on top of the struggling state budgets, because revenue is down. do you see that the mandate on medicaid also is an issue that is going to affect the economy in the long term and the big picture? >> well, i understand motivation and the objective of trying to cover more people, to help people who are not already covered by insurance, but, not to sound like a broken record, but, once again, the cost is at issue, and if they want to add these costs, they have to think about where else they can cut, where else they can raise revenue, because we need to have fiscal stability going forward -- where else they can raise money. as a broad measure, we have to think about how our government's fiscal picture will look, not just this year but five years from now, 10 years from now, and

make sure that however we choose to structure our health care program that we get a sustainable fiscal outlook. . t however we choose to structure our health care programs, that we have a sustainable fiscal outlook. >> well, thank you. i think that one thing we're trying to do is just close this down enough that we can find the information and have the best facts that we can. and setting an arbitrary august deadline seems to many of us to be very unwise because so much be very unwise because so much could happen that w irreversible if we really did change our health care system to this extent with the costs. and in hard economic times anyway. and many of us are concerned, as well that employers will be encouraged to just drop health

care coverage, pay the fine, and let people go into the public system which then becomes a bigg bigger burden on the government, but also the beginning of rationed health care in many views. so i thank you for saying that we ought to be very careful before we do add more entitlements to our health care system. and i hope you will work with us as we are able to get more and more information about the real long term consequences. thank you. >> thank you, senator. we'll now call on senator bey. >> thank you for being with us. i'd like to follow-occupy senator hutchinson's question. i realize that you haven't had the chance to review the omv analysis of some of the different proposals that have come up here, but let me ask you in general, if we enacted a

health care reform proposal that did not intend the curve, that would really meet the long term fiscal challenges that we're facing in your opinion, would it? >> it would not. if it did not address the cost issue, it would not meet the challenges. >> so the test being applied around here, they're looking at health care in isolation rather than as a part of the broader fiscal picture. my concern is that the long term fiscal policies are unsustainable. i know you're concerned about the increasing debt. if you look at the five year budget, in no year will the growth of the debt be really below three and in many years substantially beyond that, so it takes on a multiplier effect and if we don't come to grips with this, it will get away from us. so if all we did was even pass a health care bill that was deficit neutral, didn't make things worse, but didn't make it better fiscally over the next ten years, that really doesn't

get to the heart of the problem either, does it? >> that's correct. >> so in some ways i think the standard we're holding ourselves to is inadequate. and when at least the initial analysis suggested it might exacerbate the situation, that is a matter of some concern. i know the president cares about that, too. and now they're looking at things that really can bend the curve hopefully because it's just not sustainable the financial path that we are on. let me ask you about the revenue side of this. you've been a reserver of the elected branches of government for a fair amount of time, as have i. the path of least resistance here is to claim savings in some sort of out years that may never materialize or to pretend to impose cost reductions that congress never has the backbone to actually enforce. there are about 18 different

things that were proposed to bend the curve, 16 have been included, but they're largely pilots or small demonstration projec projects. if you were sitting where we're sitting, how do we -- it almost defies reliable analysis. what do you do if you're a policy maker in a case like this? >> well, you first judge to see if you have approaches that you think are sufficiently well documented that you think they would be reliable so you can score them. if not, you might put in triggers and say we will limit the growthnless we show that we can reduce cost per person by so much%. so there might be ways tie the expansion of the program to the success of cost saving measures. >> well, that would certainly be a good thing. again the difficulty is that some of these things have been -- some companies have

implemented some of them and they've worked at sort of a micro level, but they've never been done to scale so they're not included in the appropriate. if you're asking to us put our reputation on the line with a hard score, just can't do it. and it's difficult to estimate things a year or two in advance, let alone ten, so a lot of this is just educated guess work and its that's a difficult platform on which to build long term fiscal policy. so that's one of the things that we're struggling with now. one of the proposals that has been sukggested was to take and as you're aware there was some time ago an agreement made to reduce medicare reimbursements for physicians. and so now there are further savings in a variety of programs that have been pledged as a part of this program. one has to look with some skepticism about whether they will be enforced. so to take the bottom ticks out of it, to maximize the chances that the savings will actually

be achieved, there's a proposal to create an independent commission. do you have an opinion about that from a fiscal policy standpoint? >> i think it's ultimately up to congress, but you have tried to make a technical decision. so it may be something like that would be promising. i guess i would note that things like reducing compensation to doctors can give you one off savings, but you have to deal with this on going growth rate and that ties into the structure of our held care delivery system. and so the question you have to address is are we, for example, overusing technology. >> we need systemic reform. >> that's right. >> but you're right, in the long ru run, the rifle shots won't get this done. i'm having shall cognitive disowe nanls. one of the things in the stimulus package we enacted was some reduction in payroll taxes

to try to put some money in their pocket. one of the proposals that's out there dealing with the employer mandate arena is to require employers below -- or before a certain size that don't participate to pay up to 8% higher payroll taxes as their contribution to health care. how do we reconcile these two things? weeding cutting payroll taxes on the one hand to stimulate the economy but possibly racing them on small to medium sized businesses that don't contribute to health care on the other. >>? n. the short run, raising taxes in a recession will tend to weaken the economy. so there is no inconsistency there. i think the issue is how -- if you're going to have additional coverage, how are you going to finance that. and i assume that this proposal would be a way of in terms of the economy, you height want to consider phasing it in later so

it doesn't have an immediate impact on the profitability of small business who are on the demand of consumers. >> that's true, it's a short term/long term phenomenon, but businesses tend to make decisions with an eye on the longer term, not just the circumstances that they gas abo today. so we're trying to make systemic reform, but reconcile that with the budget situation that we face and the need to not add burdens to the economy when it's burdened enough. i want to that you think. i really appreciate your emphasis on the importance of fiscal policy, your comments came reflected your op-ed piece in the "wall street journal." the hardest decision will be how do you go about altering the variety accommodative policies that we're pursuing. i wish you the best with that, but i think we've got a good man in the position to do that. so i appreciate your appearance

here today. >> thank you. >> thank you, senator bayh. senator bennett. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i apologize if i go over ground that was covered since i left. because we were working on some other things. the first thing i wanted to say is i, first of all, appreciate your leadership very much, appreciate the difficult times that we've been through. i want to -- and also your statement with regard to the examiners and the regulator. but i just want to testify on behalf of the small businesses and small banks in my state. they really feel like the message is not getting through. and i know you talked about training, i know you talked about other types of things, but i hope we can work together somehow to create a set of metric so is that we can measure in some way whether or not your message is getting through.

and nobody wants bad loans made. i'm the last person who would want that. but to the extent that it is true that hesitancy that you mentioned this morning, that natural hesitancy in a time like this to be maybe more risk averse apyou would otherwise be, to the extent that's really affects decisions being made at the local level, we ought to figure out what who are we can do it clear that up, because where there are willing lenders and willing borrowers and where the loan is a reasonable one, given how tough these times are, we ought to be doing everything question to make sure that happens. so i appreciate your willingness to at least think about what who are can be done. the second thing i wanted to ask you about quickly, because my time is short, is on -- you were reassuring this morning on the question of the stress test and what we learn from a bank's ability to raise capital.

i continue to hear -- but at the same time, you also recognize this coming potential crisis in commercial real estate and some other things. and i'm having a hard time reconciling in my own mind how these two things are true at the same time. and i know there's a deep concern, continuing concern, that the spread for the assets that are on the banks of these books has not shrunk very much and we haven't taken our medicine with respect to commercial real estate. i don't know if you have anymore that you want to add, but i'm having a hard time seeing how on the one hand we should feel okay because the stress test came through -- the banks came through the stresses fairly well, they were able to race private capital, but on the other hand, we know that this looming issue is out there with commercial real estate. >> it's not inconsistent. the stress test, first of all, applied to the top 19 banks. and we found that there's still $600 billion in losses to be

experienced in the next two years, so that's quite substantial. and our conclusion was that even after that $600 billion of losses, they would still be able to meet well capitalized requirements.other aspect is that a lot of the commercial real estate loans are in smaller banks. and so shall smaller banks, which were thought counted in the stress tests, were not examined in the stress tests, will be facing those costs going forward. so it is a major challenge to the banking system and i've discuss with a couple of your colleagues some of the things that the fed is doing and i think what we will see is that banks faced with commercial real estate loans which cannot perform at the original terms will be trying to find renegotiations to allow at least partial performance going forward. >> and it's my sense that up until now, there has been an

inclination to roll over these financings. but what hasn't happened yet is a resetting of underlying valuation of the assets, which is still something that we're going to be facing in the next 12 months -- over the next 12 months. one very quick question and then -- re brief. you mentioned twice this morning that i heard that you thought that the talp had had an effect on small business lending and i just wondered what the evidence of that is. >> the evidence is, first, in the secondary market, you can see the spreads on the securitizations that are traded and those are come in quite substantially. and we've also identified, we talked to lenders who said that the ability to issue these securitized products had freed up their balance sheets to make new loans. and so we do have some evidence for that. some of that was discussed, by

the way, in the financial oversight board that oversees the t.a.r.p. just@@@@@ @ @ @ @ r it was so successful and might use that i hope you will see similar success here. the last question i had -- as you think about unwinding this economy that taxpayers have been forced to make and that the fed has done, we have a lot of work to do around here in the above what we'd do with these mountains of debt that we have on the federal government entered of this. i know -- i wonder if there is anything you like to say to was about how we should deal with that side of the equation as you

are thinking about unwinding the work the fed has some. how do we get the knowledge that when you are in a recession it has been appropriated recession like this, that it's been appropriate to do what has been done, but as we come out of the recession, we need to get our fiscal house in order. >> it's very tough and i don't envy you your task. i think one small piece of advice would be instead of thinking about this as a year to year situation, think about the local trajectory, how are we going to go forward, not just this year or next year, but over the next five years or ten years taking into account what we though about population, aging, health care costs and those things. so the whole path is what matter, not just this year. >> well, thank you for your service and your testimony. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much, senator bennett.

senator cole. >> mr. bernanke, the federal reserve has been increasing their balance sheet over the past year as you know and created many new lending programs to continue the flow of credit to consumers as well as stabilize the financial markets. additionally the federal reserve announced that it will purchase up to.125 trillion of mortgage backed securities by the end of 2009 to help surt the housing markets. and that's very good, too. despite all these efforts, loans and lines of credit are lard to come by for many consumers and community banks are having a difficult time originating new loans due to liquidity problems as he'll sure you're aware of. the federal reserve has done precious little for small community banks at the national level. so when and what can the federal reserve do to help small banks all across our country start

lending again? >> well, community banks are very important. and as i was mentioning to one of your colleagues, in many cases where large banks are withdrawing from small business lending or from local lending, the community backs are stepping in. and we recognize that and think it's very important. the federal reserve provides similar support to small banks that we do to large banks in that you mentioned liquidity. we provide discount win did he loans or loans through the term option facility and smaller banks are eligible to receive that liquidity at favorable interest rates. it's not our department, but the treasury has been working to expand the range of banks which can receive the t.a.r.p. capital funds and they've gotten -- made significant progress in dealing with banks that don't trade publicly. we have worked with smaller

banks to try to address the regulatory burden that they face and we have a variety of partnerships, for example, with minority banks to try to give them assistance, ten cal assistance and the like. i agree if i were a small banker, i would be a little bit annoyed because the big banks have got an lot more of the attention because it was the big banks and their failures that have really threatened our system. and that's why it's very important as we do reform that we address this too pig to fail problem so we don't have this unbalanced situation where you either have to bail out of big banks or else it brings down the system. that's not acceptable. we have to fix that. but we are working with small banks and fernley i always try to meet with small bank leaders and the icba and other trade associations and i agree with you that they're playing an important rely right now in role right now in our economy. >> you say you agree they're

important and they play an important role in our economy. are you satisfied that we're doing proportionately as much for small community banks as we're doing for the large banks? >> well, again within the powers that we have in terms of providing liquidity and from the perspective of the treasury and the t.a.r.p. providing capital, we are trying it provide an even playing field to the extent we can do so. if you have other thoughts, i'd be happy to think about it. >> well, we have small bankers all across our country, and i'm think building my own state of wisconsin, that are wanting so much to do more business in their communities, but they don't have the liquidity to do it. i'm sure you understand that very well. and in these small communities, they are the backbone financially of the community. and, of course, i hear from them that they feel that they're not getting as much attention as they would like at the national

level and i think you said that you agree. >> i do agree. >> thank you. while consumer spending has remained flat in 2009, the personal savings rate has finally started to rise and quite substantially. the weak economy has made consumers more skeptical of borrowing and increasingly aware of their spending habits as i'm sure you know. as we hear considered reforms to the banking system to help financial institutions downturns, we need to prepare families to their next economic crisis. do you have any policy recommendations that would help continue the upward trend of the personal savings rate and avoid another bubble based on consumer activities? >> well, there are very few silver linings to this crisis, but i think one of them is that increased thrift and increased attention to family finances

will come out of it. so we welcome the higher saving rate. it's constructive for the country, et's constructive, it reduces our dependence on foreign lenders it supports investment. so it strengthens family finances, so that's positive. policy makers have been trying to find a magic bullet to increase savings and given the low savings rates, obviously it's not been very successful. there have been a number of ideas, one -- a number of them relate to what's called behavioral approaches. taking account of the fact that people are lazy and it gives them the first choice you give them is what they'll take. so, for example, recently the congress made changes to the law that allows employers it to make 401(k) contributions and opt out rather than opt in choice for their workers. and they found that just by making that simple change, that many more workers decided to

contribute to their 401(k) plan and that builds up over time, of course to a significant amount of savings. many employers also contribute, match, 401(k) contributions. so those are some of the kinds of methods that may be useful.u. i talked with a senator recently about the financial literacy and financial education. again, i think part of the issue -- particularly among lower income and minority populations, who don't save as much, is making them aware of the benefits of saving for retirement for other life goals. so i think education has a role to play as well. but i have to tell you, senator, that the enomics profession has not been extremely successful in finding good methods of increasing savings. and it takes, unfortunately, this kind of crisis to change

behavior the way we've seen it. >> thank you very much, senator bernanke and senator. >> thank you very much, senator cole, for the questions. i want to change the chairman for joining us today. the hearing record will remain open for one week soap members [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

>> coming up next, president obama's news conference on health care. then house debate on a pay-as- you-go rules. later, the ceo of the red cross talks about how organization is bearing in the current economy. -- fairing in the current economy. >> coming up thursday on "washington journal" recap of the news conference in the health-care debate with david hogberg. then eric cantor is his reaction to the president's remark on healthcare ridge chelation -- legislation. then we will hear from the specialty idea of the tarp program. later, and looked at commerce to the as the two freshmen members.

