>> de-r&d funding is a good indicator of what will happen with feature program starts. there has been a shift from early activities like applied research and advanced component development towards later development activities like operational systems development. that means there is less money going into the early technology activities that you would normally do to start new programs. . . @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@

so i think we are stuarting to see a shift away from the very complex exquizity solutions that secretary gates would say towards programs that are less ambitious although not necessarily low tech by any means but less ambitious in terms of new technology that would be required to develop. and that would save costs in the long run. >> also, to what extent, how big is that wedge between the 50 billion place holder versus what you expent to be spent? >> the first part of your question is the base defense budget is the highest level adjusted for inflation since

world war 2. if you look at in terms of percent of gdp it's not that close to it. and part of the reason for that is since world war ii, we've seen some fluctwations in the gdp as the economy's grown and retracted. currently the percent of the gdp for the base depence budget is up significantly from last year not because defense spending went up that much but because the economy contracted. i believe it's over 5% if you include total d.o.d. budget. but in historical perspective world war ii we were spending way above that on defense spending. but it's a different time. our economy has grown quite a lot since then and the economy over time does grow faster than the defense budget. so over time you do expect to see that that percentage would

decline. and the second part of your question in terms of future war spending i wouldn't want to hazard a guess at this point what would be required in the future but it does seem likely it will be significantly more than the 50 billion that has been put in the budget right now. it depends on the situation on the ground especially in afghanistan and what the generals are going to request in terms of additional troops that we move over there because that adds a lot to the cost. >> you say 3 to 4%. i'm pretty sure that the pentagon is saying the real growth is 2% over last year's. do you use different deflators? >> we do different slightly different deflators. i'm using a gdp deflator. the defense department computes their own. i don't think that's the

difference in one year because it's a slight difference and the difference would only really show up if you're looking over an extended period of time, 20, 30, 40 years. but what i've heard the department of defense saying is that the inflation adjusted growth will be less than 2% in future years. what i've heard them say for this year is around 4%. >> the other thing is 73% increase defense budget. in past years your predecessor would lay this out, 43% increase. does your include supplementles? >> that's looking at, well, i'd have to look. i believe that's looking at the base defense budget. >> your figure would have been the low? >> i'm not familiar with that figure. >> we used a lot in the past and this must be supplementals. >> we can look at that.

>> baneline budget and two separate bills sent up not all rolled into one. so we should be thinking 660, 670 a year? >> it looks like what the administration plans to do is include the d.o.d. budget and then a separate part of the budget for overseas contingency operations they're calling it. it's in the section right after the d.o.d. budget. but they're submitted at the same time to congress. that's what they did this year. it looks that what they tend to do in future years. so i would expect to see that again in the future. and as we talked about before, if they did not estimate it adequately, then later in the year they might have to come back and ask for a supplemental on top of that.

>> ok. >> to what extent have some of the future year high dollar procurement programs particularly in the air force and the navy been migrated into the classified budget? is there an indication that that has happened? >> i have not seen any indication of that happening. >> next generation bomber, for example. >> this came out publicly at a congressional hearing that in the air force's unfunded priorities list one of their items in there was for some early funding for requirements work for the next generation bomber. it was listed as classified item. one of the members of congress outed it during the meeting. so we know that's there. it's not necessarily that it migrated into there. it may have already been there in a classified funding line in

previous years but we don't know because we can't see into those details of the budget. but i don't know of any broad trend in terms of migrating unclassified programs, programs previously unclassified into the black realm. i haven't seen that. >> how do you see evolving? >> what we've seen in missile defense budget is the secretary has taken a different tact. overall their funding is down relatively significantly. and what he said back in april was that he wants to shift towards funding more theater ballistic missile defense systems as opposed to national defense systems. so he scut funding for things like the test program air borne laser is not buying a second aircraft to continue carrying

out tests there. he cut the kin etic energy sector. and he stopped fielding the interceptor missiles in alaska. he is capping that. at current level. so that all taken together does result in a net decrease in funding. at the same time though he is buying another aegis destroyer equipped for missile defense. and he is buying more of the that had systems as well. so it is a shift within mda but overall it's a reduction in funding. so those programs look like theater missile defense are good to go. they may see increase funding in the future. the more high-tech national missile defense programs look like they're not going to grow at least under the proposed budget. >> ground based mid course

defense. >> regarding procurement, many see a future crunch coming in regards to the fact that beer buying fewer new items and yet we continue to use o and m as a bill payor for other needs. especially with reset and recapitalization costs on the growing. do you see a particular time in the future when this comes to a head? is it three years, five years? >> in terms of reset and retap tallization costs, it's been funded in the war supplementals in the past. there's i believe 17.6 billion included in this war funding measure for reset costs. but it's kind of tricky in how you define what is reset costs versus modernization programs and replacement of equipment with more capable equipment. so in the past the definition had been getting broader in terms of what was allowed in the war funding for reset costs. in this budget we've seen it

get narrow again. in particular i believe funding for 2009 was around 23 billion. we've seen it drop to 17.6 in 2010 and the reduction is due to reduction in replacement procurement for replacement vehicles and weapon systems. and that funding line got cut in half within the reset cost. and part of that is that procurement items that were for modernization initiatives just got moved back into the base budget. it's not that they actually got eliminated from the budget. so i think we're seeing a narrowing of what is defined as war reset costs. the other issue though is in the long term the military stated in the past that their reset costs would run about 17 billion a year as long as the conflicts continue and then for several years after, two to three years after the conflicts subside. so i think the challenge will

be for d.o.d. is that after conflicts in iraq and afghanistan do subside, that they've got to maintain that level of reset funding going to the future. so if there's not additional funding for the war, this could be pretty far in the future, that could be an issue. >> do you have any concerns about the decreasing and the rate at which we buy new equipment? >> there's definitely concerns with the rate we buy new equipment. it's a longer term trend that we've seen and it's continued through today even though at the same time defense spending has gone up significantly, procurement of new equipment has not kept up. the air force has said that the age of their aircrafts is about 4 years right now and that's going to increase up to 27

years out into the future. so we're not buying in the air force's case we're not buying new planes at the same rate as our planes are aging. so we are seeing older weapons systems. that then does drive additional o and m costs because the older something gets in general the more expensive it becomes to maintain. and so that is forcing difficulty situation for d.o.d. and that's part of the broader budget issues that d.o.d. is going to have to address in the future is if we keep funding increasingly complex weapons systems that are very expensive to develop then we don't have funding to procure them then we can't upgrade our force. if you look at the program before it was restructured the cost had grown to 16 0 billion. it was going to grow significantly more. it wasn't that far along in development and that was just enough equipment to equip one

third of the active duty army. so programs like that we aren't going to be able to mornedize our entire force if they're that expensive. so that's the issue d.o.d. has to look at to try to bring some of the costs under control. >> you mentioned these wish lists, seeming to hint that because they've been reviewed by the secretary of defense they may have gone down this year. i'm wondering if you've analyzing anything about the disclosure requirements on capitol hill of earmarks. >> well, it's a little too early to say for this year. there are new disclosure requirements. what we have seen so far, i believe in the senate bill, that a number of earmarks got put in as not being allocated to any specific member. so that does seem to skirt some of the intent of the rules. the range of the earmarks i've

seen could be additional 3 billion to $9 billion in a defense budget. in the grand scheme of things it's a relatively small, but it is a lot of money, so i think that's going to be a concern for the administration. they've talked about eerk reform and given some of the items being added back in, but the presidential helicopter, the joint strike fighter engine, sufficient confluence of those things could be a serious veto challenge to what congress is putting in the bill. but a lot of that remains to be seen what will end up in the final authorization and appropriation bills once if congress gets back in session and they get to conference on these. >> the secretary just added 22,000 more new soldiers. how big is too big for the force in terms of cost and

budgeting over, say, the next five to ten years? >> whenever we add more troops to the size of the force, there are long-term budget implications with that. if we go back to 2007, when there's decision to increase the size of the force by 92,000 troops above what it had been, the cbo estimated at the time there's a number of startup costs of getting those troops in and getting them trained and equipped. but the long term operating costs of an additional 92,000 troops is estimated at about 14 billion per year every year added to the d.o.d. budget. so every 22,000 troops, every 10,000 troops that we add, there's this long term cost. it increases not just pay and allowances and all of that for the troops, but health care costs, retirement benefits, accrual payments that twofe set aside in the budget for retirement. but then also you have to have

larger bases, you have to have family housing. there's all of these additional expenses. the equipment to equip these troops so they have something to do when we have them in the force. that all adds to the defense budget and it's a very long term cost. we're looking out 20, 30 years if we keep the additional size of the force. so i think that's going to be a real challenge and continuing to increase the size of the force within a flat defense budget. and with all these issues going obthat we've talked about. something d.o.d. is going to have to look at is once these conflicts in iraq and afghanistan do subside, can we afford to maintain the higher troop level that we have right now? if we do make the decision to keep the additional troops, then where does the money come from? so i think it is a big issue.

>> is it fair or accurate to say that it's generally cheaper to prepare for conventional war than counter insurgencies, when you think about man power and legacy costs on one side and operational costs and big platforms on the other? can we say one way or the other? >> i wouldn't want to hazard a guess which is more expensive. there's definitely different types of costs. you know, when you look at conventional warfare, high end type of warfare, your costs are shifted more into the weapons systems increasingly complex weapons system that is you need to counter different threats. when you look at irregular warfare it's much more man power intensive. but there are also weapon systems cost that is go there thing that is we hasn't expected in the past, things for the m rap and now the matv that we're building for

afghanistan. so it really is a mixed bag and i don't think either is cheap. and especially when you're trying to create a force that is able to respond to the full spectrum of conflict it's going to be a challenge. >> over time as you look at this relatively flat budget, what are -- i know your budget cuts. what are the strategic implications for the united states? >> you know, one of the thing that is we're seeing come out of the qdr and maybe jim could talk to this some more is that we might not be able to afford a force that can be prepared for two major theater wars at a time. and that's been kind of a attentive planning in the past. and if we aren't going to size our force for that, then that does have strategic implications. it looks what we may be aiming for now is one major war and

one smaller ongoing contingency kind of what we're seeing right now in iraq and afghanistan. i don't know if there's anything that you would want to add to that in terms of strategic. >> when you look at the pressure on the top line as well as growing timets particularly in terms of d.o.d. health care you are really getting pushed from both the ceiling and the floor. and we are going to have to make some very hard choices as we look ahead. and it may be in charge of how we look at our force construct not only how we size but also how we shape our forces. and traditionally we've tried to create a force which is really optimized for the middle of the spectrum and hope to be able to swing and cover the extremes. as we look ahead, the types of

conflicts we face, we see that we're going to be in an era of perssistnt irregular conflict but we also see a other threats on the horizon. so it may be a question of optimizing our forces more buy bodely and then think about how we reduce some of the risk in the middle, which i think is a different approach. but i think the days of being able to slami slice and just make some cuts around the edges of the program and nipping and tucking, i think the days of nipping and tucking are coming quickly to an end. >> the days of nipping and tucking are coming rapidly to an end. and what lies ahead? >> i think we're going to have to think about trade. it's no longer a question of really looking at particular modernization programs or particular elements of our force structure but we're going to have to have more strategic

level discussion in terms of the emerging missions that we see on the horizon that u.s. forces may be called upon to undertake as well as other mission areas, legacy mission areas which we can certainly see cases in the future where you might call upon the forces but it's an area where we as a nation choose to take some risk. >> in this era of persistent conflict outside of iraq and afghanistan. no one can list for me where we might do this persistent irregular conflict. can you maybe take a swing at that? >> i think what you see today is you have a number of states in the world that are very fragile in terms of their governance and their ability to police themselves effectively.

and so there's the potential that they become areas for terrorism and terrorist activity that can emanate from within their borders to the outer world. and the estimate that d.o.d. has is that there are about 30 to 40 countries today where d.o.d. either is or may need to conduct activities, counter terror activities as well as foreign internal defense activities in surt of those nations. so this is going far beyond iraq and afghanistan. but you see a number of initiatives and efforts under way whether it's in the transis a harne or other regions of africa looking at southeast asia or the phillipines and other places. cooperation with the government of pakistan and with other

countries around the world for counter insurgency. and i don't think there's any sign of this abating with the drawdown in forces in iraq and even looking ahead at future withdrawal or drawdown of forces in afghanistan. >> a lot of the impetus on uavs in the last two years has because of gates' personal interest. when he retires will the momentum that he has required for uav spending drop with his retirement or is it such a part of the pentagon budget going forward no matter who is secretary of defense? >> i think uavs are definitely around to stay. that the military has seen quite a bit of utility from them in the current conflicts. i don't think it's just secretary gates that likes them. i think secretary gates was frustrated at first that he

couldn't get the air force to spin up production faster and to get more involved in uavs. but what we've seen is they've proved invaluable in iraq and afghanistan in terms of providing intelligence, surveillance, but also in strike missions. they have a lot of advantages over manned vehicles in terms of range and loiter time. we can keep in orbit of predators over a target pretty much indefinitely, keep swapping out the aircraft and they keep going. and they're relatively cheap. they're slow, they can be shot down and we do lose them from time to time. but number one you don't lose a pilot. and number two, you don't lose that much of an investment in them. so i think for those reasons we are going to see uavs around for the long haul. and others in the air force, in the navy as well are very interested in pursuing a uav,

particularly unmanned aerial combat vehicles in the future. so. >> broad areas of maritime systems that they felt was in jeopardy. have you followed up on that? is that system in jeopardy within the navy or has that solid fid where it's got some support if sn if you don't know, that's fine. >> i haven't seen anything in particular on that reasonably. i don't know if you're referring to bands but the naval unmanned combat air system and there this is an issue that's being looked at in the qdr currently. >> and i believe some of the advantages are it gives you a longer range of strike off a carrier and you're looking at future threats getting in range of our current fighters like the current joint strike fighter could be an issue.

we might not be able to get in range. so having a longer range strike platform like that is something that the navy has got to look at. >> what do you predict for the future? >> well, we've seen a lot come out in recent days. definitely with the f 22 production looks like it's going to end, then in terms of future fighters that is the future for the military. it's the largest acquisition program right now and it's the largest acquisition program in the history of d.o.d. supposed to go over $300 billion. challenges for the joint strike fighter in the near term are trying to finish development and stay within cost and schedule. d.o.d. set up a joint estimate team and they reported back in september of last year that their independent estimate, still within d.o.d. but independent of the joint strike

fighter office, they thought there would be about a two year schedule flip and a cost overrun within the next five years. in the fy 10eu budget d.o.d. did fund close tore the joint estimate team's cost projections for fy 2010 rather than the program office's projections. but we don't see a detailed, we aren't sure if they're bought into the higher estimate for future years as well. a slip in the production of it by two years, that's going to exacerbate some problems that already exist like a projected short fall of fighters in the navy in the coming years. so the joint strike fighter, a lot of eggs are in that basket. i think it's a program that has to succeed one way or the other. and so that's definitely going to be something we look at closely in the future whether it's staying within its cost estimates or not.

thanks everyone for coming. are

>> three days of peace, love, and music. 40 years ago this weekend, a half million people gathered. co-founder michael lang takes us behind the scenes tonight. radio talk show executive brian jenings on the new fairness doctrine. why it's a bad idea and alternatives to censorship.

