for any agreement -- prirble for any agreement. >> ok. i will close after you if you can kindly just say a couple of words. >> ok. i think that at least i feel that it was too short and maybe should be the beginning of an ongoing dialogue. .

journalists or members of knesset, we should go forward and make such meetings much more -- as many times as you can, we will be happy to do it, not in front of the camera. this was important for the media, but behind closed doors and this is a good opportunity for us to be much more laudible of each other's aspirations and hopes. and i thank you people who came from the palestinian authority and made the effort and who you are courageous to come to the israeli knesset. [applause] >> before we close this session, i want to thank the palestinian journalists that came today and there are hopes there will be many more sessions, many more

that we have had since 2005 and we will charter buses back and forth. and we will go to ramallah and teach some photo journalism there in the next few months. there are going to be a lot of things to be involved in. i thank the journalists that came out today. you are writing about the sforse here. you are each covering the stories here. you need to have the access. don't forget your colleagues in a profession that is not always simple. before we close, i want to thank our staff, because they did an incredible job and i want to single a out a few people. people don't realize how difficult it is to make hundreds and hundreds of calls to try to get assistance. and i thank you for going above

and above and beyond and i thank our hosting member from knesset. and our deputy foreign minister and members of knesset for joining us. with this, i close this session of the middle east press club. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> in a few moments, president obama makes a surprise visit to the white house briefing room to talk with reporters. then first lady michelle obama on childhood owe bestity. and later, a speech by the food and drug administration commissioner. >> taking a look at the $787 billion economic stimulus program signed into law a ago, more than $333 billion has been committed with just under over $179 billion having been paid out as of february 2. track the stimulus money, go to www.c-span.org/stimulus to watch hearings, debates and speeches and links to outside watchdog

groups. that is www.c-span.org/stimulus. >> now for educators, c-span offers the new c-span classroom.org. we have designed the web site to make it useful for teachers for use in your classroom. find the most watched video clips organized by subjects and topics, latest in education news, plus the chance to connect with other c-span classroom teachers and it's all free. sign up at the new c span classroom.org. >> president obama talked about his meeting with congressional democrats and republicans and health care legislation and iran sanctions. press secretary robert gibbs continued speaking with reporters after the president. this is about an hour.

>> you know, we're trying to bring some change that you can believe in. hello everybody. i'm glad to see that all of you braved the weather to be here. a little while ago, i had a meeting with the democratic and republican congressional leaders and it went very well. in fact, i understand that mcconnell and reid are doing snow angels on the south lawn together -- can you picture that, chuck? not really. the meeting did go well. and i appreciate them making the trip. we had a good and frank

conversation and one i hope we can continue on a more regular basis. we all understand there are legitimate and genuine differences between the parties. but despite the political posturing that often paralyzes this town, there are many issues upon which we can and should agree. that's what the american people are demanding of us. i think they're tired of every day being election day in washington. and at this critical time in our country, the people who sent us here expect a seriousness of purpose that transcends petty politics. that's why i'm going to continue to seek the best ideas from either party as we work to tackle the pressing challenges ahead. i'm confident, for example, that when one in 10 of our fellow citizens can't work, we should be able to come together and help business create more jobs. we ought to be able to agree on providing small businesses with additional tax credits and much needed lines of credit.

we ought to agree on investments in crumbling roads, bridges. and we should agree on tax breaks for making homes more energy efficient, all of which will put more americans to work. many of the job proposals that i have laid out have passed the house and are soon going to be debated in the senate. we spent a lot of time in this meeting discussing the jobs package and how to move forward and if there are additional ideas, i will consider them as well. what i won't consider is doing nothing in the face of a lot of hardship across the country. we also talked about restoring fiscal responsibility. there are a few matters on which there is as much vigorous bipartisan agreement, at least in public, but unfortunately, there's also a lot of partisan wrangling behind closed doors. this is what we know for sure, for us to solve this extraordinary problem that is so many years in the making, it's

going to take the cooperation of both parties. it's not going to happen in any other way. i'm pleased congress supported my request to support the pay-as-you-go rule that turned deficits into surpluses in the 1990's and i called for a bipartisan fiscal commission. this measure which originally received the support of a bipartisan majority in the senate and co-response soared by senator gregg, was blocked there. during our meeting, i asked the leadership of both parties to join in this serious effort to address our long-term deficits, because when the politics is put aside, the reality of our fiscal challenge is not subject to interpretation. mathis not partisan. there ought to be a debate about how to close our deficits. what we can't accept is business as usual and we can't afford grandstanding at the expense of actually getting something done.

during our meeting, we also touched briefly on how we can move forward on health reform. i have already announced that in two weeks, i will be holding a meeting with people from both parties. as i told the congressional leadership, i'm looking forward to a constructive debate with plans that need to be measured against this test. does it bring down costs for all americans, as well as for the federal government, which spends a huge amount on health care. does it provide adequate protects against abuses by the insurance industry, does it make coverage affordable and available to the tens of millions of working americans and does it help us get on a path of fiscal sustainability. we also talked about why this is so urgent. just this week, there was a report that and them blue cross, the largest insurer in california is planning on raising premiums for many individual policy holders by as much as 39%.

we don't act, this is just a preview of coming attractions. premiums will continue to rise for folks with insurance. millions more will lose their coverage all together. our deficits will continue to grow larger. and we have an obligation, both parties, to tackle this issue in a serious way. now, bipartisanship depends on a willingness among both democrats and republicans to put aside matters of party for the good of the country. i won't hesitate to embace a good idea for my friends in the minority party, but i also won't hesitate to condemn what i consider to be object stinance that is rooted not in substancetive disagreements but in political ex peedens. we talked about this as well, particularly when it comes to the confirmation process. but for months, qualified, noncontroversial nominees for critical positions in government often positions related to our

national security, have been held up despite having overwhelming support. my nominee for one important job, the head of general services administration, which helps run the government, was denied a vote for nine months. when she finally got a vote on her nomination, she was confirmed 96-0. that's not advise and consent. that is delay and obstruct. one senator, as you all are away, put a hold on every single nominee we have put forward due to a dispute of a couple of earmarks in his state. in our meeting, i asked the congressional leadership to put a stop to these holds in which nominees are denied a vote for months. surely, we can set aside partisanship and confirm these nominations. if the senate does not act to confirm these nominees, i will consider making several recess

appointments during the upcoming recess because we can't afford to have politics stand in the way of a well functioning government. my hope is this will be the first in a series of meetings that i have with leadership of both parties in congress. we've got to get past the tired debates that have plagued our government and greater hardships among the american people and extraordinary frustrations among the american people. those frustrations are what led me to run for president. as long as i'm here in washington, i will in-- make this government work on their behalf. i will take a couple of questions. >> john boehner came out and told us the house can't pass the health care bill. the senate can't pass the health care bill. why would we have a conversation about legislation that can't pass? as a part of that, he said, you

and your white house, congressional democrats should start over from scratch on health care reform. how do you respond? are you willing to do that? >> how's -- here's how i responded to john in the meeting. there are core goals that have to be met. we have to control costs both in families, businesses and also for our government. everybody out there who talks about deficits has to acknowledge that the single biggest driver of our deficits is health care spending. we cannot deal with our deficits and debt long-term unless we get a handle on that. so that has to be part of a package. number two, we've got to deal with insurance abuses that affect millions of americans who got health insurance. and number three, we have to make health insurance more available to folks in the individual market as i just mentioned in california who are suddenly seeing their premiums going up 39%.

that applies to the majority of small businesses as well as sole proprietors. they are struggling. i've got these goals. now we have a package as we work through the differences between the house and the senate, and we'll put itñr up on a website r all to over a long period of time, that meets those criteriañ meets those goals. but when i was in baltimore talking to the house republicans, they said we can accomplish some of these goals at no costs. and i said, great, let me see it. and you know, i have no interest in doing something that's more expensive and harder to accomplish if somebody else has an easier way to do it. so i'm going to be starting from scratch in the sense that i will be open to any ideas that help promote these goals. what i will not do, what i don't think makes sense and i don't think the american people want to see would be another year of partisan wrangling around these

issues, another six months or eight months or nine months worth of hearings in every single committee in the house and senate in which there is a lot of posturing. let's get the relevant parties together and put the best ideas on the table. my hope is we can find enough overlap that we can say, this is the right way to move forward, even if i don't get every single thing that i want. but here's the point that i made to john boehner and mitch mcconnell. bipartisan can't be that i agree to all the things that they believe in or want and they agree to none of the things that i believe and want and that's the price of bipartisanship, right? that's the way it gets presented. mitch mcconnell said something nice in the meeting about how he supports our goals on nuclear energy and clean coal technology

and more drilling to increase oil production. well, of course he likes that. that's part of the republican agenda for energy, which i accept. and i'm willing to move on some of the preferences of my party in order to meet them halfway. but there's got to be some give from their side as well, that's true on health care, true on energy, true on financial reform. that's what i'm hoping gets accomplished. >> can the bill be passed? >> what i agree with is that the public has soured on the process that they saw over the last year. i think that actually contaminates how they view the substance of the bills. i think it is important for all these issues to be aired so people have confidence before moving forward on such a significant part of the economy as health care, that there is

complete transparency and all these issues have been adequately vetted and adequately debated. and this gives an opportunity not just for democrats to say, here's what we think should do, but gives republicans a showcase before the entire country to say, here's our plan and why we think it will work. one of the things they said they didn't think the status quo was acceptable and that right there is promising. that indicates that if all sides agree that we can't just continue with business as usual, then maybe we can actually get something done. >> and them said they are raising premiums because the economy is so bad. one of the reasons why businesses are not expanding right now, at least according to

business leaders, they say there is an uncertainty of what they need to plan for because of the energy bill, because of health care, that's what they say. i'm not saying it's true or not. what do you say when you hear that? >> i think that the biggest uncertainty has been that we have just gone through the worst recession since the great depression and people weren't sure whether the financial system was going to melt down. let's be clear about the sources in terms of business investment over the last several years. a huge contraction, trillions of dollars of losses in people's 401k's. people have a lot of debt coming out of the previous decade. the housing market losing a whole bunch of value. the good news is that where we were contracting by 6%, the economy is now growing by 6%. the c.e.o.'s i talked to are saying they are now making

investment and i anticipate they are going to start hiring at a more rapid clip. what i have also heard them saying is we would like to feel like washington is working and able to get some things done. there are two ways of interpretting the issue of uncertainty. one way would be to say, well, you know what? we'll go back to what we were doing before on, let's say, the financial markets. we won't have the regulations we need, won't make any changeses in terms of too big to fail. that will provide certainty until the next financial crises. that's not the kind of certainty they need. we need to agree on a bipartisan effort to put some rules of the road in place so that consumers are protected in the financial markets, so that we don't have banks that are too big to fail, we have ways of winding them down and protecting the overall system without taxpayer

bailouts. that requires legislation. the sooner we can get that done, the better. the same is true with respect to health care. c.e.o.'s i hear from say we would like you to get health care settled one way or the another, but they acknowledge when they open their latest invoice for premiums and find out they have gone up 20% or 25%, that's the kind of uncertainty that also tamps down business investment. so i guess my answer would be this. the sooner the business community has a sense that we've got our act together here in washington and can move forward on big, serious issues in a substantive way without a lot of posturing and partisan wrangling, i think the better off the entire country will be. i absolutely agree on that. what i think is important is not to buy into this notion that is perpetrated by some of the

business interests that got a stake in this who are fighting financial reform for example, to say, we'd be doing fine if we didn't try to regulate the banks. that, i think, would be a mistake. >> to play devil's advocate, a small business, not someone who is going to be affected by the regulatory reform, you would acknowledge, you have proposed a bold agenda and a small business might wonder, i don't know how the energy bill is going to affect me or the health care bill is going to affect me. i might hold off on hiring. >> the small businesses i have been talking to and i have been talking to a lot as i have been traveling, their biggest problem is they can't get credit out of their banks, so they're uncertain about that and uncertain about orders, do they have enough customers to justify them doing more. it's looking better at this point, but that's not the

