and sort this out. host: thank you for your time, sir, i appreciate it. that does it for today's "washington journal." we will be back tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. with more of your phone calls poure. c-span[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] . .

anniversaryokw3 of its signing f the recovery act. the vice president said it taxpayers have gotten their money's worth. and that the money has saved as many as 2 million jobs. that from "the cbs early show" this morning. we would like your thoughts. send us your tweetsç to c-span. we will read and keep track of your comments. we will read some of it

selected ones throughout the day. national elections. hold(4q%ei- we will have a briefing at 3:00 p.m. eastern and we will have a y for your here on c-span. ambassador hills is that the u.s. institute for peace and he will talk about the upcoming barack the elections. it is getting underway on our companion network, c-span-2. later, the budget and they are set to speak to reporters live at noon on c-span-2. coming up in 20 minutes, president obama will talk about the stimulus program. we will get news and your calls. first phone call, columbus, ohio, johnny on the democratic line. go ahead.

caller: thank you. i give him an a because he came into a mess, and i want to the economy and the people and money spent on basketball, football, where it is sold out. people contribute money. the economy for us here for the people in the bottom is fine, it is the top, the head is cut off from the body. if they would sit back and relax and listen to him and quit the talking did we would get our economy back together. host: in your town of columbus, ohio, where do you see stimulus projects? have you seen a direct link? çguest: they greeted about 60,0 jobs in columbus. they say they did. i can't prove it.

they said they did. and a lot of people are back to work. but the economy started with the bank thing. when the banks crumbled everything fell apart because when that had falls off, the body parishes. you know that. as far as the stimulus is concerned, he did what he was supposed to do. the ones who are not happy are the ones who do not want to see the country to survive. they want it because we don't -- we have a black president. but i have news for themç moved here in 2007 and i saw hillary clinton, i did not watch news then. i was not -- did not know she was running for president. i said i would vote for her because she is a woman. and then i heard barack obama speak and when he got on the news and started talking, my tv went out -- host: we are goingxd down a

different road here so we will leave it there. curtis on independent line from baltimore. caller: i give the stimulus an a. a lot of people out there who don't even know -- for the people getting unemployment right now, president obama, he tacked extra money on the end of that so when it ran out he would still be pumping out a couple of checks. he is trying his best. this guy is actually trying his best but anybody who has been watching what is going on, the republicans are blocking him. if you voted, if you need health care or something going on wrong and you wanted change, you should turn on your tv and see that the republican guys are stopping getting health care. çhe is trying to say give money back because the bank aren't -- bank guys do a pretty good. host: all right, joe on the republican line.

give his current program an f. and the previous caller lre ççeconomy, is just foolish. i would suggest also that your ççapçç reporter -- he is ay goodçw3 witdr carrier for the çadministration. whatever the administration puts w8÷t( he reports on. does heçççw3 do independent g himself? %dmd]. facts and figures on the stimulus? ç ú]ç i have seen a couple of roadsides saying they spend money on shovel-ready jobs.

the creation ort( save jobs, tht is a joke. if any independent reporter delved into that, i do not think they would be as&7sy as the administration suggest. host: this is from "the wall street journal." face say their recipients of stimulus money is saving five under 35,000 people. as many as 2 million jobs have been supported by stimulus money. government data indicates most of the jobs supported by stimulus spending bill on to the state andç localç level, including 325,000 teachers and school staff. jersey on the democratic line. good morning. caller: how are you? host: what is your grade?

caller: i would give it a b. i actually would have preferred the stimulus money, a larger chunk goes back to individuals to put the money into individual's hands. but overall i would give it a b. i find it interesting when you asked the last caller where he got information about the stimulus, he , hean f, and he could not give any source of information. i think there is far too much going on. i also do not think -- think it is odd, i hear the oft-repeated law that the obama administration promised unemployment will not go above ç8% and i have looked everywhee -- media matters, c-span, obama's speeches, statementsç n newspapers and google and of no where did they promise of the unemployment would not go above

8% but yet you hear republicans repeat this canard every day on c-span. i think that obama -- i think the people need to check themselves. i think they need to realize th# cobra benefits, some stimulus money weítç to that. police and fire and road clearing. we had a record snowfall in the northeast. i]these states and local governments are using the stimulus money to keep the road( clear. highway building, bridge is being repaired in the jersey and pennsylvania. i don't know where these people are getting their information from. i think obama is doing a good hoet people in this country need to understand he has served one year of a four-year term and before they start talking about throwing him out let this guy do his job. host: let me ask you -- where did go for facts and figures, recovery.gov caller:: i go to

recovery.govç, c-span, media matters, you too, congressional services -- there are all sources of information. i think the problem is people are so locked in sort of their own ideological bent that they refuse to see any good that this guy does. i am not suggesting that obama is the perfect president but i think people need to realize, we lost from december to february -- december 2008 -- december february 2009, 2010 -- i am sorry, the three months before obama came in, we lost 1.3 million jobs in this country. host: let's hear from a republican. john from philadelphia, mississippi. çw1ókççcaller:w3ç i can spean

got a job through a company that gotçqçç[?23ç a road buildit justçç outsideç philadelphiag from meridian back into town and he worked three of four months, good paying jobs. and the winter weather set in and he was laid off, still laid off, was able to get unemployment for not working on that. there is always the prospect of him getting rehired. but in the meantime, he applied and did not get the job but applied with of the local police department over there in that meridian. that was directly part of the stimulus money. host: what does that mean for you? caller: i'm sorry. my grade would be an easy b-.

i think the main problem here -- and i hear from a lot of your callers, just taking one side or the other just got to stop. this country is so far gone economically and morally and ethically, we got to work together or this thing is not going to work. i don't care if it is a republican or independent or democrat, what ever. he is doing as best as any president in the past could have ever done with this enormous problem. thank you for c-span. host: vice-president joe biden was onñr "the early show" defending the stimulus and he said american taxpayers have gotten their money's worth. he also says we are onlyç about half way through. çnorth carolina, chad ojúáhe republican line. caller:koçmemoçvçvzçi]kr

i would give the recnb)y act att in my area here, i have not seen any jobs being created. these shovel ready jobs, those are not sustainable, just like he is growing the size of government. i would think the majorityç of the jobs being filled our government jobs, which we don't need. çthe only spend, i think, a thd of thew3 stimulus. why? why are we only spending a third? ççç[óo ç education has gone most of the money. the amount paid out, $32

billion. it is the largest share of the money that went to state governments so states could shore up their budgets for schools and other essential services. if that money had not come to north carolina and you saw teachers being fired or other services being cut back, which you think? caller: i would be upset. that is 1/3. onlyç 1/3 of the money that has been paid out, even to education. if it is a political game, most of it will be spent this year because it is an election year. why do we own spent 1/3? host: have been tracking it? ççççcaller: i do not believe sites. you'll not get the truth from main street media.

thank you for c-span. it is a joy to get up and listen to these callers. host: are getting unemployment benefits? caller: yes, i am. host: that is part of the stimulus benefits. caller: if it wasn't for my government, i would be working and making good money. that is not my fault. i did not quit. i got laid off. host: what was your job? caller: i was making air compressors. çhost: why it was the governmet at fault? caller: everything is being driven overseas. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ttt@ @ @ the energy department received

$33 billion. they amount paid out, up $1.1 billion. transportation department, $1.8 billion. the amount paid out so far, $8.6 billion. there is the safety net spending for medicaid and unemployment insurance as well as food stamps, $270 billion. flint amount available, was a $20 billion. they pay out about $104 billion. next phone call comes from california. caller: hello? host: what is your grade? caller: patient but all of the money into my if -- they should put all of the money into manufacturing. do not worry about fixing roads and all that stuff. all that stuff will come if you get the manufactured back in

this country. this country has been shortchanged. they should charge a tariff for anything that comes in this country. you'll get this country back on its feet right away with manufacturing. host: richard from florida. caller: good morning, greta. no higher than ani] f. this is ridiculous. unemployment is 9.7%. the caller you had earlier, i do not know where he was from. he said he did not know or the 8% unemployment came from. it came from president obama's mouth. i talked to a friend overç the weekend. he has a plow company. he had 30ç people working for

wrote that he will have to let off because there's no construction in florida. it is going down. the stimulus package is a front to get people elected. this is not to create jobs. 80% of the jobs in the country are in small business. stimulate the atmosphere for small business. cut taxes. great opportunities so they can expand and grow. host: i want to show you two different takes on the same story. this is "the wall street journal" this morning. a possibility. that is the way they framed it this morning, saying republicans face an uphill battle as they have to go after 10 seats, 10 new seats and retain all of their own.

here's how "the new york times" phrases the same story. they face significant hurdles. georgia, susan, republican line. caller: good morning. host: what is your graybackde? caller: i think there has been too much money spent. we are going in? too far. my husband is retired. 100% disability. i am worried about my children, my grandchildren, and my great- grandchildren. can i say one more thing? host: go ahead. caller: i am white but i have a

lot of black friends. i have lived all over the world on military bases. i want to tell them, i do not disliked obama's. i do not like some of the people he has picked in his cabinet. host: president obama by executiveç order will announcea debt commission headed by alan you can see their pictures at the bottom of the story. we shall use them as we go to the next phone call. philadelphia, marked on the democratic line. we are talking about grading the stimulus. -- mark on the democratic line. caller: i will give it a c. the biggest problem has been that most of the money has gone to state and local governments.

that is a recipe for disaster. it throws money down a rathole. i have to believe a lot of this monday goes to beef up the pensions and give -- beef up the benefits of state and local police. how is that creating jobs? i would like to say since the cost is close to $1 trillion would have been broadbased tax cut. çif you take the marginal tax rate for working folks outt( he, give us a 10% tax break, that willt( spur demand. let's get out of this mess zçad not worry about theç deficit çlater. the republicans did not care when they were in power. i would just take the hit on

that and move on. host: this is more from what we read. subsidizing those jobs avoided layoffs or tax increases that could have furtherç undermined the economy. people lost private-sector jobs. of the 1 and 7 $9 billion paid out, $112 billion went out in the form of large checks -- of the $179 billion paid out. an additional $700 million was spent on administration. $47 billion has leftxd washingtn in transfer payments. billion is also in the pipeline already. chantilly,fá virginia, republicn line. goodç morning, caller. what is your graybacks caller:

good morning. ç-- what is your grade? caller: people are divided. as long as people are divided, we are not going to go nowhere. i remember. he said some of these things and he lied. he said unemployment like the caller said, he went out already. that was the first live. he said there was transparency. there is not transparency. we have a symptom. what is causing this? we are not attacking it. what is causing it? it is the big banks that are on for government. the banksç are onç the governt they are an elite group or

class. they rule the world. host: all right. xdthe capitol hill newspaperç s this headline. they say nancy pelosi has issued 260 statements over the past year in an effort to win the debate thatç could be the y to retaining the democrats' majority in the house. washington, d.c., democrat line. caller: hello? i would like to give it a b. i see what is going on. i see he is trying to get everything out there. even if he puts together a homeless center, the republicans will want to drop it. i just wanted to say one thing. if all of these guys do not know

where to do, do would in baltimore. he went over to baltimore. this stimulus think, if you noted bet somebody is over there doing wrong stuff and people were slamming these bills down, you should vote them out. you should keep them out. thereç should be only good people and help us americans out. those people should be the people we are electing. host: does that mean in 2010 you will be voting against incumbents? caller: i will see what they give us. what kind of people will be running. if barack obama runs again, maybe i will vote for him. the guy is actually trying. republicans keep shutting him down. a cannot get health care or anything.

