decline in participation that we've seen in the last few years does represent factors. much of it is young people, for example, who presumably are not out of the labor force indefinitely. but given the weak job market they're going to school or doing something else rather than working. so one possibility and one reason why the unemployment rate may not fall as quickly going forward is as the economy strengthens, the labor market strengthens, many folks come back in the labor market looking for work, which would be a good thing. but we'll just have to see. but i do think -- i think i would agree with the argument that a significant part of the decline over and above the downward trend in the participation rate is reflecting other factor and should reverse when the economy gets stronger.

>> from the l.a. times. can you give us your assessment of the impact of the mild winter weather on job growth and what that might mean going forward, and related to that, i think you said last month that some of the recent job gains reflected a catch-up from outside cuts right after the recession. given those two things, what kind of job growth can we expect? >> well, the weather issue just reflects how difficult it can be to make realtime assessments for the state of the economy. it probably brought forward the hiring so it made perhaps january and february artificially strong and march, perhaps, artificially weak.

it probably affected construction. manufacturing, there's a number of things that were probably affected to some extent by the unusually warm weather that we had this winter. and we're doing the best to try to adjust for that. we're also looking at the seasonality issues that have araisin because of the unusually large recession in 2008 and 2009. so again, that makes the data harder to interpret. i advance the hypothesis that the increase in employment we've seen the last five, six months, might to some extent be greater than we expect going forward because it represented at one time catch up, undoing the very sharp layoffs in 2008 and 2009. that's only a hypothesis. we'll have to see going forward.

if it's correct, then job gains wi will be somewhat less than $250,000 month that we've seen recently. but we don't know yet. and i wouldn't draw too much conclusion from the march report. because of weather and other factors, we really can't take a conclusive result from that. so we'll continue to watch the labor market. that's an important consideration. if unemployment looks like it's no longer making progress, it will be important consideration in thinking about policy options. >> with the unemployment projections that you've made. >> well, we need something -- estimates differ. we need fewer jobs monthly to keep unemployment consistent or stable. then in the past, more like 100,000 a month for stability.

but that's a very rough estimate. and of course, individual participants may have different views. again, that's not a forecast. i've made a hypothesis, which would apply slower improvement in unemployment. the possibility exists that this recovery will generate a virtuous circle with the greater hiring which is more consumer spending and greater hiring and so on. whatever remains to be seen. and which way that goes is going to be very important determinant of our response. >> mr. chairman, thank you for the time. first up, sir, on the projections in your bid for transparency from our openness here at the fed, would you consider in the future, you and your colleagues, actually attaching your name to the projections here so that, again,

markets, folks out in the -- watching your actions, get a better sense of what you're thinking in the future, what your colleagues are thinking. and separately, sir, as you consider where you are at this moment, all you've been through with the financial crisis, the recovery, what it is now that most frustrates you about the recovery? that still confounds you the most about the recovery, that still confuses you the most? >> those are not all the same on the former, our sub committee is looking at the scp for ways to improve transparency. and we're looking at everything. your particular suggestion is on the table, as are other ways to make this more useful. again, it's a work in progress as i said before. the most frustrating aspect, i guess, of recovery has been that it's been quite slow. and as a result, here we are almost three years from the

beginning of the expansion and the unemployment rate is still over 8%. so we're looking and hoping that as the headwinds lift, as financial stresses ease, as housing improves, we can begin to get more rapid recovery in the labor department. it's been a long slog. that would be the single most concerning thing. from a policy perspective, there are many issues, like the fiscal issues, for example. but within the problems of the federal reserve, i think it would be the pace of improvement in the labor market. >> thank you.

today the supreme court considers whether arizona has the authority to enforce a state immigration law enacted in 2010, or if the federal government has exclusionive authority when it comes to immigration. you can hear that oral argument on frid on. every weekend 48 hours of people and events telling the american story on american history tv. get our schedules and see past programs at our websites. and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. this week former vice president dick cheney had a heart transplant. he called it a gift that's unbelievable, unquote. mr. cheney who headed the vice

presidential search in 2000 also said that mitt romney should ignore what, quote, talking heads have to say about the running mate search. >> welcome to the spring semester program here in the lincoln auditorium at the washington center. 25 years ago a four-term congressman from wyoming spoke to a group just like you. we're very honored to have him back today. to introduce him is a good friend, another congressman and

cab knelt level secretary, the honorable norm manetta. >> thank you very much, mike. it really does give me a great deal of pleasure and honor for me to have this opportunity to introduce the next speaker in the alan kay simpson norman mineta leadership event here at the washington center for interns and academic seminars. as you all know the washington center was founded in 1975. and has been the recognized leader in providing transformational experience for over 50,000 students through internships and special academic semina

