issues than ever. it would be great if the new administration said i'm going to keep those structures in place and i'm going to find people who can populate them. this thing goes for the agency. a lot of agencies are at their peak in terms of sophistication. >> host: are faster, this disconnect between technology and law, has it affected the federal trade commission and the federal communications commission? >> guest: yes, ma although those agencies in particular understand i think deep within their deny the have to get good at this. and i have some experience with the agencies. i think they really have made strides, probably not as quickly as i would like but they both have made strides in recent years. both of them now have established chief technologists, and going back years and years, those two offices have been

populated by i think without exception just amazing people, sophisticated people. and so of long as they continue on that path they will be fine. they will be kind of keeping a steady state. the problem with agencies is always resources. in a perfect world we would double or triple the budgets we give for these purposes. and i don't think that is likely to happen with either of those two agencies, particularly within the new administration what have we had a period like this before where technology or industry of some type that of some type that we had of law? >> guest: sure. the rise of antitrust law was a direct result of the robber barons and the railroads. and antitrust law got anything to begin with the regulation of the airlines. the history of law in many senses is the history of trying to respond to the last great technological shift. one thing i talk to my students a lot about though is the

internet and digital technology, it's faster. i think everyone would agree with that but the question is is it the difference in degree or really isn't a difference in time? are we seeing some sharp elbow and the curve? that means this will not just be like the last times with encountered it might be something more fundamental and fast. the jury is out. most days i wake up and think there really is something distinctive and different about what's going on. of it is a wakeup. i might have a more of a historical view and i think other people have had that thought before and this, too, shall pass. >> you mention surveillance policy. i'm curious, this problem made worse by the fact we are seeing surveillance in some ways expand and the opportunistic let me expand, that's this week on december 1, rule 41 logo and effect which will allow the government to ask judges to

issue warrants for low searches of computers in any jurisdiction, not just their own jurisdiction. seen by some as an enormous expansion of surveillance powers. does this all, given the fact there's confusion and knowledge gap among some, does that make it more likely we might see abuses and we might see innocent people victimized by the way the government carries this country for the most part we've been talking a surveillance on the criminal side. a knowledge gap we've been talking about is so much worse on the national security side. so here you have a presumption of secrecy and recession of classification. and you have kind of rigid structures in the intelligence community to give a lot of deference to people on the ground. there are probably lots of good reasons to everything i just described. but what it means is very few people can often outside impact on what to do with the latest

technological advance. and so yes, i worry a lot about that. i think that it's very easy for the people, well-intentioned people, to say, to advance the latest coal from the government, we are going to really take advantage of the latest innovation. and we are really going to bend the law along the way to allow us to do that. and given the inherent lack of sunlight in these spaces, it might take the rest of us 10 years to figure out what's going on. this is kind of the story of the telephone metadata leaks. this is kind of start of a lot of the things we've learned about the nsa over the last 10 years. and so in many ways, i shudder a little bit to think about how surveillance law might expand partly because the techies rule the roost and the lawyers really don't know how to ask the right question. >> i guess what you're saying is it's not malicious the tent,

just like understanding how pervasive or how intrusive it might be. >> guest: that's right. we've had numerous filings from the lawyers who have gone to the secret fisa court and have said you nothing we told you in the brief last year, turns out we were wrong. we just misunderstood what our technologists were telling us. so here you have an example of a real failure to communicate that has ended up, resulted in surveillance programs that are a much more massive than they probably should have been. >> host: what can congress do policy wise in your view to make this more smooth? >> guest: right. i mean, where should we begin, right? there's of the electronic communications privacy act which relates to a lot of what we've been talking about. here you have a law created in 1986 which still is the foundational law that governs when the fbi can read your e-mail. nothing is in dire need of

updating. there has been bills and several consecutive congresses that would make some sensible fixes and changes. congress itself could get better on size. congress could create better offices to hire scientists to give them advice the way they do with the congressional research service at this time. that would be a wonderful benefit for them. the communications act probably needs updating. the copyright act probably needs updating. so it's just picked a direction and fire. there's probably something that could be fixed. >> host: paul ohm and dustin of reuters, this is "the communicators" on c-span. >> we will have more on the presidential campaign live at eight eastern on c-span3 with a look back at the presidential debate with two of the moderators martha raddatz and

chris wallace, along with the co-chairs of the commission on presidential debates. that starts live tonight on c-span3 at eight eastern. up next, gene sperling, former chief economic adviser for hillary clinton's presidential campaign, his remark support of "wall street journal" ceo forum. >> thank you very much. thank you, gene for joining us. >> thank you. >> playing cleanup, which given the events of a week ago has to be particularly after meaning for you tonight. but no, thank you for being with us. let's talk first to be good about this election. you were an adviser to the clinton campaign. you worked as john said, you are both in the bill clinton administration and their barack obama administration. you have been a very devise on economics, policy maker and

