his personal experiences with health care. >> what were some of those experiences? >> he's uninsured. so he's,you know, he's -- he has a girlfriend and he's worried that when he gets hurt he wants to be able to pay for, you know, to be able to be covered. >> how long did it take you to complete the entire project? >> we actually did it in four days. >> as a third prize winner, you're going to receive $750. what are you going to do with your winnings? >> i actually don't know yet. i think i'm going to put it into the bank. >> thank you for joining us today. .

joining us on the phone is martin kady of "the politico" to talk about what the senate did yesterday. they approved a cloture vote, a procedural hurdle. what happens next? guest: at this point the way is cleared for this extension of unemployment benefits as well as other programs to pass within 30 hours. this was the big hurdle. this was the sort of republican unity vote against this

particular bill. republicans will point out they were not against the extension of unemployment benefits or extension of other programs like the doctors 6 and flood insurance and cobra health insurance. republicans are just mad that democrats keep doing these one- month sort of band-aid fixes on this and it is not paid for. trying to figure out a longer- term bill here. but this should clear pretty easily. four republicans jump ship, including scott brown of massachusetts. host: longer-term bill, when could that come up for a vote and what with the legislation say? guest: we don't know exactly when it will come up. they just bought themselves another month. but harry reid said yesterday he might be able to put together a deal with mitch mcconnell and tom coburn, the primary filibuster guy, by this afternoon. might be a longer-term deal.

what they would do is a full year extension of all of these programs. that way they would not have to deal with it every month. the thing is, tom coburn and the republicans are not going to land on this unless they have some sort of pay for, congressional limbo for spending reduction or revenue increase or something to offset this. host: do democrat have the votes now that we see that four republicans yesterday voted to end this debate and go forward with at least a short-term extension of unemployment benefits? does that tell us possibly democrats have the votes even if tom coburn objects? guest: the only have votes for cloture and the one-month and extension. both scott brown and susan collins who voted to end debate yesterday, both said we are only supporting the cloture vote.

we are not necessarily supporting the constant one- month extension here. the democrats don't have the votes in the long run to keep extending this temporarily. the way the democrats have gotten around the pay goals is to labeled as emergency spending and keep doing it one month or another with extension. host: what about how democrats and republicans are framing the issue for the midterm election? guest: the democrats have an easy way to bring it. they will say republicans are letting 200,000 people who are long-term unemployed have their benefits yang out from under them because republicans can filibuster this. that is the democrat line. that is an easy line. republicans are saying, look, we are not completely wanting to yank the social safety net out from under people. we just believe it should be paid for with some sort of other reduction in spending or something like that. a so, for republicans, it is a

little harder. the other backs are to the corner. but they are trying to stick to some sort of fiscal printable sunsetting we will give you those programs. we needed to be paid for in the long run. host: this bill is slated for a final vote to extend the unemployment benefits for one month, would expire the end of april and if they don't pass a long-term solution before then they will have to be address this at the end of the month? guest: we will be back here in another month just like we were in the same place in march and in february. it if you

>> i would like to add what came before. my predecessor, lynn downy, a giant in our profession and someone who might owe a debt of gratitude and built one of the best teams in journalism and i'm fortunate to find myself working with him. i would like to give a note of congratulations to milton, who i guess becomes the president, and we are proud that asne has selected him. his knowledge of big bureaucracies will sur-- serve asne well. i'm pleased to have the opportunity to introduce your lunch time entertainment. i have known tim geithner for about 20 years and had the pleasure of working with steve since coming to the post two years ago. if i was any kind of journalist

at all, i would tell you about secretary geithner. i don't, which is a self-indictment. tim was the assistant treasury attache when we met. i was at the "wall street journal" covering economics. and i did some reporting over the weekend and called a bunch of friends who worked with secretary geithner and the only thing anybody can remember about him was he had a laugh so loud some claimed that he had to shut their doors and his tennis game was so good and was used as a ringer when they played dignitaries. it was an assign minute -- assignment, there was a real estate financial bubble that broke about a crash that resulted in some big institutions collapsing others being taken over by the government and liquidity being

injected, followed by worries, temperature pid bank regulation. and there is an international parallel. in those days, g-2 referred to the u.s. and japan, the country that was buying up the u.s. treasuries was japan and the manufacturing sector was japan. americans were worried about asian currency. and i think that experience must have shaped the secretary's understanding of what has happened here in the u.s. and i could make the argument it was probably a good thing that he knew all that he knew from japan. i know when he was running the new york fed he was one of the few officials who was appropriately and deeply concerned about the dangers of derivatives and exotic instruments. he knew how bad a financial crisis would be and that informationsight is what he

shares with steve. when they said we didn't look at the financial signals, i refer to steve's work of the previous year which he won a pull its zer prize. steve declared it the worst mess since 1929 and described the real estate bubble, the stock market, failure of credit and risk controls, all of it a year before the implosion. his column in the "post" is a look into the realistic mind and moderates our sight about leadership. i will now hand it over to him for him to interview secretary geithner. [applause] >> good afternoon. welcome. thank you for joining us. i want to start by talking about the geithner rally. if you were a a stock and the

buyers of stock were limited to journalists, it's been quite a year for you. a year ago, the bailout was a disaster. the market was in the tank. deficit was going to explode. there was this little unpleasantness with a.i.g. you got a bit false start on regulatory reform and only with the intervention of rahm and larry summers that you were able to keep in your jobs. that's what we would have thought at the time reading the press. today, the bailout is a success. make us money. the markets are at 11,000. the deficit we learned deficit is going to be less than everybody thought it was. reg reform is about to pass.

larry and rahm are on their way out and you're the kingpin. >> just proves, steve, you guys are doing a heck of a job. [laughter] >> my question is, were we right then or are we right now? >> steve, i just try to focus, try to make sure we fix what is broken, doing the right thing, not to worry about the politics or the all the other stuff and we are in a much better position today. this was a terrible mess. still is a terrible mess. still really hard economy. we face really difficult challenge on the economic side. there are going to be risks for some time but in a much stronger position because the decisions the president made early on. a lot of what the president decided was shaped by having watched a bunch of countries mismanage and go through similar crises and failed to get it right early. and by deciding as he did to do

politically difficult, hard, forceful things early on, we have kind of growing faster and more quickly than people thought and the markets much more stable. it's very tough out there. and the memory of this crisis is going to long period of time and again, just to remind you of what was said, look what happened, look what happened to the u.s. economy in the 1990's, after that experience of looking at how the rest of the world was doing and acting to deal with it, fiscal problem, make sure we are investing. you had a long record of very strong plant investment growth, productivity growth, gains shared much more broadly across the country, produced by a president making hard choices and i think we have a chance now to come out of this much

stronger, much more resilient and a much stronger position because i think the president did some hard, early, tough things at the beginning of what was a terrible storm. >> senator mcconnell, the republican leader of the senate said today, somewhat surprisingly that he would ask republicans to vote against financial reform, this was against the new conventional wisdom, this week's conventional wisdom, that the bill is going to pass, republicans wouldn't dare be on the wrong side of this one and be perceived as defending wall street. what's your prognosis and what changed thingsf it has changed for the better politically? >> well, you have to start with the following basic observation. look at the devastation caused by this financial crisis. look at the damage it did to the

lives of millions and millions of americans. look at what it did to businesses. look at how much damage it cost to american credibility. i don't think there is a tenable position that says that we don't need to fix the former system. i don't believe it's a viable position and that's why i'm confident we will have congress enact a strong sweeping set of reforms, largely frankly on the model that we put out there, that we set out there initially and that the house has adopted and the senate is close to considering today. remember this system, think of what's at stake. this is a system in which people could take all the upside and be exposed to not so much of the downside. you had large swaggets operating in the dark. institutions operating without any risk-taking. made it easy for people to shop

and exempt themselves from basic protections that consumers rely on and you had the united states of america come into the worst financial crisis since the great depression. ben bernanke said larger financial stock and had basically no tools to unwind, to fail to put into bankruptcy large institution. the consumer is faced with the choice to let the system collapse or put hundreds of billions of taxpayer money at risk, completely untenable to say this is a system we can live with. and that recognition is going to drive us to a necessary, essential, very well designed sweeping set of reforms. and the work you have all done to bring a spotlight to the choices we face in this debate, particularly on the consumer, so far has been very helpful. if you listen carefully, the debate is no longer are we going to have serious consumer protection. people aren't willing to contest

that, partly because of the work you have done. the debate is about a much more complicated but equally important issue which is how to design a system where you are going to constrain risk taking, prevent crises from spreading and if a major institution goes to the edge of the abyss, that we are able to put them out of their misery and bankruptcy regime and dismember them without the taxpayer being exposed to a penny of risk of loss. it is a simple, basic choice and i believe we are going to decide as a country that it's time to fix what was broken and fix the stuff that makes us so vulnerable still. >> is the danger in this final phase of these negotiations that you will have got the consumer protection, but that in exchange for that, they will be start to writing in the loopholes and exceptions that will be so complicated. it's a risk, but preventable risk, because again, the efforts

ahead still that people are going to try and undertake to slow it down will be conspicuous , the loopholes will be conspicuous. and one of the great things about our country is that our process should make that difficult, because you can expose it to the light of day and hard for people to defend it. but i don't think, i'm much more optimistic in our cast it as a country and in this political system to deliver a strong set of reforms that is not vulnerable because how you can look the american people in the eye and say we are going to leave in place a system that caused so much damage. and as you said, steve, the initial strategy was toedly delay until -- memories are going to fade eventually. that was an untenable strategy. the strategy will be to weaken it with exceptions that are hard to understand, hard to see.

and great strength of our country that is hard to do and we'll expose it. >> last week, a former colleague and a mentor, robert ruben gave some testimony before the commission looking into the causes of the financial crisis. i don't want to oversimplify what his sort of response to questions was, basically, look, no one saw it coming. this was a perfect storm. not the rating agencies, not the regulators, not lots of people in the business who know a lot more than i, said mr. ruben. by the way, that's a common explanation. is that -- do you accept that explanation from those who were in charge of these large institutions? should we accept that as an explanation? >> i think it is fair to say that not enough people saw this

coming and certainly fair to say that people acted preempttively to prevent this from happening. you can't build a system that relies on either the self-interests of people running major financial institutions to save the economy from financial risk. you can't run a system that relies on the wisdom of regulators, frankly torks always act preempttively, and you can't build a system that depends on the ability of people in washington to act with perfect foresight, it's not tenable because we will never know with confidence what the next source of risk is, what the -- what new innovation will bring the system to collapse. you have to build a system that recognizes the -- much more

conservative shock absorbers because you won't be able to have people sitting in this town act with perfect foresight in the future. the basic theory of reform should be based on the skeptical view of what firms will do in their self-interests and what regulators will ultimately do with discretion in this case. the basic strategy that the president adopted is for the system to run more conservatively, so there are much thicker curb ons against risks in the future. >> can we change the culture of wall street or the culture of the regulatory agencies? >> i think you can change the culture of the regulatory agencies. we can and should demand much higher standards. you need to give them more authority, clear accountability. you can demand higher standards

over time. and i think we should. i don't know extent to which you can change what drives people who are attracted to the rule of finance. you have to frankly constrain the choices they make and make sure the incentives are right. again, i don't want to run a system that bets on the hope that again people running private financial institutions are going to do anything but act in what they perceive to be in the interest of their shareholders and employees. if you get the incentives better and constraints better, it will be a safer system. >> as was mentioned in the beginning, we go back to our troubles when we had them with japan. now we have similar troubles with large trading partner, runs large surpluses and the view that also is running and

undervalued currency. those are all part of the same story. we went through a long dance with the japanese on this. we didn't want to push them too hard. it was said, we can't lose face, we have to do this quietly, be patient, they have a different time horizon and we never got that right. we waited until they imploded, but we never got it right. it looks like a rerun of the same movie with the chinese. and again you and the treasury are saying, hey, let's not declare them manipulateors, let's be patient, they are coming around, but looks like they are playing us again, different country is playing us again. what would you say to that criticism or concern? >> i don't agree with your characterization of the strategy then or now and let me begin with the optimistic side of this basic debate. think about how that broad story turned out for the u.s. and japan.

