aircraft a protection mechanism that would keep them safe while flying through a chemical biolod biological. we were going to deliver it directly to the pilot. and its delusion, so you're getting the right percentage of oxygen, would be metered by an alga rhythm on the system. all other aircraft took that oxygen into the cockpit where the regulator mixed it with cockpit air to the right percentage of oxygen. but if you were going to fly through chemical environment, it's likely that the cockpit air could be contaminated. so as a result, it delivers oxygen to the pilot under pressure. so that if there's a problem in the cockpit, it's always pushing out and never being brought into

the lungs. we had not flown aircraft in particularly high performance aircraft where the pilot is continually under pressurized x oxygen. and when you lay on more gs, you get even greater pressure and the pressure suit begins to inflate. so the physiological events that are occurring are as not as well understood or as well known. the report will say this that during that same period of time we reduced the emphasis and the number of people associated with aviation physiology, research, and science. so at the time we were entering a new environment for flying, we also took down those kinds of people. we went from 600,000 people in the air force down to 330. during that period of time,

those types of people went away. that needs to be reestablished. the center of excellence for aviation physiology and those sorts of things need to be reestablished because we're operating an aircraft with systems that perform differently than before and they may have some effect on the human's response and in the human's reaction. we're not aware of some of thos to it. >> those are the organizational types of recommendations and observations that general martin's board offered to the chief and the secretary that go beyond just findings about equipment. it's the world's most advanced aircraft and does air superiority unlike any other aircraft in the world. this is the leading edge of technology. if our nation needs a capability

to enter contested air space to deal with air forces that are trying to deny our forces the ability to maneuver without prejudice on the ground, it will be the f-22 that will take on that mission. it can do that right now without hesitation. >> i want to follow up though the question about the root cause. i am convinced there is a root cause. i want everyone to know those who operated in their families, we will not rest until we find that root cause. >> but in the meantime, are not pilots at risk if you cannot find the root cause? >> pilots are at risk every time we strap an airplane on. what we do is critical to our nation and we are in full belief

that the steps that are in place by the combat command, the recommendations that general martin's board has come up with have given us a very safe airplane while we work to ultimately determine what the root cause is. this airplane is safe and capable of flying. >> i want you to know. i grew up in the f-16. we entered a period where we had a significant number of fatalities. we would be flying against somebody skpels they would fly into a train. we didn't know why. we continue to fly the aircraft. it was through a series of tests, training, inspections, equipment changes, that we learned that the f-16 had such a capability that it could exceed the human. we fixed that. we continue to fly and be ready for missions. >> there's a couple other things here. first of all, the on board

oxygen generation system as it was originally designed and installed did not require any routine maintenance or schedule. it was a fly to warn or fly to fail system. we have routine inspections on the entire process from the on board generation system. we do swab tests for the entire life support system on a regular basis. so there are maintenance actions in place today that were not there before that can uncover leaks in the system. then you put on the pulse oximeter. you put in the head set. you're now giving the pilot indications that they did not have before about their physiology and their performance. so there's a whole bunch of things that mitigate the risk, but we're still deadly serious about finding the root cause so that engineering wise, we

eliminate that. will those other things that i mentioned stay on board? in some cases, yes. that will be an operational decision that they will make. >> and i understand the inherent risk for any flight combat missions. let me restate the question. are these pilots put at unnecessary risk since you haven't determined the cause? >> no. >> gentlemen, we have time for one more. >> you spent a lot of time talking about altitudes in this discussion. i want to get back to your -- what you found regarding the g forces and these incidents. why does there seem to be a kor canlation between these incidents and these g forces? the second part of that is, you mentioned the navy has been in discussion with this

investigation. have they experienced some of these same physiology call instances? >> first of all, with respect to the navy, yes, they have. and they have shared that information with us. their f-18 fleet has both the previous system known as liquid oxygen and on board oxygen generation systems. they have had these incidents in both types of aircraft. you can check with them. i think you'll find the numbers are fairly significant. they have put in place some mitigation strategies, which i think were very helpful for us to understand as we went through our study. now with respect to the gs and the occurrence of the incidents, i think it was my experience as we did our study that we had --

we observed that under high gs, the on board oxygen generation system might not produce as much oxygen as it would when it was not under g. but it was never below what we call the warning band. it was never in an area of concern. but it was a phenomenal we noticed and that's one of the tests ongoing now to determine why that occurs. it was unexplainable. it did not do that in the ground, but it does it in the air. so that one we're working. with respect to gs, several of the instances that have occurred occurred with no gs. not zero, but normal 1g flight. in other cases, it may have occurred. so we have seen it across the board. you don't have a correlation to gs and incidents.