rationale for people saying i'm not hiring. most small businesses right now, they have enough customers to make a profit and get the bank loans required to boost their payroll, boost their inventory and sell to those customers, they will do so. ok. let's see. david. >> you heard mcconnell talk about nuclear power, offshore drilling, free trade. is your party going to go for that? >> i think that on energy, there should be a bipartisan agreement that we have to take a both and approach rather than either on or approach. i'm firm in my conviction that the country that leads the way in clean energy, solar, wind, biodiesel, geothermal, that

country is going to win the race in the 21st century global economy, so we have to move in that direction. what is also true is that given our energy needs in order to continue economic growth, produce jobs, make sure our businesses are competitive around the world, that we're going to need some of the old traditional energy sources as we are developing these new ones and ramping them up. we can't overnight convert to an all life solar or all-wind economy. we are going to have needs. so the question is, are we going to be able to put together a package that includes safe, secure nuclear power, that includes new technologies so we can use coal, which we have an abundance and is very cheap, but often is adding to our

greenhouse gases, can we find technologies that clean that up, can we identify opportunities to increase our oil and natural gas production in a way that is environmentally sustainable, and that should be part of a package with our development of clean energy. and you know, my hope is that my republican friends and also democrats say to themselves, let's be practical and let's do both, let's not just do one or the other, but let's do both. over time, i think the transition is going to be more and more clean energy and over time, fossil fuels become less prominent in our overall energy base, but we have to do both. >> how confident are you that there will be consensus for that approach? >> i'm an eternal optimist. and so it's the right thing to

do. and all i can do is just to keep on making the argument about what's right for the country and assume that over time, people, regardless of party, regardless of their particular political positions, are going to gravitate towards the truth. i'm going to take two more. let's see. i just want to make sure i was getting a balance here. go ahead, chuck. why is everyone moaning about todd? >> he's too good. his questions are too precise. >> iran, we got the news today that they're doing more of these or trying to enhance the uranium even more. i think secretary gates today

was quoted as saying basically the dialogue seems to be over, now the question is sanctions. where are we on sanctions? how close is this? i know you had an end of the year deadline when you stood up there with sarkozy. how close it is moving? >> it's moving fairly quickly. we have bent over backwards to say to the islamic republic of iran that we are willing to have a constructive conversation about how they can align themselves with international norms and rules and re-enter as full members of the international community. the most obvious attempt was when we gave them an offer that said we're going to provide the

conversion of some of the low enriched uranium that they already have into the isotopes they need for medical research and hospitals that would serve up to one million iranian citizens. they rejected it. although one of the difficulties in dealing with iran over the last several months is, it's not always clear who is speaking on behalf of the government and we get a lot of different mixed signals. what's clear is they have not said yes to an agreement that russia, china, germany, france, great britain and the united states all said was a good deal and that the director of the iaea said was the right thing to do and that iran should accept. that indicates to us that

despite their posturing that their nuclear power is only for civilian use, that they, in fact , continue to pursue a course that would lead to weaponization and that is not acceptable to the international community. we have said, if you want to accept the kinds of agreements with the international community that lead you down a path of being a member of good standing, then we welcome you. if not -- >> by deciding to do what they did -- >> if not, the next step is sanctions. they have made their choice so far, although the door is still open. what we will be working on over the next several weeks is developing a significant regime

of sanctions that will indicate to them how isolated they are from the international community as a whole. >> what do you mean by sanctions? u.n. and others? >> we are going to be looking at a variety of ways in which countries indicate to iran that their approach is unacceptable and the u.n. will be one aspect of that broader effort. we are confident right now that the international community is unified around iran's misbehavior in this area. how china operates at the security council as we pursue sanction is something we will have to see. we will have to see how forward leaning the russians will be.

they have seen that iran isn't serious about solving what is a solveable dispute between iran and the international community. i'm going to take one last question. >> thanks for joining us. it's been a while. on health care, republicans are asking for the february 25 session will include economists, and public interest groups and people supporting your side and will it be people supporting your side. on and them blue cross, do you have authority to tell them or stop them? >> i don't have the authority as i understand it. i can't issue an executive order lowering everybody's rates. if i could have, i would have and saved everyone grief on capitol hill. that's why the status quo is unacceptable. but there i know short cut in

dealing with this -- there is no short cut in dealing with this issue. i know the american people get frustrated in debating something like health care because you get a whole bunch of different claims being made by different groups and different interests. it is a big, complicated, tough issue. but what is also true is that without some action on the part of congress, it is very unlikely that we see any improvement over the current trajectory. premiums are going up 10%, 15%, 20%. more and more people are losing health care. during the health care debate, everybody was saying, the president asking the government to take over health care. for the first time this year,

you saw more people getting health care from government than you did from the private sector, not because of anything we did, but because more and more people are losing their health care from their employers. it's becoming unaffordable. that's what we are trying to prevent. we want people to be able to get health care from their employers, but we also understand you have to fix the system so people are able to get at affordable rates and small businesses can give their employees insurance at an affordable rate. and that's not happening right now. to your question about about the 25, my hope is that this doesn't end up being political theater as i think some of you have phrased it. i want a substantive discussion. we haven't refined exactly how the agenda is going to go that day. we want to talk republican and

democratic leaders on what they think is most useful. i do want to make sure there are some people like the congressional budget office, for example, that are considered nonpartisan, who can answer questions. in this whole health care debate, i'm aminded of the story that was told br senator moynihan who was in an argument with one of his colleagues and his colleague was losing the argument and he was getting flustered and said to senator moynihan, i'm entitled to your own opinion. >> he said you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. that's the key to a successful dialogue on health care. let's establish common facts. let's establish what the issuesr what the problems are and let's test out in front of the

american people what ideas work and what ideas don't. if we can establish that factual accuracy about how different approaches would work, then i think we can make some progress. and it may be some of the facts that come up are ones that make my party a little bit uncomfortable. so if it's established that by working seriously on medical malpractice and tort reform that we can reduce some of those costs -- i have said at the beginning of this debate -- i would be willing to work on that. on the other hand i'm told that is only a fraction of the problem and that is not the biggest driver of health care costs, then i'm also going to insist, ok, let's look at that as one aspect of it, but what else are you willing to do?

and this gets back to the point i was making earlier, bipartisanship doesn't mean that democrats give up everything that they believe in, find a handful of things that republicans have been advocating for and we do those things and then we have bipartisanship. that's not how it works in any other realm of life and it doesn't work in my marriage with michelle, although i usually give in most of the time. but there's got to be give and take. that's what i'm hoping can be accomplished and i'm confident that's what the american people are looking for. all right? since there wasn't a jobs question, i'll make this the last one. >> republicans are saying the jobs package we have seen isn't

ready yet and worried about the costs. can something move through quickly? >> the house has moved a jobs package that has good elements in it. my understanding is that there is bipartisan talks taking place as we speak on the senate side about some elements of a package. i think there are some things that a lot of people agree on. just to give you an example, the idea of eliminating capital gains for small business. something we can all gee on. i talked about it in the state of the union address. my hope would be that we could all agree on a mechanism to get community banks who are lending to small businesses more capital, because that is something that i keep on hearing is one of the biggest problems that small businesses have out there. so i think it's relateic for us to get a -- realistic for us to get a package moving quickly

that may not include all the things that need to be done and it may be that that first package builds some trust and confidence that democrats and republicans on capitol hill can work together and then we move onto the next aspect of the package and so forth. it may take a series of incremental steps, but the one thing i'm absolutely clear about is we have an economy growing right now, huge boost in productivity. that's the good news. the bad news is that companies haven't taken that final step in actually putting people on their payroll full-time. we are seeing an increase in temporary workers, but they haven't taken on that full-time worker. and so, providing some additional impet tuesday for them, right as the economy is moving in a positive direction, it will yield some good results.

thank you, guys. that was pretty good. >> when do we see you again? >> now that the warmup band has played -- i can't imagine there is a lot left to say. i'll do a few of these and we'll get going. >> please follow up on the issue of bipartisanship. the president said it just can't be democrats abandonning their ideas. there has to be give and take, what about the give that the white house offers? can you offer any specific ideas or places where the white house is willing to give ground? >> you heard the president discuss in the interviews that he's done that the notion of talking more fully about medical malpractice is something that you could put on the table and we could discuss. understand this, republican

ideas that are already in the legislation that the senate considered, high risk pools for uninsured with pre-existing conditions, interstate come pabts to allow coverage to be sold state lines. low-cost catastrophic care for the young, grants for prevention and wellness programs with participation in employee wellness programs, small insurance pools that offer affordable coverage choices. there are republican ideas -- the latest figure i had, 160 amendments that were offered in the committee process by republicans that have been put into this bill. that's the point of this. as you saw the president discuss in baltimore that we should listen to these ideas and we should have that discussion. >> sounds like you are taking the position that the white house has listened and now it's time -- >> i didn't say that. the notion that republican ideas

aren't contained in the bill is just -- i think you know that is simply not true. if you think about the number of meetings that senator bachus had with senator grassley and senator inslee, the number of times they spoke with this. the notion that the president hasn't talked to republicans is nothing more than a republican g.o.p. party talking point. the point of this is, let's have a reasonable discussion and let's sit down and discuss these issues in a bipartisan way. let's do this in a way where we can have this discussion, we can have this discussion in front of the american people and we can decide what ideas we can all agree on. understand this, i think the last example the president was using, which was bipartisanship isn't going to 100% of your ideas or 100% of my ideas, right? that's not bipartisanship. but there has to be give and

take in that process. and we have to understand that you may not get everything you want, but some of what you want and the other side may get some of that as well. when senator mcconnell and congressman boehner both said today as you heard the president discuss that the status quo, what we have currently is unacceptable, that we have to work together now to figure out that certainty and provide it for the american people to improve the system. >> the white house saying it is still willing to give in that give and take? >> absolutely. we have been willing to give. >> underlying issue of bipartisanship here, does the president genuinely think that the republican leaders in the house and senate want to work with him on jobs and health care? is that his take? >> we take them at their word. we take them at their word that they do want to have -- play a constructive role and want to

work with democrats on making this happen. senators hatch and schumer are working a jobs tax credit on a bipartisan basis that could come up this week for a vote in the senate. the president discussed -- there was a lengthy discussion on insuring credit to small businesses as something the white house and members of congress in both parties believe was important for small business. there was a discussion on the deficit and ensuring that the fiscal commission be an outlet for that, understanding that congressman boehner and senator mcconnell both spoke in support of their -- house and the senate, respective pieces of legislation on that. so i think there is -- if we understand what the president says in agreeing that we can have this give and take, i think we could make progress. >> follow up, robert.

president obama is saying no, though, to boehner and mcconnell -- for him to scrap the house and senate health care bills and start from scratch. that's a nonstarter? >> they're going to bring their ideas to the table. look, there are some in their party that want to do with the entire -- i wrote a few things down -- oh. i wrote, eggs, milk and bread. but i crossed out bread, just so i can make pancakes for ethan and then wrote down hope and change. pretty good. pretty good.

again, there are different ways of tax treatment for the republicans. there are some that want to do away with the tax deferral on health insurance. obvious, there are some that don't. there are those that want to -- that believe that there should be a broader restructuring of the medicare advantage program that provides incentives for insurers to run a program that's already being run and there is a disagreement on that. we don't expect that the republicans aren't going to bring the ideas they brought to the table. the president isn't going to scrap what has been a year-long process to get us to this point. yes, sir? >> missile defense. despite the president having scaled back and revised the bush administration missile defense strategy. >> your characterization of

scaled back and revised, provided better protection for europe and the homeland, to do it in a way that is simply not more cost effective but a better result in the event -- >> i won't argue. despite what russia's top general said today they view the system as being directed against them and they say this is what's holding up an agreement on a new star treaty. how does the administration convince them of the u.s. intentions? >> when president obama talked to president medvedev, he didn't bring this up as an obstacle. our change in architecture for a missile plan that protected europe and this homeland in a better way was announced last september, yet, we have had substantive negotiations going on for many months.

