to the congressional budget office, you don't need to listen to what one member or the other says, the congressional budget office says that h.r. 3200 will have $239 billion in increased national debt, and will add to our additional debt in additional to new taxes that is in the bill. is in the bill. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @

america's suicide. [applause] the most powerful weapon against america disdain of our history and guiding principles. we are close to losing our liberty. we're patriotic but had almost forgotten why, but we have this moment in history to stop suicide. i have this moment to tell you, david, congress, and president obama, you were never given the right to destroy and enslave the populace. thank you. >> i thank you very much. [applause] charlotte -- will the senate be covered by the same lot that

they an act for us plebeian? -- plebians. i find it reprehensible but a house committee rejected that amendment that said just that. charlotte, you are right. you are very right about that. as i mentioned, dr. fleming and i both thought that that provision. -- authored that provision. on the senate side, that will be my first amendment on the senate floor. if there is any government option in the bill, anything like that, then every house member, every senator, all of their immediate family have to be in and government option, no -- that government option, no other choices. [applause] no special attending physician at the capitol, no special privileges at military hospitals, nothing else. the government auction. -- the government option.

charlotte, anything else to add? >> that is all i wanted to hear. >> john has often the same thing on the house side. >> thank you, david. i set forth house resolution 615, which some of you may be aware of. it simply says that if you vote for a government-run health care system, and you in congress are willing to forgo the waiver in this bill and you will sign up for yourself. as david pointed out, he often said the senate version. to date, we have over 500,000 americans who are encouraging their representatives to do the same. we have 70 fonder -- congressman, including the gentleman behind me, who are also co-authors. i have reached out to every single democrat and house, -- in the house, including nancy pelosi, and not yet one has been willing to sign up.

[booing] >> i am rodney alexander and i represent the fifth congressional district, lying to the north of baton rouge all the way to the arkansas line. i am also co op -- a co-sponsor of dr. fleming's legislation, but i personally believe that if any of these bills lying on the floor pass, it really will not be relevant anyway. i think we will all be under one plan. i think that is the motive, to put everybody under one plan. i think it is even more misleading than having leaders, especially the president during his campaign, who often said, i want to make sure that everyone has access to the same type quality health care that members of congress have access to. well, i want to tell you, my wife and i have been here 42 years.

my wife is a schoolteacher, a full and for over 30 years i have been a member of the louisiana state group benefits health plan, still am today. i do not have access to any more quality health care than the spouse of any other school teacher or state employees in the state of louisiana. the employee is that we have have to pick and choose from the cafeteria plan. if i was offered the group benefits plan, i would have to sign up with blue cross and blue shield. we have to pay for the insurance that we have. we do not have the plan that many people believe that we have. >> and charlotte, you are exactly right. this very amendment you were talking about was proposed in house committee. the problem is the proponents

of the bill defeated that amendment, killed that amendment, including one louisiana congressman voting against that amendment. [booing] lanny, where are you? what did you doing to defeat this bill, and can reconciliation succeed? one thing dr. barasso is doing, is joining with the only other physician in the senate, dr. tom coburn, and they are doing an enormous amount of outrage about this issue because of their medical background. he is doing outreach about this issue because of their medical background. >> very few know as much about the roles as david vitter. i don't know if you have ever been to a reconciliation fight. at the time of the revolution, benjamin franklin said that 33%

of the people were tories. they favored what the british were doing. 33% were timid, and 33% were true blue. and that is what you get in this audience. [applause] in franklin said that the battle is for the timid, to get to the people who have not made up their minds yet. that is what i am trying to do. trying to making sure that the voice of the american people is heard and that the knowledge is there said that people will come to the same conclusions that we do, that this is not what we want for america's future or for our children. >> lanny, did you have a follow- up? >> it looks like we are losing all war in the media. what can we do to solve that problem? >> i understand your concerns.

but i don't care how the media covers us. in august we have been winning the war and we can go on and win the war if we keep at it. [applause] not to me, the big question is this. are we going to keep at it as active, involved citizens? are we going to stake passionate and keep in every phase, every member of congress, in october, in november, however long it takes? [applause] ok, as we gutted donald preston, -- go to donald preston, let me give the rest of the batting order coming up. jean, and joan. first, donald preston. president obama said at a town meeting that medicare advantage

plans do not work. i have had people choice 65 for years and it does work for me. $0 charge for hospital stays and doctors is an example. donald, i agree with you. that is why i am opposed to cutting that out. let me just say, one of the specific proposals from the proponents of this bill in terms of how to pay for it of $500 billion cut to medicare. medicare advantage is at the top of that list. please know that. >> the president has been doing town halls, and he says if you have a program that you like, you can keep it.

and then he says they are going to eliminate medicare advantage, 10 million american citizens. i am sure their people like you right here today. we have only 3000 in wyoming. when they put that program into place, it was intended for people in cities and people in rural communities. that is louisiana. i had the privilege today toward the newly opened louisiana state university medical lab area. incredible state of the art, doctors all around the country and around the world are going to come here to learn how to do with computer simulations surgery. i'm an orthopedic surgeon. it is beautiful what they have there. cardiologists learn how to put stints in two parts. it is absolutely incredible. and they also have a program to help train physicians to train to practice in rural louisiana.

help for their tuition so maybe they will stay in the family physicians, pediatricians, obstetricians, the primary-care doctors that we need in this country and in all our rural areas. i think medicare advantage is very important. we also had a privilege to take a look at the community health center that tulane has. we toward 25 different groups together. it is a labor of love by these physicians and nurses, helping your community. it talks about that type of people in this community. with tomorrow being the fourth anniversary of the tragedy of hurricane katrina, to see what these folks have done and what they started with -- i can ride after the hurricane, and now they are moving into an all -- all designed to help people in the community. this community reaches out, one person helps another.

the community should be very proud of it. if you do it right, both of the universities have been doing remarkable. but getting back to medicare advantage, it means a lot for 10 million people. for the president to eliminated, as a surgeon i take care of a lot people. i will tell you, people on medicare advantage, it helps coordinate your care, and medicare does not do a good job that. medicare advantage does a better job. could do a better job? sure, but to eliminate it, i think that is in a mistake. >> explain the vote in house committee. steve scalise was there. i will put it to steve.

where is gene? >> right back there. >> in that committee, we have many amendments. i co-sponsored a number, including the amendment that would forestall members of congress to join the public plan, even though i do not like the idea of the plan. but germany where your mouth is. -- put your money wehre your -- where your mouth is. if you think it is a good plan, joining. and they all voted against that, every member who voted for the bill voted against that. but we did have an amendment on abortion. that was one built by one congressman to mandate abortion in the bill. there is a lot of dispute on whether abortion is in the bill. don't believe any politician in washington. the national right to life's expressed a strong opposition to h.r. 3200. it would predictably result in the greatest expansion of abortion since roe v. wade.

we brought up an amendment to ban abortion in the bill. we actually passed it on a very close vote. unfortunately, they turned around an hour and a half later, and there was arm- twisting and a lot of games that were played, and you can go watch the tape on c-span, henry waxman brought it back up again and it did our amendment using a procedural -- defeated our amendment using a procedural trick. unfortunately, many budget with henry waxman to allow them to bring it back up again and killed our amendment that an abortion in the bill. it reverted back to the form that it was in, which according to national right to life, would result in the greatest expansion of abortion. there was a record vote, we forced that vote, and we would be happy to get you copies of those votes. but they did occur and unfortunately they defeated the amendment. they allow abortion in their

bill. >> do you have a follow-up? >> i would like to mention that i am very disappointed that the people south of louisiana, who are actually some of our most flavorful and well respected people, are blinded by their representative and his liberal views. he is a good old boy. [applause] >> joan ingram, where is the republican health care plan? democrats keep saying that republicans just say no. do republicans have a plan? >> we have about five different plans. when we did the senate doctor show, tom coburn talks about his plan. i encourage you to come to all our web site and watch the show,

twice a week, it is at republican.senate.gov. it is with the pre-existing conditions that people have. it is designed to let people who buy health insurance to take this same opportunities as the big companies. these have been written about often but not really cover that often in the press. yesterday, as we were doing our senate doctor show, we had an interview with cnn and dr. coburn was asked about it. what republicans have a plan? he went on about things that are in the republican options. why are we getting the press on that? well -- [inaudible]

you will be happy now that c- span is right behind you and they are going to play at this weekend. see the guy right here there? he just waved his hand. [applause] there he is. bernanke. >> any follow-up? >> i wanted to thank you, david. i think you are one of the most maligned at centers in -- senators in washington, but you stand up for yourself and stand- up arrest. -- for us. i appreciate that so much and so do all of us. [applause] as we go to barbara bailey, i want to announce that next batting order. >> the question that john had was an important one. there are a few house bills as

well as the senate bill that you are talking about. there are competing proposals. h.r. 3200, this is the bill that passed a house committee that i post. but in the house, there are two and others, which is h.r. 3400, one that we put on our web site. we have 20 co-sponsors. rodney alexander is a co- sponsor. we have more co-sponsors on our bill than they have on their bill, h.r. 3200. they only have seven co- sponsors and yet there are 20 members of congress, including four medical doctors that have co-sponsored this. it has pooling together. estimates are that you to save $100 billion a year just by common sense medical liability reform and redress for pre-

existing conditions. you could get all of our problem -- lower prices without getting the government involved. >> as we go to barbara, i like to ask the following folks to start making your way to the aisle. allan ross, and cecil bailey. barbara ask, would you vote no on health care plan and no on cap-and-trade? my response to that is, ditto and ditto, absolutely. [cheers and applause] these house members have already voted no on cap-and- trade.

i think everyone on the stage agrees on both of those issues. barbara, any follow-up? >> i sit next to him on the environment and public works committee. when barbara boxer glares at our side of the table, i am not sure if she is a glaring at him or glaring at me. we're going to continue the fight against this program that will cripple our economy, crippled our energy, and make us more dependent on foreign sources of energy, and undermine our national security. thank you. [applause] >> that is all i wanted to know. >> you understand, we each want to be the cause of the glare. we fight about there. is there any hope for tort reform in this congress? [applause] i will give you my honest answer.

in this congress, i think the answer is no. i don't think this congress will ever consider meaningful tort reform. but let me just remind you of the first rule of politics, which i think is relevant there, particularly as we think about the next election. in politics, it is a lot easier to change bodies than to change hearts and minds. so keep that in mind. >> you heard howard dean only a couple of days ago in a candid moment say, well, the reason why we cannot put it in the bills because it will never pass, because of our trial lawyer constituents. >> give him an a for honesty. >> who is more important, but

trial lawyers or the american people? i think you know the answer to that. [applause] and it is fascinating to me, because someone who is practiced medicine, my wife is a breast cancer survivor, we see it from both sides. practicing medicine, i will tell you absolutely every physician, have you ever ordered a test that cost the patient money but actually did not help them get better, because of defensive medicine, you are afraid what happened? every doctor will tell you that they have done it. that costs all of us a lot of money. ending you say, i see that past president of the medical association, president obama was at the ama meeting, he said that we need to do something about lawsuit abuse. everyone just cheered. i don't mean capps.

he kept a completely out of every bill in congress and it is just wrong. when it passed for reform in texas, the rates went way down, and a lot of physicians went there to practice. you're trying to deal with underserved communities. they found that the numbers of these tests that were done with defensive medicine went way down. $200 million is spent each year in defensive medicine that does not help anybody. if you take your kid to a hospital, you get responsible parents i sheet of paper to take on, make sure that their eyes are focusing. you cannot do that anymore.

every one of those young people now get a cat scan or mri to make] sure that there is not bleeding going on to make sure that they are not one in a million. it is not only the financial cost, but all of these people that are getting the radiation now. we do not want that to continue to build up, either. we absolutely need to do something about -- the other thing is about 60% of all the money in the system does not get to the injured person. if there is an injury, the person ought to get something to help them for the loss. 60% of the money goes to the system. that could lead the lawyers, the expert witnesses, and it takes too long. it could take five years. if you want to find a better way to make sure that someone is injured, and to make sure that the money gets to the person that is injured in a timely way -- but as congress does not seem have that interest

which you and i know is critical, something that can really help drive down the cost of health care for all americans. >> doctor, do you have a follow- up? alan ross is a retired marine, served his country for years. [applause] he served his country at a reduced rate to earn retirement and health benefits. what about that versus just giving the stuff away to nonproductive people? would you like to elaborate? [inaudible] >> i spent 20 years in the marine corps.