>> now from pittsburgh is suesy math rick who is the founder of suburbanen grilla. and she is coming to us from pittsburgh where they have just condeluded nets roots nation, the annual convention of liberal bloggers and activists. first, susie, tell us where did you come up with the name suburban grilla? >> well, when i was a newspaper reporter and editor, i wrote a political column for delaware county in pennsylvania and it's considered to be the suburban republican counter part to the chicago daily democratic machine. and i kind of liked the idea so

it was suburban and it was girla because these guys ran everything and they weren't used to people taking pot shots at them. >> tell us about nets roots nation and what's been going on up there. >> well, depends on who you are. i personally skip most of the panels because this is an opportunity for me to meet and talk with and network these people, my online colleagues that i'm in contact with and supportive of the rest of the year. but there's great panels for people who aren't bloggers. all kinds of information about how you can can be effective in your community, how to get things done. it's really fun. that's the thing, it sounds dry and boring. it really is a lot of fun and i look forward to it every year. >> one panel that you did not skip is one you moderated between senators spector and representative suss tack who is

running to replace senator specter. tell us about that panel discussion. >> well, it was interesting because i thought that senator specter said smgs news worthy that i didn't see the "new york times" pick up this morning. which was that senator specter said that the republicans in congress had gotten together and decided before the inauguration that they were going to oppose any stimulus bill put forth by president obama so that they could break him. i thought that was interesting, but apparently nobody else was paying attention. and senator specter talked about his record. there's a fairly deep mist trust of senator specter because he does this interesting thing. i grew up in philadelphia and he has been representing me in one form or another for 40 years. and what he does is he comes out and makes a very impassioned speech about something. and he'll say this is wrong and this is unconstitutional and this simply can't stand.

and then he turns around and votes for it. and i asked him about that. and he says, well, you have to look at individual votes. and i thought, well, no. i don't have that great of memory. and if i've noticed this, i'm sure it's there. >> the panel was covered by the philadelphia inquirer and the headlines spebtor sess tack make spitches. he tells activists he was working hard to support obama's health plan. sess tack links thoim bush. c-span also cord your discussion and wemmed we would like to show the audience a little bit of what happened there and we will continue our discussion. >> this is kind of an odd question but i think it's something that comes up a lot here at this conference. and it's what i would call the net roots will you still love me tomorrow syndrome. of, you know, we go out on

dates with candidates, they say all the right things. they buy us dinner and tell us we're pretty. and then it's all they can do to get as far as away from us as possible. we're kind of like the girl that they had under the bleachers but won't take to the prom. >> so what was the response of representative sesstak and senator specterer regarding that sort of romantic kind of allution that you made to politics? >> this was during the second half. they weren't on the stage same. and this happened during joe sesstak's segment. and actually we had a really good response from him because, see, one of the problems that we have being effective in the blog atmosphere is that we started this tactic of we would say you know what, here's a maveragenal race marginal race

in wisconsin or oregon or minnesota and we're going to get a lot of small contribute yngs and we're going to target that race and see if we can't take that seat back for a democrat. but what happens is they see all these little $25 contributions come in, but they don't see it as coming from us. they don't think of us as a lobby like they would anybody else or a caucus so they tend to just say, i represent my constituents and i represent the people who gave me large contributions sms and as i pointed out yesterday, i had taken a look at his campaign contributions from when he first ran for congress and far and away your largest contributor were the net roots. but there's no way that we can consider you our guy in congress the way that a lot of other lobbyists do when they give that much money to help somebody win. and he said, you know, i never thought of it. when i -- when i spoke to him

after, he said that he was going to see if he could put together a net roots caucus of congressional members who had been helped by the blog atmosphere in terms of funding and see if they couldn't work together and address issues together that were our concern, which i thought was great. how often do you get a result from something like that. >> if our viewers and listen ers would like to get involved, the number 202--- on the your screen. all the numbers ... the e-mail is journ@c-span.org. or twitter is c-spanwj.

caller: mariana, florida. host: go ahead. caller: i am active retired duty. i have health care. however, i have a conscience and a heart. i believe we need health care reform. i have a couple of observations, i would like your opinion. in california there were thousands lined up to see a doctor. cbs news reported it. on the front page of "the new york times" of what i understand. cnn said not one word. i called cnn constantly. the negative portrayal by the 24-hour news channels, in my opinion, were the angry protestors, negative views expressed constantly, has led to, in my opinion, a decline in

the chances for healthcare reform in this country and a decline in the popularity of the president because of what they have portrayed. this was expressed on bill moyer's the journal on pbn with the discussion he had. those are my points and my observations. host: thanks for the observations. on top of that. suzy, the lead story in the philadelphia inquirer this morning says obama is saying the media is overplaying the protests, "tv loves a ruckus." he said it is polite to have questions. your thoughts. guest: absolutely. i was a journalist for 20 years. i will tell you this, reporters are lazy. they're really lazy. i don't think most people understand that there is nowhere near as much fact-checking going on as you think there is. people think what they saw on tv

is true. all the time on stories. you need to fix it. they would get mad at me. i'm sure a lot of those people worked their way up through the ranks and maybe they even work at cnn. the thing is, also with the 24-hour news channels, what happens is when they have a mistake in the story, once the mistake is there, they rarely go back and fix it. they have to fill up a big news hole on a 24-hour channel. they keep repeating the same erroneous story with the error in it over and over. i have seen this so many times i can't even count. fox news, one of their favorite tricks is whenever a republican congressperson is caught some a scandal -- and kids, you can play along at home, they will always put a d after their name when they run the news story. so something like you see on

television. >> what about what you read in the blogosphere, can you read that anymore in the mainstream media? guest: there is a good music critic that i have been reading for years. i'm familiar with his pace. i know that if he says, you know, this is a good album you would like it. i can go out and buy it without hearing it first. i have been reading him for so long. i kind of think that is how it works from the blogosphere, you get a sense for the judgment of the person you're reading over time. and the thing about the mrog spheres we're self-correcting. there are a million people out there, experts at some little piece of something. and they're very happy to leave a comment or e-mail us and say, no, you have that wrong. here is another point. you know, we're not shy about making those corrections. host: another call. this is from austin, texas. robin on the line for

independents. good morning. caller: [inaudible] on actually answering the question about how health care will be helped not only to the soldiers, such as jimi hendrix or [inaudible] having his head strapped to the back of a stretcher to puke to death. he could not od. shall we explain how -- host: let's move on to holly in columbus, ohio. holly? caller: good morning. i want to say in regards to the protests, i have been keeping up with this. what i find very disturbing is, especially fox news, of course, they just say america doesn't want this, america doesn't want this. i'm an african-american, i'm

well-educated, i have master's degree, i have lost my job, i have lost my health care. and i'm currently experiencing some health care issues, i don't want anything for free. i don't want to just live off of anyone else's taxes. what i find disturbing is they keep saying america doesn't want to look at this. when i look at town halls, i don't see me or a lot of people that represent me. it is unfortunate, these people are just so mad about president obama, and it shows how, really, republicans -- i'm just going to say republicans really feel about everyone else, other than themselves. and what i want to say is to people out there, there are other perspectives, it is not just about them. everybody doesn't just want to live off the system and get free health care. and president obama is the one president, he just has a heart and cares about everybody.

the way that these michelle martins and glenn becks are trying to make him this -- this filler in the white house that he's trying to destroy america. ok. to me, they're making him be like a god, he can mesmerize millions of people all over the world to believe what he's saying. host: we will leave it there, holly. suzy, your response? guest: i'm right there with you, hun. i have been out of work. i have been fighting to get a ruptured ligament repaired in my ankle. i understand what you are talking about. people are getting distracted by the side show. i think these people that go to the town meetings, they're concerned. they're people -- particularly in this economic environment. they're frightened of anything

new. they're believing what they're hearing. most people are not educated news consumers. very few people are educated news consumers. in order to be an educated news consumer, you have to read widely and you have to read consistently. i mean, you know, i read like 10 newspapers a day. let me tell you, i would love to hit the lottery and never read another paper again. but it is really difficult for the average person to fit this in between going to work, taking the kids to soccer, making dinner, doing homework, you know, taking the car to get fixed. you know, real life gets in the way of knowing what is going on. people tend to fall for the side show. the people coming out to the meetings, i think they're real people. i don't think this was manufactured by lobbyists. i think it was -- the lobbyists

gave them fools to organize. but i think the fear was out there and the anxiety is out there. everybody is anxious now. most people don't really know whether they're going to have a job one day to the next. how could you not be anxious? health care, that is something that affects everybody. if you think you have health insurance, you haven't tried to use it yet. i had an emergency room visit a few months ago where i came home and i found a bill for $12,000. i called them up, i said yo. they said oh, we're sorry, we made a mistake. i thought how many people get that bill and don't fight that and assume they owe it. there are a lot of shenanigans in health care. people are anxious. host: take another care from james out of eunucha new york. go ahead. caller: i'm not a republican that is slamming obama or

anything. i don't mind necessarily having universal health care. my problem that i see is i don't know who to trust, who to listen to. i have a situation right now with my mother-in-law who fell in a nursing home. they said it was part of her dementia. because of insurance, they couldn't do certain tests unles they had a reason. so what happened was she ended up going in two weeks later and found she had a bleed in her brain and cancer. well, now it's too late to do anything and she's basically comma tosis. my problem is what -- comatose. what will happen later? my problem is what will happen later? i have a broken ankle. i don't deserve a splint. you should walk it off. that is my biggest concern. i don't get any answers.

i hear one side or the other, but i don't get any definitive answers on what it is actually going to consist of. host: thanks for your call. suzy, go ahead. guest: that is a true level of concern. people don't know what congress is planning to vote for. and by the way, you know, i really identify with what you just said as well. my mom just died a couple of weeks ago. we had all kinds of health care issues with her and health planning ahead. it is really a difficult position to be in. but please understand, the insurance companies are doing it. the insurance companies are the ones making those decisions for you now. the insurance company decided i couldn't have an mri for this ankle and i had to fight for it for two years. that part will be better. that much i can tell you. i can tell you that i don't

believe there will be a bill passed that doesn't involve higher standards for your care, not lower standards. it is that standardizing them. there are all kinds of reasons why doctors order unnecessary tests and all kinds of reasons why insurance companies deny necessary tests. what the government hopefully will do with this bill and what everybody about the bill says is they're looking to find higher standards. that is why it is so sad that people are panicking. call your congressman. they're usually very happy to take phone calls. call your congressman. find out what they're looking at. don't panic. these people do work for you. don't do it in a belligerent way. say i need help, i'm concerned. they'll help you. host: next up is mark.

good morning. caller: thank you for the opportunity to take my comments. i can't even begin. so many people touched on so many things. one of the big things is people that say the mainstream media, and these people are in business and want to make money. you know, disseminating information is a huge part of that. if they can, dig deeper. it is tough. i feel like, just like the last guy, you know, where can you turn? where can you get that information? i think that people need to start demanding that as well from the news sources. you know, they need to say, hey, we need something that doesn't include all the political aspect

of it. we need the truth. if they don't like what they're getting, they ought to change the channel. they have to go someplace else. host: mark, where do you get your news from? caller: to be honest, i flip back and forth on everything, but i work with drudge reports with headlines and it is easy to skim through. i go to usa today, i try to get a lot from them. i feel like they stay out of the -- host: one more question and then i will let you go. do you read any of the blogs? caller: you know, i haven't gotten into it much. there is so much out there. i'm sure there are resources that organize the blogs and give a better explanation of what everybody talks about. i haven't found that resource yet. one of the points that you made and the clip you played that i really liked, you know, when she

talked about the bleachers. i feel like the american people need to have that players-only meeting. where the coaches go out of the locker room and need to come together and say what do we really want, what do we really expect out of our government? they need to look at the local politicians more. i think a lot of responsibility needs to start shifting back down. host: sorry for cutting you off. we have to move on. go ahead, suzy. guest: i often read usa today. i think they do a great job and keep it neutral. i have found a much lower level of bias, one way or another. another good source is my blog

susiemadrak.com. it is hard to know what to believe. that is where blogs come in. basically -- i always say i'm a news cons cons area. i tell you what they leave out and what is wrong with what they put in. it is difficult i was in the business myself. i have an eye for this thing. i see a lot of the distinctions. one of the problems with the news industry is they don't have to worry about health care, you know, they don't have to worry about whether or not their home is going to get foreclosed on. they're not dealing with the anxieties that ordinary americans are dealing with. it is controversy that is good for advertising. the more viewers and eyeball on

a program, come on. we all know it. yet we have people who believe everything he says. i'm glad there are people like mark out there with a high level of skepticism who are still trying to find out what is going on. host: let's take this call from dale on the line for democrats. caller: thank you for taking my call. i waited a long time to get through. i have a comment about cnn and csnbc. if we wouldn't change the laws around the newspapers and radio

stations.. . when i see how things are manipulated, how, more importantly, i think the single most important thing, the people do not disclose what they do for the ave a living and the networks don't make them. you can't point to just one station, but where it will say news analyst and the guy is a lobbyist. you know, i would suggest that any time you see anybody who says anything that seems a little bit off on tv, go to your computer, look up the guy's name and find out where they're really coming from. basically, we're offering paid

advertisements to these groups. >> james on our line for republicans out of lodi, california. >> it's about 20 some years ago the federal government ordered all of the medical schools in the united states to reduce their enrollments, and then they turned around and paid the medical schools for their lost income from having reduced tuitions. and this is how your government acts when it has any way, any avenue of influence in the medical profession is they call the shots. and many times the public isn't even aware of it. >> james, thanks for your call. >> james, there's an interesting thing, though, that we have the internet now. it's -- and i've seen this just from talking to politicians over the last several years. they're not aware of how easy it is to check up on what they say now. they really still can't get used to the fact that in five minutes i can tell you that you

just lied about something and here's the record. you get to look up all the stuff. you know? you get to arm yourself. the thing that they really don't like are informed educated votors, inform yourself. it's the only way to fight back against the special interest groups. one of the best things in the health care reform that's happened is wendell potter, who used to be the director of public relations of signature na insurance in philadelphia came out and started talking about all the thing that is were part of his job. he quit his job working for them to distort and manipulate the news to make it sound like health care reform was really an evil plan. and this same guy is now going around and admiting what they did, talking about what's going on now, comparing it to what happened in 93 and 94 and saying it's a lot worse this time. don't believe what they're telling you. so educate yourself. >> let's take this last call

from done on our line from independents. >> yes, as far as the lobbying/analysts goes, that you could speeng a little bit to, i don't know the 30 or 40 different military types that were on cnn and all the other news stations that were actually getting talking points from the pentagon and putting them forward. but secondly, you didn't get a chance today but howard dean did a great job yesterday. i listened to the entire sestak-spebter, howard dean thing yesterday, and i would recommend strongly to get his book because even though he's partisan it was a pretty nonpartisan explanation of things and he explains things even better than obama, as far as i'm concerned. >> thanks for your call. >> what i've noticed that all

the calls here this morning is that the democratic and republican calls are all saying the same thing. we're anxious, we don't know who to turn to, we don't know who to trust. you can't trust what you see on television. you really can't. you can trust some of it but it's hard to know which. they had all these military analysts that were getting their talking points from the pentagon and it was an absolute conflict. they were absolutely out there cheer leading for the war. the same people telling you that it will bankrupt this country to have health care are the same people who told you that it wouldn't cost us anything to go to iraq. so it's like give that a thought. >> we have to leave it there. thanks for being on. >> thanks for having me. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

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sunday night at 8 on c-span. >> british voters expected to go to the polls a national election next spring. david cameron on how a tory government would change domestic policies. british politics, sunday night on c-span. >> how is c-span funded? >> the u.s. government. >> some of it is government- raised. >> it is not public funding. >> donations? >> i want to say from me, my tax dollars. >> c-span is publicly funded. no government, no government money.