republicans keep shutting everything down. i need some help. host: cnn released their latest poll that said 52% of those polled said president obama -- >> we will leave this recorder program and taken to the white house. the president will be introduced by the vice president. live coverage on c-span. >> i am probably preaching to the choir as to how beneficial it has been. i stand before you one day, the exact day to a year that we signed this act. what i want to talk about is what we have accomplished, where were back then. i think where we are now and where we're going. you and i know without any question the recovery act is

working. it is working well. maybe even most importantly is working towards something. it is not enough that american workers get back on their feet a day, but it lays a foundation for tomorrow. you are living proof of just what the recovery act is capable of. we realize there is a great deal more to do. every success story you could talk about, there is another story of a man or woman who just lost a job, a plant that has been closed down. we know times are tough for too many people throughout the country. i have traveled to 60 cities talking about the recovery act. every day, every community i go to, you can see the pain of some of the communities are going through.

communities that were battered by the economy. i was just in saginaw, michigan. out of work teachers and businessmen and women, small business owners, construction workers who have been laid off. but i have seen something else as i have gone through those cities and towns. i've seen a sense of hope and optimism. i was with a gentleman yesterday. his name is gonzalez. he worked for an automobile company. he got laid off. his wife and kids were there. because of the recovery act and the job training program at a community college in his town, he went back and took a 16-hour course in being able to deal with -- a 16-week course in being able to deal with

chemical's debt related to how they produced -- chemicals and how they produce solar panels and dow corning has a plant nearby. they have added 1000 people over the past year because of help they received as well. he is now working. he is working at a decent salary. that community college will train another 100 people from not training program directly to a job. the other thing i've noticed from you all is this emphatic belief that there is more reason why america has to beat number two, none whatsoever. i find even that worker refuses to believe america is going to two in the world, whether it is in the construction of wind turbines or other renewable

energy. there is a sense among americans that there is no reason we will not come out of this stronger than when we went in there. so that is what we have been able to deal with. the recovery act has provided a significant degree of optimism. we transform american health care and creating the best education system. that is our future. i say to my friends who voted against this act, tell me how we cannot lead the 21st century with the same health care system and the same energy policy we have had the last 35 years. everyone knows the truth. without a transformation in health care and education, new

jersey, we're not going to succeed. we will not lead to 21st century. that is unacceptable. some of my friends who were willing to acknowledge we need to lead in those areas, they are not willing to take what are difficult steps to make this transformation. they're not willing to step up. not us. the present and i know we can do better. we know -- a president and i know we can do better. we think we can usher in a new era of innovation for america. we owe much of the recovery act to those elements of change we're looking for. we look to the clear-eyed leadership of the president and many of you. i will conclude by saying many

of you have taken advantage of the sparked that the recovery act provides and some of the tax incentives and others. we do not think the government is the one that will ignite this revolution. you all take a little bit of help and you go out and risk a lot. you get some help from the government and you give to capital markets and you go on the line for a whole lot more. a whole lot more risk. we and our youth for it. that is the way we would get through this. that along with the president's a leadership. that is why we stand here today with so much hope for tomorrow. his leadership has taken us. far from where we were last year. lester, this economy shrunk over 6%. in the last quarter, a group

over 6%. something is happening. i think the main reason it is happening is because of the man i am about to introduce, but president barack obama. [applause] >> thank you, everybody. thank you. please, have a seat. thank you to blake and chuck and to my outstanding vice president and his extraordinary team that have done a great job of managing this program. i want to begin by recalling where were one year ago. millions of jobs were already lost to the recession before i was sworn into office. another 800,000 would be lost in the month of january. we later learned our economy

shrunk by an astounding 6.4% in the first quarter of 2009. economists from across the political spectrum to warrant a dramatic action were not taken, the united states could spiral into another depression. that was the backdrop against which i signed the american recovery and reinvestment act with blake alongside. it certainly wasn't a politically easy decision to make for me or for the members of congress who supported it. no large expenditure is ever the popular, particularly at a time when we're also facing a massive deficit. but we acted because failure to do so would have led to catastrophe. we acted because we had a larger responsibility than winning the next election. we had to do what was right for the u.s.xdç economy and for the

american people. one year later, it is largely thanks to the recovery act that a second depression is no longer a possibility. it is one of the main reasons the economy has gone from shrinking 6% to growing at about 6%. manufacturing supporproduction d a small gain. the recovery act is responsible for the jobs of about two million americans who would otherwise be unemployed. these are the members of economists across the spectrum. -- these are the numbers of economists across the spectrum. part of the controversy is because there are those who have tried to score political points by attacking what we did. many of them short at ribbon

cutting ceremonies for projects in their districts. [applause] despite the extraordinary work that has been done for the recovery act, millions of americans are still without jobs. millions more are struggling to make ends meet. it doesn't yet to feel like much of a recovery. i understand that. it is what we will continue to do everything in our power to turn this economy around the truth is the recovery act was never intended to save every job or restore our economy to full strength. no government program can do that. businesses are the true engines of growth. businesses of the engine job

creation in this country. during a recession, when businesses pullback and people stop spending, what government can do is provide a temporary boost that puts money in people's pockets, keeps workers on the job, cuts taxes for small businesses, give us confidence 2 entrepot norris that maybe they did not have to cut back right now. -- gives confidence to entrepreneur respondrs. there has never been a program of this scale moved at the speed that has been enacted as effectively and as transparently as the recovery act. i am grateful that congress agreed to more crest that the bill include note earmarks, that all projects received funding based solely on their merits.

despite that, i was concerned -- we were just talking. when this past, we said $787 billion, some more there will be some story of some money but ended up being misspent. $787 billion spent out over 18 months. that is a lot of money. and it is a testimony to vice president biden and his team that the dog so far has not barked. [laughter] this team has done an outstanding job. it doesn't mean that everything has been perfect. think of the scope of this. it has been running smoothly and transparently. we print one of the toughest inspector general's in

washington as well as professionals to help run the implementation. every american can see how and where this money was spent by going to www.recovery.gov. 1/3 was made up of tax cuts. tax cuts for a 95% of working americans. we see some polling where twice as many people think we have raised taxes. 95% of you got a tax cut. [applause] tax cut -- tax cuts for 95% of working americans, first-time homebuyers, parents trying to care for their kids, 8 million americans paying for college. so far we're provided one and

$20 billion in tax relief to families and small businesses. -- which provided $120 billion dollars in tax relief. i mention this at the state of the union and they were squirming in their seats. there were not sure whether to clout because most of them voted against the tax cuts. it was interesting to watch. [laughter] the second third of this bill was minute of relief to those who were most affected by this recession. we have increased unemployment benefits for more than 90 million americans. we made health insurance 65% cheaper and those who went to get temporary coverage from cobra. we gave relief to states. relief that has allowed 300,000 teachers to keep their jobs as

low as tens of thousands of police, firefighters, first responders, and correctional officers. not one of the 50 governors we have spoken to has failed to show appreciation for this relief. i am concerned because state budgets have not yet recovered. you are now seeing a whole bunch of state and local governments who were able to put off playoffs last year at the -- having to make some tough decisions. we could see layoffs taking place this year because we have not re-upped terms of providing help. that is something we are watching. we're concerned about that. the last third of the recovery act as one want to talk more about today. that third is about rebuilding

our economy on a new and stronger foundation over the long term. we knew we came into office it wasn't enough to solve the immediate crisis before us. we knew we came through with some people are calling a time when there was barely any job growth and where the income declined in the average american household. this was before the recession. the average american household declined as the cost of health care and college tuition reached record highs. prosperity was built on little more than a housing bubble and on financial speculation. people were taking out home equity loans. we cannot go back to that kind of economy. that is not where the jobs are. the jobs are in areas like clean energy and technology. advanced manufacturing. new infrastructure.

that kind of pick, it requires us to consume less and produce more. -- that kind of economy requires us to consume less and produce more. we need to send more products overseas that are made by american workers. we need to train our workers with new skills. çotherç countries realize thi. they're putting more emphasis on math and science and expanding broadband. they are making serious investments and clean energy because they want those jobs. america cannot stand still in the face of this challenge. we cannot afford to put our future on hold. a big part of the recovery has been investing in that future. it created jobs now and business opportunities now. it is laid the foundation for where we need to go. instead of pouring more money intoq schools, we launched a

national competition between states that only rewards success and reform. reform the raises student achievement, turns around failing schools. çfailing schools that failed te future of to many students. we make suret( there is an infrastructure that his bill to compete. we know how projects that 31 states that are laying the ground for the first high-speed rail network in the united states of amamerica. for years, japan and europe have had high-be it will. china has about 40 times as many projects on its front. we're playing catch-çup. we should not be. the recovery act has been possible over 12,500 transportation construction projects from rebuilding highways to improving our airports.

today winnow its funding for over 50 innovative transportation projects, everything from real roads in appalachia, a new passenger terminal in new orleans. these projects will put hundreds of thousands of americans to work. in many cases, theyç already have. that is part of the reason that truck is here today. the recovery act will fund about 1/3 of the work his company will do. he can hire twoç engineers and about 100 employees. whether or not the recovery act has created jobs, talked to chop. ç-- talk tow3 chuck. the new equipment he has ordered will save an additionalç 40 jos in california. these are will pain, long- lasting, private-sector jobs that would not beñr possible

without the recovery act. they will be doing the work america needs done to stay competitiveç in a global econo. in no area is this more important than in energy. we have finally jump start it possible to 1000ç jobs in those sectors. -- we have made possible 200,000 qjobs. consider the investment we have made in the kind ofç batteries used in hybrid cars. before theç recovery act was signed, 90% of the world advanced betterç production was done in asian countries. the the unitedçóç states did ls than 2% of thisi]q advanced baty manufacturer that will be the key to the high-mileage low- emission cars. nbthen we invested in new

research and battered technology in support of the construction of 20 battery factories that will employ tens of thousands of americansç, batteries that can -- factors that can make enough batteries to power half a million plug in hybrid vehicles. next year, two years after the recovery act, the unitedç stats will have the capacity to produce nearly 20% of the world's advanced batteries. from less than 2% toç 20%. we will be able to make 40% of these confessed batteries by 2015. an entire new industry because of the recovery act. qçthis kind of progress is happening throughout our clean energy sector. i announced loanedç guaranteesn the first new nuclear power plant in nearly three decades. it will create thousands of

construction jobs. there is a manufacturer in philadelphia the makes energy efficient windows. he used to be skeptical about the industry and so the head to head onto more shifts. i]one year ago, blake gave us a sort of one of his companies. right before i sign the recovery act. at the time, blake was pretty sure the recession would force him to play off half of this stuff. one year later, because of a clean energy investments, he has added about a dozen new workers and expects to hire about a dozen more by year's end. çthe company continues to instl solar panels all over colorado. that is our future.

