position on this crisis? are is germans made up their mind? >> i think it's -- i know there's a lot of focus on germany. it's unfair to look to germany as the sole source of the problem now. what germany is saying is to make monetary union work we're pro paired to put a substantial commitment of resources behind this broader endeavor. but for that to work it needs to be in support of reforms and changes to the institutions to lock in. that is a very reasonable position. you can differ will lots of elements of the strt ji and how it's evolving. on that basic premise, martin wolf wrote this in a good way, that's perfectly reasonable and acceptable. recognize you need both for this to work. you need reforms that will endure with institutional changes that look like you can't go back.

and you need a substantial commitment to give them time to work. you need both things. it's not just about germany. it requires other countries to be willing to move towards them. >> a question in the back. the gentleman. yes. we have a microphone back there. >> thank you. thank you mr. secretary for doing this. so the g-20 is going to review europe's progress next week. i assume that the g-20's not going to do much other than that on europe. i'm wondering do we have time for an 11th hour action by europe once again next -- later in the month spain's yields are beyond stainable. et cetera, et cetera. do we have that time? >> i think you're right. many people observed this. if you wait to move in these

things, and you let the market get ahead of you, then you increase the costs of the solution and you make it harder to get there. it's very costly. so there's no argument for once you decide what you have to do there's no argument for doing it slowly. you should get there as quickly as you can. they're having a summit at the end of this month. what they're trying to do is negotiate a new set of reforms so that they can lay them out to the world at that summit. and you're asking the question, will the world wait for that? they have a pretty strong incentive not just because they're coming to the g-20 early next week, but because of the greek election and because the world's waiting for them. they have a big incentive to add as much clarity to those plans as early as they can. and they can help with confidence to have the major players in europe state with their intentions are. even if it's going to take a little time to negotiate the

details. that can be re-assuring. i think what you're going to see at the g-20 and after even ahead of their summit you're going to see the world look still to germany and other major players for them to lay out a little more clarity. what these broad objectives mean on banking union on a firewall for the reforming countries and on the growth stuff. i think more clarity there would be better sooner. >> right here. >> so following up on the last question, mr. secretary, you named -- listed three things. banking union, growth, i can't remember what the third one is. firewalls. support mechanism. and you said that's what has to come out of the summit. >> out of their summit. >> right. >> i was that i canning their words, their plans, their

elements. >> are you confident that you'll get all three if i may put it that way? >> what they're saying -- >> let me finish the question, mr. secretary. >> when we worked together you interrupted me all the time. >> this time i'm going to give you the last word. are you confident? and what i think this reflects the general questions on europe here and this afternoon is what is the risk if they're falling short and what i think this goes to the consequences including for the broader financial system including our own. thank you. >> well, i think the stakes are very high for them and for the rest of us. they have an interest and again we can't -- their interest is more powerful than anyone's to trying to avoid that risk. so how confident am i. i try to emphasize the positive. they've laid out pretty clearly where they want to go in these

dimension. they put some pretty capable people in charge of trying to design the details of that framework. and based on what they say to us directly, they're serious about it and they intend to move. and i think they recognize the importance of moving now. this is not like it's been. this is the fourth major escalation not just in the crisis, but in the response. this is different from the way it's felt before in the sense that they're not minimizing the risks. and they're not telling us that they feel they have a whole bunch of time to wait. so hopefully that's in encouraging. >> with that i'm told that we have no more time and ted truman has had almost the last word. >> as he deserves. >> we want to thank secretary geithner and your team for making this possible. [ applause ] >> and i should point out with all of these cameras here it's very obvious that just to make

sure everyone knows this was entirely on the record. in about ten minutes we'll take you live to cleveland, ohio, looking at it there for a campaign rally with president obama. he'll speak with voters and supporters in the buckeye state which is expect ted be a battle ground state this coming fall. george w. bush won ohio's

electoral votes in 2000 and 2004. but the state turned blue in 2008 when president obama ran. see the president's comments live coming up here in just a little bit on c-span3. also today senate foreign relations chairman john kerry continues his push for the u.s. to join the law of the sea treaty. he already held a hearing earlier today. and a second round begins live at 2:30 earn and our companion network c-span will carry that. law of the sea treaty governs how nations use international waters. again that's 2:30 eastern on c-span. until we see president obama at that campaign event in ohio we'll bring you a discussion on what both the presidentened mitt romney propose to promote the economy and stimulate jobs. it's from this morning's