i think the notion that this isn't a impediment with what's going on with star is not true. it wasn't what president medvedev told president obama. >> russian armed forces chief of staff said despite the declaration of those statesmen who say on the contrary it provides for our security, that's far from the case. >> i would say -- i hate to contradict the president of russia in speaking to the president of the united states about getting a star deal going and not mentioning in a phone call that's happening in the oval office something like this because it's just not the case. it's not what's holding up these negotiations. these negotiations are ongoing. if it was -- there are a series of things -- look, whenever you

get down to this point in the treaty, you're taking concept you'll agreements and putting them into words and there are going to be fights over different words and that's what they're working through. i can assure you, it's not a different approach to missiles. >> some republicans on the hill have been critical of this administration for not getting them involved in health care reform or other issues as well. and the white house has now invited them to the white house today. >> what other issues? >> financial reform, stimulus. >> we were working together on a bipartisan package for financial reform. >> that they haven't been brought in to the process and now they are being brought in now and going to be brought in on the 25 again. is this something that the white house is saying we should have

involved republicans? >> we are paving the road again to bipartisanship. but you have -- >> there seems to be a more aggressive effort to involve republicans. >> i don't think that's true. i will go back and try to figure out the number of times that the president talked to republican senators in trying to get the finance committee to come to an agreement. it was many, many times. we hosted meetings down here. the notion -- it's quite revisionist to think that somehow -- remember in the summer all these questions about, when are you going to get through this and get to the floor? we spent hours and hours and hours, many conversations trying to bring republicans in the finance committee along. senator snowe did join in that finance committee vote and did work constructively and we worked constructively with her.

so -- >> also health care reform as well. >> that is health care. >> the entire reforms that have been going, financial reform, they feel that republicans have not been brought into this process. the white house seems to be more aggressive in doing that now. >> we have a fundamental disagreement about the premise of your question. >> chip? >> big mistake about passing health care reform before christmas? >> i don't think it was a mistake at all. if we thought it was a mistake, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing. again, remember this. remember the president went to capitol hill to talk to house republicans about supporting the recovery act before we could load the pool up, they put out a statement opposing the recovery plan. this is exactly what the president said, chip. if bipartisanship means i'm going to give up everything i

believe and adopt everything that you believe, that's not bipartisanship. it's never been bipartisanship in this town. if bipartisanship means we're going to take into account some of your ideas and some of our ideas, no one is likely to get 100% but meet somewhere in the middle to make progress. that's the definition of bipartisanship has been for several 100 years and that's what we hope each party is interested in doing now. >> the president made the impression, on the deficit, that there was a tone of bipartisanship in the room and he was talking about pushing aside the bipartisan commission. both boehner and mcconnell came out and boehner in particular said that the democrats and the president have been on a spending binge. they went into full partisan mode. >> i hope -- >> all he needs is to make the decisions himself.

>> i hope your reporter can ask -- chip, nobody in their right mind could blame everything that's happened on one party on spending. nobody could. whether they want to come out of the white house in a bipartisan meeting and decide that history is far different than the way any normal human being would read it, that's up to them to defend. the point is this, leader boehner co-sponsored a bill by frank wolf and jim cooper to set up a commission that didn't even have -- did not have an equal number of house democrats and republicans on the commission. senator mcconnell, in a number of different venues, including in november on cnn, spoke quite passionately for the conrad-greg commission. the president weighed in and

supported the conrad-gregg commission, which is set up similarly to the woofl-cooper proposal. we put that up for a vote. now if each party is serious in dealing with the deficit, we wouldn't normally think that you would need 60 votes in the senate where you can pass something based on a majority, you wouldn't think you need 60 votes if each were serious about working on the deficit. but that's what was asked for, 60 votes. let's talk about what happened in that vote. it got 53 votes. not all republicans supported it. not all democrats supported it. but we got 53 votes, seven short of the necessary 60. those seven votes could have been gotten by the six co-sponsors of that will bill in december that decided not to vote for it and active

co-sponsor that are also decided. they're the seven votes. but, look, chip, the president laid out $17 billion worth of spending cuts, 60 votes. the president laid out 20% in spending cuts this year and we hope to get those. if congress wants to do better than that, the president is happy to look at it. the president talked with paul ryan, a line-item veto and talked about recisions and the president will look at those. >> has it been made clear to the president that there is no compromise on both the bipartisan commission and health care reform? they want him to scrap the bill. isn't the president engaging in this political theater by saying come to the table and talk to us? >> not at all. 53 senators supported a debt commission, right? the senator who was at the meeting represent i e

representing the senate republicans said two months ago he supported it. the leader of the house republicans -- >> is that political theater? >> it's political theater to when something comes to a vote, the president is very clear. he said to john and mitch, he said, guys, it doesn't really work in this town if i say yeah, i'm for that, and then you decide that you have been for that and now you're not. i don't know what the definition of that is, chip, and i presume you will have a congressional correspondent ask them why on earth each would support something and when it came to a vote, they would not support it. look, they have concerns about how what would be on the table. well, here's a good idea. there's a budget process that will go on on capitol hill. if you have an idea about how to structure a budget, we've got no problem voting on that. i have no doubt that if the

house republicans or the senate republicans want to the put forward a budget, that should be voted on, absolutely. i can't imagine anybody would stand in the way of having that budget voted on. >> two questions, one is, the president just mentioned his proposal to make tarp funds available for small banks to make small business lending. how important is that, that package be considered immediately? >> i have to talk with legislative affairs and see what is being considered by the senate. to a person in this meeting, everyone mentioned prior to the discussion on -- prior to the discussion on how it would be structured, to a person, every one of the leaders, including the president, mentioned that getting capital to small businesses, allowing them to borrow money to meet payrolls or

expand is one of the most important things that we can do. some other differences were discussed in terms of how that is structured, but the leaders talked about how you're going to pay for this. we have authority to use money to help banks get the capital they need to lend. so this is, as the treasury secretary, dr. summers and dr. romer all three of them said, also we do something like this, lending is going to contract. we have this authority and that authority is the permissible authority under tarp is to get the financial system going through lending, that this was

an easy, commonsense way to get that done. >> the president highlighted as well as senator mcconnell the fact that the republicans like some of his energy ideas, clean coal, nuclear power. was there any discussion in the meeting of moving forward with a comprehensive energy bill that would include those elements as well as some of the democratic proposals? >> senator mcconnell brought up some ideas that the president had proposed in the state of the union that he thought many republicans would support. he mentioned clean coal technology, which the president has supported since running for office in illinois in 2003 and 2004. mentioned increasing nuclear loans, which is in our budget and talked about offshore oil drilling, something that the president supported at the end of the last campaign. i think as you heard the president say, he is certainly

prepared to walk away from some in his party that think we can't do those things. now, in order to get some of this done, we need that give and take with the republicans. >> was there any serious -- >> that wasn't a long topic of discussion. i think the president said to senator mcconnell, if that's what he supports, he will be pleasantly surprised at what the administration supports. >> in the state of the union, the president made mention of the three trade deals. >>up. >> but he didn't say they should be ratified. there has been a lot of speculation on that. does he want them ratified this year? and if so, is there political damage there because 2010 and certainly labor would not be happy with that? >> george, again, this is a good example of what has to be give

and take. the president mentioned those three. we didn't lay out a specific deadline but the president believes that in order to create jobs here, we need to increase the amount of exports that are leaving this country. he has a very robust agenda on exports and they include those free trade agreements. >> should they be ratified this year? >> the president didn't lay out timelines in the state of the union and didn't do so in this meeting. . .

having this discussion, having everyone be able to see this discussion and being able to discuss openly the ideas that each party want toss bridge to the table -- wants to bring to the table, the president believes can help move this process forward. it started in what the president did in baltimore and the president hopes it will continue on february 25 at the white house. so. >> but representative cantor is already saying it's a dog and pony show and we have no interest in discussing the failed bills of the democrats that have already been rejected by the american public. he said it this morning.

>> look, i can't imagine -- >> -- asking for discuss then. >> i can't imagine that a group that wanted to sit down and talk in a bipartisan way with the president about health care would now walk away from the process of sitting down in a bipartisan way and talking to the president on health care. i mean, i hear crazy stuff in this town all the time. but to literally move one day from your talking pointless of, we need a transparent process where the president sits down and looks at and takes seriously our ideas on health care and then the next day says, my gosh, what you want us to do is in a transparent way sit down and talk about our ideas on health care, we can't possibly do that. so, look, i'll just say, representative cantor can decide whether he agrees with himself in yesterday's letter or whether he agrees with himself just a few weeks ago when he was making this argument. so -- >> one of the conditions that they're asking for prior to the meeting is that reconciliation be taken off the table.

is the white house willing to go there? >> i think that the republicans should come to the white house to discuss their ideas without any preconditions. >> that wasn't an answer, really. >> go ahead. >> i just wanted to say -- >> the president's not going to eliminate anything based on preconditions. if that's one of their precondition, the president doesn't agree to limiting the way we're going to discuss this. >> based on some of the reaching out that you just discussed with chip on health care with the republicans, does the president see this february 25 summit then as kind of the last chance for the republicans to come to the table and agree on something or else he's just going to do with with democratic votes? >> no, i don't -- i think the president believes this is the next best chance to do it and the president's going to take republicans seriously, that they want to come discuss these issues. you're laughing and i haven't even finished my answer.

>> how many more chances is he going to extend before he just says, they're not going to play, so we're just going to go with democratic votes? >> bill, i -- well, i think if there was a way to have solved this prior to today we wouldn't be -- >> i appreciate your notes object the hand gag. how focused is the white house monitoring the tea parties this weekend? >> i didn't watch it at all. >> did you see the tea party movement as a real political force this year? >> look, it seems to be a very successful private enterprise. i would say that, you know, there appear to be fewer speech makers that are unemployed in this economy than what might have been previously reported.

look, i think whether -- whether you're part of an organized party, whether you're part of a movement that has a convention, i think what we saw in 2008, what we saw in massachusetts, what we see across the country is a great deal of anxiety about what we've been through. we discussed this a little on friday when we talked about the jobs report. the reformlation of how many jobs have been lost in this recession, 82.4 million, exceeds what had been lost in -- 8.4 million, exceeds what had been lost in the recession of 1981rks the recession of 1991 and the recession of 2001 combined. so for a long period of time this anxiety has built, whether you're again a democrat or a republican, an ypt, a member of

the tea party movement, you want to see this town be able to sit down and talk about their differences, but also not just focus on their differences. i know there's been a lot of questions in here focused on what we disagree on, not what we agree on. i think the president wants to sit down wlrks it's in a bipartisan meeting, to talk about the economy and jobs, whether it's in a bipartisan meeting to talk about health care, to find some agreement on what we're for. there are plent ofy outlets for people to discuss what they're -- there are plenty of outlets for people to discuss what they're against. what the american people want us to do is come together and make some progress and move forward on what we agree on to help their lives, to help them pay for a college education, to help get this economy restarted again, to help them get the credit they need to start or expand the small business. that's what the american people want to see this town work on. i think that's what the president wants to work on, too. thanks, guys. >> any comment on craig becker?

