -- because of my experience most people would rather be stimulated than recovered. [laughter] they gave bush a stimulus. in 2008 bush since his top economic people bernanke to the democratic congress. seven weeks before the election. jim and i had a great weekend planned.
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we were just enjoying dating and i had to call him up and say instead of dinner and they harbored day anniversary you get to sit in the capital for the weekend while we haggle about the t.a.r.p. program. we did get to watch rahm emanuel burst out of the meeting carrying a sack full of blackberries like wyatt. as we were sitting in a meeting people inside the meeting were blackberry and out what went on in the press. we sat with george bush seven weeks before the election and decided it was in terrible shape and where to fix a going forward that we have no option now so we passed something called the t.a.r.p. which i believe will go down in history as the most unpopular successful thing we ever did trade democrats vote for tanenhaus more than republicans to the give barack
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obama -- when john mccain refuses to. then obama becomes president. in other words 2008 there was bipartisanship. we had some things he wanted to do but obama becomes president and that's the end of bipartisanship. the advantage the republicans have and they still have it now is they used to not care so much if the government were shut down. now a number of them it's a good thing. basically here's the deal. this is the story of king solomon and you have a faction that says cut it and see if i care. that's the problem. we have to be the ones that say you can't do that. >> obviously you are liberal but one of the things you talk about in the book and it seems to date back to your experience when in 1964 you were part of freedom summer in mississippi. i guess you were interviewed by
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someone purporting at the time. >> a great sociologist named william mccord. he was a sociologist. >> you said then, and i guess you are about 24 that you are not there to create a perfect world and that you believed, i mean in leading -- i am not here to build a perfect society, just to ensure that the gets us chance to live his life his own way. can you talk about in that quote the tactical accordance of remaining realistic. if he could say something about how that philosophy -- to. >> i don't think that was the term. what i saw and there was a slip of the way in the african-american movement. in 1964 people said we are making fun of him. if you remember the great play
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green pastures which is set in dialect of the time. there's a character in there called the log. the people used to call him mocking him as mr. high and mighty. there were differences both over strategy and tactics but also with delawd. this turned out to be the majority of black people and it's been replayed with a lgbt people. a lgbt people that were originally opposed to marriage as a goal, marriages that bush was institution that oppresses women. they were basically swept aside by the overwhelming majority but it was the same people -- the iraq people they said look we
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want to have the same rights as everybody else. there were others who said this oppressed group the tip of this beer in a society precisely because they have been excluded from the society they will understand we should rebuild it entirely differently and there will be new communities. the average citizen that i just want to be like everybody else whether they were black or people that deplored the fact that -- you have black separatists. they never had great support. separatism my experience came when people thought they weren't being treated equally and had no chance to. you have the same people -- same thing with people in the gay community. then there was this tactical and strategic difference. people said rosa parks never
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asked us in the middle of the bus. quite to the contrary. the first lawsuits brought by the legal defense fund were not even to challenge segregation but to say you say you are going to give a separate equal but it ain't equal. they brought lawsuits against the law schools in texas and the mama because they said they were going to allow black people in separate law schools may prove that they weren't separate trade so they did get them at minute but not on the ground that segregation was unconstitutional but that was being -- and he was constantly manipulating here and there. being realistic about your goals is important for a couple of reasons one of which is that if you are unrealistic if you'd keep telling people to do something they have no chance of succeeding in and you denigrate partial successes it's a waste of time.
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finally people in the lgbt movement understand it. >> what do you think moving into june and is decision from the supreme court on gay marriage another decision whatever that decision is what do you think the threat is given bad in congress you were never able to and it seems unlikely it would pass and in many states now there is this movement toward religious freedom. >> that's the problem. justice kennedy has written eloquently pro-a lgbt inequality in every case they came up in belmont. secondly when a lot of courts of appeals said the states under the jurisdiction had to allow marriages those states is the supreme court to stay the
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decision to suspend it, the supreme court said no. the supreme court was not sure it would have been irresponsible to allow them to go forward only to pull the rug out later on. i think it will be done. by the way among those that are hoping the supreme court does this are all but the fanatical republicans because they know an issue when they see it. it's become a wedge issue against them. if they come out against marriage they look like -- and if they don't go against it they lose the chop with itinerant primary. on nondiscrimination that is critical. to believe we have problem because the country too many people are uneasy about the transgender people. they have come out -- the next time you have a democratic house senate and president we won't passim inclusive nondiscrimination bill.