remember, at a similar moment of national concern, in the wake of a very deep recession, america confronted by what they saw happening had a moment of doubt and concern about whether our weaknesses were japan's strengths. and nobody would look at the economies today even with the challenges we have been through and say that that concern was -- it was just overstated. now, i think i believe we have an enormously productive beneficial economic relationship with china. it's hugely important to companies large and small across the country. and i think we benefit hugely from that relationship today. we have a bunch of challenges with china. it is very important to us that they are changing the way they grow. so growth relies less on the u.s. consumer, financing unsustainable spending by borrowing, very important to us they are growing more from

domestic command, ress reliance on exports. but that is in their interests, too. they don't want to be vulnerable to the kind of collapses they saw in global demand. it is important to u.s. companies. if there is a level playing field, it's basically fair rules of the game and we are going to be as always and you should expect any administration will be forceful and aggressive in making sure we are promoting changes that offer a level playing field in those markets. and of course, it's important, as everybody understands. it's very important that they move over time to a more flexible exchange system. it's in their interest to do it, china's choice to do it. but i believe they will decide. it's in their interest to move. and one way to explain this, china wants to be a strong independent country and as a

strong large independent growing economy. doesn't make sense for that country to run a monetary policy exchange regime that lets the reserve set interest rates. it's good for them over time, that's why i'm confident they will move. >> you just got back from china and even here you have spoken with the president of china. is there anything in those conversations that leads you to be confident that if we give them time and hold our tongues, that they will move in the direction that we would like them to move? >> our strategy is going to be guided by doing what is in our interests and it's in our interests to make it more likely that they decide it's in their interest to move and that's the strategy we are adopting in this case. [laughter] >> ok. >> i think that was a yes. >> let's go on an equally obtuse

issue and that is mortgage modification. the industry essentially has dragged its feet for actually before you became treasury secretary for two years on the issue of reducing principal of these mortgages. they tried everything other than reducing principal. it's not worked as effectively as anyone would like. and i'm wondering, is there any greater use of sticks and carrots to finally get them to do it? to reduce the principal on these loans permanently. >> this is a very difficult challenge. i think it's important to step back and look at the basic strategy we adopted. we have been actually quite successful in bringing a measure of stability to a housing market

that was still falling off the cliff when the president took office. a year ago, when you looked at broad expectations, most people thought house prices might fall 20%, 30% further. what you saw relatively quickly on average across the country, even with the enormous trauma, you saw a measure of stability. and that happened not just because of the broad actions we took in the recovery act in the financial sector, but because we act todd bring down mortgage interest rates to historic lows. that was a very important, very powerful, very broad-based strategy that benefited all american homeowners because it reduced the cost of home ownership in a very substantial, meaningful way. now, the program that we embraced for loan modifications, it's important to recognize is reaching more than one million americans and they are benefiting on average from $500

to $600 billion a month. that is a substantial amount of direct financial relieve, financially financed by banks. >> $500 billion to $600 billion? >> right. this is a substantial powerful program. it is targeted, though, at people we think you can really justify trying to help. it won't reach the people who are speculating in housing. doesn't reach people who bought a second home. it doesn't reach people who already can afford their mortgage payments. it doesn't reach people -- you know, just by luck or choice, because they are unlucky or choice got themselves so far extended, they just couldn't reasonably afford the house. so it won't reach a substantial number of americans who are caught up in this crisis, many of them victims, but it is a very powerful program.

over the last several of weeks, we announced changes to the program to make it more likely to make sure that relief reaches more people and in principal reductions over time. you have to judge this by the alternative program. as you hinted at, we don't have the ability to compel generalized principal reduction across the american financial system. we don't have the ability to do it. and to try and achieve that without that authority would be enormously expensive and hard to justify on public policy grounds, because you have to explain to americans that it makes sense to take their money on a scale of hundreds of billions of dollars potentially and devote it to releaving them of a substantial part of the

principal and their house. and explaining that is a better use of their money. so, you know, like you, we have to make choices among the alternatives. and the housing market is still under a lot of stress. there are a lot of foreclosures still ahead and going to be a challenging process to work through, but this is the best mix of alternatives that we have been able to identify, given the limits on authority and given recognition that we don't have unlimited resources. >> one of the reasons i think, part of the main reasons that it hasn't gotten a lot worse is that freddie mac and fannie mae which are essentially instruments of the treasury are buying 95% of the conforming mortgages in the united states.

and also the federal reserve has been buying as well. >> you're right. the basic strategy we adopted alongside the fed was designed to bring down mortgage interest rates. that required stabilizing freddie mac and fannie mae and that was successful in bringing down interest rates. >> if they rise another percentage point, are we going to be ok? is that going to be accept tabble? >> what i would say generally on this, steve, i think what you see generally happening now is encouraging signs of more confidence in the strength of this recovery. i think you see that in many parts of the world. you see it now, too, and that is good encouraging thing. it doesn't take away from the fact that this is still a tough economy, you know, most americans have never experienced anything like this in their

lifetime, had no memory of it. this is a deeper, more damaging economic crisis than we have seen in generations and the effects of that are going to belonglasting. generally, i think you are seeing in most measures in confidence, a growl improvement in confidence that the american economy is starting to come back. >> rising interest rates is on balance a positive thing as long as it's not too much and not too fast. >> that is one of the things that happens when people get confident. >> going back to freddie mac and fannie mae, i know you are a determined position, we are studying this and not going to make our decision yet. could you step back from that a little bit and take a little bit of kennedy school type of thing and tell us the pluses and minuses of going to be a public utility model, basically making fannie mae and freddie mac doing

the same thing under a tougher regulatory regime in one of the things that are regulated. you like the utility model? >> i do. >> a simple basic proposition that we can agree on is you can't run a system where you have a mix with companies with private shareholders, boards responsible for maximizing shareholder profit, benefit from this mix of implicit-explicit from the government that allowed them to borrow at low rates and generate profit to the shareholders. it went to the shareholder and not the homeowner, not whose purpose it was to serve and support. we won't recommend that will sustain that system. the other thing that went wrong, that mistake was magnified by the fact that we did not set a constraints on how much risk they took.

and we allowed them to build up this huge portfolio of mortgage securities on the expectations they could earn a lot of money to their shareholders and left them with way too much risk relative to capital and caused the risk of catastrophic damage to our system. that is a preventable mistake as well. there are lots of utility models but if that's what you call it, i would be in a favor. and we are doing reform in two stages. i think it's the right strategy. first stage was a comprehensive set of reforms across the broad financial sector. we thought freddie mac and fannie mae would be good to do stage two because we are still in a challenging stage, and we want to look at the broad mix of institutions and policies that the u.s. has built up over time. >> coming to the end of time. i want to get some questions.

so i'll ask one last question. the latest data out from the hedge funds is that 25 top hedge fund managers earned $1 billion each. everyone didn't earn $1 billion, some earned $3 billion. some earned less. the poor ones. >> you're against this? >> no. what is your reaction about when you read that sort of thing and is that in your mind a signal that markets, i suppose you might call them labor markets, are working or financial markets, are they working or is it an indication there is something wrong with the markets and imperfection there and maybe we want to think about why that is so and fixing those? >> i think there is a lot that

is obviously wrong in financial markets both what we got wrong and generally. and we have learned painfully over time, financial markets need to operate reasonably well for the economy as a whole and need constraints on risk taking and a significant cause of this crisis, wasn't the only cause, but a significant cause was as i said in the beginning, you had compensation practices across the financial system designed in a way that people were able to benefit from the upside without being exposed to sufficient risk of loss on the downside. that is an untenable balance and it's something that has to change over time. and it's a hard thing to change. we have had a lot of experience as a country to regulate compensation practices that had unfortunate effects but we are trying to change it by doing two things. one is to force public companies to submit to their shareholders their compensation plans for

approval. put them in the light of day. let people see them and let shareholders vote on them. that's necessary, but not sufficient. we are proposing to make sure that supervising these institutions enforce standards on compensation practice that end this basic dynamic where you could get the upside without being exposed to the downside. and i think those are achievable things. but what you pointed out, not just one example of what can happen in the financial markets without that basic feature, but we have three decades of steady, quite substantial rise in economic equality in this country. for many americans it's a symptom of an economy that is not providing the same basic sense of fairness and opportunity as it used to as a country. and it's something that is very important for us to work to

change because it goes to the core of credibility and confidence in how the system works for people. and so i think that financial reform is part of that, but it requires a substantial broad-based investment and the things that the president is committed to carry out, education reform, regulatory reform and make things better for the average american. >> why is it sophisticated fund managers keep signing up for hedge funds where the price is 2% fee plus 20% of all the upside. that's how you get to $1 million. >> that's a good question. they are asking themselves that. >> so, some of you must have better questions than i. so i can see one hand there. and i'm not so good because of the lights.

yes, sir. >> good afternoon, mr. secretary. i'm from the hispanic daily newspaper in miami. i was very moved by your comments about the amount of suffering that's gone on in the united states because of errors of the past, but there is also suffering that has gone on all around the world because of this debacle. could you clear something up for me that i don't understand very well. the mistakes that were made here and the signals that we didn't see, we talked about many, many times. outside the united states, some people point the finger exclusively at washington and at the united states for the cause of the world recession. but i also read in newspapers that some central banks of other countries and some private investment banks of other countries bought into the same

mortgage-backed securities and derivatives without taking a look at what it was they were buying and not having a clear sense of what the value of what they were buying was. is it accurate to strictly point the finger at the united states and say this is a u.s. problem that sunk the world into a massive recession? >> you are absolutely right. this crisis was so damaging both here and around the world because it was a global crisis in many ways. the causes were global in many ways. we messed up a lot of things here but the crisis wouldn't have been as severe if it hadn't been accompanied by a set of policy choices outside the united states that made many countries very vulnerable. just to give you an example. so even with all the mistakes we made in our financial system, our system still was relatively small with respect to the share of our economy. the best example, if you look at

for the small and large major european economies, their banks as a share of their economies are dramatically larger. our banker -- banking system is 1% times. in switzerland, it's eight times. continental europe, three to five times. the losses are much larger with respect to the share of their economy and made them much vulnerable. you are also right in pointing out and that leverage out there, you say that leverage was in the form of buying a bunch of the worst part of the u.s. mortgage assets. but this crisis fell a long period where monetary policy around the world produced very low interest rates. and those factors made the crisis a global crisis on a much more acute scale. if this was just about errors in the united states, it would have

been a deep recession for us and milder recession for the rest of the world. but much more damaging because of those causes. our job is to fix what is broken here and we are going to try to make sure as we try to reform our system here we do so with the rest of the world so they are putting in place more conservative standards at the same time. not at a disadvantage, competing against them, but because we want the world to be more stable in the future as well. >> it is true our banking system is relatively smaller compared to our economy. but if you add the shadow banking system, maybe not. >> i thought you would make that point. but in fact, even with the fact that we call them banks today, if you include that broader measure of our financial system, even your civs, our system was much more smaller and less