the two benefits is military pay after 20 years, if you can get out and do something else. you get medical benefits for life. those of the two big things. i can see right now if this passes, just the ordinary person that sat on the couch his entire life and has the same benefits that i earned at a reduced rate, you do not have to do anything for it. [applause] where you going to do to the hundreds of thousands of retirees that are in the same boat as me? >> i hear you. yet if a bill like the obama plan passes, what deficits and debt that are already skyrocketing in terms of the

federal government, you don't think that that is going to squeeze everything in the budget, including what we have for our soldiers and military retirees? of course it will. of course it is going to squeeze all of that. any follow-up? thank you. thank you for your service. [applause] john flemming was a military doctor and you saw that first hand. >> i just visited with the va up in shreveport. this issue came up. how will it impact active military duty and their families? as far as i'm concerned, no one deserves the best that this country can give than those who were the uniform of the united states of america. [cheers and applause]

so why should we give free health care for people who do not belong in this country and deprive it of those people who have given the ultimate sacrifice? [cheers and applause] >> that is a good set way to learn next question. if they pass this health care reform, will it cover illegal aliens? cecil, i will give you my answer. there is nothing in the bill that says it covers illegal aliens. under the four corners of the bills, it does not. but there is nothing in all of

these other benefit programs that says that he does to illegals either, and in practice it absolutely does. it always does. it always does. furthermore, when the other side talks about 45 million uninsured, a full 25% of that figure are illegal aliens. i will be honest with you. i think that is a problem, but a law enforcement one, not health care one. [applause] cecil? >> i was just wondering why in god's name are we responsible for somebody's health that is not supposed to be here to begin with?

>> every one of iraq agrees with you. -- up here agrees with you. part of the motivation is of the amnesty program they can make those folks voters and tip the balance in terms of every future election in this country. [booing] let me give you the next batting order. mary, carolyn, and robert. mary asks, thank you for standing up for life. we all did the same. [applause] was an end and would you put in the bill that will ensure that taxpayer funds will not be used to fund abortions, since the hyde amendment is not a permanent provision? >> they are trying to do that in the health committee bill.

there was amendment about how money would be spent. the republican said that it sounds like it might pay for abortion. the republicans brought an amendment that said, just make it clear, no money in this bill will be used to pay for abortions. that was our amendment. and that amendment lost. all the republicans voted for the amendment as well as one democrat, casey from pennsylvania. but when you have 13 democrats, 10 republicans on the committee, they can always let one go to vote on our side. the vote was 12 against, 11 for our amendment, so the amendment failed. it says to me that they plan to use federal money to pay for abortions, although it does not actually say that in the words. it looks that way because they defeated our amendment that says

no money will be used. we're going to try to do the same with the bill that is in the finance committee. we will continue to try and make sure that federal money does not go to pay for abortions. right now it looks to me like it does. >> do you have a follow-up? >> i think it is so important because most people in our country are pro-life, and i think it is important that u.s. senators and congressmen, that you stand for life, make sure that you get something into the law that says that our taxpayer money will not kill unborn children. thank you. god bless you. >> absolutely. [applause] and again, i want to underscore what john and steve have said about this, because it is so important. the proponents of the bill say, this is not about abortion. the abortion word is not in this

bill. it is not there. many conservatives say, ok, but we want to make sure, so here is an amendment that specifically, clearly says, no taxpayer funds in this bill for abortion, and in the same proponents of the bill kill the amendment. what is going on? it is a clear conclusion to reach that that is a very valid threat. ok, how is the panel that would make decisions on treatments selected, and what are their specialties and qualifications? that level of detail is not in these bills, but there is clearly a move toward that. going back to the stimulus bill earlier this year, there was a panel set up, so-called comparative health outcomes

panel, many of us fear that it is leading exactly in this direction, which is exactly what they have in the national health care system in great britain. >> and india's committees, that will lead is the president on where they should spend the money and use the money. comparative spending, likely approved by the president, and it gets down to the point that you just made. kathleen sebelius, the head of health and human services -- [booing] i was on cnn with her a week ago, and what she said is, don't be distracted by the details. [laughter] well, the american people are focused on the details. we care about the details.

that is what this is all about. is very personal. it affects everyone of us very personally. let's do a show of hands, how many people think that you are personally out of your pockets will be paying more for health care than you are paying right now? look at that. every hand is going up. how many people here in the audience thinks that your health care is going to be worse than it is right now? every hand goes up. so the details matter to everyone in this room and we're going to fight over the details. [applause] >> carolyn nixon. the president said that if we like what we have, we can keep it. one way that he will pay for his plan is to cut medicare advantage. how can he say both?

[laughter] >> i have heard him say both many times. at the same times, he says we can keep the doctors and keep the plan that we like. we have medicare advantage through our social security, we have humana and we have been very place. -- pleased. my husband was pretty much saved by it. >> that is a great point. >> you are exactly right. he has said both of those things. both of those things are completely contradictory. sure. >> at this question about medicare has come up a couple of times.

i have practiced for 30 years. this is something, dated day economics that doctors are involved in. medicare is a beautiful house on a very weak foundation. you need to understand that. right now, doctor reimbursement has been cut to the bond. if a doctor has too many medicare patients and not enough private insurance patients to offset that cost, he will go out of business. many of them have. as a result of this, if you expand medicare and the single payer opsin idea, and you pull more of that private insurance that subsidize medicare, the whole system will cave in. that is the whole problem. that is why people on private insurance will not be on private insurance five years from now. it is like a black hole. and if nothing is done to medicare in terms of damage to

it, it is going to run out of money in eight years, ok? it's heading for a train wreck. the president is going to take out $190 billion to eliminate 25% who are in medicare advantage. that leaves another $300 billion. a president says that it will not come from services but out of the providers. ok, our heart surgeon today is paid 33% of what he was paid just a few years ago. an eye surgeon is paid the same thing for cataract as he was in 1964. if you take $300 billion at that system, was the chance it will, of services? -- coume out of services? extremely high. if anyone should be concerned about going to government-run health care, you in medicare should be the most concerned, in my opinion. [applause]

>> this is been a very important point. if you like what you have, you can keep it. i strongly believe in that. but some going around talking h.r. 3200 -- but in their bill, right on page 15, a health benefits plan shall not be a qualified health benefits plan under this provision unless the plan meets the applicable requirements. do you know what this does? the health care czar -- we need to be rid of all of these czars. we do not need to have another czar. [cheers and applause] it sounds like some of you may

have read that section. if you look at this section right here, this gets the health care czar the ability to take away your plan even if you like it. we tried to remove this from the bill. not one member who voted for the bill would vote with us to remember it. they will be able to take it away and it is not right. >> james? james bruce, let's go this quickly. it is my understanding that acorn will be participating in the national census. right now, they are an unofficial partner with the u.s. department of commerce in the u.s. census. [booing] i had specific amendments on

the senate for the bar that. both times they were defeated by i near party-line vote. two democrats, every other democrat voting know. -- no. we need to change that sort of vote outcome. two points -- tort reform and caps on pain and suffering, and a crackdown on fraudulent health care. what do we think about that? >> tort reform is critical. we have to get that part under control. if you want to get cost of care down, if you have to get rid of all lot of unnecessary procedures, defensive medicine. $200 billion that we can save the system. [unintelligible] talking to doctors there, is 30% cheaper than if you are in

iowa. but the things that you mentioned, the other ways to do that, as opposed to iowa, delivering a baby there is 30% more. it all has to do with all laws and we need to make sure that we did that. you talked about this long bill and we could dissect all the pages. that trickery, the financial trickery in these bills is something. to try to keep the cost -- the first question about the cost. to try to get the cost to $1 trillion. these are astonishing figures. they are going to collect tax money for this for nine years. they are only going to pay for services for six years. you have not heard that before, probably. but those are the details of the bill.

but costs are going to go beyond that. yet this does not break our country, that absolutely well. we need to know more about the specifics about the details that are in this horrible bill. >> any follow-up? >> i have a message that i would like you to give nancy pelosi on my behalf. [laughter] not only did nobody nobody bribe me to come here, i had to give up overtime pay. if they do not stop driving us to socialism, it is going to be nasty. that is the message. >> thank you. [applause]

i can tell you that we will help deliver that, but all of you can deliver it much more effectively. you are doing that, so keep at it. [applause] okay, next batting order, and this may have to be the wrapup. brian, armand, william, and glen. bryan says, we cannot afford another $1 trillion bill. how can we defeat this madness? i hate to tell you the real cost estimate. i think the best cost estimate is $2.20 trillion to $2.40ysñ trillion over tend years for full implementation. he goes up from there. the nonpartisan cbo says that costs is a huge issue. instead of ending the cost

curve down, it has been in the cost curb up and making it worse. this is a non-partisan body, and the head of the cbo is appointed by nancy pelosi. brian, do you want to follow up? >> thank you, senator. and i thank you for holding all these town hall meetings. unlike the so-called declared opponents who seem to be afraid to even hold one meeting. i want to thank you for coming here today and being so forthright. [applause] >> this is 19 and counting this month. we will keep going on so it will not end. do not worry. [applause] >> what can you all do?

you have two of united states senator, and one of them are going to vote against this. it is up to all of you to make sure your other united states senator votes against this bill. [cheers and applause] >> why isn't anyone asking the question about trashing this bill and starting over, writing it so people can understand the bill? armand, i agree with you completely. any 1000 page bill, no matter what the topic and who writes it, is likely to be really dangerous and really full of foolishness. in terms of process, i would much rather have three or four or five focused 30-page bills that deal with specific

problems, like pre-existing conditions, like associated health plans, like tort reform. [applause] there are absolutely problems to fix and we need to fix them. but we need to use a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. follow-up? >> when you represent a lot of people in your district a five- page bill is enough. you don't need all these pages. i would want my constituents to tell me, here is the bill, e- mail me and call me and tell me what you think. that is the way i would vote. >> absolutely, thank you. william?

is there anything the republicans can do to prevent the democrats from passing the 1000-page bill in the senate with only 51 votes? that is a great question. he goes back to this issue that was brought up earlier called reconciliation. in the senate, where john and i work, almost everything has to pass by 60 votes. not a simple majority, 60 beds. i came to the senate after the 2004 election and i was actually part of a big republican freshman class that put us at 55 republicans. i thought that this 60-vote roh was absolutely ridiculous. but it had been growing on me since then.

almost everything takes 60 votes. the only exception is the process called reconciliation. and certain things are very complicated. certain things if they are directly related to the budget can pass by a simple majority. the democrats were looking at that option and because of that, i have internal staff and experts who are looking to figure out what about the overall plan could be passed, a reconciliation with a simple majority and what could not. we are doing a lot of work to prepare for that fight. i will give you my impression, which is half of the entire plan could be passed through a simple majority, but the other half could not. this is very imperfect to do everything that they want to do.