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> in a few moments, first lady michelle obama talks about childhood obesity. then a speech by the food and drug administration commissioner. and later, chairman tim kai nembings addresses a chairman of the democratic national committee. >> tune in c-span 2's book tv for a three-day president's weekend beginning saturday. authors include former treasury secretary henry paulson talking with warren buffett on the 2008 economic collapse. on afterwards, gary wills on

how the atomic bomb changed the presidency and the role of the u.s. in the world. afterwards, all day monday, books on american presidents, h.w. brands on president obama and our culture. craig cheryly on ronald reagan. for the complete schedule, go to booktv.org. it's the only collection of american presidential portraits painted by one artist. american presidents, life portraits by renowned painter and sculpture now on display through february 21. the exhibit looks at the lives of the 43 men who have held the office, through paintings, photographs, prints and audio recordings. sponsored by c-span and the white house historical association and if you can't get to west lafayette, see the entire collection online at c-span's website, americanpresidents.org. >> earlier today, first lady

michelle obama spoke at the official start of the nationwide campaign to prevent childhood obesity. the first lady has been meeting with cabinet officials, health experts and state officials in recent weeks to discuss the issue. her remarks are about 25 minutes. >> they're just barely hanging in but we want you here because this is really all about you. we have other dids but these guys are the national football champion, right? congratulations, you guys. you guys can sit. we're almost done. hang in there. just think, you could be in school. [laughter] but we're all here today because we care deeply about the health and well-being of

not just these kids up here but for all kids like them all across the country. and clearly we're determined to finally take on one of the most serious threats to their future and that's the epidemic of childhood obesity in america today. and obviously it's an issue of great concern to me not just as a first lady but as a mother and as tiki said often when we talk about this issue, we begin by citing sobering statistics like the ones we've heard today and we can't say it enough because we have to drill this in, that over the past three decades childhood obesity rates in this country have tripled. that nearly 1/3 of children in america are now overweight or obese. that's one in three of our children. but the truth is that these numbers don't paint the full picture and it's important to say this. the words overweight and obese,

those words don't tell the full story. because this isn't about inches and pounds and it's not about how our kids look. it has nothing to do with that. it's about how our kids feel and it's about how they feel about themselves. it's about the impact that we're seeing that this issue is having on every aspect of their lives. pediatricians like dr. pal fry all over this country are seeing kids with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, more and more kids with type two diabetes and as we all know that used to only be a disease of adults. our teachers talking a lot of them, they're telling me how they're seeing the bullying, the teasing. our school counselors see the depression and the low self-esteem. coaches are seeing kids struggling to keep up or worse yet sitting on the sidelines unable to engage. our military leaders report that obesity is now one of the

most common disqualifiers for military service. economic experts tell us that we are spending outrageous amounts of money treating obesity-related conditions like diabetes, heart disease and cancer. and public health experts, as tiki said, tell us that the current generation is actually on track to having a shorter life span than their parents. and none of us wants this future for our kids and none of us wants this future for our country. so, instead of just talking about this problem and worrying and ringing our hands, it's time for us to get going and do something about this. we have to act. so let's move. let's get this done. let's move to get families and communities together to make healthy decisions for their kids. let's move to bring together our governors and our mayors, doctors and nurses, businesses, community groups, educators,

athletes, moms, dads, you name it, together to tackle the challenge once and for all. and that's why we're here today. to launch this wonderful new campaign called let's move. let's hear it. let's move. [applause] let's move is a campaign that's going to rally our nation to achieve a single but very ambitious goal and that's to solve the problem of childhood obesity in a generation. so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight. but to get where we want to go it's important for us to first understand how we got here. so i'm going to ask all the grownups in the room to just close your eyes for a moment and think back. think back to the time when we were all kids, as tiki, did, he's there, causing trouble. >> so is my brother. >> like many of you, when i was

young, we walked to school every day, rain or shine, and in chicago it was in the wind, sleet, snow and hail. we were out there. you remember how at school we had to have recess, had to have it. you had to have gym. we spent hours running around outside when school got out. you couldn't even go inside until it was time for dinner. and then in so many households we'd gather around the table for dinner as a family and in my household and many there was one simple rule, you ate what was on your plate. good, bad or ugly. kids had absolutely no say in what they felt like eating. if you didn't like it, you were welcome to go to bed hungry. and back then fast food was a treat. it was something that happened occasionally. it was a big treat for us. and dessert was mainly a sunday affair. and in my home we weren't rich. the foods weren't fansy, but there was always a vegetable on

the plate. and we managed to lead pretty healthy lives. but many kids today aren't so fortunate. urban sprawl and fears about safety often mean the only walking our kids do is out the front door to a bus or a car. and then cuts in recess and gym mean a lot less running around for our kids during the day. school day. and lunch time may mean a school lunch heavy on calories and fat. and for many kids those afternoons spent riding bikes and playing ball until dusk have been replaced by afternoons inside with a tv on a and internet, video games. and these days with parents working so hard, longer hours, some cases two jobs, they just don't have the time for those family dinners. and with the price of fruits and vegetable -- vegetables rise -- rising 50% higher than overall food costs over the past two decades, a lot of times they don't have the money. or they don't have the supermarket in their community

so their best option for dinner is something from the shelf of the local convenient store or gas station. so this is where we are. many parents desperately want to do the right thing but they feel like the deck is stacked against them. they know their kids' health is their responsibility but they feel like it's completely out of their control. and they're bombarded by contradictory information at every turn. they don't know what to believe or who to believe. and this leads to a lot of guilty and anxiety and a sense that no matter what they do, it's not going to be right and it's not going to be enough. and i know what that feels like because i've been there. look, i live in a wonderful house since the day i am blessed with more health and support than i could have ever imagined. but i didn't always live in the white house. and it wasn't that long ago that i was a working mom. i've shared this story, struggling to balance meetings and deadlines and soccer and

ballet and there were plenty of nights when you got home so tired and hungry you just wanted to get through the drive through because it was quick and it was cheap. or there was the times you through in that less healthy microwave option because it was easy and one day my pediatrician thankfully was someone who is already doing what the american academy's going to do, pulled me aside and told me, you might want to think about doing things a little bit differently. and for me that was my moment of truth. it was a wake-up call that i was in fact the one in charge. even if it didn't always feel that way. and today it's time for a moment of truth for our nation. it's time for a wake-up call for all of us. it's time for us to be really honest with ourselves about how we got here. because the truth is our kids didn't do this to themselves. our kids don't decide what's served to them at school or whether there's time for gym or

recess. our kids don't choose to make food products with tons of sugar and sodium and supersized portions and then to have those products marketed to them everywhere they turn. and no matter how much they beg for pizza, fries and candy, ultimately they are not and should not be the ones calling the shots at dinner time. we're in charge. we make these decisions. but fortunately that's the good news here. because if we're the ones that make the decisions then we can decide to solve this problem. and when i say we i'm not just talking about folks in washington. this is not about politics. there is nothing democratic or republican, liberal or conservative, about doing what's best for our kids. and i haven't spoken to one expert about this issue who has said that the solution is having government tell people what to do. instead i'm talking about what we all can do. i'm talking about commonsense

steps we can take in our families and communities to help our kids lead active, healthy lives. and this isn't about turning the clock back to when we were kids or preparing five coarse meals from scratch every night. no one has the time for that. and it is not about being 100% perfect 100% of the time because lord knows i'm not. there is a place in this life for cookies and ice cream andburgers and fries. that is a part of the fun of childhood. often it's just about balance. it's about really small changes that can add up like walking to school when you can, replacing soda with water or skim milk, trimming portions sizes just a little, things like this can mean the difference between being healthy and fit or not. and there's no one size fits all solution here. instead it's about families making manageable changes that fit with their schedules and their budgets and their feeds and -- needs and tastes and

realities and about it's communities working to support these efforts, mayors like mayors johnsonton and tony who are building sidewalks and parks and community gardens. it's about athletes like -- and role models like tiki who are building play grounds to help kids stay active, community leaders like will allen who are bringing farmers markets to underserved areas and companies like the food industry leaders who came together last fall and acknowledged their responsibility should be part of the solution. but there is so much more that we have to do. and that's really the mission of let's move. to create this wave of effort across the country that get us to our goal of sofpking childhood obesity in a generation. and we kicked off this initiative this morning and my -- in my husband's office when he signed a presidential memorandum establishing the first task force on childhood obesity and that's going to be comprised of representatives

from key agencies, many of them are here today. and over the next 90 days, yes, more work for you, these folks will review every program and policy relating to child nutrition and physical activity. they're going to develop an action plan to marshal these resources to meet our goal and ensure we're continually on track to meet those goals, the task force is going to set some real concrete benchmarks to pressure measure our progress. so we can't wait 90 days to get going here and we won't. so let's move right now starting today on a series of initiatives to help achieve our goals. first, let's move to offer parents the tools and information they need and they've been asking for to make healthy choices for their kids. we've been working with the f.d.a. and several manufacturers and retailers to make our food labels more customer friendly so people don't have to spend hours squinting at the words they can't pronounce to figure out whether the food they're buying is healthy or not. in fact, just today the

nation's largest beverage companies announced that they'll be taking steps to provide clear, visible information about calories on the front of their products as well as on vending machines and soda fountains. and this is exactly the kind of vital information parents need to make good choices for their kids. we're also working with the american academy of pediatrics and supporting their groundbreaking efforts to ensure that doctors not only regularly measure children's b.m.i. but write that prescription detailing real steps that parents can take to get their kids healthy and fit. in addition we're going to be working with the walt disney company, nbc universal, and viacom to launch a nationwide public awareness campaign educating parents and children about how to fight childhood obesity. and we're creating a one-stop-shopping website, let's move -- let'smove.gov, good name, so parents can find

helpful tips including healthy recipings, exercise plans and charts they can use to keep their family's progress on track. but let's remember that 31 million american children participate in the federal school meals program. and many of these kids consume as many as half of their calories daily at school. and what we don't want is the situation where parents are taking all the right steps at home and then their kids undo all that work when they go to school with salty, fatty foods in the school cafeteria. so, let's move to get healthier food into our nation's schools. that's the second part of this initiative. we'll start by updating and strengthening the child nutrition act, the law that sets nutrition standards for what our kids eat at school and we've proposed historic investment of an additional $10 billion over 10 years to fund that legislation. with this new investment we're going to knock down barriers

that keep many families from even participating in school meal programs and that way we'll add an additional one million students in the first five years alone. we're going to dramatically improve the quality of the food we offer in schools, including in school vending machines. we'll take away some of the empty calories and add more fresh fruits and vegetables and other nutrition options. we also plan to double the number of schools in the healthier u.s. school challenge. this is an innovative program out of the department of agriculture that recognizes schools doing the very best work to keep kids healthy. they're already providing healthy school meals, requiring physical education, incorporating nutrition education into their curriculums. and to help us meet that goal, i am thrilled to announce that for the very first time several major school food suppliers have come together and committed to decreased sugar,

fat and assault, -- salt, increased whole grains and double the fresh produce in the meals that they serve. [applause] >> and also for the first time, food service workers along with principled superintendents, school board members all across this country are all coming together to support these efforts. and with all of these commits -- commitments we'll be able to reach just about every school child in this country with better information, more nutritious meals and we'll be able to put them on track to a healthier life. these are major steps. but let's not forget about the rest of the calories our kids consume. the ones they eat outside of school, often at home in their neighborhoods. 6.5 million children live in food deserts and these are

communities without a supermarket, calories that are empty ones and you can see the areas here, this beautiful map in dark purple, the food desert, this is the new usda food environmental at lass that we're unveiling today. this maps out everything from diabetes and obesity rates all across the country as well as food deserts and you can see them mapped out in orange. this is going to be a very useful tool for patients and for the entire community -- parents and the entire community. so let's move to ensure that all our families have access to healthy, affordable food in their communities. that's the third part of this initiative. today for the very first time we're making a commitment to completely eliminate food deserts in america and we plan to do that within seven years. now we know this is ambitious, that's why it's going to take a serious commitment from both the government and the private

sector. so we're going to invest $400 million a year in a healthy food financing initiative that's going to bring grocery stores to underserved areas and help places like convenient stores carry healthier food options and this initiative won't just help families eat better, it's going to help, as will allen said, create jobs and revitalize neighborhoods all across america. but we know that eating right is really only part of the battle. experts recommend that children get 60 minutes of active play every single day and if this sounds like a lot, consider this, kids today spend an average of 7 1/2 hours a day watching tv, playing on the cell phone, computers, video games and only 1/3 of high school students get the recommended level of physical activity. so let's move and i mean literally, let's move. let's find new ways for kids to be physically active both in and out of schools.

and that's the fourth and final part of this initiative. we're going to increase participation in the president's physical fitness challenge and we'll modernize the challenge so it's not just about how athletic kids are, because not every kid is going to do pushups and situps but what's important is how active they are. we're going to double the number of kids who earn a presidential active lifestyle award in the next school year. that award recognizes those students who engage in physical activity five days a week for six weeks. and we've recruited professional athletes from all over the place, a dozen different leagues including the nfl, major league baseball, the wnba, they've all been terrific. they're going to promote these efforts through sports clinics, public service announcements and so much more. so, that's just some of what we're going to do today to achieve our goals. and we know it won't be easy, we won't get there this year and we probably won't get there

this administration. we know it will take a nationwide movement that continues long after we're gone . that's why today i'm so pleased to announce that a new independent foundation has been created to rally and coordinate businesses, nonprofits, state and local governments, to keep working until we reach our goal and to measure our progress all along the way. this foundation is called the partnership for a healthier america and it's bringing together some of the leading experts on childhood obesity like the robert wood jansen foundation, the california endowment, the kellogg foundation, the brookings institution, and the american -- the alliance for a healthier generation which is a partnership between the american heart association and the clinton foundation. and we expect many others to join in the coming months. this is unheard of. so this is a pretty serious effort. one that i'm very proud of. proud of everyone for being a part of it.

