who do not think you have to go to a museum when you confide everything on the internet. how are you dealing with that? >> we are hosting things with young people. museums typically reach about 10% or 15% of the public. what about the other 85%? and people may feel like they do not have to go to these classical cultural institutions. reaching them is important. doing it through the internet is a straightforward process, but we need to learn to think how they do. i have been working with focus groups on that. >> what kind of resistance have you seen on the staff? do people not like thinking about a different way of using technology? that can be a difficult cultural change. >> at the smithsonian, the folks are really creative. they are open to new ideas if

they see how it will work to the benefit of what they really want to accomplish. we will probably have 29 million people visiting our museums this year. the physical experience is very important. how do you use technology to enhance the physical visits and then use technology to connect to people who might not be connected other wise it all. . .

then their visit will be much more informed. they may have a hand held device in the future that will tell them where to go. the second floor, some nook is hard to find sometimes and yet it's a treasure to do that. after they leave, they can continue to interact with our docents. it's a more enriched experience. >> you were brought onboard because of the resignation of mr. small because of the overspending. how did that happen and what has changed? >> the regents became more engaged after the issues arose during mr. small's secretarieship. they did a lot of the right things and they put in 25 new policy statements. i tell people, this happened at universities 10 years ago because we are nonprofits and we realize you need better oversight because we have a billion dollar budget. part of it comes from the

federal government, part from ourselves. you need to be good stewards of every dollar we get from the taxpayer. so we put in a framework of policies for oversight and accountability. we are still implementing some of those because we had to buy new computer systems. but the policies are in place. the then their visit will be much more informed. they may have a hand held device in the future that will tell them where to go. the second floor, some nook is hard to find sometimes and yet it's a treasure to do that. after they leave, they can continue to interact with our docents. it's a more enriched experience. >> you were brought onboard because of the resignation of mr. small because of the overspending. how did that happen and what has changed? >> the regents became more engaged after the issues arose during mr. small's secretarieship. they did a lot of the right things and they put in 25 new policy statements. i tell people, this happened at universities 10 y example what is different? >> we have new travel policies. i have to get approval before i go anywhere on my travel because it's a good thing. as a university president i had to do the same thing in a public institution. there's more checks and balances, more oversight on what people are doing, and more making sure you are doing the right thing in cases where there is a gray area.

>> stacy palmer. >> in the search for private money, how are you able to compete at this time when the recession is so tough? you are competing against food kitchens and other desperate needs. how to you say to a donor that a museum is an important thing to support? >> good question. the fact is, what i like to think -- i've gotgotten to know the smithsonian more. people love the smithsonian. they see themselves in it, a special connected way. they see themselves. folks, when you work with a donor, they're going to have local causes. they're going to want to give to their universities or schools or churches or charitable causes. but they like to have a national cause, and so if they're going to make a contribution to the country in a national way, the smithsonian is a logical place to do that because we represent the whole country. >> have you been able to raise money to deal with some of the renovation needs that you have?

apparently many crumbling buildings. people like to give to a glitzy exhibit. >> this has been a good year for us actually. we are probably going to end up a little short of the goal we set before the recession set in. when we look at our colleagues we are doing very well. we are grateful to our donors, tremendous support. we think new ideas generate interest in things that people didn't see before. we think context helps people make donations and we think good people make donations. we have to tell our story better and when we do that i am confident all these issues will be resolved. >> is the smithsonian pursuing some of the money making endeavors that was started by your predecessors such as the smithsonian tv channel? >> we still have the smithsonian channel, and it is a concept that isn't quite there yet because not everybody gets hd-tv. you start at that subset of the people using it. i think we have enriched the

content into the contract and showtime has been very open and responsive to our concerns on that front. i feel good about it. when you watch the channel today it's a great experience. we need to enrich the material and make sure we are connecting to the smithsonian where we can. we have to connect to the media, the you tube, connect to the next generation. they may not be watching tv. they may be watching you tube. so we are looking for other ways to reach people. we think the cham is one of those places. >> what kind of changes have you made at the smithsonian in the past year? any changes to set the new vision into motion? >> one of the things i said from the beginning was that we needed to do a significant planning exercise. i saw that first of all from the morale question. how do we get people to think about the future?