leveraged overall. and because of that, i think more importantly because we did act much more forcefully to recapitalize the system with private money, i think our system is going to emerge much more strongly and quickly. >> was it unhealthy that 1.40% of s&p profits was coming from financial companies? >> that long period created a large level of profits in the industry and obviously, it was too high because it wasn't real and did yourable. it rested on a shifting sands of risk. >> i'm from "usa today." mr. secretary, many of our readers and some of the people in this room will spend the next

couple of days struggling to fill out their tax returns. and in the quarter century since the last major tax reform effort i.r.s. has weld to hundreds of pages of instructions and they are working to fill out returns that they don't understand. what ideas do you have for tax simplification -- >> you're on the right track. you made the case. it was a good case for reform. >> if you could tell us what is the administration prepared to make april 15 less onerous? >> the president set up this fiscal commission to recommend ways to bring our deficits back down to earth, to get us back to

us living within our means. we have to take a comprehensive look at the entire framework of policy in the united states and in that context that will give us the opportunity to do what i think all americans would support and make it easier for people to pay their obligations as americans and meet their obligations. and it will be forced by the imperatives of our long-term fiscal problems to build support for comprehensive reforms that include simplification. i think we're coming to the point where that will be possible for us to do and will be able to benefit from lots of advice on how best to do that. >> you got into a problem a few years back when you did your own thing. i assume did you do your own taxes this year or did you get professional help? [laughter] >> thank you for raising that issue. [laughter] >> i do it slightly differently,

i have an excellent accountant who i have enormous confidence in. i had an account fant then, too. but i like my accountant. >> thank you for joining us. >> nice to see you all. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> we'll begin in 15 minutes, but a couple of quick housekeeping matters. >> treasury secretary geithner talking to the american society of newspaper editors. just a couple of programming notes. coming up this afternoon, president obama wrapping up the

nuclear summit and a look at some of the gathering of the world's leaders earlier today. the president will hold a news conference this afternoon and live coverage at 4:30 eastern. 15 minutes, u.s. house gaveling in. six suspension bills under consideration today and votes at 6:00:30. live coverage of the u.s. house at 2:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. while we wait, a discussion on unemployment benefits. the senate is debating that from this morning's "washington journal." >> your comments on your views on extending these unemployment benefits in the short-term or permanently is an incentive not to work. a on the indep lydia, i'm going m put you on hold and maybe they can punch up that phone call for

me. having a little trouble seeing what might you are on. we will get to you in just a minute. but more from "the wall street journal" this morning. it says, sure enough, the share of unemployed workers that do not have a job in 26 meet -- 26 weeks steadily increased. average spell is now 31 weeks even though the economy is once again creating more new jobs than it is losing. @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ >> senator harkin record is there any compassion? do the senator think losing crucial skills and contacts and how politically smart is it for democrats to embrace policies to

keep the jobless rate higher than it would be otherwise. how many people share his desire to defend a jobless rate near 9%. today it's 9.7% in the fall election campaign. lydia on the independent line. good morning. and what do you think? caller: i don't agree with anything that the "wall street journal" has to say. it's the mouth piece of the republican party. who wouldn't want to work? my son had been out of work for over a year and have been to dozens of job fairs and filled out dozens of resumes and cannot find a job. what is he supposed to do? sit out on the street and freeze to death. i want this country to see that the republicans don't care about working people. host: can i ask about your son and his efforts to find a job. the "wall street journal" is quoting larry summers, economic

adviser to president obama in a book they wrote and the argument he made then is people have a certain amount that they want to make when they go into a job interview and because they have this unemployment benefit that they can relie on, if a job doesn't meet their requirements, then they don't take it, is that the case with your son? caller: no. he has done construction work. he has done fencing work, drywall. he is a hard worker and he will do any job as long as it's honest and decent labor and this is nonsense that people on unemployment don't want to work. when he was working, he was bringing home $1,500 and now 240 a week on unemployment. do you think he is happy with that? it keeps the roof over of his head and food in his mouth. this is nonsense. the republicans had no problem

for voting for emergency spending when george bush was financing two wars and have a problem with working people being able to feet and feed their children. host: joe from north carolina. caller: my heart goes out to the previous lady but the last time i checked, the military recruiters were still looking for business. i'm sure her son would be able to enlist in one of the armed services and we would be happy to have him. when it comes to incentives not to work, the republicans are sticking with what the democrats started, pay-as-you-go. but i think this is a small piece of what we're going to see in november. the american people are just starting to really wake up and realize what's been going for the past year with the obama administration and our new normal and the health takeover and the list goes on. i think we're going to see a big

change in november with a lot of republicans in the house and senate. so i would also look for the summer to be rather contentious when it comes to senate debate. host: let me jump in and read to you the "new york times" editorial on this. a wrong way and a right way and your point on republicans saying they want pay-as-you-go. they say this.

host: what do you make of that argument? caller: well, there's an argument for it. i also believe that if government would get out of the way, economic stimulus would find its own way by american ingenuity. we aren't going to sit back and collect unemployment when people are hiring. there was a little bit of history, an interesting piece of history about benjamin franklin when he was younger and

traveling abroad. and when he went to other countries and his observation was that when a country props up its unemployed and poor through subsidies they remain poor and slide further into poverty but when they cut off subsidy or any kind of entitlement, they basically come to the realization, either i get off my duff and get to work or i starve to death. they bottom out in their own situation and get to work and do what they can and then basically become more productive and just opens up their whole horizon. host: we'll move on to greenville, south carolina, on the democratic line. go ahead. good morning, you need to turn down that television. caller: good morning. i wanted to say that i think

this is more complicated than people wanting to go to work or not wanting to go to work. there are people looking for such a long time and then they get this entitlement when they get unemployment benefits provided to them and there are people like single mothers who decide to go back to school. my little sister is one of them and decided to go back to school full-time. and then the idea of whether or not she would be extended month to month to month, i don't think so. but at the same time, it's like any other household with a budget. when you have a crisis come up, you have to pull money and pay for it because it's not going to go away and don't fix it, and after you fix it, you have to see what bill you have to pull money from that thing you have to fix because you were in a clutch and couldn't do anything but take care of it right then. there is some psychological things. some people get tired and give

up, some aren't looking at all and some decide they will start a business or go back to school. all those factors are important. the other things is, i don't think -- i support what they are doing to make sure people don't go to homeless but they shouldn't keep extending benefits unless they put restrictions, are you checking to see if they are applying for jobs. they ought to have more restrictions to see what they are doing to find work. there are a lot of people collecting benefits and treat it like welfare and there are a lot of people who are hitting the pavement every day and can't find something. and then there are a lot of people who get in a rut and have been looking for a long time, get depressed and their mindset is not in a diligent search for employment. so there are so many factors why people are still unemployed.

and the government needs to do more to address those instead of handing out money every 30 days. host: harold in washington, d.c. caller: the time is way off. you said "the times article"? host: which one? caller: "wall street journal." whoever wrote that article -- host: the editorial. caller: they should try to live on unemployment for a while. i'm drawing unemployment and it's about 7/-- 1/7 of what i normally make. i live in washington, d.c. my rent is over $1,000 a month. my unemployment is a little over $300 a week. so you do the math. host: harold, what kind of jobs are you interviewing for?

what is out there? caller: the jobs that are out there -- don't get me wrong, there are jobs out there. the jobs are out there are minimum wage jobs and you aren't going to do that in washington, d.c. on minimum wages, especially by the time taxes come out and the whole nine yards unless you are living at home with your parents and i'm 62 years old. host: how old? can you retire and collect social security and medicare or -- caller: i am an independent worker. so retirement is not in the cards for me. host: what did you do before you lost your job? caller: i'm in the convention business.

host: frank on the republican line in beverly, washington, d.c. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> six bills today in the house, including one, remembering the victims of the attack on the murraugh and supporting the goes and ideals of national week of hope. later this week, bills on taxpayer assistance and clean water. the senate back in a little bit at 2:15 to resume consideration of h.r. 4851, including extending unemployment benefits. the senate is live at 2:15. now live to the house floor here on c-span. the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the chair lays before the house

a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's rooms, washington, d.c. april 13, 2010. i hereby appoint the honorable jesse l. jackson jr. to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, nancy pelosi, speaker of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: the prayer will be offered by the guest chaplain, dr. alan keerian, office of the chaplain, united states senate. the chaplain: let us pray. the lord of the nations and king of all kings, you alone deserve our worship, you alone are the most high god. heavenly father, you ask us to trust you with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding. and in all our ways to acknowledge you. and in so doing you promise to make our path straight. that is why we call on your mighty name today, lord god. many are looking for straight paths but cannot find them. grant them grace to seek and

find your path to a meaningful life. show right paths to every member of this body so they may skillfully and cheerfully labor for the good of all. and may you, lord, have mercy on those in harm's way and their families, meet those in lonely places and comfort them with your amazing grace. i pray in the name that is above all names, amen. the speaker pro tempore: the chair has examined the journal of the last day's proceedings and announces to the house his approval thereof. pursuant to clause 1 of rule 1, the journal stands approved. the pledge of allegiance will be led by the gentlewoman from california, congresswoman chu. miss clue: i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

the speaker pro tempore: the chair lays before the house a communication. the clerk: the honorable the speaker, house of representatives. madam, pursuant to the mer mission granted in clause 2-h of rule 2 of the rules of the u.s. house of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate on march 26, 2010 at 12:30 p.m. that the senate passed without amendment h.r. 4957. with best wishes i am, signed, sincerely, lorraine c. miller, clerk of the house. the speaker pro tempore: the chair lays before the house a communication. the clerk: the honorable the speaker, house of representatives. madam, pursuant to the permission granted in clause 2-h of rule 2 of the rules of the u.s. house of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate on march 26, 2010, at 4:09 p.m. that the senate passed without amendment h.r. 4621. that the senate passed with amendments h.r. 4573.

that the senate agreed to without amendment house joint resolution 80. that the senate passed senate 3162, senate 3191. with best wishes i am, signed, sincerely, lorraine c. miller, clerk of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: the chair lays before the house a communication. the clerk: the honorable the speaker, house of representatives. madam, pursuant to the permission grantsed in clause 2-h of rule 2 of the rules of the u.s. house of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate on april 12, 2010, at 3:11 p.m. notifying the house of the filing of the answer by g. thomas portous jr., district judge, for the eastern district of louisiana and providing a copy of his answer to the house of representatives. with best wishes i am, signed, sincerely, lorraine c. miller, clerk of the house. the speaker pro tempore: the chair lays before the house a communication. the clerk: the honorable the

speaker, house of representatives. madam, pursuant to the permission granted in clause 2-h of rule 2 of the rules of the u.s. house of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate on april 13, 2010, at 9:50 a.m. that the senate passed without amendment h.r. 4887. with best wishes i am, signed, sincerely, lorraine c. miller, clerk of the house. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to clause 4 of rule 1, the following enrolled bills and joint resolutions were signed by the speaker on friday, march 26, 2010. the clerk: h.r. 4872. h.r. 4957, h.r. 4938, senate 3186, and the speaker signed on thursday, march 29, 2010, house joint resolution 80, h.r. 4621. the speaker pro tempore: the chair lays before the house a communication. the clerk: the honorable the speaker, house of

representatives. madam, this is to notify you formally pursuant to rule 8 of the rules of the house of representatives that my district office hags been served with a subpoena for documents issued by the u.s. district court for the southern district of new york. after consultation with counsel, i have determined that compliance with the subpoena is consistent with the privileges and rights of the house. signed, sincerely, gregory w. meeks, member of congress. the speaker pro tempore: the chair lays before the house a communication. the clerk: the honorable the speaker, house of representatives. madam, this is to notify you formally pursuant to rule 8 of the rules of the house of representatives that i have been served with a subpoena for documents issued by the circuit court of st. lucie county, florida, in connection with a civil case pending there. after consultation with the office of general counsel, i have determined that compliance with the subpoena is consistent with the privileges and rights of the house. signed, sincerely, thomas j. rooney, member of congress.