and i know that in these challenging times for our country there will be those who will wonder whether this should really be a priority. they're going -- there are going to be many who might view things like healthy school lunches and physical fitness challenges as extras, as things we spring for once we've taken care of all the netities. there are going to be those who ask, how on earth can we spend monday on fruits and -- money on fruits and vegetables when many schools don't have books or teachers? or how can we afford to build parks and sidewalks what we can't even afford our health care course costs? but when you think about it, you realize these are false choices because if kids aren't getting adequate nutrition, even the best books an teachers in the world won't help them get where we want them to be and if they don't have safe places to run and play and they wind up with obesity-related conditions, then those health care costs will just keep

rising. so, yes, we have to do it all. we're going to need to make modest but critical investments in the short run, but we know they're going to pay for themselves likely many times over in the long run. because we won't just be keeping our kids healthy when they're young, we're going to be teaching them habits to keep them healthy their entire lives and we saw this firsthand with the white house garden when we planted our garden with students like tammie last year and one of tammie's classmates wrote in an essay that her time in the garden and this is a quote, has made me think about the choices i have with what i put in my mouth. isn't that good? another wrote with great excitement that he'd learned that tomatoes are both a fruit and a vegetable and contain vitamins that fight diseases and armed with that knowledge he declared, so the tomato is a fruit and now my best friend. what more could you want?

but just think about the ripple effect. when kids use this knowledge to make healthy decisions for the rest of their lives. think about the effect it's going to have on every aspect of their lives, every bit of it, whether they can keep up with their classmates on the play ground and stay focused in the classroom, whether they have the self-confidence to pursue the careers of their dreams and then the sam in a -- stamina to succeed in those careers, whether they'll be have -- have the energy and strength to teach their own kids how to throw a ball and ride a bike. whether they'll live long enough to see their grandkids grow up, maybe even their great-grandkids, too. in the end we know that solving our obesity challenge won't be easy and it certainly won't be quick. but make no mistake about it, this problem can be solved. this isn't like a disease where we're still waiting for the cure to be discovered. we know the cure for this.

this isn't like putting man on the moon or inventing the internet. it doesn't take a stroke of genius or feat of technology. we have everything we need right now to help our kids lead healthy lives. and rarely in the history of this country have we encountered a problem of such magnitude and consequence that it's so eminently solveble. so let's move. let's move to solve this. because i don't want our kids to live diminished lives because we failed to step up today. i don't want them looking back decades if now and asking us, why didn't you help us when you had the chance? why didn't you put us first when it mattered the most? so much of what we all want as tiki said for our kids isn't within our control. we want them to succeed at everything they do, everything. we want to protect them from every hardship and spare them from every mistake they'll ever have.

but we know we can't do all of that. we can't do that. what we can do, what is fully within our treel control is to give them the very best start in their journeys. what we can do is give them advantages early in life that will stay with them long after we're gone. as president franklin roosevelt once put it, we cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future. this is our obligation. not just as parents who love our kids, but as citizens who love this country. so, let's move. let's move, let's get this done. thank you all so much, thank you, i look forward to working with you in the years to come. you all take care. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

>> here's what's coming up on c-span. next, a food and drug administration commissioner. then chairman tim kaine addresses a meeting of the democratic national committee. at 8:10 eastern, president obama makes a surprise visit to the white house briefing. >> on "washington journal" tomorrow morning we'll take calls about how congress is dealing with the economy and jobs. our guest is ian swanson of the hill d. former special assistant for homeland security looks at the

administration's homeland security plans. and we'll talk about civic literacy with richard brake from the intercollegiate studies institute. "washington journal" is live on c-span every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. taking a look at the $787 billion economic stimulus program signed into law about a year ago, more than $333 billion have been committed with just over $179 billion having been paid out as of february 2. check our website to track the stimulus money, go to www. cspan.org/stimulus to watch hearings, briefings and speeches as well as congressional debates and links to the government and outside watchdog groups. again, that's www.c-span.org/stimulus.

now an event with dr. margaret hamburg, commissioner of the food and drug administration. she talks about her agency's agenda at a conference for health policy analysts, researchers and other advocates. this is just under an hour. >> thank you very much. it's really a pleasure to be here and i'm additionally glad that i simply made it here. i have a prius so in addition to having to deal with the snow, i was worried about the brakes. but i am really delighted to be here and very pleased to be able to follow our secretary, secretariesy billous, who is a remarkable woman. i thank her for her strong leadership and her support of f.d.a. which has been really un wavering in her short tenure, she's already been out to the f.d.a. twice which i think could be a record. i also have to say that i think she probably has made another record in terms of how quickly

she came on the job and immediately had to face major public health challenges. first with the global pandemic of h1n1 and also as our nation has struggled to deal with the important issue of health care reform. i also want to thank the organizers of this conference for the invitation to be here today. i deeply appreciate the work that all of you in this room are doing to sort out difficult and complex problems with our health care system and with the health of our nation and to help us to be able to provide higher quality care to patients and to be able to improve the overall health and well-being of our nation. i really was not at all sure that this meeting would go forward. i admire the determination of the leadership. i thought snow would probably do us in and at a minimum i

thought that i'd be addressing a rather empty room so when i look out at all of you, i'm really impressed by your dedication and i must say that i'm happy to get a warm welcome here. when i took this job back last spring i was a little worried about the kind of response, whether or not that i would receive when i was introduced as f.d.a. commissioner certainly too many people offered me condolences along with dwhrations -- congratulations when i was first appointed. many wondered why i would want to take on a position like this as the head of an agency that was always appearing to get globbered. but in fact i've been amazed by the spor that i've received from -- support that i've

received from every quarter, almost everyone i've spoken to and met with in the last eight months since i was appointed have shown real commitment and deep interest in the success of the f.d.a. a real desire to help support me in this task. and i think it's clear why. all of us eat, all of us need medicines from time to time, we all have families whom we want to keep safe. each and every one of us needs an f.d.a. that can do its job and do it well. yet the challenges are daunting. consider that the f.d.a. regulates about 20% of every dollar consumers spent in this country. drugs, medical devices, vaccines and biologics, cosmetics, tobacco products now as the secretary mentioned, animal drugs and even products that emit radiation.

to add to the challenge, an increasing percentage of these products come from overseas. creating new challenges and assuring the safety and quality of our food, drugs and medical devices. what i'd like to do today is to describe some of the priorities and perspectives that i bring to this job and how they're being addressed. the late senator kennedy, one of our nation's great champions of health care, once said that the f.d.a. is the most important health agency in the united states. this is a surprising statement to some but the more deeply i'm involved i learn every day about the complex and important work of the f.d.a., the more emphatically i understand and share his view. congress has given f.d.a. strong regulatory powers, the public expects us to take

action to make sure that the products we regulate are safe and of high quality. but we're also the gate keepers with a major role in getting new products into stores, pharmacies and hospitals. in both areas, preventing and countering threats to health and furthering the development of innovative products, we have a unique role in responsibility. if we cannot do our job and hopefully do it well, there's no one else, no one in government, in the private sector, in the not for profit world or in ac deemia that can step in and backstop behind us. ironically when we succeed we're often invisible. the outbreak that did not occur, the dangerous drug that never made it to market, but when we struggle, our mistakes are usually glaringly visible. moreover if we miss a signal that indicates problems with

the drug safely or conversely if we unnecessarily delay an application for an important new drug, patients certainly can suffer. throughout our history, the f.d.a. has often been the target of critics who claim that we're too slow to approve important new products, too quick to jump at the sign of a safety problem. that's one side. the other critics tend to say that we're too industry-friendly and allow too many dangerous products on the market. this is a hard job and the challenge for f.d.a. leadership is how to steer the ship in often choppy waters. my approach has been to use as a compass what is in fact f.d.a.'s historic mission, the promotion and protection of public health. this public health perspective is perhaps not surprising as i've worked in public health most of my career, though i

actually trained recently to be an academic researcher. but what does the public health perspective really mean? the institute of medicine has defined the mission of public health as, quote, fulfilling society's interest in assuring the conditions in which people can be healthy. to be healthy, surely people need access to a safe and nutritious food supply and to the safest, most effective medical products possible. the f.d.a.'s role is to support this access and in doing so promote health, prevent illness and prolong life. as i said, most of my career has been in public health. it began nearly two decades ago when i accepted the position of new york city's health commissioner and that occurred actually rather to my surprise. and at the time my great aunt winny who was sort of like a grandmother to me was actually very upset by my decision of the she complain to my father

that she just couldn't understand why i didn't want to be a real doctor, why was i taking on this strange government role. and my father tried to offer her some conslation by telling her that i would in fact still be a real doctor, but that now i'd have a million patients. and now i guess i have about 300 million. and so what are the key challenges? in my view as a public health agency, f.d.a. must work to prevent problems, to balance risks and benefits and to monitor outcomes. my goals are to modernize f.d.a.'s work in all these areas and to strengthen the agency's credibility in doing so. these goals are intimately linked and it's linked not just to strengthening the f.d.a. and the important work that we do, but also to f.d.a.'s role in the u.s. health care system and in a globalized economy.

so i want to discuss each of these key areas in turn. first, f.d.a. must try to identify and prevent problems before they occur. one good example comes from how we address food safety. in late 2008 there was an outbreak of salmonella related to contaminated peanuts. i suspect that most of you probably recall this outbreak. i know it had a powerful effect on the president who was just coming into office as this outbreak was hitting its high point. in this case the f.d.a. learned about the contamination of peanut paste produced by the peanut corporation of america but the agency did not take aggressive enforcement action until after there were confirmed cases of illness. in the end, eight people lost their lives and thousands were made sick. by contrast last april, a

number of months after the peanut corporation of america had peaked to the problem, we learned that a california company's piss tash yos were contaminated with salmonella. this timed f.d.a. immediately warned consumers not to eat posstash yos while we investigated the extent of the problem. we found the source of the contamination, identified the shipments and the products involved, the companies issued recalls and there were no sicknesses or deaths. from the beginning of the investigation we worked with the piss tatch yo -- piss tatch yo industry closely to identify the products. both the products that were at risk and the products that were safe. within a short period of time people could start eating pistachios again. the situations were different but between peanuts and pistachios, the f.d.a. began

toward more prevention. we have a better food registry which you a lows companies to let us know of any problems with their ingredients before anyone becomes ill and we're waiting for the senate to pass a major food safety bill. the bill which has received bipartisan support has already passed the full house and passed through senate committee. this bill is really important because it will provide important new authorities and resources to the f.d.a. for food safety. it will give us the ability to do mandatory recalls of tainted food. give us routine access to food safety records at factories and farms and make sure that facilities develop and adhere to safe manufacturing processes. these are things that are vital for us, especially if he want to prevent major problems rather than simply to react. most businesses agree and support these measures as well.

they understand that when an outbreak of food-bjorn illness occurs it is deeply damaging to the food company that is responsible and can hurt the entire industry. the salmonella outbreak and the peanut corporation of america not only killed and sickened people, but it shut down plants , threw workers out of their jobs and led to recalls that cost the food industry about $1 billion. preventing problems also applies to medical product regulation. that's the reason for the agency's quality by design program which aims to build quality into each stage of the production process and other measures to address safety across the life cycles of products. across all of our regulated areas, we're asking not just how to fix problems, but how they can actually be prevented. we're reorienting our inspectors to focus on key

measures for prevention, not just evidence of current or existing problems. but when we see problems, we cannot be afraid to take the actions necessary to stop them in their tracks. too often the agency has found itself engaging in back and forth with companies and with lawyers while serious health and safety problems remain in limbo. my view is that when the health of the public is jeopardized, we have a duty to warn and to act. for example, shortly after i took office i learned about a growing body of evidence that a zinc compound in certain anyway zal products for cold systems -- symptoms was damaging the sense of smell of consumers. there were well over 130 cases of people that appeared to have permanently lost their sense of smell from using these products. so we took action. we warned consumers not to use these products and the manufacturer removed them from the shelves a week later.