>> if this thousand page bill passes, there will be able to interpret this any way that they want. they will have total control over our lives. >> you are right, because even at 1000 pages, much of this language is very broad and a lot of the language has new bureaucracy to write the details. the devil is in the details and we need to know about this before this becomes the law. is there any way to get an alternative bill on the floor that will reform health care through free enterprise by allowing trade with the professional associations. number two, what can we do to

convince congress to approve the government -- to oppose the government auction, which would result in socialized medicine. two great questions. >> in terms of the rules to be used, we will continue to bring the bills and put out these issues, and in the two years that obama was in the united states senate, he voted against allowing people to purchase health insurance across state lines, and he was against letting individuals write this off of their taxes, and savings accounts for a number of these things. item after a crucial item he voted against this. the numbers are against us right now, but we have the vision and values, and we will use every tactic that we can, but mostly

we need the help of the american people. we need everyone in this room talking to your friends and telling everyone to get to the elected representatives so everyone sees the danger for the future of the country. this is breaking the glass that you will not be able to put back to america -- put back together. this will change america forever in a way that is not good for the nation. >> these house members have already been pushing the alternatives, and the amendments to take out the government auction. >> by the way, you have probably

heard that there are members of congress who have not read the bill. i have read the bill. we will be glad to leave you a copy if you would like to go over it. there will be a movement to take the option out of the bill. when we go back to washington, the dialogue has been taking place, that we will have to remove the public auction. and i think -- i do not know if there is a specific bill but i think that we will be asked to vote on some kind ofla pn between now and the end of the year. >> even if you take the public

auction out of this, the government auctioned -- if you take this out, there are lot of things in the bill that will not be good for the country. >> i think for the last couple of weeks we have seen an incredible citizen movement, people reading the bill and expressing their concerns. as some people are going back and looking for people -- they say they will take up the public auction, and they will do a co- op. this would be just like the public auction, the one thing you have not heard them say, no one is willing to take out the $800 billion in new taxes. not one of them says there would be willing to take out the rationing under the bill. let's go to some of these

common-sense alternatives that will fix the problems without breaking the things that are working. >> and let me underscore that, -- [unintelligible] let me _ and your -- let me underscore your point. there is a big move to be bipartisan and agree to a compromise. and you know what? many times that means the following. you have a terrible bill and you pass the amendment so this is now just a really bad bill, and

then you will pass this. that will not be my task. [unintelligible] what i just described it may be washington's definition of bipartisan. that is my definition of selling american down the river, and we will not do this.

do you have a follow up? >> there was one thing i wanted to share. i have a wise step father, and i asked him once, why is it that the doctors -- the doctors in england hate their socialized medicine? the answer was amazing. he says, because they have to play god. they have limited financial resources, and they have to make decisions about who will get medical care and who does not. the older people will go home with a couple of aspirin, when they know if they did expensive surgery, they could save their lives. >> that is wrong.

there is one thing that is more scary, and that is the government playing god. [applause] we are going to try to get to three more people, this is -- michael says, how can we know that the tax dollars will not pay for abortions. we spoke about that. i will ask if i can go on. what will be the ramifications on the home health, and the agency is providing those services? i have been a therapist for 30 years. any of the doctors want to take this? >> let me approach this more broadly.

anytime that you have a government health care system, you will run into a budget limitation and once this hits the budget, you have to simply decide how it will allocate those resources. we have heard testimony from people from canada and the united kingdom, and the stories that we heard were spying chilling. the lack of care to people who have coverage is much worse than people here without coverage. one example was a child to needed something for his ears, and nine months the developed a brain infection. another was a young mother, who was born with a spinal disorder and she needed surgery. after years of waiting, and she was partially paralyzed, when

she asked why she could not have corrective surgery, the answer was, you have not suffered enough. these are the realities in a government run health care system where the resources are allocated. this is broken down into something called quality. if someone is 70 and has elements, their life is less important than someone who is 40 years old. these resources -- they will be given out according to how productive and how valuable that your life is. the older and sicker you are, the last valuable that you will be. >> 99% of my home health

patients are on medicare, and that will be the problem. will have huge cuts to medicare. thank you. [applause] howard dean says that there will be no tort reform. if a patient under a government health care plan has a legitimate malpractice suits, will he or she be able to sue the government or just be out of luck? today, he can sue a private health plan or provider. i will tell you live here. and this is particularly significant to doctors and other providers. i think this proposal offers to doctors and other providers potentially the worst of all worlds. it potentially offers them socialized medicine, like in

england, without malpractice protection. in england, doctors have that protection. that does not make the system did, but they have that protection. here, doctors and other providers could face the worst of all worlds, and i do not think it will be the government getting sued. it will still be individual provider's. -- individual providers. >> thank you, david, for that answer. i still think it is good to be a bad bill. thank you for taking the time to come out here. [unintelligible] he must be in a fact-finding mission summer in south dakota or another country. thank you for voting against the the stimulus and thank you for voting against the clunkers. >> we're going to be able to take three more questions.

bill, janet hayes, and don squeezebac. will you support legislation that will provide military retirees with benefits similar to the ones in place? >> certainly, i will do everything in my power to protect those benefits and make sure it or try to make sure a new plan does not erode those benefits. but i am very concerned that a new big the government plan would end up eroding those benefits or even come eventually, collapsing that system into the bigger system. anybody else want to respond? bill, and a follow-up? >> david, first of all, and mike, thank you so very much. i want to thank you so much for everything you have done.

i am a little confused, as most of us are. a lot of us here are on fixed incomes on social security. we have been told that social security will drop this following year because of increases in medicare and that there will be no cost-of-living increases. you have to explain to me why that is because medicare is going to increase and reduce our social security benefits. we cannot sell their houses. where is our cost of living increases? >> you're right. with medicare cost increases, that means you're coming out behind. you're not even staying in the same place. that is a great point. i want to mention another cost- of-living adjustment, too, though. i have legislation about it. there is, under present law, an

automatic pay raise of virtually every year for members of congress. [booing] a that is ridiculous and that is offensive. i have a bill to take that away so there is no automatic pay raise. [applause] we have actually put enough public light and public pressure on that issue that we passed that through the senate appeared now we have to pass it through the house. -- past it through the senate. now we have to pass it through the house. real quickly, janet hayes, all hospitals are clogged up with the uninsured. we are in the red. you support the charity system and the charity hospital being reopened? >> i support that. it is long overdue in downtown new orleans. but i also support using a different, better model and

having many follow the patient and not just follow big government institutions. janet, i am sorry, we need to wrap up. don says, which is being done with the is ours? is the people to do that -- is it possible to -- with the czars? is it possible to do that without oversight? >> i think they're absolutely unconstitutional. [cheers and applause] any big presidential adviser like that, like a cabinet secretary, is supposed to come before the u.s. senate for confirmation. this is a complete and run around that. this is completely unconstitutional.

i am going to fight that. unfortunately, i don't think that is going to change. the majority in the senate says it has to change. [applause] who pays their salaries? you pay their salary. we'll pay their salary. jeff. >> thank you all very much for being here helpmates thank you for bj for being here. tell me thank all of our guests -- thank you all very much for being here. thank you all and help me thank all of our guests. [applause]

the middle east institute in washington today about the boom and bust cycle in the region's oil market. this is almost an hour. >> he teaches political economy and lectures on gulf politics and political violence and

radicalization. stefan has published widely and has a couple of books coming out. one is on saudi state building called "princes, brokers, bureaucrats, oil and state in saudi arabia" to be published by cornell university press and another book called "engineers of jihad" about islamic radicalism and higher education that princeton will be putting out. but today stefan will be talking about the political economies of the gulf and taking a look at the current economic situation in the region and comparing it to the last time the gulf faced an economic crisis which was in the 1980s and while the current economic recession has hit many western countries quite severely, although the gulf has been affected it has not been as badly hit as other countries and we'll be looking today at why that is. before we do so, on thursday september 10th, we are fortunate to welcome a yuck young man who

is a former uk leader of a radical islamist group. he had a prison conversion and he is now working to combat extremism through his foundation called the killian foundation. he will be here talking about how to encounter extremism in pakistan. on september 11th we have two academics scholars, paul is executive director of the university of maryland guilden horn institute for israel studies, i lan is with lafayette university. they will talk about israeli/arab peace negotiations, what works and what doesn't. finally somebody with an answer, a solution. now please join me in welcoming stefan hering to. >> kate, thank you very much. i'm very flattered, i'm very

grateful and honored to be invited in the first place. i would like to come back to d.c. i have fond memories of the archives work in the national archives when i was writing my ph.d. it is not everyone's idea of fun but i always say and it sounds very sad, some of the most interesting hours of my life in archives. i'm glad to be back. i'm flattered by the turnout given that i have to compete for attention with former leaders of jihadist groups. so today i'm going to talk about rather technical and dry but i do hope that i can give what i'm going to talk to you about a more political spin and talk about some of the more underlying political shifts that have happened in the cause of recent economic developments in the gulf and what i'm

essentially planning to do is that i'll briefly look at the first oil boom in the gulf unfolded in the 1970s and how that compares with the recent oil boom since 2000, 2002, 2003 and how those two bomb booms c in the political economy that underlies the distribution, the bargaining that happens between states and societies. in very simple terms, what have the gulf states done in the early 1970s up to the early 1980s with their money and how has it shaped politics in the gulf and how does it compare with the distribution of strategies and bargaining in the last ten years. the argument in a nutshell is going to be that one important player in the political economy of the gulf, that is the private sector, the big merchant families, the big businesses in

the gulf. they have shifted their role in the political economy rather the political economy rather fundamentally.@@@@@@@@@ @ @ @ @b the political economy has evolved a lot and they have a very powerful and reasonably sophisticated private sector there that has begun to shape politics. on the other hand you have the population at large, the bulk of the population which continues to be deeply dependent on the distribution of the state. they continue to operate in bureaucratic center rgs, enjoy state employment, relatively

idle employment in many cases and that is part of the bargain has not shifted since the 1970s. those state society relationship whether the state is the giver, the distributor, an omnipresent worker state and the population at large, the middle class the working class totally dependent on the state and have not gained either economic or political autonomy. i'll use when it comes to the example of saudi arabia as a case study, but it applies to all of the gulf states. that starts the evolution from the 1970s but the trends are the same in all of the six places. first of all, i talk about what the states have been doing with the money they've been getting. they have been recently getting a whole lot of money. if you look at that graph here

you see the blue line is saudi data about state revenue and expenditure the blue line is the revenue, increasing rapidly, but the expenditure happened quickly. the money they got they spent domestically. the same happened in the recent oil bomb. in 2003 revenue shot up rapidly and expenditure seems to have followed. you look a bit more closely at another metric and that is the share of revenue as a percentage of gdp and the share of expenditures as a proportion of gdp. then you see that actually in the 1970s, expenditures shot up rapidly from the mid 1970s and state expenditure was the dominant factor in the national economy. and interestingly that has not

happened the last time around. although state expenditure has grown in absolute terms, relative to the economy at large, the state has not become more important, state expenditure has not become more important whereas revenue has, in fact, become larger as a share of the total economy. that means other things must be going on at the same time. state expenditure is growing so fast but not as a share of gdp that means that private economic activities must be growing at least as fast. a similar picture in kuwait the absolute revenue and expen dechur numbers here which then again if you look at them relative to gdp shows state expenditure has not increased relative to the total economy during the recent boom, in fact, it has gone down a little in kuwait which has particular political reasons in the kuwaiti

case. you can show similar graphs in the other four gulf monarchies. this time around the state has been more cautious in its spending policies. if you look at the compound annual growth rate of the saudi state, the income of the saudi state, in every year of those six years state income has grown by almost 1/3 but at the same time state expenditure has only grown by 14%. they've saved more than half of the additional income growth they have had. if you compare that to the 19d 70s oil boom, their income grew very rapidly but they spent all of it right away because the growth rate of the two are almost the same. so that means first of all some lessons have been drawn from the

last oil boom. they are saving a lot more. they are putting money in the piggy bank for the day oil prices are not that high. that day arrived in late 2008. it means they have a much, much longer breath now when it comes to deficit spending. in 1981 which was the end of the first -- the peak of the first oil boom, when saudi arabia had amassed at that boom time the maximum of savings, those savings corresponded to one total government budget. in other words if they lost all revenue, if the iranians or israelis had nuked the oil terminal, the saudis would have had enough money to go on spending and operates their government for one year without any revenue from anywhere. this time around this ratio

corresponds to three years. they have saved more than three years' worth of state spending in overseas and domestic financial assets. the same ratio in qatar is more than four years, that means they can operate on a high level of spending for a long time even when prices are low. that was not the case in the 1980s when pretty soon the states with relatively oil income per capita like bahrain and saudi arabia, they had to cut into their spending. this time they don't have to because they have been more cautious. what does all of that mean for the structure of the saudi economy and the relationship between the saudi government and the business sector? first of all, if you look at the relative shares and composition of gdp since the early 1970s you

see that, of course, oil again has become a more important part of the economy with increasing prices. a graph based on nominal prices, current prices, not real prices. in real terms oil prices are as high as they were in the peak of the oil boom in the 1970s and '80s. the oil sector is not crowded out government spending and private sector economic activities. there is quite a lot going on outside of the oil sector. business remains a lot more important despite the very high oil prices. how do oil prices and government spending affect business developments over time? this is a pretty involved relatively technical graph but let me walk you through it because it tells an interesting story. you have here the black line which is the oil price in real terms. you see the first spike in '73,

the next spike in 1981 with the iran/iraq war and the aftermath of the iranian revolution then you have all these bands here in different colors which are the shares of different sectors of the economy in the total economy. and you see, for example, the violet which is the oernship of dwellings, the money made through real estate ownership mostly through renting out property and you see here the red band which is construction, contracting. those are classical boom sectors. people make a lot of money when commodity prices come up through the fact that the demographic grows, there is more purchasing power, represents go up. people can make a lot of money through property. a lot of construction, infrastructure, private housing in construction booms.