>> and report says that enhanced border security and immigration laws have the opposite effect. we will hear from an author of the report for about an hour. workers in the u.s. would have significant economic benefits. the authors of the study shared their findings this afternoon. good afternoon, everyone. thank you for coming to today's cato institute capitol hill briefing. is the mic on? are we live? all right, let's get this fixed. oh. the button. all right. now i'm live. okay, good afternoon, everyone. welcome to today's cato institute capitol hill briefing. i'm curt couchman welcome manager of the government affairs at the cato institute. today we'll hear about the paper "restriction or legalization, measuring the economic benefits

of immigration reform" which should have been one of three handouts that you picked up on your way in. one of the other ones is "as immigrants move in americans move up" and that's what daniel griswold will talk about. and finally the immigration chapter from the cato handbook for policymakers. if you are familiar with the handbook it's a great resource if you want to get the merpt of cato institute scholars on in major issues that face policymakers. anything in health care to education, trade, immigration, civil liberties, energy policy and everything in between. so our first speaker today is daniel griswold, the director of the center for trade policy studies of the cato institute. since joining cato in 1997, mr. griswold authored or co-authored studies on globalization, trade and immigration including the upcoming back, "mad about trade, why main street america should embrace globalization."

i brought half a dozen copies with me. you can order it on amazon for about $15. i want to read a couple quick little excerpts from the forward to the book, which is written by clayton utter, the former u.s. trade representative and secretary of agriculture. since dan is too modest to do shameless self-promotion i'll do it for him. he wrote, this is a book that ought to be read by all americans. as this author points out, international trade seems often to provoke more anxiety than gratitude. s that unfortunate for without ten couragement of foreign investment and a expansion of trade, we'd likely still be a third-world country today. in this book, dan griswold talks about from textism. they relied on emotion and phobias rather than facts to carry their agenda. griswold wears on his sleeve

come passion for the poor and empathy for the often-forgotten consumer. and as finally, add griswold effect effectively emphasizing, protectionism is just another way to talk about the people that work for no taxes. this is a book full after great arguments. they are not superacademic. they are in plain language and easy to understand and lay out all the great benefits of trade. mr. griswold has also authored a number of art quells from the newspaper and appears regularly on media outlets. he's testified on the range of trade and immigration issues and as a note to any cobb greshl staff, he would be more than happy to do so again. before joining cato, he was editorial page editor of a daily newspaper, "the colorado springs gentleman zell" and "the congressional press secretary." he has a bachelor's degree and

the london school of commission. dan griswold. -- london school of economics. thank you very much. the center tore trade policy did you dids has been an advocate of comprehensive immigration reform for quite some time. in 2002 we published a study called "willing workers" and it made the argument that the key to successful immigration reform is a workable, temporary worker program. and we believe that today. at the root of illegal immigration is a basic story of demand and supply. during types of normal growth, our economy is creating hundreds of thousands of net new jobs each year for workers with relatively do you skills. we all know the sectors that they are in. retail, hospitality, food preparation, cleaning,

construction, landscaping, and at the same time, the pool of native-born americans who traditionally filled those jobs, americans without a high school diploma continues to shrink. in fact, in the last decade, the number of americans without a high school diploma dropped by 3 million. that will drop another 2 or 3 million in the next decade. yet, our immigration system has no adequate channel for a peaceful, hardworking immigrant from mexico or another country to come into the united states and fill these jobs. as a result, we have chronic illegal immigration in the united states. the key to any workable immigration reform, worthy of the name is to expand that legal channel, to create opportunities for low-skilled workers to enter the country legally. critics complain that the 1986 immigration reform and control act failed because it wasn't

enforced properly. well, i don't think that's true. it famed because it had no provision for the future throw of legal workers into the u.s. economy. any reform effort that this president and congress undertakes, cannot make the same mistake as the 1986 law or we'll have the same failure and frustration we did then. now, another complaint by critics of reform, is that allowing more low-skilled workers into the country will be importing poverty. will swell the underclass and will just cost u.s. taxpayers more money. the two cato studies that we're highlighting today speak directly, i think, to this misplaced apprehension about that. the first is a recent free-trade bulletin that i authored, titled "as immigrants move in americans move up." what i found in that study is that from the early 1990s up

until 2007, the u.s. underclass by a number of measure was shrinking. the number of native-born americans living in poverty. those struggling in adult life without a high school diploma. we're shrinking and by every measure, including african-americans. this, during a time of fairly robust low-skilled immigration to the united states, legal and illegal. during that time, the hue of the underclass changed. it became more hispanic. more immigrant. and more functional. by functional, i mean, low-skilled immigrants are much more likely to work and much less likely to commit crimes than native-born low-skilled workers. and that is thanks in part to immigration, in contrast to 15 years ago. if a member of the underclass is standing on a street corner today they are probably waiting for a job and not a drug deal.

our second study released this week finds that huge gains for u.s. households from expanded legal immigration. the study is titled "restriction or legalization, measuring the economic benefits of immigration reform." you should all have a copy. the paper was written by a dr. peter dickson and dr. marie rimer. and they have both done extensive consulting and economic modeling for the u.s. government and government agencies, including the u.s. international trade commission where they actually have an office over there and the departments of commerce, agriculture and homeland security. what they have done is modelled the economywide affects for the u.s. government of changes in u.s. trade and immigration policy. i heard dr. dixon give a presentation several months ago and asked him to apply his model to the current immigration debate and they came through spectacularly, i think. they are study for the cato

institute finds that the choices that congress and the president will make on immigration reform in the months ahead will have a huge economic impact on u.s. households. they are key finding is the difference in income for u.s. households between restricting immigration on the one hand and legalizing it and accommodating it on the other is a quarter of a trillion dollars. curt, last time i checked that's still real money, even here in washington. well, let me turn it over to professor dixon. he's the sir john, distinguished p proprofessor in melbourne, australia and known internationally on his work on computable general equilibrium modeling and he and dr. rimmer wrote this book. in 2003 he was awarded the distinguished fellowship of the economic society of australia

and completed his ph.d. at harvard in 1972. please welcome dr. peter dixon. thank you, dan. and thank you to cato forgiving me the opportunity to present our results to you today. now, economists can't possibly speak for more than a few seconds without needing charts and overheads and so on so i apologize for that but we're going to have to have power point. if we got powerpoint? is anything happen something can these people see, too? okay. here.

we'll post this online, too. >> okay all right. all right. so if you want to see it you have to change to the other side of the room. now, in 2005, there are about 7.4 million unauthorized workers in the american u.s. workforce. and under businesses usual assumptions that will grow to about 12.4 million by the year 2019. this poses some policy issues. what should be done about it? so we use our economic model to look at three possibilities. the first is tighter border security. will restriction as ply. build the fence higher.

the second is tighter internal enforcement. harass the employers. and the third possibility is some form of legal legalization -- some sort of gift guest-worker program. so we start with tighter border security. and the experiment that we run in our model so we can move on, i have to coordinate the slides here. as you can see -- that's it. there you can see the business as usual line. the top line. that's showing the n which is to cut supply so that,

in fact, the number of authorized workers' gross only to 8.4 million. so we have clout -- cuts applied. the way we visualize the effect, we have made it so that potential legal immigrants pay an extra $5,000 for a border crossing. a border crossing it dangerous to do. it costs money, you give money to smugglers, it might not be successful and you could be sent back home. there is a significant risk of something bad happening to you. so we build things away that is equivalent to potentially legal, in terms of it costing them an

extra five of dollars for crossing. $5,000 for a crossing. what's the effect of all of that? well, this policy means that in 2019 there are 3.55 million less illegals working in the u.s. now, that's about 2.1% of the employment of the basic employment in the year 2019. so employment in the u.s., with this policy, is going to be about 2.1% lower than it otherwise would have been. so your first guess is that the economy would be 2.1% smaller. but the model says, no, that's not the right answer. the economy will be 1.6%

smaller. and then you think, well, why is it that it's only going to be 1.6% smaller? well, you recognize that the reduction in the labor force is a reduction in low-paid low-skilled work. so you haven't really got a 2.1% reduction in the effective labor force. in fact, when you think about it a bit further and realize that the productivity of the workers you're excluding is only about half that of the average productivity of legal workers, you wonder why the economy shrinks by as much as 1.6. why didn't the economy shrink more like 1%? you really excluded about 1% of the effective work -- effective quality of labor. so why is it 1.6? the answer to that question

turns out to be rather important. the so-called "occupation mix effect." when you exclude the low-skilled workers, what happens to the u.s. workers? the legal workers? well, what they see is vacancies opening up at the low end of the labor market. so you've excluded people who were going to work at the low end of the labor market so vacancies open up there but simultaneously vacancies close off at the top end. why is that? you'll have a smaller economy so you're going to need less civil servants. you'll need less school teachers. less doctors. you're going to need less police officers and so on. you're going to need less of all occupations. all right? but vacancies are opening up at

the bottom where you've excluded the illegal immigrants. but closed off at the top where you haven't excluded any illegal immigrants. so new entrance to the workforce find themselves with lesser opportunitys so the young people entering the workforce settle on a job as a private security officer rather than a police officer. the young graduate who wanted to be an economist, the highest calling, of course, the young graduate wanting to be an economist find there is are no jobs for economists. all right? instead they become a member of congress or some lesser occupation. but you get the idea. so excluding people from the bottom, causes a shuffling effect down. and that's why the economy

shrinks by the 1.6 rather than the one because the excluding of these low-skilled migrants, these skills, the illegal population of the united states, all right? so it destroys .6% of labor moving right along. so what does all this mean for the standard of living of the u.s. households? well, by 2019, under the policy of tighter border security, under the policyhat reduces the number of illegals by 3.55 million, by 2019, under that policy the standard of living or the income gnp, whatever, of

legal u.s. households has been reduced by .55%. if you like it in dollars, that's like about 80 billion. now, there are six reasons. there are six effects. and they are, the occupation mix effect, that's number two that i outlined. americans -- legal americans will have on average, lower skilled and lower paid jobs. that costs them -- that's the negative .31. then there's this capital effect. you remember the economy was smaller, so there will be less capital in the united states than there otherwise would have been. now, your country, like mine, is basically, a big country so if you have less capital you'll have less foreign-owned capital so what's the problem? well, the problem is that foreigners pay lots of taxes

when they invest in this country so having less foreign-owned capital and less capital here means that you'll collect less tax revenue from foreigners. so that's that modest .24. how about employment of legal americans? well, your first guess is that nothing happens to the employment of legal americans but your second-guess is that something slightly bad happens. and that's because you remember we've shuffled americans to lower-skilled jobs and lower-skilled jobs have higher rates of unemployment. so by changing the occupational mix of americans, we've not only reduced their average real wages, which is because they've got lesser jobs, but we've also increased their unemployment rates and that's the fourth effect. another effect which goes the other way, and is the effect

that's been most spoken of in the political debate, is that we'll save some money. illegal immigrants, they use some public sector resources. they use some primary education. they use emergency medical care. they use the roads and so on. and so having less of them will save. american taxpayer some money and that's a plus for reducing the number. and that's that .17. the sixth effect there is -- this is an economist idea, all right? an advantage of having a smaller economy is you get a better deal in world markets so if you have a slightly smaller economy you'll push down the world price of oil. you'll buy less oil and reduce the world price of oil. if you have a smaller economy,

you'll be exporting less so you get a somewhat better price for the american varieties of cars and for holidays and so on and so forth. so in terms of trade effect. that's the advantage of having a smaller economy. the first effect there, and this is for the people who both have done economics 101 and remember it. which may be nobody. here you are. it's demand and supply. now, what happens is that we've restricted the supply of low-skilled migrant labor so we've moved the supply curve to the left. and so in simple terms, we have increased the price of those that remain. so in that diagram, the wage race of the remaining

low-skilled illegal immigrants has gone up by 9% because there's a less supply of them and that's a cost to the legal residents of the united states. so putting all those things together and there they are, the six effects add up to minus $80 billion or minus .55. we could do it all again and this time, we'll bear down on the employers. so the first policy was to restrict supply. build the fence higher. the second policy is to make it more costly, more dangerous, for businesses to employ illegal people. now, it turns out the effects of that policy are more or less the same. the six effects, again, and there's some little variations. for instance, the occupation mix effect isn't quite as bad. the reason the occupation mix

effects isn't quite as bad is that one of the things that firms will do, if there's more regulation and so on, they'll employ more lawyers and more high-skilled people. that's to mitigate the problems of the regulations. so there's a little bit of a gain on the ok mags mix fix. but overall, there's not much to choose between shifting the supply curve out or -- shifting the supply curve in, which is building the fence higher. or shifting the demand curve. the effects of roughly the same and there it is. there we are. shifting the demand curve in by making it more costly for employers to use illegal labor. now, let's try it the other way

around. okay? let's have a guest-worker program. in which employers who want to use low-skilled immigrant labor can obtain this labor that goes to mexico city, the nation up there organizes it and the employers can get a visa -- we'll talk about whether the visa should cost money or not -- we can have a visa tax if we like. but the employers can bring in low-skilled immigrant labor. legally. so what will that do to the supply of they workers? well, the supply curve will move out. the workers no locknger have to worry about smuggler's fees and no long very to worry about being captured on the border and no long very to worry about

starving to death when they are crossing the rio grande goes wrong or whatever. so their supply curve, more of them will be wailing to come at the going wage rates. so if we did that, the simplest case is we reduce the cost of a border crossing by $5,000 rather than increase the cost of border crossing by $5,000. so, if we do that we get results that are basically, opposite of those we've already seen. the direct effect, that was the demand supply diagram, the direct effect is that the wages of the illegals, the wages that are paid in america, the wages go down. that's an advantage to american employers. more of them come. that increases the occupation mix effect. that increases the pressure on u.s. workers to be pushed now up

the occupational ladder. instead of down, they are pushed up the occupational ladder. so we have a positive occupational mix effect. the economy is bigger so we have a positive capital effect. there's more foreign capital here. so, remember the foreigners don't get the full benefit of their investments here. the full benefit of the investment is what the extra capital in this country can produce. the foreigners take away some of that but they leave behind quite a lot of it in the foreign guest workers here filling the low-paying jobs. the occupational mix effect remains that unemployment rates for americans will actually fall, and having more guest

workers here will have public expenditure effects, and negative rather than positive, and the economy will have a negative effect on prices americans pay for imports. but that is not all. if you had a legalization program and guest workers, two things that happen.

