>> could afternoon. on behalf of the maryland school of public policy, welcome. i and the professor of public policy. late last fall, i was visiting sol in his new living space

on connecticut avenue. he pointed to where i was seated in said that steny hoyer was sitting right there in that chair and he told me that if he possibly could, he would do the program. well, steny hoyer is a man of his word. he is here. his passion and determination were key to making this event happened as they were key to a number of his programs on public policy issues of the day. it was his deep civic engagement and this event is now a tribute to saul stern. i ask that we share a short moment of silence in memory of his good and rich life.

it is now my honor to pass the baton to my friend and colleague. [applause] >> thank you. i and the dean of the school of public policy here at the university of maryland. i want to welcome all of you to this discussion about something that kids and poured into the american teacher as anything we can imagine. this is part of a dramatic change in the debate about the deficit and national debt. we are now talking about what the problems are which are increasingly clear but beginning to devise the road map for the future and the solutions. there is nothing that would have pleased him more than to see this enormous crowd together to think about not only what it is

that we have as we face problems but also the kind of solutions we can imagine to be able to engage individual citizens but with some of the best experts in the country and to establish the kind of dialogue that creates that a link between those of us here at the university and the broader policy world, as well. we are in a situation unlike any that we faced before. not only with a deficit that is rising but also with a new health care reform bill that passed that begins to imagine the future but leaves so many questions unanswered. a new deficit-reduction panel has been created where everybody agrees on the problems but the solutions are anything but clear. our goal now is to begin plotting the road map for the future. that is our enterprise today and we are excited that all of you are a part of it. we will have a question and answer session at the end so as our speakers speak, we invite you to think about what you want to ask them and how we can create the best kind of

engagement on these issues. . .

personally. don is in his first year as guillen of the public and he's taken on this job by storm. he's had a lot of help from his friends and the alumni of the university. stall stern has given us wide counsel. he's the kind of person you always wanted to talk to. when he came he drew people to him because as he got you what he wanted to you do you felt really good about it all at the same time. nearly 95 years, what a splendid life he had. but the saul stern professorship of specific engagement draws policy experts to the campus and those whose careers and thoughts inspire our students and faculty alike to a leadership role.

kongman steny hoyer always speaks about his inspiration to public service through such a contact on this campus. facilitating conversation is a focus of the public policy school. we are really very fortunate to have -- that he brought this vision to us. i also want to thank sincerely the concord coalition, very well-known and famous skorgs this fiscal solutions tour, really the collaboration between the saul stern professor, mac destler and the concord coalition. so the coalition attracts remarkably bright scholars and policymakers from diverse fields and i'd like to them thank all of them for co-sponsoring this today. it's identifying the tractable among the many

possible solutions to various problems. finally i'd like to mention that the school of public policy has been focusing on these issues of economic policy a very long time with very well-known names in the school. alan chicago, don ketti. ken, who's deeply involved in the issues of social security, and also tracy gordon, who may be here today. explores public finance and management at the state level. of course no one is more engaged in issues of fiscal policy than maryland's own majority leader steny hoyer, who is in his 15th term representing maryland's fifth congressional district. as an alumnus and long-time supporter of the school, the university of maryland in general and higher education in maryland and throughout the nation, we are fortunate to have the

majority leader hoyer in such a prominent position of national leadership. his dedication to the university and fiscal responsibility are his hall marks and for that we all have a great debt to him. we thank him for coming today and we wish this whole conference a very interesting and fruitful discussion on this most important topic. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much, mr. president. i'm pleased to be here always on the campus and college park, where i spent such a long period of time getting out of here. but it was one of the highlights of my life. i tell people that marrying my life was the only thing that surpassed my going to the university of maryland in terms of making an impact on my life. i'm always pleased to be here, pleased to be here with dan mote and with all

of you and i'm certainly pleased to be here with steven and margaret. saul stern came into my life 46 years ago. i was 4. [laughter] ok, i'm a politician. we lie. you understand that. and saul stern worked for u.s. senator daniel brewster. a couple of summers later, steve certain is -- stern, who was a mere child at that point did an internship and that's when i got to meet him and i met his dad at the same time who was, even then, very active in public policy, an influence in public policy. a leader not only in the democratic party but much more broadly, a leader in our community on so many different issues. it is not -- this program is not about celebrating the life of saul stern, but if any life can be celebrated joyfully and thankfully, it is the life