seminars. almost two years ago my very, very good friend of 70 years, former republican senator allen kay simpson of wyoming and i, a former democrat, member of congress. agreed to lend our names to this leaders series, in order to present to washington center students distinguished individuals who have exemplified not only the high honor of public service, but the ability to engage in the statesmanship, that this country and the whole world so desperately needs in these very challenging times. this is a forum, excuse me, for

intelligent discussion on important issues of the day that transcend party affiliation. i was just completing a stint as the secretary of commerce in the clinton administration when i was asked by president-elect bush and vice president elect cheney to join their administration in an act of bipartisanship to serve as their secretary of transportation. so i know a little about bipartisanship. vice president cheney and i had a very special relationship. one that was cemented on the fateful tragic day of september 11, 2001. during which i gave the first

order in american history to ground all aviation in the united states. i was with vice president cheney in the presidential emergency operation center, peoc, a day that i'm sure neither one of us will ever forget. dick cheney has served his country with distinction. as white house chief of staff, a six-term member of congress from wyoming, secretary of defense, and then as vice president. this represents a lifetime of public service and we are grateful to him for honoring his commitment to speak here after what has been thankfully a speedy recovery from his heart

transplant surgery. >> so, please welcome steve scully from c-span, and my very good friend, former vice president of the united states of america, dick cheney. [ applause ] >> one change to the program. thank you. it's been a month since your surgery. so the obvious question is, how you feeling? >> well, i'm feeling very well. very fortunate. i've been through living with coronary arterary disease since i was 37 back in 1998. but gradually over time as is

predictable in those cases, i eventually had five heart attacks and heart failure and so forth. so i got in line for a transplant. and i got that transplant just four weeks ago yesterday. and i feel a lot of emotion that goes with that, frankly. one, is great gratitude to the individual who donated -- family who donated the heart. that i was privileged to receive. the fact that i'm no longer carrying around about ten pounds of batteries, which is what i operated on for two years. i had a heart pump installed on my heart. to supplement it. and then i had batteries and control element that i wore at best, 24/7. and i don't have to do that anymore. i'm not wired to the wall or wired to anything else. i'm back to having a strong, healthy heart.

and some great docs and nurses who took good care of me. and i feel better in terms of my overall health than i have in a long time. >> walk through a month ago or a month and a day ago when you got the phone call, who called you, what was your immediate reaction, and what happened next? >> well, two years ago, roughly two years ago, i had reached the point where i was, as they say in stage failure. my heart was still pumping but wasn't serving enough for my vital organs. my kidneys and so forth. that was dm july of 2010. at the same time i applied to go on the waiting list, for actual transplant.

this was a device designed and has been used now for the last few years. to use it on people who have a need for a transplant. but one of the problems is we don't have enough organs to transplant. this buys you time. i was able to live with that for about 20 months. in the meantime you work your way up on the list, and with respect to being eligible for a transplant. and you have to go through a lot of tests. there are a lot of things involved in deciding whether or not you're a good prospect for a transplant. there is also an awful lot of measurements that need to be taken to make certain that you get matched up with the right kind of heart that involves blood type. it involves the size of the hard relative to your body. tests for all the antibodies that you have. to make certain they get as

close to a match as possible. that enhances your success. and then on a friday night, about midnight, i got a phone call. i knew i was getting near the top of the list. but it was a matter of finding a heart, and having a heart become available. that met my requirements. and we got a phone call at midnight. and got in the car and drove to the hospital. our home is about 20 minutes from fairfax. checked in there. about 7:00 that morning they began the operation. it took five or six hours also together. i was up and around within two days. they had me off the respirator. and out in nine days. it went amazingly fast. by then i had been living with -- it was an artificial system, in effect, with the heart pump.

it was going very well. i was out of the hospital in about nine days. everybody has been marvelous ever since. >> and what has this taught you, or have you learned about the whole organ donor program? >> we could talk about that all afternoon. i carry, for example, my driver's license, my wyoming driver's license. has a little red heart indicating i'm an organ donor. i'm volunteered. if anything happened, a car accident or something like that, they would know that they could harvest organs that might be

utility. my old heart wasn't much good after 30 some years of abuse. a lot of times they're able to get organs to help several people instead of one. it's not just the transplant. it may be lungs involved and a kidney for somebody else and there may be eight or ten people who benefit when somebody agrees to donate organs. and one of the things you learn that i come away with is it's the kind of gift that's unbelievable. 6 what it makes possible. i like to encourage people to participate, obviously. but that's a personal decision for people to make. but we're at a stage where our technology gets better and better all the time. and we don't yet have artificial

