the town hall meetings. caller: thank you. this is my first time calling. host: go right ahead. you are talking to paul light. caller: good morning. guest: nice to talk to you. caller: right now i am a republican. what i'm calling about is that we are not giving the president a chance. i am 72 years old. i worked all my life. we need to get him a chance the bi. it is a public auction. it is of a government run program. a lot of people seem confused. we need to think about that. what do you think about this?

guest: people need to sit down with the president. with the public. . . franklin d roosevelt had with the american public and layout his healthcare plan. tell us exactly what he wants. then he can go to the wall with his public approval, his support in congress and push forward on that plan, make it it clear what's in it and what is not in it and then get into the negotiations with the house and the senate. >> host: is it too late, when has the train left the station? >> guest: well, you are letting the opponents of healthcare, of of the obama plan if there is one, concrete in form. you are letting the opponents define what it it is and they are very good at it it. just as democrats are very good

at painting republicans into a corner, the republicans, conservatives are very good at painting the president into a corner. so what's happening is that they're punching at every possibility, every possible component of the plan and the president has yet to say, this is what i favor and here is the bill that i favor. he's letting these bills move through congress. they got this in them and that in them. you had a caller earlier who said he's read the entire bill. good for him. he can't find anything that says you get to keep your own insurance. which plan was that? which bill was that? there are five or six of them floating around and that is just the ones that are in committee. i don't think it's too late. i think you have the august recess here where you can reset the agenda and really get the american public to focus, maybe write in early september he sis

down and has a candid conversation with the american public and instead of talking about the fact our current system isn't working, talk about how his plan will work better because if there is one thing i've learn friday watching congress it's that you can't beat nothing without something. and he needs to really tell the american public what he has in mind for his agenda. >> host: our guest paul light is professor of public service and founding principle investigator of the organizational performance initiative. he worked at brookings institution where he was a senior fellow and was founding director of its center for public service. our next caller is from minnesota. good morning, marge. marge, hi, you are on the air. >> good morning. >> host: welcome. >> thank you. thank you to c-span. i guess i'm looking for the

truth. i'm looking for some answers. >> guest: i think we all are. it is nice to hear from minnesota. my father lives in brainard. he's 95. he's on medicare. he also has medigap. he's well covered by the federal program for older americans. you know, i'm hoping to hear the truth, as well. and i think that's partially the president's job. no matter who it is, for the president to come out and say, here is what we've got. the debate is clouded with assertions from both sides about what's going on, how much we're subsidizing charity care in our insurance premiums, what is covered by the drug companies, did they pull a fast one with the obama administration? there is just lots of interpretation right now and it is occurring in a vacuum without

a clear answer from the president about what he wants and that i keep coming back to, that is the president's responsibility. that is how you get legislation through congress these days. that is how you get the big bill through congress. that is how we got the big bills through during the bush administration, how you get the big bills through. we need a plan and then we need to really take a look at it using more thoughtful methods than shout-downs at town hall meetings. >> host: next caller is palm on the democratic line from new york. >> good morning. that is a perfect sedway. yesterday there was a reporter on c-span who said she'd been to four town halls. she'd asked dozens of people at town hall fist they had voted for obama and not a single one had. i wanted to make the point also

we hear a lot of callers saying, we need tort reform, why isn't tort reform in the bill. we need cross state insurance purchasing pools, why isn't that in the bill? well, both of those are state issues and i'm afraid that if obama came out for tort reform and across state line insurance pools then the same people would be screaming, have you ever read the constitution? we believe in state rights, blahblah, blah. this is a wound-up gang of people who are generating a lot of great television and little serious debate. thanks very much for listening. >> guest: i think there is some truth in that argument. i think that a lot of the town hall upset has been brood and promoted from washington and elsewhere, but when you listen to the town halls and listen to the individuals who are not

shouting, there are good questions about this. there are people who are stepping forward saying, what's going to happen to me? how does this affect me? i think there is desire for inform ag information about that issue. it is in the devil, i know. we don't particularly like the way we're getting healthcare right now, but we're getting healthcare. it is a pain. we have to file form after form, but we don't have a good sense of what is coming. so i agree that a lot of the town hall shoutdown is generated from outside. it's being promoted from outside, but when you look into the town hall, sometimes you hear a question that's just so painfully personal about how this will work that you beg for an answer. you beg for the truth that our friend in alexandria, minnesota

was calling for. >> host: and sam from central city, kentucky. good morning, sam. >> good morning. how are you today? >> guest: just fine, thanks. >> good. good way the lady from new york just called, i was going to talk about tort reform. i believe this is not healthcare reform. this is healthcare welfare that is being pushed on us and will be passed on us because this is what the liberals want. if it was reform, tort reform would be a big part of it because we know the trial lawyers and ambulance chasers play a big part in the cost of overall healthcare. trial lawyers and democratic party do not want this so it will not be passed. as far as things in the bill, we are told there are myths out there about healthcare. one of them is taxpayer money for abortion with the public. as of date, there have been nine amendments presented that would

expressly prohibit taxpayer money on any public option of going toward paying abortions. it has been defeated. what does that tell you about the agenda on taxpayer money for abortions and public or anything. i'm not one of these town hall crazys, i'm just a person who looks at the whole thing. i believe that we -- the government should serve us, not us serve them and i feel healthcare thing is essentially the thing that is going to enslave a lot of americans to the government. going to be tied to it. a lot of security and welfare and things are going to be tide to healthcare. it is going to be provided by the government. >> well, i mean, i think there are a number of issues being debated in town halls and elsewhere that would better be debated behind closed doors

where you are really working out a package. i don't know what will happen with abortion. for example, i don't know if we end up funding it or not f. this is going to be even a tiny bit bipartisan, you are going to have to deal with some issues. we know where the big cost drivers are toward the reform at least as i read the papers and look at it is is not the big driver. it's technology. it's the testing. it's the multiple, the heavy investments and end of life care and so forth. the big cost of insurance in part big chunk of our insurance payments that end up in charity care for people who aren't insured. it is a complex debate and we're throwing it all at americans in just a big gulf in a short

period of time. and i think that's difficult because we end up saying each one of us ends up saying what does this mean for me? what's going to happen to my family? am i going to get the treatment that i need? am i going to get the choice of doctors that i currently have? we don't have a good sense yet of what it means for each one of us and that has to be communicated in order to get legislation done, especially of this particular size. it's just huge and we just need more information that's perhaps coming from independent sources like congressional budget office or the government accountability office where we can be told what is in this thing and what is not in this thing. we don't yet have the president articulating a plan and that is essential as i've said before for taking advantage of the

president's popularity and it's also the president's responsibility. he's letting congress do too much of the work without really telling the american public what he favors. >> host: from jackssonville, florida, bruce is calling on the independent line. >> yes, good morning. >> host: good morning, welcome. >> how are you this morning? i only had a few things to say. one was concerning the president and as the gentleman was saying, backing up what he said or whatever and being exchanged from healthcare reform to insurance reform and back to healthcare reform and then we're doing the different back and forth public option. not the public option, it's not. it's just -- he's not, you know, he ran centers when he was running for office and we had the economic stimulus bill and i call it chicken little syndrome.

they flew a senator or congressman back from somewhere in the midwest to vote on the bill to pass it through and that was valentine's day weekend and the president went off to chicago with his wife for their favorite dinner and then he flew to denver to announce signing of the bill. then he went to arizona to do the mortgage recovery act and the economic stimulus is pork. he wasn't going to have any more pork and like the gentleman said, there is a lot of things that he said he was going to do that he hasn't done. then we have the omnibus spending bill that was, you know, that was george bush's bill left over that had 9000 porks in it. >> host: bruce, i want a response from paul light before we have to say goodbye to him. let's hear what he has to say. >> guest: there is traditional politics rolling through this. the stimulus package is loaded. the omnibus was loaded.

there have been some coming out of the -- i think americans want to hear from the president specifically on what he proposes on healthcare. he needs to sit down with us, i think really in the form of a fireside chat, not a press conference, to really explain what he wants and let that debate be the one that shapes what is happening out there. don't let the opponents define what you stand for. you define it it and that is what the president's job is. >> host: paul light, thanks for being with us. >> guest: always a pleasure. >> host: our guest paul light is from new york university. he's author of numerous books,

>> from city hall in citrus heights, california, this is about 90 minutes.

>> the mayor, do you want to leave your card for me? [laughter] thank y'all for being here. this is tremendous. we oftentimes -- worry about whether anybody is going to come to our meeting. we don't have to worry now. that's why we send out notices and so forth. i appreciate the fact that so many of you have come out. and rather than some have suggested and we need to worry about this, there seems to be a great demonstration of democracy in action in our congressional

district. thank you for being here. normally i stand down there closer to you but we thought we would add more chairs here. we have an overflow crowd. unfortunately a lot of people couldn't get in and they're outside, we have speakers so they can hear. we're going to see if -- if we might be able to have some people come in with questions from outside, as well as those of you here, who might can see and see if we can get this off in a proper way and in as fair a way as we possibly can. let me introduce a number of members of my staff so you know who they are, who you can contact. if we don't answer your question, you can give the question to one of our staff members and we'll do our best to get back in touch with you. peter, who is my deputy chief of staff who works here and in washington d.c., he comes to me after two weeks on vacation

spent with his wife who is a a -- captain? in the united states army, who just returned to afghanistan with him. marilyn erbs, she oversees operations of the office and handles affairs in the district and does outreach for the office. debbie jones who is right out here as well, special assistant. and liz donnelly, senior field representative that has joined our staff in the last month. and bob, senior field represent whoif is over here on this side. i got bob from the sacramento beat. that's where he was -- he is a career person in the press, and we're happy to have him. oliver chu in the back. you play contact him if you have issues with the immigration or

citizenship. he does a great job on military questions and postal service and others. and michelle panos is here. she's a constituent services representative. and medicare and department of state. for those of you who haven't been to one of these meetings before, would say why do you need to talk to us about department of state. they issue passports. too often we hear from people the day before they're going to europe or south america. we can generally work magic, but it does help to give us more than 24 hours notice. chris o'connor. where is chris? chris in the back is a congressional aide. he's a great young man that has been working with our office. i was privileged to meet and have discussions with his dad last week. his dad is a -- is a p.o.w. from vietnam, he served many years in prison cell there on our behalf. and his dad is a great guy and we're certainly happy that we