one would be the guest workers would be more substitutive all, workers american work would be more substitutable. more like american workers. they'd have higher productivity. illegal workers are actually quite poor workers. they have quite low productivity. they are quite unreliable. the reasons for that are fairly obvious. they're always looking over their shoulders. employers can't invest in them or train them. illegal workers are low-productivity workers and not particularly reliable workers. now, in the next simulation there that you can see on the chart, we introduce the idea that guest workers would have higher productivity than the

illegals that they replaced. all right? now, the illegals have productity that's probably 30% less than native-born workers. illegals, they get paid a lot less and the reason they get paid a lot less is because they are worth a lot less. so they have lower wages reflecting low productivity. but what happens if legalizing them increases their productivity such that half the gap goes. the half the gap between the product activity of the legal workers and the illegal workers. half of that productity gap disappears. well, this magnifies the gains from a guest-worker program. and it magnifies the gains because each guest worker is now

bringing more labor with him or her. you can think of it like a person comes with a certain amount of productivity. an ability to produce effective labor. now, with a guest-worker program, each person brings more labor with them. so you get a bigger increase in supply and bigger capital effects. all of the effects before are mag tied but the one effect that's not magnified so much is the negative effect on public expenditure. each person is coming and bringing more labor but not bringing more drain on the public purse. they are still using the same amount of hospital care and schooling and roads and so on. so the negative effect doesn't blow out as much as all the good effects. so under those circumstances,

the benefit has grown from something like about $80 billion to more like $160 billion a year. and that's permanent, forever and ever. $160 billion a year for u.s. households. we can go on that little knew wanls wanlss. what if too many come? you can control the numbers. not by building fences or by prosecuting with employers. you control the numbers by a visa tax. that next column, column number six, that shows the effects of a program which restricts the number of guest workers to that 12.4 billion which is the same as the number of illegals in our basic case for 2019.

we'll restrict the number of guest workers to that 12.4 million in 2019. and we can do that by a visa tax. now, why does it work? well, imagine it like this. in the present situation, the illegal is worth, in the workplace, 70. okay? so the american employer, the u.s. employer pays 70. all right? now, the illegal would actually willing to come here for of, except for the smuggler's fees and the cost of the illegal crossing. so the illegal needs to be paid 70, and that's what they are worth at the moment but they would be willing to come here for 70 -- for 60.

all right? they would be willing to come for of if they didn't have all the hassle of getting here. so that opens up the immediate prospect of everybody being happier with the illegal only being paid 60. there's a prospect for having a visa tax. still it costs employer 70, but instead of the smuggler getting 10, the u.s. government get ten. that's quite a good deal. imagine that instead of that, the illegal worker, now guest worker, has an increase in productivity is now worth 80. they are still willing to come here for 60. but they are worth 80. so that on up the prospect for the visa tax to be 20.

so that opens up the prospect for u.s. hold holds households by the government, to benefit from eliminating the smuggler's fees, and from the increased productivity that a legal worker would have relative to an illegal worker. so to wrap you will this up, here are our conclusions. tighter border security welfare reducer for u.s. households. why? well, at least -- you might get rid of them all, right? at least higher wages for the ones who remain. they are scarcer. and remember, the negative occupation mix effect. tighter border security means that americans, after a while, i'm not saying anybody in the

room will change occupations, but new sbrants to the workforce, unemployed people will find their opportunities are opened up at the lower end of the workforce and closed off at the top end. so that was the occupation mix effect. titler internal enforcement. basically, instead of the -- instead of the illegals having higher wages as they do with tighter border security, instead of that, the scarcity part of it, if you like, from having these people scarcer in the economy, what really happens then is thathe scarcity value, if you like, is all used up in lawyers and accountants and law enforcement and all that sort of thing and, of course, you still have the negative occupation mix effect. legalization, on the other hand, produces welfare gain for u.s.

households. it converts the illegal crossing. it cobb verts that into a gain and there's also the benefit from the higher productivity of the low-skilled migrant workers. we calculate that you could keep to the 12.4 million by 2019. you could keep to that with all these benefits with a visa tax worth about 30% of the cost of employing them so the cost of employing an illegal migrant would be, say, 100. and then you -- now, a guest worker, the guest worker gets 70 and the u.s. government would get 30. actually, it says that that tax is too high. you should have more than the

12.4 million. and the rights of taxes more like 14%. but the really key point to good policy is legalization. some sort of legal system rather than the illegal system. so the difference between the 40 and the 14 and the 30% visa tax from the welfare point of view of the u.s. households is not very great. and as dan said at the beginning, it's quite a big issue. i mean, you're talking about benefits to u.s. households from good policy of 160 billion a year. versus cost to u.s. households, a bad policy, worth 80 billion a year. put those two things together and as dan said, that's a difference of 240 billion, which is a quarter of a trillion, which is real money. okay. i think i have finished. so, thank you very much.

>> we'll move into a discussion period. for toes of you that couldn't see the powerpoint we'll post it on the event page where you supposedly registered for the event. if not, you can go into the archived event section of the cato website and it will be there. at this point we'll take questions. if you could keep them direct and brief so that we n get to as many as possible that would be great. mam in the black? >> two quick questions. you made the point and i'd like to know where you got your figures because i always heard opposite that illegal workers have higher productity than american workers. that's the first. and the second one is, if they are coming here legally and basically, they are the same people, how do you determine that they their productity is

higher just because their flel their the same people? -- if they are legal if they are the same people? >> i can repeat the question if you like. can you hear me? >> yup. >> so the question was, how do i know that illegals have low productivity relative to legal workers in the same occupation. and the second question is -- how i do flow that converting them to being legal would increase their productivity. is that right? my evidence for their productivity being low is their wages. complex theory suggests that -- economic theory suggests that people will be employed up to the point where their wage is equal to their productivity. if wages were higher than their

productivity then they'll get fired. if wages are lower than their productivity you want more of them. okay? so the main evidence for the idea that they're productivity is low is that they systematically earn low wages related to legal residence. the other question is, why do i think the wages would go up? that's speculative. and that's why i give you the -- i gave you option that i gave you. a simulation without their  productivity rising and then with their productivity rising. i think their productivity would rise because i think that would become more reliable workers and they've become workers in which employers could invest, give them some training and so on. >> could i make a comment? let me just add to that quickly.

in my 2002 study, "willing workers" i looked at some evidence the government found from -- we had what really was an amnesty in the 1980s and they found that the empirical evidence supported what peter is saying. they invested more in their job and language skills because they were more secure as workers. and their wages took an >> yes, sir. >> the two factors i always hear why people objected immigrants is that one, they would use up all of our emergency rooms and not have

health insurance. the other, that their children are going to flood the school system's and essentially they are not paying anything for their tuition. it seems to me that two things can be done. why not require them to buy health insurance, just a minimal amount, rather than paying a coyote. they could buy health insurance. that could be a requirement. and if they're going to have children here, why not make them pay some kind of tuition to a public school. >> dickensian those figures but having more of them here was negative. so we have to take into account

what resources they use in the medical system and the school system, and that is the thing that gets most safe. system. and that seems to be the thing that gets most airspace in the debate on the issue. you can see, fairly minor effect, relative to all the good things i talked about. so it -- yeah. if you had a guest-worker program you could actually design it so that they didn't bring their children. all right? that would be a possibility. it's a tough deal. we're talking about a deal whereby the united states makes a deal to have those jobs done by foreigners. but everybody wins.

you know? the united states households win and the foreigners willingly come. if that he came on short, temporary visas. they come here and earn a lot more money than they could get at home and it might well work that they leave their families at home. >> a comment on that. when we commissioned this study we didn't tell dr. dixon we'd like this result. i knew their model us -- had been tested and i was curious and we went with the results. and it confirms, in part, what the critics say about immigration reform. it is going to cost us as taxpayers. the government will have to spend more on schools and medical care. but that cost is overwhelmed by the economywide benefits. this is, i think, the headline finding of the study. when you look at the other effects that dr. dixon and dr.

rimmer looked at, that's a key point to take away. it can be the -- the government can do things to restrict access to the welfare state by immigrants and my strong preference is let's wall off the welfare state and not our country. there's limitations to that. the supreme court ruled you can't bar children of illegals from public schools. you can't turn them away from emergency rooms. but i think those costs tend to be exaggerated and they are more than offset by the economywide benefits that dr. dixon talked about. >> we want to get to as many people as possible. >> come on up i have wards and we'll be happy to -- the gentleman in the back. >> when you have illegal immigrants here, the united states not being a country that can expel them after x number of

years most immigrants on the guest program will look at this as a path to citizenship. so in the long rrun, given that they are making less than the average mesh would, even after, their bump in productivity, does that apply a lower immediate i have been average income for americans? having more guest workers in the united states? and number two, there is an optimal -- socially optimal point that you can -- for the united states government to impose a visa tax. how high can this tax be without rechannelling these guest workers to the coyotes. and how much -- what's your approximation of the revenue that could be raced by having this visa tax at a socially

optimal level? >> the first part of that is about the path to citizenship. it has to be right, but completely clear this is not a path to citizenship. this is a way in which the u.s. gets a job done. it's like trade. i mean, you're importing labor to do a particular job and then go away again. it's nothing to do with -- it's not meant to be a path to citizenship. that should be absolutely clear. starz -- if you had such a program, all right, in place, i think that the prospects for people to be employed illegally would actually be rather -- would be reduced. if you see -- if employers had a perfectly reasonable legal way of getting this type of labor, then it destroys the demand for the illegal people.

you can have your enforcement programs -- my guess is that the american public would be very sympathetic with a very tough program on employers who, although there was a perfectly sensible, legal channel for them to get the labor, chose to employ illegal people. all right? it's not a path to citizenship. and i think it would -- the people who came on the program i think would find it very difficult to get a job after the legal period was over. because they would be in competition with legal workers. you get the point? all right. now, on the revenue side, our calculations suggest that about 30% of the cost of employing the

guest workers could be siphoned off by the u.s. government. now, whether that would give much incentive to illegal employment or not, well, i think i gave the answer before. i think the answer is no. okay? 30% would not be enough, i think, to make it worth the while of employers to take on illegal workers when they have a perfectly reasonable access to legal workers. okay? >> if i could just jump in. one of the perverse consequences of our current enforcement-only policy is we've actually made it more likely once the illegals come in the country to stay. it's so costly and dangerous to cross the border. they don't dare go back and

impose those costs and risks to them again. so they stay. half the illegals have been here for five years or more. if we adopted a system of expanded legal entry, they would be able to go home for christmas. they would be ablg to stay in touch with their family. they would have less incentive to bring their spouses and chern over. from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, where it was technically illegal for them to be here, but we didn't do much about it, we had a strong circumstance lal pattern of immigration from mexico. the research shows about 80% of them eventually went back home. i think adopting a legalization program with some kind of fee for the visa would restore that circular -- circularity. most mexicans prefer to live in mexico. they want to go back. that's where their family is. their culture. they come here to solve short-term problems. we make it virtually impossible for them to do that legally. i think what we need to go is

create that legal channel. they'll come here and work for three or six years, they'll benefit the u.s. economy and themselves and their families. the large majority, based on past experience, will go home. they don't come here to seek citizenship. they come here for economic reasons. >> the lady? >> will you address two issues, one, the cyclical nature of this kind of heated debate in the united states. are there other ways of immigrants. and two, given how uncivil the health reform debate is coming through the town halls and awful of that, do you perceive that same environment happening when the immigration reform debate finally gets rolling next year? thank you. >> i'll leave number two to dan. number one, on the cyclical aspect, one of the things about

a guest worker program is that it really cushions u.s. employment from the ups and downs of the cycle. for instance, now, in the depths of this recession that you're in, you wouldn't expect employers to want many of these people. all right? but then in the boom, you would expect them to want more. so in fact, a good guest worker program smooths out the ups and downs in employment for the legal residents of the united states. but i'll leave the political -- >> just emphasizing that point, by all accounts, the number of illegal immigrants in the u.s. has actually gone down in the last couple years. which perfectly supports dr.

dixon's point. about the civility of the debate, yes. the immigration debate needs a good dose of civility. it's a very -- you know, i tell people when the trade debate gets a little tame, then i turn to immigration. where people's emotions are even higher. i think both parties, the democrats and the republicans, have factions within their constituencies that need to be face down if we're going to succeed at immigration reform. the republicans have to stand up and transcend a minority nativist element that just seems to oppose immigrants generally. and as you mentioned, that's a common feature of american history. 100 years ago it was those italians and poles and russian jews. and before that, the irish. this is a standard fare. we tend to love the past generations of immigrants and have all the questions about the current generation, never

stopping to consider that the u.s. continues to absorb immigrants, i think, in a generally successful way. the democrats, however, i think are facing opposition among organized labor. and organized labor kind of gave up their absolute opposition to immigration a few years ago. but they continue to oppose guest worker programs and temporary worker programs. i think this is a critical mistake on the part of organized labor. if you take one message away from our presentation today, it's that a workable, robust, guest worker program is essential to the success of immigration reform. and to the extent that the nativists on the right and organized labor on the left oppose that, i think they both have to be marginalized in this debate if immigration reform is going to succeed. and we're going to finally solve this problem of illegal immigration. >> okay. this is going to be the last question then.