so a great time to be a contractor in the gulf and saudi arabia and in particular in the 1970s. but then when the oil price went down from 1938 those sectors really crashed. there were probably hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies of small contracting companies. it is a typical kind of klondike phenomenon, same in alberta, canada w the oil. what has the most recent oil spike done to the structure of the saudi economy in comparison? that is not the typical boom time explosion of rental income and of the construction sector, but, in fact, saudi economic development and the structural economy are much more stable and much more solid.

on the one hand you don't make as much money as a contractor, but now the oil price has gone down much less fluctuation, much less volatility in those historically boom-dependent sectors. it looks like the economy son a more permanent growth path, it is more resilient and doesn't react on a short-term basis to those kinds of fluctuations. that is really a good sign. i could walk through those other sectors but if you've got specific questions on finance, manufacturing and the relationship to oil prices we can take that up in the q & a. this is essentially the same graph, not with oil prices as the black line but government spending as the black line. it looks essentially the same showing you government spending has traced oil prices relatively closely. the full black line is current spending and the dotted black

line is capital spending. that is spending on infrastructure, physical assets. you see that, that has really collapsed after the mid 1980s because the government did not have money anymore to pay for infrastructure because they had so many salaries to pay through its current spending budget. so that was the first eye ball test showing that it seems that the structure of the saudi economy and saudi business is more resilient and les dependent on the oil prices and government spending policies of the day. now, this is something that can be confirmed through a number of economic metric tests. changes in government spending and how that affects the size of the business sector. time series, regressions, confidence intervals and

co-efish yeco- co-efficients and you have to believe me when you look at this graph here you see that the growth of government spending is tracked pretty closely by the growth and the size of the private sector. up to the mid 1980s and after that, those two lines really move together pretty neatly. after that there is a decoup decoupling. there is quite a bit of fluctuation in spending growth or in spending declines, but the growth of the private sector seems to be on a continuous line. if you do that through all kinds of models you get that confirmed in the statistics, that saudi spending in the 1970s had a much stronger effect than the

nowadays. so that is quite convincing evidence that the business classes have become more independent of state spending. that is the basic political message behind all the figures and all the technical language. so there are a number of other ways in which the private sector has become more independent of government. the first one of which has to do with the structure of spending. much of the business growth during the 1970s was driven by government capital spending. that is spending on bridges, roads, buildings, machinery, physical infrastructure. how you spend that money you give contracts to private contractors. that gives you a lot of political discretion. you can choose who gets the contract. you can build up relationships of patronage, specific

clienteles in the business sector. that is what happened. a lot of the contractors became rich because they had the right connections to the right members of the ruling elite. nowadays although the state is spending more in absolute terms, actually most of the spending and that is true of the other gulf countries is current expenditure. what does current expenditure mean? operation and maintenance expenditure, some contractors, some direct allocation of money to businesses involved, but most of it is salaries for employees in the public sector, salaries for bureaucrats. now so many are employed in the government than in the 1970s. that current expenditure shot up with the current boom because they started employeeing people, they increased wages and welfare spending. all that kind of money at the end of the day is recycled

through the private sector. businesses get to handle the money because the consumers money because the consumers a),@@ @ dn @ @ @ political distinction between the first and the second oil boom. you see here, in fact, that although the saudi population has grown rapidly up until now, the share of civil servants and

the total population has grown at the same time. now per 1,000 saudis, you have something like 43 civil servants according to the ministry of civil service statistics where you only had 20 in the mid 1970s. at the same time the population has tripled so you have six times as many civil servants and six times as many people drawing salaries. the majority of people, in fact, are still employed in the public sector, the majority of nationals, not expatriates. they have a lot higher salaries. most of the purchasing powers from nationals comes from civil service employees. those are some figures that give you a sense of the distribution of female and male saudi employees in public and private sector. i can tell you right away those are probably wrong because, in fact, the saudi state employees

twice as many people in the public sector than you see in that graph because a lot of them are employed in the defense sector, the minister of interior, which has 5,000 employees but we don't have figures on that. the bottom line being that most saudi nationals are still employed by the state. the same is true. we don't have to run through all of those detail figures. the same is true of all the gcc countries. the bulk of the population is dependent on state employment. this is just a wrapup of the argument i just made based on those graphics. that is that government salaries or in some cases private salaries in government cases constitute most of the private consumer demand. in the uae there is a bit more of real private sector salaries

that are not derived from government projects but that has declined in the recent bust and in particular in real estate sector in the uae. that means despite much low e. pen di chur on contracts and physical infrastructure on the government, rents, oil money spent by the money, still dominates as a demand in the gcc countries. it stl runs the economies but the politics has changed in the sense that the government has much less control over how those funs. that is the basic point of salaries being recycled and the government with projects. the private consumer decisions means real markets are created. you are in real competition. you have to run a nicer, better

supermarket than the other merchant family if you want to capture that demand. you can't be schmoozing with a prince. you have to be a real business man. that is essentially what happened since the 1980s. the collapse of capital spending forced the private sector to focus on private demand and that meant they had to engage in competition and become more professional. that in a business class and that is still opaque and informal at the core but runs a much tighter ship and is more professional than most of the business class in most of the other arab countries, because they've been operating in a competitive environment for more than 20 years now. so the take home line is that those are still raunchy economies, but those are raunchy economies where the rent cannot be used politically in the way it could be in the 1970s, and

those are raunchy economies which have a real capitalist clause, which is not something that was the case 20 or 30 years ago. there are other signs that the private sector has become a much, much more serious player. it's been returning to the provisional public services. in the 1930s, a lot of schools were funded by the private sector. the few power generators that you have, the potable water was all provided by the merchant class because the states has no money or infrastructure, and the merchants were completely pushed out of those sectors by the expansion of the raunchy estates and subsidized public services from the 1960s and '70s and on. and now they're returning to it. now you have private schools, you have public/private partnership in the provisional

power in electricity. you have a triple back of the private sector of the merchant capitalists into serious areas of public service, where it's been completely mar lly margina. the government still continues publish private partnerships and this again means that business has a different bargaining position because it's not just the recipient of rent but a provider of expertise that is needed by the government. the government has started to spend again on infrastructure, all of those countries but much less so than in the 1970s.

you see that current expenditure still dominates capital expenditure, but they're now building again roads and bridges and refurbishing the infrastructure. and in fact, most of capital expenditure, most of the infrastructure being built, the machinery being bought is now being purchased or built by the private sector. so private capital information still dominates public capital information and that does include -- well, a lot of real estate speculation and it does also include real investment in infrastructure and in public services by the capitalists. there's another way in which the local capitalists have become more powerful, that is they have accumulated so much money over the years that they keep overseas and that gives them a negotiating position vis-a-vie the government.

if the government has any interest in repatriating that capital. that doesn't even require that those businessmen negotiate collectively with the government. if the government doesn't provide the kind of business and regulatory environment that would attract that capital, that capital is just never repatriated. but even without any formal political negotiations, there's a structural power to the local capitalists and governments emphasize this. the official reports that say oh, we have neighbors where it's -- neighboring states was much easier to get commercial registration where the infrastructure works better, and all our capitalists are moving there with our money. so we have to change something about our own economic policies

and that's unheard of, that would have been unthinkable 30 years ago when the name of the game was just distributing state money. business has much stronger role in economic policymaker in all of the gulf countries nowadays. it dose not have any interest in political change, so we have to disentangle economic influence and negotiating policies from the business side with larger political change or a larger political agenda of the political class. they're very happy with the basic political dispensation as it is in those countries. the businesses still remain policy takers on most issues and they're systematically being consulted and have a veto power over policy. there are many examples of the capitalists being able to stop certain policy initiatives,

taxation plans, certain regulatory reforms, and that is a fundamental change from 30 years ago when they had practically no collective political agency. but at the core, they still resemble the systems with which -- within which they operate. they're still family run, things are still informal, and in that sense it's real complementary between the governments and business sectors and both ends of that relationship are pretty happy with the political system, which is based on informal family rules. i'll wrap up after this. there's another reason why there's no real prospect for political change in a more

fundamental institutional sense emerging from the capitalist class, and that is they have no -- they would have no apartment society to team up with, to mobilize for political change, even if they wanted to, because the population at large is almost as segmented in most of the countries as it was in the '70s and '80s. so whereas businesses really developed, they've become more active, more autonomous. the majority of the population at large of the middle class, the lower middle class are still state dependent, depending on subsidized services, state employment which in many cases consists of jobs which people really often don't have to do too much work. but that puts a strain, and that's the point on which i think i wanted to end. that really puts a strain on

those systems to different degrees, because some systems have so much oil money it's not a big worry. but you have saudi arabia and bahrain. you have here a graph of oil income, and it looks like they have almost as much money to spend per person as they had in the 1970s. if you deplate those figures for the declined purchasing power, there's a lot less money available per individual, even at times when oil prices are back to $80, $90, $100 a barrel. so that means we have lower rent per capita combined with higher spending per capita, because they have a lot more people employed relative to the total population than you had 30 years

ago. public services remain subsidized. there were attempts to reverse subsidies, they always failed for various political reasons. the boom has tempted various regimes to give up more money, increase subsidies, pensions, and welfare spending. and that really means that in the long run, and i'll just jump over that, that means in the long run if you have continued demographic growth, which you're going to have even at relatively high oil prices, you'll have increasing spending needs from year to year. and if you extrapolate, and i just jump to one graph, if you extrapolate a scenario where you have expenditure growth continuing as -- on the basis of the figures of the last few

years, and you have oil income continuing on a high level, then even despite very high oil prices, you have a budget deficit within just five years and you have depleted the total reserves and i'll remind you that the total reserves right now that saudi arabia has correspond to three annual budgets. you have that depleted by 2019. this is a very mech nisic scenario. but the important message, to prevent that from happening, they would have to eat into their current expenditure, meaning subsidies and salaries. they've cut into their project development, they've managed to

bankrupt their contracting sector. they've never managed to cut subsidies substantially and cut the public @/&,w@@a@ @ v@ @ b@ " an less. do we have any questions from the room?

>> do you see any comparisons between recent oil price folds over the last year to now? and the oil collapse price of the '80s? well, there's an interesting paradox, and that is that the oil price decline in the 1980s, after 1981, was pretty gradual. it didn't happen overnight. there was a collapse in 1986, but the decline has been going on for five years. yet it caught those governments unaware. they had to abandon all kinds of development plans, slash their budgets. they didn't have enough savings to cope with the new situation. this time around, the oil prices collapsed very quickly. it took a few months for the oil price to go from $140 a barrel

to little more than $40 a barrel. and the governments were very well prepared this time around because they saved, they could use as their savings, they kept their economies okay because they didn't have to eat into their budgets. so that's one reason why those countries are not as badly affected by the oil price decline. even if they cut their spending dramatically, because i tried to show the private economy in those places is a lot less exclusive dependent on government spending. so even if they had to engage in very radical policies, it would no crush the private sector the way it did in the mid 1980s when almost half of saudi companies went bankrupt when government -- when the budget was slashed to

little more than $100 billion. i'm not a global political economist or oil expert, so i think we can talk about private, but i don't want to put my unfounded speculation on the c-span record at this time. >> if you can state your name. >> larry marzak and i'm a banker. i had a question. you had your mech nisic scenario of if budget deficit and the drawdown of reserves and the crunch. isn't the private sector building its future based on that not happening? and if that were to happen, what are the implications for the private sector?