have chris working for us. [applause] and i have two people here from my washington d.c. staff. sandra weisman. sandra, believe it or not, worked for me many years ago when she was a mere child. i like to say she left me for horses. she also trains horses. and she has worked for the c.b.o. and has worked on the senate side on special investigations committee over flp and she has worked at one time for the senior republican on the house ways and means committee. she does a great job for us, particularly those of us dealing with federal government agencies in our area. she's done an outstanding job and brian kane also from the washington d.c. office. let me just -- even though the -- the manner in which we operate these town halls is to allow you to ask any question you want about any issue you want then this has been

suggested to be a health care -- or at least primarily a health care issue forum. this would be the second one i had. i had one a month ago in folsom where we had a standing-room only crud but not as broadly based ooze this. and i have done three town halls where the primary subject was health care. let me say this. i think -- the outpouring and passionate views of the public have made a huge difference in washington d.c. after i had my -- [applause] >> after i had my town hall meeting in folsom a month ago -- that was on our break. i went back and i told my colleagues what i heard and what i had seen, the passion and interest and knowledge that people had about this issue. i said, this is something i

haven't seen on a domestic issue in 10, 20, 30 years. it is something that is personal to people. it is something that is important to people and they want us to get it right. there ought to be no rush to judgment. we ought to try and figure out what the right thing is for people, what they want us to do and how we don't destroy a system that is -- is in many ways effective, why we don't get rid of the -- of the best parts of our system. and how we ought to attack the very specific problems that exist in the overall health care system. and there was some people who were surprised -- [applause] and there was some who were surprised and said, we can't take the time. we have to pass this before we go home in august. and three committees will work on it. we have a thousand page bill, you don't need to read it. just trust us. people who were saying that

actually -- actually believed it. i disagreed with them but they believed we needed to do this. the president gave us a deadline. i thought it was wrong and i fought against it but nonetheless that was the debate. had it not been for the response of average every day americans at town halls on teletown halls and people stopping me in the airport, if that has not happened to all members of the house and senate, we would not have breathing room to allow this to happen. so -- i just want you to know, it is because of -- the public. here's what we're going to try to do. we have -- i think we still have cards. we have comment cards with the questions on them for people to write out so that i can get more than just the questions that i can get to today. secondly, what i'm going to try

to do is maybe have the first question here on the inside, the second question from the patio and the third question from the outside, and see if we can rotate that to give people a fair a chance as possible. however, you play have noticed we have tv cameras. c-span is televising this. it is not live but they're filming it and they will show it at some point in time. in order that they can have the questions properly heard, we ask either to ask the question from this mic right up here at this table or brian has a wireless mic that he will utilize. if you don't get to the mic, it will not be heard by the people on -- on viewing c-span. i would ask you to please do that. let me very quickly throw out -- my principles or the ideas i look at as we're look thagget health care issue. as some of you play know, i'm a son of a doctor.

my dad was my hero growing up. i wanted to be like my dad. as a little kid i used to go on house calls with him and make rounds at the hospital with him to meet patients and see how he handled things. as some of you heard, i wanted to be a doctor like my dad and i went to college with the idea of doing that. in my sophomore year, god sent me a message callled organic chemistry -- i did not flung as someone suggested but the rigor and the -- the outcome was such that i knew maybe i better do something else. i never lost my sense of service or sense of appreciation. and so when i look at health care, i look at it through the eyes of someone who grew up with a father who was a primary care physician. he was board certified in board medicine and cardiology. he took care of people who couldn't pay. he also took care of some -- some famous people. he was richard's -- richard

nixon's personal physician and saved him from death one time. he was an infantry physician in normandy and landed on normandy on d-day. -- his medical field station was close enough to the front lines that he received a purple heart after being injured in a artillery barrage. he was the greatest advocate for his patients of any person. and -- i i have heard him, i saw him get angry at nurses if they didn't do the right job and fellow doctors, but he was the greatest support of doctors and nurses. i heard him on the phone, the conversation would go like this, you want me to release my patient from the hospital. she's 85 years old. she just had this procedure. i'm afraid if she goes home, she will not be able to take care of herself even with assistance and

if she slips and falls and has a broken hip, she'll be back in the hospital and be subject to potential -- other illness including pneumonia and -- by the way, what is your medical degree, where is it from? you're not a doctor. where is your nursing degree? you're -- you just work for the insurance company. well i want your name and i want to know where i can reach you, because i'm putting it in my medical chart so if somebody happens to my patient, wule be held personally responsible. [applause] >> the only reason i mention that is that there's always going to be the need, i believe for the doctor to be your advocate for the care that he and you believe you should receive. and in all of the discussions we have about health care reform, it seems to me extremely important that we never lose sight of that. when i get sick, one of my

children gets sick, one of my grandchildren gets sick, i don't say, i got to call the insurance company or i want to call the government. i say, let me get a hold of my doctor. let me find out what we need and how we're going to do it. what is best for my child or me or my grandchild. i think we have lost some of that. the second thing i would say is this. if you analyze medical care in the united states, we have the greatest innovation -- we have the greatest new technology -- we have the greatested a vnses of anyplace in the world. if you look across the board, whether new pharmaceutical products or new surgical instruments, new techniques, i wouldn't want to go anywhere but the united states. having said that, we have to recognize that we got problems. and one, there is a significant problem of people who are uninsured. and now the president talks about 43 or 49 million people. it is in the 40's somewhere. but when you break it down, when

you take out 10 million people who are not citizens here, when you take out a multiple millions who are young people, who have sufficient salaries to be able to buy insurance but decide voluntarily not to buy insurance, because they're in the healthier r-iest years of their lives and they don't want to do it. whether you take out those people that are -- uninsured for a period of time in a year but were insured before and will be insured afterward, when you start going down to it, for those -- i kale hard-core uninsured, it is about 9.3 million people. that's in the insignificant. we have to deal with that. but out of a population of over 300 million people, that's 3%. they are chronically uninsured and they have difficulty getting care. should we turn over the entire system that generally works for the greatest number of us in order to try and take care of 3%? or should we try and figure out

how we specifically -- you might even say surgically come up with a solution for that 3%. so that would be number one. number two, there's no -- there's no doubt there's problems with insurance. some problem with coverage. and i like to see a number of things. i like to see -- us come up with portability, meaning if you move from one job to another, it doesn't mean you have to change your insurance, which means you change your doctor. it is sort of packwards. shouldn't you decide when you want to change your doctor as a result of your relationship with your doctor and what you're looking for as opposed to the other way around. secondly, it seems to me -- we want to have a reasonable way of trying to bring costs under control. and and i use that in quotes because -- we're always going to have arguments about how much. but obviously medical care costs skyrocketed compared to other

things in our society. but at the same time, we don't want to stop the high quality that we have. and so how do you do it? there are those that sincerely believe the best way to change what we do now is to have -- to have and i'm going to use these words even though leadership on the other side doesn't allow us to use these words in our printed material, government-run health care system. and the reason i say that is there are those that believe, if you look at the model in england or france or look at the model in canada, they think they do a better job than we do. i disagree with thap i don't think we need to do that. because ultimately, if you have a government -- [applause] as i say, there are those that disagree with me, the way i an highs this is that -- if you're trying to have some way to keep costs down, there's only really two ways to do it. if you have a government-run system, you do it by rationing,

straight-out rationing. i'll give you examples of that in the other countries or you could try and have what i call greater transparency. that is you and i -- all of us have more information, for instance in you're going to have a surgery, you ought to know what the infection rates are at the hospitals that you go to. you ought to know the more bidity rate and the success rates. that information ought to be available right away to help you make those decisions. you ought to know how much they're charging. some hospitals play charge differently than others. that information arms us as individuals to make decisions. that's transparency. competition. i rather see more possible programs insurance programs association programs, we're now talk pg cooperatives, if properly understood, that play be the case. and expanded opportunities, expanded choices that you would have. one thing i believe might help us in that direction is to say

you ought to be able to, or your employer ought to be able 20 choose a plan that is legal in any state in the union, rather than calt. it'll be enfoorsed under california law so you would have that -- that way you would have many more opportunities. it seems to me that would help us. and the other thing is -- and -- and some are talking about it -- senator conrad from north dakota, leading democrat in the senate talked about cooperatives. he has a different view than senator schumer. senator schumer's is almost a public option. here's the idea as i see it. knights nights of columbus, kiwanis club, alumni from a particular university. the elks. you would allow them to establish cooperatives or health associations, there by having pools that would be large enough so that you could bring costs down. because you would be going

beyond the pools that are available to you now, which essentially are, who do you work for? this would give you greater opportunity for those sorts of things. so those are some of the things we're talk pg. i know there are a lot of questions, a lot of opinions out there. and i love to -- to get them from you. once again, please use the mic. we have -- we have the moving mic somewhere. and -- yes. and i'm going to try to take one question here from the inside and then we'll take one from the patio and one from the outside. from the inside right here. brian, go ahead. >> first, i want to make it clear, i have read through the bill, myself personally. >> great. [applause] >> now, my question has several components. the first part of it is in the stimulus bill -- this grants the government the -- the digitizing

and possession of our medical records and then -- in section 1173 a page 68 of the -- of hr 3200 it gives the government real-time access to our financial records. and -- if those two things aren't disturbing enough for you, if you continue on throughout the rest of the document, there are four sections which exempts the government from protecting our privacy and security with regard to our threakeds are in their possession. the first section is 1152, which you can find on page 304, section 1221 which you can find on 404, and section 1301, which you can find on page 455 and section 11, or i'm sorry, 1866 e which is on page 476. my question is, why would i ever agree with a bill that invades our privacy and -- and exempts

the government from their current obligation to protect us. [applause] >> thank you for that question. let me go into the first part of it in which you talk about the stimulus bill, goes to the question of i.t. or computerized records. as a general rule or a general yd, the -- the -- the computerizing of medical records is a good idea so long as we have -- we have strong privacy protections. what i mean by that is this. you go to a lot of hospitals today, you find they're computerizing records and you'll find they find that to be helpful for a couple of reasons. one simple reason, can i tell you this from my dad's handwriting, when i went away to summer camp, my brother and i would go, my dad would write us