the speaker pro tempore: the chair will entertain requests for one-minute speeches. for what purpose does the gentleman from south carolina rise? mr. wilson: permission to address the house for one minute. rend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. wilson: mr. speaker, over the past two weeks i have heard about the job-killing effect the recently passed government health care takeover will have from concerned citizens across south carolina. i have heard from small business owners, the primary providers of jobs in america, how they will face a $2,000 fine for each employee without insurance. i have heard from seniors who are afraid that their former employers will drop their drug benefits. i have heard from people currently looking for work that the creation of 16,500 new i.r.s. agents isn't what they had in mind when it came to job creation. and i have heard from just about everyone about the concern that their insurance premiums will rise dramatically. the message i bring back from south carolinaans is clear. repeal the job-killing takeover and replace it with an

affordable solution that is centered around the patient and not the government. in conclusion, got bless our troops, and we will never forget september 11 and the global war on terrorism. best wishes for success of the heritage golf classic at hilton head island, south carolina. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from illinois rise? >> to address the house for one minute. revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. davis: thank you very much, mr. chairman. during the recess i spent three nights with residents of the seventh congressional district at three town hall meetings in oak park, illinois, river forest illinois, forest park, illinois, and last evening westchester. overwhelmingly all of the individuals who were present extoled the virtues of the health reform legislation that was passed. and i was vindicated because i voted for it.

i want to thank the residents of my congressional district because we were on the same page. i thank you, mr. speaker. and yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from texas rise? >> mr. speaker, ask unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized without objection for one minute. mr. smith: mr. speaker, americans continue to see the national media as too biased, too liberal, and too powerful. by almost a two to one margin americans say that media bias is a bigger problem in politics today than big campaign contributions, according to a new rasmussen public opinion poll. by a three to one margin, americans describe the average reporter as more liberal than they are rather than more conservative. and almost seven out of 10 americans believe the news media have too much power and influence over government decisions. other recent polls have shown

similar results. if the national media want to restore americans' trust, they should report the facts not tell the people what to think. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from texas rise? >> i ask unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. johnson: thank you. you know, tax day's a dreaded deadline for millions of americans, but according to the associated press, for nearly half of the u.s. households, it's simply somebody else's problem. this april, 47% of americans will pay no federal income tax at all. according to a new report, the top 10% of earners will pay roughly 73% of the income taxes collected by the federal government. that's just not fair. being an american is a privilege not a right. out of fairness everyone should have to pay some tax, even if it's just a buck a month, to

help pay to live in this great democracy. by pushing more and more people off the tax rolls and having just a few foot the bill for the many, we are punishing hard work, thrift, and sacrifice. this is america. where prosperity and helping your fell man should mean more than just paying your neighbor's taxes. it's about fairness and freedom. yield back. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentlelady from west virginia rise? mrs. capito: to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentlelady is recognized for one minute. mrs. capito: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise today to extend my deepest sympathies to the 29 victims of the upper big branch mine explosion, their families, loved ones, and their community. last monday's tragedy occurred in montcoal, west virginia, and the worst mine disaster in over 40 years. it has been gut wrenching for our entire state. in the wake of this horrific tragedy, those citizens of west

virginia, including our outstanding emergency and rescue workers, and our governor, pulled together to support the communities and families devastated by this explosion. as we grieve this loss of life, we must also honor the victims of the accident by taking the appropriate steps to ensure that this never happens again. never again in west virginia or in any other state can we let safety slip through the cracks. we will not let this happen again. now is the time to band together and do everything we can to protect our citizens. i hope you'll join me in praising our miners for the difficult and dangerous work that they do. and i ask that you keep all the workers, their families, and their communities in your thoughts and prayers. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to clause 8 of rule 20, the chair will postpone further proceedings today on motions to suspend the rules on which a recorded vote or the yeas and nays are ordered or on which the vote incurs objection under clause 6 of rule 20.

record votes on postponed questions will be taken after 6:30 p.m. today. for what purpose does the gentlewoman from california seek recognition? ms. chu: i the house suspend the rules and agree to house resolution 1222. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the resolution. the clerk: house resolution 1222, resolution supporting the goals and ideals of national library week. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentlelady from california, ms. chu, and the gentleman from tennessee, mr. roe, each will control 20 minutes. the chair recognizes the gentlewoman from california. ms. chu: mr. speaker, i request five legislative days during which members may revise and extend and insert extraneous material on house resolution 1222 into the record. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. ms. chu: i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady is recognized for as much time as she may consume. ms. chu: i rise today in support of house resolution 1222, which encourages all americans to take advantage of the numerous resources libraries make available.

across the country, libraries help develop communities by bringing people of all national yilts, ages, and socio-and economic backgrounds together to enjoy the pleasures of literature, media, and new technology. libraries foster national discourse on intellectual freedom and provide informational equity across the nation. libraries not only provide free resources to adults and children, but they also preserve historical artifacts and information. highlighting societal achievements. today we have nearly 123,000 libraries nationwide playing a vital role in creating vibrant, energized communities. our very own library of congress sponsors the annual national book festival. authors, ill traitors, and poets gather at the nation's capital to promote reading and literacy in all 50 states. in fact, president obama and first lady michelle obama help

sponsored this event as honorary chairs. last september, the annual national book festival was a huge success with 80 best-selling authors and over 1,000 volunteers, scores of people gathered to promote reading to children. the library of congress is also a great resource for the public as the largest library in the world, the library of congress holds more than 120 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. the collections include more than 18 million books, 2.5 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.5 million maps, and 54 million manuscripts. national library week continues to commend librarians who help the public interpret the information they need to live, learn, and navigate their way in today's challenging and complicated economy. by providing free educational opportunities, and a safe place for lifelong learning,

libraries help people explore their curiousities and foster community involvement in education. . i want to thank representative ehlers for bringing this important resolution forward. again, i want to extend my gratitude for libraries toward their work. mr. speaker, i ask my closing to support this important resolution. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from california reserves the balance of her time. the gentleman from tennessee is recognized. mr. roe: thank you, mr. speaker. i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from tennessee is recognized for as much time as he may consume. mr. roe: i want to rise in support of h.res. 1222 and want to associate myself to the comments of the gentlelady from california. this is sponsored by the american library association and libraries across the country each year in april. it is a time to celebrate the

contributions of our nation's libraries and lie barians and to promote library use and support. in 1957, the national book committee developed a plan for a national library week based on the idea that once people were motivated to read they'd support and use libraries. with the cooperation from various organizations, the first national library week observed in 1958 with the theme "wake up and read." libraries play a vital role in supporting the quality of life in their areas. they provide no-fee public network to have access for digital and online education including government, continuing education and employment opportunities. libraries help us discover a world of knowledge, both in person and online and are a key player in the national discourse on intellectual freedom and equity of axis. according to the national center for education statistics, december, 2008,

report, library use was up 1.4 billion visits continuing a long-term trend of increased library usage. by recognizing national library week, we show our appreciation libraries, librarians and staff. i ask my colleagues to join me to support this. just as an aside, mr. speaker, i want to encourage everyone, whether they are a parent, aunt, uncle, just a mentor, to take a child to library to read and mentor them. it's a great place to do it. it's a great place to educate. i want to congratulate congressman vern ehlers for introducing this. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentlewoman from california. ms. chu: i want to yield the gentleman from illinois, mr. davis, for three minutes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from illinois is recognized for three minutes. mr. davis: i want to thank the gentlelady from california for

yielding time. mr. speaker, i rise to express strong support for h.res. 1222, supporting the goals and ideas of national library week. the science fiction novelist frank herbert stated, and i quote, the beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand. our national libraries serve as a much-needed conduit by which we as american citizens gain more understanding of the world around us. first sponsored in 1958, national library week is a national observance sponsored by the american library association and lie barians across the country each april. it is a time to celebrate the contributions of our nation's libraries and librarians and to promote library use and support. all types of libraries, schools, public and academic participate.

the city of chicago is home to exactly 79 public loy brears -- libraries and many public libraries with information ranging from cultural specific research to academic. in my congressional district, the seventh congressional district of illinois, we serve as home of the headquarters for the american library association. i am proud to have this great organization in my district, and i am pleased that many of its staff members are my constituents. we have libraries that are renowned, both public and private, sauches the -- such as the harold washington library. at a town hall meeting in westchester, illinois, one of the trestees of the loy brear board -- trustees of the library board made it known to everyone present that loy

brears are vitally -- libraries are vitally important and i was pleased to agree with him. i also want to congratulate robert morris college, one of the academic institutions in my congressional district, for their installation of a new library that recently opened its magnificent -- mag anyway sense. i thank you, mr. speaker, and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from illinois yields back. the gentlelady from california reserves. the gentleman from tennessee. mr. roe: i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from tennessee yields back. the gentlelady from california. ms. chu: i urge passage and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the question is if the house will suspend the rules and agree to house resolution 1222. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 having responded in the affirmative, the rules are suspended -- ms. chu: i request the yeas and nays. the speaker pro tempore: and without objection the motion to reconsider is laid on the

table. the gentlelady from california requests the yeas and nays. the yeas and nays are requested. all those in favor of taking this vote by the yeas and nays will rise and remain standing until counted. a sufficient number having arisen, the yeas and nays are ordered. pursuant to clause 8 of rule 20 and the chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be postponed. for what purpose does the gentlelady from california seek recognition? ms. chu: i move that the house suspend the rules and agree to house resolution 1041. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the resolution. the clerk: house resolution 1041, resolution congratulating and commending the university of idaho's football team for winning the 2009 humanitarian bowl in boise, idaho. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentlewoman from california, ms. chu, and the gentleman from tennessee, mr. roe, each will control 20 minutes. the chair recognizes the gentlewoman from california. ms. chu: mr. speaker, i request five legislative days during which members may revise and extend and insert extraneous material on house resolution 1041 into the record. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. ms. chu: i yield myself such time as i may consume.