learn lessons from the past. but our job is to focus on the future. and to focus in a unique way. the smithsonian if we are lucky will be here 1,000 years from now. we have only been around as an institution 163 years. so we really started thinking long term in our planning with short-term horizons and milestones. we got people together from different parts of the smithsonian talking to each other and it was a fun exercise. this was a very intensive, bottoms-up process. the first time we engaged everybody at the smithsonian and brought in people from other muzeems, other universities to tell us what they thought and that's all being wrapped into a strategic plan right now and it's exciting. >> you've talked a little bit about reaching out to young people. i know one of your other priorities is trying to make sure that the smithsonian is diverse and representing what this country is all about. what specifically have you done to try to encourage diversity at

the museums? >> first we need to recognize that 20 years from now this country will have no majority anymore. so we want to make sure the smithsonian is fully aware of that and that we develop an approach towards our exhibits, towards our educational materials and towards our collection that will prepare us for that period. we need to get ahead of that wave. we have a great opportunity. we have the museum of the american indian, building the museum of fran fran culture. the latino interest group. so we have the resources to begin to speak to this diversity question already. what we want to make sure we do is it's ingrained and i have created an executive committee that looks across the spectrum of the smithsonian to make sure we are representing diversity and thinking diversity. should there be a diversity component within that, that you speak to so you communicate with a larger subset of the american

public? >> you've talked about attendance being up this year despite the recession. are you getting a sense that there are new audiences coming in through the doors and do you attribute any of this to the big night at the museum movie? >> we had some fortuitous upticks, one was the inauguration. some were looking for a cup of coffee but they came. so that was good. that won't be repeated but not all those were just inaugural related. we saw an uptick as a result of the movie. but we had over 30 new exhibits this year at the museum. our researchers put on fabulous new exhibits that brought people in and with the economy being what it is and we are free, we are a great place to go. we just want to make sure when people get there, they have a terrific experience and lots of places to go to get that experience. >> let me go back to the record

visitorship. are there any circumstances that you would charge for admission and you currently don't, why not? >> we are not even thinking about that. the rp is we think -- reason is we think we can address the revenue issues with other things that we can do that are within our mission and that would be good things for us to do. there are places for example in some of the contract research where we haven't recovered the end rate cost. we are going to do those things first and see where we stand. there is no question in my mind that we will be able to rectify our economic side of our house, first pi telling our story better to donors and folks up on the hill. they want to hold us accountable. with planning and bringing everybody together we will develop a voice for the smithsonian. that will make people more amenable to supporting us, to increase our ability to serve the american people and the world. >> can you tack -- talk about what some of your favorite

things at the smithsonian are? what do people not know about? >> there are a lot of those. i am so fortunate to be able to -- usually every week i schedule something, that's a little different than what the average person would do. just recently i went to our botany department in natural history. they laid out these collections of increbbedible plants they've got. hundreds of thousands of these things that document different species. now we can do d.n.a. studies on them and do much more interpretation of whether or not our species is going to survive or these species which is connected to our survival. so talking to the people who go out and collect these objects all over the world, why do they do it? where do they go and how do they do it is fascinating to me. >> you've talked a little bit about wanting the smithsonian and science of the smithsonian to become a major player on the big issues of the day like climate change. do you worry at all about wading

into political waters there since congress is always right next door? >> that's a good question. we -- our position is that we will do our best to be honest brokers on these issues. we are not going to be evangelists on one side or the other. we will present information to the people. climate change is a complex issue, and it hasn't happened -- it may be happening but it hasn't happened yet. so there is sort of a prediction part of the story of climate change. so i was in wyoming recently where we have a botanist making excavations of a period 55 million years ago when global warming did happen. why are we there? because we can document what really happens when global warming occurred. i cracked a rock open with my hammer, bingo. i am looking at palm leaves in wyoming. 55 million years ago this earth was very warm and the natural process trove global warming. so what is happening in terms of

the climate is a combination of natural and manmade influences, and our job is to try to provide solid information to help people understand the story. it's a complex story because carbon comes from a lot of different places and we want to be the honest broker on these kind of issues. >> how do you trace the time frame, 55 million versus 30 million years ago? >> it's based on dating of the strata that are out in wyoming, worland, wyoming, home of butch cassidy and the sun daps kid. you can date those profiles and you can measure the isotopes in the layers. you can see where the sources of carbon came from. you can see for example, that was about the time that mammals were beginning to make a run after the dinosaurs were gone. they disappeared. mammals came in and some of the mammals survived that period, they were really tiny. there were horses the size of cats roaming around at that time. so you can see a lot of very

interesting things going on in that period. >> one of the things you did at georgia tech was to internationalize the institution. how do you see that translating at the smithsonian? is it a global institution? >> it is in a way because we like to see we were in 90 different countries in our activities, some of which represent physical platforms. in panama or in chile, the great telescopes, or in a place i visited recently, we monitor the health of these magnificent creatures. i think the interesting thing is a twist is we are more international in the sciences than we are in history, arts and culture. we should have a balance. there is a case where history, arts and culture needs to increase its profile. we are working with the state department and looking for ways that we can help the state department and goals of the prept administration in terms of