-- photos and his secretary would have to type them for us, because we couldn't read dad's writing. there are mistakes that are made because people miss interpret physician's writing. so a lot of hospitals are now setting up systems whereby the -- the doctor enters his record by computer and records are kept. secondly, the question is, can we do that with -- can doctor's records, the medical records developed in hospitals and would that be a benefit? it would be a benefit in this sense. if in fact if you were traveling outside your own region and had an accident and became ill and you wanted to seek treatment, it would be very good if that new -- that new medical provider, at least new to you had an opportunity to review your records at your permission and you would be able by whatever means we have, with your -- your personal password, to be able to grand them permission to go in

and do that. it would probably -- eliminate dube littive test that is they wouldn't have to do. or it would allow them to compare them to the previous tests which would be a base lin to show if you had a change as a result of the accident or illness you were receiving at the time. secondly, when they're prescribing something for you, it would minimize the potential of them prescribing something for you that is contradicted. that is you play be taking something or have taken something the last 30 days, you cannot remember it. they play not ask you for it. they would check your records and know this. so in those ways, it would be effective. the thing that i've said is the devil is in the detail. we just had someone who is being prosecuted for hacking into a million or more credit histeries. 140 million -- i'm sorry. in washington d.c., we talk in

trls, i get mixed up. if that can happen, think what would happen if they got to get into your medical records. so while the principle is a good one, we have to be careful how we do it. we have to be very careful how defwow it. we can't have a rush to judgment. secondly, with respect to financial records, there are some sections in the bill that deal with financial records that are supposed to go towards your -- your el 1kwrib89 for various programs here. and i mean, there are any number of programs here for which people are eligible, depending on their income levels. i'm always -- wary of the government getting too much of my finance m records or you should be of your financial records. so here's what i would say to you. i don't think we have done the proper investigation of the privacy protection that is ought to be here even though i agree with an i.t. application to

health care and it is the wave of the future, i don't think the prokses are in here that have to be here. am i saying i have the slukes to the perfect way to protect it? no, i don't. i know we have to do a better job of it. that's one of the problems with 1,017 page bill that is foisted on us. it is almost like you have to take it all or nothing. i think we could get agreement across the aisle on a number of different things that are not complete overhauls of the system but are changes in the system that both of us think would be common sense. that's what i hope we do, rather than the other way. >> we're -- we're bringing somebody in from the patio. >> thank you for being here this evening. i recently returned from canada. i'm a naturalized american citizen and i heard for years how great the health care is at home. and one of my good friends a year ago, in may fell from a

ladder and broke her knee. they did some minor surgery and she will go to calgary in october of this year to get the final treatment after a wait of 17 months. so i'm in the happy with the idea that let's follow canada. secondly -- [applause] secondly, i have a friend who a few years ago, he -- he retired from the house of representatives -- i would recommend that we quit all of this talk about this health plan . can you work it so all of the american citizens have the same health plan that those have on the hill? i'm sure your father, the doctor, would think that was a good health plan for us all. thank you.

>> well in the consideration of the bill before the various committees on my side and the republican side, we tried to deal with that question by saying if the public option were part of the program all members of congress would be required to be in the public option. in one committee it was adopted and the other committee it was voted down. i don't know if it'll be in the final package. it seems to me that mechanism where people have options to make choices that -- that we have as federal em employees as do all employees is one american people ought to have. i would expand it beyond the four option. i think we have four or six options, beyond that, by allowing americans to have access to the different option that is are available in all states. so the people could make their decisions there, rather than me deciding which two or three or

four you ought to be able to have the option for. interestingly enough, in canada, and i was there recently, last month, the best i have is a -- a 2001 survey asking americans and canadian professionals about health care in their -- in their countries. and found that 51% of canadian doctors rated their country's emergency room care as good or excellent, while 72% of u.s. doctors did. and the hospital administrators, 88% of american intensive care units were rated as good or excellent, compared to 70% of those in canada. 81% of u.s. operating theaters, that means rooms earned high rating compared to 62% for canada. and 84% of -- of american administrators thought that diagnostic and imaging of doctors, thought diagnostic and

imaging technology was of the grade they needed compared to 49% in canada. you play have noticed that the incoming president of the canadian medical society, the top doctor in canada announced this week as he -- i think he's about to take over his position or has just taken over his position that -- that they have a serious problem in canada. actually, it is a -- it is a woman, dr. ann dong. she described the canadian health system as being in crisis. she said, the canadians have to understand this system is not sustainable. we all agree the system is imploding. we all agree things are more precarious than canadians realize. i'm not doing that to condemn the canadian system. what i'm saying is -- i think our system operates better, particularly for americans. it has problems, we got to deal

with the problems as opposed to chucking it. and trying something entirely new. but we will see. do we have a question from outside? >> hi. >> thank you for coming and hearing us. i feel like -- we're not being heard at all in washington. and being completely dismissed. and -- an american and just, i've never been involved in politician before. but this is something that is very -- important to me. my mom is -- in florida. she -- she doesn't really understand what is going on, and she doesn't know how to voice it. i told her i would come here and help her out. i have two children as well. i'm just a regular citizen, a soccer mom and i came to say that you know, i been unemployed and -- and -- it has taken me six weeks to even get a phone call from the unem ploit, even

to get a check. i wonder how a government-run health care is going to work. it is -- it is bureaucratic and i'm concerned. and --ed other thing is, as a conservative and as somebody who is 0 for this pill, what are republicans doing and you going to do individually to make sure this bill gets stopped. >> well -- thank you. [applause] >> i know a lot of good people that work in government at all levels, including the federal level. but i also understand the nature of large bureaucracies and there's no larger bureaucracy than the federal government. the ore thing i notice is that when i say that -- that i don't want someone coming between -- between me and my dock to tore -- doctor, what i'm saying is, i think the choices ought to be made at the level closest to me. and with people in whom i have

confidence. as you farm that out or make that further and further away from you, the ability of that person who is further away, to be able to understand your situation and make that judgment, i think is impaired. >> and in terms of government, there's nothing further from you than the federal government. i think the points you make is a very good one. will we have a magic change that insurance companies are sweetness and light and they always say yes. that's not the case. if you you have competition so if you -- if you say to your insurance carrier, look, you know, this is not working, i'm going to go to someone else. you have some leverage over them. secondly in our system, you can sue the insurance company if they make the wrong decision. you can't sue the federal government. and so if you just start looking at those things, no program or system ising for to be perfect -- but i think we stand a better chance of having a good system or a better system if we

increase competition, and increase information and knowledge, that's what i call transparency, have appropriate regulation and believe me there has to be regulation. and i think it was -- it was madison who said, that if -- if men and he meant men and women, if men were saints we wouldn't need g. then he suggested we need government because we're not saints. he also said that after you create the government, you got to make sure that you watch those that are watching you. meaning that you got to be careful of government. on my side of the aisle, even though we're a distinct minority and the majority party could pass a bill without a single republican vote. they could lose 40 of their members and still win, it is difficult the at -- we don't set the agenda. what we attempt d is to try and -- to do is try and present views as we see them and present

alternatives as we think they should be presented and attempt to build a consensus, including the people, talking to members of congress, and pressuring members of congress to do the right thing. we have raised a numb of these issues over this debate but we have been essentially frozen out from our ideas being in the bill. if it hadn't been for -- for americans, on their own, organizing, or unorganize or disorganized coming to meetings and saying, wait a minute, we want you to take a different position here, we wouldn't be here now. ourp obligation is to not only be against something but to present alternatives. there are four major republican alternatives and parts of alternatives. there was 31 amendments offered on the republican sides in ways and means committee, for instance. outlining things i talked about. my hope is the president will now say, you know, maybe we

overreached here. and maybe we misread the american people. maybe they don't want a total overhall of system -- overhaul of the system and maybe what we need to do, maybe what we need to do is bring everybody together and try and reach consensus as best we can and start with those things we can agree on at the very beginning. that would make more sense to me. that's my hope of what will be done as we go forward. thank you so much. pst [applause] >> a question from -- from the lady right here. >> thank you for for having this meeting for everybody. i'll keep this really short.

there you go. >> notice that the -- the smat and the house can pass this would you tell any help from the republicans. if they choose, if the democrats choose to use that option, or it use the reconstruction option, is it possible in the future to reverse this action? >> you -- you use the term reconstruction. i think you meant reconciliation, which is a term of art on the senate side, by which they can avoid the 60 votes that they need to overcome a -- a fill buster. the -- the -- the complicating factor is, they're limited in what they can do. they can do some legg legislating on the bill and can't do others. it is not as easy as sometimes thought. thank you for that -- that observation. my concern is this. if we get this wrong now, it sets in place a -- a structure

that would be very, very hard to undo. and that is why i call it a profound decision. it is not just going to affect you and me, it'll affect our children and grandchildren. it is difficult to pull back once you reconstructed the entire system. and that is why i -- i am concerned about it. and the president has -- has properly cited mayo clinic as one of the outstanding systems of medical in this country. and my dad trained at mayo one summer, before i was born. i visited mayo clinic when i was a lawyer on a matter. i know people there, outstanding institution. but they have come out -- signing a letter with 12 other systems that they consider to be similar to theirs, although they would say they're the best, in which they have said, that the president's plan as they understand it and basically the pla than that has been adopted

by these three committees in the house became law, it would put them out of business. now i can't give you a chapter and verse as it why they conclude that. i can only say the very system the president holds up as the best in the country and i would say is as good as any, they believe if we pass this bill, because of various aspects of it, it would end up with their demise. and now i got -- i got pay attention to what they say, because if they're one of the leaders in the world, i mean, where do you think the saudi princes come to have their health care taken care of. they come to mayo, for goodness sakes. people from all over the world come there. they're about. you're looking at a-plus, they're a-plus. in if they say they would be forced out of business, that's a problem. i don't think the president intends that. but someone been in this operating and knowing what they're doing says it this will happen, i think we have to stop and listen. we have another patio -- we have

pa a patio person. >> i'm a patio person, my to fight my way in. thank you for taking my question. just incidentally in rochester, minnesota, which serves the mayo clinic, there's a customs office. no doubt to help those saudi princes get to the mayo clinic. >> a few people from canada come down too. >> those too. >> nevertheless, in 33 years of selling insurance to people in sacramento area, i've done a great deal of work in medical care. in the last few years, i have been successful a m-ee -- my clients are happy to be introduced to high deductible health savings plan compatible. in the bill, i believee -- -- in the bill, what i'm seeing, is they used to have a $25 copay that they now know costs $150.