the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from california is recognized for as much time as she may consume. ms. chu: i rise today to congratulate the university of idaho football team for their victory in the 2009 humanitarian bowl. on december 30, football fans nationwide witnessed the thrilling game as the university of idaho defeated the bowling green state university falcons to win the humanitarian bowl title. both teams showcased their offense talents, but when the final whistle blew, the university of idaho emout a victory over bowling green state university by a score of 43-42. the ballgame featured plenty of offense as the two teams traded touchdowns in one of the most compoiting bowl games of the season. the game tied and with less than a minute left bowling green scored a go-ahead touchdown. the university of idaho pieced together a 66-yard gain winning drive and capped it off with a

dramatic two-point conversion, going for the win instead of a tie in overtime. in the past three years, head coach robb akey challenged his throats to become better young men both on and off the -- his athletes to become better young men both on and off the field. the team closed the year with the second bowl victory in school history. the only other time they appeared in the bowl game. they defeated the southern mississippi golden eagles in the 1998 humanitarian bowl. congratulations to running back woolridge, a senior named co-m.v.p. of the game. he carried idaho with 126 rushing yards and two third quarter touchdowns. congratulations are also due to the wide receiver for making the game-winning touchdown catch, which was his only reception of the game. comar was the only leading

receiver and offensive player of the year during the regular season. congratulations to the quarterback, a junior who threw for 240 passing yards and four touchdowns, including the epic game-winner. he finished the season with the seventh best passer efficiency rating and named the team's most valuable player. last but not least, congratulations to offensive guard mike lupati, who was the tome's offensive captain and a consensus all-american selection. he's the first university of idaho player to receive this honor since 1957. lao patty is considered one of the top prospects available at his position in the 2010 nfl draft. the outstanding players and coaches at the university of idaho produced a great turn-around season and their accomplishments are a testament of their skill and perseverance. the support of students, alumni

and fans helped bring great pride to the school. finishing the season with a winning record and a bowl victory will only push the team further as fans look forward to a successful 2010 season. mr. speaker, once again, i congratulate the university of idaho football team for their success and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from california reserves the balance of her time. the gentleman from tennessee is recognized. mr. roe: thank you, mr. speaker. i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for as much time as he may consume. mr. roe: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise today in support of house resolution 1041, congratulate and commending the university of idaho's football team for winning the 2009 humanitarian bowl in boise, idaho. on december 30, 2009, the university of idaho's football team won the 2009 humanitarian bowl in boise. the university of idaho ended their outstanding season with a victory over bowling green state university.

they won the game in the closing seconds to a take a 43-42 victory of their second humanitarian bowl. head coach robb akey led the team to victory and to its first winning season since 1999. senior guard mike lupati -- i apologize since he -- i messed that up, was named all-american alvin trophy finalist. the contributions of this outstanding player and coach was the success of their past season. we should take time to highlight academics as well. the university of idaho was founded in 1889 and is the state of idaho's flagship institution. it's located in moscow, idaho, and is the state's oldest university and the state's land grant university. the university programs are organized into 10 different colleges which have graduated olympic medalists, nfl players,

congressmen. i extend my congratulations to the university of idaho president, the athletic director and head coach, robb akey, and his staff, the hardworking players and fans and ask my colleagues to support this resolution. and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from tennessee reserves the balance of his time. the gentlelady from california. ms. chu: mr. speaker, i'm pleased to recognize the gentleman from idaho, mr. minnick, for throw minutes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from idaho is recognized for three minutes. mr. minnick: i'm delighted that my colleagues from the states of tennessee and california recognizes that we do play football in idaho. and at a rather outstanding level. i'd ask that they might take back, particularly the gentlewoman from california, that word to the pac-10 conference commissioners and both of you might mention our strong performance to the

b.c.s. which currently grants teams from my state second-class status. the university of idaho in particular is the turn-around story of the year in football in my part of the country. what coach robb akey has done is taken a mediocre team and through superior recruiting and leadership turned it into its first winning season and first humanitarian bowl victory in many years. it's fair to say that with the strong leadership of the coach producing outstanding through the players, like mike lupati, who went from the w.a.c. and this bowl to the senior bowl as an all-american, that there are great things ahead that this league is very competitive and the word from idaho to all of our colleagues in the other 49 states is the vandals are back. i yield back my time. the speaker pro tempore: the

gentleman from idaho yields back the balance of his time. the gentlelady from california reserves the balance of her time. the gentleman from tennessee. mr. roe: i yield back the balance of my time, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from tennessee yields back the balance of his time. the gentlelady from california. ms. chu: i urge passage of house resolution 1041 and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: all time having been yielded back, the question is will the house suspend the rules and agree to house resolution 1041. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 having responded in the affirmative, the rowls are suspended, the resolution is agreed to -- ms. chu: on that i request the yeas and nays. the speaker pro tempore: the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. the yeas and nays are requested. all those in favor of taking this vote by the yeas and nays will rise and remain standing until counted. a sufficient number having arisen, the yeas and nays are ordered. pursuant to clause 8 of rule 20 and the chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be postponed. . ms. chu: i move the house suspend the rules and pass house resolution 1042. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the resolution. the clerk: resolution commending the boigsy state

university broncos football team for winning the 2010 fiesta bowl. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman from california, ms. chu, and the gentleman from tennessee, mr. roe, each will control 20 minutes. the chair recognizes the gentlewoman from california. ms. chu: mr. speaker, i request five legislative days during which members may revise and extend and insert extraneous material on house resolution 1042 into the record. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. ms. chu: i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from california is recognized for as much time as she may consume. ms. chu: i rise today to congratulate the boise state university football team for their victory in the 2010 fiesta bowl. on january 4, football fans were treated to a much anticipated game between the boise state university broncos and the texas christian university horned frogs. boise state prevailed and narrowly defeated t.c.u. by a score of 17-10 to win the fiesta bowl. both teams came into the fiesta bowl undefeated in the regular season and this game was

essentially a rematch of the 2008 poinsettia bowl in which boise state lost to t.c.u. by just one point. the game featured two of the premiere offensive teams in the country as boise state led the nation in points per game while t.c.u. finished fourth in the nation in points per game. while many expected t.c.u.'s dominant defense to play the deciding role, boise state's defense excelled when it mattered most. boise state's defense only allowed one third down conversion while forcing three turnovers. congratulations to the head coach who was the conference coach of the year for the second year in a row and won the paul bryant award for national coach of the year for the second time. since coach peterson took over the reins in 2006, boise state has gone 49-4 with two perfect seasons and two fiesta bowl victories. congratulations to kyle, a sophomore tight end, and

brandon thompson, a junior quarterback who were named co-m.v.p.'s. thompson had two interceptions in the game and one for a touchdown. congratulations to cornerback kellen moore, a sophomore who broke the boise state single season touchdown pass record with 39 touchdowns and only three interceptions. moore was also named the western athletic conference offensive player of the year. six broncos were named to the all conference first team which included moore, junior wide receivers austin and titus, sophomore offensive lineman nate, junior defensive end ryan, senior defensive back kyle wilson. young was honored on the first team for his special teams performance as well. the being extraordinary accomplishments by the boise state broncos are no doubt because of their tireless determination and outstanding work ethic. they have consistently been a

formidable team over the last four years and have brought national claim and great pride to the school. the fans of the university will certainly look forward to another successful 2010 season as the broncos continue to fight for a spot in the national championship game. mr. speaker, once again i congratulate the boise state university football team for their success and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from california reserves the balance of her time. the gentleman from tennessee. mr. roe: thank you, mr. speaker. i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for as much time as he may consume. mr. roe: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise today in support of house resolution 1042 commending the boise state university broncos football team for winning the 2010 fiesta bowl. the boise state university broncos won the 2010 fiesta bowl against texas christian university's horned frogs on january 4, 2010. the game was very competitive with a final score of 17-10. with less than 10 minutes left in the game the head coach

called a gutsy fake punt play that led to the game-winning touchdown. the broncos finished their 2009 season with an undefeated 14-0 record. sophomore quarterback kellen moore threw for 39 touchdown passes during the season setting the single season school record. coach peterson received the paul "bear" bryant award recognizing the best college football coach in the nation for the second time in four years. the team could not have had such an outstanding season without his excellent coaching. the broncos football team has been a consistent winner, particularly on their signature home blue turf. in 2008 the broncos only lost -- only loss was a one-point loss to texas christian university. in 2007, boise state was viktoras in the fiesta bowl with a historic 56-7 win. i stand before the house today to recognize the significant achievements of the players, coaches, and students whose dedication and hard work have led to the success of the boise state university broncos football team and congratulate

them on their victory in the 2010 fiesta bowl. i ask my colleagues to support this resolution and also to my good friend, congressman minnick, being a huge s.e.c. fan you do play some football in idaho now. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from tennessee reserves the balance of his time of the the gentlelady from california. ms. chu: i'm pleased to recognize the gentleman from idaho, mr. minic, for three minutes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from idaho is recognized for three minutes. mr. minnick: mr. speaker, idaho produced two outstanding football teams last year and the premier one from national ratings comes from my hometown, boise idaho. as my colleague, the esteemed gentleman from tennessee recognizes, we do play national class football. and as he also stated, we are not only good, but we can be tricky when the circumstance requires. coach peterson is a coach's coach.

not only did he produce three undefeated conference champions in the past four years, he did go to the fiesta bowl twice and on that national stage made idaho proud. he is an -- in addition to being a skilled technician and superb leader in another sense as well. his students graduate from college. his students are properly disciplined. he manages to go through a minning season hardly ever having to raise his voice. he is the epitome of the good things that college athletics stand for. i'd like to salute him for his success in my state in bringing the broncos into the top five -- among the top five rated preseason teams this year and a team that has an outstanding chance of becoming even with the b.c.s. rules, next year's national champion.

the success of coach peterson and the boise state broncos demonstrates why above everything else if we are going to be fair to schools that come from outside the major b.c.s. conferences, we need to revise the way the b.c.s. system -- championship system works. we need a playoff system. we need to give every team, including the two from my home state, a fair opportunity to compete for and win the national championship. i'm proud of what boise state has accomplished. it's an extraordinary tale of success, a tribute to an excellent coach. i think it is clear to everyone in this country that the broncos are a world class football team and for everyone in idaho, i would say, 19 -- 2010 is going to be another spectacular year. go, broncos, go.

i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from idaho yields back the balance of his time. the gentlelady from california reserves the balance of her time. the gentleman from tennessee. mr. roe: i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from tennessee is recognized. mr. roe: just a quick comment. we do these suspensions and we talk about them and vote on them and so forth, but there is a real lesson in college athletics that i think congressman minnick brought up and that's very important and not just a resolution congratulating a football team, but young athletes. i know i certainly learned these lessons. as an athlete you learn to show up on time, be a team player, and give your very best. if you take those attributes into the world of business and your life, you are going to have a pretty successful life if you take those lessons that you learned. so congratulations once again. i would like to associate my comments. we just saw in the last week one of the greatest athletic events in this nation which was the ncaa basketball tournament. we saw what happened there. and football team should be allowed the same opportunity.

i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from tennessee yields back the balance of his time of the the gentlelady from california. ms. chu: i urge passage of house resolution 1042. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: all time having been yielded back, the question is will the house suspend the rules and agree to house resolution 1042. so many as are in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 of those voting having responded in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the bill is -- resolution is agreed to -- ms. chu: on that i request the yeas and nays. the speaker pro tempore: the yeas and nays are requested. all those in favor of taking this vote by the yeas and nays will rise and remain standing until counted. a sufficient number having arisen, the yeas and nays are ordered. pursuant to clause 8 of rule 20 and the chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be postponed. for what purpose does the gentlelady from california rise? ms. chu: i move that the house suspend the rules and agree to house resolution 1198 as amended. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the resolution. the clerk: house resolution 1198. resolution congratulating lock haven university of pennsylvania for 140 years of excellence in higher education.