>> it's like walking on a golf course and you see a ball sitting in the rough. you have to trace it back to the beginning of the swing of the golfer and every bit of flight in the way that gets it there. so it is easy to say here's where the symptoms occur and focus on that moment, but we have taken all the way back to where the gulf swing begins, which in this case is when the pilot walks out to the aircraft. he has this on. it's measuring his oxygen levels. this is recorded and analyzed. it's worn through the flight and every one of these is analyzed. and we have found that the oxygen levels are staying high in the pilot. this device, we're back to high school chemistry and the periodic table. we're looking at parts per billion. that's the analysis that we're getting to. part per billion, where osha measures things in parts per

million. so we're getting as detailed and as granular as we can with both the quantity and the quality issue. we haven't found the root cause, but what i'm committed to is we will not leave any stone unturned. we will use every form of study and discipline that is out there to get at this problem. that's what we continue to do today. >> thank you very much. >> one quick follow up question? president obama responds this afternoon to the house republican 2013 budget passed

last week. he's speaking at the annual meeting of news editors here in washington, d.c. live coverage at 12:30 eastern on c-span. voters are going to the polls today in wisconsin, maryland, and the district of columbia for the primaries and other election issues. mitt romney in wisconsin this morni morning. he's hosting a lunch inwalk shau. rick santorum is back in pennsylvania today watching the election results tonight. and 95 delegates at stake today. wisconsin with the most at 42. maryland with 37 delegates. you can see live coverage of all the primary results and candidate reaction starting at 7:00 on c-span. tonight here on c-span 3, it's american history tv prime time. each night while congress is on break this week and next. america, the university of oklahoma hosted a symposium with david mccullough.

the national journal hosted a discussion recently on the federal budget and deficit reduction on the upcoming panel former senate staff director steve bell endorsing an approach that would provide immediate stimulus. this is about a half hour. >> next we have our discussion with our panel of experts. joining us this morning, we have steve bell, senior director of economic policy, policy center, laura peterson, senior policy analyst, taxpayera pollack, senior policy analyst, the economic policy institute. our moderator for this morning's panel is jim tankersley, the economics correspondent for national journal. jim joined us from the tribune washington bureau where he covered energy, the environment and politics for newspapers, including the "los angeles times" and the "chicago tribune." he previously worked at "the toledo blade" and "the rocky

mountain news" and "the oregonian." mr. tankersley and a colleague at the blade won the 2007 livingston award for their business as usual series of stories revealing the true roots of ohio's economic decline. he was part of the coingate people that was a finalist for the pulitzer prize. jim? >> thank you so much. thank you all for sticking around. i'm a numbers nerd myself, and have been delighted with the amount of numbers so far this morning. but i want to start without numbers and start with some raw politics. we just heard a lot of theoretical discussion back and forth about how numbers and how we should do this for $5 trillion here, $4 trillion there. let's talk about what is going to happen, right. what does this look like a year from now, both from the lame duck and going forward. how much closer do you all think we will be toward actual fiscal health, towards balancing our budget, and most importantly, where will those

budget-balancing measures actually have come from. we'll start with you. >> history would tell us if you look at gramm-rudman-hollings, which was enacted 25 years ago was an amendment in order to get a debt ceiling passed, which should remind you of what happened last summer. history tells us it will take that kind of brinkmanship, frankly, to get something done. our estimate at the bipartisan policy center is that some time in late december or early january, treasury will announce that they have to resort to extraordinary measures because otherwise the debt ceiling would be breached. that and the expiration of the bush tax cuts and the implementation under current law of sequester, as mr. van hollen said, offers some possibility. but, you know, after 40 years of doing this, and being a doer scots, i have to say the odds

are they'll kick most of these grenades down until the bond vigilantes decide to exact some punishment. >> and do you agree with chairman ryan that the bond vigilantes are waiting for this election and once that's over, they'll pounce? >> it's not a secret. moody's has already told us that if nothing happens by january, they will downgrade sovereign debt. fitch has said the same thing. and john chambers of standard & poor's, who makes those decisions has said the same thing. so we have the three major ratings agencies in this country saying if you don't act, we're . and i believe them. >> the defense sequester. do we think it will happen? will it actually go through? or is it going to be shifted somehow? >> i'm not sure i would argue that the sequester as it is now envisioned will go through. i think there is enough consistencies within congress that don't want to see that,