i have clients that are making decisions about how they treat their bodies in order not to play $125 for a drug. sometimes there are things you can't avoid taking but sometimes people can make choices. what i like to know because everybody says, where's the question? where is the dialogue, can there be dialogue? is there a place in all of this for the consumer to take responsibility for how their health care dollars are spent. we buy flat screen tvs for peanuts because consumers make choices. that's my question. >> very good question. it is true, as you state, that -- that health savings accounts would be illegal after i believe the first five years. because under the bill, after five years any private programs, have got to meet the standard

set by the quote/unquote public option or by the federal czar that would require them to be basically what the public option would be. by definition the a.h.a.'s would be illegal you could not maintain them any longer. the question is broader than that. the question is really what can you do to -- to -- to get people more involved in the process so that they're making decisions and they're weighing decisions with all information and with -- with what some people call skin in the game. you look to -- the example of safeway stores, the c.e.o. of safeway stores has taken it upon himself to become fully invested in the whole issue of health care for his employees. they have come up with a system in which there is skin in the game. there's a certain amount of money they actually make

available to their employees and that money goes toward deductibles, but there's a limit. it is a high limit but if you spend more than that in a particular year, to be paying for that out of your own pocket. above that, when you clear that, i mean, there's full coverage and so forth. but what it does, it gets you involved in the earl least stages of it. the other thing they do is they help their employees with information about comparative costs. now the example they gave in an article i read was that -- if you you have to have a cologne scope, i don't know why they picked that, but that's the procedure they were talking about. they went and surveyed, practitioners and -- and -- and hospitals, i believe it was within an hour drive of their corporate headquarters in the east bay. and as i recall, this is kind of memory. there was something on the order

of seven different options you can have and the prices ranged from like $700 to a couple of thousand dollars. so -- they made that available to their employees. not telling them, you got to do this or go there but their esm employees could make a judgment where they took into account quality and cost. the other thing they did and this goes for the point that my patio person just made, they tried to -- to create rewards in their health care plan that rewarded what they would call -- good behavior. and that is -- that is you know, fitness programs, getting your weight to a certain level. and those sorts of things and they were allowed under that system to give you a benefit for doing that. and as a result, in the first year, that they had, the

companies total health care costs went down 11%. and they shared that -- that cost savings with their employees, cost cutting their costs by 25% or more. . . >> or them telling me how much i shall away. but, i think is reasonable -- it is reasonable for the employer providing the insurance to say here is what you're going to

pay, but if you do these sorts of things that we believe will give you a healthier lifestyle, we are allowed to give you a benefit for that. i happen to think that is the kind of incentive system that americans respond to. no one takes away your freedom. you are allowed to make rational judgment, but your actions have consequences. as opposed to the government somehow mandating so we become this in any state. i believe we have gone far enough. i think there are things that can be done. there are other companies that have done the same sort of thing. i think these other kinds of ideas that we ought to be taking into consideration as we try to do something on the federal level. we have someone from the outside now. you're doing such a great job of being polite, c-span is

probably going to be disappointed. >> i am obviously a senior citizen. a very senior citizen. i do not want it. i do not want any part of it, that is a statement not a question. i understand i am up here for question period i question to you is, regent for a question. -- i am not here for a question. i want to know what you intend to do to listen to the thousands of people that are outside during your vacation from the senate? >> thank you. some people would think you have elevated me to the senate. here is what happened. this is the largest of venue i

could get in citrus heights. >> i can find you a bigger room if you need help finding it. >> we're going to have to more town hall meetings, one in jackson on saturday and won the -- >> what are you going to do to come back to citrus heights and listen to the thousands of people? >> i would be happy to come back. as i mentioned before, our problem is worrying whether someone will show up. we have never had a problem in citrus heights. if we could arrange this again, we would have to say that anybody coming to this time can't come next time. >> you have no idea how many people are outside. really, the parking lot was full, and people are still coming in from across the street. somehow, doing your recess, you need to provide a way you can hear the rest of us.

>> i will be happy to see if we can arrange that. is that working? >> i had a quick question about health rationing. as you can see, i have a handicapped son. how's it going to affect my son? i pay premiums that are good. there has been a lot of speculation, i would like it cleared up. >> we can argue about the specifics or details of a plan. if you analyze a government-run plans, and let me explain why i say government-run plan. there are those -- and they are

suggesting that the public auction is off the table -- option is off the table. the spokesperson says it is not off the table. that has been misunderstood. here is the reason why i have a concern about the public option. if you look at the experience we have had with the student loan program, we had a private and hadoption. -- a private and public option. they have eliminated the private option because they think the government can do it more cheaply. i am just telling you what we just passed and signed. we have one of the best companies in the entire country here in my district that has

done an outstanding job of processing these loans and actually keeping young people current with those loans. i do not think the federal government is going to be able to do the same. secondly, if you look at the medicare and advantage program have, that is a program that was put in the last administration to offer a private-sector alternative to regular medicare. my district has one of the highest percentages of senior citizens signed up for that. under this bill, it basically will emasculate the medicare it vantage program in areas like my district. thousands of people will no longer be on medicare in advantage. the concern, driving it out, the public option being the only option -- my concern is that it

almost necessarily becomes a public monopoly. in a public monopoly, a government monopoly, it is hard to have competition drive down costs. the ultimate way you do it is by rationing. in the u.k., two weeks ago, they announced that they will decide on the effectiveness of treatment. they have decided they will no longer allow painkilling steer royal injections for people with low back pain. they have 60,000 to 90,000 people. now that resonates with me, because about eight air 10 years ago, i had what appeared to be intractable low back pain. the only way i was able to recover was with the pain specialist.

i got the deep, sterile little pain killing injections. i was trying to think, if i had the pain and i was in great britain, i am now told that because of some panel, they have decided that for purposes to keep costs down, they're going to stop it, i would be going out of my mind. are we ever going to have a perfect system? no. are we ever going to have the money we need? no. i think we do have competition and transparency, and in special cases, when government needs to assist with funding, i think all of us would understand that as an obligation we have. but to immediately turn it over to government and prevent -- and to forget the private sector,

that is self-defeating. >> first of all, i like to thank you for the opportunity to ask a question. i am recently returned peace corps volunteer. i am currently unemployed. i am unable to find a job. i am in eligible for unemployment insurance as rules of the peace corps. i will have to cancel my health insurance next month because i do not have a job and i can't afford it. i have a pre-existing condition. 1100 out -- and 11,000 people voted for the president than the republican candidate. can you promise me and everyone else to not only represent the views of the very vocal minority, but to represent the views of the majority of the third district who desperately want and need health care

reform? thank you. >> as i said, i do believe that we need reform. the question is, what type of reform should we have? i do not support a wholesale overturning of the system we have. i do say there are things we must do to respect -- with respect to pre-existing conditions. in a republican alternative and some amendments that were presented in the ways and means committee, there were efforts to try and do that in a way that was different than what the bill had, but nonetheless, to provide for that. and second, with respect to those who have an ability to get insurance, for various reasons,

there is a group of people. we ought to be able to establish a program to assist that. some proposals would include a federal government working to already existing programs -- to put money behind that. some people say it would just be cheaper for those people who qualify, that are unable to get health care, that we provide them with a specific health care plan or option of private plans and subsidize it. their ways to do it without turning over the whole system. will i support a reform of those aspects that need reform, absolutely. but do i support a wholesale overhaul or overturning of the current system we have? no, i do not.

before you ask a question, brian, can you ask the law enforcement people if, at 830, -- at 8:30 i could go outside and talk to whoever is out there. i do not know if they will allow it, but i will be happy to try to do it with everybody out there for half an hour if they will allow that. >> first of all, congressman, i would like to thank your staff. there were thousands of people who came out tonight, and there is so much energy out there, i am happy and feel honored to let

in. following up on the last person pose a question, -- the last person's question, the needs are many and the resources are relatively few. my concern and my question is, we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 12--- 12 million to 30 million illegal immigrants in the united states. i think 25 million or 30 million is more accurate. there are six and six -- between 6,000,006.5 million in southern california. -- 6 million and 6.5 million in southern california. the question is, in trying to do research at looking at the health care reform bill, i cannot find anywhere where it specifically denied health care

benefits to illegal aliens. nor can i find anything that specifically granted them rights. but when we have people like the gentleman before me and others that have needs, my question is, can you equivocal a say that we will not be funding illegal aliens out of medicare and medicaid? currently, and california -- i worked for the department of health services before, so i know we are spending millions of dollars to provide emergency care for indigent and illegal aliens. the other reason i am asking is because right behind that, i have seen the preliminary bill for illegal immigration that the administration is proposing.

in that, they're talking about opening the doors, 24 our amnesty approval, no background checks. we in california have a problem. people start fires because of drugs, people are here illegally. will this bill, willis' reform the way it is written, fund illegal alien health care? >> that is an interesting question, because it has been brought up. in the senate, they say it is not going to, but have no specific provision for it. when they were going through this bill in the energy and commerce committee, a congressman from georgia who happens to be a republican offered an amendment that specifically said that you would have to show some evidence of citizenship in order to qualify for medicaid as it exists under

the new program. that was defeated 29-28. there was an amendment brought for the next day by a democratic member that said illegal aliens are not to receive medicaid, but did not have any requirement to show any identification. my sense would be that we ought to bring an amendment on the floor which would require proof of citizenship in order to be eligible for one of these programs. >> i thank you very much for your time and for a frank answer. i hope you'll be as diligent when the illegal immigration reform bill comes up. from what i saw on cnn, who is

supposed to be impartial, it does not sound very good for the american people. >> that plan would be dead on arrival if it came to the house or the senate. i do not know what the administration plans. i know that senator schumer intends to introduce a bill either right after we get back in september or shortly after that, which i believe will be the primary bill to deal with. nancy pelosi has said -- with a minute. >> she is the speaker of the house. i did not vote for, but she is the speaker. she did say that she is going to wait and have the senate act first. the action, if there is action on immigration will be on the senate side first. what you described, it will not go anywhere.