"washington journal" take your calls in e-mails starting at 7:00 eastern here on c-span. >> join the conversation on civil rights and race relations with npr and fox news analyst juan williams. sunday, august 2 at noon eastern. >> "you in a close play susan jacoby on the ongoing reaching "q &a" with susan jacoby on ongoing conversations >> policies and funded? >> through donations? >> taxpayer funded? >> through philanthropy. >> how c-span funded? 30 years ago, america's cable companies created c-span as a

public service. it is a private business initiative, no government mandate, no government money. >> now president obama talks about health care legislation at his fifth official news conference since taking office. this is just under an hour. states. >> good evening. please be seated. before i take your questions, i want to talk for a few minutes about the progress we are making on health insurance reform and where it fits into our a broader economic strategy for the six months ago i took office amid the worst recession in half a century. we were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month and our financial system was on the verge of collapse. as a result of the actions we took in those first weeks, we

have been able to pull our economy back from the brank. we took steps to stabilize our financial institutions and our housing market and we passed the recovery act that has already saved jobs and created new ones, delivered billions in tax relief to families and small businesses and extended unemployment insurance and health insurance to those who have been laid off. of course we still have a long way to go. the recovery act will continue to create more jobs over the next two years just like it was designed to do. i realize this is no comfort to those americans who are currently out of court and i will be honest with you. the new hiring is always one of the last things to bounce back after a recession. the fact is even before this crisis hit, we had an economy that was creating a good deal of wealth for those folks of the very top of not a lot of good-paying jobs for the rest of america. it is an economy that simply wasn't ready to compete in the

21st century and one where we have been slow to invest in clean energy technologies that have created new jobs and industries in other countries where we have watched our graduation lag behind and where we spent much more on health care than any other nation but aren't any healthier for it. that is why i have said even as we rescue this economy from a full-blown crisis, we must rebuild it stronger than before and health insurance reform is central to reform is about every american who it ever fear that they made this their coverage if they become too sick or lose their job or change their job. it is about every small business that has been forced to lay off employees or cut back on their coverage because it became too expensive. it is about the fact that the biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of medicare and medicaid. let me be clear. if we do not control these

costs we will not be able to control our deficit. if we do not reform health care your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket. if we do not act, 14,000 americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day. these of the consequences of inaction. these are the state of the debate we are having right now. i realize that with all the charges and criticism that you are being thrown around in washington a lot of americans may be wondering what is in this for me? how does my family stand to benefit from health insurance reform? tonight i want to answer those questions. even though congress is still working through a key issue, we still have a rough agreement on the following areas. if you have health insurance the reform we are proposing will provide you with more security and more stability. provide more security and more stability and will keep government out of health care decisions, giving you the option to keep your insurance if you

are happy with it. it will prevent insurance companies from dropping your coverage if you get too sick and it will give you the security of knowing that if you lose your job, if you move or change your job you will still be able to have coverage. it will limit the amount your insurance company can force you to pay for medical costs out of your own pocket and will cover preventive care like check-ups and mammograms that save lives and money. now, if you don't have health insurance or you are a small business looking to cover your employees you will be able to choose a quality, affordable health plan through health insurance exchange, a marketplace that promotes choice and competition. finally, no insurance company will be allowed to deny you coverage because of a preexisting medical condition. i have also pledged reform will not add toward deficit over the next decade and i mean it. in the past eight years we saw the enactment of to tax cuts, primarily for the wealthiest

americans and the medicare prescription program, none of which were paid for and that is partly why i inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. that will not happen with health insurance reform. it will be paid for. already we have estimated two-thirds of the cost of reform can be paid for by reallocating money that is simply being wasted in federal health care programs. this includes over $100 billion on wanted subsidies that go to insurance companies part of medicare, subsidies that do nothing to improve care for seniors and i am pleased that congress has already embraced these proposals. well there currently working to a proposal to finance the remaining costs i continue to insist that health reform not be paid for on the backs of middle-class families. in addition to making sure this plan doesn't add to the deficit in the short term, the bill einstein must also slow the growth of health care costs in the long run. our proposals will change the senate's of doctors and nurses are free to give patients the

best care, just not the most expensive care. that is why the nation's largest organizations representing doctors and nurses have embraced our plan. we also want to create an independent group of doctors and experts who are empowered to eliminate waste and inefficiency in medicare on an annual basis, a proposal that could save even more money and ensure long-term financial health for medicare. overall, our proposals will improve the quality of care for our seniors and save them thousands of dollars on prescription drugs, which is why the aarp has read-- endorsed our efforts. not all the measures i mentioned were contained in congress is drafting legislation that we are now seeing broad agreement thanks to the work that has been done over the last few days so even though we have a few issues to work out, what is remarkable at this point is not how far we have left to go, it is how far we have already come. i understand how easy it is for this town to become consumed in

the name of politics, to turn every issue into running tally of who's up and who's down. i have heard the one republican strategist tell us party even though they may want to pollack-- to go for the kill. another republican senator that defeating health care reform is about breaking me. so let me be clear. this is about me. i have great health insurance and so does every member of congress. if this debate is about the letters i read when i sit in oval office every day and the stories i hear at town hall meetings. this is about the woman in colorado who pays $700 a month to her insurance company only to find out that when pay a dime for cancer treatment it had used up her retirement funds to save her own life. it is about the middle-class college graduate from maryland his health insurance expired 20 change jobs and woke up from the emergency surgery that he required with $10,000 worth of debt. this is about every family, every business and every taxpayer who continues to

shoulder the burden of a problem that washington has failed to solve for decades. this debate is not a game for these americans and can afford to wait any longer for reform. they are counting on us to get this done other looking to us for leadership and we can't let them down. we will pass reform that lowers co, promotes choice and provides coverage every american can count on and we will do it this year. with that i will take your questions. and, we are going to start off with the then feller with "associated press." >> thank you mr. president. congress as you alluded to is trying to figure out how to pay for all of this reform. have you told house and senate leaders which of their ideas are acceptable to you? if so are you willing to share that standard with the american people and if you haven't given that kind of direction to congressional leaders, are you willing to, are you willing to explain why do you are not

stepping in to get a deal done since you are the ones setting the deadline? >> well, before we talk about how to pay for it, let's talk about what exactly needs to be done, and the reason i want to emphasize this is because there has been a lot of misinformation out there. right now premiums for families that have health insurance have doubled over the last ten years. they have gone up three times faster than wages so what we know is that if the current trends continue, more and more families will lose health care, more and more families are going to be in a position where they keep their health care but it takes a bigger bite out of their budget. employers are going to put more cost on the employee or just stop providing health care altogether. we also know what health care inflation on the curve it is on we are guaranteed to see medicare and medicaid basically break the federal budget. and, we know we are spending on

average, we hear in the united states are spending about $6,000 more than other advanced countries, where they are just as healthy, and i have said this before. if you found out that your neighbor had gotten the same car for $6,000 less, you would want to figure out how to get that deal. and that is what reform is all about, how can we make sure that we are getting the best bang for health care dollar? now, what we did very early on wednesday two-thirds of the cost of health care reform, which includes providing coverage for people who don't have it, making it more affordable for folks to do and making sure that we are over the long term creating the kinds of systems were prevention and wellness and information technologies make the system more efficient, that the entire cost of that has to be paid for and it has got to be deficit neutral. we identified two-thirds of those costs to be paid for by tax dollars that are already

being spent right now, so taxpayers are already putting this money into the kitty. the problem is they are not getting a deal for the money they are spending. that takes care of two-thirds of the cost. the remaining one-third is what the argument has been about of late. what i have said is that there may be a number of different ways to raise money. i put forward what i thought was the best proposal, which was to limit the deductions, the itemized deductions for the wealthiest americans, people like myself could take the same percentage deduction that middle-class families do, and that would raise sufficient funds for the final one-third. now, so far, we haven't seen any bills a top that. there are other ideas that are out there. i continue to think my idea is the best one, but i am not foreclosing some of these other ideas as the committees are working them through.

the one commitment i have been clear about is, i don't want that final one-third of the cost of health care to be completely shouldered on the backs of middle-class families who are already struggling in a difficult economy, and so if i see a proposal that is primarily funded through taxing, middle-class families, i am going to be opposed to that because i think there are better ideas to do it. now, i have not yet seen what the senate finance committee is producing productive than the number of ideas that we have not seen the final draft. the house suggested a surcharge on wealthy americans, and my understanding although i have not seen the final versions, there is talk about making that basically only apply to families whose joint income is $1 million. to me, that meets my principle that it has not been shouldered by families who are already having a tough time.

what i want to do is to see what emerges from these committees, continuing to work to find more savings because i actually think it is possible for us to fund more of this process to identifying waste in the system, try to narrow as much as possible the revenue needed on the front end and then see how we can piece this thing together in a way that is acceptable to both democrats and i hope republicans. absolutely it is my job. i am the president, and i think this has to get done. just a broader point, if somebody told you that there is a plan out there that is guaranteed to double your health care costs over the next ten years, that is guaranteed to result in more americans losing their health care, and that is by far the biggest contributor

to our federal deficit, i think most people would be opposed to it. that is the status quo. that is what we have right now, so if we don't change, we can expect a different result. that is why i think this is so important, not only for those families out there who are struggling and you need some protection from abuses of the insurance company or need some protection from skyrocketing costs, but it is also important for our economy and by the way it is important for families wages and incomes. one of the things that does not yet talked about is the fact that when premiums are going up and the cost to employers are going up, that is money that could be going into people's wages and incomes and over the last decade we basically saw middle-class families, their incomes and wages flatlined. part of the reason is because health care costs are gobbling that up and that is why i say,

even if we don't reduce our health care costs by the $6,000 that we are paying more than any other country on earth, if we just reduced it by two or 3,000 that would mean money in people's pockets and that is possible to do, but we are going to have to make some changes. we have got to change how health care is delivered into the health care dissolute-- so that doctors are being paid for the quality of care and not the quantity of care. we have got to make information technology more effective. we have got to have the medical system work in teams so that people don't go through five different tests. those are all critical to do and we can do them. i understand people are feeling uncertain about this. they feel anxious partly because we have become so cynical about what government can accomplish. people's attitudes are, you know, even though i don't like this, at least i know it and i

would like to have more that i don't know so folks are skeptical. that is entirely legitimate because they have not seen a lot of laws coming out of washington lately that have helped them. but, my hope is, and i am confident that when people look at the cost of doing nothing, they are going to say we can make this happen. we have made big changes before that and up resulting in a better life for the american people. david alexander of reuters. >> thank you mr. president. you have been pushing congress to pass health care reform by august. why the rush? are you worried that if you don't, there is a delay until the fall, the whole effort will collapse? >> a couple of points. number one, i am rushed because i get letters every day from

families that are being clobbered by health care costs. and they ask me, can you help. i have got a middle-aged couple that will write me and they say our daughter just found out she is that leukemia, and if i don't do something soon, we just r.e. they are going to go bankrupt or we are not going to be able to provide their daughter with the care that she needs. and, in a country like ours, that is not right. so that is part of my rush. the second thing is the fact that, if you don't set deadlines in this town, things don't happen. the default position is inertia, because doing something always creates some people who are unhappy. there is always going to be some interest out there that decides, you know what? the status quo is working for me a little bit better, and the fact that we have made so much

progress, where we have got doctors, nurses,@@@@@@@ r i do think it is important to get this right. if at the end of the day i do not get to see that we have it right, then i'm not want to sign a bill that that to our deficit. i will not sign a bill that does not reduce health-care inflation so that families as low as government are saving money. i am not going to sign a bill that i do not believe will work. my measure of whether things work or not ouare listening to e american people and health care experts to have shown that in

some communities health care is cheaper and delivers a better result. and delivers a better result. i think we can achieve it so i am confident that if we just keep at it, we keep working, we are diligent, we are on this, if we take criticisms that are out there, and modify whatever plans are already working through congress so that it meets those concerns and those criticisms, that we can arrive at a bill that is going to improve the lives of the american people. i will give you one specific example. i think there was legitimate concern that we have not incorporated all of the measures that could reduce health care inflation over the long term. in some of the versions of health care reform that were coming out of committee. over the last week, working with

not only health care experts but also members of congress who are concerned about this, we actually have now got a commitment to incorporate an idea that has a panel of doctors and health care experts advising on how we can get a better value for our money in medicare. and, every expert out there says this can be a valuable tool to start reducing inflation over the long term. so, can i say this though? if we hadn't had any kind of deadline, that change probably would have never surfaced until who knows when. and, so, i want to do this right, but the american people need some relief. chuck todd. >> thank you our. where just talking on that question about reducing health care inflation, reducing costs. can you explain how you are

going to expand coverage? is it fair to say, is this bill going to cover all 47 million americans who are uninsured or is it going to take a mandate? is this something, your bill is probably not going to get it all the way there and if it is not going to get all the way there, how far is enough? 20 million mark, i can sign that, 10 million more i can't. >> now, the truth is that unless you have what is called a single-payer system in which everybody is automatically covered, then you are probably not going to reach every single individual because there is always going to be somebody out there who thinks they are indestructible and doesn't want to get health care, doesn't bother getting health care and then unfortunately when they get hit by a bus and end up in the emergency room, the rest of us have to pay for it. that is not the overwhelming majority of americans.