>> that's a good question. i think in general, most of the big merchant families are still relatively short term in their planning. there are just a few that have engaged in the kind of industries where you need long-term planning, notably petrochemicals. where you need to think 10, 20 years ahead in terms of price cycles. and those that are least dependent on state spending, the market is international and is always going to be some demand for basic petrochemicals. as far as i have spoken to people who cater to more short-term demand, you know, people in the real estate or retail sector for example,

they're not very worried. continuing private demand has to do with the fact that everyone gets their salaries and the global financial crisis hasn't really affected the local consumer market very much. and they, i think, i would dare to say would not think 10 or 20 years ahead in their planning. the traditional gulf business family is mostly in trading sense the 1970s and contracting and they operate on a pretty short-term basis. >> i had a couple of questions. one is when you say the merchant class and the private sector, is it pretty broad based or mostly

part of the extended royal family or is it broad based? >> it depends on the country. if you look at qatar, in any big business you're likely to have a -- in other places it's a lot broader based. in kuwait, there is a wide merchant class, which doesn't mean the ruling families don't have a significant presence, but they're not the dominant players. also, if you're a prince, in many cases you can't be bothered to set up and run a business, so there are also some merchant business and serious investors among those ruling families. but those in terms of the

interest, more with the rest of the merchant class more than with their other family. which doesn't mean there are not barriers to industry. those families got to where they are off true their royal connections. so it's not a completely open playing field but it's a lot more diverse than just relatives of the rers. >> you spoke of the recycling of a lot of the cash. do you see any evidence that any of it is moving into opposition political campaigns and there has been -- we get sporadic reports in terms of security issues. we noted there's been the arrest of several hundred fairly recently. do you see any stepup in campaigns, you know, of terrorism there?

>> you would really have to distinguish one country from another. you have the kuwaiti regime where you have a lot of money going to elections. the parliament can essentially prevent anything from happening in kuwait and frequently does so. and merchants have been very, very present, notably unsuccessful as candidates, but as financers of campaigns, but it's public electoral politics. in terms of violent opposition or islamist radicals, i mean, it's a very, very complicated debate. but most of the things that have been said about it pertain to the financing of international jihadi groups.

and continues to be some money coming out of the gulf supporting international jihadists. but i'm not aware of any evidence that significant local businessmen would support the local militant insurgency. first of all, the local militants don't have a very broad base in society, whereas people might pat you on your back and you might be popular. but if you move to iraq or blow yourself up in saudi arabia, that's beyond the pale for main stream saudi society. so established players, some of them, you know, might at least in the past have contributed to international islamist militancy. but domestically i really don't see that happens. >> i just have a question on

your last slide that shows the budgets going into deficits in 2019. what is the assumption of oil prices and how can you predict them? revenue is so dependent on oil prices. >> that's a good question and the scenario is more arbitrary. that's why i have several of them. i could show you several others of them. but the basic message in all of those scenarios is as long as they stick to their ball game, that is subsidizing the local population, then sooner or later no matter which oil price assumption you make, they will run a deficit. so sooner or later they might have to change their system. that might be in 2016 or 2025. but a perpetual increase in

current spending, which is what they engage in because of that distribution of policies, it's at someoint unattenable and will lead to very significant renegotiations. that specific graph i had i assume relatively high continued spending growth, but also a continued high oil price level. it's not a prediction, it's just a thought experiment. >> it's been hypothesized that the nuclear capability development in iran could generate proliferation of nuclear endeavors all around the gulf and saudi arabia. do you think that could be so? and if so, how would that affect the economies of these countries?

>> there's been a lot of speculation by international relations scholars that it might be the wise thing for saudi arabia to do to arm -- pursue nuclear arment. but based on everything i know about the elites there, the politically cultured, i think it's the very last thing they would like to do. and there's a basic misconception about the recent attempt to set up a civilian nuclear capacity in kuwait and also in saudi arabia. people think oh, those guys have so much oil and gas, it doesn't make any sense to build a nuclear plant. this must be a security insurance policy. but in fact that is not the case, because those places are running out of gas. the industrialization has been

stopped, and if you get $80 a barrel, it doesn't make sense. if the'80s it made sense to burn that kind of oil because you had huge spare capacities. but nowadays, the opportunity costs of burning the oil domestically is a lot higher in most scenarios than building a nuclear power plant for which in fact the political institution environment -- when i speak about that in france, i always like to make comparisons that french people don't like to hear very much. it's very criminalized. there's no complicated planning process and municipalities, legal procedures they got to go through to set up a power plant, which is what makes nuclear

power in many cases very expensive. if you say i want the power plant, you buy the technology off the rack, probably from the french in fact, and you have it standing there five, several, eight years later. so it makes a lot of sense for them to continue their industrializing. >> beyond the wealthiest nations you studied, what more can you say about what you've learned about all the poor nations in the region you didn't say too much about? >> that's vast. one interesting observation to be made in the course of the most recent oil boom and the role of the regional gulf, and that is the spill overs, the developmental spillovers for poorer countries have been higher than during the last one.

this time you have the capable business class that is reasonably patriotic, that has burned its fingers after 9/11 in terms of western investment, they were afraid of confiscations. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chain or build a power plant,

the region is profiting more from that professionalized industry than it did a few decades ago. >> i had a question about the composition of the private sector as you call it. you talked about big merchant families, localists, capitalists. the first question is what percentage -- are there a lot of smes, is it the big-name firms? and the second one is who is really going to benefit in this? saudi basic industries corporation has a lot of investment in asia at the moment. half a year ago i spoke to the manager of the project between yemen and djibouti. can you name who is going to profit at this point? >> i think the yemen/djibouti

thing is off the table. i don't think it ever seriously was on the table. in terms of the structural of the local economies, like anywhere, most companies are smes. depends on how you define them, but something like 09% or 95% companies abide by run of the mill criteria, a lot of which are owned by nationals but run by the arabs or asians. but in terms of the contribution to national development, i do think that the big business families play a predominant role, because they're a lot more willing to engage in new experiments and most of the smes are just really, really low

margin copy cat type of operations. you into to saudi arabia and you have 20 shops selling the same soap. someone has to sell soap and shampoo, but the developmental effect for the national economy is rather marginal. so i think the more interesting things that are happening do come from the large business families. and the second part? [ inaudible ] >> the inside is a bit different from the outside. i can just give you examples. it's difficult to give you a comprehensive answer. for example, the family from riyadh, they've moved into all types of manufacturing, that a lot of people predicted in the

'80s would be white elephants. they've gone into petrochemicals with other partners and invested overseas in manufacturing. they've got plants in vietnam, manufacturing plants in egypt. so they are one of the examples of how far those families have moved just beyond pure rent seeking but they're not the richest. right now the people who are making a lot of money domestically until recently were the big banking families, and now increasingly with the return of capital spending, some of the big contractors are making a lot of money. >> good afternoon. i have noticed that several of the leading recent economic

indicators have shown that consumption in china seems to be rebounding and with that its demand for energy. and we have seen over the last several years in this decade that china has put serious investments into oil and gas resources in africa and central asia. i suppose my question does follow up a little bit in that the previous -- the previous question dealt with investment outside of these countries. what is the extent of chinese investment in petroleum interests in the gulf coast countries and if it's to a great extent, what impact will that have with the relations between these countries and the western energy consumers? >> there's not much. there's somche if chinese

investment in gas but the more important acts of cooperation is refining in petrochemicals. that's what has been alluded to in terms of big, off state owned conglomerates moving into china or moving into east asia and setting up plants there to push further down the value chain and get more bang for the buck out of the cubic feet of the barrel of oil. and there's a natural complementary between asia and the gulf. asia is the manufacturing power house of the world. there's not much stuff being made in the west anymore, and the raw material for that is essentially oil and gas in most cases. so this is the relationship that's going to deepen over the

decades. but it's been getting off the ground more slowly than people would have thought in terms of bilateral investment because the chinese have been very difficult and conversely a lot of the petrochemical investment happening in the gulf countries is still dominated by either local merchant families or western multinationals. so the chinese have not broken into that yet. but it will play itself out over the decades. [ inaudible ] >> there will be a great deal of chinese interest in the vast gas reserves off qatar that may be developed? >> qatar has stopped developing it, because they got more money than they can handle and gas

prices have come down quite a bit. the production itself is controlled by national oil companies in partnership with usually foreign service providers. and i don't see a good reason for why they should let foreign equity and those kinds of operations anywhere else by marginal fields. certainly not in the biggest prize and that is saudi arabia. the national oil company is a very capable player and very much equipped to maintain their -- they don't need any foreign equity partners to do that. >> thank you very much. [ applause ] >> "washington journal"

continues. host: paul rainwater is executive director of the louisiana recovery authority. thank you for being here. some four years after her king could train a, the date marked on saturday, what can you tell us about what remains to be done in recovery efforts in louisiana? guest: thank you for allowing me to be on this morning about talking about this. we put out about $8 billion in grants to homeowners throughout the coast of louisiana. we're finding is some of those homeowners have gaps. we're putting together plans to make sure that, working with secretary shaun donovan who is down last week to celebrate the

anniversary and brought some good news, but working with him to fill those gaps. we think about 20,000 homeowners this still -- between what we gave them and what their insurance gave them, still have a rebuilding gap. we have had a lot of affordable housing units that were destroyed during the storms, about 82,000 rental units, many of those affordable. we're working very hard to bring them back. we're making good, strong progress. if you look and how we're rebuilding public housing, we're doing it in a way that is very mixed and come which is using the same sorts of principles is shaun donovan used in new york. making a lot of progress but still have a ways to go. if you look of places like the lower ninth word, we've gone about $230 million of grants to about 2500 homeowners in that area. some of those people chose not to come back. some better they're still having the vehicle to rebuilding.

we are in the process of getting money from nonprofits to help those people rebuild. a lot of progress. 80% of the new orleans area population is back. many people chose not to move back. men their living in this set of louisiana and a summer living a said the state. there was a lot of progress. many national journal's recognize new rollinses one of the best places to sit out the recession. we're spending money on the recovery and louisiana. we're creating a lot of energy and ivan," opportunity. host: your comments are a good sign them up in today's "christian science monitor" reporting that new orleans is not three-quarters full. t ever see it going to pre- katrina population levels? >> i really do not. we have had many conversations about this. i worked on a recovery in a lot of different ways. i was part of the evacuation team, and worked for the

legislative director. i have seen it did a lot of different levels. it is strategic on the federal level. i do not think -- we have talked about a smaller footprint. obviously, we worked hard to try to bring back as many people wanted to come back. if you looked at what is happening and the flood plain maps that are now coming out and the agencies working together, i think you'll see a smaller footprint in morgan city. but i do not think it will be back to the pre-katrina population. i'd think many people, in the way we did our grant program, and give people the opportunity to decide whether not wanted to come back or not. many people look chosen to live somewhere else and have gone the other opportunities. we accept that. but we're trying to create a stronger, safer, smarter

louisiana as we rebuild using 21st century planning principles, building codes. yes, we're going to have a much better new orleans at the end of the day. but obviously, we've done everything we possibly can to bring back as many people who are interested in coming back. host: will take your phone calls on the hurricane katrina recovery efforts. we have our republicans line, democrats line, and our independents line. if you are in louisiana resident, we have a special line set aside for you. we have paul rainwater up until 10:00 eastern this morning. you talked about the rebuilding of homes and of the population coming back. what about the defense for future katrinas -- the levee system? what is coming along on that

front? guest: there is some progress. the have category three projection for hurricanes by 2011. during hurricane gustav, the governor sent me down to new orleans and those at me with mayor nagin and the concern was whether not the lead is with holder not, and they did. so people have gained some confidence. but we spent about $2.5 bill in with another $8 billion to spend. people are hoping we can get back to a level of confidence. we saw the during this stuff, and people did say they live is held, but they hold against a katrina? our department has told people, do not take a chance. even after 2011 when we get back to a category 3 hurricane camille need to evacuate a take precautions. many of us never believed that

the levies would breach in new orleans after katrina, but we had 57 levee breach is. we want to bring them back to a level of protection the people can feel confident about. there is progress but much work to do. host: are democrats aligned, new jersey. caller: i wanted to ask the gentleman in question. you know, you had a lot of people donating money like all the rappers and all these famous people besides you. where did all this money go? that is my first question. guest: that money went to non- profits like the unity of new orleans. we had a real homelessness problem in a new orleans. many non-profits worked very hard to provide emergency housing for people. brad pitt has his make it right

foundation. they are building homes in new orleans. so that money was used to help people get back inside their homes. many people, when you think about it, over 135,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. people lost everything. so we had to rehouse folks which means buying new furniture in some cases and helping people get back up on their feet. many people were away from their jobs for three or four months. some people used emergency assistance to survive. so those dollars were well spent and well accounted for. there has been very little fraud in the recovery which is interesting, but i think we have made great strides to account for those dollars in louisiana. host: wisconsin, good morning, independent caller. caller: i have two questions. i went to new orleans in march