washington journal. >> we want to welcome back john engler, the president of the business round table. >> great to join you this morning. >> yesterday mitt romney talking about jobs in the economy. what was his message? >> i thought it was a strong message. we had the president in march. we brought governor romney in this june. he laid out a critique of the economic data. governor romney talked about i want to bring certainty and get the government on the side of job creators. people that want to opportunities for americans to go back to work. i thought that was something that throughout his remarks you could see the heads nodding. today in the country there's

such risk and uncertainty as a result of the tax laws which are uncertain regulatory policy, which is a priority uncertain. a lot of implementation with dodd frank health care, environmental policy. uncertainty against the fiscal cliff that's looming. debt ceiling extension again. se quest ration for the defense department. all of this just creates an environment. it's very hard to make investment decisions. >> let's go to something that the president has said which is that the republican attack plan is to attack everything on the president. from your standpoint, who's to blame, is it the president's fault. is it because we have a divided government controlling the democrats in the house and senate. is there a dysfunction in washington overall, who's to blame? >> i said our government's underperforming. there's no question and i say that collectively. but i was a governor in the '90s

when bill clinton was president. of course, i have been a governor as i was coming in as bill clinton was going out as governor. but watching him as president. he ended up working with a republican congress. we did welfare reform which was i think at the end the most significant social overhaul of a major program. it was trial and error. twice we passed bills that went to the desk. the reason was the block immigranting of medicaid. at the end of that process, a year not unlike this one, it was exactly like this one. he ewe had avn incouple bent president running for re-election. the president signed welfare reform and the rest was history. romney had an interesting observation yesterday. he said when he was elected in

massachusetts something like 80% of his legislature was democratic. he had a practice of meeting every week with leadership, speaker and the majority leader and they would, they wouldn't always come to his office. they'd go to his office one week and go to the sice the foweek, rotate it around. we're not getting that level of engagement today for whatever reason. i do think having been in different branchs for my career, you have to have the lines of communication open. >> do you think that speaker boehner and republican leader mitch mcconnell do they like the president? is that part of the problem? they're not talking to each other. does the president have a dislike towards these two republican leaders? >> i certainly think there's inexperience on the president's part. i mean he's gained experience by virtue of being in the office. i think coming into it there wasn't a lot of legislative history. there aren't i would say close

personal relationships. i think that's also the president is democratic key leaders. there's plenty of stories around town yost that the always the warmest set of relations. i do think that it isn't about liking or being enthralled with one another. >> but they have to talk to each other. >> institutionally they do. i would submit i heard speaker boehner being interviewed a few days back. he said, look, the phone rings i'll be there. the president wants to meet, i'll meet. i don't have a sense that there's an ongoing engagement. i thought that president biden would play much more of a role there. he is somebody who intimately knows the congressional process of how to get things done. for whatever reason that hasn't been his assignment, but i am -- i am just surprised. people have criticized senator

mcconnell and said he shouldn't have -- maybe he shouldn't have earlier my goal is to make sure president obama serves one term. the reality is that probably is always the goal of the opposition leaders is to beat the other guy. that aside they all raise their hand and take their oath and the country needs decisions in washington today. we need to have some questions answered. i think given the backdrop of the global economy, the profound weakness in europe, questions about rates of growth in places like china and india, the u.s. needs to be strong. i think we have that potential, but we couldn't do it against the backdrop of such significant uncertainty. that needs to be swept off the table. i thought yesterday even jamie dimon was talking about some of that in kind of an interesting way. >> your calls and comments to john engler the head of the business round table. mitt romney speaking there yesterday. the president in march. both events on our website at

cspan.org. you can send us an email or join us online on our facebook page or twitter page or give us a phone call. the number's on the bottom of the screen. the president traveling to cleveland. the white house admitting this is a campaign speech, but he is talking about the economy. what do you want to hear? >> i think, let's just say everybody speech out to be about the economy. i think that's the far and and away dominant issue this year. half of the americans are concerned about the economy. that dwarfs everything. i could like to hear the president say, look, while we have long-term differences and i have a different approach than speaker boehner, mcconnell, i think it's important in the long-term that we answer some questions. let's get these taxes extended the way it's been suggested. larry summers suggested that