>> president obama seems to side step the issue of legalizing immigrants this year, because he said his plate is full of other debates on health care. can you comment on these? because he campaigned during the presidential campaign that legalization of immigrants should be a priority. >> well, if i were giving advice to president obama, and he hasn't called me about this, but i would say put aside health care reform and concentrate on immigration reform. polls show two-thirds americans are satisfied with health care. i don't think we have a health care crisis in this country. sure, the system needs to be changed. go to cato.org and see how we can improve the health care system. with illegal immigration, we have a status quo that very few people are satisfied with.

the congress can do something concrete about it that will reduce illegal immigration, enhance our economy, enhance our border security. i think -- i don't think immigration reform should be shunted off any longer than possible for these other matters. senator schumer, very much to his credit, has said he wants to make this a priority with his committee and start with hearings. i think there are enough republicans to work on this issue. senator m there are enough republicans and democrats that deliver clear majorities in both chambers, and the president has said he wants to get this done. no excuse this time. the single biggest obstacle to immigration reform, i think, made a tactical and strategic mistake to demonize illegal immigrants, and they're no

longer able to stop immigration reform legislation. the democrats aren't charged and need to deliver on this, and i believe there are republicans willing to work with that. that could get this done in 2009 if it wanted to. >> we have to wrap up now. we're going to stick around a little bit if you have questions which were not answered, and thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] .

enter the home to america's highest court, from the grand public places, to those on the excess of will by the mind justices. the supreme court. >> we return to the closing panel of the right online panel.

we will hear from matt lewis and the heritage foundation. this conference is being hosted by the americans for prosperity foundation. this is live coverage on c-span.

her hewe are live from pittsburr the right online conference. we expect to hear from matt lewis, as well as others. this is expected to get under way in five minutes or so. a look at some of your health care video in the meantime. >> house what insurance plan has fun as the initiative cross in the country? medicare. yes, it does. that is a proven fact from the government's budget office. they have the highest

administrative cost of any plant. not only that, they are running out of money. >> we are listening to different sources. we are getting different numbers. >> health care now. health care now. health care now. >> nobody listens. we jump up and down and we get excited and our voices raised. we write letters, but no one listens. when we start getting excited, what we are radicals. well you did not listen to us. what does it take for costs for you to listen to us the first time? >> health care now. health care now. >> i would like to see health care for everyone. i want to see affordable as

health care for everyone. everybody out here probably has a health insurance. there is a population that is not here that has a voice and it needs to be heard. i am in the health-care field. i came out here, what i thought i wall -- was good to hear was to hear them speak about it, but i did not get that. i am disappointed in that. i wanted them to address the issues, that answer some of the people's questions. hawke cracks i feel it is a very unfair issue. as a nurse, i would have to perform abortion against my own riding. i think that is very unfair, and a system that is supposed to giving people -- it is about th

government taking control of our lives. cracks what that is against what they are trying to do in congress right now. that is not good for anybody. >> if you want to call it socialism, i think it is better than what we have now. >> my turn. i was born in cuba. you cannot get an aspirin in cuba. i sneaky and medicine every month. see the human feces on the floor. >> i live in spain, which is a socialist country. the health-care system worked perfectly. i live for five years there.

i lived in spain and people were taken care of from birth to death under a fair system. it doesn't cost and buy anything. >> folks have come to this coffee shop, and they're sitting, talking about national politics. we may not agree or disagree with everyone that is here, but the congressman is working his way through, talking to people one on one. we do these every month. this is by far our largest crowd. >> the governor -- the government has no business taking care of work i can take care of on my own. h>> we now return to pittsburgh

>> i was in austin tx/year and saw a lot of enthusiasm. how you think the right has adapted in the last year, and if you think conservatives are still struggling to grasp the power of new media or if the left is looking to us for some ideas? >> i think the left is probably looking to us for some new ideas. a lot of what we have done has been, take example today, we

will prescreen questions. we are still behind. part of its it is a lack of recognition on the right of what it will do to get a hat. the left has been willing to be a collaborative, and to put money toward the problem. on the right everyone is interested in the profit motive. in some cases we will not make a profit. a lot of left-wing sites on the internet will see advertising by the afl-cio, the democratic party. you don't really see that on the right.

there is a funding gap that plays into it. i am seeing the trend that project a on website -- that on the right website the traffic is going up. they use the same analytics tools, and they are later -- a larger. we are starting to make progress. there needs to be greater recognition on the right that demographically, we are different. we are working families, who works through the day, who cannot be engaged on line, verses college kids and retirees on the east and left coast to can dedicate their time to it. >> you have for many different

hats. i think you see it both as somebody who has written about this but also somebody who has been involved in campaigns. >> the ratings -- it is a mistake for conservatives to -- we should try to learn from the other side. i am sure that liberals try to learn from lee atwater back in the '80s and '90s. the right and the left are different. i have to tell you that the left is very worried right now. it is not because they are worried that the conservative blogosphere is beating them. they fought to -- the thought

that it had gone dormant and it has come back. " what we have to look at is not necessarily to compare the conservative blogosphere against the left, but we are in pittsburgh and that is taking place simultaneously. it is unfair to say that this is our version of that. conservatives also have feedback with thousands of conservatives every year. the other point i want to make is that i think the sell-off of flagellation has to stop. conservatives have to stop. the internet blossomed during a time when conservative -- republicans, and more specific

time -- term was out of power and liberals were out of power. people out of power were more creative and willing to try different things. there is a tendency to over inflate the other side and how good they are and to under appreciate how good our side is. that can lead to being demoralized. right now, if you look at the last month, i would challenge you to tell me that the net routes have been more effective in the last month than the conservative blogosphere. i don't know if the trend will continue.

when bill clinton was present, they were raking in money. activists and donors are ticked off and mad. when george w. bush was elected president, all of our problems apparently had been solved. quince -- conservative donors quit giving money. the same is true online. when you are in power, there is something about the establishment that means you are no longer a revolutionary. a great example of this -- you guys probably remember a week ago, the white house put out this thing that said, if you see any misinformation coming from -- about health care, you should inform us at a website. the white house responded smartly -- they did what you are taught to do, they put up their

own video, they put up a website, the summit came forward and did their owned youtube video and nobody covered it. when you are a revolutionary, you are no longer the establishment, all of a sudden a million flowers bloom. the problem with iraq obama and the white house is, they won. it is no longer cool or fun, trust me, i was a conservative lawyer in the bush years. that was no fun. there are benefits to not being in power. >> i want to ask you as somebody who deals with grass roots and

activists, how is the left still outmanoeuvring the right on line? what are the tools we need to be using to be more effective? >> there is still some outmanoeuvring. there is still a lot more blockers morebloggers. a lot of bloggers on the left are from the soros machine, or they get hired by the washington post. >> all of these guys, they get hired by mainstream media, we are objective now and the right really is evil.

now i am mainstream media. it's funny how that works. the right is never going to be embedded in the media the way out left is. the left has been easier time inserting stories into the media. that is why there is so much anger at the town halls, is because you get a majority of americans who have realized the politicians who control things are against them. the press is not accurately reporting things. they are having to yell to get their message out. i think the left has an achilles' heel that the left is beginning to capitalize on. once the right solidifies this, i think it will be terrifying for the left. the left came into the internet because those -- that was the available tool for them when republicans controlled washington.

they dominated bought internet. i think the internet is a lot more to egalitarian. when the right was out -- in power in the '90s, the available to will was talk radio. the right began to dominate on talk radio. the left has never been able to succeed at talk radio. imagine a resurgent online right and a thriving radio right working together? it becomes a very powerful force to bypass the left intermedia operation in washington and new york to get to people across the country. you are seeing that happen now. particularly with local talk radio stations. the left and the media have generated an astroturf story, americans for prosperity, freedom works and the rnc and others who are working to drive

astroturf firstersers to town h it is not the guys in d.c. doing this. it is a local radio guys. >> did you guys see the sheila jackson lee phone call on tv? how many of you think if there wasn't a blogger that have this sent out, how many of you think this would be on cnn or nbc? and then in the same town hall there was elated that happen to be there and she represents herself as a pediatric surgeon, and she wasn't. and if you are going to fake your profession, also fake your name. that is a good rule of thumb.

the houston chronicle ran with the story. they put her in the story and said she was a pediatric surgeon. there was a loggerbl aogg blogg there who interacted with her, and she admitted she was not a doctor. this is what they're doing it at the grass roots. these are people who live wherever and they are making a difference. >> sometimes they are feeding that information into a talk radio. there is no doubt the left will start pushing the fairness doctrine again. >> the important take away from what you both said it is people like you here who were with us today, are the ones that will go out and do this today. you cannot do this from

washington d.c.. it issue from washington d.c. who are recording these town hall meetings. i think that both of you come from a different kind of perspective when it comes to blogging. there may be disagreement among the two of you here. what is more important, the activism or the reporting side of this? >> i will start. this is interesting. always for the first punch. you learned early. it is funny you bring it up. a couple years ago, you got into a heated debate with the -- in a

topic. this has been around for a while. there are people who say -- as much as conservative bloggers get into a fight, this was the topic. there were vicious words that were said. the purpose of blogging is activism. there are other people who want to be george will one day grow up. there is a clash. my argument has always been that it is a false choice. i believe that if you look at when the conservative movement was effective in the past, you have always said people, great activist, great opinion leaders, and politicians like ronald reagan. i'd still believe in a place called hope. i still believe that we need

that, that we complement each other. newt gingrich is from of quoting mark thatcher who said, for sure when the argument, then you win the vote. i believe that. george w. bush did not teach. ronald reagan, he was a leader, he sometimes did things that were not popular, he understood it was part of the job of being president was to educate the public on why it free markets -- or whenever -- so i think -- i take issue with the argument that bloggers should be activist. i do believe that it is important that we fight off these philosophical and a theological battles. when i write for politics and daily, and mainstream website,

people like lyn this week from the chicago sun-times and robert shapiro and different people are on there, in the conservative viewpoint. hopefully people in new york city and san francisco are reading me when they go there. i hope that a little bit, they will see the conservative side of things. >>matt i this is wrong. >> i agree. it is not a false choice. the dean barnett argument started over launching a protest. the problem still continues is not that we need pundits or activists, we need both. rush limbaugh rallies in the crowd, does a good job of educating people on the issues. others are the ones you rarely will hear calling congress.

we need a variety of voices. the problem of the blogosphere is the writing. if i do something that protests, there will be someone who will spend 10,000 words writing why i either should not do it or if i would do it their way instead of my way it will be much more effective. you get that everywhere. the right is notorious about that, everyone wants to be the next rush limbaugh or gen -- george will. the problem is when we start throwing stones to each other as opposed to throwing stones at the other side. i am a big believer at throwing stones at republican politicians who have gotten out of line. [applause] as i said this morning, we are

rapidly getting to a situation where we may just take back the house, and it will hurt us, because we have not learned all the lessons we need to learn. we can throw a lot of stones right now. in the right blogosphere, you have some a competing voices is the way people decide to distinguish themselves is to start throwing stones to the ems -- their friends. they need to work together. >> not only throwing stones, but he still has the most harsh more controversial rhetoric also is quoted, it's linked to what ever. another point that i would make is, and you brought up earlier that there are not enough full- time bloggers.

if you were full-time as a blogger, you can do what we call research. if you have 40 hours a week you can do research. you can become an expert in a policy area, whether it is health care or whatever. if you only have a couple of hours to blog when your boss as a looking -- when your boss is not looking, you cannot be a policy blogger. what you become -- if you only have a limited amount of time, it is easier to write your opinion. i read opinion a lot, but i try to come up with something no one else is thinking of of late. there are not enough full-time conservative bloggers. >> for those of you who do not

have blogs, not is not -- now is not necessarily the time to start one. now is the time to go and find pre-existing committees on the line, and become a part of the larger community. a lone voice crying in the wilderness rarely gets heard in this day and age, particularly on the line when there are 20 million blogs. if you go to a community of like-minded people and start working together, your opinion is valid. i am interested in your opinion. what i am much forested in is your ability to pick up of rock and thrown -- -- what i am much more interested in is your ability to pick up a rock and go to town hall and make your voice heard. our ability to hang up the phone and go downtown and get -- or

get off the keyboard is more important than the lone voice crying out in the wilderness to be heard. >> the audience should not think of themselves as bloggers, but as 21st century community organizers. >> i have a journalism deberg -- degree, came to washington in 2001. i took a job at heritage. correction are more qualified to be a reporter for the washington post and the left-winners they hire. >> i don't think i could get a job there. my point is that i think that in addition to george will, we also need people like robert novak. in every column that robert novak reported, there was

always news in that column. that is what made him such an effective columnist. it was not strictly an opinion. the other thing that we need and the left has been able to do this with funding, a talking points memo, investigative reporting. in many cases, it is slanted towards their perspective, but they are still breaking news in many cases. that is an area where i am personally interested in. i would love to see more person on the right to vote their time to the spirit >> i think that is the single greatest efficiency is that the left has whole organizations dedicated to filing ethics complaints and information requests against republican, coupled with organizations to then write the story based on information gathered, and feed it into the mainstream media. we are still not there on the right. there needs to be significant

investment in that area. >> you can stand -- the at the house of representatives all day long and ask what do you think of sarah palin death panels? you don't have time to do that. >> the franklin center, which is a free market organization working in different states across the country with a state- based of think tanks, each state has a free market think-tank. there are things happening. i think we need to ramp of them up, and devote more attention to them. i wanted to shift gears. this november all eyes are on virginia and new jersey, because there are gubernatorial elections. these are the first elections in the wake of obama's election

last november. what will the barometer be on the right? what do you foresee in the next eight days before this election? >> if you compare where we were in 1993 to where we are now, we are ahead. now we are at 15, i think we were at 13 total for 1993. we won virginia and new jersey then and those were big indicators that something was afoot, particularly when -- same with this time. you have to be careful about reading too much into it. he started monday of last week saying that bob macdonald was not going to kill as many babies

as me if he was elected governor. the dialogue was shifted to promising to raise taxes on all virginians. and in new jersey you have fbi indictments coming every which way. i hope the right does not read too much into the elections. there is something to be said that we are picking up seats in special state legislative elections. my view is that 2010 is the most important election that we will have had since 1968. the reason i say that is think about this. this will be the first election since the passage of the voting rights act where the republicans did not control the white house during redistricting.

picking a state legislative races in 2010 as of critical importance to the republican party because it will be the state legislatures that draw those lines. those of you who do have blogs and those of you who don't should be focusing on state legislators we can pick off to make sure we have republican majority combating a democratic white house. >> i put a lot of stock in momentum. i think this is a huge year. recently i heard the governor of mississippi, chairman of the rnc in the '90s. he said when christie todd whitman won and george allen won in new jersey and virginia respectively in 19943, -- 1993, most of the canada is a one and not 1994 signed on and were recruited after george allen and christie todd whitman won. that is amazing.

not only is a victory in 2009 a harbinger of things to come, but it will encourage top tier candidates who are sitting on the fence that they can win in 2010. it doesn't just a psychological value. it has a tangible, real value that winning the share will encourage the top tier republican candidates who have been sitting out that no one wants to lose to get in the race. i think it is huge. i think we win, republicans win in virginia. i am optimistic about new jersey except for the facts that they could just replace their candidate two weeks out and put in somebody else. i think you can never predict what will happen in new jersey. it is impossible to predict what will happen. it is looking very good in virginia. i wrote something the other day at politics daily when i went back and looked at george stephanopoulos is book, all too

human. i looked at the part about health care and i looked at what was happening in 1993 and 1994. it was uncanny. we all know there are comparisons between today and 1994. i challenge you to look at my peace. what you will find is that they are even down to the fact that talk radio played a huge impact, there was even a mention of at one of the town hall meetings there was a guy with a gun in the audience. the cia had to take it away from him. this just happened today is a way in new hampshire. this is history repeating itself. i think the democrats have made many of the same mistakes that they did in 1994. >> adding one more point about recruiting, think about this. already this year the nrcc, which is the house potiphar

campaigns has had one heck of a recruitment cycle. date already have significant top tier candidates before next year. after new jersey and virginia that if we pick them out -- up, the senate side is a disappointment -- as a premise for republicans. on the house side, where it matters we are doing very well. >> just a couple more questions before returning to the audience. a lot of credit goes to americans for prosperity for putting on this conference for a second straight year. and jim phillips, president and executive director, i applaud them for their efforts. do you feel that other leaders

in the conservative movement fully understand and are embracing new media to the extent that they should? if not, why not? >> they are starting to get it. we had grover norquist today as president for american for tax reform. the fact we are having this today, that a conservative organization is putting this on is very important. they need a succession plan. there are a lot of older conservative movement leaders. i do not think -- let me back up. john maxwell, a look great leadership girl said, without a successor there is no success. if you have a conservative organization today, and there is not a very good succession placed the succession plan in

place, then you are not doing your job. i think there are a lot of problems and a lot of good things. we are not at the place where they know everything, but we are at a place that they know that they do not know. they are not tweeting, but they know what twitter is. we are at that point. >> if you have not been to the defending the dream conference in october, i went to lash years and cannot recommend it enough in washington. it is a huge conference. it brings people together. you talk about some of the things we are talking about today. it is a way to get us focus on moving forward, unlike a lot of other forms that the right has

had for a long time. it is part of the problems we had on the right. there are a lot of groups that have gone into status " mode. they are doing a lot of things that they were doing in 2003 with republicans in charge of the congress and white house. that is not a winning formula. there is way too much status quo on bar right. there are five organizations on our right that are consuming resources and not doing anything with it. some of these organizations over time, i probably should not name names. there are some, we probably know them that are wasting resources on the right. think of some of the big conservative organizations out there. compared them -- compare them, where you are not just turning

out people to be pontificated to by politicians in washington, but turning out people to collaborate with each other. that doesn't happen and off on our side because people got complacent in the 2000's. they are fully in doubt. it is good to be a little hungry. -- they are for endowed. >> i hope here to it -- eric would not include heritage in that list. i can tell having worked at the heritage foundation that it is remarkable to see just how far -- just -- when i started here there was a reluctance to even let me blog on the heritage website. now it is one of the most popular places for our policy

analysts to get the story out. >> heritage essentially started townhall.org. they were ahead of the curve. >> from my personal perspective , working for three organizations within the conservative movement, i have seen a willingness to adapt. it takes time for our leaders to do that. there are good ones in the organization's that set a good example. >> as i am doing my plug for the dream, you should have a package here today. i encourage you guys -- we are hungry right now as a movement, going to events like this, going to defense like the definitive

