that for every $10 increase in the price of gas, the economy will expand about .2 percentage points slower this year. and that's obviously, you know, if you get 20, or 30, or 40, or $50 increase in the price of gas which we've seen in past years, that could be a significant hit to growth. but the current level of oil prices is not in and of itself going to be enough to derail the economy. >> i'm going to ask you about some of your twitter feeds. but for those who want to follow you, where can they find you? >> bcapplebaum. >> mr. bernanke, would you tell me whether you do your own shopping at the grocery store? why did congressman paul ask that? >> well, congressman paul is pointing out that the price of food has been increasing quickly in recent years.

food prices fluctuate quite a bit and down. same reason that they don't include gas prices in that measure. but what mr. paul is basically noting is that for all you americans buying food, buying gas, living their daily lives, inflation can feel more in force than the numbers show. actually much more of a problem than he's acknowledged. >> thank you, benjamin. his work is available online at nytimes.com. for the first time in seve months, the president is sitting down with a bipartisan session. this is the firsteting since last summer's debt consolidation. that meant senate republican

lead leader the house speaker john boehner that left out the house. you may note that last summer, the president and the republican leader of the house encounter during the debt ceiling talks. eric canter repeatedly interrupted the president during the end of the meeting.canter s president walked out but they have been working on a number of legislative jobs packages. the jobs issue, the economy and gas prices among the issue that is came up at the session. and following their lunch, the speaker of the house and the senate republican leader back on capitol hill meeting with reporters. >> good afternoon, everyone. we had a positive lunch at the white house today. and i think we discussed a number of areas where i believe there's common ground between the two political parties. particularly on jobs and on energy. and i'd like to think that some of the bipartisan bills that we've moved through the house

will take -- will be taken up soon by democrats over in the senate. you know, during the state of the union address, the president said that he was for an all-of-the-above national energy policy. half republicans have been for a national all-of-the-above national energy policy for about five years. and it's the same approach that his jobs council in their annual report supported it as well. and so we offered to work with the president on some of those bipartisan bills, again, that have been passed in the house. the president believed that there were some areas where we could find common ground, and, frankly, i was encouraged by that. we also discussed the jobs act. the package of bipartisan bills that was introduced yesterday, the president was very optimistic about moving that bill through the house. and so be it. frankly, it was a very good lunch and i'm encouraged by the

attitude and the tone that we had during the meeting. >> yeah, i share the speaker's view that the lunch was productive. i think all of you know the bottleneck to accomplishing things on a bipartisan basis has actually been the united states senate. the house of representatives has passed, as the speaker indicated, a number of proposals on a bipartisan basis. many of them supported by the president of the united states have not been acted upon by the senate. so i hope that the majority leader is responsible, obviously, for deciding which bills we turn to. we'll turn to bill that is could actually pass and be signed into law, the house has passed a number of those bills. as i indicated, the president's indicated he's for them. the bottleneck has been the senate. i think we ought to pass these bills and get them down to the president for his signature as soon as we possibly can. >> a couple questions.

>> can you say what can we do specifically here in this timely fashion to address the gas prices? >> we talked about a number of energy policies. we talked about those bills that have come out of the house. the president thought that on some of those, we could find some common ground. i did press the president on the keystone pipeline. the president said, well, you're going to get part of it. i just wish we were getting the part that would actually deliver the oil out of canada and out of north dakota. >> the part of the keystone pipeline we're getting, the president has nothing to do with. it doesn't require his approval to build a pipeline from oklahoma down to the gulf. we hope he will reconsider. the unions that are going to build that pipeline are aggressively in favor of moving ahead. we know the thing was studied for four years already. we know that nebraska issues have been solved. there's really no reason not to create those jobs now, rather than after the president's election.

>> commissioner mcconnel, the republican leader was joined by speaker of the house john boehner. it was a private session. this lunch initiated by the president to sit down with a bipartisan congressional leader. karen bohan, who covers the white house for writer's news with questions to press secretary jay carney. >> jay, can you talk about the timing of the meeting with congressional leaders why this came about now? and, also, although both sides are up, isn't it kind of a sign of the partisanship and the fighting between the two parties that there has not been a meeting of this kind since july? >> well, i say two things about that. one is that there has certainly been communication between the president and the leaders of the house and the senate in the last -- in the time since they last sat down together.