bill clinton for a while saying let's create some certainty for the rest of this year and the stability for next year so we can have the election. we know who the leadership's going to be for the next four years and then we get at fundamental -- i think we need competent tax reform. i don't think they can do that in a lame duck session. you have 60 provisions of the tax code expired last december. 40 more this year in december. we need to get that resolved short-term. we shouldn't have a debacle like we had with the debt ceiling last time. let's get that extended. i don't think that national security can allow for the damage that se quest ration would do. let's get beyond that. let's not have ere defense contractor think about who might be laid off if these cuts are a reality. the secretary of defense said right now they're the law. let's have a strategy to resolve

some of the uncertainty. then long-term let's have the debate during the campaign romney versus obama on how they see the tax structure. what they do to resolve the long-term fiscal situation. we need as part of that to have a big health care debate regardless of what the supreme court does, the long-term entitlement costs are driven by health care costs in medicare and medicaid. >> i want to talk about michigan politics in a moment. let's get to your calls and comments. barbara from chicagos democrats line with john engler. >> good morning. >> caller: good morning. i heard you say that governor romney had a clear strategy about the economy. when he made that statement friday after the president had said the economy is doing -- the private sector is going fine, he come on a few minutes later saying did he not get the -- did he not get the impression from wisconsin that we don't need anymore teachers, firemen and policemen, we need the get the

earn american people back to work? who are the firemen, teachers and policemen? don't he know when people like that and working people work the economy reflourishes. these are the people that spend money and keep people like him rich. which is his -- he didn't do anything in massachusetts. so, sir, i would like to know what the mitt romney going to contribute other than to put working people and poor people in a bigger hole than they are. >> the romney cam can debate the romney campaign in massachusetts. i think the calmer is part of the point is fundamental to where the country goes, what our direction is and private sector unemployment today which is i said earlier over 8% been there for 40 months, the longest stretch since the depression. we've not seen people coming back into the workforce. in fact, it's actually workforce

participation remained at historic levels we would have a higher unemployment rate. we're not creating enough jobs in the private sector. i have three daughters still in high school. one of them in a public school. and you know, the schools as i travel around the country, the teach rers in the schools. we spent $600 billion to make a massive commitment on education as a nation. it was interesting in wisconsin one of the things that they did to avoid reductions in education 3 spending wherever that would have had to have been found was to simply compete for the price of health insurance. put it in a market and buy it at market price. as it turned out, tens of millions of dollars. i think there are opportunities to run public systems a lot better all across america. >> tweeting this out at your twitter handle is @bizroundtable. john engler saying it's necessary to extend tax rates and create some certainty. if you extend the tax rates that

would create revenue to offset the deficit. how do you bring down a debt and keep taxes at the current level or low her. >> there's clearly three parts. there's tax revenue. there's spending. and there's growth. we do know that 1% increase in gdp is about a trillion dollars in tax revenues that come in. so there has to be balance. right now we're unambulanced away from growth. we have to have a gdp performance a lot more than 1.9 which is where we were last quarter. our ceo's, we do a survey every quarter the ceo's got to ask you what they look at gdp the last time we did that. their forecast was about 2.2 for the year. and that's probably still pretty relevant, but 2.2% gdp growth is a meager economic performance. we need to be probably 3, 3.5% to start seeing job creation. i think there's a lot -- i'm not one of these who say there's no

role for government. there's a big role for government. it -- government isn't the driver of the economy that should necessarily be the private sector. >> what is the business round table? >> round table is an association of chief association of chief executives of leading companies in america, 210 of them. we represent in those companies more than $6 trillion of revenue, so they're a big economic contributor. the supply chains literally include thousands and thousands of small and medium sized businesses and the caterpillar's highly relevant to thousands of other smaller companies who many of those are independent entrepreneurs. so the membership, the chamber of congress membership and this is important because we're in the 21st century needing to be an innovation economy and information economy, we do more than half the private sector rnd. so we're passionate about

education and science and technology and innovation and the leading voice to be the leading economy in the world to be a voice for job creation. in march we put out a plan in taking action for america and a ceo planned for jobs and economic growth and we want these companies, virtually all of whom are headquartered here to be growing and to have an investment climate where you look to the united states and say, boy, this is where i want to invest. are there global companies so they're in china, they're in south america, they're in africa and they're in other parts of asia, and they want to be ---er mo of them want to be in russia. with russia pnt, with the permanent and normal trade relations with russia. we welcome listeners on coast to