that is what is possible in america. you can argue rightly that we have not made as much progress as we need to make when it comes to spurring job creation. that is part of the reason why the recovery act will save another 1.5 million jobs in 2010. that is why i expect congress to pass on additional measures as quickly as possible to help our small business owners and have more of an incentive to hire. but for those skeptics who refuse to believe the recovery act has done any good, who insists the bill did not work>ii would ask you to take that argument up with blake and his employees. take that up with chalk and his construction workers. taken up with those who are building this new highways or teaching our children new skills, all because the recovery

act made it possible. our work is far from over, but we have rescued this economy. xdçnew factories and research facilities and small businesses, the american people are we building a better future. we will continue to support oki]their efforts and we will le our children and a comic that is stronger than it was before. thank you very much, everybody. -- leave our children and economy that is strong or that was before. [applause] >> president obama talking about the stimulus.

we want to know your thoughts about that spending plan. is it working in your state? maybe about 10 minutes or so. we will take your thoughts and taking your tweets and will read some of those later. here are a big phone numbers. the president speaking in the white house. he was introduced by joe biden who earlier this morning said that people have gotten their money's worth out of the $787 billion in economic stimulus money. what you think? caller: i think we need to sit back and stop the rhetoric. i am very positive in listening to his account of football. i am on-line looking at the jobs

being created. host: where are you tracking that? caller:ç at recovery.gov. host: i am sorry to interrupt ri. caller: i did not vote for him but i am willing to give him a chance. i did nothing keep was doing a good job. i did not think it was working. now i will give him a chance. host: the numbers for this week -- the latest numbers come out from under $33 billion have been committed. 1 and 7 $9 billion have been paid out. there push back the release of that information because of the snowstorms -- $179 billion dollars has been paid out.

you can go to the website. with linked to other trackers as well, c-span.org/stimulus. we will show you it again tonight at 8:00 on c-span. jackson ohio. caller: hello? i will like to say i think they need to cut obama a little bit ago slack. a lot of the money has up and spent isn't tax cuts for home energy improvements and stuff like that. it will be spent when people file their taxes. host: john boehner put out a release on the one-year anniversary. he said the american people took on record amounts of debt to çzv. a yearç later,q the unemploymet rate is near 10% per the comments of john boehner.

caller: hello. i just wanted to say i think the stimulus, the first 2/3, the unemployment compensation and also the tax cuts were the right thing to do. my concernçw3 is that the last third of the stimulus, why are reporting it into a nuclear power? we need to get solar panels on everything. starting to battle to special interest with nuclear power. ç-- i think he is starting to çdoçbow to special interests. çhost: we will show you discussion from this morning on the loan guarantee for nuclear power that the president announced earlier. çnew york, a republican caller. çcaller: good afternoon. a couple of things about the

recovery package that we have here in new york. a couple of projects for america to soak up. you could go to new york400.com. ç-- what we bridge or the hudsn river the people in california paidçw3, nevada, it doesn'tç. host:ççi]çç what does that ? caller: newyork400.com. a couple of the things which spent money on. $20 million for franklin roosevelt's house. host: in new york? caller: in new york. about $20 million. host: that was stimulus money that went to that? çzé]caller: yes.

$11 million for a railroad bridge that became a walkway over the hudson. $20 million went to bloomberg in new york city for a park. $1.5 million went to a ferry. host: you are calling us from new york. what do you think? caller: i am a bench jeweler. a service different stores. there is no money out there. people have no money. if they have money, they are not spending it. if they're buying jewelry, silver is the number one thing. silver is the new gold. host: this is dorothy and pennsylvania. go ahead. caller: i am in agreement with president obama. he inherited a horrible situation.

he inherited two wars, a big deficit, and they expect him to perform miracles. give the man a chance. if he doesn't do anything after the third or fourth year, taken out of office. we had a president for eight years and no one said anything. they just kept quiet. for mr. obama inherited all of that mess. -- poor robot inherited all that mess. they shouldn't criticize a man who is trying to do good for us. thank you for taking my call. host: play on the independent line. -- clayç on the independent li. caller: there is justification

for the stimulus and it was confused with the justification for the tarp funds per the tarp fund was supposed to save us from the depression. it was supposed to keep the unemployment rate below 9%. all of the grants to the state that have gone to keep teachers and policemen, they were 1-year grants and then they were over. once that money is gone, the teachers get fired and the police and get laid off. i know i am not going to get hired because the state is broke without the federal stimulus breast they will not have next year. host: when are you set to graduate? çcaller: in may. caller: the stimulus funds helped funded a deficit that i think kept people employed.

economic in visors, auditors, teachers and firemen. ç-- economic advisors. çuç people in floridaçç jumpingççw3 onto d assistance and food stamps. host: what about the comment about education, the money will run out and they will be able to get a job as a teacher. caller: what the stimulus will do is keep people working. i believe in the americanç people. i believe they will start businesses and keeping people working right now will keep the money flowing. maybe some businesses will generate. it will be gone two years, maybe by two years, the comet will be

picked up. host: politico as reported at a press release. it is entitled "one year later, immediate jolt." ça spokesman for john boehner said that heç believes more peopleçç believe elvis is alie than theçi] stimulus createdç. a spokesman from the minority leader. one more call, illinois. çi]r>ççmake sure youçç mur television. go ahead. i think we have lost her. thank you for your calls. i]more later run on c-span. thatç was to let you knowe#çt gñçourç plan sort incoming upd ççç/59ç. .

live coverage on c-span 2. here this evening on c-span, a salute to the ñituskegee airmen. they will be saluted atñi the national archives, we will have coverage at 7:00. "bookñi tv"çó ñixdghostçó primee on c-span 2, dean baker will be çóalso, your phone calls after

that program tonight and all this week as well. you may have heard in the president's comments his mention of the federal loan guarantees for the new nuclear power plants in georgia. we talked about that this morning on "washington journal." continues. host: are back with radioactive waste watchdog, beyond it clear, and alan flint from the nuclear energy institute here to talk about president obama's announcement yesterday that the government will be backing new guaranteed loans of fourxd nuclr power plants, specifically starting with two reactors in georgia. can i get your reaction first to the announcement? guest: a terrific event for us. it represents a remarkable moment in time. we have seen an evolution about the discussion on energy and climate, efforts to enact

legislation to control card and limitations, increasing awareness about difficult it can be bought to meet our electricity requirements and some of the decisions that need to be made about what technologies we should pursue. the fact the president has come to the table and said nuclear has to be part of the mix and the administration is willing to support efforts to build new reactors is a tremendous milestone. host: is it enough? lindsey graham, who has been a supporter of climate change legislation if it includes provisions for nuclear power said yesterday this is a start. republicans would like to see more along the lines of about 100 new nuclear reactors, and the money that is in the pipeline right now would produce around 10. is it enough? guest: it is interesting to be involved in the discussion about how many we need with different people proposing numbers. there has to be a process with the congress and the administration to decide what kind of programs and incentives the government wants to put in

place. we are going to build some number of new reactors. they will produce electricity without emitting co2. the more we build the last we have to worry about co2 from other sources. building less reactors, we have to have carbon sequins -- carbon sequestration for other technologies. there will be a lot of efficiency programs. it really is a question of what sort of basket. the fact the president has come forward and said we will be building nuclear plants, that will relieve some of the pressures on the other technologies. we believe it is a great step forward. host: should republicans come to the table with him and agree and support the amount of money he has put a for the budget for nuclear power? guest: currently the administration is authorized $18.5 billion in loan guarantees. the president requested an additional $36 billion. yes, we very much hope in the

fy 11 appropriation process that $36 billion of new authority will be provided. that will give us the ability not just to build aok few reacts but, say quite a few, and as to justify building a new manufacturing capacity, new infrastructure. that isñi where a lot of the new jobs get created. we are very interested in decongestedñr that there is a ri industry -- we are very interested that there is a real industry as a result. faugh host: you are not happy. why not? ñiguest: very concerned about te financial risk. the congressional budget office says over half of the projects will default on the loan repayments. the way the loanñr guarantees wk is the taxpayer will be left holding theñi bag for billions f dollars per reactor. so we are very concerned about the financial risks. we are also concerned about the radiological risk. these very reactors that were awarded these conditional loan guarantees yesterday, the nuclear regulatory commission

last october identified a major safety flaw the shield to protect against hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, crashing airliners. here we have a design with a safety flaw that is being supported by federal taxpayer financial risk, that gives a whole new meaning to the term moral hazard. and the environmental movement in this country is united in opposition to these loan guarantees. so we are hopeful this request from of the obama administration to congress to triple the program will be stopped before it is implemented. host: president obama talked about it yesterday when he made the announcement about the different sides coming together on this issue. he made the point of saying that this affects our economy, and the tayside's need to come to the. we have a little bit about what he said. >> my budget proposes tripling

the loan guarantees to finance saved, clean nuclear facilities. we will continue to provide financing for clean energy project here in maryland and across america. there will be those who welcome this announcement, those who think it has been long overdue. but there are also going to be those who strongly disagree with this announcement. the same has been true for other areas of our energy debate, offshore drilling to putting a price on carbon pollution. even when we have differences, we cannot allow those differences to prevent us from making progress. on an issue that affects our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we cannot keep on being mired in the same on stale debates between the left and right, environmentalist and entrepreneurs. host: kevin camp, he said this

is not just nuclear pretty the administration will focus on wind, solar, other renewable energy sources. why not be on nuclear or other organizations meet the present and half way and support what he is trying to do? guest: there are good ideas and bad ideas and energy and nuclear power is a bad idea. we have 50 years of experience. the nuclear energy -- has not saw nuclear waste problem, catastrophic releases and, there is still the nuclear weapons proliferation problem. this is a 50-year-old industry, enjoyed lion's share of public subsidies and now the nuclear energy -- industry again is trying to gobble up the lion's share of energy loan guarantees so wind and solar and efficiency are left with the crumbs. but those are the real answers to the climate crisis. it is time to make wise

decisions. we can't do it all. host: i want you to respond to the loan guarantee issue because i think for taxpayers that is a big issue in this economy, that the cbo found that the risk of default on these loans is 50%. if each plant is around $8 billion, that leaves the taxpayer but that bill. guest: let me answer a couple of questions. the first question you asked of kevin is is there an opportunity to reach some sort of consensus in climate. that has been a very difficult issue here in washington for several years. we have seen members of both parties get involved with that behind the scenes, ask a lot of questions, the level of knowledge has gone up. and i think as a result we see more republicans willing to embrace real bulls, and democrats changing their traditional position on nuclear. i think there is possibility for consensus. i don't think it can happen this year. it's very difficult in washington right now to get a deal on a proposal like this.