2005 and fell in love with the place instantly. i had my heart set on moving there. and katrina happened the following fall. i have been looking into it ever since, checking on times and picking up on recovery efforts. i do not work a job that allows for vacation time. so any time, the amount of money would take to help rebuild, i might as well move. you have any tips for anybody looking to move to new orleans or people who had previous interest in the city and want to help the city get back to where was if it ever can? i guess that is basically it. i just messed up with my second question. guest: there are a number of organizations. you can go to the greater new orleans inc. website, gnoinc.

the "wall street journal" wrote an article about a young entrepreneur is coming to new orleans, and other great opportunities going on. we're spending $7 million a day on the recovery. much of that money is going into new orleans. their great economic opportunities there. the veterans administration is getting ready to build a hospital. we're getting ready to start working on a new charity system, teaching at the hospital that would be governed by a tulane and lsu. there is a biomedical center also. but groups like gnoinc can help you get in touch to rebuild together and also habitat for humanity. there are a number of a organizations of focus on a new orleans. the st. bernard project is another group, and you can do to their website. they're taking volunteers to help rebuild your lens.

but groups like gno inc will allow you the opportunity to see the opportunities of how to get to new orleans and how to live there and be a resident. there are great opportunities. host: next up is lake charles, louisiana. republican caller. caller: was or walking outside. how're you doing? and was calling about the rita victims. everybody is talking about katrina. my mother passed about two years ago and got money from a program. my and standing was that once the victim died, that we did not owe that money back even though we have an estate settlement. our insurance company could get the money to repair the home.

then we ended up paying the lawyer fees which was like $100,000. so if we pay everything back and of the lawyer fees, we're still not going to have the amount of money we need to make the home marketable or livable. i was wondering what you were wrong to do about that. guest: there are several things we're working towards. one is try to make sure that people have the money they need to rebuild. when you take katrina and the rita, the largest national disaster in united states history. rita has not been forgotten about. i was the operations manager for salt was louisiana for rita. i was very involved, and that is my home area. we have dollars we can get you. i need you to call our local number and ask for irma.

she can get you in touch with one of our lawyers. in a very complicated secession title issues and of the transfer property, there were many elderly people who were not able to survive the evacuation of the storm after the storm. there are very sensitive -- a very sad situations. we have attorneys to work through these things, and we will sit down with you. host: next, the bronx, democrats ran. we're with pa rainwater, hello. caller: i have a comment, more or less. i do not think that a natural disaster, as you call it, is really in the back of everybody's mind. it should be in the back of everybody's mind is to send action towards the people after the disaster. the lack of interest in trying

to do the right thing for the people. the the people do not come back, that is one of the basic reasons why people are more or less -- and no, they have that fear. we just feel like host: that paul rainwater, any thoughts on his comments? guest: yes, it is interesting we have talked about this quite a bit. it is been discussed in the congress and senate. i have testified about 12 times before congressional committees to talk about how you can show this. there's no doubt the country prepares. this and $13.4 billion down to louisiana. $8 billion of that has been spent on housing. the state has been focused on getting people back. thousands of volunteers came from across the country to help people. during the responses of, there were thousands of volunteers in front of the state of louisiana

and around the country. during gustav, we evacuated 18,000 of the most impoverished people in this city and provided trains and buses and airplanes to get people out. then we brought those people back. it is hard -- katrina changed so many things. i know there was so much negativity after the initial response. having been a part of that as the first responder, many of us worked very hard to shift that mood. and focus on the positives and a focus on the partnership that we now have with the federal government and of the local governments to show that we do care and government can work to be a positive force in recovery. host: and you were a first responder is a member of the national guard? guest: i was a city manager in late charles, louisiana, and was asked to work and the steady

march the operations center. and the live is breached, i was asked to manage a the area on the costly boulevard. someone -- i was there in the reserves. i had had hit a responder and had been an emergency manager. people recognize that we would need as much help as we could. we spent the 36 hours to evacuate in thousands of people at the causeway. the work of many first responder is on the country. it was great. the coast guard, national guard, and helicopter pilots. this is been a very difficult time. many of us have had an opportunity to come back under the new administration and work to focus to change things in the 2 main #one, our response, much better. we have a gentleman that is the

debbie fire chief from l.a. county than now works in the state of the louisiana. they're making sure we're ready. we saw a much better coordinated system during gustav that was seen less. we tried to do the same thing with the recovery, working with the secretaries to make a seamless recovery. again, we have a good state, federal, local partnership. we got rid of a lot of the turf that existed in 2008. i think we're making good progress and speed. host: here is a call from new orleans. caller: mr. paul rainwater, first off, i hope if there is another storm, we have responds. my problem is with the red cross. their main headquarters down here it is north of i-12. they never did come into orleans

parish. i was here for eight days after the storm. fema did not show up until friday. we had tractor-trailers' coming down with vice. if it was not for the u.s. marines dropping us mre's, water, and landing on a high school football practice field to bring us supplies. host: we're running out of time. what is your biggest concern about future possible situations in new orleans? caller: the ninth ward. we're getting ready to elect brad pitt mayor down here because he has done more than anybody. he really has. because the people are coming back, the businesses are not going to spend any money to rebuild. i am is so frustrated because i

love this city, born and raised, and my father called this place in god's country. it is the greatest place in the world. host: thank you for calling. paul rainwater. guest: the first katrina population is about 351,000 compared to 453,000 before katrina. new orleans is talked about as a place to ride up the recession. we're spending a lot of money there. there are great opportunities. i understand of the problem with recovery is that you do always have two different stories. there are people with a lot of optimism. there are a lot of young people from teach america who are pouring into new orleans to work as part of the recovery. host: today, how much federal money has gone into the recovery and how much guest: statech?

@@@@@@" f those dollars. we think we're going to get another $2 billion. so you're talking about great opportunities for contractors to be part of the rebuilding and repair of the recovery of new

orleans. host: miami, good morning. caller: first of all, many thanks to c-span for your great coverage, especially on the health-care issue. i am considering an offer in new orleans. i have a young child and am a professional. i have heard, as many have, the problems in new orleans with crime and the school system. so i am concerned about that. i would like to hear his sales pitch as to why a young professionals and moved to new orleans. i will take the answer of the air. thank you. host: thank you for the call. guest: thank you. and look forward to seeing this. but when you talk about schools, a renaissance is occurring in the schools in new orleans. there is a man who reworked into redid schools in chicago and philadelphia and is known across the nation as a man of the good things done.

i will tell you that it is amazing to see the schools in the new orleans recovery school district, and they are making a huge difference in the lives of children. i had the opportunity to go to many of these schools that have been rebuilt. we just did a ribbon putt -- a ribbon cutting on langston hughes, named after the great poet. when you see those children in the new facility, it is amazing. there are a number of charter schools being no bent and have some of the brightest people from around the country teaching in those schools. many good to me those teachers and those principles, you cannot help but feel optimistic about what is happening. yes, there is a crime problem in new orleans. i think it is being addressed through state, local, and federal partnership. i spoke to our state superintendent a couple nights ago but what they were doing, working with the fbi and the

drug enforcement administration and the secret service, a local sheriff's department and the police department. we have several large task forces involved in working through the crime issue in new orleans. but much of that is sort of localized in neighborhoods. the fact is, many, many people live in new orleans and are very safe. despite what you might hear, there's a lot of opportunity there. there's a lot of optimism there. your question about the schools, i would ask you to go to the recovery school district web site, look at it, make phone calls. there gentleman there and the ladies that would love to talk to you about relocating there. go to the greater new orleans inc website. you can make a phone call to several other organizations in new orleans. megyn kelly about the positives that are occurring. host: as a reminder, we have those was as on our website, c- span.org. one more call from illinois.

caller: the rate of the coast decline due to having things like drenched the river and the missing with the ecosystem in new orleans, they anticipate that the actual gulf coast will be right up to the edge of the city within the next 90 years. i was wondering what you are doing to address that because those buffers that exist right there, right now in this field prevent a lot of flood waters from getting up against the flood protection. if that is gone at the rate of two football fields per hour, the premises for the future in terms of having a category three or four hurricane hits the city direct again, i want you to address that. guest: that is a good question.

there's three levels of protection. we have our coastal protection restoration program, and the head of that work in environmental public works committee. he is very aggressive about making sure that we have the first line of defense. we're spending a lot of money on coastal protection and restoration. the next piece is the levy system. the corps of engineers is working on it. the third piece is extremely important. it is what we can do internally. good, strong drainage programs, elevating homes, carvin homes, and we're finding the largest television program in the history of the country right now. it goes beyond that as well. the senator has talked about water management and has gone to the netherlands. we have sent staff to look to their water management program. the fact is we need to figure

out smarter ways to live with water. their ways to do it, as we as seen in other parts of the world. we need to look as some of those principles and figure out things we can adopt the work. but we can survive storms. during ike and gustav in cameron parish in louisiana, and hospital was elevated after rita. the storm surge in ike was to the beat fire -- feet higher and the hospital survived. we can do this. we're one of the greatest countries in the world. i think americans can figure out how to survive storms and how to survive floods through smart and effective ways of rebuilding. host: our guest

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> i not know what is wrong with them saying that the court must comply with the statute. they must comply with the statute. they are in violation by not doing that. >> what case to you have supporting what he says? >> let's look at this case in the second circuit, the decision by the district court that says, a nine month delay, which is shorter than what we were talking about was a violation of

due process. >> that was the individual client? >> i do not think that this was. >> this is from connecticut? >> the district court case from connecticut. >> this is not from the second circuit. a 10 month delay was the ajudication of due process. -- process. this could find its way to the federal circuit and this is contrary to the conclusion of the court in this case, because the conclusion of law no. 8, they found that many of the challenges of the plaintiffs are

aimed at the process, to reach the decisions of the individual claims. these processes have concluded to be outside the purview of the jurisdiction. there is no way for these issues to come up in the context of the system. one part of this case is that they do not explain any way, in which this court, or some other court may take up these issues. in fact, there is no remedy suggested, anywhere in the record. where these issues that we have raised in the case could be resolved. i do not care if you are talking about the administrative delay, the way that we treat the veterans -- or this plan.

>> these should be remedied by congress and the administration. congress and the administration should be solvent, by themselves. this does not give us all the way to the answer. >> if they don't -- you are left, unfortunately with the court to do with the other branch should be doing. >> i agree with that. >> this does not solve the problem. >> this is a problem that has been around for a long time. >> this is still insolvent. >> one question about the reasonableness -- >> maybe we could ask this question to the opposing counsel since you cannot give us sailing would answer. this is a rhetorical question?