the overwhelming majority of americans want health care but millions of them can afford it, so the plan that has been, that i put forward and that we are seeing in congress would cover the estimates are at least 97 to 98% of americans. there might still be people left out there who, even though there is an individual mandate, even though they are required to purchase health insurance, might still not getting it, war despite a lot of subsidies are still in such dire straits and that it is still hard for them to afford it and we may end up giving them some sort of hardship exemption. i am sorry, go ahead. so, i think that's the basic idea should be that in this country, if you want health care you should be able to get affordable health care, and given the ways that is already in the system right now, if we

just to redesign certain elements of health care, then we can pay for it. we can pay for it in the short term but we can also pay for it in along term and in fact there is going to be a whole lot of savings that we obtain from that because for example, the average american family is paying thousands of dollars in hidden costs in their insurance premiums to pay for what is called uncompensated care. people the show up at the emergency room because they don't have a primary care physician. if we can get those people insured, and instead of having a foot amputation because of advanced diabetes, they are getting a nutritionist who was working with them to make sure that they are keeping their diet where it needs to be. that is going to save us all money in the long term. >> you mentioned to republicans in your opening statement, but you have 60 democratic seats,

healthy majority in the house for goeth you don't get this, isn't this a fight inside the democratic party and republicans really aren't playing? you can't blame the republicans for this one. >> first of all, you have not seen me out there blaming the republicans. i have been a little frustrated by some of the misinformation that has been coming out of the republicans, but that has to do with as you pointed out, politics. if you have got somebody out there saying, not let's get the best bill possible but instead says, let's try to beat this so we can gain political of advantage, well, that is not i think what the american people expect. i am very appreciative that people like chuck grassley on the finance committee in the senate, people like mike enzi, people like alexius know have been serious and engaging democrats in trying to figure

out how do we action get a system that works, and even in those committees were you did not see republican votes we have seen republican ideas so for example in the health committee in the senate, 160 republican amendments were adopted into the bill because they have got good ideas to contribute so the politics may dictate that they don't vote for health care reform because they think you know, it will make obama more vulnerable. but, they have got a good idea we will still take it and in terms of democrats, the fact of the matter is that, because this is a big issue i think that a lot of democrats have a lot of different ideas. some of them have to do with regional disparities. for example you have got some democrats who are concerned that the medicare reimbursement rates and their communities are too low, so they would like to see

the bill incorporates higher rates for doctors and providers in rural communities to incentivize good care and those communities. that is a legitimate concern but the minute you bring up that concern, that adds money which means we then have to find additional dollars. so, this is part of the normal give-and-take of the legislative process. i am confident in the end we will have a bill that democrats and some republicans support. jake. >> thank you mr. president. you said earlier that you want to tell the american people what is in it for them, how will their families benefit from health care reform but experts say in addition to the benefits you were pushing, there is going to have to be some sacrifice in order for there to be true cost-cutting measures such as americans giving up tasks, referrals, choice and end of life care. when you describe health care reform you don't understandably,

you don't talk about the sacrifices americans have to make. do you accept the premise that, other than some tax increases on the wealthiest americans, the american people are going to have to give anything up in order for this to happen? >> they are going to have to give up paying for things that don't make them healthier. and, speaking as an american i think that is the kind of change you want. look, if right now hospitals and doctors aren't coordinating and of to have you just take one test when you come in because of an illness, but instead have you take one test, then you go to another specialist and take a another test, then you take a third test and nobody is bothering to send the first test, the same test, to the next doctors. you are wasting money. you may not see it because if you have health insurance right

now, it is just being sent to the insurance company but that is raising your premiums, that is raising everybody's premiums. that money one way or another is coming out of your pocket, although we are also subsidizing some of that because there are tax breaks for health care. so, not only is it costing you money in terms of higher premiums, it is also costing you as a taxpayer. i want to change that. every american should want to change that. why would we want to pay for things that don't work that are not making us healthier? and come here is what i am confident about. if doctors and patients have the best information about what works and what doesn't, then they are going to want to pay for what works. if there is a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not

pay half price for the thing that is going to make you well? the system right now doesn't incentivize that. those are the changes that are going to be needed, that we are going to need to make inside the system. it will require i think patients to, as well as doctors, as well as hospitals, to be more discriminating consumers. but i think that is a good thing, because ultimately we can't afford this. we just can't afford what we are doing right now. and, just to raise a broader issue, that i think has how we look at health care reform, let me just talk about deficit and debt, because part of what has been happening in this debate is the american people are understandably queasy about the

huge deficits and debt we are facing right now. and, the feeling is, alright, we have the bank bailout. we have the recovery package. we have the supplemental. we have got the budget. we ours the numbers, trillionth here in trillionth there's a legitimately people are saying look, we are in recession. i am having to give up things and yet all they see as government spending more and more money. that argument i think it's been used effectively by people who don't want to change health care, to suggest that somehow this is one more government programs so i just want to address that point very quickly. first of all, let's understand that when i came in, we had a $1.3 trillion deficit, annual deficit, that we had already

inherited. we had to immediately move forward with a stimulus package because the american economy had lost trillions of dollars of wealth. consumers have lost their their 401(k)'s, through their home values, you name it, they have lost trillions of dollars. that all just went away. that was the day i was sworn in, it was already happening. we had 700,000 dolleck-- 700,000 jobs being lost. we felt it was important put together a recovery package that would help stabilize the economy. then we passed the budget by law, and our budget at a ten year projection, and i just want everybody to be clear about this, if we had done nothing, if you have the same old budget as opposed to the changes we made in our budget he would have been $9.3 trillion deficit over the

next ten years. because of the changes we have made, it is going to be 7.1 trillion. that is not good, but it is $2.2 trillion less than it would have then if we have the same policies in place when we came in. so, the reason i point this out is to say that the debt and the deficit our deep concern of mine. i am very worried about federal spending. and, the steps that we have taken so far have reduce federal spending over the next ten years by $2.2 trillion. it is not enough, but in order for us to do more, we are not only going to have to eliminate waste in the system and by the way we have a big victory yesterday by eliminating a weapons program, the f-22 that the pentagon had repeatedly said

we didn't need so we are going to have to eliminate waste there. we are going to have to@@@@@@@ r to everybody who is up there who was then other by this idea that the obama administration wants to spend and spend, the fact of the matter is that we inherited an enormous deficit, enormous long-term debt projections, and we have not reduced as much as we need to. healthcare reform is not going to add to that deficit. it is designed to lower it. that is part of the reason why it is so important to do now. chip reid? >> thank you.

>> thank you mr. president. on medicare, they are obviously millions of americans who depend on medicare, and when you talk about ending the long term cost them or when you talk about cuts in the current proposal on capitol hill, you talk about cuts in medicare or they talk about cuts in medicare but there never many specifics. specifically what kind of thing, what kind of sacrifice are you calling on beneficiaries to make and even if not right away our future beneficiaries going to be getting less generous benefits than today? and what you think about taking it out of the political realm and giving it to an outside body of experts to take it out of health care? >> that is what our proposal is. it is called the medpac program. by the way it was originally a republican idea. i want to give credit where credit is due. the republican congress passed a bill that created a panel of health care experts to make

recommendations to congress on how we could get better quality, lower costs. the problem is every year it would just go on the shelf and nobody would act on it, so what we have said is, let's give that body some power. let's require congress to vote on the proposals they are making every year. congress can still reject it, so does not completely removing it from politics, but they have to reject or accept it as a package and that i think what incentivize and empower important changes, but here's the thing i want to emphasize. it is not going to reduce medicare benefits. what is going to do is to change of those benefits are delivered, so that they are more efficient. let me give you a theories that the example. you have heard that there is a consequence of our efforts of reform, the pharmaceutical industry has already said they

are willing to put $80 billion on the table. why is that? the reason is, is because there is probably more waste than $80 billion in terms of how the drug plan and medicare is administered. we might be able to get $100 billion of debt or more, but the pharmaceutical industry voluntarily said here the $80 billion. do you know what that means? that mean senior citizens who right now have a so-called donut hole in their plan, where after spending a certain amount on prescription drugs, suddenly they drop off the cliff and they have got to pocket the entire cost. so they half of that is filled. that is a hard commitment that we already have, so that is the change in how we are delivering medicare, but do you know what? it turns out it means out-of-pocket savings for seniors. that is why aarp has endorsed

us. christie parson. >> you promised health care negotiations would take place on c-span and that has not happened. nord ministries and recently turned down a request from a watchdog group seeking a list of health care executives who visited the white us to talk about health care reform. also, the t.a.r.p. inspector general recently said your white house of withhold and to much information on the bank bailout so my question for you is are you fulfilling a promise of transparency and the white house? >> on the list of health care executives who visited us, most of the time you guys have been in there taking pictures though it has not been a secret and my understanding is we sent a letter out providing a full list of all the executives, but frankly these have mostly been at least photos phrase for you could see who was participating. with respect to while the negotiations not being on c-span, you will recall in this

very room that our kickoff event was here on c-span, and at a certain point, you know you start getting into all kinds of different meetings, the senate finance is having a meeting, the house is having a meeting. if they want this to be on c-span, then i would welcome it. i don't think there are a lot of secrets going on in there. and, the last question with respect to t.a.r.p.. let me take a look at what exactly they say we have not provided. i think that we have provided much greater transparency then existed prior to our administration coming in. it is a big program. i don't know exactly what has been requested. i will find out and i will have answered for you. >> thank you mr. president.

you have said the recent bank profits indicate there has been no sense of remorse on wall street for risky behavior and we haven't seen a change in culture there. do you think that your administration needs to be taking a harder line with wall street and also, would you consider going a step further than your regulatory reform proposals and supporting a fee on risky activities that go beyond traditional lending? >> we were on the verge of a complete financial meltdown. and, the reason was because wall street took extraordinary risks with other people's money. they were peddling loans that they knew could never be paid back. they were flipping those loans and leveraging those loans and higher and higher mountains of debt were being built on loans that were fundamentally unsound.

and, all of us now are paying the price. now, i believe it was the right thing to do. as unpopular as it is, it was the right thing for us to do to step in to make sure that the financial system did not collapse, because things would be even worse today that the steps not been taken. it originated under the bush administration. we continue it, because, with your on the left of the right if you talk to economists, they said that this could have the kinds of consequences that would drop this into a deep depression and not simply a very severe recession. now, one of these success stories of the past six months is that we really have seen a stabilization in the financial system. it is not where it needs to be, but people are no longer talking

about the financial system falling off a cliff. we have stepped away from the brink and that is important because what it means is there are a lot of companies right now that can go into the marketplace and borrow money to fund inventory from payroll and that will help the economy grow as a whole. the problem is, now that the financial system has bounced back, what you are saying is banks are starting to make profits again. some of them have paid back the t.a.r.p. money that they received, the bank bailout money that they have received and we expect more of them to pay this back. that is a good thing and we also think it is a good thing that their profitable because of their profitable that means they have reserves in place and they can lend. this is america, so if you are profitable in the free market system, then you benefit. but, what we haven't seen i think it's the kind of change in behavior and practices on wall

street that would ensure that we don't find ourselves in the fix again where we have got to bailout these folks and while they are taking huge risks, and taking huge bonuses. so, what do i think we need to do? we have got to pass the financial regulatory reform, and you know this is an example of where folks say, should the obama administration be taking on too much? the fact of the matter is that if we don't pass financial regulatory reform, then banks are going to go back to the same things that they were doing before. in some ways it could be worse because now they know that the federal government may think they are too big to fail, so if they are unconstrained they can take even more risks. so, there are a number of elements of financial regulatory reform. with respect to compensation i would like to think that people

would feel a little remorse and feel embarrassed and would not get multimillion-dollar bonuses, but if shane does not work, then i think one proposal that i put forward is to make sure at least shareholders of these companies know what their executives are being compensated, and that may force some reductions. for banks that are still receiving taxpayer assistance, we have a set of rules that give sessom control on reducing the unwarranted compensation and in terms of the last point you made, which is the possibility of these four transactions that we want to discourage, that is one of the ideas that is going to be working its way through the process. i think it minimum, what we want to do is to make sure that, to the extent the federal

government is going to have to be a backstop, just like the federal deposit insurance corp., everybody is familiar with the fdic, when you put your deposit in your bank you have confidence that they are insured, that is paid for by bank fees. we need to make sure that there's a similar mechanism in place for some of these other far out transactions, so if you guys want to do them, then you have got to put something into the kitty to make sure that if you screw up is not taxpayer dollars that have to pay for it, but dollars coming out of your pockets. steve kaufman of the cleveland plain view. >> thank you. to follow up on jake's question earlier star. so many americans are concerned that this plan particularly the public option which lead to reduced benefits are reduced coverage, to questions. one, can you guarantee this legislation wheel lock again, so

the government will never deny any services that will be decided by the doctor and patient, the government will then not deny coverage and secondarily can you as the symbolic gestures say that you and the congress will abide by the same benefits and the public option? >> well, number one, not only the public option but the insurance regulation that we want to put into place will largely matched up with what members of congress are getting through the federal employee plan. that is a good example of what we are trying to build for the american people. the same thing that congress enjoys, which is they go, there is a marketplace of different plans that they can access, depending on what is best for their families. one of the plan that we have talked about is a public option in part of the reason we want to have a public option is to help keep the insurance companies on the speak with the insurance companies are providing good care and as it is they are going to be more regulated so they

can't deny you care because of a preexisting condition or because you change jobs or they decided you were too sick and not a good risk. with regulation, there is already going to be improvement in the insurance industry. but, having a public plan out there that also shows that maybe if you take some of the profit motive out, maybe if you are reducing some of the administrative cost that you can get an even better deal, that is going to incentivize the private sector to do even better and that is a good thing. that is a good thing. you know, there have been reports in just over the last couple of days of insurance companies making record profits right now, at a time when everyone is getting hammered. they are making record profits and premiums are going up. what is the constraint on them? how can you ensure that those costs aren't being passed on to

employers or passed on to employees? the american people, ordinary middle-class families and the way that overtime is going to make them broke? part of the ways to make sure there is some competition now there's so that is the idea. now come to get your original question, can i guarantee that they are going to be no changes in the health care delivery system? no. the whole point of this is to try to encourage changes that work for the american people and make them healthier. the government already is making some of these decisions. more importantly, insurance companies right now are making those decisions in part of what we want to do is make sure those decisions are being made by doctors and medical experts based on evidence, based on what works because that is not how it is working right now. that is not have this working now. right now doctors a lot of times are forced to make decisions

based on the fee payment schedule that is out there, so if they a &rrp free doctors, patients, hospitals to make decisions based on what is best for patient care and that is the whole idea behind mayo. that is the whole idea behind the cleveland clinic.

i am going to be visiting your hometown's mall to go to the cleveland clinic, to show why their system works so well in part of the reason it works well is because they have set up a system where patient care is the number one concern, not bureaucracy, what forms have to be filled up, what do we get reimbursed for. those are changes i think the american people want to see. [inaudible] >> you know, i would be happy to abide by the same benefit package. i will be honest with you. i am the president of the united states so i have a doctor following me every minute, which is why i say this is not about me. i have got the best health care in the world. i am trying to make sure that everybody has good health care and they don't right now. lynn sweet.