of saul stern, who did so much for so many so frequently. and steve and margaret, we're pleased you're here to represent your dad and your father-in-law and we were all blessed to be a part of his life. thank you very much. i want to say how pleased i am to be here as well with dr. destler, who was our provost and who did such an extraordinary job and who is a wonderful representative of the university of maryland. what? bill? what did i say, max? professor destler. i want to thank him for his leadership. i want to thank my former colleague, tom mcmillan for his service to this university in so many different ways. he has made us so

extraordinarily proud of not only his prowess on the basketball court but more importantly the university of maryland that showed it to be an outstanding economic institution as well as athletic program. thank you for your con -- continuing fidelity to the university@@@@@@@@@ @ @ @ @ @ and bill bixby and bob. all of whom i've worked closely with over the years on various aspects of the

subjects we're going to discuss today. i haven't work is -- worked as closely as mr. biggs, andrew, but maybe we'll do that in the future. don ketti, thank you for your leadership. this is not a town meeting. if it were every seat here would be filled. indeed, when i held a town meeting on health care, there were 1,500 people in the auditorium and the subject we were discussing was not as important adds the subject we're discussing today. it was not, perhaps, as consequential, certainly in the long term as the subject we discuss today. and i want to congratulate those with this entire effort to indicate our public and to look for solutions. it's easy to lament reality, what is. it's difficult to say what should be and how we're going to get there. we're here to discuss what

i believe is america's single most pressing challenge. putting our fiscal house in order. america's accumulation of debt is a common danger and one that ought to engage the best efforts of liberals and queverts -- conservatives alike. because while all of us here have our own view of the prop proper role of government, facts do not have ideal zpwi. to a government that does nothing that pay for entitlement and interest to our creditors and an end to american leadership in the world. then -- on their book on the american crisis, they tell us that public debt exceeding 90% of g.t.p. is often a tipping point into a wrenching crisis, a point we are on pace to reach too soon. we only have to look at greece to see where the path we're on leads.

we're here because we are committed to changing that course. getting america out of debt isn't the work of one president or one kong or one bill, or perhaps in this case, one decade. but i believe our work in kong must be about breaking a long pattern of fiscal irresponsibility and easy decisions. and putting america make on a more sustainable course. we just passed a health reform bill, which some believe to be antithetical to the goal i have just expressed. however, the nonbipartisan congressional budget office tells us that the reform bill reduces the deficit over the first decade. it is projected to save us $143 billion and some $1 trillion in the decade after that. those savings, however, as

david walker correctly points out, in part are contingent on kong keeping its pledge and taking hard votes to control health care costs in the years ahead. kong does not have a good track record on that objective. doing so will take courage, the willingness to value our neigh -- nation's fiscal future over the political precious of the moment. it will be essential for the kong to show that courage and it will be incumbent on the american people to demand that courage. that is why i lament that fact that every seat here is not filled. and david, i hope in your sessions to come around the country that the seats will be filled. c.d. and that americans will come as you hope, as concord coalition hopes, and bill, as you've been working towards the public

does in fact understand. we're all of one mind on this issue. i understand there's no fiscal sleight of hand or silver bullet to eliminate waste and inefficiency in our health care system. i know that no expert can tell us definitively the best steps to cut costs. but i do know that american health care is the most expensive per capita in the world and that we don't have better health to show for it. so doing the bill we passed was not an option. but it's only the beginning of the struggle to control health care costs, the single greatest driver of our deficit. i believe this administration and this

congress must be committed to this. president obama has proposed a deficit that would cut our budget in half my -- by 2010. it's a daunting and foreboding message of how difficult that will be to obtain. it proposes a freeze on nondiscretionary spending, a powerful sign that kong gress must tighten -- con gress must tighting its belt. the president signed a bill to reform weapons acquisition and help control the $92 billion in dense cost overruns identified by the government accountability office. we have also reinstated the crucial pay as you go law that forces con gress to find a dollar of savings for every dollar it spends.