but i think this represents an evolution in their positions, and i think we have to reach a deal on crime legislation enacted this is a big step in that direction. so i think it is very promising. eventually there has to be a deal and i think this that's the one with milestones. let me do speak specifically about loan guarantees. kevin has raised really a canard, a false issue. he is reciting a cbo report done in 2003 about a loan guarantee program that was not enacted. it was a proposal in 2003 for a loan guarantee proposal. this cbo gave an analysis and said some of things kevin has said. that is not the loan guarantee program we are talking about. it is irrelevant to the statutory program in place right now, where companies have made applications have received an a -- commitment. the commitments are conditional. conditional on applicant needing a whole bunch of requirements. one is nrc improves the design. that is in process.

nrc approves construction and operation. those decisions are not going to be made until 2011 or 2012. so we've got a long way to go through the regulatory process. in addition, when an applicant applies to the doe, they review the application and makes a determination whether or not they think the proposal is credible and what they think the risk of default is. in this kit they think it is extremely low -- in this case, they think it is extremely low. they charge the applicant for that risk. so the applicant actually pays up friends -- up front, write a check, to cover the risk of default. host: not the whole loan. guest: the risk of default. if they say there is a 1% risk, they write a check for 1% loan, so and it totality of the portfolio, if they all have a 1% risk of default they get 1% from

each applicant and the cover the anticipated default rate. it should cost the government nothing in the totality. host: critics are saying is because there is no economy for nuclear power because the regulatory structure of nuclear power makes it difficult for any of these companies to thrive, and on top of that you do not have, as kevin brought up, a disposal system before this nuclear waste. guest: let us take each one of those. first of all, nuclear energy is very competitive. for the last seven years the power sold from nuclear-powered plant has been the lowest cost source in this country, 1.7 cents per kilowatt hour, cheaper than natural gas and coal. very competitive once you have the reactors in place. in addition, the nuclear industry does have a lot of regulations. in some ways, we embrace andçóó welcome the fact that this is a very strictly regulated industry. we pay the federal government's

cost of imposing for the regulation. industry pays over a billion dollars a year to the nuclear regulatory commission to texas. 800 billion -- $800 million to the department of energy for the nuclear waste program which is in a state of turmoil and change right now, but we send the money every year. we are paying for the federal government's cost associative the operation. in addition, generating hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue to local communities and states, employ thousands of people. this is economically a very good move for us. host: kevin? guest: economic would rid the industry. i would like to respond. this loan guarantee program is very similar to the one talked about in 2003, so that estimate of a very high default rate is still important information. in fact, current loan guarantee program may be worse and some regards than the one look atñr cbo -- guest: kevin -- host: 1 second --

guest: we're talking about 80% coverage. doe recently put the taxpayer further back in line for compensation so corn export banks from france, japan, will be in front of u.s. taxpayers if one of the project defaults in terms of being compensated. in terms of the license solving any of the financial risks, there were dozens, scores of atomic reactors in the 1970's and 1980's that got their license and then the project was cancelled. so this license will not take care of the financial risk. they can still fail after the get license from nrc. in terms of the 1% figure, there has been tremendous obscurity at the department of energy which flies in the face of president obama's call for transparency in government. we cannot look of the applications. we cannot look at the methodology being used to figure out what the subsidy fee should be, so because there is this figure

that is that some 1%, the other 49% would be covered by taxpayers. we are talking about billions of dollars per reactor. republicans are proposing 100 reactors. contradicting the idea of fiscal conservative. host: how do you respond to supporters that say that this is clean energy? that there is no co2 emissions? that if you are looking for alternatives, this is one way to go? guest: there are side effects, including ultimate radioactive waste management. in terms of clean, there is more than just carbon emissions. there is also radioactivity released on a routine basis. in vermont we are seeing the yankee atomic reactor leaking into the ground water. if it is not the king into the ground water, it is being

discharged intentionally by the commission into the connecticut river or the air. creating carcinogens, birth defects, genetic damage, and nuclear power plants inevitably generate it, just like radioactive waste for which we have no solution. host: let's keep the conversation going in and all the viewers. springfield, massachusetts on the republican line. caller: good morning to the host and i thank you for taking my call. to kevin and alex -- you know, i really sat here and i was basically up called at the results of his proposal for this guesstimation ponds i scheme -- ponzi scheme. .

how can the government -- not to say i am necessarily against it, but if your house is on fire, how are you going to start another one? guest: i used a figure of 1% because that is a number that the congressional budget office frequently uses when they make estimates about current loan guarantee programs. i was not implying that was a specific risk of default that the southern company or any future applicant might make

simply wanted to use that as a hypothetical. that is in contrast to what kevin had in mind which relates to a program that is not on the books. as to groundwater releases. kevin talked about that as well. the industry prides itself in complying with nrc requirements. the nrc allows certain amounts of tritium to be released from power plants. it has many industrial applications. but what the industry has found these higher levels of notification, they want some confidence in what the negotiators are doing. so we have a program where we any releases of tritium fromre these pipes. that has led to an increase inc awareness. at the vermont side, we have a

situation where tritium was released from an underground pipe. and our g-8 is searching for that site, and there are getting -- in the energy -- the nrg is searching for that site, and they are getting closer. we are not even sure if it has an effect on human behavior. tritium decays very clean and we believe it can be managed safely. guest: the vermont department of public health has said that the tritium has already likely reached the connecticut river from these weeks. some companies said that there were no underground pipes, and

now there is a perjury investigation from the attorney general looking at those false statements under oath to the state. where did this 50% figure come from? it is based on the past record of the u.s. nuclear power industry. 50% of the reactors that were originally ordered were never built. the capital costs are where the financial risk is. alex said there was a low blow to the rate once you have these things, but that is the whole point. they have set a $10 billion price tag for how much it will cost, and in will skyrocket from there. in pennsylvania, is closer to $15 million. >> southern was proposing to build two new reactors in georgia. , those two reactors, when they go online, will meet the alleges

the demands of 1.2 million homes. you cannot get that much of a reliable electricity from windmills or solar cells. those technologies have applications, and you can have some intermittent power on your great, but we need this type of power to keep our power need to going forward. it is impossible to meet that requirement and avoid greenhouse gas emissions unless we put on line these types of facilities. host: here is a piece in "usa today" --

it would cost, in total, about $60 million. you cannot provide that much electricity with all of these other things. compared to the amount that you could provide with nuclear power. guest: there is an excellent book written about this called "carbon free, american free." when it is about 6 cents per kilowatt hour. this is a way to compare apples to oranges. nuclear power is 12 cents or more, going up. wind is going down in price over time. again, the lion's share has gone to atomic power. wind and solar has been left with the left overs, but when it is very cost competitive, the

fastest growing new source of electricity worldwide, and solar is becoming more cost competitive with the clear. energy efficiency is seven times more cost effective dollar per dollar, compared to nuclear power. we had a climate crisis, we have limited time, limited money. energy efficiency is the first thing we need to do. then things like wind and solar, which do not have the risk of radioactive waste for the possibility of chemical releases. host: next phone call. caller: we are at the epicenter of the mountaintop removal, here in west virginia. we cannot get the laws of the country in forced over here. we are looking at that and top removal of coal which is

devastating our area. it has destroyed nearly 2 million acres of forest. the water pollution with the heavy metal is basically making this place uninhabitable. nickel industry does not pay its true price -- the coal industry does not pay its true price either. nuclear will not be the thing to solve this. if we do not ease up on coal production here and stop this mountaintop removal, there will be no appalachia. we agree with kevin -- energy conservation is the key to this thing. electrical generation is not necessary because demand is way down. host: alex, respond to that. guest: i am sympathetic to his

situation where there is an immediate need for electricity. the country gets 50% of its of electricity from coal, 25% from natural gas, and the rest are others. we have to deal with the fundamentals. we will not be able to avoid we will not be able to avoid using coal, going forward. we need more electricity as the

country continues to grow. host: jean, new york. go ahead. caller: thank-you, c-span. you are probably one of the best television programs on. that having been said, what your guests said that we needed nuclear power to reduce co2 emissions. but the matter what problems america has, we are not getting anything unless the business can control it. if we put our money into removal recent -- renewable resources online, we will get more of a percentage of our energy needs from them. i want to dwell on co2 emissions. through the icc we are led to believe that it rises and falls and naturally regulates our temperature, which is absolutely false. there is a new video out about

global warming and emerging science understanding. icc completely leaves out the sun when it continues the warming and -- thinks about the warming and cooling cycles of the earth. as co2 is released from the ocean, it is not a pollutant, it is a fertilizing gas that nourishes this planet. when the sun cools down, co2 levels are reabsorbed back into our celestial bodies. back at the time of the diamond -- dinosaurs, we were given all the gasoline we had today. your had 10 times as much co2 as it had now. your exploded in broke. host: what is your question -- the earth exploded in growth. host: what is your question?

caller: we could move forward and have our energy needs met by renewable resources. host: what kind of investment would you like to see, beyond nuclear, would your group like to see in alternative energy? guest: to begin to answer that question, i would like to talk about this book, where alex gave some figures on the amount of wind and solar we have in this country. showing that by the year 2040, the united states could face out nuclear power and fossil fuels in the electricity and transport sectors, which could be done affordably for the same amount that we currently spend on expensive nuclear power. this is doable.

feasible and economically affordable. we need to do with to solve the climate crisis. so, we need to shift our priorities away from dirty, dangerous, and expensive technologies. i wanted to point out, some of the nuclear energy institute biggest lenders have just received this guarantee. some of the biggest coal companies in the country. they do both, nuclear power and coal. we need to have a whole other direction and, to give the obama administration credit, they have talked about rules and efficiency. but of all this money goes to carbon sequestration, better ideas will fall by the wayside. host: how are you funded? guest: from private donations across the country.

host: any democratic investors? large donations from wealthy individuals? or is it smaller donations? guest: we are a tax-exempt organization, we are not partisan. host: winchester, va. republican line. go ahead. caller: being on the conservative side of the republicans, one utility company i have been two in texas, why have they not been put on line? rather than spending all the money, the billions of dollars, for a new company? for a new reactor to go on line? that is my question. host: a good point. there are several reactors around the country that were not completed and we are currently

looking at whether those should be completed in terms of going on-line. they have had a lot of success in recent years in bringing reactors in some stage of completion back online. we have gone from 103 to 104 commercial reactors. one of the first places that the industry work, we had to except -- >> we will leave this pre recorded segment for an update on u.s. relief efforts in haiti , joined from the pentagon, the deputy commander of the southern command in miami, answering questions from reporters at the pentagon. >> the commander of the joint task force, he the. -- joint task force of haiti.