>> as far as i am concerned -- >> this is something that we would like to hear, we will give you some time for rebuttal. >> matt one short thing to the question? the court did not declare any relief. so as to what the obligations are for the veterans administration under these statutes with health care and disability would be subject. >> it would please the court for the secretary of affairs. the veterans administration works closely with congress to obtain the resources to achieve

these goals. and congress closely monitors these issues and has imposed jurisdiction limitations >> as you are answering the questions, some of these figures that he has cited, in the brief are troubling. the delay figures, and i was wondering if you think that your client is succeeding in doing what you say they are doing. >> the veterans administration -- the district has made a number of findings about hiring over 3000 new staff members and dealing with the pilot programs to shorten the delay. this is what the veterans administration is dealing with,

in the recent statute in october of 2008. the time frames are compressed by having them agreed that the evidence is complete. part of the delay that is here, is that this is a unique system. the veterans administration has the obligation to assist and they take this very seriously. but this will sometimes lead to a delay, as the evidence comes in and they have to look for more evidence, and this is going back and forth. those delays are too long. but with regard to the most serious delays around here, it really is only affecting a small percentage of the cases. i will make certain that this is very specific. this is only affecting a small

percentage of the cases. only 4% go to the decision. this means that at this level the veterans are getting their benefits, and the veterans administration is getting this right the first time. >> maybe i have misunderstood this. i was not exactly certain why this figure was supporting your position. if you draw this out of the process -- for the time, given the communication on life and health, there are very few cases that would reach conclusion, because people do not live that long and do not want to spend that much time in the process of

resolving disputes. it was not clear to me about this figure that you have, -- >> the final decision. >> how does the support your position. >> this is affecting the small percentage -- >> how do we know -- >> we do not know that. >> how do we know the 96% is not -- we are not giving up and we say, this has taken too long. >> this is taken for granted. >> that would be more helpful. to say that 4% of the only ones at the end of the line -- there are already reasons why people are dropping out, they may not

have the resources or the patience, or whatever, the longevity to see this through. >> this shows why it is difficult to assess the reason for the delay, normally, the unreasonable delay case -- you have an additional set of facts, a deadline and the ability to say -- this is way too long for a case like this. these cases very in complexity. what may be unreasonable in one case may be reasonable in another. you cannot assess this. >> >> i do not mean you personally, but the department of justice -- and the department of veterans affairs -- and that

table -- you have a lot in common. you want -- you want to have timely delivery of services to the men and women who have fought and bled for the country. just getting away from the law, to explain this in plain english, there is money -- there is not a shortage of money. congress is always generous with money. i assume that there is not a sense of goodwill in the department -- >> a large percentage are veterans. >> the general himself -- i was just wondering why we are here. what is the disconnect here,

that you could not allowed and the kind of plan to get this done. this is not about who wins and who loses, but do what everyone is wanting to do. a service for the veterans. >> the veterans administration has made a steady commitment of resources to these problems. these were more salient in recent years, as we have more people returning with posttraumatic stress disorder. it takes awhile for the allocation of funding and personnel, to catch up with the provisions and the services. there was a number of findings on the health, the veterans administration -- the veterans health administration had 8% of the incentives in the strategic

health plan. there is a national suicide prevention hot line, and everyone has a suicide prevention coordinator. there is a tremendous allocation of resources. >> this is not available at the local centers. you have to go to the hospital? >> there is the effort to increase the availability and again, the mental health plan is a set of initiatives, that they are trying to do better on. there is a big difference between having these initiatives, and having the veterans administration work with congress to follow through on this, and having the court order this. that is what the supreme court said, you cannot do the unreasonable delay case, because

this affects this in the day-to- day management with the separation of powers. i think that there is a disconnect. the court is ordering you to compel the agency to think about everything. >> that is the last resort. >> this would be like the court taking over the prison system. why do you do this for 17 years. in 17 years they have not done this. this is the same thing with the veterans office. >> know it is not. >> you see, let us do what we have been doing. his question was whether you and the other side could get together, and degree of things

that would make it unnecessary for the court to issue this. >> the fundamental problem is that any kind of settlement like this is backed by the judicial supervision and the pace of health care reform. this is something that southern utah says that you cannot have. maybe at one time the court could intervene, but this is not the system that we have. especially when the statute commenced to the provision of health care to the discretion of the secretary. you want to do this in a timely manner. but there are no meaningful standards to evaluate if you are providing good enough care, fast enough to the veterans. >> there is no unreasonable delay.

is it your contention that there is generally no unreasonable delay? >> i do not think that is what they found. there were a lot of various -- >> the legal set of factors that they have to go through, they find that there is no unreasonable delay. they are focusing on the delay that is more serious. this would make a diversion of resources away -- where they are doing much better with the average of 180 days. many of these figures do not sound very good but this is a function of the fact that the evidence is coming in pieces and

the veterans administration as many duties to help the veteran. they may do this is exactly what -- they may not do this exactly right the first time, they may come back because you need this piece of evidence. >> in your view, the fact is that this other veterans groups are concerned about the unreasonable blame on this basis. >> i am not trying to disparage the concerns. what i mean to say is that the benefit system -- the unreasonable delay can be addressed -- in a systemic way, but the court of appeals -- the court of appeals claims -- >> i thought there was no unreasonable delay? >> u.s. the following question

and i was trying to be responsive. do we care about that and how can we address this? the system that is prescribed allows you to address this -- >> they are right on the merits? but they are in the wrong forum? >> that is the opposite of what i have said. >> they are right on the merits? you see know. or yes? and when -- and when i asked -- this is the same thing. are they wrong on the merits. >> there is no unreasonable delay here. there are specific jurisdiction barriers, to the district court. >> i am trying to find out about the complaints and the answer is -- there are no unreasonable

delays? >> this is the finding? >> i am not asking about the finding. there are unreasonable delays? >> we have the opinion of the judge on this? >> you have no opinion of your own? >> the officials have testified that they want to move the system faster. the judge has pointed out -- >> this is in the wrong forum. >> in the individual case, you can complain -- and you can go to the court of appeals and said, this has been a reasonable delay. >> i am only trying to find out two things. are there basic allegations --

that there is an unreasonable delay? or is it that they are correct and this should be in a different forum? i believe that you said both. >> the basic allegations are not correct as it was found, and this should be in a different form. >> you can still make allegations in the court will direct -- reject them. >> for $10,000 you can file a complaint, that does not mean that there is no merit. if they did have merit they should be somewhere else. if they do not have merit, that should be the end of the case. >> there are factual findings here, and there is the legal finding that there is no unreasonable delay. the court did not have to get to that. there were not talking about the jurisdiction, and the agency

decisions affecting the benefits. this is the scheme that was set up by congress to afford having the federal court entangled, in how fast to process thanks. those sorts of things -- that is what was enacted. >> we do not have to get to that because this is a wonderful system. >> that is the opposite order. you deal with the jurisdiction question first. >> but the judge says that everyone is concerned about whether the veterans are being improperly treated by the government. if they are not, we should be giving you a medal. but you say that there is no problem. if there was a problem they should be somewhere else but there is no problem.

>> you are going to a policy argument. >> this is not a policy argument, i am asking about the facts. they have the treatment that they are entitled to. is there unreasonable delay. and your answer is that there is no unreasonable delay. we are proud of the treatment that you are giving us. >> that is not something that is relevant here. this is a legal case, ultimately. >> i know what this is. >> answer was i am asking you. i know that you would like to tell us what we can ask, but the judge said a new breed, that they are concerned about the welfare of the veterans. when i asked you about this, you say i should not ask about this. >> i do not believe that is a fair characterization.

>> i do believe that. >> we do not have metals >> we cannot hand out metals. >> that authority is still with congress and the president. >> the point is that this -- >> we understand your position. would you like to have a rebuttal? >> >> i would like to make a few -- >> there will be no medals. although this would resolve the case. i would find some way of coming up with the metadal. >> with the 4% issue, coe vs. thurmon dd, the appeal procedure

must comply with due process. this is with the regional office dispositions in trying to suggest there is no problem. what happens to a lot of these appeals -- the veterans are not represented in many cases. if you look at the disposition on the veterans court, you find anywhere between 25 and 34% of the claims are either dismissed for default, or lack of jurisdiction because the veteran did not satisfy the time line, or basically dismissed voluntarily. how you get to 4% is complicated. and you ask if the veterans give up, and the evidence is that

they get very frustrated with the system, they will give up at some stage -- and this is very high in the regional office. >> the 4% -- does not reflect the 97% of the happy people? >> i am according the record on that. >> >> the other issue i would like to speak about -- >> your answer to the question -- that we have vast over and over to your opposition, are there other areas, generally, where there are unreasonable delays? >> there are reasonable delays throughout the entire system, but i will break this down. these delays are unconscionable. when you are talking about a process that takes 12 for 15

years, so many people died before the ultimate resolution. there are unreasonable delays in the provision of health care. there are thousands of people on a waiting list for mental health care in this country. this is a mandatory duty. all of the key provisions are not only in the mental health care plan -- they have been codified in the suicide prevention act. one moment of reasonableness i want to talk about -- is this. one measure of reasonableness of time is the task at hand. here we have a process of adjudicating the claim. we have the average time that it takes, in hours, and a work standard for adjudicating the

claim. we are talking about somewhere between three and a half, and nine hours. what this means is that for those veterans claims, sitting for five or six years to be adjudicated, there are sitting on a shelf for most of the time. it is as if you have an assembly line, and the line is stretching out so far, that takes perhaps one day to deal with this specific task. >> is this for mental health services? >> people are waiting for that, and there is a finding that 85,000 veterans have been waiting over 30 days for an appointment in mental health, even though the strategic plan require 14 days. >> you go to the emergency room? >> this includes some emergency

cases. we had declarations from widows with cases that went to the emergency room and were told that your number 36, come back in two months. >> we are acting like there is plenty of money to do this. with that long a waiting list -- you think they have all the personnel and the facilities required for the administration and they can eliminate the waiting list? >> the evidence in the record of having enough money comes from the people who are running the programs. there has been a large increase in the budget in the last three years. the question of retiring the backlog -- on the adjudication has grown so large -- >> this is not just a question of money.

they need personal authority -- i do not want to get into this -- that was my question. >> there is money around, are there not enough people? >> this is a combination of the problems. this is a management problem -- and this is where the resources are dedicated. as an example -- the medical centers have a large amount of autonomy and even where congress is earmarking the money for mental health care, in a medical center, the director of the center can divert the money for other use, and this happens frequently. we do not spend the money where it should be spent -- and the budget is huge. this is enormous. they say that they have plenty of money to do all of these

things. there is the worst case scenario for the people with multiple course of duty, -- >> do you agree with the opposition, the finding was that there was no unreasonable delay. >> the findings -- the court did not find that there was not unreasonable delay. they went through this and basically adopted all of the proposed findings with respect to the timing of the delays. >> the judge was showing all of the unreasonable delay, and the reason for the decision was that he believed that the court could reach this. >> that is exactly right. the judge found these delays

were troubling. the same language used today. the question though, as to why these delays have become so protracted, is a complex issue. at this stage in the case, the court said -- the relief could extend to a series of regulations, even a whole program to be revised by the agency in order to deal with the unlawful result. the medical and the the time has come for the court to act. >> the case is well argued and

we think the council for their help. what i am going to do is encourage the council to get together during lunch time -- get a sandwich together, and i would like for you to consider the possibility of working something out in this case. on this side of the table, this is something where we would have to get -- will have to get permissions and approvals. >> that is not an order. >> that is not an order. >> >> i enjoy having lunch. >> at least -- we have a mediation office, that does exceptionally good work. we can put this to your disposal.

this is very successful with a number of cases, including the criminal cases, things that people thought were completely incapable of mediation. we have a number of judges -- who are regulars in the process, and this may be useful in resolving the issue. part of the problem, putting aside the legal issues, is that this is one of those things that is very difficult for the court to manage and this is much better done by the management and if the parties are interested in pursuing a course of action involving one of the senior judges, who is a veteran who may help the process.

we will be happy to consider my colleagues, and continued to give you a chance to work something out. everyone here is concerned with making sure that the men and women who fought and bled for the country -- i see good faith on both sides. maybe this can be brought together in a constructive way. we can have winners on both sides. if we do not here for the parties in one week, we will submit the case -- but i am hopeful -- it if you need time because of the permissions, you can ask for more time and we will make sure to be generous and in he more time.

we will do what we are paid to do -- i think that there is some way of bridging the gap, become healers and mediators, and people who bring parties together, rather than keep them apart. that would be good for the profession, and would be a great service to the people who care about this -- >> thank you. i have one more housekeeping matter. there is an important case that came out this morning from the federal court, dealing with due process, and the property interest in the due process violations. we will be submitting a letter with respect to the case. >> go ahead and do this. i recommend breaking bread, even if this is a bottle of water

that you shared together. >> we have the issue -- and they were looking at this with the administration. >> on the other hand, you have heard some of the questions from the panel. the tape is available and you can listen to this and we have a conference -- you have heard what we had to say. i would think that you are all excellent lawyers -- you will figure out what is going on and with the new information in

hand, you can make the assessment. you can share this with each other -- anyway we will defer the submission for one week and we will pray that a solution is found. >> in a few moments, a discussion about the future of organized labor. in one hour, ken salazar on the construction of a memorial at the flight 93 crash site. then gov. patrick announces the election to replace the late senator ted kennedy will be held in january. >> this morning on washington

journal, we will look at the legislative agenda in congress with michael wilson from americans for democratic action. the vice president of news corp., william mcgurn discusses his opinion piece on the obama administration. and we continue our look at health care with robin norman and dvid crutchfield. "washington journal" is live every day at 7:00 eastern. >> a couple of live events to tell you about on c-span. the former ambassador to the united states from israel talks about the threat by the nuclear program of iran at 11:00 and at 5:30, a forum on how the japanese elections may affect relations between the united states and japan.