the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentlewoman from california, ms. chu, and the gentleman from tennessee, mr. roe, each will control 20 minutes. the chair recognizes the gentlewoman from california. ms. chu: mr. speaker, i request five legislative days during which members may revise and extend and insert extraneous material on house resolution 1198 into the record. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. ms. chu: i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady is recognized for as much time as she may consume. ms. chu: mr. speaker, i rise today in support of house resolution 1198 which celebrates lock haven university of pennsylvania for 140 years of service and leadership. located along the susquehanna river, lockp haven university in pennsylvania was founded in 1870 as the central state normal school. by 1983 the school joined the pennsylvania state system of higher education and was named -- renamed lock haven university of pennsylvania. the university features a gorgeous 200-acre main campus

in central pennsylvania and an additional 13-acre branch campus in clearfield, pennsylvania, which was established in 1989. lock haven offers a small college lifestyle to over 5,100 undergraduates, along with more than 60 undergraduate programs and three graduate programs. the school has an outstanding athletic program which offers 10 women's and eight men's ncaa teams. both 13 division ii championships and has been active club sports teams. students also have the opportunity to participate in over 120 clubs, activities, and organizations on and off campus. lock haven demonstrates leadership in serving the community and was named to the presidential honor role for -- honor roll for community service in 2009. every year its students perform over 40,000 hours of community service through the mountain

serves center. focusing on programs for disadvantaged youth. this year lock haven will celebrate 140 years of broadening the minds and horizons of its students and it will mark a significant milestone in the university's history. mr. speaker, once again i express my support for lock haven university of pennsylvania and thank representative thompson for bringing this bill forward. i urge my colleagues to join me in support of this resolution. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from california reserves the balance of her time. the gentleman from tennessee is recognized. mr. row: thank you, mr. speaker. i -- mr. roe: thank you, mr. speaker. i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for as much time as he may consume. mr. roe: i rise today in support of house resolution 1198, congratulating lock haven university of pennsylvania. on the banks of susquehanna river in central pennsylvania is a university where students receive excellent career preparation, develop lifelong

friendsships, and never feel like they are just another number. lock haven university provides -- prides itself on having a small college lifestyle with a big university education. with an enrollment of 5,000 students, classes are student centered and there are unlimited opportunities to become involved. lock haven university was founded in 1870 as the central state normal school. from 1927 it was known as the state teachers college of lock haven and in 1960 the name was changed to lock haven state university, a state college. in 1983, the school joined with pennsylvania state system of higher education and became known as lock haven university of pennsylvania. the clear field campus in clearfield, pennsylvania, was established in 1989. l.h.u. has more than 60 undergraduate programs and three graduate programs. the student faculty ratio is 19 to one. its athletics department offers eight women's division two team as well as seven men's division

ii teams. l.h.u. has an outstanding international mission offered exchange programs on six continents. it has approximately 580 full-time employees which includes 270 full-time instructional faculty. there are more than 120 clubs, activities, and organizations on campus and it's also one of the few public ininstitutions in the united states to require laptop computers to freshmen and transfer students. the requirement is completed by wireless technology that will encompass virtually the entire campus in the near future. l.h.u. students have numerous opportunities to learn outside the classroom. in addition they can study abroad a semester in england, france, japan, australiaa, or one of 24 other countries. 97% of recent graduates are either employed or continuing their education. .

today, we honor lock haven university. congratulations to the president and the faculty, one of the most noble endeavors, preparing future leaders for every sector of our society. i'd also like to congratulate the students and staff. i support this rougs and ask my colleagues to do the same. i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentlelady from california. ms. chu: does the other side yield back? mr. roe: i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from tennessee yields back the balance of his time. the gentlelady from california. ms. chu: then i urge passage of house resolution 1198. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the question is will the house suspend the rules and agree to house resolution 1198 as amended. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 having responded in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the rules is agreed to and without objection the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table. the gentleman from tennessee.

for what purpose does the gentleman from virginia seek recognition? >> mr. speaker, i move that the house suspend the rules and agree to house resolution 1206 as amended. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the resolution. the clerk: house resolution 1206, resolution remembering the victims of the attack on the alfred p. murrah federal building in clom city, oklahoma, and supporting the comboles and ideals of -- oklahoma city, oklahoma, and supporting the goals and ideals of the national week of hope. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from virginia, mr. connolly, and the gentleman from tennessee, mr. roe, will each control 20 minutes. the chair recognizes the gentleman from virginia. mr. connolly: thank you, mr. speaker. i ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. connolly: mr. speaker, i

yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for as much time as he may consume. mr. connolly: mr. speaker, thank you. i want to thank congresswoman mary fallin and our colleagues from oklahoma for introducing this resolution. this commemorates the lives of the federal employees and other victims of this savage terrorist attack and the reminders of the ongoing terrorist attacks in our ongoing borders. it was introduced by representative mary fallin on march 23 of this year and was referred to the committee on oversight and government reform. it comes to the floor today with the bipartisan support of over 50 co-sponsors. over the last year we witnessed a rise in violent rhetoric by extremist groups in america. and the most recent incident, andrew joseph stack, crashed a small plane at the federal building in austin, texas. it included the office of the internal revenue service among

others. there have been over 75 violent attacks by domestic terrorists since 1995, mr. speaker. the resolution before us today is especially poignant because it is but the most destructive example of a recent frightening trend in domestic terrorism, that is to say the incident in oklahoma city. at 9:02 a.m. on april 19, 1995, timothy mcvirginia and terry nichols used a truck full of explosivives to blow up the alfred p. murrah federal building in oklahoma city. most of the building's employees were at work and their children at a daycare center, killed 168 people, and wounded 850 others. the explosion was so powerful it reduced much of the building to rumble and damaged at least six adjacent buildings, including an apartment building, a church and a ymca. some of the victims of the

murrah federal building were children, who were in the daycare center for building employees. mcveigh and nichols appeared to have been motivated by anti-government ideology as dozens of domestic terrorists who attacked america in 15 years subsequent to that bombing. seven emergency response crews responded to that attack after receiving a call reported at 9:03 a.m. the fire station one crew arriving first at the scene. oklahoma city police force set up a command center to set up a massive search and rescue operation. the civil air patrol, american red cross and other organizations assisted with response to the attack. after the attack, oklahomans and other americans responded with generous offers of assistance. immediately after mcveigh detonated the explosives in the track, many bystanders ran to the building, tried to save people who were still in it. oklahoma city restaurant owners

gave first responders free meals. blood drives forced the city to have blood donors wait for the next drive. workers actually left their boots on site after response crews ran out of work boots. with the collective sacrifice and outpouring of support earned the moniker oklahoma standard which describes the extraordinary spontaneous outpouring of community support in times of tragedy. thank you again, congresswoman fallin, our colleague, for introducing this resolution, which i am a proud co-sponsor, and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. for what purpose does the gentleman from tennessee rise? mr. roe: thank you, mr. speaker. i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for as much time as he may consume. mr. roe: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise today in support of house resolution 1206, remembering the victims of the attack on the alfred p. murrah federal building in oklahoma city, oklahoma.

15 years ago domestic terrorists set off a truck bomb in front of the alfred p. murrah federal building in oklahoma city in what would become the most terrorist attacks that would happen on american soil. in a matter of moments,, the lives were brought to an end. and in the aftermath, we learned that more than 850 people were injured and 30 people were orphaned. 219 children lost at least one parent in the tragedy. to those buried, it seemed as if no one in oklahomaess scaped unscathed. indeed, it's been said at 9:02 a.m. on april 19, 1995, every american became an oklahoman. the outpouring of support in the hours, days, weeks and months following this attack revealed the depth of character of the citizens of this great nation. many of those killed from federal employees or the family

of federal employees. it is important that we take time to remember the civil servants who served our country honorably and perished in this tragedy. all of these employees deserve honor and recognition. i want to thank the firefighters, emergency response teams from oklahoma and across the united states. the service men and women, the medical personnel and the thousands of volunteers who donated their time to help save lives and assist the injured and provide meals to those who came to help the people of oklahoma, without these brave men and women, countless more lives may have been lost that day. oklahomans have demonstrated the depth of their own character by rebuilding in the wake of the bombing. this tragedy could have been devastated -- could have devastated the future of oklahoma city, but in the 15 years since the bombing, the city and all oklahomans who undergone profound healing.

i commend them for their strength and the continued commitment to overcome this. rather than allowing fear to hinder them, the people of oklahoma city determine the city's growth while keeping alive the memory of those lost. nowhere is that determination more beautifully exhibited than at the oklahoma city national memorial and museum. this facility has attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world each year since its opening. it serves as a reminder of not only the tragic event that took place 15 years ago but also the way that all americans came together to pick up the pieces and move on. it provides oklahomans and all americans with a sense of hope that we truly are able to rise from the ashes of terrorism and come out a stronger community and nation. the memorial institute of prevention of terrorism was also created to help educate the nation's emergency respondors and law enforcement

about preventing and mitigating the effects of terrorist attacks. before i close, i will quote the inscription on the wall of the memorial which sums up the lessons learned from this senseless tragedy. it reads, "we come here to remember those who were killed, those who survived and those who changed forever. may all who leave here know the impact of violence. may this memorial offer comfort, strength, peace, hope and serenity." as we near the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the murrah federal building in oklahoma city, i hope we keep those impacted in our minds and heed these important words. i am proud to be a co-sponsor of this resolution and urge all of my colleagues to support this resolution. mr. speaker, i think this speaks volumes about what we are as a nation. we're not a nation of political parties. we're all americans. and we come together in a tragedy like this, to help heal

and i extend my condolences from the great state of tennessee to oklahoma. i thank my friend from virginia here today for helping us commemorate this. and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from tennessee yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from virginia. mr. connolly: i thank my friend from tennessee for his kind words. and i now am pleased to recognize our colleague and friend from minnesota, ms. mccollum, for four minutes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from minnesota is recognized for four minutes. ms. mccollum: mr. speaker, today i rise to remember the victims of the attack on the alfred p. murrah building in oklahoma city, oklahoma, that killed 160 people. this man viewed the federal government as such a threat it justified mass murder. i applaud my colleague from oklahoma for her resolution because it serves as a reminder that right-wing anti-government extremist groups are on the rise today. only two weeks ago members of the so-called christian militia in michigan were arrested by

the f.b.i. for plotting to kill law enforcement officers in the hopes of inciting an anti-government uprising. a national civil rights organization has documented a growing number of hate groups in america, and states, quote, they are driven largely by an angry backlash against nonwhite, immigration, economic meltdown and the decline to power of an african-american president. in one word, racism. the individuals associated with the patriot movement during the hay days during the 1990's produced an enormous amount of violence. most dramatically, the oklahoma city bombing. as the movement has exploited -- exploded, so has the reaches of its ideas. aided and abetted by commentators and politicians. only last month a fox news media commentator with members of congress next to him rallied

a tea party crowd by disparaging congress and calling the crowd, quote, all these tim mcveigh wannabes here, end of quote. to that the crowd cheered and applauded. when members of congress compare health care legislation to government tyranny, socialism or totalitarianism it's like pouring gas in the hopes of extremism. members of this house, democrats and republicans, have a duty to end the dangerous name calling that can only inspire extremist militias and phony patriots. in the most freerks prosperous and greatest dokse on earth, it's time to return civil, decent public policy. i don't want another oklahoma city to ever take place again. and just as we will not give aid and comfort to al qaeda, let us not allow the words of elected leaders to give comfortable excuses to extremists sent on violence.