[laughter] i said steve, but he just stood up. that is not fair. shame on you. gideon there real quick. >> i appreciate that. you cited the mayo clinic in the cleveland clinic's as models for the delivery of health care. the mayo clinic though has problems with house proposals, saying they don't focus enough on patients and results. what to expect to achieve tomorrow by going to the cleveland clinic and r.e. expecting some form of the endorsement from the cleveland clinic? >> i am not expecting an endorsement. the cleveland clinic is simply a role model for some of the kinds of changes that we want to see. i think it is important to note that the mayo clinic was initially critical and concerned about whether there were and of changes in the delivery system and cost-saving measures in the original house bill. after they found out we had put

forward very specific mechanisms for this medpac idea, this idea of experts getting the politics out of health care in making decisions based on the best evidence out there, they wrote in their blog the very next day that we actually think this would make a difference. alright, i try to make that short savitt lynn sweet would last question in. >> thank you mr. president a we usually professor henry jr. was arrested at his home in cambridge. what this thaincident say to you and what does it say about race relations in america? >> i should say at the outset that skip gates is a friend, so i may be little biased here. i don't know all the facts. what has been reported though is that the guy forgot his keys. he jimmy his way to get into the house. there was a report called then

to the police station that there might be a burglary taking place. so far, so good. if i was trying to-- i did guess this is my house now. [laughter] let's say my old house in chicago. here i would get shot. [laughter] but, so far so good. they are reporting, the police are doing what they should and there's a call in date investigate what happens. my understanding is, at that point, professor gates is already in his house. the police officer comes then. i am sure there is some exchange of words, but my understanding is that professor gates then shows his id to showbiz is his house. let that point he gets arrested for disorderly conduct, the charges which are later dropped. now, i don't know, not having

been there and not seeing all the facts, what role phrase played in that, but i think it's fair to say no. one any of us would be pretty angry. number two, that the cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proved that they were in their own home. and number three, what i think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of african-americans and latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. that is just the fact. as you know liane, when i was in the state legislature in illinois we worked on the racial profiling bill because there was indisputable evidence that blacks and hispanics were being stopped disproportionately, and that is a sign, an example of

how you know, the race remains a factor in this society. that does not lessen the incredible progress that has been made. i am standing here as testimony to the progress that has been made and yet, the fact of the matter is that this still haunts us, and even when they are honest misunderstandings, the facts that blacks and hispanics are picked up more frequently and often time for no cause, casts suspicion even when there is good cause and that is why i think the more we are working with local law enforcement to improve policing techniques so that we are eliminating pote

the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. chairman, i rise in strong support of the statutory pay as you go act of 2009. to understand this bill, it's important, or useful to understand its short history. at the outset of the 1990's, congress passed the budget enforcement act to ensure the budget summon agreement would be carried out. the speaker pro tempore: i ask the members to take their conversations from the floor and give courtesy to the members that are speaking. mr. spratt: among its provisions was a rule called pay as you go or pay-go for short.

they accused of -- us of dodging the hard decisions we had to make. but the budget was in surplus and it was clear pay-go had played an important part in the success. in 2003, -- in 2002, the budget enforcement act was allowed to expire and president bush and the republicans, the majority at that time, chose not to reinstate pay-go. without the process rule in place, the budget deficit -- the budget plunged from a surplus of $236 billion in 2000 to a deficit of $214 billion in 2004. in april of 2005, in congressional testimony, alan greenspan said, and i'm quoting, one of the real problems we had was allowing pay-go to lapse in september of 2002. were we still to be able to exist under a pay-go regime, which i thought worked very

well, i think we'd have a lot fewer problems now. when democrats took pack -- took back the house, a reinstatement of pay-go was at the top of the agenda pay-go was made a rule of the house the day we convened. without support of the bush administration, there was no way to get it enacted into law. but now work the support of the obama administration, the underlying legislation we are pushing and advancing today was originally sent to us by the president, mr. obama. with the support of the obama administration, we're in a position to take a longer stride toward budget discipline by enacting statutory pay-go into law. the obama administration inherited a colossal deficit, swollen to accommodate massive measures. we must focus attention on our long-term fiscal health.

pay-go rules cannot by themselves convert deficit into surplus, but they can help. they rein in new entitlement spending and tax cuts this they are easy to pass and hard to repeal by insisting on offsets and deficit neutrality for new laws, it holds the bottom line constant. it's a common sense rule that everybody can understand. when you're in a deficit, don't make it worse. when you want to spend a dollar, save a dollar. everybody can understand the common sense logic of this bill. i would add that pay-go has not only been a common sense idea that found its way into the rules of the house and the statute books but has traditionally received bipartisan support. it was enacted in 1990 under a republican president and democratic congress. in 1997, it was extended under a democratic president and republican congress.

this is not a panacea. i wouldn't hold it out as that. it's not the ultimate solution to deficits. but it is a significant step in the right direction. it was proven to work in the 1990's and needs to be reinstated for that purpose now. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentleman from wisconsin. mr. ryan: mr. speaker, at this time, i yield four minutes to myself. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for four minutes. mr. ryan: i wish the budget committee had an opportunity to mark up this bill. however, the decision was made to bypass the budget committee and go straight to the floor this bill is not a simple extension of current law. it bypasses the deliberate and transparent process and we're rushing legislation to the floor. it's an ongoing trend of a disturbing trend which is write legislation in the leadership offices, rush it to the floor, ram it through congress without legislators legislating. we have one of the most talented chairmen of the budget

committee who knows more than anybody else how these laws work, mr. spratt, it should have gone through his committee. unfortunately, written in leadership, rushed to the floor, out it goes. that's a disturbing trend with how this congress is working. let me talk about the need for fiscal restraint and fiscal discipline. we concur, we agree, we have to do things to get our fiscal house in order. we need to equip congress with more and better tools to get this budget under control. unfortunately, this isn't the cool. this tool does not work. let's look at pay-go's track record thus far. since pay-go was instituted as a rule here the budget deficit under the last republican budget was $161 billion. the budget today, the deficit is at $1.8 trillion, more than ten-fold increase. let me show you how much spending last year in increases were subject to pay-go for this

year's spenting. snm @ @ @ @ @ @ @ :@ @ @ zk@ @ b:@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sh @ @ @ @

the government right now count have funded, to medicare, medicaid, social security, a mountain of debt is before us and what does pay-go do to address it? absolutely nothing. pay-go does nothing whatsoever to address the runaway entitlement problems we have today. it simply says if we're going to build new programs, new nondiscretionary, mandatory entitlement programs, then and only then shall we pay for it. we know the track record of something like this. without spending caps, without reform to go after existing spending programs, this simply results in raising taxes. so we believe that this is more or less a machine to raise taxes to pay for new and more costly government programs. it does nothing to attack the fact that we have trillions upon trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities right now.

it does nothing to attack the fact that just this year alone, discretionary spending is going up 8%, 11% for discretionary spending, it ignores those things. it's like buying a fire extinguisher after your house has burned down. congress is going to commit all these fiscal crimes, only to put pay-go in place after they've been committed. so mr. speaker, this bill, as well-intended as it may be, is not the solution. there are better ideas. and i only wished that we could have gone through the budget committee and collaborated in making this bill better. with that, mr. speaker, i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentleman from south carolina. mr. spratt: i yield two minutes to the gentleman from texas a meck of the committee. >> the gentleman is are recognized. mr. doggett: for eight look

years, fiscal responsibility was abandoned by the bush administration and its congressional neighbors. whenever a difficult decision came along, they played a devastating game of kickball to the tune of, don't worry, be happy. record surpluses turned into record deficits. and the economy began to collapse. this did not happen by accident. republican ideologues urged the approach of fiscal deficit with more borrow, spend, and tax cuts as the best tactic to starve government and ensure that democrats were never able to address the other deficits in our society, educational deficits, health care deficits, and more. this year, with only seven months so far to correct eight years of failure, as we clean up the mess that we were given, we reaffirm our commitment to pay as you go and we're already making it a reality in one of

the most significant challenges of our time, the health care deficit. we correct it without adding to the fiscal deficit. we're paying for long-neglected health care reform by cutting costs in the system and taxing the few at the top who benefited the most from the bush era. fiscal response blet, fiscal security is national security. today's vote signals we are abandoning the republican fiscal model which is straight out of the magic kingdom. their rule like the first law of disney is that wishing will make it so. that may work in the law of fairy tales but it's been a budgeting disaster and economic nightmare we begin correcting today. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from wisconsin. mr. ryan: at this time, i yield two minutes to the distinguished gentleman from ohio a member of the budget committee, mr. jordan. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for two minutes.

mr. jordan: thank you, mr. speaker. i thank the gentleman for yielding and his continuing efforts to try to bring some fiscal sanity to this town and this place. mr. speaker, i rise in opposition to this so-called pay as you go bill. most americans, frankly, would label this tax as you go. families and businesses across the country are tightening their belts but this congress keeps spending like there's no tomorrow, putting our country on the path toward bankruptcy. now they're trying to get the american people to look the other way with this smoke screen called pay-go. earlier this year, we offered a balanced budget. that's pay as you go but this bill doesn't balance the budget. for three years we've been offering amendments in committee and on this floor that would hold the line on spending. that's really pay as you go, but this bill doesn't hold the line on any spending. in fact this bill is another facade to allow spending and spending and spending. remember last week, for the first time, for the first time in american history, we hit a $1 trillion deficit. it's slated to go higher as we

have a few months left in this fiscal year. just to reiterate a couple of points the ranking member made in his opening comments. last year with the pay as you go rule the majority had put in place we exempted $420 billion worth of legislation from that very rule. and the deficit increased by $1.7 trillion. that's over 1,000% increase over the current pay as you go policy the majority has had in place. we need real pay as you go. our substitute offered by our ranking member, mr. ryan, is the right approach. it has spending caps, it has deficit targets, it takes the right approach to balance our budget and will have a super majority requirement, something we need to override the spending limits and caps in the bill. we don't need more smoke screens and empty promises we always see from washington. what we ed is real fiscal responsibility. let me say this. over the next decade, the

deficit -- excuse me, the debt is slated to reach $23 trillion. think about what it takes to pay that off. you first have to balance a budget. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. ryan: i yield the gentleman an additional minute. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. jordan: $23 trillion. first you have to balance the budget, then run a $1 trillion surplus for 23 year, that doesn't count the interest which is approaching $1 billion a day. we need to get serious and not have smoke screens and facades. we need real pay as you go we need real fiscal responsibility. one of the thing this is a make this is cunltry great is the idea that parents make sacrifices for their children so that they can have a better life than they did. they in turn become adults and parents and do the same for their kids. it's been that psych that will allowed the united states to become the greatest nation in history. when you begin to reverse that process and leave the debt to someone else, that's a real problem. today we can do the right

thing. vote this legislation down and enact the substitute version offered by mr. ryan. if we do that, we can start to move in the right direction and do what's right for our children and grandchildren. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from south carolina. mr. spratt: i yield fur minutes to the gentleman from south carolina with first introduced the legislation calling for the pay-go rule. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for four minutes. mr. miller: i rise in strong support of this legislation to help restore fiscal responsibility. i salute president obama and the majority leader hoyer for their leadership on this important issue. listening to this debate might leave the american people confused about republican values. republicans regularly declare their fidelity to controlling federal spending and claim also that they want to fix our broken health care system. . and they oppose our historic

health care reform bill. my question is simple. when they controlled the house, senate and white house, all of our government for eight long years, why didn't they control federal spending? why didn't you reform the health care system? but what you did when you got power for the first time was you made your highest priority a tax cut to the richest people in this country without paying for it. the rest of us have been paying for it forever. and in 2001, you did it and in 2002 you did it, turning the budget surpluses into massive deficits. why is it they added a record number of earmarks to the appropriations bill, running the deficit bill even further? why in that eight years they never ever made health care reform a priority? not ever. not ever in those eight years. meanwhile, americans' health care bills keep rising, insurance companies deny care and the number of uninsured continue to grow.