this was a good outcome and we'll always act when public health is clearly at risk but enforcement is only one of the tools f.d.a. uses for public health. a second critical task for f.d.a. that i want to mention is to fairly balance benefits and risks. where there is much risk in little -- and little benefit, f.d.a. should step in to prevent products from reaching the market or pull products from the shelves. where there is much benefit and little risk, we should step up the efficiency of our approval process or actively urge people to receive the benefits as we're currently doing with vaccination against the h1n1 flu. of course there's that gray area in between where products have both serious risks and important benefits. in this case f.d.a. must use all of the tools at its disposal to maximize the benefits and minimize the

risks. to maximize the benefits we can help direct a product to those who can use it most. to minimize risk we can invest -- investigate predicters of problems. today including even such things as genetic markers and educate care givers and patientings -- patients about who should or should not use a product. all the while we should be monitoring the impact of our actions and using this information to decide how much more or less we should do to protect the public. indeed a very key area of focus for f.d.a. is the assessment of outcomes. we can't measure success only by the number of facile - -- facilities we inspect or drugs we approve or whether we're following the regulatory guidelines to the letter. the true measure of our success is the health of the american people. for food we must keep a close eye on food-borne illness, for medical products we must have

an idea of the key health needs of the population and whether we're creating regulatory pathways necessary to meet them. we've shown in the past year that f.d.a. can clear red tape to get needed products to consumers in emergency situations. for example, as a result of pandemic preparedness planning that has taken place over many years now, f.d.a. was ready when h1n1 flu pandemic began to take extraordinary steps to protect human life. we immediately authorized the emergency use of newly developed diagnosics for h1n1 so people could be tested for the disease as a guide for treatment and for tracking the epidemic. in addition on an emergency use basis, we made anti-viral drugs available and circumstances for which they hadn't been licensed but where they might save lives. we based our decisions on careful review of available

data and risk benefit analyses that came from scientific evidence developed for these products. we must also be aware of where patients can be suffering adverse consequences of regulated products. last fall f.d.a. launched a safe use initiative to encourage medications to be used safely. meaning in part not accidentally invested -- ingested or overdosed, not given to patients who will not tolerate them, not prescribed in inappropriate ways and not used in appropriate -- inappropriately by patients at home. some thoughts that this was going a bit beyond f.d.a.'s traditional role but we thought it was a vital part of our role. and through this effort we're partnering with a wide range of allies from hospitals to health plans to pharmacies and we'll monitor our progress closely to be sure that we're on the right track. we have a lot of important

tasks before us. unfortunately, though, over a period of many years f.d.a. has not gotten the resources and other support necessary to fulfill our important mission. but i do hope and believe that we are turning a corner, there's growing appreciation that is in everyone's best interest to have a strong, fully functional f.d.a. and we're embarking on a new era of public health protection with the support of the white house and of congress. last week president obama released his fiscal year thretch proposed budget which contained significant enhancements in key areas of f.d.a. there's a long way to go, but these are exciting times. recently as the secretary mentioned we've been interested with the unprecedented task of regulating tobacco products, the number-one cause of preventable illness in our nation. we're strengthening the safeguards for our food supply

while looking forward to the passage of the legislation that would give us significant new authority and some resources. to support this area of work. we're implementing new strategies to enhance consumer and patient safety while supporting innovation. and we're working hard to bring the f.d.a. fully into the 21st century with respect to two key areas of activity, science and globalization. and before i close i want to say a little bit about each of these key areas of activity. first, with respect to science, we're moving forward to strengthening and stream line the science of our current regulatory procedures and implement new strategies to guide our work. as you may know, a number of reports and advisory boards have warned about the dire state of science funding at f.d.a. and how the scientific and regulatory demands are outstripping f.d.a.'s capacity

to respond. clearly this cannot be allowed to continue. in everything we do, a fundamental priority must be strengthening science. in everything we do, f.d.a. must demonstrate that it's a science-based, sion-driven agency. we must ensure that we always use the best possible science and data to guide our decisionmaking and our thinking. we must get advice from the best possible experts and always be prepared to change our mind in the face of emerging science. it's obvious that the agency charged with responsibility of judging the safety and efficacy of drugs and medical products and monitoring the safety of those products and other products, including foods and cosmetics, needs to possess the scientific capability equal to that task. but while that statement may seem logical, the fact is that in terms of investing in the kind of science we need to

advance as a nation, we're somewhat off kilter. f.d.a. clearly needs more resources for science and the president's budget reflects that, but it's more than that. just as biomedical and life sciences research has evolved in the past decades, regulatory science, the science and tools we use to assess and evaluate a product's safety, effectiveness, potency, quality and we -- and we for mans, must also evolve. i also use the metaphor of a rower on the pa tokic with one powerful muscular arm and one scrawny arm, rowing with all of his or her might, it's inevitable that the boat will not go on a straight trajectory forward. so it goes with u.s. biomedical advances over the past several decades. basic science spearheaded by n.i.h. is pulling hard. but it also takes muscle to create innovative tools,

standards and approaches for the efficient assessment of product safety, efficacy and quality. without these complimentary advances in regulatory science, promising therapies may be discarded during the development process simply for the lack of tools to recognize their potential, an outmoted review methods can unnecessarily delay approval of critical treatments. conversely, both significant dollars and many years may be wasted assessing a novel therapy that was better -- that with better tools might be shown to be unsafe or infective as an -- at an earlier stage. strengthening regulatory science is a vital and urgent challenge for the brightest minds in academia, industry and government. a robust state-of-the-art field of regulatory science is essential to f.d.a.'s work. there is no doubt. yet it also represents an important driver of our nation's health, our health

care system and our economy and it's a goal that we all must embrace. i feel confidence -- confident that if we do so, we'll be able to speed the movement of new discoveries to practical applications and we've seen examples in the recent past where concerted scientific investment led to the development and approval of new drugs in remarkably little time. .

the institute. at that point in the aids epidemic, there were a few emerging potential drugs and a huge push to get as many possible as possible in clinical trials. the only way that patients could get access to drugs and every day, we were dealing with desperate people who wanted to live and had little hope. within a decade, f.d.a. had provided a science-based regulatory pathway for companies to follow and also approved an entire new class of drugs to treat aids along with the anti-retro virals. question had drug cocktails keeping patients alive. the earlier years were my early years in sedain and gave me a

deep appreciation of the fundamental importance of scientific insites in innovative research and scientists from pharmaceutical companies and the f.d.a. can do when working together. several partnerships with industry and universities to advance regulatory science are starting to bear fruit. one example concerns new tests for kidney toxicity and f.d.a. worked to identify and identify kidney damage from a drug. the idea was to determine whether these biomarkers might signal that a drug is toxic early in the development process before loss of time and money was spent in developing the drug and bringing it into clinical trials. as a result of this effort, f.d.a. admits new data from

several differentes as. if we could identify more biomarkers, we could reduce the development, time and costs of drug approval and hopefully provide more improved product for those who need them. similarly, we're working in partnership with others to try to develop new trial analytics and provide better answers with patients and shorter time frames and new insights in the field of genomics and target studies that will be more meaningful with benefits to patients and health care system in the form of more successes and lower the cost and time required to develop new drugs. we would like to encourage others to join us in such efforts and i'm happy to report that the fiscal year 2011 budget for fed -- f.d.a. includes

regulatory science at f.d.a. such an initiative will help us prevent problems, and create better health outcomes for the american people. and as we begin this new year and a new decade, one of our top priorities must also be to update our approach to import safety in a globalized world. the model for f.d.a.'s current control system was established in a much simpler time when the modern f.d.a. was created back in 1938, onlt a time percentage of our goods were imported. today we see imports from more than 150 countries and about 300,000 foreign facilities. these are f.d.a.-regulated products. this year, more than 20 million shipments of such f.d.a.-regulated products are expected to arrive in the united states. just one decade ago, that number was about six million and decade before that, it was a much, much

smaller fraction. so the problem is growing rapidly and enormously. consider that some 15% to 20% of the food we eat comes from other countries. in fact, about 75% of the seafood we eat here comes from foreign waters and 35% of fruits and vegetables come from beyond our borders and these are some of the food stocks that are most vulnerable to contamination. and 40% of the drugs that americans take are imported, with up to 80% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in drugs we take here come in from foreign sources. so the numbers really are extraordinary. this flood of new imports represent the wealth of new products now available to americans and many, many benefits. yet it creates a whole host of additional challenges. it is clearly impossible to korean out all bad goods at the

borders. fewer than 500 f.d.a. investigators are responsible for monitoring this flow of goods. and that represents sadly an almost insignificant increase from two decades ago despite the fact that the volume of imports has been growing enormously. as a result, we inspect less than 1% of these products before they enter the united states. last week, i announced the introduction of a new computer system that's helping f.d.a. investigators prioritize the way they inspect imports, a system called predict. the system allows us to prioritize products by risk levels and find problems and speed the clearance of the majority of import shipments which don't raise red flags. still, we can't expect to catch every import problem simply with men and women on the dock. we need a new paradigm for inspections that reaches back

along the chain of production to the countries sending us products and the factories and farms that produce the goods. the only way to do this is to see our global role as a shared responsibility. this means ensuring that companies bear responsibility and accountability for the safety of the products and their supply chain and not rely on the f.d.a. to show up and find a problem in the plant. it means building up a worldwide network of oversight, working closely with international organizations and other national governments, harmonizing standards, helping to build regulatory capacity in other countries that have less mature regulatory systems, developing third-party regulatory systems and sharing the responsibilities of inspections and the information that comes from them. this is a supreme priority for the f.d.a. and we're in the midst of many

different initiatives to make it happen. we're setting up permanent offices around the world. we have signed more than 30 agreements that enable us to share information from inspections and other important safety information with other countries that have mature regulatory systems like ours. and we are training regulators in countries with less sophisticated systems and helping them to build capacity. by doing so, we are not only improving the safety of products coming to our shores, but making other countries making healthy improvements to the goods they are offering to their own citizens. this is a form of health diplomacy and it makes sense in a globalized economy where we are all more connected to each other than we sometimes realize. my first big job in public health was serving as new york city health commissioner for six years during the 1990's. during that time, my two children were born and made an

impact on me. on my children's birthday certificates, my name appears twice both as their mother and health commissioner. both roles gave me a duty to protect them, at home, but also by preventing illness and promoting health and the world around them. this second role wasn't just a duty to my children, but to all children and to everyone in the city. my job is bigger now and the approach is different, but the mission is the same. protect the public health. and to goal and guide in all we do. thank you for your attention. and hopefully for your support. [applause] >> i talked longer than we planned, but we still have time fosh -- >> yeah.