words have power for both good and evil. i implore my colleagues to temper their rhetoric and not only allow the words of a member of congress to ever be used by a violent militia or phony hate-filled patriot to cause violence. the victims of the oklahoma city bombing were women at work, men in line for government services and children in a daycare center. and these families were torn apart and they struggle to heal. a community was devastated but it is again filled with hope and memories. and i hope this resolution and every member of congress will reflect upon the victims of oklahoma city as well as our duty as elected leaders in a proud and free country. mr. speaker, i rise to ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks and i yield back my time. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentlelady yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from virginia. mr. connolly: i offer my deepest sympathies to the victims of the attack on the

alfred p. murrah federal building. 15 years later we remember and mourn their tragic loss. i urge my colleagues to vote in favor of h.res. 1206, and my colleague from tennessee having yielded back his time, i now yield back ours. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from virginia yields back the balance of his time. all time having been yielded back, the question is will the house suspend the rules and agree to house resolution 1206 as amended. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 having responded in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the resolution is agreed to and without objection the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. without objection, the title is amended. pursuant to clause 12-a of rule one, the -- rule 1, t

because if i get sick, if something bad happens to me, i don't have any insurance to cover me. i also -- if i want to go visit a doctor i have to pay full price. so, it doesn't matter to anybody, getting affordable health care and passing the public option doesn't matter to anybody more than me. >> the world health organization recently rated america as only 37th out of 191 countries in the quality of our health care system. despite the fact that we spend the most in the world for health care. as of 2008 43.6 million americans were uninsured. with america's economic crisis, those who were insured have seen their premiums skyrocket. those americans who have pre-existing conditions can still be denied medical treatment by their insurers or even be dropped from their plans altogether. >> individually, i have a health plan through my partner's work, it's an excellent plan. however, that's a ratherity. i think among the insurance policies. and most people think they have insurance. there's 55 million people who don't have insurance.

there's probably another 20 million to 40 million who are uninsured. he don't know you have bad insurance until you get sick. >> many uninsured americans avoid making doctor visits as they cannot afford them. as a result many serious problems that could have been avoided with preventative treatment get progressively worse. eventually forcing people to go to the emergency room, which is the most expensive place to see a doctor. the extra costs must be absorbed by others in the form of higher premiums and deductibles. >> no. i don't think the current system has worked which is why i'm so supportive of president obama's efforts to reform the current system. i think in particular, whether or not there is a public option and i think there are probably different ways of defining that, i don't think it's that simple. simply a public option versus no public option, i think

there's gray areas in between. whether or not you have that, fundamental reforms like eliminating discrimination on the basis of existing conditions, those are huge fundamental reforms of health care financing of insurance and of the overall system. >> for the reason of their own financial longevity, many of the private insurance companies have been propagating lies about the public option in an effort to turn the public against it. they make the totally false claim that there will be so-called death panels on which, for example, bureaucrats will deny life-sustaining treatments to the elderly. this is no more than a scare tactic. nothing even remotely close to a death panel has been suggested in any of the proposed health care bills. >> one of the things about the public option that's a myth is that the government's going to take over your health care. the thing that the public

option is, what the public option is, is if you have a private insurer covering you, you can keep it and if you want to switch, you can switch to another private insurer but with the public option, all you have is another option. it's not the government taking over your health care. so, the biggest misconception i always hear about the public option is that the government's taking over health care, that it's single payer or in any he way a radical change from what you have. >> some also claim that the public option would be a gateway measure leading to socialism. by definition, it would simply offer consumers another alternative in the free market. others also argue that the public option would raise insurance premiums rather than lower them. but if this is true, then it would surely fail. it would be rejected at the marketplace as being clearly inferior to the private options and everything would eventually return to the way it is now. >> you know, we desperately

need reform and the broken in all kinds of ways, it's broken in that we have lots of people who are uninsured and that's just a moral outrage. the also broken in the escalating costs for people and it's also, i think, sort of broken in the great amount of a lack of security that people have regarding their insurance if they lose their job, they lose their insurance, if they have certain conditions, they're not sure sort of wroo those conditions would be covered. >> there are still many people around the country who don't or won't accept the public option as a viable solution to solving our health care crisis. >> i have relatives in canada know how bad socialized medicine is. my aunt had breast cancer, she was treated. her husband had prostate cancer and they let him die. so it's kind of like, luck of the draw and it's randomized. you sometimes will not get treated for cancer because they

don't want to spend the money. so if you have really bad luck like my uncle, they let him die. >> the private health insurance companies aren't with the same prerogative at any other corporation, to make a profit. it's not with the american peoples' best interest in mind, the just not in their nature as a company to do that. the basis of capitalism to do what they do. they have a product and they market it. it only becomes immoral when there are no other options for americans to choose and that's just what the public option is. it's a choice. >> my name's jennifer and i support the public option. >> my name's joshua and i support the public option. >> my name's erin and i support a public option. >> my name is camilla and i am for the public option. >> i'm juna, i support the

public option. >> we support public option. >> i do support the public option. >> my name is vesla, i do support the public option. >> my name's nadia and i'd like to know more about universal health care. >> to see all of the withinning entries in this year's student cam competition, visit studentcam.org. >> next, former clinton administration labor secretary robert explains why he believes the economy and the job outlook remain bleak. from today's "washington journal." it's 45 minutes. >> "washington journal" continues. host: have a very early hour in california, robert reich is joining us to talk about the economy. many of you know him as the former labor secretary under plaze -- president clinton and now the policy professor at

university of berkeley, california. also, the author of 12 books. i wanted for some headlines out there for you this morning before we get going. here is the "wall street journal." that is the front page. the "washington post" frontpage says the team is optimistic. and then we also saw in the last couple of days that the economy is on track to possibly grow up 3.6% from off -- 3.6%, create $518 billion in recovery and the banks have started to repay their loans from taxpayers. are we on our way to recovery? guest: greta, i wish i could say we were on our way to a vigorous

recovery. we certainly are on our way to recovery. the business cycle follows isleton's law, but in reverse. everything that goes down eventually -- follows isaac newton's law, but in reverse. everything that it goes down and eventually comes up. the stock market is recovering in part because corporate earnings are up, and corporate earnings are up largely because companies have sliced their payrolls. they have cut their cost and, again, their payrolls, their employees, are their biggest cost. many companies are going abroad for sales. they're also going abroad for workers. so, what is good for america's big companies in terms of their property -- profitability and american stock market may not be necessarily good for american workers. we are seeing in this recovery a little bit of a two-tiered recovery, that is, big companies and wall street are doing very well. their workers and employees are

doing ok. small businesses are doing badly. people on main street still are without jobs and is going to take, unfortunately, even if we have a pretty good recovery, it will take years and years before we take -- before we get a level of employment back to where we were before the recession. later on, we will get to some of my concerns about why this recovery is going to be quite anemic, unfortunately. host: you wrote yesterday in the "wall street journal" this, the u.s. economy has added 162,000 jobs in march. that sounds impressive until you look more closely. at least one-third of them were temporary government hires to take the census. better than no job, but hardly worth writing home about. the real jobs were fewer than the 150,000 needed to keep up with the growth of the u.s. population. it is far better than it was. we are not hemorrhaging jobs as we were in 2008 to and 2009, but

the bleeding has not stopped. at what is going on? guest: you can say that we are going in the right direction, but still not producing enough net jobs to fill the need for jobs by a population that continues to grow. we have lost about 8.4 million jobs. net jobs from the american economy, and on top of that, we're down 2.7 million in terms of population growth, the number of people coming into the labour force, people who would like jobs, young people who were counting on jobs. that is over 11 million short of what we need. even if we had a very vigorous recovery, and that would be about 300,000 net new jobs per month. you can see that it would take five to eight years for us to get back to where we were before. i do not want to be doom and gloom. i am quite an upbeat person in real life.

but i'm looking at these numbers and also realizing something else, that is, many of the old jobs are never going to come back because companies have been using the great recession as an excuse, or maybe they have been forced to do it, to trim their payrolls with outsourcing and also with new technologies, office software cannot machine tools, whatever -- office software, machine tools, whatever. the combination of software over there is actually reducing the number of jobs in these companies and, perhaps, will reduce them forever. many of the old jobs simply will not come back. it is not a typical recession or at the end of the recession you get a lot of old jobs coming back. the people you have lost their jobs, and we have a record number of long-term unemployed who have been out of work for six months or longer. about 40% of the unemployed are going to have to get new jobs,

often that pay less than the jobs they used to have. that is a hidden dark side to this so-called recovery. it is a hidden dark side to the unemployment figures because when you have a lot of people who settled for new jobs that pay less, they do not have money in their pockets to turn around and buy things to keep the recovery going. host: i know our viewers are easy to to -- eager to talk to you. let's go to the phones in citrus heights, calif., randy on the republican line. caller: thank you for the opportunity. conservatives also get up early here in california. my question is, it seems to me that it is kind of a no-brainer that the uncertainty about the agenda of this current administration is what is holding down people from hiring. there are too many things pending that business owners are afraid are going to affect their

bottom line. while all this stuff that the administration would like to get done is kind of hanging out there, you know, it is not known whether it is going to be done or not. with cash and trade, are they just going to say we will not -- kappa and trade, are they just want to say we will not pass a cat and trade -- cap and trade. we will just give dollars to do it, kind of like with fiat. i do not think anything is going to turn around unless we have a regime change in this country. host: what should the obama administration and congress do to get businesses hiring? caller: they should take the bull by off of their backs. it seems like every week they have a new business group that is the bad guy out there. these are our employers. just because they have money does not make them bad people. the administration seems to just flippantly throat around accusations against -- throw

around accusations against people with money. i guess they are trying to harness this populist backlash against business or whatever. host: professor reich, what do you think? guest: randy is correct that there is a lot of uncertainty in the business community right now about new regulations, new rules coming down. but i think the biggest source of uncertainty is whether there's going to be enough demand among consumers for all of the goods and services for the pri -- the businesses they are producing. we have had ituri and legal uncertainty before, but the businesses -- we have had regulatory and legal uncertainty before, but the businesses are reluctant to hire when they do not know there will be enough consumers out there to buy everything they want. that is the number one uncertainty. until they know that, they are simply not going to do a lot of hiring. small businesses have a special problem. the biggest problem for small businesses is not the regulatory uncertainty.

it is not even necessarily knowing how many consumers are going to be out there. the biggest problem for small businesses is that they are still having a lot of trouble getting credit, bar wing. big businesses do not have to worry about borrowing right now. they are sitting on a huge pile of money, in fact. but small businesses do. often, regional banks or community banks that are sitting on a big pile of a -- of non- performing loans, those small businesses are being told by the banks, even though you are a very good credit risk for a pretty good credit risk, we cannot take the risk right now. host: burlington, wisconsin, david is joining us on the democratic line. caller: professor reich, thanks for your good work. i'm a constituent of congressman paul lyonrayns. i'm wondering if his road map

for america is a good idea, or if it is just more handouts for wall street, stockbrokers and the wealthy. i would appreciate your thoughts. guest: i wish i knew exactly what congressman ryan's roadmap is for america. i think we have to be careful about any more handouts to wall street, and also, the wealthy. wall street is now saying to anyone that would listen, that is, the big banks are saying, we have paid back most of the bailout. i was reading an article this morning that many people in washington are breaking our champagne saying that the bailout work aned and they gives back almost as much as we gave them, but that is not true. the allies a hidden cost. in fact, it is not so hidden. the cost of the big banks now knowing that they were not too

big to fail. they were not quite sure of that before they got bailed out. now they are quite sure of that. that could lead to risky behavior of a sort that got us in the problem in the first place. with the zero interest rates, we basically have a circumstance not unlike 2006 and 2007. we have given the banks a great deal, not just through the troubled assets relief program, but also true low-interest loans. the federal reserve has been extraordinarily kind to the big banks. and now, without any regulatory reform, financial reform, all they know is that the federal government is going to be there for them when they need it. and this is a different situation -- and frankly, i will tell you, i do not think this is a liberal or conservative or democratic or republican issue. i do not see the logic in bailing out the big banks. i do not think we should have

done it. i think we should have come up with extremely tough regulations and rules that prohibit banks from doing anything like this again. the cost to the economy was incalculable. the cost to the global economy -- a recent estimate by a scene was about $four trillion. the cost to americans who are still out of work is extraordinary. -- the cost was about $4 trillion. the cost to americans were still out of work is extraordinary. this is just the tip of the iceberg. host: memphis, tenn., bill, independent line. caller: i have a question concerning the relationship between the large millions of illegal aliens who are here and americans who are out of work. i know it is a cliche, but it seems to me that the 20 million something illegal aliens better