i think last summer and spring were notable for the high number of hours that the leaders spent together with the president as they tried to work out -- avoid overt to government shut down in the spring and work out an agreement on deficit and debt reduction in the summer. as for this meeting, it was an opportunity as the president saw it to meet with the leadership at the beginning of this year. it was useful to do it after congress acted on the president's highest priority for the beginning of the year which was ensuring that the payroll tax cut was extended so that 160 millions didn't see their taxes go up tomorrow. and having done that, it was an opportunity for the president to meet with republican and democratic leaders to talk about other areas where we can cooperate and work together to help grow the economy, enhance

job creation and in general help pursue the americans' agenda. i think that is a good way of looking at the timing of this particular meeting. >> in your answer to energy policy, it's clear that you and the republicans are still very far apart on that issue in particular. so what specifically leads to this optimism? is there anything on energy policy other than both agreeing that it's a problem? >> well, again, there's keystone. and sort of the political posturing around that. but then there is certainly -- there are certainly other areas in -- within the realm of what the president describes is his all-of-the-above approach to energy policy where there should be opportunities for agreement. in enhancing america's energy

security and energy independence. the president will continue to pursue his approach, but he will certainly he welcomes the opportunity to look at other people's ideas and if they -- if they make sense, then he'll certainly, gladly work together in a bipartisan way to get them done. so i wouldn't -- i think that the constructive nature of the meeting today, you know, encompasses an array of issues, not just energy. but certainly energy was discussed. >> jay carney, the white house press secretary reacting to questions today on the lunch that took place at the white house with president obama, vice president biden and a bipartisan list of congressional leaders. well, for this next story, some background in usa today reporting that divia and sharma had just ordered appetizers on

the costa concordia when the crew's ship lurched, plunging diners into darkness. the massachusetts couple celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary climbed six flights of stairs to their room despite a lack of emergency training. sharma knew that life jackets were in their closet because she had placed her husband's jacket in the closet. but she says crew mates would not say why the ship was listing badly to port just off the italian coast. the problem was expanded when the electrical malfunction took place. the couple would later learn that the ship had struck rocks that gashed a 165 foot hole on the side of the ship. today, on capitol hill, a congressional hearing focusing on what happened and lessons for the u.s. cruise line industry. >> at about 9:15, we were at our

dinner table and we had just ordered our appetizers. at that moment, there was a violent shaking of the ship followed by loud crash noises as the plates and the glasses broke due to the listing of the ship towards the star board side. lights went out immediately, but there was no announcement as to what happened. it was pitch dark with no visibility. everyone nearby started to scream and a few minutes into the ordeal, the emergency lights came on and we observed that the ship was listing on the port side. this is when the first announcement came on telling us it was nothing but an electrical failure and everything is under control. crew members urged the passengers to remain calm and seated. the staff started to bring out people's food as if nothing bad had happened. while the ship is still tilted, we saw a few crew members in our dining room break down, crying and extremely panicked. when we glanced outside, we saw around 5-7 crew members wearing life jackets, but, still,

announcements continued telling us to remain calm and seated and the electrical issue is being worked on and everything is under control. around 10:00 p.m., about 30 minutes into the situation, we are still in our dining room when my husband decide does d i time for us to go and at least get our life jackets in the room. at this time, if we don't go back to our room, we don't know where else to get our life jackets from. we have no knowledge from where we can get the life jackets otherwise. i had spotted the life jackets in the closets of the room since i was unpacking and putting our you can our luggage away. as we went out of the dining room, we were highly unbalanced because of the tilt. it was extremely hard for us to walk and maintain our balance. once outside, we were immediately unable to locate the stairs as we had taken the elevators to get on deck three. there were dim emergency lights indicated the stairs and we

climbed six floors to our deck to our room on deck nine to get to our room without guiding us in the dark. somehow, we did manage to get to our room holding the guardrails, very much exhausted and now panicked. as we were getting to our room, there were constant announcements of the same message. ladies and gentlemen, everything is under control at this point and it seems to be a generator failure. please stay calm and wait for further instructions and be cooperative. what caught our attention was that all of the announcements were made on behalf of the captain and never once did we hear the captain speak. however, there was a sense of panic in the announcer's voice that kept making the announcement. finally, we did manage to get our door unlocked using our card key after several failed atte t attempts. the room had no light and it was extremely dark. i stumbled upon a few things that had fallen on the floor. at that time, my husband decided to stand in the middle of the door to keep it open and pushing the furniture back to make some room to get our life jackets.

the ship felt a little more t t tilted and the room's furniture shifted more significantly. i knew where the life jackets were because i had just unpacked the luggage. once we got the life jackets, we immediately got out of the room and spotted our state room attendant nearby. i, at that moment, asked the room attendant where are we supposed to go? and she replied in a very irritated tone saying madame, at this point, there is no emergency. you do not need to go anywhere. please stay here and wait for more instructions and wait for the emergency alarm to sound as we had no idea what it would sound like. as she started walking away, we asked her in an emergency, where are we supposed to meet? she reported that we should go to deck four. at this point, we were still unaware of what was the root cause of this ordeal. and the same announcement kept on repeating telling the passengers to remain calm and