>> brad, why don't you begin. >> i'll talk loud. could you talk more about your responsibilities with regard to tobacco and how it compares with your authorities with regard to food and drug and what you're doing to carry it out. >> this is obviously a very important new mission for f.d.a. and it's a historic advance. i believe it will make a huge difference in the ability to reduce smoking in this country and hopefully prevent the onset of new smoking. it in many ways draws on existing strategies for regulation, but in many ways, it's also quite different and

we're developing a whole new approach. the legislation was signed into law in the summer, last summer, by the president. and it laid out a number of very explicit requirements for us in terms of actions we must take. and we have been moving forward rapidly, setting u7 up a new center, recruiting a terrific a new center director and hiring up at the same time we are starting to implement important programs. the law focuses on several key areas. one is really deepening our understanding of the science of tobacco and tobacco products, understanding the components of tobacco products which now the companies are required to report to us and really be able to address with much, much better

information and specifics the health hazards contained therein. we have very explicit authorities to try to reduce the onset of smoking, particularly in youth and address strategies for getting people who are already smoking to quit. we have moved forward in banning candy and spice-flavored cigarettes, which is something that has been linked to enticing young smokers into taking up the habit. we also are moving forward with making more explicit warning labels for cigarette and tobacco products and addressing issues of advertising. we have a big job in some arenas. we are really charting new ground. we're also working with

regulators from other countries who are already engaged in doing some aspects of tobacco regulation in order to learn from them where we can, working closely with states and local authorities as well to implement aspects of this law. and we've already been sued three times, which hasn't surprised us. but we are up and going and moving forward, beginning to see the fruits of some of our labor and really have an ambitious agenda going forward. >> what do you think is the single biggest challenge at f.d.a.? >> it is such an important area. and you know many ask the question at the time whether this was too big a challenge for f.d.a. to take on given all the other important tasks that it

was already juggling. for me it is very appropriate as a science-based regulatory authority with a public health mission, i can't think of any other place that it can be. the legislation came with a source of funding, which is very, very important, user fees from the industry. so we really feel very comfortable that we are getting the systems in place and the requirements of the law as i said are very explicit. so i think that the great challenge was really to hit the ground running because we simply had no other choice if we were going to achieve the goals of the law. and i believe we are well on our way, but it will obviously require continuing effort, lots

of attention, real dedication because what we're doing is not always well received. but what we are doing will make a difference for health, i'm sure. >> going back to your comments that f.d.a., no good deed goes unpunished that people think you are moving too swiftly or not swiftly enough. looking back at h1n1, that vaccine was brought out in record time, really stunning, but from another perspective, late, and if the virus was more deadly than it was, we could have had a major problem on our hands. what does f.d.a. take away from that entire experience? >> there are overall lessons to be learned from public health preparedness and i'll mention a couple. one is that planning matters.

had we not been investing in public health preparedness and pandemic flu period over a period of many years, we would have been in much more desperate shape when h1n1 emerged. i was working in leading the department of health and human services preparedness planning back in the clinton administration, but at that time, we could barely get anyone outside of h.h.s. to take the threat seriously. when i approached fema, they said, epidemic, infectious disease outbreaks? we don't do that. we do natural disasters. well, they did agree to do an exercise with us where we unfolded a scenario with their participation and they quickly realized this was a natural disaster and they engaged with

us. similarly other critical components of levels of government, the private sector and others, have been engaged in pandemic preparedness and other biological threat, public health preparedness planning, much more intensely in recent years, and that made a difference. it certainly underscores not becoming complacent. it is critical that h1n1 turned out not to be as severe a disease as we had initially thought it might be, we cannot take comfort and think, well, you know, pan democratic flu isn't the big problem that everyone hyped it up to be. it is time to look back at the specifics of the lessons learned and put in place the changes to our system that will make a difference going forward and we need to keep investing in critical research to leverage advances in science and technology to make us safer and

more anymoreble in addressing the threat of the next flu pandemic or the next unknown. we do not have to be relying on outmoded vaccine technologies that even under the best of circumstances -- and we did produce this vaccine which was a licensed product and has proven to be very safe, we nonetheless were relying on vaccine technology that we flected yesterday's science -- reflected yesterday's science, not today. we need to invest in new diagnose no, sir particulars, and new anti-viral drugs and f.d.a. plays a critical role in helping to support that into real world products. >> i think we have another question over here.

>> i would like to ask about in the area of clinical trials what the f.d.a.'s thinking about comparative effectiveness research and the methodology for that going forward. >> the hallway that we address clinical trials in our tools for analysis and our strategies for clinical trial design is key to enable us to have both a more effective and efficient regulatory pathway for new medical products. we are working hard in that area. i mentioned that we have some working partnerships to try to enhance our scientific understanding and want to expand that work and implement it in practice. we also see population-based

approaches as very, very key to strengthening our ability to monitor safety throughout the life cycle of a product. we are putting a lot more attention in post-marketing surveillance strategies and a prompse and that will enable us to identify safety concerns once a drug is out in the marketplace, now being used by many, many more individuals than during the clinical trial process. we can use these population-based approaches in the post-marketing arena also bringing information technology to bear so we can do data mining access large and often diverse data bases in an integrated way so we can really identify and respond quickly to emerging safety issues.

so that's another important area and i think very exciting work. comparative effectiveness research is very, very important to deepening our understanding about the relative value of certain products and the role of different products under different circumstances. f.d.a.'s statutory responsibility is really to review and approve or disapprove products that come before us, not so much in a directly comparative way. we certainly use comparative information in terms of how we might recommend certain drugs for use in first line or second-line drugs, for example. but there are many opportunities for f.d.a. to engage more deeply with broader efforts in comparative effectiveness research. and we actually have rereceived

some resources through the stimulus monies to help us build that capacity. and it really comes by opening up some of our data bases and resources so that people asking questions in their comparative effectiveness research can use that important information to again deepen our understanding and ultimately to better serve people who need access to the best possible drugs for their conditions and concerns. so it's a very important area and obviously there is a lot of work within the department going forward and of course within the broader world of health services research. >> take a question over here, please.

>> can you hear me? university of massachusetts, boston. i was glad you mentioned biomarkers. my area is on oncoling drug development and health policies and i'm concerned about the new drugs being developed based on biomarkers with the percentage of ethnic minorities enrolling in clinical trials. one drug was approved with less than 4% of african americanses enrolling in the clinical trials and that drug isn't effective in patients with african-american ancestry. >> we need very much to exfer medical products in a range of different subpopulations and there may be difference in response both in terms of benefit and risk. as we learn more about both

underlying mechanisms of disease and the potential role of genetic markers and biomarkers, we need to start to really target therapies in new ways for the subpopulations that will benefit. it's more demanding in terms of the research needed in some ways, but i think it also obviously will bring huge benefits and help us better understand both people -- subpopulations that should not be receiving a given drug because we know they may be more susceptible to risk or it may not work for them. but it will enable us to not disregard potentially useful

drugs for certain subpopulations because if you just look at the broad numbers, there are risks that might jeopardize the approval and use of the drug overall. so it's an effort that has to go on looking at risks and benefits. it depends on both deepening our understanding of the science and how we use these emerging tools appropriately and making sure that we collect data from all of the appropriate populations national park appropriate ways and that we're examining the use of medical products through the whole life cycle of the product from the time of initial discovery through the approval process and out into the marketplace whereas i was assessing some of the most important information can be

gleaned, but we want to be able to glean it in a timely way so we can protect health and minimize risk. >> we want to thank you so much. we know you have to protect all 300 million of us. we wish you god speed and thank you for being with us this morning. >> thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> here's what's coming up on c-span, chairman tim kaine addresses a meeting of the democratic national committee. at 8:10 eastern, president obama makes a surprise visit to the white house briefing. and after that, the senate budget committee looks at the federal budget and the national debt. >> tune in c-span's 2 book tv

for president's day weekend. authors include henry paulson talking with warren buffet on the 2008 collapse. historian gary wills how the atomic bomb changed the presidency. it airs on sunday night at 9:00. books on american presidents, f.d.r., president obama and our culture, ronald reagan. for complete schedule go to booktv.org. >> it's the only collection of presidential portraits painted by one artist. now on display at purdue university in indiana through february 21. the exhibit looks at the lives of the 43 men who held the office through photographs, prints and audio recordings.

sponsored by c-span and the white house historical association. and if you can't get to indiana, see the entire collection online at c-span's website americanpresidents.org. >> tim kaine spoke last weekend at his parties' annual meeting here in washington. he talked about president obama's initiatives about health care, the economy, the election of scott brown to the u.s. senate and what his party must do to win this fall's mid-term elections. he speaks for about a half hour. >> look, as the president alluded, we have had our ups and downs since the year of the inauguration, but we have accomplished a tremendous

amount. he went through the accomplishments of the year and he could have gone on longer, but it has been amazing what this president has been able to do in the midst of this difficult climate. just to personalize it for a second, just one, just one, the recovery act. you hear the republicans who voted against it say every house member and every senator except two voted against it and saying the recovery act hasn't do anything. i was a governor and i had to write a budget before the recovery act was passed and i got to write a budget after it was passed. and what i saw in the before and after scared me to death, frankly. and every mayor and every governor in this country if they're honest with you, they felt the same way, this recovery act was absolutely critical to get this nation back on track. as you heard the speaker yesterday say, you know from 74,000 jobs down to 20,000.

we aren't where we are yet. we aren't where we want to be, but that's a big deal. manufacturing coming back. not where we want to be, but a big turnaround. the jobs numbers came out yesterday. the difference in the before and after, just in virginia, the recovery act meant there were 9,000 state employees that i would have been giving a pink slip to. and so -- and i could do that about a lot of the accomplishments, left anybody listen. i'll tell you what it did. it stopped the economy in freefall and brought the economy back and this president and congress need enormous credit.

this president has got us turned around and we owe him. republicans need to join democrats in trying to get the economy moving again. that's what the president called for in the state of the union. and we are waiting to see evidence that the other side cares about this mission as much as we do. [applause] >> while we are hartened by the fact that things are coming back, improving statistics are still full comfort to people who are hurting. i saw this in virginia. our employment rate was pretty good, but wasn't good everywhere.

there are pockets, people, neighborhood and families. if they're hurting, they're hurting and we need to be about them. jobs will be the number one focus of this administration. as the president laid out, it's been about jobs since day one. fairness for women, equal pay for equal work, it's been about jobs. but even now in this economy, focusing on small business success. it's not main street that -- wall street that causes the economy to grow. it grows because of the moms and pops, entrepreneurs, the folks who do something in their garage or come up with an idea and get financing to make it happen. the small business sector that causes the economy to grow and the president is championing that with smart strategies to grow small businesses. and the president said we are not backing away from the compelling, moral and economic cause to reform the health care system of this country.

we are not. [applause] and you know what? we can't back away, because if it's going to be done, it's only going to be because democrats will do it, right? it's not the other said saying we need to make reforms. they are fine with fewer and fewer businesses buying insurance. the other side is fine with premiums and costs to businesses and families going up. the other side is fine with growing numbers in the uninsured. that status quo makes them feel great. makes them feel gait. if we're going to change that and go in a different direction, it will be up to us. i shared with you in austin, this driver for me is this health clinic i go to in ap lashian county where people drive from all over the country, 16 states this year to park in a parking lot and wait for days to be able to walk in and see a doctor the only time they will

see a doctor. they wait through evenings, heat and storms with their kids in their cars, four, five days at a time and wait in lines all weekend long to see a doctor for the only time. people are still waiting. they're still waiting. and businesses that are greet getting the premium notice, they're still waiting. folks getting turned away from treatment because of pre-existing conditions will get their policies rescinded, they're still waiting and seniors who are wait paying more, they're still waiting, we've got millions and millions of americans waiting and they are waiting on us. we might get one or two and hope we will, if it's going to be done, it's going to be us that does it. we will keep at it and we will succeed and the american people for years, for decades, the story will be written that we stood up for them.