advisor on economics come advisor on this clinton campaign. you heard elizabeth warren no doubt today talk to us about some of the issues. i don't want to pressure for postmortem but what went wrong in this campaign? why am i not talking to you now as the next treasury secretary? >> i think there will be lots of the considerations about campaigns in strategy. i think we had an excellent person in hillary clinton. i think her misfortune and maybe our misfortune or progressives is we have someone who is perhaps extremely qualified, vast experienced at a moment in time where that was not wings to fly like a deep weight year i think my first campaign was the dukakis campaign in 88, and george herbert walker's

experience was very tough for us. it was like a positive thing, was hard to overcome. here i think it did make it harder for her to capture some of that anger and outrage that perhaps trump in bernie sanders were able to capture. but look, you know, -- >> because she been part of the incumbent administration? >> because she been there. she was first lady. she was senator from new york. she was secretary of state, and she had to a delicate message in the sense that those of us who really believe that barack obama helps every country from a great depression and deserves a lot of credit for how well things have gotten, and yet we are little bit like a football team that was goal in 16 and now we are 10 and six. is a lot of improvement the people want to go to the super bowl and it's not there. so she had to both kind of be a change candidat candidate and yt somewhasome ofthe off the suppof

this, you know, past president. so it was difficult but i will say that, you know, having been involved in all this i believe one should be very passionate about their values. to me i'm in policy because i believe we should have a country where every child, that the accident of your birth should not overwhelmingly determined the outcome of your life. and there is room for poor americans and immigrants and people to rise. and working families can work with dignity, raise their families with dignity, retire with dignity. those are values i hold dear but it together to have a lot of humility. >> one of the things on the line last tuesday is how disastrous the last features a bid for the democratic party across the country. you can measure it. they have lost half a dozen senate seats since 2008. they've lost about 25 house seats. republicans have astonishing

control of statehouse, governorships across the country. they are in an extraordinary strong position and now having the presidency. what's gone wrong from 2008 where you took everything and you seemed to be advancing across the country, and now you're in a worse position as the democratic party than you been in a generation? >> that goes to the humility that we won twice but there were problems. as i think elizabeth warren said earlier, yes, they won the electoral college and that is how you win the presidency and to get to govern, but they're going to have, they have a respectable public lost their there are conflicting sources. i guess what i really feel in my heart is about barack obama coming in to a terrible financial crisis was no doubt a mixed blessing that actually made it easier for a democrat to

win the presidency in 2008. but terrible financial crisis as i think others said, they are terrible in at least three ways that are very difficult. number one, the degree of pain and suffering in people who lost their dreams, their houses, their savings was terrible. secondly, when you have recoveries after great financial crisis, you don't get the pent-up demand to 1984 morning in america. you could people be leveraging and you get people the leveraging of the time when you gedid that robust growth so that you don't get legions of long-term unemployed people who never get back in. and then third, the remedies are almost inherently unpopular. you have to stabilize the 75% of the system which is larger financial institutions. you stabilize them to help the average person help of their savings.

but that person still sees you stabilizing the people who look like they are the culprit. and so you get yourself in a situation where you have to do what you have to do to save the economy, but it's not out of anybody's agenda for what's popular. >> save the economy but destroy the democratic party? >> no. i think when you inherit a financial crisis like that it does help you get reelected but it does make it harder to completely meet the expectations of people when you are overcoming the type of -- look, this wasn't an average recession. this was the worst recession and crisis since the great depression. you didn't bounce back as quick. look, we can talk about other things. i think people got kind of stimulus fatigue. if you want to know what was the chart we used to show barack obama that would drive massively crazy, we would say what would

growth be in the economy and unemployment if state and local spending had been the same under your presidency as it had been in the bush and reagan recoveries? it was devastating. look, private sector gdp has been 2.6 are sent. the reason why it is lower than 2% has been in touch at state and local levels. that showed a bit of the public tolerance for keynesian when they see you do a bit, and there are two ways to look at that. for us it was like no, you need to keep increasing demand can do more infrastructure, get people to work. >> productivity has been very, very poor in this recovery, one of the week as we that. private sector productivity this back at levels that hasn't been at 10, back to the 1970s. that's a reflection. i'm not -- >> right. >> it's not an economic