that there will be some sort of alternative. but i do think the money is coming out of the defense department. they think $500 billion is going to have to come out one way or the other. i think both sides know it. i think the pentagon knows it. look at the books. you can kick stuff down the road for a while until, you know, you really kind of come up against the wall. and that's where they are right now. so i think there is going to be lots of machinations similar to what we saw earlier this year, strategy reviews. you know, there will be a lot of choreography to make sure that it looks -- that the pentagon looks like they're in control and that they're calling the shots and this is not being decided by the bean counters and that kind of thing. but i think whether it is through sequestration or whether or not it's through a budget, that eventually, you know, take some out here and there, that that money will come out eventually. >> quick diversion. is the pentagon in control? it would seem it would be much harder to cut this if the generals really didn't want to do it as the gentleman is

indicating. >> i think about what they think basically blasting their boss, the commander in chief. but i have no doubt that chairman ryan, like in chairmen before him have had plenty of discussion with generals who come to him and say i would like more money. i think that happens all the time. and i think generals go, you know, it's part of the process. they go to the hill and they talk to chairman and they say this is what we'd like, particularly for my service. and, you know, they always want more. they're not really in the business of cutting. they're in the business of saying this is what i want to do. so i'm not sure -- back to your question, which was, you know, i think that the pentagon -- a big part of the strategy review that we saw earlier this year was -- came out of negotiations that happened last year where

basically said we see this is coming down the pike, but we want to make the decisions. we just don't want congress or someone else handing us some kind of mandate. so i think they're going to maintain that argument, that they want -- they want the decisions about the cuts to originate with them. so they'll push for that. and i think that they will probably be -- under panetta and obama, that they may very well get it. but i just think it's unavoidable that there is going to be more than the $497 billion coming out of the defense budget. >> speaking of mandates, let's talk what sort of mandate comes out of this election. do you think particularly in terms of the expiring tax cuts and how they get dealt with. how do you foresee that going and -- because it can have huge ramifications both on deficit reduction, but also on growth. >> that's true. the irony here is if we do go based on current law and we

don't do anything, then the path we're headed on is actually for the budget, not necessarily a bad one. we do get to fiscal sustainability. not quite in the way a lot of members of congress or a lot of experts on the stage want to go. but at the same time, like we should recognize that this really is kind of -- these are choices that we're making that we do have a path that is laid out for us. we can choose a different path. but at the same time, the one path that we shouldn't take is basically just ignore all of that and continue down the same kind of current policy path that we're headed. in terms of getting some sort of mandate, i think it really depends on who wins. mitt romney right now is running on a platform that actually increases the deficit substantially. so if he wins, it's going to be difficult for him to then implement deficit reduction, because that means that he is going to have to be breaking a lot of his campaign promises. >> just to push you on that, you think that his priority would be

to do the tax cuts that he is calling for, which would be deficit-inducing instead of doing the deficit reduction that he is sort of in general calling for in terms of reducing the debt? >> i don't know what his priorities will be. but what i do know is if you look at the overall plan, the spending cuts that are in his proposal, and thiss including, you know, the 20% cap or the balanced budget amount, which really aren't actual spending cuts. that's just a procedural mechanism. but the actual spending cuts are there in no way add up to the lost revenue that he has. if you're just scoring on what you can score, it actually results in a net increase in the deficit. so my worry would be that then he will have a difficult time adhering to his campaign promises. now for example, defense. he has said that defense should be at 4% of gdp for the foreseeable future. well, if you look at the ryan plan, ryan's plan brings down,

if you take out social security, you take out health programs, then everything else goes down by 2050 to about i think it's about 3.75% of gdp, okay. that includes defense. so if defense is at 4%, that means everything else is eliminated. that's everything else including our entire regulatory structure, all public investments, transportation and research and development and education. that includes actually ironically, funding for congress. and the president. >> maybe not ironic. >> it gets a very weird existential debate at that point. >> first off, congratulations on breaking the numbers seal for all of us here. so let's dive into some other types of numbers, which is polling numbers, right. the public has very differing ideas on what they like. we would all like to see lower taxes. we would all like to see higher taxes on the rich. we would like to see a strong defense, but we would like to wind down the wars, and by the way, don't touch my entitlements.