hearts. we're able to supplement to some extent. i was very fortunate to receive the transplant. >> let's talk about the book and we'll get students lined up for questions. in the first half of the book you outline how you started as a graduate student in the university of wisconsin, never got your ph.d., ended up on the white house staff. how did that come about? >> i was recruited to go to yale when i got out of high school. and i got kicked out twice. i ended up back in wyoming building power line and

transmission lines for some years. and then ultimately decided i needed to get an education. so i went back to school at the university of wyoming. and i was seriously interested in a young lady that i had gone to high school with. she was an excellent student. she graduated the top of our class. after a year she agreed to marry me. we'll celebrate our 47th anniversary this year. i got my b.a. back in the '60s and went to wisconsin where i was working on a doctrine. it was a relatively small group. but we were able to pick the

congressmen we wanted to work for. i came to washington to stay 12 months in 1968. i stayed about 40 years. i was very impressed with one young congressman from the north shore, a guy named don rumsfeld. he spoke to the group. i thought. i would like to go to work for him. i went and interviewed with him. i was going to get my ph.d. and come back and become a professor. he listened and threw up and said this isn't going to work and threw me out. he claims that's not what happened. but i took notes. i remember it very well.

a couple of months later, he was named by president nixon, who was starting his administration to run the old office of economic opportunity. i sat down and wrote and unsolicited 12-page memo to him telling him how he ought to conduct himself, what he ought to do with the agency once he took over. what kinds of policy initiatives he should undertake and so forth. and sent it to the man i was then working for. and didn't hear anything about it for a couple of weeks. then i got a phone call asking me to come down to the agency the next day to be part of a transition group. just a group that was going to advise rumsfeld. and this was the day he had been sworn in. so i went down. he came in. he spoke to the big group and then left. then he sent in a secretary. she came in and said is there

anybody in here named cheney. i held my hand up. she took me back into his office. he said you, you're congressional relations. get out of here. he didn't say i'm sorry i threw you out last time. he didn't say i liked your memo. he didn't say, how would you like to come work for me. he said, you're congressional relations. get out of here. i said, where is congressional relations? got directions and went down and took over. >> you were how old? >> at the time i was 37. no, excuse me. i would have just turned 28. >> my nam is alli. my question is about your book specifically. when writing your book of memoirs. is there any moment you would have done differently and any regrets from your earlier years of policy you wish you would

have done? >> in political life? >> yes. >> not really. i look back on that. we had great opportunities come our way. that was because of people willing to take a chance on me. after you've had a career like mine, it's easy to look back on it and sort of get into the mindset that somehow i earned it all by myself. it's not true. it's almost never true. jerry ford was willing to hire me to work for him.

my subsequent career has turned on those decisions that other people made when i was here as a young man and didn't expect to stay more than 12 months in terms of what i would have done with my own career, i did everything i set out to do. and it was obviously varied. got to do a whole bunch of things. i loved the fact that i was there to work in the ford administration in the aftermath of watergate. when i finished with president ford i went home to wyoming because i decided i wanted to run for congress. that was the place for me to run from. but everything i had done here during the nixon and ford administrations that laid the ground were ultimately for my campaigns and, i fortunately won all of those.

and i got to be secretary and then i got to be vice president. you can't plan. there's no place to go do a job fair and say that's the package i want. i was extraordinarily fortunate. it's been a wonderful career from my standpoint. i loved every minute of it. i'm only sorry i'm not young enough to go back and do it all over again. >> thank you very much. >> let me ask you about the ford years. in the book you said the impact would have been lessened for more thought was given to how the pardon was announced. in terms of public relations, what do you think gerald ford or people around him should have done? >> well, rumsfeld and i came in and helped with a transition for about two weeks, i guess. and then we both left.

and then a couple of weeks after that we got called back f the president had been there about a month. he decided he needed a new chief of staff. that was the job he gave rumsfeld. and it was during that couple of week period our tours that he issued the pardon. i thought it was the right thing to do from the standpoint that it was just in a sense. nixon was resigning under fire. the only president ever to do so. he made a very difficult call. and president ford made the decision because he thought it was the right anything for the country. put watergate behind us and deal with other things. the only problem i saw was the president announced the par dpon don on a sunday morning on

nationwide television. nobody is up watching nationwide television on sunday morning unless you love meet the press or fox sunday morning. but in those days, very few people got the broadcast. you see the sun streaming in the windows of the oval office. the leaves are out on the trees. at least in september still. and just a beautiful day and a fantastic setting when ford gave a great speech, but nobody heard it. and there hadn't been any effort made to sort of lay the ground. like leaks to the press or maybe bring in the congressional leadership and brief them in advance. and so everybody was really surprised by it when it happened. and it dropped us about 30 points in the polls in a week? we went from close to 70% approval rating down to 40%. and it was a burden we carried th