achievement of this administration. >> no, but i think there's a lot of mystery about productivity right now, whether it's accounted for right, the fact, whether gps clearly makes us more productive but does it come into the gdp factor so that therefore cannot be part of productivity. but i do think, i think a lot of us feel that there were still demand issues at a time you need to get things back there and to be fair barack obama to try those things. you can think they are bad policies but you can seek out to implement all of them. right now many progressives are united in that we need more full employment economies. you see a lot of us being more dovish than janet yellen, and would like to see more demand there and quite honestly i think that's more pervasive even in the business community now who were hoping that donald trump actually succeeds in what has been the democratic agenda of a

stronger, more significant infrastructure boost into the economy. >> why do we asked the audience questions. right here. >> i'm nick from snap on tools. look, you said about president clinton and about his focus on the middle class, promoting it. i would suggest that, i just last week, election week in algona iowa ineffective. from their perspective it's like this. if you look at the campaigns as the balance between priority among social issues versus economic issues. they clearly saw the democratic campaign as prioritizing social issues before their own economically-based issues, whereas they saw trump, the other side, whatever they thought of them come as prioritizing jobs and economic issues. despite the fact that karl rove, it's the middle class is to

become self like that it almost seemed like the democratic agenda departed from bill clinton. so going forward how do you see that playing out? do you see the democratic agenda going back to emphasize economic issues over social issues, or do you see them try to double down on the social issues? >> it's obviously, this whole week has been very painful, and it's painful to you say that because from our point of view, everything from her point of view, the economy was first. i don't think that that is, i don't think that was the aspiration of the campaign. but we will have to look at why that didn't breakthrough. maybe it is just the idiosyncratic nature of donald trump, kind of once of a lifetime personality who, you know, we worked for ever on a really ambitious college plan, and it came out the day he was

fighting with making kelly. we just couldn't get any coverage. that's what it was like. now, was that just kind of bad luck? was that our failure? i think, i guess i would say policy wise, i think there is no question that the focus was still the economy, stupid. the focus was on, and this is a little different from what david was saying but i think we were kind of focus on an economic plan, at plan that align tax incentives and investments in what would create jobs on our shores, what would be good for the middle class, and infrastructure plan. and people responded quite well. and even exit polls are very mix of who they thought had the better economic policy. but as i said you have to have humility and you can't sit there and say welcome we need to do a dnc. if we failed then we have to look at bat for going forward. but i don't think it reflects

that was a conscious desire to not have it be an economy, stupid, camping because i can tell you that was her aim. and if they didn't come through, that was more of a failure of execution tha that intent. >> any other questions? yes, right here. >> mark from hyatt hotels. the first of two major economic initiatives on the table our infrastructure and tax relief, or tax reform. first, what's your take on what's been indicated so far quick secondly what level of congressional support amongst democrats do think there will be for those two initiatives? >> well, i think that's to be seen. because they will try to do this as a reconciliation measure, which is to not to bore everybody, but is a process by

which used a budget resolution essentially only need 50 votes in the senate. and then obviously vice president pence into the tie-breaking vote. that creates the opportunity for donald trump and the republicans to pass a tax reform and perhaps infrastructure bill without any democrats. now, you know, reconciliation is a complicated term. that's a possibility. part of the question for them will be if you can do it, do you want to do that? and i think that if they want to pick up democrats, you know, they're going to have to move off division. this would have to be more focused on the tax package, on whether it is a draining, you

know, training our fiscal situation for tax relief that is going mostly to upper-income americans. they have this challenge even in the campaign which is on the republican side, there's a lot of pressure when they cut the corporate right, to cut that passed the rate at the same level. we all know that not everybody would be kind for that if every past it was the of a hardware store. but as we know, pastor income is every court -- every corporate partner, every manager. and for a lot of people that's going to be just a backdoor way of lowering taxes for the most well off. so i think we and people have come when people of both, both the white house, the house and the senate, they tend to look at it as their mom and they sometimes overreach a bit and they'll have to be careful. and i would say this to people

in terms of corporate tax reform. obviously, as part of president obama's theme we were engaged in that process. we do believe that our current process is irrational and that you want something that is simple, more fair and encourages more job creation. here it has your brilliant cfo spending more time helping you create new products as the posted international tax arbitration. we kind of agree with that. but i think that people will judge this a lot in the end as how of mind those benefits are with the kind of job creation and investment impact. and in 2004 when there was a repatriation holiday which lots of democrats voted for, and george bush signed, the analysis was fairly clear, almost unambiguous, that almost 90 plus% back of the money brought