building ties to other countries. >> what might that entail? >> it might entail artists traveling abroad, historians performing jazz. it might involve -- we just had one of the top people in the museum world in egypt. they're going to build a museum. they want to know how do you build collections? we are the experts on that. we had a group of people helping that gentleman and his delegation. >> you've talked a little bit about facilities, but that's a major challenge for the smithsonian with a $2.5 billion backlog on maintenance. have you been able to secure some stimulus funding to get started op a little bit of that work and what are you tackling first? >> ok, first i would say that number intrigued me, $2.5 billion. it's not as big as it sounds because it's not deferred backlog. that was actually a plan to try

to address over time the continuing maintenance issues and revitalization issues. we haven't really changed that plan. we would still like to get those maintenance dollars and types of projects. i think we have rationalized it in a better way. stimulus funding, we did get $25 million for facilities in the stimulus plan. we would have liked to have gotten a little more but we are going to do a great job. we have already done all the commitments that need to be made. if you go to the grand old arts and industries building, you will see scaffolding. particularly when it becomes close to a safety issue. >> it's not just the buildings themselves but people in them who make a museum alive. do you have enough of the scholarly infrastructure? i know there have been losses,

people being able to work at the mue steam. >> that's fundamental issue because when we look at the prept recession we tend to get absorbed what is happening today. the real issue is the continuous trend. the trend has been downward. it comes out of our total budget which impacts the budget we can put into people. so we have lost 600 people over the last 10 years in our permanent work force. we have more volunteers than we do permanent people. i love our volunteers. thank god for them. but we need have the permanent staff. that's where we are trying to come to the stabilization point where we are not declining. we have an ability to sustain ourself going out in the next 100 or maybe 1,000 years to do what we need to do for the american people. >> you have referred to the smith sown yn -- smithsonian as america's attic. >> i wouldn't say that.

>> treasure. is there something you want to showcase? >> we have 137 million objects in our collections. and i don't use the word attic because that has the connotation of dusty and people put things there they're not using. smithsonian is a vital, happening place. but we have -- >> what is in stories that you want to showcase? >> we need to let these things be seen by people who own them. at any given time you are probably seeing 1% of those things if you go to all of our museums. so the objective is to say let's make it available. we shouldn't hide anything. we should put everything out there. we want to provide context to our scholars about these objects because each one has a story embedded in it. so the objective is to use the

web as a way of getting them out, build an educational program at the smithsonian that explains those things to children all over the country and then they'll want to see the real thing. >> with the changes you are trying to make along those lines, do you think people will start to think about the smithsonian differently in the years to come? >> i would like to think so. i think they will see a more holistic view of the smithsonian. they'll realize we do have sciences and we do have the research is very deep at the smithsonian, whether you are talking about history, arts, culture or science, there is always research about what is going on. so i would hope so. i think they would hopefully see uses a cutting edge place, a place where things can be a lot of fun at the smithsonian. we don't always have to be serious. we have popular culture collections. i was just looking at a painting that tony vinic gave us of duke ellington. that was a wonderful thing for

him to do. i have the great opportunity to see him next week. i want people to see us as a place that is not always serious but a place that's fun to go, new exhibits are happening. and we are communicating with you in a way so it's a two-way street as opposed to in the past, you would come, we would tell you what to see. in the future because of the internet you will be able to tell us what you think and in some cases you will tell us something about an object that we didn't know about. >> wayne clough, thanks very much for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> we continue the conversation with brett zonker and stacy, what did you learn? >> i think we learned that wayne clough is a very good fundraiser. one of the things you could see about the way he talked, his passion, his love for the future. that's what will help the organization raise the money it

needs to survive. the fact he said things were going well is a huge statement. in the nonprofit world people are saying just staying flat is a good thing. so the fact they're doing well in these tough times is a good sign for the future. >> you were bringing up a line of questioning about theline changes, the web developments at the smithsonian. what have you been seeing? >> i think he has already tried to bring an on-line pilot program for k-12 students to talk about the lincoln bicentennial. they want to do that type of thing again to talk about climate change and to be a major player in education where the smithsonian hasn't been before. >> clearly he came onboard because of mr. small's resignation. can you follow up about the question about that and what he inherited? >> what is important is he has had to institute a number of changes working with his