eight years of all-republican government, spending the taxpayers' money as a drunken sailor and with full apoll guys to the sailor. raising deficits to historic levels and inaction in health care of any kiped of reform, but they made rhetoric a priority and made politics as usual a priority. now that they're out of power, they speak about controlling deficits and reforming health care, p but they state they hope our president fails. the hope for our nation is that our president fails. i have been a supporter for pay-go budgeting when i first introduced the bill, when liberals and conservatives worked together with president clinton to adopt the pay-go rules, they had deficits left over from the 1980's and 1990's and we recorded surpluses and ran them a number of years in the row. president bush and the

republican-controlled congress aerased it and repealed the law and now what we see is the interest on that debt is crowding out the national priorities. in 2007, democrats made pay-go part of our rules again and legislation today strengthens that by making it part of the law so the senate and the house will have to abide by it. our bill says congress should not cut taxes or increase entitlement without first deciding how you can afford and pay for these new costs. pay-go requires difficult decisions about national priorities and about how to afford them. we can't pay for tax cuts or entitlement we can't afford them. pay-go will strengthen the economy by helping to reduce interest payments on our debt and modernize energy policy and college affordability. our health care bill will not increase the deficit one dime. it's paid for. our new college affordability is not only paid for, but returns

$10 billion in reductions. the democrats are working hard to ensure going forward we can exercise fiscal discipline that hard-working americans need and expect from this congress. i urge my colleagues to vote yes on pay-go. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from wisconsin. mr. ryan: i yield 30 seconds to comment. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for 30 seconds. mr. ryan: on the last speaker's point. he is saying that the last majority did spend too much money. a number of us criticized us and a number of us came to the floor with budget enforcement legislation, a minority of the majority voted against it and all but a few in the then minority voted against it. but more to the point, spending did grow by too much in the prior eight years, but look at it now, mr. speaker. if you thought spending was fast then, holy cow.

with that, mr. speaker, i would like to yield 2 1/2 minutes to a member of the budget committee, mr. mchenry. the gentleman is recognized for two minutes. mr. mchenry: i thank the ranking member for yielding. i rise in opposition to the democrats' so-called pay-go scheme. it sounds good, but the reality is far different than the sound of it. it does nothing to control out-of-control spending. the proposal does nothing to hold accountable discretionary spending, which is 40% of the budget. as american families face difficult decisions about every dollar they spend, the majority of this congress believes that 40% of their budget should be exempt from fiscal discipline, because congress must show the for titude to resolve these spending issues and control reckless spending i support the republican alternative. it sets discretionary spending

caps for the next decade. the caps would not impact defense, veterans or social security and to adequately fulfill our obligations, discretionary spending would be allowed to grow at the rate of inflation, unlike the majority of this congress, our proposal would have reduced budget deficits in the years to come. it's noteworthy this pay-go scheme has been the rule of the house for the last three years. well, what's happened in the last three years? federal spending went from $2.7 trillion to $3.6 trillion, a 25% increase, mr. speaker. why? well, simple. the democrat majority chooses to waive the rule when it's invenalt and spend like drunken sailors. it's unforpt. in order to have fiscal discipline and reign in reckless spending and the debt it fuels, we need to focus on these issues and have spending caps.

it is counterproductive for this congress to spend so much @@@@@)

we went to a deficit of $4.5 trillion, an astounding $10 trillion fiscal u-turn. it's time to correct that mistake and to see that it never happens again. the pay-as-you-go principle is one that families and businesses understand. it's common sense, and they get it. unform, some of the members of congress who were the arc texts of the largest deficits of american history, the deficits they rail against on a daily basis, don't get it. speech after speech they sing the song of fiscal responsibility, but today they will vote against the commonsense pay-as-you-go law. i'm proud to make this a permanent law and not a temporary one. the pay-go principle makes sense for this congress and all future

congresses. had it been made permanent in the 1990's, our national debt today would be trillions less and our children's future far brighter. we cannot correct irresponsible fiscal decisions over the past decade, we will begin the important process of reducing deficits and balancing the federal budget. that, more than any speech, is what our children and our country deserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from wisconsin. mr. ryan: i will say -- yielding myself for 10 seconds. i will say the majority passed a budget resolution under the pay-go regime that triples our debt in 10 1/2 years. i yield to the gentlelady from wyoming. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady is recognized for two minutes. mrs. lummis: our deficit will sore to $1.8 trillion.

the budget will triple our debt in 10 years and still be pay-go comply ant. that is how disinagain youous this bill is. they didn't even allow it to go through the budget committee for fear, perhaps that the distinguished chairman of the budget committee might come up with something more reasonable. instead, it is the ranking member that had to come up with something more reasonable. families in wyoming and across the nation don't have the luxury of exempting 40% of their budget from balancing, but this pay-go bill does. 40% of the budget is off the table. it doesn't have to play the pay-go game. this is slight of hand. i ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to reject this bill, which falls short of its goals. let's slow entitlement growth

and control congress's appetite for spending. let's pass the paul ryan amendment. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady's time has expired. the gentleman from south carolina. mr. spratt: i recognize mr. van hollen. mr. van hollen: i rise in strong support of this legislation. on the day he was sworn in as president, president obama inherited huge deficits and exploding debt in this country. the previous administration wanted to put everything on our national credit card and ask future generations to pay for it. it's time to put an end to this and this bill is the beginning of the end of irresponsible spending. it's the end of sweeping our problems under the rug and saying we are going to put them off for another day and we have seen the impact this kind of budget mechanism can have. we saw it in the 1990's, during which we had a pay-go rule in place and saw our deficits and debts go from record deficits to record surpluses.

and when we abandoned that, when we abandoned that fiscal discipline rule in 2002, we saw our federal debt explode. as we dig ourselves out of this economic ditch we find ourselves in, it's important to put our economy on a long-term, sustainable basis, and this legislation is part of doing that. it will require that policies that result in revenue reduction or increased mandatory spending be offset over the next five and 10 years. that will require us to take a hard look at our national priorities and require us to look at the tradeoffs we have to make, just like every family in america has to make those hard decisions. we say let's apply that rule to the united states congress. unfortunately, as we saw from the last administration, there was a lot of talk, but no action. mr. speaker, what this does is say this isn't just going to be a house rule, this is going to be a matter of the law of the land. and while it can never be a total substitute for our ability

to mufter the political will to get things done, history has been a clear guide that this helps us get the job done. i commend leader hoyer, mr. spratt and the others for bringing this important legislation to the floor. let's say to our children and grandchildren, we're going to take some responsibility. the buck stops here. let's stop passing on our problems to the next generation. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. the gentleman from wisconsin. mr. ryan: i would like to three minutes to the the gentleman from california, mr. lungren. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for three minutes. mr. lungren: i thank the gentleman for yielding. mr. speaker, when i returned to this house chamber in 2005, it was obvious to me that we were spending too much money on the federal level. it was obvious to me that uncle sam needed a diet at that time. but at this time, it is even worse. we need what i would call a gastrobypass. and instead, what do you bring to the floor?

you bring us cosmetic surgery and fiscal face lift. it looks good, but there's nothing behind the mask. look at the figures. since my friend from south carolina has been chairman and his colleagues on the democratic side have been allowed to be called chairwoman, chairmen, since they have been charge, what has happened to the spending? it's got even worse. you complained and you put the patient on a diet of milk shakes. we are in real trouble today and everybody knows it. what dw we do last week? we decided the fiscal situation was so bad, we needed to have a new program for wild horses at a cost of $700 million, $700 million. millions of more acres closed up

for that purpose, but $700 million dropped on the laps of the american taxpayer and this week you are trying to sell us a story that somehow you're concerned about overspending. the american people are a little bit sharper than that. they understand that when you complain about overspending and yet in the first opportunity you have to have your president in the white house, to control both houses, we pass the magic trillion dollar mark. yes, we had and in the very same week for the first time in our dictionary earmarks listed, is a word that is now conventional language. in that same week, we set the record, $1 trillion deficit in a single fiscal year haven't --:after a while, you can keep looking back and keep pointing in the mirror and saying look at what those guys did, but you have to man up.

you have to actually say you're responsible for the actions taking place right now and those actions have given us the largest deficit in the history of the world. we are going to double all of the debt that we have garnered from george washington to george w. bush in five years and we're going to triple it in 10 years. i know that's not the intent of the the gentleman from south carolina for whom i have great respect. it is a heavy burden to try and carry this democratic proposal and the administration's proposal. and i understand he probably would not -- he would rather not be in this position, but he finds himself in this position, mr. speaker. and all i can say to my good friend on the other side of the aisle is -- the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. lungren: i'm so sorry you have to do this. . the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from south carolina. mr. spratt: i'm glad to bring

this to the floor. i think it's going to work again. it's not a panacea, but it's a useful device to have in our arsenal of weapons to deal with the recession. by the way, the recession we're in, which has caused us to suffer a huge swelling in the deficit, starting in december of 2007en the bush watch. wall street fell apart in september of 2008. the tarp program was initiated in response to that. that, too, happened in the bush watch. we're in the backwash of many fiscal and economic policies which happened on that watch and we're suffering the consequence of them. i yield three minutes to the gentleman from vermont, mr. welch. spripe the gentleman is recognized for three minutes. mr. welch: sometimes the american people don't pay attention to an awful lot of what we say here. frequently when they don't, they're right. if this debate is really about accusations and

counteraccusations about who is responsible, we're not going to get anywhere. the american people know we have to pay our bills. we have to as a government just like they do individually. we have honest debates about what should be our priorities. i've been an admirer of the gentleman from wisconsin in his persistence in talk about fiscal responsibility. i disagree with the gentleman from wisconsin that the weight of fiscal prosperity is by radical reduction of taxes for very wealthy people. that's a fair and honest debate. on our side, there's some folks who think the worthiness of the goal of health care for all americans is its own justification and a way to pay for it. i disagree with that. if it is a worthy goal, we have to turn aspiration into affordable reality by paying for it. and on the health care bill, which is a major priority for president obama and for members of congress, we are going to bring to the floor a health care bill that is paid for and does not pay for the budget. or does not add to the budget

deficit. one of the major reasons that we should do this legislation is so that there is discipline on those of us who are advocating either for tax cuts, because they believe that will be good for the economy, or for reform in health care so that before we spend an extra dollar of our taxpayer money, we kick the tires of the system that we're affecting, like health care, and we have come to the conclusion on our side that to achieve one of our greatest goals, health care for every single american, that we've got to kick the tires of the health care system and kick them hard to squeeze out savings we can. this legislation where we're accepting the burden of responsibility to pay for those programs we think are essential to the welfare of the american people, we have the obligation of paying for it and before we even look at taxes, we want to

look at how we're wasting money. a dollar saved by cutting down waste is a dollar avoided in taxes. so this legislation, whatever its characterized as a machine for spending, which frankly is absurd is a machine for responsibility. whether or not our colleagues want to characterize this politically or not there is a reason on our side that we believe fiscal responsibility is a burden we should ac and we will with this legislation. i thank the budget committee for its leadership on this. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from wimbing. mr. ryan: may i inquire as to how much time remains in the two sides. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from wisconsin has 16 minutes remain, the gentleman from south carolina has 13 1/2 minutes remaining. mr. ryan: the gentleman said 16? e speaker pro tempore: 16 for the gentleman from wisconsin and 13 1/2 for the gentleman from south carolina. mr. ryan: i'd like to yield two minutes to mr. garrett of new

jersey. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for two minutes. mr. garrett: i come to the floor today thrilled that the majority has finally decided to focus on their own recklessness, their out of control spending. by bringing a statutory pay-go bill to the floor, we can conclude if they were left to their own devices, the democrats would run this country's finances into the ground. i think it's an admission of guilt on their part that they cannot help themselves. i find it disingenuous that the majority is are now raising the ban over fiscal responsibility after hearing on this floor that the republicans were reckless when we were voting against the $800 billion stimulus bill. it's hard to listen to their calls now for spending, 4 1/2 months after the democrats passed a $410 billion omnibus appropriation bill that contained over 9,000 earmarks system of lest we forget, earlier this year, the

democrats ram through the a budget through this congress to double the national debt in @@@v

gentleman from south carolina. mr. spratt: mr. speaker, i yield two minutes to the gentleman from new york, mr. bishop. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for two minutes. mr. bishop: i thank leader hoyer and chairman spratt for their leadership on budget enforcement. the issue is simple. congress must pay for what it spends. pay as you go budget enforcement rules in the 1990's helped balance the budget and project a 10-year, $5.6 trillion surplus, all while tough decisions were being made by the congress and the clinton administration in a decade of increasing defense, health care, and infrastructure cost. our new majority renewed pay-go a great step toward fiscal responsibility but not enough by itself. we need statutory authority to guarantee pay-go is enforced. while the minority is quick to

blame the administration and our majority for the current state of the federal budget, it is important to remember we didn't get here overnight or by biaccident. when pay-go is allowed to expire by the republicans in 2002 is also did budget discipline. the administration and republican congress made conscious decisions to enact the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthy while fighting two wars and expanding entitlements without paying for them except by expanding the deficits. this turned the surplus into the $1.3 trillion annual deficit president obama inherited on the day he took office. over the -- over the last several months we have been forced to invest to arrest an economic collapse but we must quickly return to sound fiscal discipline with pay-go as a firm pillar of our economy. this is confirmed by our president and leadership to pay for the health care reform, highway bill and other priorities working their way through the congress.