back was used for dividends, stock buybacks, stock buybacks that will raise the compensation of executives, et cetera. and if people look at the end and they say they did tax reform and that led to this rise in tide and really helped workers, but it looks like boy, this was just something where they're able to do whatever they want because democrats didn't control anything, and this was just i guess what elizabeth warren called, to the elites, it will backfire. when you have the privilege of having no government, you know, again be interesting to see whether you run the table or you realize it might actually be in your long-term benefit to try to find more support from progressives. >> thanks for joining us, come on the way from california to do so. before i turned back to gary,

just a couple quick housekeeping notes i've been asked to remind you folks. anybody who decides to go to the sponsor dinner tonight the shuttle would believe it at 6:15 p.m. this is that the french ambassadors resident. there's a couple more seats left if some of you folks want to join. i will see you at the tokyo policy hotel. back to jerry. >> jeanne, thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] >> toughest job in the world is to be the quarterback of the losing team in the super bowl and having to go into the press conference straight afterwards. so jeanne is the cam newton of the democratic what a the 20. that concludes this "wall street journal" ceo council. thank you all again for coming. i want to say a particular thank you to our team who worked so hard to make this such a great event and make it go so smoothly, particularly as you can probably tell from the agenda we had to scramble pretty hard to in the course of the last week to make sure that we

had an appropriate relevant topical agenda for you to enjoy and i hope you enjoyed. thank you all indeed very much for coming. a reminder, the sessions and discussion will be published in a special report in "the wall street journal" next tuesday, november 22 of want to thank our sponsors, enterprise florida, nasdaq, and worked a. thank you much begin to you. it wouldn't be possible without your support. please do share your thoughts. we will be sending a short survey tomorrow morning. and just to elaborate a little more what johnson. as ceo council members are all invited to a number of events, all these events in the course of the next year, the ceo council lunch in demos. and with "wall street journal" editors, two of them in the next few months. one in menlo park, california, on march 28. one in chicago on may 16.

we will be holding our first annual ceo council meeting outside the u.s. may 16th at the palace hotel in tokyo with a very senior asian officials, ceos, experts and others. next year's annual meeting will be right back here next november. it won't be after such a momentous election but it will be just as interesting and we will have a year to digest these events to see what going on. we will be doing a lot of other events and you'll be hearing more about the. so once again, thank you very much for joining us. please join us outside now for cocktails. thank you. [applause] >> earlier today north carolina governor pat mccrory conceded defeat in the know from the election. the closest race in the state's history. here's a look at his youtube statement. >> as we get ready for the christmas holidays we are reminded of how fortunate we are to live in a free country. we are also thankful for all

those who served and protected our freedom, for those who continue to do so. being the governor of a stolen has been a privilege and an honor. that during this wonderful season it's also time to celebrate our democratic process and respect what i see to be the ultimate outcome of the closest north carolina governor's race in modern history. despite continued questions that should be answered regarding voting process, i personally believe that the majority of our citizens have spoken, and we now should do everything we can to support the 75th governor of north carolina, roy cooper. the mercury administration team will assist in every way to help the new administration make a smooth transition. while exhibiting the highest of ethical standards i am proud of our team leads the state in much better place than when we came into office.

out initiatives and teacher pay, environmental cleanup, budget surplus, transportation planning, paying off billions of dollars in debt, health care reform, tax reform, created 300,000 new jobs and food to connect the bonds we have made major new investment in our state parks, national guard and our universities and community college that will have a positive impact on future generations of north carolina. during my remaining weeks as governor this team will be focused on developing a financial plan to be approved in a special legislative slush and two of our citizens and communities impacted by hurricane matthew and by the current wildfires in the western region of our state. i ask all of us to please pray for our new governor roy cooper, our new president donald trump and their families. and i encourage everyone now more than ever to respect all of our public servants and offices

they are elected to hold. thank you for the honor to serve the great state of north carolina. >> live picture of the lobby of trump tower with the president-elect continues to meetings to fill out his cabinet. earlier today he announced dr. ben carson as his choice to head up the department of housing and urban development. you can watch disrupt the day on our website at c-span.org. earlier today vice president-elect mike pence spoke with reporters in the lobby of trump tower.

>> [inaudible conversations] we are excited to have dr. carson as our intended nominee for housing and urban development. we're looking forward to another very productive week in the transition that is sending a historic base. and i'll be spinning some time in new york this week, spending some time here at the trump tower but i think the american people are rightfully encouraged and impressed at the speed and decisiveness our president-elect is bringing to assembling a government that will make america great again. thank you all. [inaudible] >> the senate is coming in shortly working on a medical research built includes funding for national institutes of health, and vice president biden's cancer been shot initiative. a vote to advance the bill at 530 beauties turn and vice