-- descend the dream conference, basically my rule of thumb about conservative conferences, if the focus is not about meeting each other and collaborating, we are wasting our time. that is what i like about these. if you don't know when you leave this place if the person -- the person sitting before you and behind and in front of you, we have to start figuring out who everybody is. there has also been good synergy between the organizations carried american for prosperity organization were gathering in atlanta, and now the leadership institute did some training at this. that is very good to see. >> playing off that note, in addition to finding out who your sitting next to and making a connection, what would you say if you could offer one piece of advice to the attendees here.

there are other people watching on c-span. what is the one piece of the advice he would give them leaving the conference today that they can do on line to be effective? >> the one piece of the advice i would give you is no who represents you. if you have a problem with this problem because of their voting record, let the rest of us know. building the record in the opposition against those we intend to fight is vitally important right now as we move into an election season finding out who the people are, what the problems are. this really is a fight. you see it now every day, some of you here who ever gone to meetings have been attacked by the media as phony. the media is treating it as

valuable activists, becoming not just part of the conversation, but part of the movement is of the number one thing. when i said the movement, i am not talking about some esoteric thank. i am talking about the movement of the people from the keyboard to the town hall to the voting booth. >> i am not sure i can top that. follow me on torture --twitter. in reality, the number one thing i would have you leave with is don't be demoralized. i think the wind is at your back right now. although we have a source of lamented the fact that the left is organized and the right is not come in a way it has always been that way.

they have a top-down structure, conservatives by nature are rugged individuals. you don't take your marching orders from the central agency. >> by tune in every morning to get my marching orders from karl rove. >> for me it is rush limbaugh. halliburton calls me every morning to tell me what to say to defend for a while. >> there you go again. i think the key is get an iphone for a blackberry curves or something that has a camera and go. go to town hall meetings come and take your member of congress. the for the state is the media,

you are the 50 state, citizen and journalists. you are holding the representatives accountable. that is something that i think everyone can do. keep in mind the power that you have. you own a broadcasting station, a printing press, a camera, the beatles recorded the music on five-track players. the technology is there to make an incredible activists, incredible citizen activist and someone out there that is keeping an eye on the government. >> i don't think they even make five-track players and the kids don't have them in their basements. cracks one more piece of advice. psalm 73, the guy who wrote it

lamented that the wicked people seem to prosper. he said i envy the air get less, pride is there necklace and they closed themselves with violence. he then realizes that has this great line that basically in an instant, house southerly and they destroyed, completely swept away by their terrorist. we on the right must be happy warriors until the end. we must be happy warriors because we don't know -- i am a christian -- and i things -- i thinks things come from their perspective. victory comes, will we just don't know when so be happy warriors until the end.

>> that is excellent. that is a great point to shift from me asking the questions to hearing from all of you. we have a couple of people with microphones and i see a question down here in the front of the room. >> i thought it was interesting to hear you talk about the combination of talk radio, well established in the '90s, and if we add to that the new media right. if we put those two forces together we would be unstoppable. the question is what will happen as they pushed the fairness doctrine on talk radio and the version that will hurt the conservatives.

how do we feel with that coming down the pipe? >> we have to stop it. anyone who is a defender of free speech, a defender of allowing dissent. the fairness doctrine will be horrible and it will be done to score partisan points, if it happens. at this point it looks like there was going to be an effort to push it through congress. i think they backed off of that, because talk radio is so powerful there will be likely an effort. anybody who looked values freedom and free speech has to fight this to the nail. >> there can be efforts at the fcc or other agencies where they try to do this. it is not as open and transparent as it would be otherwise. >> the sec has decided that

local talk radio should be fine for airing too many conservative viewpoints. i did a c-span interview yesterday and with apologies to those folks watching at home on c-span. the only more malcontent people in america for our left wing collars on the c-span morning show. one of them called an and said, there is no one in congress advocate for the fairness doctrine. name names. john kerry did a month ago, barney frank did, others have positively mentioned it. who is the trial in the senate, not barbara boxer, the other one. dianne feinstein did mention it. it is being talked about. they are blocking republican attempts to shut it down well at

the same time appointing people to the fcc to throw it back in. we have to be vigilant. >> my name is rick trader. i live in a snake pit called new jersey. part of the problem is that in new jersey we have three republican congressman that voted for cap and trade. i, being a lifelong republican and a conservative feel that it is time to pull the plug on these people. they are going to be supporting obama and the democrats in the

congress, we don't need them. when i talked to other republican people, they think that if we get rid of one then we get someone else that's worse. i am in a dilemma about that. then we have a man who is running for governor who one week prior to announcing for governor, refused to say that he was a republican. he refused to say that he was a conservative. i am in a dilemma of what to do about this. any help? >> the guy who was afraid to say he was republican, was he afraid of --? >> he was also a man and if you ask him a pointed question cannot give you a direct answer. his name is chris cristi. i would like to see a republican governor in new jersey, but i would like one that would follow the conservative congress.

>> the heart and soul of the republican party right now will be fought in the state of florida. the establishment republicans are backing a man who supports cap and strayed, supports the stimulus package, supports universal health care, who supports blocking and drilling for oil off of florida coast. he is running against an articulate conservative hispanic, whose parents led castro, a guy who was elected speaker of the house. they are voting for the guy whose positions are no different than the current president of the united states. the national republican senatorial committee has endorsed the guy. they endorsed him to stop money from going to the other guy. my old general rule is that this is a two-party country whether we like it or not.

it is impossible for a third party to succeed. the socialists can because they run under the democratic party or go to vermont. my rule is, vote conservative in the primary. fight until the bitter and end vote conservative. at the end of the day, you are left with two people, one who will vote for a republican speaker of the house or republican majority, the other will vote for harry reid or nancy pelosi. those are two very critically important votes. regardless of how they vote on anything else, one guy will vote one way and the other will vote the other. who would you prefer they vote for? it is not a game of purity

anymore. i wish it could be but it is not. it is a game of the evils of to loesser's. you have to pick the lesser evil of the two. >> thank you. >> i am very concerned about what will be happening with the census. apparently the census will be under the control of the white house. they are hiring all these people from a corn to be census takers. there was an article in the wall street journal that talked about there is a question of them counting illegal immigrants in the census. i wonder how this will if -- affect elections going forward and if there's a thing we can do about it?

i assume it will affected not in our favor. >> my understanding is that there is some compelling laws that even the white house will have to comply with on that. that they were not able to pull it from the commerce program. let's not kid ourselves. they will still control the process. under the white house math today, there are three people in this room and next door in the empty room there are 5000. that is the way the game will be played. there will be fictitious numbers of people through hypothetical sampling. the republicans have a good argument that you have to count people and cannot make them up along the way. but you are dealing with a white house and congress who are controlled by one party and they want things to work to their advantage. if the republicans were in charge you would see them doing

things to their advantage as well. if the issue is, what are they going to do that circumvents legal standards they have to me? it is critically important to elect people who are going to make sure the laws are followed. frankly, they need to be careful because if the republicans take back the house next year there is a long list of things to be investigated. we will tie them up in congress just as they try to tie up republican administrations. >> this is the reason that judge greg step down from the administration and now is a u.s. senator. i think there is a good reason for you to be concerned about the spirit i will say that. >> a couple of you mentioned something about top tier candidates. you made the comment that if we have a couple of wins, maybe they will step in because they

think they can win. i think it is time we have real statements -- statesman who are not afraid to lose. if these people are top tier candidates, they ought to be running when they -- whether they are afraid to lose or not, otherwise they are just professional politician. charlie crist is an example. he was supporting the stimulus package running around with barack obama without reading it. >> i agree with you in the sense that in a perfect world i think you are right. let me just go back to the initial point, which is what haley barbour said, the former rnc chairman, who was a very respected governor of mississippi. according to him, most of the people who won were part of the republican revolution of 1994 signed on after '90s -- 1993 victory. it is late to get in the game.

. . >> there are only about 640,000 people in the state. but like every other state, they have two u.s. senators. even though there is a republican governor, they dominate the slate -- the state legislature, you name it. everything is republican. the entire federal delegation as democrat.

the have toyed with the idea of running for u.s. senate, and he could win if he gets in the race. if he saw a republican winning in new jersey and virginia, that would go a long way to easing his concerns. >> i have more patience for candidates now to take that, because you are asking them to give up their livelihood to run. you're taking away from their family. florida is a perfect example. you have to candidates, one who is in because he thinks he can win, and the other who is in because there is a fight that needs to be fought. people who want to give up their job, basically give up their family for a year and run need to see tangible signs for encouraging helped -- encouraging hope.

even i know candidates at the local level who want to know that they have a shot. what happened that november will be the flags of whether or not there is something worth fighting for going into 2010. >> john randall and joe from the national republican congressional committee are actually here, among us lowly bloggers. that shows commitment that they're getting out there, paying attention. you all rock. >> did you have a question over here? >> by find it hard to -- and i find it hard to think that we should vote for the republican as lesser of two evils. i came from pennsylvania and

supported specter early on in his career. if i was here for the vote between specter as a republican and the democrat, i would have voted for the democrat. if you're going to get it, why not get the real thing? second, candidates have the start talking about sacrifice. a candidate may give up a career or make some sort of sacrifice, but what have those people risk? take the other side of that equation. if that person doesn't run, how much of your job have been saved if the country goes to hell in a handbasket? [applause] as an alternative, my question to a republican congressman was, what is pelosi's strength that the majority of democrats to vote for her.

he started giving me the explanation, but the question he missed was, why would you elector as the speaker of the house? we probably can't replace colosio because of her crazy constituents. -- pelosi because of her crazy constituents. could we get them with that kind of pressure to choose a different speaker of the house? >> i look at this from a policy perspective, where they have been talking more from a political perspective. at the heritage foundation, a democrat from alaska who replaced ted stevens came and spoke about missile defense. when he opened the speech, he said he had just come from a democratic luncheon, and all of his colleagues were shaking their heads and asking them, why

would you go talk to the conservative heritage foundation? he said they were right on the issue of missile defense. it they get it right. on a policy issue, yes. there is no question that, from my perspective, party affiliation does not necessarily mean what it should indicate. the other point i would like to make is, on the issue of educating members of congress, we have done a tremendous amount of data collection and analysis on both kat and trade and health care, and it is very helpful that there are numbers you can take that are applicable to your district and share with your member of congress about how cap-and-trade will impact on jobs, what job losses are going to be. whether your a liberal democrat, a conservative blue dog, or a middle-of-the-road republican,

you can have an impact. seek out some information and share, whether you do it with a letter to the editor or at a town hall meeting. >> let me add that and say that i am a lot more practical now that i used to be. i am only 34, make of that what you will. i do not think it works to run against nancy pelosi or put pressure on democrats. it it sounds like a good idea, but conservatives have been running against teddy kennedy and it has never really done them a lot of good. they haven't done anything but raise money. politics are still local. i live in the eighth congressional district of georgia. we have a congressman who votes with the republicans bob -- probably 60% of the time, but he

voted for nancy pelosi because he was going to get nothing from his district if he didn't. on the first issue, i am really sympathetic to if we're going to get democrat like, just get democrat. the answer is the primary system. throw the bum out of the primary. arlen specter would have been wiped out of the senate as a result of that. [applause] but we have got to keep in mind, at some point, it boils down to practicality. take, for example, a man who voted for cap-and-trade. we will get nobody to the right of him. the district is plus seven democrat.

it almost went into a recount. at some point, there are some districts in the country where we have to suck it up and let somebody who we don't agree with across the board when because, at the end of the day, if we do not have a majority in congress, we may feel good about the purity of our intentions, but we're not going to get any policy accomplished. i would much map -- i would much rather, at a minimum, slowed to a crawl the advance of government then keep it going full steam ahead. the goal is to retreat government. if i can retrieve it, i am going to try to smother it. >> i think we have time for a couple more questions. >> i have heard estimates that

74% of the seats are safe because of gerrymandering. is that an impression you share, and what can we do about it? >> yes. i was an election lawyer, and the greatest thing this country could ever do if it really wanted to make politics interesting is make it more representative, and have a non partisan gerrymandering panels. right now republicans in republican states draw a line to benefit republicans. democrats and democrats states draw lines to benefit democrats. and those not represented by power are going to be shut out by and large. it is really a ridiculous farce. i ran a race in 2002 for a guy running for congress in georgia, the democrats controlled the state house h.

it was barely democrat. a republican actually won it in the general. you could pull vault from one side of the district to the other side of the district over a different district. it was very bizarre, basically a circle with the top open just a little bit. they do this across the nation. >> there is another thing that never gets talked about. congressional districts would be more competitive, and what would happen -- let me start with what happens now. when there are safe republican districts, they elect conservatives. the win republican primaries -- primaries. it is a safe democratic district, liberals when. essentially, people who have strong positions who turn out

and vote on primaries, especially if it is raining or if it is in maine. -- in may. there are districts that only republicans can win and the democrats can win, you end up collecting hardcore republicans, hard-core conservatives, or hardcore liberals. the people who decry the vitriol, the gnashing of teeth, how rhetoric has become heated, there is a reason for that. we have gerrymandered districts this way. if congressional districts were more fair, you would find a more centrist and in politics. -- centrism in politics. >> i disagree slightly, because you start off having strong

republicans win in safe republican districts and vice versa. but they become victims of the establishment. when is the republican establishment guy who has worked his way up to the state legislature to the party central committee who gets elected, everybody loves him because i remember when i was 10 years old, he helped me raise money for the chicken dinner at the church. there is a danger there. it starts out that way, but we see over time. we see the same seat get bad. there was a staunch fiscal conservatives in a district that was democrat leaning. he understood that you actually have to go out and talk to voters to get their votes. the ideas become critically

important. >> there is a question in the back? >> a democrat that did not vote for obama. [applause] i was going ask a question but i thought what reply -- but i thought i would apply to put pressure on the democrats. you need to not put pressure on them, but leave your hand out to us. i realize where my niche is, talking to other democrats. they voted for obama, but this is not the day that he wanted. we have heard such evil stories.