>> a forum on the future of organized labor. this is a candidate to become the next president in september. hosted by the center for american progress action fund, this is a little over one hour. >> i want to thank you for those very kind words, and more importantly for all that they do here, to respond -- all that you do here to respond to the challenges that this country is facing. i think that when this -- when historians look back at the last eight years, they will see this at a time when the leaders lost their way. but they will see this as a time when the rest of us found our voices.

they'll actually see it as a time when progressives found our voices. so the work of the center has been fundamental to making that happen. and you ought to take a great deal of pride. everybody that works here, all the staff here, and the leadership here. it was a tremendous thing that you've been doing. it goes without saying that with the passing of ted kennedy these last few days have been sad ones. not only for those of us that have had the opportunity to work with him but i actually think for everyone in this country. we've all read a lot about how he was a great legislator and of course he was. he really was. and the reason why is that he has always -- he was always guided by his values, progressive values, our values. i remember last year at the democratic convention in denver

he said that there's a new wave of change all around us and if we set our compass true, we'll reach our destination, not merely a victory for our party, but renewal for our nation. and i've been thinking a lot about that the last several weeks. because this is also an era of change for workers and an era of change for our unions. we have the chance to make it a time of renewal for the american labor movement as well. this is labor movement's moment and together we can build the labor movement i think we need to create and the kind that we need to build to get the america that we want and deserve. an america where young people aren't robbed of the opportunity to go to college, an america where older men and women never have to fear that they'll outlive -- live their lives in poverty. an america where you don't have

to worry about whether the health insurance you have is going to pay for the health care that you need. an america where every job is a portal into the middle class. see, that's the kind of america we want. it's up to this generation of trade unionists to build a labor movement that can make it happen. quite frankly, we don't have a moment to spare. not a single moment. because the truth is, the middle class in this country isn't being squeezed. we're being crushed. women and men, working parents who ought to be living the american dream instead are losing their health care, losing their pensions, losing their jobs, losing their homes, and losing their patience. today there are nearly six time as many people looking for jobs as there are jobs to fill. and if all the construction

workers who lost their jobs just since last november stood side by side you'd have a line stretching from washington to new york and back. and it's not just the private sector. there is always that myth that somehow employees, public employees are immune from a recession. well, right now, just one month into the new fiscal year, 13 states are looking at budget shortfalls of $26 billion. and who's going to pay for it? well, the same people who have been paying all along. the men and women who provide the public services that all of us depend on. i want to tell you something. it wasn't the uaw or afscme or the machinists or the teachers or any other union that was calling the shots at bear stearns and lehman brothers or

aig or goldman sachs. and i can tell you for a fact that no one at the fed or the treasury department ever picked up the phone and called the afl-cio or any other trade union for our advice or for our opinion. but even though it wasn't organized labor that got us into this mess, i'm here to tell you that we are the people who are going to lead america out of the mess. see, there's no other way because the bottom line is that you cannot rebuild this economy unless you raise workers' wages and the fastest and surest and most effective mechanism for raising workers wages is to collective bargaining process. increasing productivity only raises wages when workers have bargaining power. take bargaining power out of the

equation, and you still generate wealth. but it won't get into the hands of the people who created it or really who must have it in order to grow the economy. that's what's been happening over the last 30 years. john maynard understood the dangers and ravages of free market fundamentalism. and i'm convinced that the president and most of the house and many in the stat understand it, too. and that's why they're backing the employee free choice act. that's why the center for american progress was one of the very first organizations to endorse it, because just as growing -- as a growing labor movement built the first american middle class, unions can build a new middle class today. that's why our message is, don't support the free choice act

because it's in labor's interest. support it because it's in your interests. support it because it's in your children's interests. support it because it's in your but the challenges that are facing unions is not just to change the way that labor law is working around here, is the way that we work. this is to reconfigure ourselves to respond to the needs of a new generation of working americans. today, tomorrow -- we are releasing a new study that was completed on the crisis that is facing young workers. what this will show is that by every nation -- americans are in an economic free fall. men and women under the age of 35 are earning less than $30,000

a year. 52% of them are living with their parents because they cannot afford their own home. many of these workers do not have health care were paid sick leave. they did not have paid vacation. . they ought to have paid sick leave. they ought to have paid vacation. they ought to have pensions. they ought to have union representation. but when they look at unions, too often what they see is a remnant of their parents' economy. and not a path to succeed on their own. this is the issue that'll decide the future of the american labor movement. while we all hear a lot about unions coming back into the afl-cio and quite frankly that's a personal priority of mine but ultimately it won't matter how many unions are in the afl-cio if we fail to capture the imagination of the millenniums.

now, we ought to be clear. the problem isn't that they have some deep seeded hatred of unions. they don't. earlier this year rory and david who is here with us did a study for the center for american progress that points out that support for unions is higher among younger americans than it is for any other age group. the problem is that they, not that they dislike unions. they think we do a lot of good things. we did a lot of good things for our members. a lot of good things for others. the problem is they don't think we have enough to offer them. and that's not the way it has to be. you see, a few years back there was another center study that was done by a friend of mine named jim grossfield. it found that young workers, white collar workers, who really didn't want much to do with the

labor movement really sat up and took notice when they heard about unions winning protection for telecommuters, bargaining for portable health care, or standing up to protect professional standards. when we talked about the problems facing contingent workers, they really listened and for good reason. after all, a man or a woman working as a temp or freelancer today may as well be walking a tight rope without a net. they know workers with unions make more money and they have better benefits. they don't just -- they just don't think that unions fit the way that they work. and you can't blame them. because we haven't really focused on the way that they work. we can't ask them to change the way they earn a living to meet our model of unionism. we have to change our approach

to unionism to meet their needs. now, our unions, one union that's pioneering this in this area is the communication workers. they have an affiliate called wash-tech. it began as a grass roots movement of temps working at microsoft in seattle. now, thanks to the internet, it has members from boston to silicon valley and it's evolving into a dynamic new union of tech workers dealing with problems ranging from job security and health care to offshore outsourcing and visas. but you know that we can only address their needs, where they work. we need to address the fact that a lot of young people going to college today are drowning in a sea of debt by the time they come out of college. there is a story that the writer

anya has posted on her blog about a young man named robert bauman in new york. maybe some of you have heard about it. he grew up in foster care. he worked his way through community college and college and law school. he survived two accidents, one that nearly cost him his leg, and all along the way he took out 32 separate student loans. over a period of four years his debt soared to just a little over $400,000. and if that's not crazy enough, five appellate judges said that he can't join the new york bar because he hasn't done enough to pay off his debt, his loans. that's just one example. there are literally tens of thousands of other examples.

young people studying to be nurses and teachers and social workers and engineers. going to college with dreams of good careers and graduating into near bankruptcy. paying off loans the rest of their lives. now fighting to make college affordable may not be a traditional union issue but if we care about the economic security of young workers, it really has to become one of our concerns and one of our issues. and that's quite frankly just one piece of the equation. i'm not suggesting that the labor movement ought to abandon all of its traditions. what i am saying is that nostalgia for the past is really no strategy for the future. than tradition should always have a vote. we just can't let it have a veto. you see, this is a critical moment for the american workers. we need to seize it.

that doesn't only mean speaking to the interests of young workers. we need a labor movement that tells american workers in no uncertain terms that racism, indeed, any kind of bigotry, may serve somebody's interests but it sure as hell isn't our interest. in 2009, 30 years after the death of a. philip randolph, labor still haunted by the legacy of jim crow. that's why after the employee free choice act becomes law our first priority has to be launching a drive aimed at the country's 5 million poverty wage african-american workers and other minority workers and the women that the economy has left behind. and there's more. we need a labor movement that's ready to partner with every employer who respects workers

and understands that their employees are an asset to be invested in not an expense to be cut. but we also need to be ready to push back against any ceo who thinks that he or she has the right to earn a good living but their employees don't. in short, we need a labor movement with the strength to compel every company to live up to the responsibility of corporate citizenship. and in that regard i can tell you that i know the center has been working to try to bring walmart around on some health care reform. but there should be no mistake on this point. none. walmart will never, ever be a friend of workers so long as it denyings its own employees the right to the strength and the dignity that can only come with a ufcw contract.

and that's not all. we need a labor movement that's organizing and mobilizing as never before to speak out for workers whether it is at the courthouse, the statehouse or the white house. today more than ever we need the labor movement that stands by our friends, punishes its enemies and challenges all those who, well, can't quite seem to decide which side they're on. i'm talking about the politicians who want to turn out our members. they want us to turn them out for every vote, make phone calls, door knocks, but somehow they always seem to forget workers after the votes are counted. for example, legislators who don't understand their job isn't to make insurance companies happy. it's to make americans healthy. legislators who say they are all

for health care reform, but refuse to stand up for a public system that puts people before profits. you know, to hear some of them you'd think the objective isn't to come up with a health care plan that works, it's to write a bill that republicans will vote for. they think they need to -- i think they need to understand that you can have a bill that guarantees quality, affordable health care for every american or you can have a bill that the republicans will vote for, but you can't have both. we in the labor movement, well, we keep our promises. and we damn well demand and expect the people we elect to keep their promises as well. now, what kind of labor movement does america need?

well, it needs a movement that makes sense to a new generation of workers, a movement that challenges old bigotries, a movement with the strength to hold corporate america accountable, a movement guided by progressive values and understands if you fight for those values you may not always win, but if you refuse to fight, you are always certain to lose. now, i know that we have some time and we want to have some time for discussion, but i began my remarks, i mentioned ted kennedy. well, there is another kennedy that also touched my life. it was his brother, bobby. it was around the time that i first went into the mines. i volunteered in his campaign. and some of you may recall all through that year he often quote george bernard shaw and say some

men see things as they are and ask why, i dream things that never were and ask why not. you know something? that is who we are in the labor movement. we are people who dream. we dream of men and women working at jobs where they are treated with respect and paid what they've actually earned. jobs that they look forward to going to every morning, not the kind they can't wait to get away from every night. we dream of a nation where it doesn't matter what color your skin is, what sex or religion you are or whether you are gay or straight or what country your family is from because here in our america we think everybody ought to have a seat at the table and a chance to stand in the winner's circle every once in a while. we dream of parents being a able to look in their childrens' eyes and being able to tell them if

they study and they work hard, they can achieve anything. you see, that's the america that we dream of. and, quite frankly, this is our moment to ask why not. thank you. [ applause ] >> i'd like to ask mr. trumka to join us. thank you. i'm david madland, the director of the american worker project. i'm thrilled to have rich here. >> thank you. >> very good to see you. i'm going to moderate a discussion with the audience but as the moderator i'm going to take the opportunity to ask the first question. >> okay. >> you know, you talked -- you mentioned the importance of the labor movement, how it needs to grow and have strgth to be able to represent more workers

to have the power so that workers have better wages and sort of drive the economy. and you talked about a major strategy of doing that is to focus on young workers. and you laid out sort of your vision for attracting young workers, but it was at a higher level. can you go many in depth. how are you going to target young workers? are there new strategies to do that? >> first of all, we are going to bring younger workers into the labor movement. we have lost touch with the generation and over the last ten years you are seeing them pay the price. we are going to invite a group of young workers, union and no i really want to know that when they say something, they are understanding what they want me to understand.