deputy kenae is currently serving as the deputy task force administrator. they both join us from port-au- prince, they will make some brief opening remarks and will be happy to take your questions. gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us today. >> by him very happy to be here today with my colleague. i think that it is fitting that we said at this table together, as we do this everyday at various times on the joint effort, it is symbolic that we are working very closely together imam of the most positive experiences that have had, certainly as the lead

agency, working on behalf of the other representatives of the u.s. government. cooperation has been extraordinary and we are very grateful for that. this catastrophe that we are responding to is still in the early stages. we have gone from emergency response into subsequent phases of a transition into relief. early on in this response we of course concentrated on the immediate provision of essential services of food, water, and medical services and so forth. fortunately you have been able to see those needs met by the united nations and other international partners across the board, transitioning into other issues, such as sanitation, shelter, rubble

renewable, and jobs. we have also seen an evolution of the kind of organization and cooperation with a number of organizations, the united nations effort has become more road that -- more robust with many groups joining in to various sectors like water, sanitation, and so forth, becoming better organized and moving in the right direction every day. more and more international partners have joined the mix. we are seeing more and more partners and significant progress, i think, in leadership in key sectors by portions of the haitian government, taking a real lead in such areas as

shelter, sanitation, planning and jobs. it has been very satisfying to work with our friends and colleagues there. recently a number of congressional delegations in congress people, so forth, have come here. judging by the reaction of all of these officials, it's clear that there remains a strong commitment on the part of our leadership and government to stand with the haitian people. many challenges remain. we have a lot of work to do. we have made some progress, but there is a long ways to go. we are working well together. when this effort succeeds, we will have been responsive and

our government and commitments will bring long-term help to the government and the people of haiti. i will turn it out over to general keane. >> i would like to acknowledge the ambassadors leadership here, our military, and the support of the united states agency for international development, which has been a strong partnership from the first day. along with other partners here, united nations forces, as well as numerous non-government organizations that we have worked alongside of in the streets. just over one month ago, since the devastating earthquake struck, we have made steady progress, doing this closely with numerous international organizations. since i last spoke to you, much has transpired and much progress

has been made, has yet to be done. our first priority, when we moved military forces here within 24 hours of the earthquake striking, was to provide immediate emergency responses and save lives. we did that by opening the airport within 24 hours. the progress that has been made in that alone has been tremendous. i know that you are familiar with these numerous forces, as many as 20,000 soldiers and marines, coast guards, we have approximately 13,000 of them, 7000 of those are groups -- boots on the ground in haiti. our focus has been couched as i mentioned, providing medical assistance, distributing water and food. over time, as we met those

needs, we have seen the needs transition through non- government organizations, supporting security requirements as we pushed off humanitarian assistance through supporting distribution points throughout the city of port-au-prince, as well as other cities to the west, assisting in the distribution of the shelter and other items. as we see this transition occurring, we have seen civilian partners increasing their capabilities, both the government here in haiti and other organizations, we see the need for military assistance dwindling. however, at the present time, there is still a great need across the board and we still remain the size of the engaged in providing critical assistance to the government, as

well as all the other organizations just mentioned. i would like to highlight other areas where tremendous progress has been made. prior to the earthquake, the airport was taking in about 13 flights per day. that increased to upwards of 185 flights per day. today it has gone back down to between 30 to 40 flights per day. today the haitian aircraft controllers are controlling the airfield from 07 in the morning until 6:00 p.m. in the afternoon. that transition, in and of itself, has taken place, and we acknowledge the progress that has been made. other areas of tremendous progress? southport here in port-au- prince had been not usable, it

was critical to open it up to make sure that we got the supplies we needed into haiti that were needed. the success of that, going from pre-earthquake levels of 100 containers per day to today, where we are able to receive up to 500 containers, although we have not seen that level of need arise yet, we are capable of that today. it has enabled the pressure to be taken off of the air field so that we are able to bring in much-needed supplies. in the area of engineers, we have seen great engineering assets being used here in the civil sector. engineers in areas that we worked, looking at significant undertakings, like rubble removal, which we have identified additional needs for technical engineers.

working with the department of defense to get some additional technical aspects brought in. where we identify the there's no longer a need for military assets in the vincent aircraft carriers, at the same time we are identifying areas where we need additional assistance, the form of defense meeting those needs every time. as we look at our military requirements in supporting the government of haiti, we are dialing a back as necessary and requirements are needed on the ground, dialing it up where it is necessary based upon the needs on the ground. this is a difficult process and, as i mentioned, much is left to

be done in as we go forward we will continue as we assess what we need the military to do in order to assist the partners here. i will open that up for any questions you might have. >> general, this is mike with cnn. you were talking about the transition of going backwards and forwards, can you tell us about the major priorities right now? also, where does it stand right now in terms of the 82nd? is that being brought back, as well? >> our priorities rest with providing humanitarian assistance throughout the city. what we are seeing now is the principal priority, without

elaborating, getting to the shelter as we meet needs and look at these tremendous requirements as the rainy season begins, as well as rubble removal, ensuring that we have locations where we can move folks, getting them clear of particular areas, as well as sustaining medical needs. with respect, that is where the determination of needs and what we have on the ground, the engineering assets or others, with respect to any other unit, we are working with u.n. forces here and it is all about how well our partners are able to build capacity in the form of the new stuff, forces coming in

and building up their capacity every day. working in the heart of port-au- prince and the partnerships they have forged with all of the forces, we are seeing those forces able to take over some of the humanitarian assistance. it is too early to tell exactly which units might moat -- might no longer be needed on the ground as we go forward. we are looking at that right now and making our assessment with united nations forces to determine what recommendations are to be made to the southern command and secretary of defense in terms of redeployment of those forces. as i mentioned, we have defended that with the aircraft carrier and 24th marine expeditionary unit, identifying needs for our own forces, the 82nd being one

of those. >> can you give us a ballpark idea of how much money has been spent on the military side of this? but are there any projections in terms of where we will be in another month? >> others are probably better position to answer your questions on the budget. i have heard very different figures. i think that the folks in the pentagon could give you a better exact estimate of what we have spent. i cannot give you an exact figure of where we will be in one month. i can tell you that we are constantly assessing, looking at where we think we will be in a month, looking at what we need

and we are making recommendations. again, it will depend upon the conditions on the ground and what we are encountering in a few weeks in terms of the force that is needed and making those adjustments needed as we go forward. >> there's a story in "the washington post" that says that the marines are making good use of their counterinsurgency training in terms of how they deal with the local community engaging with local leaders. can you talk about how important that is in terms of this very different situation? >> i think it has been critical. not only the marines, but our soldiers at the 82nd airborne division that are here, as well as the airmen and sailors, for

that matter, the experiences they have gained in other places in the world, as mentioned in that article, in terms of how you interact with the local population, how you work with severe -- civic leaders and religious leaders in terms of understanding the cultural dynamics on the ground, critical in any mission, certainly in the humanitarian assistance mission we have here. we see the success of that from the first day of the first paratrooper arriving at the airfield. which is what i had the opportunity to meet that company, talking to the company commanders, those experiences were considered very important as they interacted with the populace, understanding the needs and reaching out to them from that very first day. we have seen the haitian people

welcome us with open arms, that understanding of the cultural, as well as the dynamics within each community, if you are in port-au-prince, it can be different if you are in a western city. understanding of those differences, even within haiti, is very important. >> i read the article. i want to say that, certainly in our experience, on the part of the troops, that is not an isolated case. this is happening all over the place, all over port-au-prince. the interaction with the troops on the distribution of food has been very encouraging, as well as working with local officials. it has been rather

extraordinary. in every case there has been an enormous amount -- i guess that the best word is sensitivity to the reaction. very kind and collaborative. i was speaking with young soldiers the other day at one of the distribution points, saying that this was probably not exactly what they thought it would be doing when they joined the army, and they said no, but that they felt great about it. >> general, this is meghan from "stars and stripes. as the military begins to pull out its medical interim care facilities, we ever that february 20 with the military will no longer be involved in based distribution. what, specifically, is left for

the military to do then? or is the mission complete? >> i do that see the military's mission as complete on any set date. as i mentioned, we remain engaged across the board. but i think that the date that you mentioned four food distribution is just one phase that the world food program, clearly, what happens beyond that date with the world food program, certainly if there is food distribution programs, they will go beyond that and it would not surprise me if that continues to be a requirement. there will continue to be a need for forces to assist in that effort in some way. working with non-government organizations that are responsible to make sure that they have the capacity to continue supporting that.

from a medical standpoint, i think that this is a huge success story. the medical situation is still very intense in terms of the need on the ground, but today i was provided information that the american health organization has indicated that 58 of 59 possible facilities -- and i say facilities because it includes everything from fixed facilities to field medical sites from any one of the number of nations, they have surgical capabilities. the u.s.s. comfort, for example, it has hospital beds and capabilities that have climbed 78% in the last 10 days. so, we see less dramatic

injuries coming in. so, we are able to locate places within haiti, medical facilities to place patients that have been treated initially, bringing them to other locations. initially, as you pointed out, we thought we would need significant capabilities for interim care facilities. i made the statement at one time, that initially within the first few weeks we thought that that could be as much as 5000 patients in a 5000 bed facility. we could build a tent city, if you will, with health-care providers that could take up to 100 patients. never having tough more than 10 at one time, at this time they have all been discharged. the good news there is that the patient load that we

anticipated been needed to go in has been absorbed into other medical facilities inside of haiti. the progress that has been made in terms of treatment and care for patients has significantly improved. which does not mean that there does not continue to be a great need for medical assistance. we have got a lot of ngo's working extremely hard in the country to provide this critical care. obviously there is care beyond that in terms of rehabilitation of dramatic injuries -- traumatic injuries that have occurred. hopefully that answers your question, if not you can redirect me. >> if distribution is taking care of by the un, medically, what is the military specifically involved in doing?

>> what we will continue to be involved in doing is supporting u.s. aid and our partners here. things like engineering assistance, logistical assistance, it gets into insuring that the passage of the port continues to mature and that we are eventually able to hand it over to haitian authorities. also at the airport. the airport, there has already been a nod to the airport, commercial traffic starting this friday. we need to continue to increase the capability of the government of haiti to take over the airport at some point. we will continue to be involved in those entities, completely transferring them to the government or other civil organizations.

logistically we will continue to support our u.s. aid partners, as we move many types of needs to include the area of settlement, as well as local clearing. those remain two significant challenges for the government's and the international community. >> let me say a couple of words about removal of rubble. this is one area where the international community and the government of haiti have started [no audio]

>> it appears that the pentagon has lost its signal to port-au- prince in haiti. we will stay here for another moment to see if they get that corrected. live coverage of this briefing, on c-span.