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it's not a constitution in the statutory way and not talking about institutions but in the individual being able to say nondiscrimination goes against my principles. first version they want to do that in arizona business has the right to ignore the state visible was the business community said are you crazy? people won't want to come here. we don't need this and that has been very helpful. beyond that what we had to do is say look there a lgbt people who'll be excluded. there are people who object to enter ration to marriage. under this law do muslims have a right to say that unveiled women may not come into their store? i think they would probably lose if you look at the principle and we passive than a woman who is
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not just the way muslim orthodoxy says she would would be kicked out. you think in the end we are going to win that fight. it's damaging economically in the business community does not want to get back and do that. the business community by the way the first breakthrough on nondiscrimination came because the most advanced sectors of the american economy said no we can't have that. so i'm not sure but i think we will be able to defeat this you can automatically invoke your -- not follow the law. >> before we go to questions from the audience i saw in describing your early life you talk about before you got into politics you were studying for a ph.d.. >> i still am. >> is that you got in unlimited
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extension for your your ph.d. and since your thesis was supposed to be on the legislative process -- >> than i would have to pass statistics. [laughter] there's a boston story here. i was working on a ph.d. soy took time off and i got involved in the campaign. i didn't know it. [inaudible] i went to work for him. he said i needed to to work for me. so they can do this, have to finish my thesis and he says is as they say in the book hey it's not easy to do than the boston political content. if you walk away don't complain to me. i said i have got to finish. here's the way it worked. he had neighbors named huntington. samuel p. huntington co-wrote several books with brzezinski.
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he said didn't the chairman -- the next thing i know huntington said there was a rule that they just instituted that if you take your ph.d. exams and i taken my general exams you have five years to finish her thesis. i talked to kevin and you are caught in this group so we will get an extension beyond the five years. that was in 1967. [laughter] >> we will call you dr. frank. >> sam huntington's brother-in-law, his wife's sister was married to one of our great broadcast journalists on public radio. >> thank you. barney frank will now take questions from the audience. [applause]
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>> i know two of my distinguished colleagues in government mark reid who has been such a fighter. [applause] and the man who would have been my representative 10 years ago tom allen is here who now represents the book publishers. [applause] >> of course is dependent on my ability to read people's handwriting so forgive me. mr. frank how do you bring the issue voter suppression to the consciousness of a large majority of american people? ..
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supporting the rights. but i have another problem. voter suppression. as vicious but but i do wish some of our friends on the left the start saying to people there is no.in voting. i have to say john stuart is very funny but i wish once in a while on that shows someone did something good. you can't count. some people they contribute to the lower turnout especially with younger people. the worse you think it is the more incentive you want to have to try and vote and change it. [applause] >> what you see in the book and what you said here with
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the murder inspired you to want to become a public servant. do you think that the issue, the name of michael brown, eric garner, matthew shepard -- >> let me say here i i think the case is different. it's much more complicated. indicted here in new york. killed the eye. apparently is doing that in missouri with no question. more complicated. complicated. if a result of the election in ferguson is that more black people take office that will have a message. i think so that too many
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union people have been somewhat ambivalent about this. scott walker's all out attack on collective bargaining. one of the great annoyances. the police departments have become right wing on the whole consistently vote for people that attack them in every way. stems some of the anger. i do hope we can get the impact of what is going on. >> this is a question that refers to your work in the finance world, dodd frank. a very interested in your book. you have two appendices that specifically deal with the
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history of subprime lending. >> we are in a situation where the economic model for lending changes. to make loans gather loans world bank and pay back the bank. they watch very carefully who they landed to. immediately sold and packaged and the lender did not care. the incentive to switch and that led to this crises. the republicans were in
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power, the democrats bought into this and did not regulate. mortgages were made and packaged into new financial derivatives. the main regular of dermain regular of derivatives is called the chronologies future trading commission. then financial commodities came in. during the time when these laws were being made the knew democrats gave them terrible loans and protected fannie mae and freddie mac. by 1994 democrats worried about those loans telling the federal reserve to regulate them. that is an interference in the market. we tried on several occasions the states passed
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laws to regulate predatory lending. the administration used federal power to preempt that. the state banks become national banks. in 2,004 democrats passed a bill to restrict subprime lending. when i became chairman in 2,007 i did not get a bill through the community. no lending to people who cannot pay you back. the "wall street journal" attacked me. why doesn't he want minority groups to have loans. 2,007. all before the crash.
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here is what he said i am aware of the loosening of mortgage credit terms for subprime borrowers increases financial risk and subsidized homeownership initiatives distort market outcomes. i believe that has now you have the power to regulate. the benefits of homeownership are worth the risk. protection of property rights so critical to a market economy requires a critical mass of owners to sustain political support. in other words then and people money so they will be conservatives and don't pay you back. the "wall street journal", most of these new homeowners are low income families not qualifying for a mortgage. ensuring far fewer of these loans are issued in the future. [laughter] [applause]
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the loans that they get caused the crash and they were panicked because the logical argument we needed regulation. we should have regulated these loans, derivatives selling credit default swaps , up and down the east coast. he listens to me talk about them. and securely named. aig issued them. it's a policy you so. if so. of the security does not pay off you have to make up the difference. they came to the federal government under bush in december of 2008 and 70 or 85 billion short of paying our debt and will go out of
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