>> why is it so difficult to close the borders and develop an immigration plan that is rational? i'm sorry -- >> i will be happy to deal with that issue for another town hall. are they going to allow me to go outside? >> i would like to share. i live in carmichael. i definitely am appreciative that you do these. i think it is vital to the health of our country to have this kind of a forum where we can tell you what we think. it is kind of a lost art form in our country today. that is one of my concerns. the question that i have for you is, i have been a registered republican for 40 years.

recently, after the last federal election in november of this last year, i redid my application as to which party affiliation i am going with. i said i am declaring nine. i am so distraught on both sides of the aisle. [applause] and i am leading to a question. the concern about both sides of the aisle is that it appears to me that because of party politics, there are an awful lot of issues that cannot be resolved because of partisanship. if we would be able to put away the partisanship of republican or democrat, and understand that our congress is there represent the people of the country, they would go a lot further in terms of solving some

any problems -- solving so many problems. as a person in your district, are you going represent everybody from this district when you go back to congress? or are you going to represent the public in -- the republican perspective, which concerns me deeply? >> i try represent the perspectives that i will share with the people that i represent. more often than not, that is the republican perspective, but not always. i try to work with people on the other side of the aisle. i am the main author of the safe ports act, the security for the ports of the united states. i went out and sought a democrat from southern california to be my co-sponsor. while i was running for re- election and while i supported

john mccain and his ticket, and opposed senator obama and senator biden, -- i worked with senator biden on a crucial piece of legislation to protect our shores from illegal drugs and the potential of terrorists explosive materials and outline what is note -- what is known as semisubmersible vehicles. i was working with him to make sure we could pass, on a bipartisan basis, legislation that i felt was good for this nation. i believe we passed that on the last or second to last day of the last session. i have tried where i can to do that. i am working with jim mcgovern, a democrat from massachusetts on a bill. it is about reducing our

overall nuclear arsenal to levels that i think are sufficient to protect this country. we dedicated some of the funds said -- some of the funds to the program directed at identifying and securing nuclear weapons from the old soviet union as well as nonproliferation and the rest of the world. a portion of the savings will go to assisting poverty and education in the underdeveloped world. a significant portion goes to reducing our national debt. i cannot reach much further than jim mcgovern to work with. when i was in congress the first time around, the soviet union was still in existence. the wife of a famous dissident in the soviet union had been seeking our treatment. she had to go back, so she went

to the congressman from the area in which she was staying. it was barney frank. she said, were you accompanied back to the soviet union so the kgb does not do something terrible to me? barney went to the speaker of the house and asked permission and funding for it. he said only if you get a republican so it is bipartisan. he came to me and asked if i would accompany them back to the soviet union initialing of the bipartisan nature of our belief that the dissidents in the soviet union ought to be protected? and when we were there, we would meet with people with whom we had identified as democrat and republican members. i have always tried where i can to reach agreement. but where, on principle, we cannot reach agreement, i will fight for it. [applause]

there are times when you can do that. if you truly believe that something is the wrong approach, i don't think it helps the people you represent or this nation to say, and the spirit of bipartisanship, i'm going to forget what i think is right and agree with that. i hope that is the answer -- [applause] >> thank you for being with us. this bill, you want to address cost effectiveness. in listening to certain radio stations and certain members of my colleagues, we are interested in the moneys that have been set aside in the bills. i know there is more than one

bill. i am referring to the bill that is over a thousand pages. there are quite a bit of moneys for an increase in abortion. i would like that addressed. it is supposed to be cost- effective. the word "abortion" is not in that bill. it is addressed and their reproductive health care. what are your feelings on it? and the politicians who claim that they are pro-life, what are they doing in regards to these moneys that are being appropriated or that may be appropriated? >> i happen to be pro-life and have voted that way. [applause] but even with those that disagree with me on that, there has been general agreement that we would support something that

restricts federal funding for abortion. it says, you may believe in abortion or believe in right to choice, but it does not mean you obligate taxpayer dollars to be used for it. [applause] and that has been generally accepted with democratic and republican presidents. if you have a public option, they have made it very clear that the public auction will include abortion coverage. at the end of five years, all private insurance programs that still exist must meet the standards established by the new czar in this bill to provide the same coverage at least allowed in the public option.

that means federal funds would be allowed across the board that were not allowed before. while it does not specifically overturn the amendment, in a different way, it causes federal funds to be used for abortion and obligates every single policy out there to provide abortion coverage. it does not talk about it. but because of the way it works, enforcing those standards -- by the way, if your employer at that point in time, and a policy that you have for your employees does not meet those standards, you get fined. not only is the option not available, but you will be fined if you do not provide it. i think that is a very troublesome development. [applause]

>> i have been outside for an hour, and there are a lot of people out there. >> i will be out there at 8:30. >> i know there is a lot of details -- and the drug companies, all the different entities involved. my concern is, these policies that are going to be determined, are you willing to put your own family on those policies and entrances -- and in assurances? well nancy pelosi allow her children to be covered by those insurances? >> as i mentioned before, there was a specific amendment offered before the education and labor committee to require the

president, the vice president, the members of congress to join the public program. the amendment was offered by congresswoman -- a congresswoman in north carolina -- she supported the one offered by congressman blunt in misery. -- missouri. it was defeated saying it was procedurally out of order. in another committee, it may have been adopted. into committees, it was not adopted, and one committee, it may have been adopted. i would say that what we ought to do is increase the opportunity for competition,

increase the number of options that people have, and have that as the answer. do not have a specific public option, and some people disagree, but i believe it will inevitably lead -- inevitably lead to a public monopoly. [applause] >> i would still like to say, if it is good enough for americans, it is good enough for our legislature. make it good. >> the first time i served, i was elected in 1978. the members of congress were not under social security. my thought was, if you think is good for everybody else, you ought to be under it. the bill was passed in 1982 that put members of congress

under social security, forced them to pay into it like everybody else. >> it would get a lot of promotion if the legislators would say yes, i like this. >> you notice a lot of them don't want to be in it. that ought to tell you what is wrong. >> thank you for coming in allowing us to voice our questions and concerns. my question is somewhat related to health care. i know there is a health czar, and 40 or so others. my question to you is what you think about them, and the shadow government being created? [applause] in addition, i want to know who is paying their salaries and what they are. >> let me try to break it down

into two parts. the chart i brought here shows the 53 agencies, departments, and programs that would be created or would have increased programs or policies in them. the colored boxes are new agencies and departments. i use this to provide -- this is the health-care provider on that side. this is you, they call the consumer, i say the patient. the other question you had it is about members in the administration. one thing they looked at was cabinet officers.

cabinet officers are supposed to be top advisers to the president. they thought was important enough for the president to select whom he wished, but to require them to have the consent of the senate. what has happened with the development of czars. even though every administration has had people like that, we seem to have many more this time around. is it a legitimate way for the president of the united states to say, look, i want advisers close to me. i do not need the congress approving by advisers. every president has had that. or is it an attempt to try to get around the constitutional requirement for consideration by the senate and confirmation by the senate. i am worried because it appears -- [no audio]

i find it to be troubling. i find it to be a difficult proposition if, in fact, any administration wants to work with the congress. it ought to upset the senate more than the members of the house, because we do not have the opportunity to have these people come before us. i will admit, on the senate side, for both democrat and republican nominees, the senate has gone kind of crazy on the way they deal with confirmations. there is such a lag time when a president comes then, before he has his cabinet or his people that have to be confirmed by the senate, you put a present -- the president can't have as people there for the first six months or so. we ought to streamline that, and the senate ought to get a grip

on itself. i am still bothered by an administration that seems to be proliferating czars. i do not like the name czar. [applause] old-fashioned historical concern of mine. >> [inaudible] >> i do not know about communists, but i worry about them as they are. >> i agree there accesses and abuses in our health care system today. i disagree with the complete destruction and overhaul of the system. the term throwing out the baby with the bath water comes to mind. [applause] several things come to mind that would lend themselves to constructive legislation. health insurers denial of

payment and limiting payments for unnecessary procedures, medications, and devices which lead to over billing by doctors and hospitals to recoup lost income from health insurers brings about lower payments from insurers and brings about greater inflated billing. on and on, with a ramping up in pricing. it is completely out of the realm of reality. bringing both camps down to realistic starting point based on real world costs will greatly reduce the overall cost of medical service. tied with that, we have the fda. the people of this nation are being poorly served by the fda, an organization that approves drugs with little independent testing. it relies on tests paid for by the manufacturers themselves. it is not looking out for the best interest of all of us.

the fda limits and seeks further control over natural remedies and substances which, in many instances, creates artificial drugs. it allows and encourages over inflated drug companies, and over inflated pricing of medicines. the fda needs to be reached in may -- recreated as a servant of this country. >> most of the complaints i hear, the fda does not improve drugs more quickly or quickly enough. i believe we have tried to respond to that issue by accelerating approvals were appropriate. secondly, drugs that are made for the flu, swine flu, that

sort of thing. it may not be utilized if you happen to be -- happened to make the wrong choice. the government in some places subsidizes its. you also have some drugs that are necessary for immunization on a large scale. we know that a minute number of people or percentage of people are going to have adverse reactions. the lawsuits can be enormous. it could create a disincentive. we have certain immunities that are allowed. fourth, when you talk about natural substances, the congress dealt with that about a decade ago. it was under a bill that was sponsored by senator hatch from utah.

one of the questions we have now is, did they go too far? some people are seeing that they take supplements. supplements are not enforced by the fda. there are those who question quality levels of supplements and whether or not some of the ingredients in supplements are actually harmful for people. we have not recognized that. it is usually athletes, what was in it, what did they take, and so forth. i am not an absolute defender of the fda, but i have to tell you that under all circumstances, with the contending force that combat them, they generally do a pretty good job. i think there are some real scientists there. one of the issues they usually comes up is, what about generics? why can't we have generics earlier? it goes back to our

constitution, the promotion of science. i forget the exact term. it is why we protect artists rights when they write a song or when they perform, we protect new patents for a number of things including drugs. the ada is, we want people to use their ability at coming up with new ideas, and it requires some risk in terms of their intellectual capital and money. in order to have people continue to take that risk, we want to make sure they have a benefit that is financial. the way we do that is to allow a number of years in which they have the exclusive right to that which they came up with. we had a problem 27 years ago when the fda took so long, the effect of life of the patent was very limited.

we had an extension on that. generics come along after the life of the patent is over. they have to prove to the fda that they can produce the very same thing. the patent is available for everybody to copy. so long as they can prove that they can produce the very same product, chemically speaking, in a safe manner, they are allowed to put it on the market and don't have to go through the same sort of approval process as if it were a new drug. so we have these things. there are also other things that are new kinds of pharmaceuticals that are biologic in nature rather than chemical. that as a whole other thing we can go into. i see is after the hour. i promised everybody that i would go up there for a while.