understood president clinton pay-go helped. the chip was the major reason we churned deficits into surplus, the growth in the economy. it was the rapid expansion of the economy that helped produce the unprecedented balanced budget. whether it comes to increasing medicare benefits, pay-go removes from the table the easily usually unspoken solution. and that is, of course, to pass the costs long to our children. i was proud to sponsor the pay-go law, not because it gets us out of our deep fiscal hole, but because it stops us from digging any deeper. theoretically. david again is right. they are rhettically, because it can be waived. he can -- we can clang the law. hopefully we will not, certainly we must not.

all of these steps are important to helping control the damage to our budget and to our future. but they are together a small part of the solution. that's why president obama create add bipartisan fiscal commission to tackle the most pressing long term challenges. i've long been an advocate for fiscal commission. i was the only leader of either party that testified on behalf of the creation of the commission before senator konrad and senator gray. i'm glad to see that two proven budget balancers have been appointed as co-chairs. a former clinton white house chief of statue and former republican senator alan simpson. congress must act on the commission proposals at the end of the year. we did not pass statutory commission. i was for statutory commission. we did not pass it. president obama did what he

could do in the face of that failure to set up a commission, and both majority leader reid and speaker pelosi and myself -- i schedule legislation -- have pledged that we will put on the floor between december 1 and december 31 the results of the commission. the results are not gaurn feed. -- guaranteed. you need 14 out of 18 votes on the commission to make a recommendation. that's an extraordinarily high bar. whether it can be reached given the membership of the commission is problematic. the greenspan commission had great difficulty in 19 2 in reaching a conclusion as well. it was jim baker in the white house that finally got a conclusion reached so that we could address social security. to get to that point, that point being where we have a recommendation, both republicans and democrats have to come to the table

without preconditions. we can't rule out any solution. on the review knew or the spending side. we can't give in to the temptation to turn this into the subject of demigodry or attack ads. quite frankly, i was business disappointed that leader bainer made this report prior to the election. fit did so it would become the object of politics in september and october and every member would be asked to sign a pledge that we will not cut this, we will not cut that, we won't do anything. and too many of us would have signed such a pledge. in -- inevitably we'll have to look at both cuts and revenues to begin a realistic reduction of the gar began chaun debt that

confronts us. our options may include raising the retirement age and might also make social security benefits more progressive. a number of my colleagues don't like that when i say that. but those who are doing very well cannot expect to get what the very needy need. on the side of revenues, i think president obama was correct in refusing to take any option off the commission's table. a useful model is the work of president reagan and speaker o'neal to create a more efficient tax code in 1986 and their work preserved social security in 19 3. those are some of the challenges and options for the bipartisan commission to wrestle with. but my last word of advice is for every one of us and particularly the young people in this all of a sudden. this mention more to you than it does to me.

it means a lot to me, but to you it is crushing your generation with debt. and if we are not careful, if you have your iraq and afghanistan or your h 1 n 1 or your katrina, you will have no resources with which to respond and your generation needs or energized to demand my generation and those younger than i serving in the congress of the united states that we act with courage and marlty on your behalf and on behalf of the strength of our country. my last word is they are work of every one of us. getting out of debt is about looking reality in the face. it's about sacrifices and hard choices. america needs a fiscal wake-up because our choice isn't between painful and painless. as steven pearlstein wrote in yesterday's "washington

post," "whether we will begin to make these adjustments voluntarily, gaugely and fairly or wait until they are imposed on us harshly and unfairly during the inevitable crisis that follows. so much i think is spilled on the question of fiscal responsibility. i leave you with the question -- responsibility to what? responsibility -- to our budget and our future? certainly. but just as importantly, responsibility to one another. elected officials and the public -- and the public -- have a responsibility to one another in this debate and if either side fails, we will all fail. washington has a responsibility to show political courage and not to exploit for temporary advantage someone else's willingness to make hard choices. some of my colleagues have criticized paul ryan.

i don't agree with his suggestions but i applaud his courage for putting something on the table that in fact does what he says it's going to do, wlorget you agree with that policy. it is what we all ought to be doing and not criticizes the other for doing it or using it for political advantage. what is politically easy is often fiscally deadly. easy choices are selfish choices because they leave the work of cleaning up to someone else. easy choices may be popular but that popularity is bought on credit. the people have a responsibility too, to refpblgt easy answers from their representatives, to indicate themselves about the source of the debt and realistic ways of ways out and understand that lower taxes and higher spending may be superofficially popular but they are road to ruin. debt is a tes