[technical difficulties] >> we apologize, it appears that there is a signal problem from the port of prince to selling on. -- from port-au-prince to the pentagon.

we will move on with a look at the white house, where the president earlier today made remarks on the one-year anniversary of the $787 billion economic stimulus plan. you can watch those comments online anytime adds c-span.org. robert gibbs is set to take questions, probably a lot about the stimulus, 1:30 eastern is the time for the briefing at the white house, it will be held live here on c-span as well. we have talked about the one- year anniversary of the signing of the recovery act. some of the republican reaction is coming in. john boehner, saying that the stimulus plan was poorly conceived and badly executed. we got to know your thoughts, opening up our twitter feed especially for this at c-span. just a couple of comments from viewers and listeners on the stimulus so far, commenting that

if we had an economic recovery without spending 70% of the stimulus, we did not needed, and we should pay back. this comment -- the stimulus should have been larger. republican lies about its effectiveness are a huge problem. facts only, please. remember, you can continue to send your comments through twitter. you can also take a look at our stimulus page, where you can track spending projects and video, including today's event. we have an update on our programming in march. the iraqis will hold national elections on march 7. chris hill is in town today, he will have a briefing at the state department here on c-span. later this evening, the national archives is hosting a salute to

the tuskegee airmen, we will have that live at 7:00 eastern on c-span. your one-stop shop for everything c-span that c- span.org/-- is at c-span.org/s rot tore. plus a collection of other c- span accessories. but for other gift-giving ideas at c-span.org/store. the peterson/pew commission on government reform invited palace analysts to discuss government debt and the policy of the federal budget process. here are the open remarks from the commission's co-chairman. this runs about one hour period. -- one hour. .

assemble at the due starting place, we'll be getting this morning's session on the way. i'm charlie stenholm. i have the privilege of being one of the three cochairs of the pew foundation commission on the federal budget. i want to begin by thanking the pew foundation and the peterson foundation for funding the effort. you have the first report of our effort thus far. it was handed to you as you check in. check in. the rest of the plan begins -- t began about two weeks ago with now the hard part. making the recommendations of how you should be able to balance the federal budget. i already had a couple of conversations with some that we'd kind of been annual perennial, whatever the next word is -- at least the 31 years i've been around this town

talking about the budget and the deficits and what we need to do about it. it seems that nothing seems to change except the problem gets worse. and i think there's now a more of an agreement and an understanding by the american people that, yes, it is possible that america is not too big to fail. when you start looking at the accumulation of debt as we are accumulating it over the next 10 years and anyone who believes in the marketplace is coming around to saying, you know, it's kind of like -- it was herb stein -- i like to quote yogi berra's version when he said it that which cannot go on forever usually won't. and i think more and more are beginning to see that. and everybody knows what has to be done. you have to restrain spending and you have to do it in the area where spending is occur. 40% of the budget that deals with the so-called entitlements. it shouldn't be that difficult

but in the political environment, it is seemingly impossible. and that's what we have elections for. every two and four years. and six years. and this november is going to be an interesting one. but i would just make one other comment. i've been of the opinion that the only way we're really going to solve this -- or put it another way. people ask me, well, charlie, you've been up there a long time. do you miss it? no, i don't miss the environment at all. but if there's one thing you could do -- one thing and one thing only, what would you do? i always said it's easy. i would change the way we would redistrict every 10 years. i would make sure districts are drawn based on the people and not on the re-election of incumbents of both parties. we've all been guilty of that. and you just see what happened in virginia this week in the editorial in the "washington post" this morning. if you think about it for just a moment, i had the privilege of

representing a competitive district. and that made me have to listen to both sides. there are too many districts that do not have to listen it off ultra right left and the republican party. that's my offer as to what can be done. now we're going to listen to the experts getting down in the mundane of actually talking about budget, the problem, the challenges we have and how we need to go about it. with that i'd like to introduce the president of our little effort here, maya mcginnis who will introduce the first panel and get us off in the discussion. thank you all for being here. [applause] >> good morning, everybody. it's so nice to start a day with no snow, isn't it? i was panicked last night. do our panelists want to come up and join us? our three panelists -- our fourth panelist is still stuck in traffic. so i'm maya.

i'm the president for the committee of responsible federal budget. and i'm one of the members of the peterson-pew commission on budget reform. for those of you who don't know the committee for responsible federal budget -- it's a bipartisan organization. our cochairs -- you just met charlie stenholm. and the board of directors is made up of really the leading budget experts. the folks who run the congressional budget office, the office of management and budget, federal reserve board, the budget committees in congress. so it's a wonderful group of people who lend their voice to reasonable budgeting. unfortunately, sometimes when i mention the name it's treated as a laugh line these days. but we're doing our best. and that's one of the purposes of this conference today. the peterson-pew commission has really been a wonderful project so far. and it's going to continue for another year. this is a commission that was started by the peterson foundation and the pew

charitable trusts to bring together the leading experts to deal with the broken budget process. and the first report we came out "red ink rising" we really turned our attention to focusing on the need for a fiscal goal. and that's one of the things our first panel is going to talk about today. the importance of actually having an objective to which you're working for in writing us, writing our budget path or putting us back on a sustainable path. so thank you so much for joining us today. thank you to our c-span viewers. i'm going to briefly introduce the panelists. we do have bio sheets available for everybody and for c-span viewers, if you go to our website, crfb.org you can look at both the program and the bios there. so today we will shortly be joined by john who's stuck in traffic. he's the president of the newly launched american action forum. we will start by hearing this morning from rudy penner, who is a former director of the congressional budget office.

and he recently cochaired a very important study on choosing the nation's fiscal future that i hope he'll talk a little bit about today. he's also a board member of the committee for responsible federal budget and commissioner of the peterson-pew commission. john podesta is the president and ceo for the center of american progress. he was the white house chief of staff for president clinton. and he and some of his colleagues have done a good deal of important work of putting out ideas for fiscal guide path to put us on a sustainable deficit path and bob former president of cbo -- as you can see we have a lot of cbo directors who are part of our organization is also the president of the urban institute. and we'll be hearing from rudy, bob and john first we'll hear from doug when he comes and there'll be time for questions and answers on all of our panels today. again, thank you for joining us. >> well, thank you, maya.

but obviously we should have one. the target that puts the budget on a sustainable path -- it's obviously necessary to have a target. to judge how we're doing. and so the president and the congress can be judged by the american people and held accountable. the only real question is what should that target be? it's nostalgia to look at the budget. it had adhered to the first 175 years of history except in times of war or recessions. the rule was unquestioned intellectually. and it was an extremely powerful force. recently been looking back at the 1950s to see when budgeting was a lot easier. and it was interesting to see eisenhower terribly embarrassed

by a deficit in 1959, which would amount to about $13 billion as we now count it. and he was bound and determined to balance the budget the next year. and he and the congress did just that. admittedly it wasn't real easy. and they used some budget gimmicks but they did do it. and along the way president eisenhower said that he really liked to provide a middle class tax cut but it was more important to balance the budget. what a quaint sentiment. well, recently as maya said i cochaired a committee for the national academies of science and public administration. and our first task was to set a fiscal target. if we had chosen to target a balanced budget, we would have been laughed off the street because the policy changes required to do that today are so implausible politically.

so the best we could do is enunciate a target of stabilizing the debt g.d.p. ratio and then the question was at what level. as you raise the target, the deficit with stability rises and then with it the negative effects on our standard of living. and, of course, as you raise the target, the risk of a meltdown in bond markets grows ever larger. but as you lower the target, the changes necessary to get there become more and more implausible. well, we finally decided on 60%. starting on a path toward it to 2012 so not to dampen the economic recovery too soon. and we didn't suggest attaining the target incident 2022. and if you look at our report, the policy changes to get there are really quite extraordinary.

the american people today are not remotely prepared for the kinds of changes that are necessary. and when we add state and local debt to make our numbers comparable to those of europe, anything higher puts us into territory where some developed countries have already gotten into trouble with their bond markets. we do have some room to go before we hit the greek level of 120% of g.d.p. and they didn't get into big trouble until they lied about their budget situation. but wait, there is some analogy here. our budget doesn't have fannie mae and freddie mac in it even though it's owned lock, stock and barrel by the american taxpayer. and there's the matter of over $3 trillion of mortgage backed securities that they guarantee. that appear neither on their balance sheet nor on the balance sheet of the u.s. government. thank goodness the cbo does the

accounting properly. well, to sum up, we're living in dangerous time when the most ambitious target that we can hope for is to have a debt g.d.p. ratio stabilized at 60%. and, frankly, we're a very long way from being able to even do that. thank you. >> thanks, maya. and i think particularly when doug gets here, the reason we're assembled here at this table this morning is to probably note that there's more agreement across the political spectrum of what the targets ought to be than there is the capacity of our political system to actually produce the results that would reach those targets. but, you know, i come to this from a couple of different perspectives. first as someone who runs a think tank that believes in a

progressive policy solutions and investments. but also believes that if you don't get there within a fiscal framework that creates fiscal stability, that the pressures of the overall federal budget, the increase in interest payments on the debt, the instability that results from a federal balance sheet will squeeze out investments for the people that the country needs -- that need them the most. on education, on the environment, on important programs that are there to build a strong middle class. and i think that today the real problem is that policymakers i think are faced with a very serious and very delicate challenge at this particular moment in trying to grapple with the problems that rudy faced. because the deficit outlook is truly dangerous in the long

term. but we're also in the midst of a great recession. and the need to try to create the right balance, to thread that needle -- i don't even know what the right analogy is any longer. to drive an aircraft carrier through the panama canal maybe. you have so little room on both sides to be able to make the short-term investments that will keep the recovery going, get job growth back into the economy is critical. and at the same time there has to be a credible path towards a better fiscal position for the united states. sxoing that's really what the -- what the challenge is. that the president is facing and peter orszag of the office of budget management are facing to try to put this togeth the prospect of job growth, the

potential of a double-dip recession will increase. that will, in fact, make it harder over the long one to address the deficit outlook over the next decade. as i noted, high levels of government borrowing can make it more politically difficult to enact public initiatives which they cite for resources as public service to pay off interest on the debt. i think it leaves the country unable to go further into debt at a time of crisis and all to the lord your incomes. they were spurred inflation and make the economy more susceptible to a crisis going forward. i think we are seeing today with the future can hold if we do not get on top of this. we have seen this play out in southern europe, as we see what is happening in countries that are not as strong as the united states. that could be our future if we do not take action now. the near term deficits -- but me

step back. i think the problem that we face today comes from two problems that are distinct but interrelated. one is what has happened over the last eight years, the last period of time? i served in the clinton administration, and at a time when we actually brought me government financial system into surplus, we had back-to-back surpluses over several years. i think that was the result of a lot of hard work and a lot of political courage in both parties, first with the budget agreement that george h. w. bush entered into in 1990, followed by the budget plan that president clinton entered into in 1993 which passed without a single republican vote, and then

the bipartisan agreement in 1997 that got us the rest of the way toward balance and surplus. tisan agreement in 1997 that got us the rest of the way towards balance and surplus. but over the succeeding course of the administration, we saw the dramatic fiscal deterioration. that was the result, i think, of deep tax cuts while we were running two wars and adding a substantial benefit to medicare without paying for it. the other part of the long-term budget problem, though, i think relates as this group is analyzed and it's fairly well-known. i won't go into it in detail. but the aging of the baby boom and the inflationary costs of healthcare. health reform is critical it off containing costs and addressing this problem over the long term.

and i assume maya will get into this with questions and i won't go into it in detail. but i think that it is -- it's imperative that we -- that we begin to reform the way we deliver healthcare in order to get savings over the long term from the healthcare system, particularly, in the public programs, but that's true in the private programs as well. we're going to need to reform the other entitlements including social security. and maybe we'll get to that. i think we have -- in my own view, we have -- we have an unsustainable path on the national security front. we're spending about -- in real dollar terms about nearly 50% more at the peak of the reagan buildup on defense. and if we don't -- if one assumes that we're going to keep that rate going both on a -- from a fiscal perspective, and i think what it's doing to our overall armed forces -- i think that's something that has to be addressed.