mr. speaker, i urge my colleagues to support this legislation and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from wisconsin. mr. ryan: i yield myself 30 seconds. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for 30 seconds. mr. ryan: i misspoke earlier when i had said a few democrats voted for the budget control act. i was wrong. no democrats voted for the budget control act when we had it here on the floor. not a single democrat voted in 2004 when we had the opportunity to pass real budget reform. unfortunately, some members of my party voted no as well, that's why it didn't pass. mr. speaker, this is a fiscal facade. nothing can change the fact that what this bill does is it basically is a situation where we commit all the fiscal crimes then outlaw them after they've been committed. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. ryan: i yield myself an additional 10 seconds. we sweep under the rug a new stimulus, new cap and tax

system, then a brand new health care bill. this is a bitter pill to swallow for the american taxpayer. with that, mr. speaker, i yield two minutes to the gentleman from kentucky, mr. whitfield. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for two minutes. mr. whitfield: i thank the gentleman if for yielding and the great work he does on the budget committee. almost every economist today will tell you they're very much concerned about the future viability of america, primarily because of the ever-increasing debt we face in this country. i am pleased today that we are simply here discussing pay-go though because it is such an important concept. i would also point out that the reason that i'm not supporting the democrats' pay-go recommendation is primarily because it exempts 40% of the budget, all of the discretionary spending from pay-go rules and requirements.

it's also important for us to realize that in the 110th congress, the pay-go rule was waived 12 times, exempting $420 billion from nonoffset deficit increases. i look forward to the gentleman from wisconsin's substitute bill that will be debated later today but i would like to point out i introduced this afternoon a resolution that would change the house rules and require a point of order on any waiving of a pay-go rule by the rules committee so that if a bill comes to the floor and it has waived pay-go, any member could make a point of order and they would require a vote on the house floor before that iver could take effect. in coon collusion, i would simply like to -- in conclusion, i would simply like to say, i can't think of a more important subject to be

debating today than pay-go because the major challenge america faces today is our long-term debt and ever-increasing debt we face. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from south carolina. mr. spratt: i yield three minutes to the gentleman from florida, mr. boyd. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for three minutes. mr. boyd: ladies and gentlemen, i rise today in favor of the legislation before the house. the pay-go bill is a piece of legislation of which i've been an advocate for years. it brings me great satisfaction to see this bill with such broad support here in the house of representatives. i'm always intrigued, mr. speaker, by the language used here and the words and the rhetoric and i heard the word used earlier by the gentlelady from wyoming that some were disingenuous. mr. speaker, i don't believe that my friend mr. ryan is disingenuous. i think he's a great american and i think he believes that he

opposes this legislation because it would create an automatic pay-for for tax cuts and he just thinks that is wrong. and i don't understand how we can consider paying for the great military we have, the medicare programs, all of the issues that made this country a great place. i assume that they believe we can go overseas and borrow that money from the chinese like we have for the last six or eight years, but mr. speaker, sooner or later we'll be buried under that mountain of debt and when our creditors figure out we can't pay it back, the house of cards will crumble. my blue dog colleagues and i for years have introduced pay-go legislation requiring the government to pay for new programs it creates. throughout the bush administration it was difficult to get an audience. thankfully, the first bill the

obama administration sent to congress was the pay-go bill. further, the speaker of the house, speaker pelosi and majority leader hoyer have taken up the cause whole heartedly. i want to thank the budget chairman john spratt for his leadership who worked with me in the creation of the fiscal 2010 budget that conditioned the enactment of major policy this is year on action of pay-go in the house. these leaders are responding to the deficit situation we find ourselves in after years of reckless spending policies, after the original bipartisan pay-go was allowed to expire in 2002. as you may have heard today, pay-go was a tool used in the 1990's to help bring this country to record surpluses, mr. speaker. given our current budgetary outlook with the debt growing faster than our economy we know we must act. the president and our democratic colleagues understand we cannot continue business as usual the last eight years in washington on a number of levels, including our budget.

the enactment of this legislation is necessary to ensure our national security, our quality of life and slow the drain on our economy. the world is watching to see if we are serious about turning this country's fiscal sinking ship around. . the narcoticment of pay-go in the 1990's was a bipartisan act. pay-go should not be a partisan issue. fiscal responsibility should not be a partisan issue. we have an interest in making sure that our fiscal policies are sound. mr. spratt: i give the gentleman an additional 30 seconds. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. boyd: we can't live on credit forever. this bill is the first step we need to restore fiscal sanity to washington. every one here wants to lead the prosperous country with a better standard of living. i urge my republican lleagues

many who stood up and supported pay-go in the past, to support this responsible legislation today. i furthermore challenge the senate to share equally in our goal to balance our budget and ensure new programs are paid for. i urge a yes vote. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. the gentleman from wisconsin. mr. ryan: i yield two minutes to the gentleman from california plrks campbell. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for two minutes. mr. campbell: i thank the gentleman from wisconsin for yielding. pay-go is a sham. now that's a very strong word, but the facts to support it are equally strong. in the last congress, since democrats took control and pay-go was enacted, $420 billion of new spending was exempted from its provision. over the last few weeks, this house has passed nine new spending bills. every one of those new spending bills increased spending over last year by as much as 22% a not a single dollar of those spending increases was paid for.

every one will add to the deficit, add to the debt and about 46 cents of every one of those dollars will be borrowed prime mearl from the chinese, indians and other foreigners. the deficit has gone from $160 billion to nearly $2 trillion since pay-go started. how does that make this a good thing? how is that an example of how this has worked to control spending and be fiscally responsible? and spending increases don't have to be paid for, but tax cuts do. and there is nothing in here to deal with our massive debt. mr. speaker, pay-go is nothing more than a public relations effort to make the most provely gait congress ever appear to be less profligate. the american people are not buying it. the speaker pro tempore: the

gentleman's time has expired. the gentleman from south carolina. mr. spratt: i yield two minutes to mr. moore. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for two minutes. mr. moore: when i came to congress in 1996, our national debt was at $5.6 trillion and our country faced a different situation than what we have today. fiscal restraint and budget enforcement tools helped turnaround a dire situation and produced surpluses during the last two years of the clinton administration. the pay-go requirements that have brought about responsible budgeting were allowed to expire in 2002. our national debt increased and almost doubled in the past six years. the national debt now stands at $11.4 trillion. today with h.r. 2920 we have a chance to help restore fiscal discipline in washington and put our country on a sustainable fiscal path. our country live as most

american families. i have nine grandchildren and it is wrong, immoral to mortgage their future and the future of other children and grandchildren and our country. we should vote and pass h.r. 2920 for future generations and our country. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from wisconsin. mr. ryan: mr. speaker, i yield myself three minutes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for three minutes. mr. ryan: let me recap what's happening here, mr. speaker. this bill has good intentions. the gentleman bringing the bill to the floor has the best of intentions. he's a good man. this bill, however, mr. speaker, is a fiscal facade. it doesn't work. it's not like the bill that occurred back in the 1990's. this bill has no spending caps, for example. this bill exempts 40% of all the spending we have in place today. how can you say that this makes

the federal government work just like the family budget when you exempt 40% of the budget? families don't get to do that. if a family is already living beyond its meansf a family is spending on credit card money, if a family is spending more than it takes in, that is an unsustainable budget. this does nothing to change that. the federal government is already living beyond its means. the federal government is already on an unsustainable fiscal course. the federal government already has a $1.8 trillion deficit this year. it is passing an 11% increase in all domestic agencies' spending. the federal government already has a $62 trillion debt unfunded liability. what does this pay-go do about it? nothing. not a single thing about all of those fiscal problems. this is not a bill to get congress to live within its means. this is a bill to give congress

this is a bill to give congress he men and women to put out a

and what is so unfortunate about this, mr. speaker, is i would like to think we could have had a bipartisan agreement to fix this. if we actually brought the blue dog bill to the floor which included spending caps like we are proposing, we could have something we could have supported. the leadership has bypassed the committee and rammed this thing to the floor so they can get the press releases out before they create a brand new entitlement next week. it's sad, cynical and wrong and the american people aren't buying it, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. the gentleman from south carolina. mr. spratt: i yield two minutes to the the gentlewoman from pennsylvania, mrs. schwarz. mr. schwarz: i rise in support of the statutory pay-go act that we are going to pass today. pay-as-you-go or pay-go rules,

as we talk about them are fairly straightforward. congress should pay for any new spending. there is strong bipartisan history for support for pay-go. as a result of statutory pay-go, this country saw record deficits transformed into record surpluses. sadly when those statutory pay-go provisions expired in 2002, the former administration with support from the republican-controlled congress ignored the common sense of paying for new spending and turned our surpluses into mounting national debt, doubling the debt in eight years. but democrats are serious about fiscal responsibility. in 2007, the democratically-controlled house set pay-go rules making a commitment again, any new spending would be budget neutral. and this year we reafffirmed our commitment to these rules and determined to meet the president's goal of cutting the annual deficit in half in four years.

and now, with the support of the current administration, we are reinforcing our commitment to fiscal responsibility by giving pay-go the force of law. as vice president of the house budget committee, i know how important it is to make wise targeted investments for our future and energy independence, health care and economic growth, but we must do so in a deficit neutral way. we must ensure that any new spending is paid for and that is what we have done when we passed the energy bill and we will do on health care reform and will be doing as we move forward on appropriations bills. the statutory pay-go is smart budgetary policy. it is common sense, and most importantly, it will guarantee our nation's fiscal security. i urge support for fiscal responsibility for the future of our country and for our debt reduction by voting yes on statutory pay-go. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman yields back.

the gentleman from wisconsin. mr. ryan: may i quire the gentleman of how many speakers he has. we just have one left. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from south carolina? mr. spratt: we have one more speaker, mr. andrews, and then we'll close. mr. ryan: well close. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from wisconsin reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from south carolina. mr. spratt: i yield two minutes to the the gentleman from new jersey, mr. andrews. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for two minutes. mr. andrews: i ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. andrews: the proposition before the house today is rather direct and here's what it is. if the house is going to vote for automatic spending for a proposition that spends the taxpayers' money every year without a separate vote, then it must offset that spending either by raising more revenue or cutting other automatic spending. if the house is going to reduce

taxes on people, if the house is going to say we're going to ask less of the american people on a given tax, then we must raise some other source of revenue or reduce some other automatic spending in order to pay for that. i don't know why this is controversial in the sense that it seems logical if we're locking ourselves into higher spending or locking ourselves into lower revenue, whatever the purpose of that may be, that we should only borrow the money to do that under extraordinary circumstances. theducation committee yesterday gave a good example of how this ought to work. a lot of members of the house want higher pell grant scholarships and less expensive student loans, and so we passed a bill yesterday that does that, but we paid for the bill by reducing spending that i believe is corporate welfare to the banking system. so here's what we did. we reduce that corporate

welfare, increase pell grant scholarships, lower the cost of student loans and did some other things in education and had $10 billion left over to reduce the deficit. that's what pay-as-you-go yields. rather than reducing taxes, it forces us to do what the sensible and rational thing to do and that is pay as you go. this is not a democratic or republican idea but a commonsense idea and all members should vote yes. and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from wisconsin. mr. ryan: i yield to the the gentleman from texas, vice ranking member of the committee, the rest of our time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from texas is recognized for 6 3/4 minutes. mr. hensarling: mr. speaker, it is a sad, sad day yet again on the house floor. i do want to add my voice,

though, in agreement with some of my other colleagues talking about the bipartisan respect that we have for the chairman of the budget committee. and i suppose it was because he has bipartisan respect as opposed to partisan respect that the speaker of the house decided to bypass him in the budget committee in bringing this legislation to the floor. perhaps it was an opportunity to actually enact commonsense legislation. unfortunately, we'll never know that. we'll never know that, mr. speaker. and so what i've heard is speaker after speaker on the democratic side of the aisle tell us that pay-go just means, quote, when you spend a dollar, you save a dollar. i believe i heard the distinguished chairman say that. and the president of the united states in adding his support for this proposition said quote, congress can only spend a dollar

if it safes a dollar elsewhere. mr. speaker, the use of the term pay-go suggests one thing. the practice of pay-go is something completely different. mr. speaker, you can see from this chart exactly what pay-go means in practice. these are the spending increases that were subject to so-called pay-go in the 2009 fiscal year. 2%. 2%, mr. speaker of all spending was subject to pay-go, this commonsense proposal. i'm not sure it's common sense to the american people to tell them that you are going to be fiscally responsible and then exempt 98% of all spending. i don't believe that's coon sense, mr. speaker. i don't believe it's common sense at all. and once again, what it tells us is, we don't have a serious

policy for fiscal responsibility or fiscal sanity. we have fiscal interim flam. we have a bumper sticker slogan that substitutes for a policy that needs to save our children and grandchildren from a sea of red ink. all of this spending is either exempt or somehow pay-go gets magically waived. under this proposal, mr. speaker, nondefense discretionary spending is going to increase 9%. pay-go is not subject to it. overall discretionary spending increases 8%. pay-go doesn't apply to it. all of our entitlement programs that are just exploding, exploding, mr. speaker. guess what? they are exempt as well. social security grows 5%, medicare grows 4.3%. so the slogan, the slogan doesn't match the policy. .

i have the greatest amount of respect for the distinguished chairman and for our president. but mr. speaker, if you were a private company selling a product called pay-go and you told the american people that it means, quote, when you spend a dollar, you safe a -- save a dollar, you'd get sued for false advertising. you'd be fined for saying that. it is not a real policy. let's say it was a real policy. we know it's not, but what if it was. what if those who brought this legislation really designed legislation that did what it said it was going to do. unfortunately, under this democratic congress, we know that spending is out of control by any standard known in the history of mankind. already, since the democrats have come to control the white house and congress, we've seen an administration sign into law

a $1.1 trillion government stimulus plan, costing every american household $9,810, including $10 million for urban canals and $100 million for a new after school lunch program, snack program. we've seen them pass a $410 billion omnibus bill, costing every american family $3,434, including $150,000 for lobster research, $143,000 to develop and expand a comprehensive online encyclopedia. we see them continue the cycle of bailouts. $13 billion for chrysler, $14 billion for g.m., $30 billion for a.i.g. and the list goes on. what we have seen, mr. speaker, is now a budget that is going to increase, increase, the federal debt by a factor of

three. it's going to triple -- triple -- the federal debt in 10 years. more federal debt in the next 10 years than in the previous 220. we see all of this spending that is out of control, so we say, ok, if you want to control this spending, or if you want to have pay as you go and you're unwilling to control the spending, mr. speaker that just leaves us with one other option. that is a 60% increase of income taxes on the american people. so either one, which is it? is it false advertising or do you really want to increase income taxes on the american people by 60%? which is it? again, what's happened since we've had this vaunted pay-go? what's happened to deficits? i don't know how they managed to do it, mr. speaker, but in just two years under democratic control, we've seen the deficit go from $161 billion to over $1 trillion.