coast, our coast is john engler, former head of the national former association of manufacturers and now the current head of the business roundtable. mel is on the phone with plano, texas, republican line. good morning. >> good morning. i would like to say there are things that never seem to get addressid and run a prosperous pawn shop in a fluent area or mixed area and one of the reasons i went to business was i met sam walt and governor clinton years ago and mr. walton said that you better figure out what you're going to do, young man, so as a manufacture's rep i was very, very -- i did very well and i sold that business and i decided after looking around and returning at a young age, early 40s they better get into the pawn business that it's obvious that it will be a growth business. my question, though, i was going

to add a second shop and it would take $66,000 in fees and soil environment fees and planting, plotting fees. it made me want to throw up, so i decided i'll just keep my 4 million and forget hiring many more people and have to go on and enjoy my life and just take more vacations, and i just don't think that they talk about all of this stuff piled on to business on the local level because obviously there's so much more than meets the eye and i don't think they ran a business currently. so thank you so much for your time. >> before you hang up. quick question for you. the economy has been tough in the last couple of years. has business increased significantly? >> it's increased tremendously. our worst year now has been 25% and you're seeing it in a lot of middle income people brought into the pawn situation. >> what are they selling?

what are you selling? >> well, we're very large in diversified. we get a lot of gold and jewelry and laptops are a big thing today and flat screen televisions are also a very big thing today because they're light enough where you don't have to have a neighbor help you bring them in, but you're seeing a whole lot of stuff going on, but one of the things that we're noticing that it's not getting better. it just seems to me that they're streamlining. more and more corporations are cutting back and making more use of their current employees, but it's a sad situation especially 50-year-olds that you can see are broken that used to have a very good job and i just hate to see that, but i've been blessed, but i can't believe that i couldn't put four more families to work and i couldn't see $66,000 to help their city out. >> thanks for calling from plano, texas.

>> his caller made an interesting point and he's talking about 66,000 for his approval, and i was talking with a builder out on montgomery county maryland which is very close to washington, d.c., when you add up the county requirements on top of everything else today, if you started to build a house, that you're probably $40,000, $45,000 worth of fees on the front end and if you're building what would be an average nows that county and it's amazing how much burden we put in place and one of t important point the caller points out is they have the capacity is they have people and resources to be able to cope with that, but the supplier doesn't and you're kind of looking then at that cost rippling all of the way down through the system and what we're saying is even if we could deal with it, why is that the

thing we should be doing? why should it take -- i have one example of one company building a similar plant here in this nation and then we're building one in belgium. literally the plant in belgium was permitted and built prior to the time and functioning before you could get the one permitted in the country. we have products on the fda and medical technologies, and i had a ceo a few weeks back. there was a show going on in germany. they had technology on display for sale being sold in europe and still not approved in this country and did not expect approval for more than a couple of years. so we're depriving ourselves of the benefit of new technology and we're certainly putting our research locations at risk and all for an approval process which i think cannot be argued as dramatically safer as the europeans used in that example.

>> the front page of "the l.a. times" about how home prices have gone up in southern california. good news for many homes that face foreclosure. have we turned the corner? >> we had ed demarco, the federal home finance authority and he -- you know, it's a good news/bad news story and there's clearly some improvement and you still have a significant percentage of americans holding on to mortgages that are technically under water. so we felt that this is one of those things that's been overlooked from the beginning after 2008 and 2009 is that the housing sector is normally a significant contributor to any recovery coming out of a recession. this time it's been dragged for the most part, so i think there are -- there are certainly a lot of bargains to be had. there are pockets that are starting to come back and there

are pockets where there is much more languishing and the point that mr. dimarco made which was an excellent presentation. you simply have to tell, back to uncertainty, what are we doing to freddie and fannie? how is it not going to be and how do we have assurances that the private capital's going to be there? and what are we going expect for our citizens when we buy the first one going to be? we know that the application process has been toughened up a lot and there's enough comment anecdotally from people and boy, all of this documentation today and we've gone from no documentation to massive documentation and how does that settle out and what's the path ahead? >> sandy's on the phone, charlotte, north carolina for john engler, independent line. good morning. >> hi. >> good morning, c-span. mr. engler, you appear to be so

concerned about the economy as we all are. however, when you were governor, it is my understanding that you were instrumental in selling the fresh water rights to the national corporation for $100 a year and the citizens got $100 a year for the water rights. i mean, you -- >> water rights? >> the fresh water, lake michigan water rights for $100 a year it was sold to nestle corporation. >> thanks for the call. we'll get a response. >> nestle corporation. nestle has a great fortune to be surrounded by the great lakes and fresh water. she's talking about a company not on the great lakes at all, but a company, nestle which produced aol