we need a commitment to setting priorities and spending tax dollars on programs that work. and are smarter and add productivity to the delivery of government services. maya mentioned this at the center, we propose that you could manage this problem if you manage a path. we saw that work, i think, during the course of the 1990s where the combination of paygo legislation and discretionary caps in the budget led to the -- to the first the reduction of deficits and then surplus. we proposed a intermediate goal of a primary balance by 2014. by that we mean total revenues equal total spending. by 2014, the federal government should be -- for every dollar of

revenue taken in -- excuse me, should only pay for dollars worth of program based on a dollar worth of revenue taken in. and that we need to work the debt problem off over a longer period of time. we believe that you could balance the budget on that path by 2020. those targets need to be supported again by a system of statutory mechanisms. designed to enforce fiscal discipline. and make it difficult for congress to deviate from the path. paygo was just reenacted. we can discuss whether those changes need to be made. but hitting those requirements will require a lot more than just a cap on discretionary spending. particularly leaving out spending. it will require a new commitment that has to be enacted by congress. and i'll end where i sort of began, which is this is not a problem of analysis. this is a problem of politics.

and a problem of the ability to find the will to get agreement to move the country back onto a more sustained path that will lead to sustained growth and greater opportunity for the american public. >> thank you, john. yeah, i think that all of these discussions are going to turn back to politics 'cause that's so clearly sort of the toxic piece of all of this at the moment. we have a third panel that will focus on the politics and i've told them not only should they assess the situation but they have to solve it. so that will be done by the end of the day. [laughter] >> we're going to turn to bob now and then doug who, of course, has been fashionably late to this event will go last and hopefully not repeat everything that has been said. so, bob, please. >> well, thank you, maya. i was intending to speak after everything had been said at least once. and so what i thought i was -- i would do was to try and place goals for our fiscal policy in

the context of the six steps that we have to go through to reach a fiscally sustainable position. and those six steps in order are first convincing the public and their representatives that something has to be done. we're, of course, at a point where rhetorically that is the case. but the next step doing something doesn't seem to be on the threshold. second thing -- second step is obviously to specify a goal. the third is to set a date to achieve that goal. the fourth is to establish some intermediary benchmarks or a path as we've heard. fifth is creating some mechanism that will encourage or force decision-makers to take the

necessary steps to reduce the deficit. and finally, there's the question of enforcement. let me just say a word or two about each of these steps. the issue of convincing the public and their political leaders that something really has to be done is one that i don't think we have overcome at this point. there are really four that strikes me arguments that one can make and i will go from the better to the worse of the arguments in terms of what we'd like to see. the first, obviously, is the moral argument that we are in a sense doing to our children and our grandchildren what our

parents and our grandparents didn't do to us. we're handing them a huge burden to pay for the public consumption that we've been unwilling to pay for ourselves. there's an international aspect to that in the sense as long as we run large deficits that are financed largely by foreign capital we're draining capital that otherwise could be used to invest and raise living standards in countries less wealthy than ours. and that is not the way the world is supposed to work. the second argument or motivation for doing something would be because it benefits us. that we would be better off in the future. our g.d.p., our living standards if we act to put our fiscal house in order. ...

>> and very different geopolitical ambitions. do we want to be a nation where, before the president sees the dalai lama or before we decide military aid to taiwan, we have to sit down and think about what reaction there will be among our

creditors. with respect to goals, they need to be understandable. and as rudy pointed out, balanced budget was very understandable to the american people. the goals we are talking about now, all three of the reports that have come out, are more complicated. they involve debt to gdp ratios, balance and the primary deficit, things that don't translate very well across the breakfast table in a discussion with, let alone in committee hearings in congress. they have to be unattainable in the sense that they have to be politically unattainable and economically untenable. we don't want to get ourselves trying for goals that would undermine the strength of our economy. and finally they have to be

flexible. all of the goals that have been set up so far have a degree of absolute as to them. but we live in a very uncertain world where economic conditions can vary where there can be wars, where natural disasters can strike, where there are inevitable economic cycles. and there has to be some kind of flexibility within the system one is designing. with respect to date for achieving the goal, we all agree that getting to fiscally sustainable position will take time, and given the current economic situation, it's going to take a good deal of time because we had to get the economy back on its feet. but whether the goal should be achieved in 2018 or 2020 or 2025, it's very hard to make a case one way or another, if this

makes the whole challenge that much greater because of procrastination and avoidance is really the things that this town does best. with respect to pass, that's also difficult because there are 1000 roads that will get you to any particular goal. and there is no real consensus among our political leaders now about what would be appropriate path, or what the composition should be, how much taxes, how much spending within spending, how much should come from entitlement programs versus other programs. with respect to mechanisms for forcing decisions, we have tried

the normal legislative process, and it seems to have not responded. there are special procedures, such as commissions or summit meetings, grand legislation, line item veto and so on. we have to think of what mechanisms are the most likely to produce some kind of packages that can bring the budget deficit down. finally, with respect to enforcement, we have to have a mechanism that, when the political process fails, and the goals seem to be receding into the distant future, something happens. and the most promising of these, i think, is some kind of trigger

mechanisms that in a balanced way, increased tax revenue and reduce spending. in ways that may not appear to be desirable, and so the congress will be encouraged to find its own better solutions. so this is a complex issue. there are lots of pieces that have to fit have decided now is the time to begin the journey. >> thank you. doug, i have already introduced here. if you want to mention your new venture as well? >> thank you for the chance to be here. i apologize for arriving late. i do not want to attribute it to the profound ability of this town to think about

procrastination. i took my homework to be three questions. the u.s. been a fiscal call? second, what to and that will be? lastly, and most difficult, how do we get this done? but me touch on each briefly and then we can turn to the discussion. first, it is transparent to you best need a physical gold. it has always been a source of amusement when colleagues this in the u.s. and the ass, fiscal policy is set in the united states. i have to explain the u.s. does not have fiscal policies, it has fiscal outcomes. it has fiscal outcomes. the house does its thing, the senate does their thing, they do economized. we have a series of budgetary outcomes that are not reflective of any sort of plan. and it is obvious that we have to change the way we do our

business. i won't belabor the dire nature of the outlook for the federal government budget, but i think it is very, very fair to say that if one looks at any realistic projection of the kind of policies under which we are currently operating, we are endangering both our prosperity and our freedom. and this is something that is and the most fundamental sense, and unfair to the generations that will follow us. we do need to have a fiscal role. with a fiscal goal will do, if broadly adopted, is raise these considerations to a higher place in the pecking order, and ultimately give policymakers a way to say no in the way they simply cannot right now. constituents, and have things they would like to have happen. they sound like a good things. they sound like good things. but they have to be good enough

to trump the fiscal goal in order to be implemented. it gives you a way to say know that we currently do not have in the united states and which is put us in a very precarious position. so moving to a fiscal goal, moving to a situation where these considerations, the debt that we will leave behind, the rising level of spending that burns our economy, these become more paramount. decision-making i think is impairment. i am all for moving toward something give us a fiscal goal in the united states. what should that goldie? well, i have long advocated that the appropriate goal is a ratio of debt in the hands of the public to gdp. this is a sensible goal because the numerator, the debt in the hands of the republic, is reflected broadly on the actions of the federal government. how much money comes in, what spending goes out, what is brought as a result, and achievements over time, it is

not sensitive to these year-to-year considerations that undermine fiscal goals. the denominator is a broad measure of our economic performance. and we will have to place a better economic reform at the centerpiece of moving forward, and fulfilling our obligations to the next generation. so have a goal that would in the the numerator reflect how you're doing budgetary and the denominator, how those policies effect economic reforms i think is exactly the right thing. the trouble is there are about four people who care about debt to gdp. and selling it to the general public i think will be very, very difficult. i want to come back to that because i think bob's point is exactly right. the educational aspect of this is imperative. i think would be important to translate those debt to gp targets, stabilizing it, getting a lower back into targets for taxes and spending. and in doing so, place the focus on the real problem in the

federal budget. and that is the rate at which spending is increasing. there is no way to sugarcoat it. the united states will not be able to tax its way out of this problem. it will have to get its arms around in a deep and sensitive way to spending programs in the federal budget. and that hopefully will trigger a debate, a deep, important and lasting agreement of what it is the federal government will and will not deal in the society, as a result what transaction will and will not show up on its ledger and how we will get its budgetary problems under control. so i think we need to focus on the debt to gdp, translate into the levers that policymakers care about, and in doing so place a focus on the spending problem that the united states has. once that happens, there are lots of mechanisms that can be brought to bear to help them stay on track. but the biggest thing is getting

the basic decisions made and getting on track. so last question, how does this get done? obviously this is a very difficult problem. i think nothing happens without having our elected representatives go back to the home districts and have their constituents say to them, what are you going to do about this, this is unacceptable. and you know, you did a good job, thank you when they make the hard decision to cut spinney, raise taxes or both. until that happens in a democracy of the type we live in, we're not going to make great progress we have to display this is a problem. we have to explain it is in the interest of the society, broadly, to undertake rectifying this problem, and have constituents report their elected representatives were doing it. i think there's a place the kinds of nuts and bolts that dominate the discussion inside washington. there's an important role for white house leadership, regardless of who is currently residing in the white house, no

major reform happens in the united states without presidential leadership. it is imperative that this become the top focus. the president of the united states, it is our biggest problem. nothing else should get in the way. and has to be a way to have congress change is a way of doing business in order to grapple these issues. the regular order has held us. with her discussions of departure from regular order whether commissions, special legislative procedures like a reconciliation. i am in favor of having to congress change the way it does business in or to ask but the consideration of these bills. because that is part of placing a fiscal goal of of the regular business as usual, and that's the paramount that congress has to take that obviously lots of details, but i think doing this is an imperative and tiny ways, to make it easier for elected representatives to get it done is the most important job we

face right now. >> good. thank you so much to all for a few for those very sobering warnings. i think made all of them more sobering by the remarkable background and experiences that all four of you bring to this. and the different political viewpoints. it's one of the things we found on the peterson-pew commission that even though they're such a vast array of political perspectives there was an awful lot of agreement on fiscal goal and what that fiscal goal should be and how to get there. and we've seen that any subsequent reports that have come out. there's just so much agreement that it is time to focus on a fiscal goal and develop a glide path to get there. there's also widespread agreement that you want to announce that goal as quickly as possible, and buy yourself some time to phase it in a little more gradually in order to not stabilize the recovery. i'm sure within this group there's a whole lot of disagreement about whether there should be additional stimulus which is another topic that i'm going to ask one question, but because there's not much time you can choose to open it up to

other people. i do think the fiscal goal is the critical first step that allows you to say no. it allows you to have comparisons of different policies to get there, but any and we can only avoid the bottom a question of what policy changes are we going to make to change the budget situation. i'd be curious in your answers to other questions you choose to, you say sort of the one specific policy change you would like to see. you can speak on behalf of yourself rather than your organization, if that's useful. right now i would love to open a. the audience is filled with experts. i will open it up to folks here. and the back. there are microphones that are going around. if you wait until the microphone comes. >> thanks, maya. i wanted to ask the panel what we really need is and an overall fiscal frame of of the kind you describe, or whether it's actually a fiscal framework for