the electrical issue was under control. we saw the crew members amongst us running around, panicked, frustrated and clueless. no one seem today have any clear idea as to what they had to do in this situation or where they were supposed to send us. people seemed to direct themselves onto deck 4 and stood near any available lifeboat. as we were making our way to the deck 4, where the muster stations were, we located and saw a lot of people just sitting outside of their rooms waiting. people were sitting on the stairs closer to deck 4, but we went ahead and stood closer to a lifeboat. at this point, there were three or four crew members per lifeboat and they were trying to keep the crowd away from the boats. still, there's no communication from their side as to when they would allow us to get on the lifeboat or what we were supposed to do. the time, by now, is around 10:30 p.m. and one of the crew members came and practically gave us the same instructions at this time urging all of us to go back to our rooms and wait for further instructions and

everything is under control. >> divya sharma, cost costa concordia, accident survivor. >> we're joined on the phone by keith lang. he is following the story for the hill newspaper. his work available on line at thehill.com. thanks very much for being with us. >> thanks for having me. >> of course, this hearing coming off the heals of the accident on the costa concordia. what about the industry? any safety concerns at all? >> there were a lot of assura e assurances given in today's hearing from both the industry and from lawmakers that the u.s. cruise industry was safe. that everyone wanted to express that the costa concordia was an italian ship and that the u.s. has a clean safety record. >> i know there's a lot of testimony including those who were on board that italian ship. >> there was a couple who testified today who said that

they were celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary on the ship and they just described their experience. they said they were sitting down to dinner at about 9:15 when the ship hit the reef. they just -- lights went out and they described a violent shaking of the ship. just a very graphic description of that day. and that really stood out. >> what about the procedures that cruise lines need to take into account when passengers get on the boat preparing them for any potential disaster and also the emergency drill that is by all accounts are required mandatory along on most cruise ships. >> well, congress passed legislation dealing with cruise ship safety in 2010 and it was signed by the president. but that dealt mostly with passenger behavior. they wanted to have streamlined the process for crimes to be investigated and reported while ships were at sea. there's been an effort to require that emergency preparation training be given to passengers before the ship leaves. right now, there is -- there's a

limit that instructions can be given after the ship has set sail. so they're kind of looking at the legislation and examining whether there needs to be more done legislatively to address the issues. the coast guard has said that they teal pretty secure about the precautions that are taken now on u.s. ships. >> with so many other industries, the cruise line industry does have a lobbyist that represents them. what questions came up to christine duffy, who is the president of the cruise line association? >> well, she thought to stress that the industry overall was safe. she mentioned that since 2002, there have been only 28 fatal y fatalities on cruise ships, which is about the number that were involved in this accident in italy. and she said that even one is

too many for this industry. safety is their number one priority. it's essential to their business because if people don't feel that cruises are safe, they're not going to take them. >> so what was the overall tone of today's hearing? what did you take away from it? >> the tone was not -- not confrontational at all. it was really kind of -- everyone seemed to blame unique set of circumstances in italy and the italian crash. rip young from alaska said that this is a good ship, there's nothing wrong with the ship, the problem is we have a captain who forgot he was a captain. so, yeah, the take away was that no one was blaming the entire industry. they were blaming the fact that there was a play at that particular accident. >> i was just going to follow up and ask you whether there will be any legislative action, whether congress is going to take this up in any other form beyond today's hearing? >> the senate is actually holding a similar hearing tomorrow. we haven't seen any legislation

emerge, but the sponsor of that cruise ship act of last year has said that if he feels there's the need for anymore consideration, he'll considering offering some. >> the headline from thehill.com at today's hearing following the italian crash that resulted in more than 20 deaths. the reporting of keith lang available on line at thehill.com. thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> you're listening to washington today on c-span radio. some other news today on wall street, the dow fell at 53. nasdaq was down 19, s&p was down six. legislation to repeal the health care laws cost control board, also known as the ipab, which stands for the independent payment advisory board, legislation repealing that went through a house committee today. the energy and commerce health subcommittee voting 17-5 to repeal this part of the health care law. no amendments attached.

the ranking member, frank palone, democrat from new jersey and democrat from new york crossing the aisle to vote for repeal with the republicans. both in the committee and on the house floor not yet scheduled, but are expected to happen by the end of the month and next month in conjunction with the supreme court hearing oral arguments in the health care law. evangelist franklin graham has apologized to president obama for questioning his christian faith. graham saying the statement i regret any comments i have ever made which may have cast any doubt on the personal faith of our president, mr. obama. graham is the son of billy graham. he also said i apologize to him, referring to the president, and to any i have offended for not better articulating my reason, for not supporting him in this election for his faith. it has nothing to do with my consideration of him as a candidate. religion news service which broke the story noted that more than a dozen members of a religious subgroup of the naacp