conservatives, the right is no different than the liberal democrat because we all basically want the same thing. we want a country and independence to succeed. instead of pressuring, reach out to us. i think we are ripe for the picking. [applause] >> i have to share this one, then. >> we talked about this last night. >> we headed here on thursday, and there is another guy coming here. we're on the bus with three guys who do not smell quite right. we are stopped because there is this mass of people in these black shirts with numbers that say rothlesberger.

the people are wondering about the black church with numbers. the bus driver stopped. he says, are you talking about the steelers fans? the one guy says, what are the steelers? the driver says, what country are you from? the man says, i am from portland, oregon. the driver says, oh. and started driving. i grew up overseas. i know a heck of a lot more about camel racing than i do professional american football. i know who the steelers are. >> the fact that you told them those were the black shirt right wing, they were assigned numbers. [laughter]

>> background -- and that crowd, they're the bad ones. >> this has been a lot of fun, i appreciate all of you coming out. [applause] i would just leave you with one last piece of advice. a couple of weeks ago, a congressman who is a freshman from utah talked about how he eventually beat a republican in the primary and won the general election. he is serving in congress and is featured on cnn now and again. he said, he did not have the money, he did not have the organization that the incumbent had. but he had a network of people like you who he relied on to leave comments on news articles, to get the message out among their friends, and used nubia -- and new media.

he set up a google group or you can have a conversation. it is little things like this that you can do, and i hope you do them when you leave here today. start building this network of your own, because the fact that your in this room shows your dedication. -- that you are in this room shows your dedication. >> i will see you at october at the defending the american dream conference in washington. >> thank you, god bless. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

>> president obama holds another town hall health care meeting today. coverages began -- coverage is set to begin at 6:15 eastern on c-span. and now, a conference of the on- line activists and bloggers, focusing on the supreme court and how progresses' can reshape the debate on the constitution. -- progressives can reshape the debate on the constitution. >> good afternoon, everyone. welcome to the hall and this panel. a week ago, when sonia sotomayor was sworn in, it was a milestone achievement. certainly for those of us in the latino community saw the breakdown of a significant barrier of the long time exclusion of latinos on the

supreme court. and the restoration of the 2 to 7 ratio of women to men on the supreme court. supreme court. the debate in the senate had an unseemly focus on out of context statements and speeches. and an almost bizarre fixation on a difficult case whose fax almost seem concocted for a law school examination in which the decision was the same as the majority of judges on the second circuit, and of which she never offered an opinion. that senate debate raised questions for many of us. that debate marked a supreme court appointment that marked no significant change in the lineup of the supreme court. justice sotomayor is a moderate

in the mainstream of the american judiciary, and he replaces david souter, a bush appointee who was nonetheless firmly in the liberal or perhaps more accurately turned, moderate -- and turned -- termed moderate. there is an ongoing debate over the constitution in the supreme court. we have a panel of extremely qualified and outspoken speakers. i will begin by asking each of them a question to launch our discussion. christie smith is a recovering attorney with brought civil and criminal trial experience. she writes for the popular liberal lbog -- blog. over the course of our history, there have been a handful of decisions that have changed daily life for a huge portions of our nation's residence.

brown vs. board of education, roe vs. wade,. in essence, these kinds of the daily life changing decisions cannot come regularly from our supreme court despite the fact that they decide dozens -- dozens of decisions yearly. why should the american public pay particular attention to the supreme court, its composition, or its decisions? >> good question. i think a lot of americans don't pay particular attention to a lot of what our nation's courts do. as someone who has been a practicing attorney most of her professional life, both in private practice and as an assistant prosecuting attorney, the courts cover pretty much every aspect of american life. i have done cases from divorces

to child abuse and neglect, juvenile and criminal matters to wills, which are a huge source of conflict at the moment. some of which is very misleading about the health care reform we are trying to do. when you look at appointments to the federal bench, be it to the circuit court or the appellate court level, or the supreme court itself, those are lifetime appointments. those sit in judgment of cases that affect all of our lives. we look at the huge responsibility, something that americans really should pay more attention to. we may never fully appreciate until we get pulled into a court

case -- look at a case that came out in 2001 with lilly ledbetter. i know a lot of folks that read our log -- blog are familiar with that case. essentially, she was being paid less because she was working while female. to be told that you could be paid less when years and years of precedence said otherwise was a huge change. that came about because there is a different makeup of the court that was much more conservative and much more attuned to a corporate argument that was toward individual arguments. you look at any number of other areas where we have had questions of national security and those other areas in the last few years.

government is made up, really do serve as a stop gap on the other two branches. without the court serving fla in that capacity and really being interested in doing that job, what you have is the potential for a wholesale power grab, especially in the executive branch where that is a much tougher thing to stop. the court served as that stopgap in a number of cases in the last few years, but only when you have a diversity of opinion on that court do you see that happening. and that's why americans need to pay a lot more attention to what's going on with that. >> thank you, christy. >> doug kendall is from a -- founder and president of the constitutional accountability center, a think tank and action center in d.c. it has been four years since the

warren court and almost 20 years since william brennan, the architects -- architect of many of those decisions left the supreme court. i don't think there is a liberal wing of this court since brennan and marshall left the supreme court. is there any hope the supreme court will play a meaningful role in promoting the liberal agenda in the future? >> i think the opposite is more likely to be true. i think in the foreseeable future, and i think what we learned most in the sotomayor confirmation process, is how thoroughly conservative our -- are dominating both the judiciary and the conversation about the current judiciary. let me make three points that flesh that out. first is a question of pure numbers. it's going to take well into the second obama term, if there is

such a term, for the lower federal courts to start to move in a progressive bregs direction. it could well be that after eight years of an obama administration, a two-term obama presidency, the same five conservatives that are dominating the supreme court right now could still be there dominating the supreme court. so there is first a question of pure numbers. the second is just the conversation in the political landescape. president bush nominated sam leto to the supreme -- alito to the supreme court. by most accounts it helped him politically, bush. we have now had successive democrats who have worked studiously to nominate anyone who would be easily labeled a liberal. and yet the fact of the matter is, that conservatives have

learned to develop talking points that simultaneously speak and rally to their base, and they at the same time speak to the political center of the country. i don't think liberals have learned that trick thoroughly yet. justice sotomayor, for the most part, adopted conservative talking points, and pulled back from some of the more progressive things she had said in the past. that approach obscures rather than clarifies the very real differences in the way progressive and conservative judges interpret the constitution and the law. and then finally, knchtiffs are dominating the agenda of the federal court. conservatives have gotten very good in recent years about looting their political objectives in the constitution.

think gun rights and the second amendment, think property rights and the takings clause. and progress siffs -- progressives, i think, are rarely looting these decisions in the court in the constitution. we sensibly, in some cases, just avoid it all together, the courts, fearing devastating victories in a conservative-dominated judiciary. the result of that is we have most of the cases that go to the supreme court right now are cases brought by corporations or conservative organizations to move the law in a conservative direction. what we have right now, and what we have to face as progressives, is a judiciary that is not likely to be the engine of progressive change but rather the hindrance to it. over the course of american history, that's been the more common type of situation where conservative justices have

thwarted progressive political progress rather than as in the warren era where the@@@@@@@@@ @ and stood up to a conservative political process. as a result, we have to kind of fundamentally change the way we think about reports. we have to, first and foremost, say why the law itself and the constitution points in a progressive direction, rather than asking for judges who bend the law in a progressive direction, we have to explain why the constitution and the law themselves point in a progressive direction. to demand judges who will follow that law in the constitution. and second -- and this is the most relevant to people in this audience -- we have to devote the political attention to the

roberts courts that the importance of the rulings of the roberts courts merit. just look what the court did on the last day of the term. they decided whether they should hear two foundational cases that decided whether you could treat corporations and corporate expenditures differently than you can treat individual expenditures. that calls into question the entire 100-year system we have which limits the corporate influence on elections. if you care -- if you think that the bush administration was too beholden to exxon corporation and haleburton just think what would happen if those corporations could divert their funds into buying elections. you see how important the federal cases are, and we need to respond in that fashion. i will just end with one thing

with representative nadler to my left here, i think it is really important for the political ranches of government to respond to the activism of the roberts court. if you watch the sotomayor hearings closely, you saw a beginning of that, i think, very promisingly through senators such as al franken and judiciary commission chairman patrick leahy. but we have to be more careful with that. christie mentioned the lilly ledbetter ruling. we need to respond to that ruling by overruling it. there's no better way to spend -- send a message to the supreme court that they are overstepping their bounds than by doing precisely that. i think what we need is a more coordinated effort to -- there's a lot of corrective legislation that's bottlenecked in congress

right now, and we need leaders, representative nad letter -- nadler being a perfect candidate, who will view the roberts court ruling as an end in and of itself and as a part of a coordinated effort to spont to the activism of the roberts courlt. >> jerry nadler is a nine-term congressmember from new york's ninth congressional district. congressman nadler, sonia sotomayor is clearly a moderate, but there were 38 votes against her. some acted like it was a last stand against liberal judicial activism. is this unique to the supreme court or will we see it in other kinds of nomnages to lower

courts or other positions in the government? >> well, it is certainly going to be more prominent in a supreme court nominee because people pay a lot more attention to it, the media does, and so forth. you will see more of it in the lower courts, although the records are not nearly as folsom to make the case. and i think it has been tade said on this panel -- been said on this panel already, we're coming off -- not coming off, we're in the middle of a period for the last 30 or 40 years, the conservative movement has made a concerted effort to pack the courts. they have pushed their presidential candidates, they have enlivened their base by so doing. they have affected republican presidential primaries by who is going to pack the courts with people who are going to be movement conservatives. not just conservatives. justice stevens said about his nomination by president ford

every single nominee was more conservative than the person he or she replaced. that is true. there are no liberals on this court with the exception of possibly justice stevens. there's no marshall, there's no goldberg, there's no brennan or black or douglas. you don't have that kind of leadership on the court today. you have moderates, and you have three or four, depending on whether or not you count justice thomas, movement conservatives who are really right-wing corporatists. and you have holding the swing vote justice kennedy who although far more conservative than the previous swing vote, justice o'connor, very conservative but not quite in lockstep with the other four. and these four are fairly young. they are going to be with us for a long time. the conservatives have made this effort. they have done several things.

they have had a chain of promotions from the solicitor general to appellate courts and to the supreme court. and they have a whole chain of candidates. they are still in the wings, god forbid, should we have another republican president. and they have also done something else -- they have developed two doctrines over and over again. liberals are activists. they are going to overrule the democratic branch of the government. now the only semi-objective measure of activism is how often do you overturn laws passed by congress? this is the most activist court in the history of our court by far. this is extraordinary. it is also an activist court by

overturning previous law. although roberts doesn't want to overturn this law, so he carves it out and leaves you with a shell in name only. he didn't lie -- he can say he didn't lie to the senate and to the senate judiciary commie committee and the confirmation hearings. i am glad i was one of the authors of the bill to overturn that, was a perfect example. it was 40 years of settled law. they have somehow gotten the mantle that liberals are activists as a hangover from the warren court and from 40 years of propaganda. secondly they have the doctrine of originalism. they claimed that we shouldn't

go beyond the law if you don't know the origin tent of the framers of the law. tell me thomas jefferson's position on abortion? i am sure he hm a well thought out opposition to abortion or other issues that didn't exist in the 18th century. the constitution exists of some glittering phrases, due process of law, equal protection that exists in modern reality. you can look at origin tent in modern reality, but nevertheless it is an appealing thing to say, and they have claimed a mantle for it. liberals or nominees, we have only had two presidents, only one nominee for the supreme court from this one, but we have only had two democratic presidents in the last 40 years or so. and they have nominated moderates. breyer and beginsburg --

ginsburg are moderate. now, we have to start emulating what they did. we have to seize -- we have to show how their being activists is against the elected rules of government. i think they have a number of goals now which are very dangerous. number one they want to go back to pre-new deal and restrict the ability of the states to restrict corporate power. which is another way -- to regulate the economy, which is another way of saying restrict corporate power. this case where they ask for reargument on -- and which they look determined to overturn the ability of congress to restrict corporate campaign contributions, if that happens, that will be a complete disaster. imagine if general electric can decide that it does president like some senator or congressman

and puts some $20 million into one campaign out of corporate could havers. -- coffers. it will make national what you have with mayor bloomberg who put $100 million into his own campaign, but it would be with every campaign. this would be a disaster, and we may have to decide how to fight it. we may have to dupe indicate what they did. we have to press democratic candidates to nominate liberals, people who will be leaders on the court. justice sotomayor seems to be moderate, but you never really know with a new justice. so who knows. we'll see. maybe she'll turn into a great liberal leader. hopefully. but there is no really great reason to expect that, but it could happen. we can pray. but we have to push president obama for his next nominee to give us someone who obviously is going to be a liberal leader

having been a liberal leader either in private life or in the senate or in the house or in some other activity or in a lower court. >> you. nan aron is from the alliance for justice, working to promote justice for all americans. she's a regular commentator on these issues. nan, in the last 20 years we've had three republican presidents, none of them lawyers, but they have been careful and strategic about packing the federal courts. so much so they have almost made the federal society into a prerequisite for anyone to be appointed republican to the federal bench. we've also had two democratic presidents in the last 20 years, both of them lawyers, and at least the first one didn't appear to take much of an

interest in transforming the federal courts. our latest lawyer democrat has only been in office a few months. what can we expect? will the obama administration focus on judicial appointments more? will they focus on changing our federal courts? district court? supreme court? what can we expect? >> thank you very much. it is really an honor to be on a panel with these individuals, long-time heros of mine, and tom just became the head of maldef, which is wonderful fofert community, and for all of you who have done this workday in and day out, we are all very, very grateful to all of you. let me just start out with something that jalen owe, not necessarily a hero of mine, but nertheless, when souter announced he was leaving the

court, jalen owe said, "a vacancy on the court? let's just hope the president is better at picking a justice than the justices were at picking a president." [laughing] and i think with justice sotomayor, we have a really fine jurist on the supreme court. i know that her record, and certainly alliance for justice produced several reports for her looking at her cases over the years. i think she will be excellent. she has a wonderful record. and i think we will see from her something like we saw from thurgood marshall producing something like a marshall effect on the supreme court. i think the dialogue, the conversation among the justices will change, not only because of her substantive input, but also because she is a person of color. and i think that will inevitably shape a lot of what transpires

at the court, and that's a very positive thing. having said that, it's important to recognize that not one court of appeals nominee has yet been confirmed by the united states senate. now, court of appeals judges, i don't know that many of us have a firm understanding, but think of it -- think of two numbers when you think of a court of appeals glug judge. 200 and 300. there are only 200 court of appeals judges in the country for 300 million americans. think of how powerful those 200 individuals are. years ago, when warren burger was at the supreme court, that supreme court decided over 150 cases a year. now the court decides less than

half of that. half of that. which it means that these appellate level judges are that much more powerful and that much more influential, and yet, not one has been confirmed because of holds in the senate. what does that suggest for us? this president is going to have a very difficult time marshaling the political power and that institution to move his judges threw -- through. we saw it during the clinton years. at the end of the clinton in administration, over 60 judges were blocked by senate republicans. if you look, and i think everyone has mentioned it, if you look at the vote on the sotomayor confirmation, we only

got six or eight republicans. this was a nominee with a mainstream record and a stellar academic and professional record behind her. that means that no matter who president obama sends to the senate for the court of appeals, to the supreme court, to the district court, those republicans are going to vote against that nominee. no question about it. ds -- it's a critical issue to the right-wing base of the republican party. and even though this woman enjoyed broad public support, represented a critical constituency group and growing constituency in this country, very few republicans ended up voting for her.