medicare and the sense that when you look at the drivers, the contribution for medicare is so great. do we need actually to focus in on a fiscal framework either capping the amount of spending relative to gdp or medicare, a tax to make the direct cost of this irrelevant immediately to public? how do you think about the medicare component of this and how does it relate to the overall strategizing about the budget? >> jump right in. >> i have some sympathy for your analysis, numerically. if you look at any other projections done, for example, medicare budget jobs out on medicare quite frankly as a drive of the longer fiscal position, but i don't think that it makes sense from a political comedy point of view to single out and say the problem is this program, and to rule out trade-offs between programs and to take off the table what is

the commonly received and i think correct conclusion that everybody has to have some shared sacrifice and making tough decisions. so while i understand the numbers, i don't think you can make this a medicare problem. it is a budget problem and you really have to address it that way. >> moreover, in the next decade or so, it isn't all held. it is the retirement of the baby boomers, so you have to consider in limiting social security growth as well. and i think as you try to do those things, you have to get some notion that the sacrifices widespread and therefore have to look at other programs in the budget as well. frankly, i don't think you can get much farther than 10 years in the kind of policies that we have now without provoking crisis. >> i guess i'm an outlier on this. i think it is the heart of the

matter. i was going to answer, if you had to make one change, to maya's question, what would it be? it has to be in the delivery of healthcare. we are spending 17.5 percent of gdp on healthcare. the oecd average is about half that. the next country, switzerland, is 11%. we are headed to toward. is going to bankrupt the country if we don't reform the way we price and deliver healthcare, reduce errors in hospitals, do the kinds of things that i thi think, there's again broad spread agreement on with respect to driving change from, away from a system that rewards the volume towards one that rewards the value. and i think if we don't do that, then medicare is going to go bust, and i think more

important, the country, businesses, american families can't really afford the system that we currently have. so hope springs eternal that there will still be changed of it on the healthcare agenda this year. maybe we will all be surprised and there will be some agreement in the summit that will take place next week between republicans and democrats at the white house. but if we don't get on top of this, and i think and isolate and drive change and reform in the healthcare system, i think that this challenge and this problem is just insurmountable. >> just to give john some kind of solace that he is not an outlier, i basically agree with him. at the point is making is, you can solve the healthcare problem, which is nationwide, by tinkering around or even radical changes within medicare program alone. you have to restructure the way

we pay for and deliver healthcare in the country at large. the other point i would make is that even if there were nothing wrong with our overall fiscal situation, we would see an increase in retirement related expenditures, and we should see that given the nature of the programs, and a shrinkage in a relative sense of these other programs. so you don't want to go in and just sort of say, we're going to solve this whole thing on the back of medicare, because if we look at the numbers, medicare or medicare, medicaid are the source of this problem. we, as the nation matures, are going to redistribute public expenditures in a way towards the aged. and that is unavoidable. >> thank you.

>> morton of all call. sense report came out in december, we have had the presidential budget and his roadmap for the future fiscally. would you evaluate it in terms of how close to the goals that you cite it comes? >> shall we start at that end of the table? >> evaluated? b. you once again, we reached out for a magic asterisk in the form of the commission, to get to the goal that the president has laid out. i think all of us at the table have more aggressive goals, but this is really the first

indication that the president is willing to go out and endorse a particular goal and path for the future. >> [inaudible] maybe i just answered a question -- the question. question. and incorporated into my answer. there's something so like and there's some things i don't like, mort. i think they bit the bullet on the high in tax cuts and they should be allowed to expire this year, not pushing that down the road. if you look at the budget passed over the course of the next 10 years, they don't achieve, i think, what all of us think is necessary, which is a stable debt to gdp ratio. except through the use of the commission, which the president

tends to execute by executive order, it having been voted down in the senate, another casualty of our broken politics, i think. but the charge they are making to the commission is the one that actually that i mentioned, which is they delay it a year from what we propose, but primarily balance by 2015, which stabilizes the debt-to-gdp ratio. they do about half the work together, but have to work remains to be done through a bipartisan process. and the one thing i think that i'd been critical of is limiting the discretionary cap to to the so-called domestic side of the agenda. i mean, and not extending that to a very wide spot for spending that is called security spending under the budget. you know, if that had been limited to supporting the troops

in the field in afghanistan and iraq, i think one could argue that not only sensible, but necessary. but if anybody thinks that every dollar of the department of homeland security is being well spent and therefore, no budget discipline should be applied to that, it seems to be a just take you down the wrong track. and i think that from an overall perspective, i think they would have been to try to execute something the president talked about during the campaign, which is an overall national security project. so that trade-offs are not made within the national security programs, and that the necessary funding to support, you know, against the ground force that is deployed in afghanistan is put up against other trade-offs, particularly within the defense budget but across the security budget overall. >> our committee took on the challenge of actually specifying various policy packages that

would get you to a 60% debt gdp ratio. and i must say after 40 years or so of messing around with budgets in this town, i was shocked at how dramatic those policy changes had to be. and i think the great problem today the american people are not hearing a thing about the kind of dramatic changes that will be necessary to stabilize the situation. they surly didn't hear about it in the president's budget. and we've got to start the groundwork of preparing them very quickly. if we're to start on this path as early as 2012, which we suggested, then you've got to start on it pretty soon. i didn't mean in my answer to the last question that there don't have to be changes in medicare. thereto, very substantial change. there has to be changed in social security as well.

or else there has to be massive tax increases of the sort that are really a imaginable in this country. so that's the work that has to be started, and i just don't see it being done yet. >> i want to echo what would he said, which i found the combination of the president's budget and the economic report of the president disappointed, not just in the numbers that were bleak and make no progress towards problems, but in the nature of the solutions which are trotted out. commission, let them go solve with the magic asterisk. if you look at the report, they hold out the hope for healthcare reform, theoretical ways, most of all of our problems. but if you look at the actual bills, they actually make things worse for independent evaluations. let's move to the next solution, waste, fraud and abuse. we've heard that before that

does very little. and then the high-end tax cuts which is a trivial amount of money and which is at odds with the rhetoric about how you get to the sink in recession. we certainly couldn't cut spending. i think the idea that somehow any congress can move quickly and dramatically enough to and into the economic recovery is ludicrous. and to send a message that you can't touch some of these things because of the recovery, i think is missing the point. you need to put in the presence budgets or his to take on serious problems that you need to echo that, and i think these didn't do that. >> there's a question right there. [inaudible] >> i have been particularly interested in medicare. the experts over the years have said to save medicare, cut benefits in half. do you think we should tell the public very bluntly the truth,

or do it diplomatically and slowly? [laughter] >> i think without to scare them to death. i mean, this is a serious issue, and the notion that somehow we have to diplomatically explain to them, we are robbing their children's future, i think is entirely misplaced that there are too many americans that think we should just cut out the budget balance. which is an enormous misunderstanding of the nature of the problem. i think, my experience in the chatter that surrounds policy debates in a political environment, is that you have to say one thing very, very clearly, 100 times a day for to penetrate the public consciousness. so i am in favor of taking the gloves off and leveling the american people. >> and if you want to scare them, just have a look at southern europe. look at what's happening in ireland, with huge cuts in civil service pay, with a dramatic cuts in social programs, tax increases and spending cuts that amount to 5 percent of the gdp,

i guess more than that. these are the kinds of things that lie in our future if we don't do anything about the problem. >> of i was going to take two questions appear. >> my name is jessica. a question about this public information. i think of all spoken about the notion that the macro numbers, are hard to convey. i'm wondering if the better approach would be social security sends every year a letter to every future social security recipients saying what their benefits will be and explaining at different ages. should we, or might reconsider, would it be effective to send every medicare recipient and the united states a tally every year

of their lifetime balance of medicare use? and maybe even consider, although i don't think you would be much revenue raising, given poverty in america, but maybe even consider linking it to an estate tax so that we agree, we want every elderly person to be taken care of in their lifetime, but we're going to tell them how much their lifetime expenditures are. and if they are left with some substantial amount of money, we're going to claim that back for the next generation. i mentioned that also because i don't actually think that it is just the older generation that's benefiting from this. i think you have a lot of interest in the generation behind them and protecting the families money intergenerational effects or whatever the u.s. government will pick up, either in social security or in medicare, is an easy benefit to the family, in terms of not

having to save for intergenerational care. >> thank you. let me try to slip in one additional question that was right here. both of you have questions? you have two quick questions. >> thank you. norman bailey, it is traditional but i think unfortunate that the discussion was centered on spending and very little discussion on production. there are after all to waste to approve the dead-gdp ratio. and i would like to a lot more discussion about how to increase reduction, entrepreneurship, the widespread public ownership of productive assets and manners of that kind and not entirely on how we can reduce the increase in spending and so on and so forth. thank you. >> i will make the next panel after that as will. there's one more question here. then we will do quick summary. >> norman from the center for economic and social justice.

i want to amplify the point by doctor bailey, and say that maybe we have to look at goals beyond the keynesian box. and that is, not only full employment and balancing the budget, but also thinking in terms of full production, full employment, full ownership, and full economic empowerment of the people through widespread ownership of future capital. >> thank you. okay, everybody can weigh in on any of the questions and their final last words. >> briefly, i think that is the desired global that the debt-gdp foreign relation to to get to policies that produce the same net debt, but one is progrowth, it will look better using that formulation and that's the one that we should choose as a society. i am all in favor of that sentiment, getting the policymaking apparatus there i think is the key. with regard to information statements, i think it's good to

inform the public, but sending someone a statement without changing the incentives, their ability to understand their healthcare choices, get higher quality outcomes for less money, i think misses the fundamental problems of medicare, which is a deeply broken system and needs to be reformed. and until we will reform it, quite frankly, it will continue to grow. and because it will continue to grow, even one time to pay off the accusative debt will not solve the problem of the future. we need to solve the problem, and i think that's the message that should come out of events like this that we have deep problems rooted in our federal entitlement programs, that they need to be addressed, that they are driving us to a position where we are in danger the next generation street from international pressures and their basic prosperity. it's time to get down to business. >> i agree we should be looking at the tax side to pick it is a situation that just cries out

for tax reform and we have to figure out how to deal with the amt, how to do with the extension of the bush tax cuts. and if you were to broaden the base, especially if you were to cap the exclusion for health insurance, you can generate enormous amounts of revenue. raise the same revenue we're doing today with much, much lower tax rates. and that would be really conducive to economic growth. >> let me say one word, one point of disagreement with doug. when he said the problem is all of the spinning side. the problem is also on the revenue side. last, a 2009, our receipts were the lowest they've been since 1950. after the president's budget is fully enacted, the revenue figures as percentage of gdp will be about 2% lower than they

were under president clinton at the end of his administration. now, you know, i might be nostalgic but i remember pretty strong growth in the 23 million jobs the united states created, probably we had growth that was twice as large under the succeeding eight years. so i think that this question of how you get revenue and the nature of reform to produce that revenue out to be front and center. and i agree with rudy that we can have a system that actually potentially has, particular on the corporate side that could lower the rate by getting rid of a number of attacks expansion that are currently locked down the code which had the same effect of spending. but spending on special interest rather than the public interest. and do that in a way that produces fundamental tax reform that produces r