>> congressman, we have time for one more question right here in the front. >> i thought i was in charge, but go ahead. >> these guys from washington and they are in charge of everything. >> since we have such a large crowd outside, everybody in the audience, could you please exit that your right over here to the side. i can't let you go out this way. the police department wants everyone the exit right there. >> yes, ma'am? >> i am a retired registered nurse. i also was a small business owner. i would like to know, maybe someone has asked, private insurance carriers have been demonized by the president and by the congress that allows -- has anybody addressed the fact that medicare sets -- the

insurance carriers follow suit. if medicare says they're not going to cover it, the insurance carriers also did not follow suit. this is a really big deal with the mismanagement of the system of medicare at this particular point in time. had you feel about the fact that we're trying to expand the role of government and we can't even manage our medicare system as it is? we're losing money, there is fraud and abuse. you do not have enough officers to track down that fraud and abuse. the demonizing of the insurance carriers should go back to medicare, i would think. that is a government-run program. that would be a concern for me if we are going to do public intervention. i believe we need health care for all, but we need to do it in a more appropriate way. >> it underscores what i have been trying to say. government does some things very well, but i cannot do a lot of other things.

in this case, it comes down to the question of, as you say, when medicare says they're not going to cover something, that is what the insurance companies do. it gives them only as to what they decide. what happens is, on the government side, if they're going to try to save costs, it is by way of rationing. they do not have an alternative because they are a monopoly. do we want to try to keep costs down as much as we can? there is a way of doing that, it is called competition. we need more information so we can be informed consumers. so that we, as individuals, are empowered to make those decisions, not big brother making them for me. thank you very, very much. i am going to go outside.

we have a town hall on health care in jackson on saturday at 10:30 a.m. and another a week from wednesday over at the city hall at 7:00. thank you for being here and being so courteous. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> he said to go this way. he city can't get through here. >> planning on attending a local town hall meeting? you have a video camera? you can submit your video to air on c-span. visit c-span.org/citizenvideo

for details. coming up on c-span, new jersey gov. john four resigned and the economy -- corzine and the economy. and rep lungren hosting a town ann afghanistan. tomorrow on "washington journal, will talk about the rise in unemployment filings and policy challenges for the obama administration. later, ron geffner, a former exchange commission attorney talks about the disclosure of

american clients to use offshore accounts. and a discussion with ronald kessler about his latest book " and the president's secret service." new jersey gov. john corzine was part of the panel that discussed the future of the economy bloggers and on-line activists. it was moderated by a blogger from "mother jones" website. it is an hour and 10 minutes. >> good morning, everybody. good afternoon to the rest of you. thanks for attending. i am a blogger for "mother

jones" magazine. i will be moderating this session. the topic of today's session is the economy in the twenty first century. what i want to start out with is a couple of minutes setting the stage about the economy. we get to talk about how to fix this mess that we are in. i think we all have a pretty good idea of how we got here. we had the biggest housing bubble in american history. when the bubble burst, homeowners lost trillions of dollars. they were accustomed to using their homes as atm machines. because of that, spending stopped. their wages have been stagnating for the past 30 years. this peaked during the bush administration, and we were

stagnating during an economic boom. that had never happened before. regulation in the financial industry because -- caused things like banks to over leverage and capital ratios went skyrocketing. the collapse of the housing bubble led to the collapse on wall street. in addition, the stock market crashed at the same time. it was a few trillion dollars more of lost wealth. when all of this happened, the global financial system turned out to be a lot more fragile than a lot of us thought it was. we were only able to avoid a replay of the great depression through monetary and fiscal policy from the federal government.

it looks like our economy might be turning around. we are not out of the woods yet. in the 1981 recession, which until now was the worst recession since world war two, it took about seven months as the share of people employed was as large as it had been before the recession. in 1990, it took 29 months before we recovered from that. before employment recovered. in the 2001 recession, it took 55 months, over four years before jobs recovered. today, it looks like we are maybe getting out of our slump. we are facing our third jobless recovery in the past two decades. the jobless recovery is our

getting longer and more jobless every time. we are still stagnating. what we have come into was the american dream that used to be a house in the suburb with a white, picket fence. it is looking pretty rickety right now. that is what our panelists are going to be talking about today. with that let me introduce our panelists. anna burger is the chair of change to win, a coalition of unions representing 6 million workers. and she is a member of the president's economic recovery advisory board. [applause] dean baker is an economist. if he is the co-director of the

center for economic and policy research. he blogs at the american prospect. he was probably on top of the housing bubble before any other economist in america. he is one of the guys that got it right. he is also the author of a founder and plunder, the rise and fall of the american economy. [applause] and finally, john corzine to spend his time in the 90's as the ceo of goldman sacks. he is currently the governor of new jersey. gov. john corzine. [applause] let me start off with a quick question.

maybe you can give us a little bit of an overview at things. given where we have been for the past 10 years and where we are now, what are the two or three biggest risks, challenges that we face going for the next couple of decades? >> let me start with the immediate future. you were saying this in the introduction, we're going to have a long period of very high unemployment. i used to be a big pessimist. i was on a panel the other day with mccain's chief economist. we were all agreeing that we were looking at 10% unemployment next year, continuing the high end of 2011, and backing down in 2013 or 2014. it is an unusually high. of unemployment.

beyond that, are we going to be back in this pattern of bubble and burst growth? a lot of people talk about this period of healthy growth for the economy was growing very rapidly. wages grew at the rate of 1.5% or 2% a year. profitability was very high, and everybody was gaining. then we had this period in the 80's where most of the gains went to those at the top end of the income distribution, which led to this institution -- there is a gap. the biggest risk to me is whether we get back into that story, where once we get the economy back on track, as it of having this pattern of healthy

growth, we get another sort of unsustainable trouble -- unsustainable bubble driven growth. then we're facing another horrible situation. >> what might keep us from getting there? >> the unions are a big part of the picture, and if you look to the post war period, unions were a big factor to make sure that wage gains were broadly spread. over 30% of the private sector was unionized. that makes a very big difference. our trade policy has also made a very big difference. it has been deliberately tilted towards hurting working people. we can have open trade that leads 3 distributing, -- that leads to redistributing, and those are really big parts.

we have to fix health care. president obama is exactly on the mark. it is not just providing health care, but it is an economic meter. if we had the same per person health care costs as canada, gm would of had more than $20 billion of additional profits in the last decade. consider that as a start. >> what keeps you up at night, anna? >> we know how to grow the economy, but you cannot grow our economy on low-wage jobs with no benefits and having people being buried in debt. [applause] we have to grow our way out of the economy. let me say i am so glad to be here, i am glad to be part of

an organization where we can sponsor a nation and the advertisers with you. we work together in the future -- is even more important. making change that works happen does not happen before elections, it happens afterwards. we can make things happen. we need to figure out how to clean up the financial industry we also have to shake the country on its head because everything has been going up to the top. we need financial regulatory reform and consumer protection. we have to turn those jobs in to good jobs. we can do it by investing in low carbon economies, we can do it by creating all kinds of

jobs and the health-care crisis. we have to make sure they're not just low-wage jobs, but good jobs. we need to make sure that when workers want a voice, they can have it and share in the prosperity. what keeps me up at night is that every single day in america, workers want to have a voice and there is an employer that is threatening them, intimidating them, and violating the law so they do not have a voice. i want to see a day when workers can share the prosperity, and we can go back to a time where we shared prosperity across all levels, not just give it to the top 1%. >> what might keep us from recovering? >> i am not going to repeat everything said, but the distribution of income is completely skewed in the country. it is shrinking our middleclass. when that happens, we do not

have an economy that functions well. we have seen huge disparities brought on by a lot of the things that have already been talked about. tax policy is completely biased towards capital as opposed to labor. we need to have a change in our fundamental structure and our tax folks. the idea that you are paying 15% on dividends and capital gains verses marginal rates for middle-class tax people is 25 or 30%. it is unacceptable. there is a lot of work to do there. i believe we have to change our educational policy so that we have skills that are actually matching the world that we live in. we're giving up our competitive edge. we don't have the skill sets

actually compete in the world today. i think that is a huge mistake. it does not mean you have the good of vouchers, it means he had to change your curriculum's and have things to make you competitive. we do not put any money on the making sure that we are leading the world and a lot of these efforts. i believe there are a lot of structural issues. the trade policy is completely screwed up. we do not have free trade in regard currency trading, but we do in regard to production. i believed that there are a lot of fundamental, pivotal changes, all the things that come in on the collective bargaining. there are a lot of things we ought to do if we want to make sure that america's middle-class succeeds.

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they have to say that they tried to hire a u.s. a decision. wal-mart doesn't have to do that when they get shoes from walchina. intellectual property, what an incredibly back word way of financing research and innovation. the biggest downside is in pharmaceuticals. we spend over $250 billion a year on pharmaceuticals. if you had a competitive market, it would be 1/10 as much. this is a really backward way to find innovation. the vast majority of drugs on the market are copycats, they

don't offer new cures. it gives an incentive for drug companies to withhold data. if i do a study and someone calls me up and can i have yoyor data, expected to share this with them. in metal or research, it is never shared. this really impedes research. -- in medical research, it is never shared. this leads to very high prices for drugs and bad medicine. i say we have this very backward in terms of our trade policy and an intellectual property. we go around the world and tell country said halthat we have toe

u.s. copyrights for disney but not fair labor laws. that is backwards. >> we have selectively how we deal with currency challenges across the globe. we leave ourselves in a position that undermines working people in this country because we will allow fixed exchange rates to work against our manufacturing sector and our families. all of these issues are totally disconnected from the rubric of so-called free trade. we don't have free trade anythinon anything other than wt

situates the bottom line for large corporations. this has to be seriously reform who for receip -- before we see the opening up of the manufacturing sector. >> we don't have a long-term economic plan for our country. if we want to move to a low carbon environment and economy, we need to have a plan. we need to think about the innovation, the technology, the job creation. we need to figure out the transition to. around the world, countries are thinking about what would this do to have a fair and just transition. there would be different jobs, a loss of jobs. how do you deal with all of these things at the same time so you can actually move forward. you can take care people who

might be losing jobs. you can do this anyway that creates the best job possible. >> how do we do this? the last half of the century, we lost half of our manufacturing base. where do we go from here? can america exist as a largely service economy? >> is because seeing service doesn't mean it has to be low wage. -- just because it is service doesn't mean it has to be low wage. truck drivers, warehouse workers, we came together to raise our voice and have a

decent standard of living. a person on the assembly line 20 years ago did not have an inherently valuable job, the job is valued because they had a union that got them health care and better job for the fifth children. we can get good wages for service workers or they can raise their kids and support their family. we can do this through organizing and giving workers a voice. at the same time, we need to build a manufacturing base in this country. a green economy is sustainable and this gives us the potential. we can create the technology and the jobs and build things here and change our country. if you think about the need for wethers asians in public and

private buildings, there is a huge amount of work that needs to be done. -- if you think about the need for weather is asiaization. >> governor corzine, you are a governor. what do you think about the greek economy? >> there is a huge effort going on to prepare and train people for restructuring those buildings, bringing water statioweatherization to the buildings. -- bringing weatherization to the buildings. we have installed more solar