had accused franklin graham of bearing false wittens and racial discord. the number of american mosques has increased dramatically in the last decade. according to a new study, researchers found that the national count was 2,106 islamic centers compared to just 1,209 back in the year 2000. and under a thousand back in 1994. the rela the report was released today. the title is "american mosque." it's a survey that interviews with about 500 mosque leaders. former senator bob kerry, democrat from nebraska has made it official, something we've been hearing about is going to seat the democratic nomination for the nebraska seat that is being vacated by senator ben nelson, democrat, as well. kerry was also a presidential

candidate back in 1992. and he was also a former nebraska governor. and, finally, the smithsonian institution plans a four-day festival with nasa to offer the space shuttle discovery. national space museum announcing plans for more than 25 special exhibits, programs and activities to highlight the history of the space shuttle program and the future of space exploration. discovery is scheduled to leave kennedy space center in florida on the back of a jet on april 17th, fly over parts of the washington area. the smithsonian is planning spot the shuttle gathering at various locations. the formal ceremony planned for april 19th at the museum's center next to dulles airport where it's going to be displayed. back in a minute with more washington today. >> get regular updates about what's on c-span radio with twitter. quick information about hearings, speeches and debates

from capitol hill, the administration and the campaign trail, including which events are live. and links to help you listen. go to twitter.com/cspanradio and click follow. there are also twitter feeds for cspan television, book tv, american history tv, road to the white house and washington journal. >> the headline from the new york times, north korea agrees to curb nuclear works. in exchange, the u.s. is offering aid. the story broke this morning. here's some of the details courtesy of the new york times web site. north korea announcing that it would suspend a nuclear weapon's test and uranium enrichment as well as allowing international inspectors to monitor activities at its main nuclear complex. this is a step that raised the possibility of ending a diplomatic impasse that has allowed north korea's nuclear program to continue with no international oversight for years. the white house calling the

steps important if limited. they none the less signal that the country's new leader is at least willing to engage with the united states which, in exchange, the u.s. is pledging to exchange tons of food aid to help this isolated, impoverished nation. well, the issue came up in statements earlier in the day. but on capitol hill, secretary of state hillary clinton testifying before the house for an affairs committee on her budget getting questions on this developing story from a republican from california. >> this morning, it was announced that north korea has agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment into a moratorium. but that was announced in tandem with the obama administration's finalizing this details on food aid to north korea. 240,000 metric tons of food aid. i had legislation passed last year that prohibited food aid to any country that diverted it for

unauthorized use. and i'll just explain my concern here. the french ngos told us of monitoring the food aid which ended up on the food exchange in north korea's capitol. and, likewise, we have numerous examples of siting of how food aid went to the military in north korea. so the law now would indicate that we'd have to verify that and we have been duped a number of times by north korea on these agreements, of course, what i'm most concerned about is when they sell it on the food exchange for hard currency. it goes into their weapons program, reportedly. so i would ask you about that and get your response. >> well, first of all, i think you're right to be cautious. we are, too. you know, the provision of humanitarian assistance is something that we do because of the concern we have for the welfare and well being of people, including those who are starving in north korea.

and we've done a series of assessments and concluded that a targeted 240,000 metric ton nutritional assistance package that targets the key vulnerable groups, mostly women and children, is merited. but before any assistance program could begin, we have to reach agreement on monitoring mechanisms to ensure that the food is reaching the people that we intend it for. and that will, you know, that will be our responsibility to try to set up those mechanisms and to, you know, be as sure as we can be that it's going to be put to the right use. >> thank you, madame secretary. and within the confines of the new law. because we do have to verify this. i have suggested a crack down on north korea's illicit activities. i've seen it in the past where that was effective, where they were counterfitting hundred dollar bills. we had sanctions on the bank,

bank of delta asia, they were using that to run their elicit activities through. a lot of their drug smuggling and cigarettes and other activities, when you cut off that kind of currency, you force the regime to come to the table. and i guess one of my great frustrations was, although we shut that down for a number of months, and he couldn't pay his generals and the words we were getting back from defectors was that they couldn't get the parts. there was a piece for a satellite that they needed or actually this was for a missile program. they needed a gyroscope. they were trying to buy it on the black market. they didn't have the money for it because we have effectively with sanctions done this and then the sanctions were lifted. my hope would be that the administration would approach this from the standpoint that that could be effective. and i wanted to ask about -- >> thank you, mr. royce.

>> whether the administration was going to follow through on the elicit activities. >> thank you, mr. royce, thank you, madame secretary. >> the congressman was asking questions to secretary of state hillary clinton as she testified abnorth korea's nuclear program. and again, the headline today in washington in which the u.s. will provide food assistance to the people of north korea in exchange for north korea's agreement to allow monitors inside north korea also scaling back its nuclear program. this is washington today on c-span radio. well, construction funding or maybe more specifically, the lack of it, is a major concern in the department of veteran's affairs and its proposed 2013 budget which includes an overall 10 10.5% increase in construction projects. the budget process in constron