how do we -- that does not suggest a path that absolutely fits for deficit reduction, or does it? >> it doesn't to me. i think the word that i would leave everyone have in their minds is cognitive dissonance. if you take a look at the american public that. >> want what they want, but they don't want to pay for it. >> like my 5-year-old, actually. >> it sounds like my 65-year-old who is a member of the tea party in south carolina. when i talk to him about such things as medicare changes and things like that, all of the sudden he is not a tea party member anymore and says i've earned that. so there is this cognitive dissonance. it's reflected perfectly. you saw what happened to cooper latourette. got a grand total of 38 votes, 16 republicans and 22 democrats. they're very courageous people

because it was only a message vote. an important message, but the fact that it was defeated so resoundingly i think reflects the fact that the american people haven't made most of these decisions. and there is so much junk, information going around. the numbers, which everyone gets bored by, are just thrown around without much regard for their truth actually. and so i don't think the american people have made this decision. until they make this decision, until palpable pain hits the average family in the midwest of this country, i think you'll see -- you'll see members of the congress behave accordingly. they're not going to break that mold. >> do you think we'll see public pressure on defense one way or the other? or will we continue to see it mostly coming from the pentagon, from contractors? where does that pressure happen? >> well, the polls that -- the public polling on defense

spending has shown a real sort of gap in answers depending how it's framed. framing is everything when it comes to defense. if it's an immediate threat, if it's something that you really think compromises your safety, then it's like money is no object. spend what you need. when it becomes -- when it's placed in terms of, you know, large government-heavy projects that have negligible benefits to our immediate safety versus and you kind of give them the choice. so you're not making the decision in a vacuum, then people actually frequently choose to decrease defense spending. so it shows there needs to be a lot of education. and i think of the public. but i think this is why you see both parties engaging in this rhetoric. and it's tough.

because if you are -- if you're really pushing the sort of panic button rhetoric, it's easier for that to get through than this sort of more measure like look, there is a lot of waste in the pentagon there is other stuff we could be doing with this money. your average american citizen isn't -- the pentagon is an enormous, enormous bureaucracy. it's bigger than most governments, you know, around the world. it's bigger than -- it employs s it's bigger than -- it employs s more people than walmart, the largest corporation. and people don't get it. i barely get it. and it's just very hard i think for people, to your average member of the public to really wrap their mind around what isn't a threat to me and what is bureaucracy. >> and how does that wrapping your mind around change if we're, say, going to war with iran? >> right. so that -- so that is, you know, that's an immediate sort of headline threat.

that of course feeds anxiety about immediate danger here at home. so that kind of thing does change. people's support for higher defense spending can wax and wane, depending on what is in the headlines. definitely. of course, now we're facing a big burnout about iraq and afghanistan. i'm not sure we can depend on want public to give us a clear answer about this. if they can depend on them to give us a clear answer about anything because i think it's so dependent, it's such a wide spectrum. it's such a big question. it's very dependent on framing. >> right. speaking of framing -- you are so -- i appreciate everyone for leading right into these next questions. ethan, one of the things, probably the only thing i remember vividly from high school economics is guns versus butter. the idea of do we spend our limited resources on defense or do we spend them on programs to help people in the country. it seems to me that the sort of

choices laid out in chairman ryan's budget or ranking member van hollen's budget are in fact guns versus butter sort of choices. do you think that those are the choices america should be debating right now, bigger military versus bigger social programs? and do you think we'll actually get a referendum on that in this presidential campaign? >> well, i think that -- i don't want to get too much into this kind of trade-offs thing. to a large extent, that's definitely true. and you can see particularly from the ryan budget as one of the members of the audience pointed out -- two members of the audience i think pointed out that there is this trade-off where you're getting the large tax cuts that disproportionately go towards higher income americans, and then you're also getting huge massive cuts to the social safety net that primarily go to disadvantaged americans. so there is obviously an inherent trade-off there. but at the same time, i don't think that we should -- there is a certain segment of people i

think in the beltway that feel like something is only really good deficitic as long as there are some losers that are identifiable. if there are no losers identifiable, then it must kind of be a, you know, a setup. it must not actually be true there is a huge amount of skepticism. but there are actually things. i don't want to call them free lunches, but certain things that actually don't hurt, and actually can kind of benefit everyone. brad delong from berkeley and larry summers who everyone knows released a paper recently looking at stimulus and found that actually when you do job creation in the short-term through fiscal stimulus, you're actually increasing long-run economic growth because there are certain aspects of the recession that actually create long-run drag on economic growth. and, you know, there are a couple of things, a couple of ways that it does that. one is that it decreases private -- recessions decrease private investment. another increases poverty levels.

and poverty is one of the things that is notoriously difficult to come out of, the poverty cycle. it can delay or make people forgo education, investments in education for themselves to go to college because instead they need to work to provide for parents who are now out of work. instead people go straight from high school to straight into the job market without investing in themselves. so for a variety of reasons, we see that recessions actually have long-run scarring effects. and doing something now can actually forgo a lot of the scarring effects. you're actually getting the benefits now. you were talking about public polling. the public is unified the number one priority should be jobs. even a lot of organizations like the bipartisan policy center still agrees in the short-term we need to do some job creation and then deficit reduction in the long run. but the job creation in the short-run isn't just a sugar high. that's something that benefits us for ther