panels than any other states besides california. we are going to have more offshore wind. the escalation will produce jobs. we need to make sure that we are producing the turbines and all the equipment associated and we will put money against that. when we do this, we are creating a hole in the industry. this will not solve the problems in the total holistic way. -- when we do this, we are creating a whole new industry. we have to ensure we are investing technologically and giving the kind of financial support that the people who want to make those investments will do it. we need to train the workers which we are doing. we need to set up separate unions that are focused on green

jobs. we need to use a change to the technological field that we're working. >> it has become fashionable to say that the u.s. is never a manufacturing compancountry. the arithmetic doesn't hold up. if you say that we're not point to have a deficit as manufactured goods the 6%. 10%, how will we pay for this? one of the main service exports is the fees that are charged in the ports when people offload ships. we will not pay for manufacturing ports on those fees. one of the major exports is tourism. that is fine except we are sophisticated people and we

clean tables and toilets. there's nothing wrong with that but what about working in a factory? we do have a future manufacturing, there's no way around that. we have a lot of immigrant workers in meat-packing and construction and those are sectors that i often see referred to as low-paid jobs that are unpleasant. they may or may not be an unpleasant but they did not used to be low paying jobs. if you went back in the future, meat-packing was a good job. -- if you go back to the past. whether a good jojob is good ord

depends on what the social situation is and whether it is a union job. >> one of the big reasons for this is, as we know, union densities in the u.s. collapsed. private-sector union intensities are down below 10%. whahow does that change? there is a whole constellation of regulations and appointments to regulatory bodies that has made the economy more and more imaginative. how does that all come together and what do we need to do? >> if you think about history, from 1935 until 1937, workers could have the union if they wanted to. this led to the greatest

economic growth in our country. then they had to go through a terrible election process after new changes. then there was an announcement on class wars on unions. then the employer started to harass unions. right now, most feeble have a union but they might lose their job. one in three workers fowould be fired. workers would be threatened that places would be close, they left a cuts, all things that happen very very often. this has made it harder for workers to have a union. we have been able to hold the standards for workers that have

it. the stand as for other people is slipping away. -- the standards for other people is slipping away. if you look at the private sector rate of 7%-50% density, that would mean instead of having blue dog democrats, we would have a true blue democrats. it is not just about what is good for the workers, it is good for our country. we actually are a political army that can oube out there supporting families. when workers want to have a union, they can have one. it says that when employers violate the law, there will be strong penalties so they don't do it. the third thing is that if they want to have a union, they can and there's a mechanism. right now, there are two wars.

one about keeping people from having a union and the second from ever getting a contract. you can solve those problems, you can do it when you and pass the employee free choice act. workers can have a choice in their job, they can share in the prosperity of the company. that is what is going to happen with all of our support. we will make this happen this fall. we'll get 60 voidvotes in the senate. we will give workers a chance to have a decent life. >> what does hire union density mean? >> i think that this is a big factor. in the early postwar years, you had shared prosperity. we had very rapid productivity growth. this was widely shared throughout the economy. this is a big factor. it is the only factor insuring

that the gains in productivity growth are shared more broadly. this is not just to the union's organizing, also is the indirect effect, the political effect. every piece of progressive legislation would not have gone through without the backing of the union's. the minimum wage would not have passed without the strong support of the union movement will get the direct effect that will have workers in a position to stand for their rights, we will get a much more friendly political structure. >> new jersey has the highest density of unions per-capita.

we have the widest share of benefit programs. my opponent tells me that this is bad. in fact, that is what people come to new jersey. we actually have a social contract to make sure that we educate our kids, try to provide, make sure that the work conditions are in forced. -- enforced. without the union movement, that would not happen. those kinds of commitments would not be made throughout the years. that is why we have quality retirement benefits, quality health benefits. we had brought to dissemination of a prevailing wage and maintaining quality earnings for

people in the building. there is no question that the association of the union movement with shared wealth is a reality. >> does the union movement -- how does the union movement need to change? our unions of the 21st century going to be different? -- are unions of the 21st century. if we did not change for a long time. we were looking at the angus that were only -- we were looking at things that were only involving our current members.

we needed to launch their campaigns. we had to do it globally. if our employees for global, we needed to figure of how to partner with them to put pressure. the teamsters, their school bus campaign was a good example partnering with unions in the u.k. to be able to collaborate across the ocean so we can actually win organizing rights for our workers here. we have had organization of workers all over the world. the labor movement understands that we need to deal with all industries and all sectors and support each other and also a partner in the community. think about what the teamsters are doing.

whether they're parting with the sierra club or the communities, about how to have clean jobs. better jobs for the workers and the committee. -- and the community. people are being recruited to be able to do energy-efficient jobs. we know that there are hundreds of thousands of workers across this country who are taking this stuff off the ships and moving it. we need to organize them and we will never be able to do it unless we deal with the employers who are in other countries. we will begin to change. this is a global environment and if we don't plan it, we want people to deal with the issues here at home.

>> europe is generally more progressive. they have less income and equality and a seed to be recovering from the recession better than we are. -- and they seem to be recovering from the recession better than we are. >> i think that they have more quality, that is clear. -- equality, that is clear. scandinavian countries, unionization rates are 80%. they have much more equality. in terms of the current recovery, i am hesitant. i was very disappointed. most european countries did not have as much stimulus as the

u.s.. one of the reasons why you could get by with less was because it was not the same crisis in the sense that an unemployed worker in germany, france, denmark, they are not in poverty. if you are unemployed in the u.s., you are worried about how to pay for your health care for your rent. unemployment benefits help of course. in europe, they had generous benefits. if you are sitting there in germany with nine percent unemployment, they can probably hanhave that for a time and not have a disaster. i would talk to people in europe and they were not forced to miss

because things were not so bad. >> -- they were not for stimulus because things were not so bad. >> the loss of jobs was last at some countries. i was talking to some unions and they said that in some places where they have strong protections, they did not have layoffs. the global banks had to lay people off in places where they did not have strong protections. in the u.k., there is a lot of layoffs but there was not in other parts of europe. in times, we can stabilize the economy if workers actually have a voice. the reason that they have stronger unions is the custom have law-- because they have loo

protect making unions. we need to organize workers said that we can bargain and bring value back. what you do at your other job determines your american dream. you either win or lose on what kind of job you have. we can give workers a chance to have prosperity and create good jobs, they have better jobs and better paying jobs. >> how does health care fit into this? what are the things that kept them from feeling quite as bad as what we did? they're spending in europe that happens automatically when in the economy goes into recession and this is more than we have the u.s.. one of those things is health care. everyone is still getting

health care. that is not the case here. how does health care reform fit into the economy going forward? >> certainly, it gives people much more security in their jobs. any job will be much more secure if you know that even if you lose it you will have health care for your family. it would be a very different universe if we could count on this. what will this look at at the end of the day? even if you look at the most minimalist to change which would be reforming health insurance so they can no longer discriminate based on pre-existing conditions, that would be a huge thing because you have people who might have a health problem and they're scared that if they lose their jobs, they will never be able to get insurance. that makes a huge difference.

in terms of the economy, we pay more than twice as much as the average for other wealthy countries. it is the same thing as though the government imposed a 1.2 trillion dollar tax on the economy and threw it in the garbage. as an economist, that is logically the same thing. it is a matter if it is the government has bureaucrats shuffling paper or the insurance companies, that is the same thing to the economy. if we can get our health care system under control, it opens up more resources for having a better economy and improving living standards? >> 20% of our budget is health or health-related efforts in the state of new jersey. if we were where you were in a european country, 9% or so, think what we could do on 8 $2-

$3 billion pay down. -- a $2-$3 billion pay down. states across the country are choking on the ability to be able to stay up with these growing health-care costs whether it is for retirees or for providing the help to people. we are providing universal health insurance in the emergency room. this is the craziest place to try to provide health care. this is a point of crisis as opposed to preventive care or wellness. we need a public auction. what actually, i think we need an aggressive option now to be able to capture those kinds of

dollars and we direct them into things that will help our overall economy. we could pay so much more if we are not dealing with the administrative fees and the commissions in the system that are absolutely choking what is the one o going on. >> how big a deal is it to the labor unions to negotiate health care? >> year after year they go and bargain about health care costs because people i have held car, some of the premium will cover those that don't have health care. -- because some people have health care and some of the

premium will cover those that don't have health care. we will be able to bargain for better wages. that would be incredibly important. >> i will be taking questions in a moment. keep this in mind. i want to cycle back to the beginning of the crisis and that was wall street. governor corzine, you have a unique perspective. you were the ceo of goldman sachs. you have been on the other side as a politician.

to what extent do you think wall street was responsible for what happened over the past decade? what needs to be done to deal with wall street in the future? >> first of all, when there's no one watching the hen house, people who are charged with generating rates of return on capital, making money, will go to extremes. that is exactly what happened over a very long time. people were stepping away from the regulatory supervisory responsibilities. people who were regulators did not believe in regulation.

as opposed to supervising, they loosened the rules. if there were innovations, they were excluded from the regulation. this allowed people to build up on risks. a lot people who work that failed institutions went to work at other institutions. i put most of the problem from

the standpoint of not a properly structured predatory set of institutions but more importantly the people that were in charge did not believe and regulations. there were no checks and balances and then risks to was not monitored properly. you have deaf people in charge of the institutions you do have -- you have to have people in charge of the institutions that you have that are responsible to the public. if you are reading and ran for your philosophical format, you

would get a different outcome than those that look at things more realistically. we need new elements of regulation that take into account the advances. we are 20 years into the development of derivatives and there is no effective regulation of those. that is impossible understand. -- that is impossible to understand. i was scared because i saw people using things like this that would impact us. .

there are no consumer protections and how these instruments were used. the initiatives that have some kind of consumer oversight of how financial institutions interface with the consumer market is essential. if we don't do it, we will not have learned a single thing in this process. >[applause] >> i don't want to pick on wall street but the whole financial industry. lack of oversight was a problem but also how it was about greed. they wanted to take risks that would take people's lives and jobs. i do think that we need regulation but we also need to think about how we were

structure of the financial industry. when it is too big to fail, it is too big. we need to figure out how to figure out safe banking to make sure that the ones that are guaranteed for a people are what they said they would be. we need to figure out real structure and real refuse of hedge funds. -- the structure of hedge funds. hedge funds for purchasing companies, taking out the wealth, taking workers and they lost pay. we saw this. it also saw what was happening to our members as consumers. when they were trying to figure out dealing with finance and

they were being sold bad products and things they cannot afford or need, they found themselves losing everything. we approach it from both perspectives, how do you deal with it with private equity hedge funds and the leveraging of debt that is bad for our workers but how do you do with the banking system at the same time? we need real transparency, clean banking systems, also how we are going to deal with compensation. we should not have compensation that is tied to a rational risk. we need to take risk and leverage out of this system so we are not saddled with it. we have ceo's who made huge amounts of money by making bad decisions. in the front line, you have workers who are getting paid low wages and have a compensation system paid on bonuses.