governing board. there was a culture of ramp yapt spending, conflicts of interest. he has had to move quickly to deal with that. he brings experience from the world of running a college. he said the smithsonian was 10 years behind where other institutions were. he probably has more to do because it's a sprawling institution and it's a very difficult one to run. but he serm has moved quickly to put a lot of things in place. he will make congress and the public to trust the institution more. >> this came up last year but looking back, what happened and why was there no oversight? >> one of the things that the board was a very high powered board, people like supreme court justices were on the board but they don't have so much time to be spending looking at the smithsonian so they weren't watching very carefully and mr. small was accused of keeping a lot of things to himself and really deciding that he was going to act like a corporate executive rather than a nonprofit executive. he got into a lot of trouble for

doing that when that was discovered. the board contemplated resigning because they realized they were so in the dark that they weren't doing their oversight job. but in the end what they decided was to overhaul themselves. they've done things to ensure more openness and trust. but it was a very messy situation. there were conflicts of interest throughout the museum. there was a scandal a week in the "washington post." it was a pretty big job that he inherited to have to clean this up. >> in the course of this conversation, did anything surprise you? >> not really. i think a scientist is in charge at the smithsonian again and that has been their long tradition. so it will be really interesting to see where he takes the place and what kinds of issues he focuses on and focuses their resources on in the future. >> his biggest challenge? >> to try to survive in this financial atmosphere. he will be squeezed with private moneys hard to come by. he has done ok this year but in

the future will get more challenging in the years ahead. i think he has a great vision but getting the money behind it to carry it out will be tough. >> thank you to both of you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> virginia democrat senator mark warner held a town hall meeting on health care last week. this took place in fredericksburg, virginia. it's about an hour, 35 minutes. >> we have a lot of people, a lot of folks got stuff to say. i want to try to be brief in my opening comments. one of the things he mentioned was we are all americans appeds we ought to treat each other with respect here tonight. we ought to demonstrate,

particularly to some of our friends from the national media are here, that not only are we americans but we are virginiaians. we may differ but one of the things i found when i was governor and had a chance to work with so many of you, you treat each other with respect. i want to make a brief opening comment. he made mention of the fact that this health care issue is one that i have been engaged in for 20 years. first as an employer and private business and somebody who has had to meet a payroll and make sure at that i pay for the insurance cost of my employees. secondly, somebody who is very proud, 17 years ago, to start the virginia health care foundation that's helped over 600,000 virginiaians get health care they didn't have.

third is i had to wrestle with health care when i was governor. one of the things i was proudest of is in virginia we used to not do a very good job of signing up our kids for chirp children's health insurance. we sent $60 million back to the federal government because we didn't sign up kids for the chips program. we turned that around. now it's the best state in the country. 98% of our kids got insurance. but i also was somebody who as a governor and i know we are dealing with budget shortfalls now but you may recall when i was governor we dealt with multibillion-dollar shortfalls. i also had to deal with health care with the rising cost of medicaid. so this is not an issue that i am new at. this is an issue that over the last mopt i have met with

religious leaders in northern virginia. i have met with hups of health care professionals in roanoke. i will have more opportunities to meet with all of you. before we get the questions and there will be a lot of things we will probably disagree on tonight. i clearly heard some of that back and forth before i got out here. but twhing i would hope we could do is start with a common point on a few facts. that's why i want to run through very quickly a couple of -- seven or eight slides. not a long presentation. i want to describe -- this is not my data. this all comes from independently verifiable data. one thing i would point out as well, there is a lot of misinformation from both sides out there. one thing i would ask, after tonight is going forward, and you can check with my website that will direct you to other independent, nonpartisan sites, to check out some of the facts. again a lot of misinformation

both ways in this debate. ha i wanted to do was talk about what is the current state, the financial state of health care in america today? next slide. if we do nothing on health care, and that is one of our choices, if we do nothing, this is what is going to happen with our existing medicare and medicaid program over the next 20-odd years. medicare and medicaid cost alone -- costs alone will dwarf everything else the federal government does. next slide. if you look at what is happening with our current health care costs in our current system, i believe it's bankrupting america. over the last few years, you've seen our health care as a percentage of our overall economy -- it's currently at about 18%. if we do nothing, that percentage will grow to 25% to

30%. the slide on the bottom indicates total dollars spent. in america this year on health care, you and i, tax money, private insurance, paying money out of our pocket, we are going to spend $2.5 trillion a year. that's almost $8,000 per person. next slide. in perspective -- these numbers, particularly that come out of washington are sometimes so big, you kind of lose any sense of what they mean. in health care in america today, we spend more than twice as much op health care than we to on food. next slide. one of the things that some of you may know about me was i spent 20 years in business. i was lucky to get in the cell phone business. i am the only politician that says leave your cell phones on even when i am