[applause] >> the loss of massachusetts changed the senate on health reform but let's say, we never like to lose a race. it was ted kennedy's seat. we have to absorb the lessons learned from it. there is one more democratic senator than when president obama was inaugurated and eight more democratic senators than when president obama was

elected. don't expect me or anybody else in this party to walk with a hang-dog look on our face. the ghost of harry truman would kill us if we complained about having 59 senators. we have to govern confidently and with optimism with 59. we have to learn some lessons. the lesson was that people are fed up with business as usual. our great friend, president obama is our president. and they want to see more change and open and transparent process and we have to recognize this as we do our work in congress and do our work as a party. as that massachusetts race didn't ended the way we wanted it to, i'm proud of the contributions you made during that campaign. the intent activism that was generated to support that effort from state parties and volunteers all over the place

beginning with massachusetts suggest our people are ready and willing to participate in these 2010 elections. i thank the massachusetts democratic party for their leadership. please, yes. we had more than 50 d.n.c. staffers in massachusetts for the last three weeks and state parties all across this country in conjunction with the d.n. drmplet and volunteer effort organized 45,000 volunteers to make 3.2 million phone calls. our people are hungry and ready to get involved in these elections in 2010, and that's a good sign. [applause] >> now the loss in massachusetts, we were going ok in 2009. we won five out five special elections in congress and added two more u.s. senators, but beginning in november those mid-term blues started to set in

with the governor races and then the senator race in massachusetts. i'm zriping it as ghost of future experience. you all remember "the christmas carol." he got the third ghost and he didn't like what he saw. he didn't like what he saw. and asked the ghost is this the future or is it the future that might be -- if i don't make some changes and do things differently? you know the answer, it was going to be the future. we had our ghost of future experience and had it in january of 2010 rather than november of 2010. we have to learn the lessons and get better and get energized. i will tell you one reason. in virginia, vaians didn't like losing the governor's mansion. we went from a red state to a

reliable state. we didn't like losing the governor's mansion. three years before my term ended in january, there was a special election in a republican senate district in virginia. republican senator was elected attorney general. there was a special for that seat. now the democrats in virginia had taken over the senate majority in in 2008, which was a big battle for us to do, but here was a seat and the republicans were sure they were going to win. we won the governorship. but democrats who didn't like what they saw in november, they gottener guised and went into that district, and we won the seat because we realized the other guys were energized, we have to be more energized. we learned that in massachusetts. i know we can be. [applause] >> now, if you look at the last 17 mid-term elections, the president talked about he doesn't mind heading into a headwind and i have said i don't

know all of you personally but i know this about you, uphill battles don't make you nervous or headwinds don't make you nervous, but we're going to go forward, not backward. but here's what we know. in the last 17 presidential mid-terms, the president's party loses 28 house seats, four senate seats. that's the average. we aren't living in average times, right? we have to assume that that norm is one that maybe it's a little bit tougher on us this year. there is volatility and anxiety out there, but it is by no means a foregone conclusion that we know if we work hard, we can beat expectations. i have shared with you a couple of reasons why i feel optimistic. we've got a great president and great success story. that is the great element, a

successful president who communicates with the american people. he has a success story already and we have to do a better job in telling that story. i heard that from all of you. but the nice thing about this year, we see it happening. each week, i think is going to be a new block in that success story, whether it's improved job numbers and meaningful financial reform that the american people grab on to. we are going to be building blocks. second thing is as i visited 29 states as d.n.c. chair, we have a lot of great candidates. you are fielding wonderful candidates out in the states. in the mid-terms we aren't just playing defense and trying to hold on to our own. we have people out in the field to win races that are currently held by republicans, to take over governors' mansions, which are critical in times of redistricting, win senate seats, to win house seats, to pay

special attention to house legislative chambers that are close one way or the other that we want to get our way for redistricting. we are playing offense all over this country with great democratic candidates and that's why we can stand strong and do well in 2010. let's be honest, the republicans have a few vulnerabilities. sometimes they are our very best friends. and we will shine a spotlight on the division and strife within the republican party. the divisions between the establishment, that shrinking republican establishment and the tea party crowd helped deliver a u.s. snar to us when arlen specter joined the democratic party and helped give us a democratic from new york when the republican nominee that they sunk $1 million into was abandoned by the party and endorsed a democratic candidate, bill owens, that won a seat that

we hadn't had since 1872. [cheers and applause] >> and i know you are seeing this in your own jurisdictions, that battle on the republican side is erupting into a civil war in a number of very important races. the republican senate primary in florida, the republican gubernatorial battle in texas. we've got lions. john mccain being challenged from the right in a primary in arizona. bob bennett, a republican senator from utah being challenged from the right in a primary battle in utah. that civil war on the other side is something that is going to produce some dividends for us, give us a chance to win some races that we might not win otherwise. i was sharing with my friend earlier, we took the state senate back in virginia from republicans in 2007 and frankly here's the way we did it.

republicans from the right took on republican moderates in our state senate and beat them in primaries and we ended up winning races that we thought had no business in winning. and we are seeing the same thing happen in races all over the united states. we are going to continue to highlight not just that division, but highlight the republican party's choice these days to become the real captive of wall street and special interests. just this week what we learned and it was great the way to learn it, no better way than a front-page story in the "wall street journal" that the republicans were soliciting money on wall street. but the pitch was something we have to pay attention to. their pitch was invest in the republican party because we're the hope, we're the hope for you to stop meaningful reform in the financial system. if you invest in us instead of

supporting democrats as sometimes you have done in the past, we're going to stop the reforms of the financial system that this president and congress want to do. stopping the reforms that america needs, stopping the reforms that we need to have a stable financial system. that's the same cratch my back and i'll scratch yours. republicans in 2009 were the party of no. they decided to be more. party of wall street. a democratic party fights for middle class, small businesses and republican party getting campaign cash. we are going to point out republican obstruction. just this week, we learned that senator shelby and others are holding up 70 nominees of president obama. around whoom there is no

controversy, judges, defense officials, homeland security officials. they are holding them up and senator shelby's case because he wants money for a particular pet project in his home state of alabama. he is holding up the very people that we need in our country to protect our country and protect our national security. and we're going to point those things as well. the dmple n.c. is going to play a critical role in 2010 in fighting against the head wind and beating all these norms. first, we think we have a very unique role to play and expertise in core competence in communicating frequently and regularly with what i like to call our 2008 surge voters. that 2008 turnout was at a surge level and the great thing is, we are data freaks at the d.n.c. and we know who they are. we know who the surge voters are

in every community in this country and part of the way we're going to succeed in 2010 is by frequent and regular communication with those surge voters, especially the young, minority voters, first time voters that we registered in 2008. there were about 50 million of these surge voters who we know. and whether they turn out in november can make a huge difference in hard-fought races. just to give you one state as exen example where there will be big races in 2010. of the 50 million, 456,000 of them are in the state of colorado, where we will have big races, senate races, governor races. 456,000 of these surge voters are in colorado. they would normally vote in a mid-term election in about the 40% election. if we could get that 40% up to 48%, 50%. that would be nearly an additional 40,000 voters for our

folks. and in a state like colorado where we have close elections, that could be critical. this communication with the 2008 surge voters is the first thing we're going to do working with the d.n.c. with the state parties, with the campaigns and candidates. and that exune occasion facilitating relationships between these voters and our candidates are very prudent. second, we made voter registration a key priority. in 2008, working together with state parties and other groups, we did an excellent job. we aren't done. although we registered hundreds of thousands of voters, there are still so many more to register. i'm struck as i travel, how often this comes up for as good as we did in 2008, there are thousands of others we have to register. i had conversations about the number of voters that are still out there in a state that will be blue if we do our voter registration job, it's a

question of when. and so -- [applause] >> so what you're going to see, we are going to roll out a national voter registration website that will help our democratic candidates. and this surprised me. up until now, there is not a central resource or website for voter registration. it's all through state parties or boards of elections or local registrars. but we have been able to put together a single source where you can send anybody in any corner of this country to go that will enable the process and register to vote and those efforts are a key to our success in 2010. and coupled with those, we're going to continue to focus on voter protection. our vice chair, donna brazil, has focused on that. and d.n.c. working on voter protection efforts, which is a central pillar of the d.n.c.

how many in here yesterday heard speaker pelosi? >> [cheers and applause] >> the speaker read this definition of harry truman of the difference between republicans and democratic, party of the people and party of the special interests. let me tell you another difference that is relevant to this voter protection thing that i have always found compelling. if you need a reason to be a democrat -- we don't need a reason. but if you need a reason, this would be reason enough to choose the democratic party. when it comes to elections, we want more people to vote, and the other guys want fewer people to vote. do you need to know anything more than that? do you need to know anything more than that? [applause] >> and that's why the registration and the voter protection is so key. we know trying to keep people from voting and keep turnout down is part of their strategy.

being more democratic and getting more people to participate is part of our strategy and voter protection is so critical. one thing is clear and that is your support on the ground, state parties and all the communities is so critical to our success. we did see in 2009 and massachusetts race to some extent that our base voters, reliable voters didn't turn out in the way that we hoped that there would. there is always going to be volatility or a falloff. but given the normal falloff, we didn't see the energy and excitement we need. some of it is campaigns, but some of is on us. we are going to need our supporters to be strong with us if we're going to win. you have the relationships in all the communities to make that happen. you were there in 2008. you were there in 2006. you were there in previous elections and we are going to be able to make huge gains if we have our base voters with us and

we will continue to do things and the president in the state of the union laid out and they'll be scared on a whole series of issues. i want to say something about the change commission. the commission was appointed and the commission -- you're going to hear about it from jim roosevelt later, was an effort that began at the convention in denver, the convention which is the party speaking with the most number of voices than ever speaks, directed the party too do three things, to look at identifying best practices for caucus states, importance to encourage participation and recommend participation. and second, deal with the calendar with the primary and caucus season to avoid the ever irlier, creep, creep, creep and push it back and put it in place

and the third issue was directed to deal with and recommend to the party to reduce the number of unpledged delegates. we're taking that charge very seriously. the commission worked all during last year and met via conference for the last time on december 30. they approved a report, which you have received by email. that is a report to the rules and by-laws commission which is going to start a process to dig through that recommendation. some of the recommendations for additional work and come up with ideas. and we'll focus on those three areas and we will move forward. and it's a first step and it's a very good report that tackles those three challenges in a strong way. under the leadership of jim roosevelt and input from all sources, we'll carry that forward. let me conclude and say this.

we know what we've got to do. we have our work cut out for us. we know what the challenges are and we know what we have to do because we have done it. we have won races in tough states and in tough times and in tough climates and we don't break down and we fight with smiles on our faces and get up the next day and our energy, passion and enthusiasm is what caries it and will carry it again. i'm confident we have a wonderful team. i would like to ask any member of the d.n.c. staff right now to stand under the great leadership of our executive director. stand up. i want you to give them a big round of applause. [cheers and applause] >> we have a great team. as i travel around, they keep me young and got great ideas and they're charged up and that's

great. and we are going to keep on communicating the message of a successful presidency and message of support for the middle class and work hard community by community and find the choice for the american people in november of 2010, a choice between democrats. fighting for the middle class workers, families, small businesses and republicans who want to return to the days of courting up and companiesing up to the special interests. we know the stakes are high. we want to produce good partners to get more good work done. but while the stakes are high, the choice is also clear. clear choices are energizing. we know it. we have to communicate it to the american people and when we do it, we're going to do it quite while. thanks for all your effort and i'll see you on the road in a community near you. thank you very much. [cheers and applause]

>> thank you very much. all right [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> president obama met with house and senate leaders at the white house today. that's next on c-span. in a few minutes, we'll hear from republican leaders who attended the meeting. after that, the president's news conference. and later, a senate hearing on the economy and federal budget. >> on "washington journal" tomorrow morning we'll take your calls about how congress is dealing with the economy and jobs. our guest is ian swanson and then a look at the administration's homeland security plans. and we'll talk about literacy

with richard brake. "washington journal is live on c-span every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. >> his film "hillary, the movie," the focus of a recent supreme court on finance campaign, david bossie on sound night on c-span. >> tune on "book tv" three-day president's weekend beginning on saturday. authors include henry paulson talking with warren buffet on the 2008 economic collapse. historian garry wills on how the atomic bomb changed the presidency. it reairs sunday night on 9:00 p.m. and on monday, books on american presidents, f.d.r., president obama and our culture, ronald

reagan. for the complete schedule, go to booktv.org. >> it's the only collection of american presidential portraits painted by one artist, american presidents life portraits by chazz fagan at purdue university in indiana through february 21. the exhibit looks at the lives of the 43 men who held the office through paintings, photographs, prints and audio recordings, sponsored by c-span and the white house historical association. if you can't get to indiana, see the entire collection online at americanpresidents.org. >> democratic and republican congressional leaders met at the white house to discuss possible areas of agreement on a jobs bill and the economy. republican leaders spoke with reporters afterwards. >> hello everybody. well, i want to thank both

democratic and senate leaders -- democratic and republican leaders for joining us. as i said in my state of the union, part of what we would like to see is the ability of congress to move forward in a more bipartisan fashion on some of the key challenges that the country is facing right now. it's fair to say that the american people are frustrated with the lack of progress on some key issues. and although the parties aren't going to agree on every single item, there should be some areas where we can agree and we can get some things done even as we have vigorous debates on issues we don't agree on. a good place to start and what i hope to spend a lot of time on in these discussions today is how we can move forward on a jobs package that encourages small business to