they only get paid if they push that products. we need a comprehensive compensation system that looks at the whole picture so we can take some of that out as well. we need a consumer protection plan, the one that will be debated in congress is really important. i guess this will not surprise anybody but guess who is against all of the regulatory reforms and all of the consumer protection reforms, the financial industry. wall street and the banks. they have come out thinking that they can own our country and get away with it. we are contacted go to the mat and pushed them back so that we can turn our economy around again and cleaning it up. [applause] >> the problem with regulation is that it is present tense. one of the things you cannot

argue about is that goldman sachs is now a bank holding company, they changed their status back at the peak of the crisis in october. this is not a secret. they're supposed to be governed by the fed and regulated by the fed. this is supposed to be much more tightly regulated. it is a commercial bank. they have said that they have not change the way they're behaving at all. they made very good profits, the trading turned out good for them. good for them except had they lost, that was our money. they were betting with our money. they got $28 billion from the fdic. this is what glass-stiegel was invented to protect. they did it right in front of our eyes and now they are handed out millions of dollars in

bonuses. this is like you rob the bank right in front of a police officer. it is incredible. we have some really big problems. one of my recipes, i see the financial system as hugely bloated. we need mortgages, we need all of these things, but if you go back 30 years ago, people got mortgages, the financial sector to find them role to to the size of the economy which was a quarter as large a then as it is today. you're very hard pressed to see what we have gotten for this huge expansion. what have we gotten? are we more secure? can businesses get better access to capital? maybe, but i would be hard pressed to make that case. we need a modest tax like they have been written into.

>> we have created institutions that are too big to fail. we should use the antitrust policy to make sure that you have more security. everyone that actually has implications for the system should be in to the regulatory system including hedge funds. furthermore, there should be a change in the tax structure, which i talked about otheearlie. capital should be treated the same as labor as far as tax policy. [applause] that is how i would go about the issue of transaction tax. we have undermined the flow of resources to society because we have differentiated under this

claim that somehow or another people are not going to work at a marginal rate of 30%. that is a ridiculous argument. that is not consistent with history, the 50's, the 60's, the 70's, the 80's, the 90's. that is a problem going forward. >> now i will open it up to the floor for questions. >> ok, this question is for governor corzine. to what extent do you hold hank paulson responsible for the financial meltdown, specifically in reference to the demise of lehman brothers? >> as you probably know, that is an awkward question for me not because i'm in love with hank paulson but there is some history.

the real problem with the paulson tenure was not the financial crisis itself, it was the failure to do the damn thing about supervising the system before hand. the fact is that to these kinds of problems we have been talking about us so far out of control and there is only talk about deregulating the system right up to july of 2008. there was a study going on about how we were going to make our financial system more competitive and the 21st century that was going to do more deregulation as opposed to actually enforcing the rules of the road. the decision to let lehman brothers ago was a mistake and created a firestorm.

the real issue is the consistency. figuring out how to work out for bear stearns, letting lehman brothers go, to figure out how to do aig. if there had been a consistency, i would give him better marks. the real problem was what happened before the crisis struck. >> ben bernanke, should he be reappointed? >> yes. >> to my mind, he is most responsible for the crisis after alan greenspan. i am not happy about his failure to regulate investment. i think that he acted outrageously in pushing the tarp. he said that the commercial paper market was shutting down. he said that he could directly mbuy it.

if he does not get the job, it would be larry summers. >> he actually said a couple of years ago that part of the problem with the economic inequality is the dehumanization. he said that having workers with a voice and a job actually helps. >> this is probably four governor corzine. 20% of the spending is through insurance and govbenefits, why e you feeding the insurance companies? why don't you go to the nonprofits? >> i am not sure where we would go to the non-profit sector. we have a state health benefits

program which is state-managed but we have to outsource it unless we were going to build the infrastructure which we don't have the resources to be able to do in the current impairmenenvironment. when you get to outsourcing the underline guts of your insurance program, you still end up paying the fees that the insurance companies charge for administering the programs. i am a big believer in a publicly nonprofit focused health-care system, a public auction. i think that medicare actually works. the ministry of charges are a lot less and the same thing goes for the va. -- steven is tradethe administrs

are lot less. >> hello, i am with americans for democratic action in washington, d.c. how do we make sure that this is not a jobless recovery? >> some of the things we've talked about before are really important and i appreciate the question. we need to reinvest. there are opportunities that we have in terms of a low carbon economy, investing in green technology that will be sustainable for our country. transforming our tax policies and our trade policies to encourage job development will do that. i think that there are things that we probably need it. if you think about the impact of the first recovery package, it kept some of the job hemorrhaging from happening. we had some job loss, we did not

have as much as we would have had. one of the ways that we can put jobs quickly, not only do we invest in infrastructure, clean energy, but in our safety net which is desperately afraifraye. local governments have dealt with home foreclosures. they have been cutting off basic services such as home care, child care, elder care. all kinds of things people need. an economic recovery program could keep people back to work and create 07 jobjobs. >> do we need a stimulus program? >> yes, we need something about one trillion dollars.

the numbers that we all agree on, we have this enormous gaffe in demand. you cannot possibly spend too much. you could spend a lot of money and we don't have to worry that somehow we would overheat the economy. we need a second stimulus. we have extended unemployment benefits for people can get them for 52 weeks. what will people do? we don't have welfare anymore. we have a system of support that is good but if people can get work, that is a bad story. at the end of the day, but will boost the economy is trade which means we have to get the dollar exchange down to the acceptable level. >> we are not going to have a jobless recovery if we don't have a second stimulus package,

we will have a resuscitation of growth of unemployment because the states and local governments will not have the ability to deal with their budget shortfalls without massive layoffs. we need one and we need to get planning on it right now. every state that as a realistic projection of where they will be if revenues don't grow and there's not a substitution for what is provided for medicaid and education and civilization under the state budgets is going to have a shockingly large shortfall in the coming year. that will mean job losses and enormous shrinkage of the public sector which is when to end up rolling in to weakness in the coming. >> that is correct. if you think about of painful state budgets, 2011 will be even

worse. if you took the money that was put into afg and bankamerica, we would have been able to get rid of all of their deficits last year. >> the administration has not done a good job of pushing a stimulus. the economy would be in much much worse shape. this is widely shared between economist. you don't want to brag about the economy and shrinking 1% but that is better than shrinking four or five. >> how can unions utilize the wisdom and the direct experience of union workers who are now 70, 80, 90-year-old spoos? how can we get them to encourage

the directions of the unions? >> that is a good point. i was out at a health care campus in pennsylvania where one of the members of mine own local was there and he was well attendevolunteering. when a moved to other states like florida or other places, we need to put them into the community. part of the 21st century is being able to communicate with people. we can do if iphone, blog, lots of different ways. -- we can do it by phone. >> bwe are talking about a financial bubble but i think we

face a much more serious problem which is the environmental. i don't see how we can just try to recreate the financial system by tinkering on the margins. i don't think that mother nature does a bailout package. how would you see the financial industry against the threat of global warming? >> i would have to agree, we have not made as much progress and there's not a lot on the horizon. the bill would be something but not very much. given the threat we are facing from global warming, we will have to do more. the only thing i can say that that is a foot in the door. one of the things i would say is that i wish that infirm angeles would think about the issue more broadly. -- i wish that the environmentalists would think

about the issue more broadly. in europe, it is buses to% of the u.s.. -- in europe, it is about 60% of the u.s. you get more of the year in vacation. everyone is given time off. that is usually not on the list of how we can improve the environment. that would be a really good way to go because it would get a lot of support and be good for the environment. that is not the whole story. there are other things that can help. it would be a lot of things. we will have to do a lot more. >> does it make sense to make new regulation agencies rather

than repairing and auditing d36e securities and exchange commission. >> there are elements of our financial system that did not have the authorization or the purview to be supervising the derivatives market. that is the most direct example. the idea that where we have investor protection but we don't have consumer protection agency in this country is bizarre. this is 2/3 of our economy and people are exposed to all kinds of products, all kinds of

pricing mechanisms that make no sense and there is no one really bringing checks and balances. and consumer protection agency is absolutely essential. it should be driving consumer education in a way that we don't do in this country in irresponsible manner. it leave-- in a responsible man. you have people who do not understand the general concepts involved and finance. if you put people in charge of agencies that don't believe in regulation, you will get the obvious result.

>> we have to look at the government structure of the reserves and talk about taking this out of the control of the banks. we need to look at this. >> you have the banks appointing their own regulators. we don't allow that. i think that we need a consumer protection agency. that was something that the fed was supposed to do. they did not make a pretense of it. the fed has given out two trillion dollars in loans and we have no idea what they did. i don't think they did anything improper but if you have an agency issuing two trillion dollars in loans and no one has a clue where the money went, that is a problem. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

>> president obama comments on afghanistan. later, a discussion of security operations in afghanistan. a hearing on wartime contract in. >> frank mankiewicz, his years as press secretary. that is sending an ounce c-span. >> president obama left for camp david before heading off to martha's vineyard for a weeklong vacation. before departing, he talked about the presidential election in afghanistan. the election commission is expected to release preliminary

results and final certified results about two weeks later. >> good afternoon. i want to say a few words about this week's election in afghanistan. this was an important step forward in that the people's efforts to take control of their future even as violent extremists are trying to stand in the way. this election was run by the afghan people. it was the first democratic election run by afghans in over three decades. more than 30 candidates and more than 3000 provincial council candidates ran for office including a record number of women. some 6000 stations were open around the country. the national security forces took the lead. over the past few days, we have

seen acts of violence and intimidation by the taliban and there might be more in the days to come. we knew that the taliban would try to derails the election. even in the face of this brutality, millions of afghans exercised the right to choose their leaders and determine their destiny. i was struck by the courage in the face of intimidation and dignity in the face of disorder. there is a clear contrast between those that seek to control the future at the ballot box and those that will kill. people are willing to murder innocent muslims, men, women and children to advance their aims. i believe the future belongs to those who want to build and not destroyed. that was the future that was sought by those that went to the polls and the security forces that protected them. the u.s d