so what does that mean for us going forward? one, the president has to make a priority of naming progressive justices and judges to the court. these are individuals with a strong commitment to core constitutional values who will be leaders and strong voices not just on the supreme court but the lower courts as well. two, it has to become a priority for our united states senate, and for harry reid, he has got to begin to work with not simply republicans, they are not going to vote for these democrats, but for democrats, the moderate democrats who are afraid ever standing up and voting for good, progressive judges. he has to approach those moderate democrats. he's got to butt recess those

democrats. we have to give those democrats, and we know who they are, confidence in standing up for good judges. we need to ensure that the senators on the senate judiciary committee step up to the plate as well. now we know that justice sotomayor was a little bit tim id at those hearings -- timid at those hearings, but she had a job to do, and that was to get confirmed. the senators on those panels have to articulate, as everyone has said, a very broad vision of why judges are important, why courts are important, and why we need strong progressives on these courts. so we have all -- we all have

our bit to do. i am confident that people listening will do our job, and we have to ensure that at the end of eight years of the obama administration -- and i'm an optimist -- eight years of the obama administration, we'll have these courts of appeal and district courts and the supreme court in doing justice around the country and protecting our prithes rights and freedoms for all americans. thank you very much. [applause] >> christy, you talked about the importance of what the supreme court does to the american public and then alluded that justice sotomayor will be a different kind of justice. she brings personal experiences and professional experiences that are not currently represented on the court. and they will bring that unique

perspective. it's also true that in our history there have been a handful of justices also alluded to who have been surprises. they are surprises from what was expected when they were nominated. in deed, justice sotomayor is replacing justice souter, who was a surprise when bush nominated him. given this information to the supreme court, what should the public do to influence justices as they develop, particularly new ones, to influence the choices, the kinds of experiences that we're looking for in judges and justices? what should the american public do to manifest the very important interest in what the supreme court does that you talked about earlier? >> i think one of the best things that people can do is

stay involved in politics, both at the local level and at the state and national level, especially. and i know one of the ways is we have an election every couple of years where we re-elect folks in the house and a third of the senate just at the national level. i'm sure that representative nadler is all too other ware of that a but we need to elect more progressive folks into office. from there those folks are -- especially the ones in the senate -- are going to be the ones who make decisions, who vote on judges coming through not just for the supreme court, which does get the lion's share of the media attention, but also forethose circuit and appellate-level -- for those circuit and appellate-level judges that come through. right now there is a judge whose nomination has been stalled for a little over seven months. his name is jim havepl.

congressman inhaas has had a hold on him since his nomination came forward. so he's basically stum stuck in -- basically stuck in limbo. it is something that's been bumbling up since the days of ed mees and the reagan ad mrs -- administration, and it's been a planned effort on the right. we don't see that same plan from the folks on the left, and that really is a shame. because if we're not exerting the same pressure on the left, if we can't be bothered to pay attention to care to make phone calls to our members of congress, to write letters to the editor, to work on these issues in our own town with our union groups or with with individuals -- individual women's rights groups or all the different aspects that go into this, if we can't be bothered to do this, then the only voices people inside the beltway are

hearing are loud angry voices from the right. which means we get moderate to right-link leaning candidates and the left wing candidate gets shut out all together. when i was growing up my granny used to medical me the squeaky wheel gets the greece. we need to be the squeaky wheel. pay attention to decision whs they come down. we talked about the ledbetter case. there have been any number of national security cases which have been decided. the five cases snead of being looked at -- cases instead of being looked at by the court were denied which would have been a classic battle between the legislative and executive and -- executive branches, but they declined to take that case. there should be cases they should look at because they deal with civil liberties thank are

enumerated in the bill of rights. they are our constitutional rights. they deal with so many things that impact our daily lives. if we cede the floor on those, and if we don't stand up and make our voices heard, then the only voices they are hearing are the voices from the federal society, and operation rescue and all those right-wing groups who fund raise on outrage that they manage to get from the right wing base. we need to do the same thing. if we are not talking loudly about what we believe in, nobody is going to hear us if we are not doing it. >> thank you, christie. you talk about conservative activist, one of the things justice sotomayor was criticized for was acknowledging something that i believe is self-evident

-- that judges make policy. you talk about some of the other dialogue that was set by the right. how do you combat criticism that is based on something so ludicrous that -- as an assertion that judges make policy. as i said, if judges didn't make policy, all of those conservative guys wouldn't be interested in being on the bench. how do we combat that kind of dialogue? >> that's a tough question. i don't know that -- i think -- i mean, it was even worse than that, because what she said was actually that judges set precedent for lower courts, which is the most banal point you can possibly make about the role of the supreme court and it was turned into an assertion that she was saying that judges make broader social policy which was in context absolutely not what she meant. so it is one off from the point

you are actually making. i don't think you can ever -- you know, the confirmation process has bogged down to the point where we're talking about -- just about nothing in them. and it is all focused on the critics of the nominee because that's where the press sees the action, and the critics of the nominee focus on -- they have three cases out of 3,000 that she decided, a few snipets taken out of context against justice sotomayor and all these important issues about what the supreme court has before it, what it's deciding, what the court -- where the constitution points and these profound differences between conservatives and liberals about these real issues get drown out. and one of the things i think was interesting about the hearing was how many democratic senators -- russ feingold, al

frank general, senator spectre -- talked about we need to make this process more informtive. we have to make this about the many very real issues that the court is actually wrestle with and dwage. -- debating. how we get there, senator cole and senator feingold made some suggestion. i don't know that any of them have any real life in the senate process, but it is something that we should all be, as citizens, insisting upon. >> thank you. congressman, doug mentioned earlier that you had been a senator that helped overturn the ledbetter decision. there have only been a few cases where congress skews chooses to overrule a decision made wrongly by the supreme court, and the prospects for getting them passed are always daunting.

so is there a role in the future for these kinds of legislative acts that overrule decisions by the supreme court? is that something the progressive activist community should be focused on? >> it is something the progressive activist community can be focused on, but only where several conditions hold. one where the decision of the supreme court is based on statchtri not constitutional -- statutory not constitutional grounds. the ledbetter decision was a decision interpreting section 7 of the civil rights act and they completely went against not only 40 years of interpretation but the plain meaning of the text, and it was an egregious grab for power. we couldn't pass it the year before. we had a majority in the house, the president signed it, we were able to do it. there are others, we should go through and do others. many of the very bad decisions are going to be constitutionally grounded and that you can't do

anything about except for wait for a new supreme court or pass an constitutional amendment, which given the make-up of the senate these days is almost impossible. so there's one other role for congress, believe it or not. the supreme court has also done something that as -- i as a democrat with a small "d" find very offensive was the bernie decision. i found it offensive because it over turned a law that i helped right. butting that aside, part of the decision said that congress can't do something unless it makes a record that it's reasonable to do and we the court will second guess its reasonableness of it. well, the reasonableness of something is a quintessentially

legislative decision. it is not for the court, but it is not for the court, but they have made this r i presided over 17 hearings, designed to make the record that section 5 of the voting rights act was still necessary. we did this back in 2005, 2006, 2007. i should not say presided, i was a regulatory member of the subcommittee at the time and became chairman. we went through thousands of pages of testimony to make the record that we should not have had to make. we should have had the power to determine that for ourselves. we made it record, and the court almost overturned it now. we will have to spend a lot of time and effort making more records to protect decent legislation against the attack on the supreme court. the other thing is, making a record in a different way, one of the major thrusts of the bush

administration and one of the major dangers is the aggregation of power in the executive branch. under war powers the doctrine of the ability of the president, the unitary executive, the ability of the president to do things on his own for national security, we'll hold you in jail security, we'll hold you in jail forever because you're an enemy combatant, without due process, the torture cases we're getting. we are going to have to be very energetic in pushing back against this. the supreme court by one-pothe vote margins pushed back against the most energetic, most extreme claims. some of these claims go back to overturning magna carta. i mean, 800 years of tradition,

by one vote. it is important to show that it was done. to show the torture. to show the reasoning. to push the administration now, to hold accountable people >> this is obviously a tough time for the families in colorado and all across america. a just want to rewind the clock a little bit, because sometimes people have forgotten what has transpired over the last seven or eight months. just six months ago, we were in the middle of the worst recession of our lifetimes. we were losing about 700,000 jobs each month.

economists from the left and right, liberals and conservatives, feared the second coming of the great depression. i do not know if everybody remembers that. that was six months ago. that is why we acted as fast as we could to pass a recovery plan to stop the freefall. there has been a lot of misinformation about that, so let me just talk briefly about what it is that we did. the recovery plan was divided into three parts. one-third of the money in the recovery act, the stimulus plan, went to tax cuts that are already showing up in the paychecks of nearly 2 million working families in colorado, including right here in grand junction. [applause] so i just want everybody to be clear. one-third of it, tax cuts, not tax increases. more money in your pockets to spend as you wish.

we also cut taxes for small businesses on the investments that they make, and hundreds of colorado small businesses have qualified for new loans backed by the recovery act, including 11 businesses in grand junction alone. [applause] that was one-third of it. another third of the money in your car react is for emergency relief for folks who have borne the brunt of this recession. we have extended unemployment benefits more than 150,000 -- for more than 150,000 colorado citizens. we have made health insurance 65% cheaper for families who are having to use covert because they lost their jobs and are out there looking for work -- myrrh having to use cobra. [applause] for states facing historic budget shortfalls, we provided assistance that has saved the jobs of tens of thousands of

workers who provide essential services like teachers and police officers. if governor will tell you, if we had not had some of that money in, colorado would have had to make much more painful job cuts in vital services and i have had to -- might have had to put in place some painful state and local tax increases. that was the second and third of the recovery act. the last third is for investments that are already putting people back to work. there are almost 100 shovel ready transportation projects already approved in colorado which are beginning to create jobs. not far from here there is a project to pave and add lanes to state highway 92. most of the work is being done by local businesses, because that is how we will create jobs and grow this economy again. by next month, project will be underway at more than 100 national parks all over america, including colorado.

[applause] these are projects improving jails -- improving trelliails. >> we saw old faithful. i had not seen it since i was 11 years old. it is still going strong. tomorrow we will visit the grand canyon. i recently signed into law and public lands bill that designates the grand canyon as a national conservation area here in colorado. these are national treasures, symbols of how much we owe to those who came before us, and the fact that we are borrowing this earth from those who will

follow as. i want to thank ken salazar, because he has been leading the way on these vital issues, especially in the west. as we grapple with enormous challenges like health care, the work of generations past reminds us of our duty to generations yet to come. there is no doubt that the recovery plan is doing what we said it would, putting us on the road to recovery. it is not solving all problems. unemployment is still way too high, but we just saw last week that the jobs picture is beginning to turn. we are starting to see signs that business investment is coming back. but that does not mean we are out of the woods. even before this extraordinary financial crisis, we had an economy that was working pretty well for the wealthiest americans, working freewill for wall street bankers, the big

corporations, but it was not working so well for everybody else. it was an economy of bubbles and busts. it was an economy in which the average worker's wages and incomes had flat line for a decade. it was an economy that rewarded recklessness over responsibility. we cannot go back to that kind of economy. if you want this country to succeed in the 21st century, we have to lay new foundation for lasting prosperity, and health insurance reform is a key pillar of this new foundation. this economy will not work for everyone until folks like nathan and his family are pushed to the brink of bankruptcy by medical expenses, until companies are not slashing payrolls a losing profits to pay for health insurance. until every american has the security and peace of mind of

affordable health care. health care touches us all in profound ways. it means is only natural this debate will be an emotional one. there's a lot at stake, and there has been a lot of attention paid to some of the town hall meetings going on around the country, especially those where tempers have flared. tv really likes that. you can have 20 rate meetings, and if there is one or someone loses their timber, that is the one that t.v. wants to cover. you have not seen the constructive meetings going on all of the country. that does not mean every one agrees with me on every issue, but it means we are trying to figure out what we know is an unsustainable problem in our healthcare system. [applause] just yesterday, i held a town hall in belgrade, montana, and

we had a pretty good crowd. some were big supporters of reform. some had concerns and questions. some were completely skeptical. i got tough questions, but even though montanans had strong opinions, they did not shout at one another. they were there to listen. that reflects the american people and what our democracy is about, more than what has been covered on tv these last few days. that is why i thank all of you for being here today. i am going to take a bunch of questions, but before i do, i want to talk about what health insurance reform will mean for you. there is a lot of misunderstandings of there. first of all, what we are proposing is a common-sense set of consumer protections for people with health insurance. people with private health insurance. i expect that after reform

passes, the vast majority of americans are still going to be getting their insurance from private insurers. we have to have some protections in place for people like nathan, people like you. so insurance companies will no longer be able to place an arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive or charge outrageous out of pocket expenses on top of your premiums. that is what happened to nathan and his wife. their son was diagnosed with hemophilia when he was born. the insurance company then raise the premiums for his family's and all -- his family and all the co-workers on the same policy. they were approaching the cap, and on top of pouring about taking care of their son, they had to try to find insurance that would cover them, plus thousands of dollars in out-of- pocket cost. nathan and his wife even consider getting a divorce so that she might possibly go on medicaid. thankfully, colorado's law does not allow coverage for small

businesses to permanently exclude pre-existing conditions like his son's, so eventually they found insurance. they are paying increasing premiums and still have to face the prospect of hitting the new cap in the next few years. i heard from a teenager in indiana diagnosed with leukemia. the chemotherapy and intensive care he received cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. his family had a lifetime cap of less than a year. the insurance would not cover a bone marrow transplant, and the family cannot afford all the money that was needed. the family turned to the public for help, but the boy died before he could receive a transplant. if you think that cannot happen to you or your family, think again. almost 90% of individual health- insurance policies have lifetime benefit levels, and about one- third of family plans and individual insurance market have lifetime limits under $3 million. if you or your spouse or child

gets sick and you had that limit, it is like you suddenly have no insurance at all. this is part of a larger story. folks with interests pay more and more out of pocket -- folks with insurance paying more unmarked out of pocket. premiums have doubled for the average family. nobody is holding these insurance companies accountable for these practices. your employer is paying even more, and you may not even see the cost of it except for the fact that you are not getting a raise. it is going into your health care instead of your salary and income. [applause] we are going to be an arbitrary caps on benefits. we will place limits on how much you can be charged for out-of- pocket expenses. no one in america should go broke because they get sick. [applause]

insurance companies will also be stopped from canceling your coverage because you get sick or denying coverage because of your medical history. [applause] if you think this has nothing to do with you, think again. a recent report found that in the past few years, more than 12 million americans were discriminated against by insurance companies because of a pre-existing condition. when we get health insurance reform, those days will be over. we will require insurance companies to recover routine checkups and preventive care like mammograms and colonoscopy. that saves money and saves lives. [applause] at the same