first time in our nation's history over $1 trillion, on its way to $1.8 trillion. that's already with having pay-go in place. before we get the statutory version. i can't imagine how much worse it's going to be once this gets enshrined. so again, you know, what this is, is an effort to put a bumper sticker on a huge problem. it's the democrats going to the american people and saying, please stop us before we spend again. we just somehow, we just somehow can't control ourselves. so this is supposed to be a band-aid on a fiscal, life-threatening wound. the american people deserve better, mr. speaker. they deserve the republican alternative that puts real caps on spending and will save the american people. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from south carolina. the gentleman has 3 1/2 minutes remaining. mr. spratt: 3 1/2 minutes? the speaker pro tempore: thanks.

mr. spratt: let me respond to some arguments made. first of all, the sequestration base, the programs which are subject to across-the-board cuts or abatement in the event there is a deficit on the scorecard. why is that in our selection of programs? because it's a cross-section of programs, purposely intended to reach a number of different constituent groups so we will not use sequestration, neither the president or the congress would want to use a meat cleaver like that. we instead, knowing it could happen, we default in doing anything else, young people, old people, farmers, miners, a huge cross-section of our constituents are represented in the sequestration base to make it clear we would never resort to that particular base for making the across-the-board cuts to put pay-go back in

balance. secondly, there's been repeated talk about, you passed pay-go in the last congress and look what happened. the truth of the matter is, our republican colleagues have never wanted to vote for pay-go because it was double edged the way we proposed it. it would apply to mandatory spending increases and tax cuts because both have an adverse impact on the deficit, bottom line. they would never vote for the second edge of the double edged southward and consequently have to come up with another explanation as to why they do not support it. so they fall back on the economy itself and say the economy, look what happened to the economy after the adoption of the pay-go rule in the 110th congress. but come on, this is a case where we have a coincidence maybe, but not a correlation. the pay-go rule had nothing to do with what happened to the

economy. the bush administration's economic and fiscal policies had to a lot to do with -- had a lot to do with what happened to the economy. the fact that the bush administration inherited a surplus and turned it into a projected deficit of $3 trillion had an impact on the economy. the addition of $5 trillion to $6 trillion to the national debt had an impact on the economy and don't forget the recession officially started in the bush administration, december of 2007. that's when it started. when it really got bad, when wall street nearly went under in september and october of 2008, that, too, was the bush administration. we voted up the tarp and that's one reason the troubled asset relief program, $700 billion program, when we voted that up, the bush administration was still in office. 10 there's the answer to the -- so there's the answer to the charge that somehow or another the pay-go rule didn't do

anything to affect the calamitous economic situation we find ourselves in. the reason we're seeing the largest deficits in our history since the great depression is we're in the longest recession since the great deprefplgs it's having a profound impact on us. the incubation of those situations came about in the bush administration. we had a good budget and the convergence of a good economy when the pay-go rules were used before. we put the budget back in balance by the year 1998. the facts speak for themselves. the budget process rules worked

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> do you expect nonprofits to pick up after the economy gets better, or do you think that this will continue? >> i am so appreciative of the american people to protect -- to give to nonprofits, and when the economy is better i believe that they will reach into their hearts and held non profits. >> given all of the leadership problems at the red cross, why should i choose the organization to receive my dollars? >> i will list the question around, and answer the

question, will you be there for awhile? that is the question. they will have to drag me out of the red cross. you will find my fingernails across the desk and i actually had one employee that said to me, so will you be here a long time. she said, will you be here 25 years? >> i said i will be 81 years old, but i hope that with this fabulous management team that we have any talent at the red cross, and the entire organization, the passion and the commitment, i know that we will be the charity of choice for people to give their dollars. >> what steps are you taking to regain public trust? >> the best way to do this is through action. and you mentioned that we had

performed well in the hurricanes. i believe that we performed flawlessly, we had 60,000 people in our shelters, and gave 8 million meals. the press did not talk about this because we were there and we did the right things. this is in spite of the accelerating costs. that is the way that you gain the trust of the american public. that is the way that people will continue to trust the american red cross. >> did that performance lead to more donations? >> i believe that is why we were able to raise the hundred million dollars for the disaster relief fund. this was extraordinary, and this was one of the craziest things i have ever done, launching a campaign with no money.

the american public came through for us, the gifts were amazing. >> do you think the focus of obama on encouraging public service will lead to more donations for the red cross and other charities? >> i think this will translate into more donations, and also more volunteers. we have over half a million volunteers and we do what we do efficiently because we have a great force. i am optimistic that this will translate to donations. i am optimistic that this will lead to more arms and legs for nonprofits. volunteer work is what makes us the american red cross. >> what are the blood donations like as compared to the monetary donations. >> asking what it is like to donate blood?

those are very valued. we provide 43% of the blood supply. this is an important element of the mission. this is amazing -- and we estimate that for every unit of blood that is donated, this can save three lives. this is an important part of the mission. we welcome people to participate in this. >> you are speaking to a room of reporters, and someone asks if you have ever thought about a way to speed up the blood donation process? >> part of the process is filling out the history form. that is the focus to make certain that this supply is safe.

we asked a lot of questions and they are all there for a reason, to make certain that the blood that we provide hospitals is absolutely safe. we will not make-order. the technology is under way to take the lead out quicker. if you make an appointment, this will cut down on the time and the goal is to get people out of there as soon as possible. >> just as long as you do not eliminate the cookie. what have you done to deal with the distribution problems? >> we are spending a lot of time to make certain that everything is safe. we have consolidated manufacturing, with a 33% decrease in problem, and a 51%

decrease in severe problems. we're trying to make certain that the blood supply is safe. >> you came from a background in corporate america. how do you approach managing a nonprofit rather than the corporate sector? >> i come from corporate america, i have a lot of experience in philanthropy, and i was on the board of children's hospital. i would describe leading in a nonprofit very similar to a business. you want to set goals and make certain that you can measure the goals, you want to make certain that people know what is expected, and give them regular feedback so they will understand the mission. the biggest difference is that the american red cross has an

incredible amount of art. that passion and commitment coupled with the talent really makes this a pleasure to lead in the nonprofit space. this is absolutely the best job i have ever had. i feel that there are many ways i have been trained to do this by entire life. >> now that you are on the other side, what could corporate america learn from a non-profit? >> that is a great question. i will repeat my answer in reverse. i believe that all human beings want to be part of something that is bigger than themselves. and every institution has a higher purpose. my advice to the corporate sector is to make certain that the employees understand the higher purpose, and that they will lead with some hard as well.

>> can you describe your relationship with the board of directors. >> i have the best board, the dream team on the board of governors. they have made some very difficult decisions. before i arrived, they had reform that made the size of the board smaller. they are fabulous and i am on the phone with them regularly and i enjoy every interaction. we have great business minds, that is one of the reasons i love this job and one of the reasons why i agreed to join the american red cross. the chair is just amazing. >> how much of the deficit is related to the economy, and how

much is related to management efficiency? >> the 209 billion i describe what i first came to the american red cross existed before the economy was in recession. much of this was just making certain that we were looking at everything that we did to make sure that we remove any extra activities. the $50 million that we now have -- this is largely because of the economy. we are assuming that donations will be down, and this is part of the activities -- and this is impacting us as you may suspect. the last dollars on the hardest to find, but we are about -- we

are determined to have the balanced budget in 2010. >> like most nonprofits, you have had to scramble for donations. what about volunteers? do you have a surplus or a shortage, and tell me about the quality? >> we have the most remarkable volunteers. all of the local chapter boards aren't volunteers. the people the served in the hurricanes' came from 40 different states and they dropped everything to help people during the disaster. and we can always use more volunteers. the country can always use more people who are stepping up. the volunteers come from every demographic, every educational background, and they aren't pleasure to work with. i would encourage anyone who is wanting to give back, to consider doing so at the

american red cross. >> how are the numbers? >> we have what we need right now but we can put anyone to work that wants to volunteer. i am is serious about that. we are very prepared during the hurricane season and we believe that we will be in good shape but having said that we would love anyone to become part of the red cross family. we will put anyone to work, for one hour or to spend three weeks in a disaster. we welcome as many volunteers as possible. we believe that we're well prepared for the upcoming hurricane season. >> other any particular skills that you are in most need of? >> we welcome diversity, and this is very important as we go to the different communities.

if you want to help will give back, if you can be a shoulder -- if you can give a hug, you can be a volunteer. >> what percentage of the donations are large as opposed to small? >> when it comes to individual giving, the average donation is about $300. a large number of this comes from the major donors and corporations and big foundations. they step up for us all the time. when i look at this, they range from 250,000, up to the gift from wal-mart that was $5 million. this is something that we can be looking at. >> the essence of marketing -- is consumer to consumer. how do you utilize that in

marketing the red cross? >> i could not agree more. people who do not facilitate that conversation -- they may lose their brand. people have that conversation if you are engaged in this or not. we are trying to create a movement of people that want to be part of the american red cross. years ago you would actually join. we would like to create something where people talk about their volunteer experience or the experience they had in a classroom. we are working with list a digital to facilitate the conversation. there is a face of a page for blood donors, and this is really phenomenal what people will do

to help each other out. >> can become your friend on this book? >> i have a confession -- i was on face budget but so many people are reaching a through the internet that i actually took down my count. but i am thinking of putting this back up. keep an eye out for me. we can all be friends once i am back. >> we will move on to the swine flu. as planning for this become a bigger priority than a natural disasters such as a hurricane? >> i would say that these are equal, and we are in communications on a regular basis to make certain that we are there so we can do community

outreach, to make certain that people understand the best way to prevent the virus. we're also talking to them about how we could shelter if there was a spread of this disease. we have probably equal amounts on this, the plan is to be there when they meet with us to educate the country, whether this is the grass roots that we bring out in the community -- and the e-mail that i mentioned, on this virus actually had 36 -- 36,000 people reading this in the first couple of days. we are making certain that the country is prepared to deal with the virus. >> how vulnerable would you say that the country is to an outbreak of this, and is there something that people should be doing that the red cross is

recommending that people do next? >> the question of vulnerability is better posed to the medical health professionals. in terms of preventing the spread of the virus, this is washing your hands, making certain that when you touch a surface, and you are traveling, you are using hand sanitizer or washing your hands, and we have a lot of information to prevent this disease from spreading on the web site. and we will come readers to educate themselves to prevent the spread of this virus. >> has the red cross to find what the role would be in a worst-case scenario? >> first, this is education. we have agreed to educate the community.

we are a grass-roots organization and we have these organizations across the country. we also will be there to distribute and bring down the vaccine if necessary, not to administer this but to be there to make certain that this is where it needs to be. we are very focused on making certain that we have a good supply of blood, which is part of the mission. >> the red cross did well last year, but they were not there on the scope of hurricane pitcher in that. are they prepared for another natural challenge? >> ike and gustav did not get the same coverage, but we had 60,000 people in the shelters,

and gave them 8 million meals in 60 days. we are prepared for this hurricane season. i have 48,000 shelter locations, and we will be able to feed 1 million meals a day if necessary. we learned that by partnering with different people in the community, we can serve those in need in the partnerships are stronger than ever. the relationship with fema is stronger than ever. i am prepared to deal with whatever comes our way. >> can you give us an example of how this response has changed since hurricane katrina? and if a hurricane came tomorrow, what could the victims expect from the red cross? >> in addition to learning that

we had to partner on the ground and the community, we also have warehouses throughout the disaster areas and it is there and this is ready, and that is a very important element of making certain that we are prepared. we also have to educate the american public, that they should be prepared, particularly in disaster prone areas, that they should have an evacuation plan, and they should stay informed with a battery operated radio. we need to have people in the country be prepared, to make certain that they have an evacuation plan. everyone should have a contact list for if a disaster strikes. where will we go, what is the plan? so we are constantly educating

the public to take these steps. have a plan and stay informed. this will go a long way in helping the nation be prepared. >> i have seen very strange donations including a pair of skis, during a hurricane in pensacola. can you tell us what kinds of the nations that you could use the most in a situation like this, is there anything you cannot use. >> what we really can use during a disaster, is a financial donation. we have a lot of donations from the large corporate donors. we get food supplies and that sort of thing. we do not need a use for snowshoes.

i would suggest that people use common sense. do not drop off your dirty laundry. we will accept any gift that we can get. this will drive them to determine what the donations are that people do not need. >> how should these be made? >> these donations are made by dropping things off, and doing things to the shelters. we welcome any kind of donation that people will make, but the easiest donation to handle is a financial donation, and volunteers. that is a donation that we can always use during a disaster.

>> does the red cross have any involvement with the victims of hurricane katrina. >> we have some funding we use for recovery. this was an unusual circumstance where we raise more money than needed to respond to the disaster. we are engaged in recovery programs, helping people to rebuild their homes in the communities that were struck hard, and we are engaged in a number of recovery programs. i had the privilege of meeting a number of families -- families who were able to get the recovery funding to rebuild their homes and jump start this again in their communities. this was one of the most gratifying experience i have had since i have been at the american red cross.

i have very few pictures, but some of them are of families giving us hugs, it is that kind of involvement. >> how the protect the red cross from fraud? like with the experience of hurricane katrina when people who were not victims ask for disaster assistance. >> we were focusing on keeping the shelters open, making certain that people had a roof over their head. this was the main focus and there was not a lot of fraud. but he read out the dark side of human nature, what you do not read about are the thousands and thousands of people who are honest, who are not doing this. i believe that not only is the american public generous, the american public is also

untrustworthy. i do not wake up in the middle of the night worrying about us. what's the former secretary of homeland security at a plan to use reporters during natural disasters. is this a good idea? >> i welcome the reporters to cover what we do. and i welcome them to volunteer. they would be amazed at what the red cross and our partners are doing when the country needs us. it would make a great reality television show. this is a great idea. when the american public can learn whenever they can learn and i would welcome the coverage. it will help people to understand the mission, and i think that this would warm the hearts of the readers to see the

heroic and extraordinary things that people do to help each other. >> you have spoken about the work that is done in the united stats the united states. what do you do in the red cross international? >> we are part of the international federation of red cross and red cross societies. collectively we have 97 million volunteers. this is the largest humanitarian effort in the world. we work with people even if there is -- a global disaster. during the earthquakes in china we were there and we gave temporary housing. during the summit, we made certain that the sister organization gave -- received funding. we have worked very closely and

we have great relationships and i have met many of my colleagues and we are very proud to be part of this world wide humanitarian organization. >> we're almost out of time before i ask the last question, we have a couple of important matters. let me remind the members of the future speakers. we will have john conyers, the chair of the house judiciary committee. on july 27, congressman barney frank from massachusetts, the chairman of the house financial services committee and on july 29, john kerry from massachusetts and the leader of the senate committee on foreign relations. and i would like to present a guest with the coveted npc mug.

>> this is coveted. thank you. >> we have time for two questions. give us a little bit on this -- you have to travel on a moment's notice. >> heyday in the life is a remarkable -- is very remarkable and physically demanding. we first went to a very large and empty parking lot where there were the kitchen is capable of making 45,000 meals a day, if you can believe this. people were standing there, cooking, in the blistering heat. they were taking this and they were loading this on to the emergency response vehicles.

this took a lot of arms and legs. many of the volunteers were senior citizens. these people were fedit, putting vats of food on the trucks. i went to a volunteer and said, how do you know that they are here. people understood that there was a big sign on the side of this -- that said that all of the food is free. i cannot describe how many different places people were coming from. there were children there and elderly, and this was extraordinary, there were people who had just lost everything. they were showing despair and

gratitude. i had a person who wanted to come and get pictures, i said that you could come for the ride but i do not want pictures. this man got out of the emergency response vehicle, he was out getting food. this will get under your skin. this is when you are helping yourself. we have special volunteers going into the major disasters, we have people responding to 70,000 every year, we have people giving comfort, to make certain that they had a roof over their head. anybody can volunteer, and i have seen people in every walk of life, retired couples, and

people in every age bracket, and if you read the annual report, people are told to train volunteers and send them into a disaster area. >> and for the final question, someone in the audience asked if you were related to george mcgovern. >> this is my married name. and my husband's family comes from tennessee. if i was related to him i would admit this. >> i would like to thank all of you for coming here, and i would like to thank the national press club staff members, for organizing the luncheon. and i want to thank the npc

archive. our events are avaialable for download -- available for download on itunes. members may get transcripts at archives.press.org. for more information, please go to our web site, www.press.org. thank you very much, and we are adjourned. [applause] >> on c-span today, remarks on

health care by mitch mcconnell and john boehner, followed by max baucus and kent ccochran. >> on sunday, susan jacoby on the coverage of alger hiss and the house activities -- on c- span. >> republican leaders broke out against the health care bills, they are charged with finding a way to pay for health care. this is still in the negotiations. this press conference is 15 minutes.

good afternoon. obviously, this is the subject of the day, and i have seen this every day. this is health care. this certainly should be the subject. i hear suggestions that members of the republican conference are involved in health care, and i have not seen a single member who is not interested in the health-care system. the american people say that they liked the quality but they are concerned about the costs and the access, and the related issues. the administration continues to mention these people who seem to not want to make progress. i have been unable to find anyone. but a single member of the

republican conference is in favor of no action. what we do think is that we should be targeting the problems. we should be doing this on a bipartisan basis. we should not tolerate lawsuits against -- junk lawsuits against hospitals. we should use the plan that -- or you can tap the costs of health insurance. you can do this by incentivizing the employees to go after the preventable causes of health care problems in this country, smoking and obesity and high cholesterol, the lack of exercise. they have shown that by making an incentive to change behavior, there can be an impact.

we know that one reason that we have such a large number -- a large number of people without insurance, this is not deductible on the tax returns. but this is on the corporate tax return. why would we not want to make the tax treatment equal for individuals and corporations. these would have a positive impact on improving the cost issue and access. i noticed that the director was called down to the white house yesterday and this is like the odor of the team asking the umpires to come up to the owner's box. if they are going to have credibility, they are the umpire. we should not be tampering with an organization that is controlled by the majority in

congress but tries to function as an indigent -- an independent arbiter of the cause of what we do. we look forward to being able to move a health care proposal this year on a bipartisan basis that does not increase the deficit, and does not put the government in charge of health care, or produce a system that will delay the care or deny care, in order to do that -- there will have to be rationing and the american people do not want any of that. let me call on my friend. >> i want to thank you for your work in the senate, and the work with your republican colleagues on dealing with the issues that are coming at us like a machine gun.

the american people are wanting us to work together to reform health care so that we can provide better access for more americans. as the americans look at what they see, this is the big government health care of -- the big government takeover of health care. they do not support this. tonight the president will say some of the things that he has been repeating over the last several months. he says that if you like your plan, you can keep this. but 23 million americans would be forced out of private health insurance into a government land. there is a consulting firm that says that the number may be as high as 14 million people. he will say that the democratic plan will reduce costs to

america. but the director of the congressional budget office says that the prices will not only not decrease, these will increase. at a time when we tried to get the costs of the system, there is nothing that will reduce costs. i do not know how you spend 1.6 trillion dollars and say that we will be spending less on health care. the president is likely to say that any plan that passes will not get into the deficit. the congressional budget office has made it clear that the plan in the house will increase the size of the deficit by $239 million. beyond all of this, the chief of staff said -- he was reviewing the speech of the president when he said this.

he said the president is likely to say that we have rescued the economy. i would like to ask my people in ohio if they have been rescued. if they try to fix the health care system as they have tried to rescue the economy we are in trouble. it is time to get rid of the plan and bring both parties together for real health care reform that will reduce the costs of the system. and provide better access. >> we will take a few questions. [inaudible]

>> as i have said that earlier, i cannot think of a single member of the congress who is not in favor of doing health care reform. in a very positive way and for one of the plans for another. there are many plans going around. we want to do the right thing here. this is not about the president. this is about the country. and the huge issue that is affecting all of the lives and this is 16% of the economy. in a country of 300 million people, the representatives may have a different idea. but this is not about any individual. this is about getting the issue right. and as he indicated, we had an experience with a major bill earlier this year, we had to get

the stimulus through yesterday. with interest this will be about one trillion dollars. we are spending $100 million a day in interest. for the people who enthusiastically embraced this, this was seen as a way to keep unemployment from going above 8%, this is 10.9% in kentucky. this is too important to rush this, we have to take our time and do this right. i hate to repeat what i just said, this is about getting the policy right. this is about getting the policy right. we want to get the policy right. [inaudible]

>> we have plenty of discussions, in the end, the question is how bipartisan is the product. i like the president, he is a good man, but the test of whether or not this is bipartisan will be the product itself. [inaudible] >> i do not know if she has the votes. i am not certain if she knows if she has the votes. but if they will rush ahead and put this on the floor as early as next week -- if you begin to look at the pieces of the puzzle, i did not bring the chart with me but this is a giant government bureaucracy and yesterday i talked about this,

the section of the bill that requires all of the employee provided health care plans, they will have to be approved by the department of labor in the health care choices czar. and the question will be whether or not these meet the federal standards. are you kidding me? most of the employers will say, that is that. i will pay the 8% tax that is included, and my employees will have to band -- fend for themselves. this will take millions of americans out of their health care plan. [inaudible] >> i do not fault the cbo

director for taking an acceptance to the meeting, i do not know what this was. you will have to ask the white house this question. but you say something very important. the $239 billion deficit is really only for about five years. it will take five years to put this into effect. this is not just six trillion dollars. as the cbo pointed out, you have the annual cost of the plan over $200 billion a year. this is $230 billion every year and that is in today's dollars. king new imagine what this will cost?

we're talking about 300 trillion dollars a year, -- $300 billion a year. the tax increase will not be anywhere close to what this will cost. >> to do what? [inaudible] >> before we get to the issue of how to pay for this, we need to see what we are doing. other than the health committee bill, which was on page 4, structured to pay for, i will not do this until i see the product. >> thank you.

>> max baucus spoke with reporters about negotiations on health care legislation. sen. conrad of north dakota and makes remarks. this is 15 minutes. we are making more progress, and today we're talking about coverage. this is about who was qualified, for the interchange exchange, and who is not. i also want to make certain that the exchange is affordable, and that this is not an empty promise, because of the insurance mandate that is required.

this is date -- an extremely complicated part of the plan. we did not have closure on this but we were coming back this afternoon. there are one or two people who cannot come back. i spoke to the president today, he said he was checking in to see how we were doing. i said that we were doing fine. this is what we accomplished and i gave him other information -- and he found this very encouraging. this indicated that we are actually moving ahead and will have an agreement. i said my best estimate -- which is not very definite because we

still have a long way to go. he appreciates the approach that we are taking. to answer the questions -- and they are all legitimate. the republicans are asking questions -- that is not true, everyone is asking questions. i am very encouraged. we have no choice but to go down the road, where we keep asking questions. everyone there is committed, to reach an agreement. and what to make certain with everything that has happened -- on washington and both sides of capitol hill. they do not want to be criticized -- and they want to

make certain that we are moving the costs in the right direction. sometimes when you want to do this right, this takes a lot of time, especially something that is as complicated. they say the only one part of this is a major bill. and it can take care of itself. but we have a lot of bills altogether. but we will get there. it will take time. >> did bourbon -- dick durbin said that a vote in august is no longer possible. >> i spoke to them, i spoke to him about a half hour ago. i would love to get this concluded very quickly. and obviously with each passing

day, this will be a leadership call. >> you see gave the president your best estimate, can you share that with us? >> can you talk about the democrats in the senate, what have these conversations been like? >> i have a lot of conversations with people who are not in the committee, and they will ask questions and i say that when we reach an agreement, we're going to have a meeting with the democrats and -- that is where this will be. i am quite confident that there

will be a caucus of the democrats and republicans. there will be a way for everyone to weigh in. >> some people say that you do not know where you are going -- >> i am not interested in answering questions like this -- there is some concern because if you are now in the room you have to wonder what is going on. but the member of the committee said, what have you found out? and i say that as soon as we have something that is right, we'll be ready to meet with everyone. >> what do you -- what you take of the decision by loren hatch?

>> i do not make anything out of this. he was barely there in the first place. the people who are here now, clearly want to have a bill and vote for a bill. i take my hat off to those people. there are some republicans who do not want health care reform to pass, i have to say that i am very proud of grassy, ensign and n and snow. >> you have worekd with doug and the white house -- worked with doug and some people have

questioned his objectivity. should the white house have asked him to be part of this? >> i have not met anyone has straight as him. you cannot push him one way or the other. and i think as far as the president is concerned, we need to have a build, can you have your people get the numbers out? i do not see any problems. the white house is wanting to do this right. they do not want to put pressure on him. it is clear -- you cannot persuade him to bend either way. >> thank you. i have a dinner schedule.

>> i can cancel mine. >> you are watching the president today? >> he is a the clock? we all are. >> thank you. -- he is 8:00? we're watching him, we all are. >> thank you. >> we have been focusing on medicaid today, in all of the complexity, some of the staff has really done an excellent job of trying to put together additional options, and we will go back right now to see f. we

can agree on a framework for submission for the additional scoring analysis, and we are getting closer -- and i know that there is frustration. i just say this, there are six of us in the room, because we cannot have 100 in the room. the job that we have -- we are not the designers. what we are working on is a proposal that will go to the colleagues. they are the ultimate decider. not the six people in this room. we have been given the responsibility to come up with a plan to put before everyone has a proposal.

they will have the ability to debate and change and improve and reject, that is the process. i understand the frustration of the colleagues, because they are wondering, what the plan entails. the fact is we do not have an agreement on a proposal. i understand the frustration of the people who wonder when we will produce a plan, who are wondering what the plan will include, and i understand the feeling of not being in the room. most of my career i was not in the room. we are proposing is, not designers. we're putting together a proposal that the colleagues will make a decision on.

they will be able to decide whether to approve or reject. i would be happy to take a quick question. >> where are you taking these questions from? >> largely from the press. >> other any meetings today with members? >> i am not hearing this directly from the members, but the press tells me they are hearing this from the members. >> if you get a deal that you like -- how hard will be to sell this to the democratic members? >> this will be difficult -- this is just hard to do. there is a reason that this has not been done. on the other hand, i think the

stars are aligned, and we are doing a very serious job of putting together a proposal for college review. >> have you made any progress on an agreement on co-op? >> we have an agreement that nothing is agreed to until everything has, and we have certainly had extended discussions, but until everything is concluded, nothing is concluded. it would not be accurate to say that there is a final agreement. >> what is holding this up? >> this is not something particular to this, this is the overall -- going through all of the options, analyzing and trying to put this together.

this is more of the overall plan -- this is not ready. >> sen. durbin says that a bill before august is not possible -- do you believe that this is reality? >> i have never believed that time line was probable. i have always thought that -- it was just on lively, given the complexity. this is not typical legislation. this involves every single american, and one sixth of the economy. this is far more complex. this is not a tax bill or a defense bill, or even a budget.