in this country and the politicians addressing that issue, what's better relationship -- what better religion to they have with the declining numbers of american workers who are not working and what better relationship do they have with the declining numbers of american workers who are not working. that means they are taking our jobs. i see mexican workers who cannot speak english. host: i will leave it there. secretary reich, your written about jobs and immigration -- you have written about jobs and immigration policy on your block if viewers are interested in going there to read your comments. go ahead and respond to this

caller, though. guest: there are a lot of concerns about undocumented workers in the u.s. that is a couple of things. number one, there are fewer undocumented workers as far as we can tell -- and these numbers are hard to come by, obviously. but there are fewer undocumented workers then there were before the economy plunged. the simple reason for that is that most undocumented workers come here to get jobs. when there are no jobs for anybody, and how unemployment is very high, they tend not to come. or they go home. if they're coming here and remitting their salaries back home, they leave because they can do better back home. i think there is very little evidence that undocumented workers right now are taking a lot of jobs away from americans. the big problem, obviously, is the economy for everybody. the economy is not generating enough jobs or enough demand for

jobs for everyone who is here. number two, giving precisely to your point, most of the studies show that the undocumented workers who come here tend to cluster in particular occupations that are not occupations that native-born americans tend to want jobs in very much. we are talking about elder care, certain kinds of construction jobs. undoubtedly, there is a negative income affect, or negative employment effect on certain americans. they tend to be low-skilled. they tend to be clustered. those native-born americans, in the same places that foreign- born undocumented workers are migrating to. but the overall effect on unemployment is almost by every measure very small compared to everything else that is going on. host: new orleans, louisiana,

john on the republican line. caller: almost every year since this bill was implemented by the president and congress, it has not seem to have much affect. it seems like it would encourage irresponsibility. people can say i can get billed out again if i engage in irresponsible -- bailed out again if i engage in its irresponsible behavior. what do you think the american economy would do if we found ourselves in that situation? guest: i agree with the thrust of your point in terms of the bailout bill. i think without tough financial regulations preventing this from happening, all we have signaled to wall street, to the big banks is that they can be bailed out. and they will be bailed out if they get into trouble. that is an invitation to more risky behavior on their part if they can make a lot of money off other people's money. i think is a very unstable

situation and a dangerous situation. i worry that the near lobbying and financial and political contribution power of wall street is making it very difficult for congress to come up with the kinds of rules, tougher rules, the kind of laws with tough teeth that will prevent wall street from doing this again. i thought initially would be talking about the stimulus bill, which is something different from the bailout bill. the stimulus, $787 billion, most people who look at this closely, and i'm talking about economist that are not affiliated with either party and have not advised your party, have come to the conclusion that the stimulus has had a substantial impact in a positive direction in terms of creating jobs. it would be much worse off right now in the job situation if we did not have the stimulus. a lot of people like me worry that when the stimulus is over, and also the federal reserve

board has to start raising interest rates again, that there is not enough demand among consumers to keep the economy going and to keep us out of either a double-dip recession, or at least out of a very anemic recovery. host: treasury secretary timothy geithner of this morning's rights in the "washington post" what are your thoughts on that legislation? guest: i am one of the ones who -- maybe because i cannot sleep sometimes at night -- i actually read the legislation. it is very weak. i do not think the legislation goes nearly far enough. for example, it does not control all derivatives. it allows derivatives called credit default swaps and others that are specialized to escape being regulated by any exchange

whatsoever. that is a huge loophole. it is the kind of loophole that investment bankers can drive there flurries through. second, there is nothing -- drive their sports cars through. second, there is nothing in the credit rating agencies -- and that is the issue the credit rating agencies have because they are reading these and if -- raising these in the first place. and it puts the consumer protection agency in the fruit -- in the federal reserve board in a way that replicates the conservative bureau that the fed already has. it does not give enough powers over all. it does absolutely nothing about executive salaries or trader salaries, linking them to long-term performance by banks. there is still an incentive to do very short term shenanigans to prop up your short-term pay.

and that is what got us into trouble. the volcker wilrule that would separate some of the functions in investment and banking are very weak. the bills coming out of the house and the senate also give too much responsibility to the regulators in their despair -- and their discretion. when you do that, you are begging for the same problem that we just had because the regulators essentially sat back and did nothing. thereafter be requirements that j@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these big banks are going to be too big to fail. even with a so-called resolution authority that would enable regulators to wind up the operations in an orderly way, a big bank that cot too -- got into trouble. these big banks are likely to get into trouble, several of them at the same time because they're using the same financial techniques just like

what happened last time. and if more than one gets into trouble, even though the resolution authority may be there, regulators and congress are going to be prone to provide another big bailout to wall street. because they did last time and if several banks are in danger of going you understand they will feel and fear that the entire financial system is in danger of going under. hat the entire system is in danger of going under. my point is that no bank should be too big to fail or not to fail. and nobody has come up with any logic or analysis showing why banks over, let's say, $100 billion in assets should be allowed to exist. we have antitrust laws and have used them in this country to be sure that big entities to not get too big for the economy or for politics. one of the original purposes of the sherman act of 89 he was to

limit -- of 1890, was to limit the political affect, not just the economic impact. i think the bills that are coming up, the two financial reform bills, are far too weak. host: thank you. kevin on the democratic line in some -- in the louisville, ohio. caller: i have been traveling around the country and we cannot find any work. it seems like all of the big projects are put on hold and there is a big freeze on infrastructure. no one is letting loose of any money. i just cannot understand what is going on you know, why it takes so long to get these projects. a lot of projects are started and everybody pulls out. it seems like they do not want to spend their money. host: are you unemployed then?

caller: i have been unemployed for six months and i have traveled from new york to florida trying to find a job. host: are you collecting unemployment benefits? caller: i am, and it is rough. getting your salary set by -- i mean to ahman it is one-third. -- i mean, it is one-third. host: your thoughts on the prospect of getting a job, and if i could throw in there the "wall street journal" editorial this morning saying that extending unemployment benefits as an incentive not to work. he quotes larry summers in his book in 1999 that argued when you give folks unemployment benefits that it just means they stay unemployed logger. guest: let me take that and then i will get back to your point, kevin, in a moment. unemployment benefits on average only pay 40% of the pre-earnings

that people had before. there is very little evidence that unemployment benefits keep people from getting a job. most people who are out of a job desperately and -- want and need jobs. not far from where i'm sitting -- a hearing california, there was an employer who needed 4500 workers and 45,000 workers showed up to apply for those jobs. i hear the same thing all over the country. unemployment benefits are not keeping people from wanting work. there is no factual background or foundation for that. kevin, back to your question. you say you have a lot of infrastructure projects around the country that are not being fully funded. that may have to do with the fact that the big stimulus bill, that $787 billion bill, that is

funding infrastructure projects around the country. it is taking a long time to get the money through the system. every level of government wants to be absolutely sure -- and this is a good thing -- that there is no fraud, that the money is being spent wisely. nobody wants headlines in the newspaper saying that the government money was wasted. but the cost of that is that it is just taking longer for these projects to get going. a little bit more than half, as far as i can judge, of the stimulus money has been spent. the peak of the spending is over. the stimulus money will probably be all spent by the end of this year. my advice to you is to keep on looking, look in the private sector as well. i know there are few private sector jobs. i want to say one more thing about this because i tell this to a lot of people who have been unemployed for more than six months. it is very hard for many of you to keep your spirits up.

many of you blame yourself. many of you find it almost impossible to get up in the morning and keep on looking for jobs. i want you to know -- and i say this as the former labor secretary and someone who has studied the job situation very carefully and knows a lot of people who are unemployed -- a, is not your fault. b, jobs will come back. but they may not pay as well as the job you have lost, but is better than nothing. you may have to settle for that at least for a while, until you get some experience on the job. and c, hopefully unemployment benefits will be available for those of you who are for now uncertain about it. the house and senate have agreed on at least in one month extension, an additional extension of unemployment benefits. hopefully, that's stop-gap measure will help a lot of you. host: charlotte, n.c., sandy,

you are on the air. caller: it is a pleasure to speak with mr. reich. it amazes me how the republican voters are so misguided. i would like mr. reich to elaborate, please, on aprilthe republican agenda on the new world order, which i think has been planned to drive down the standard of living in this country to make us more competitive on a global basis. could you please answer -- which administration was the one that actually offereauthored nafta ae caftqa bill? >> the after the election can of the clinton administration.

it was difficult to convince a lot of -- the nafta bill actually came out of the clinton administration. it was difficult to convince a lot of americans that it was a good idea. it did not create all that many new jobs north or south of the border. it diwas worried over by people who thought it was going to be a job destroyer. most of the jobs that did leave the united states did not go to mexico. they went to china. and china was obviously not part of the north american free trade act. let me get back to your basic statement. i worry in this country about the polarization of all of us. one of my best friends is alan simpson, former republican senator from wyoming. he and i get together and talk about how republicans and democrats rarely talk anymore.

in washington, washington has become a much more polarized place than ever before. when i am on tock shoulders -- talk shows, very often pitted against the conservatives, the producer speaks into my ear and they say, we want you -- during station breaks they say, we want you to be angrier because that helps us sell products or gets people to stop surfing through the channels. when they see a very angry debate. we need to talk more with each other. republicans and democrats, most republicans feel and want to ultimately the same thing that ever one else wants, and all democrats won. we want good jobs, an economy -- and all democrats want. the one good jobs, an economy that is working well. i can tell you that a man who is

not in washington and nema lager, but keeps careful tabs -- any longer, but keeps careful tabs on washington, this polarization keeps things out of control and does not reflect our most people are in this country. host: and just to be clear, we do not have a producer in secretary reich's youear. we will move on, ron in las vegas. kollhofcaller: could morning ank you for c-span. my problem is tied to the economy, but a bit different. i'm a 29-year-old male and 12 years ago i was convicted of a felony when i was 18 years old. basically, i have a lifelong

barriers. i am receiving welfare right now and the taxpayers are paying for my rent. about a week ago i tried to get a job and young lady who was doing the hiring, she said i was really a good candidate. i told her about my felony and i did everything i can do in new york state law to get my records cleaned up. they offer you a certificate, but they do not give you an expansion. this ticket is a piece of paper called a certificate of release. she said she wanted to hire me. my application had to go through the administration. and they denied me. host: we will leave it there because we are running out of time. talk about those seeking jobs,

educated, non-educated. and it is callers situation, a felony record. -- and in at this collar's situation, a felony record. guest: i'm sorry that york state has a law that will not allow you -- new york state has a law that will not allow you to expunge your record after you have paid your debt and several years. it is very difficult for those who have paid their debt to society to actually get jobs. those records still blocked employment. but greta asked a moment ago about people generally getting jobs right now, if you are somebody who has not finished high school, your actual unemployment rate is about three times higher than someone who has finished four years of college. one thing the unemployment rate heights -- it hides many things, but one thing it hides is an --

is implement is related to how much education you have. a college educated person who has for years of college, the official unemployment rate is only 5% -- that has four years of college, the official unemployment rate is only 5% rather than 9%. that does hide a lot of people who are underemployed or too discouraged to look for work. but nonetheless, there's this huge difference if you have graduated from high school, -- there is this huge difference. if you have graduated from high school, the unemployment rate is about 8.7%. if you have two years of college, it is slightly better than that. whatever level of education you have, your chances of being unemployed are lower with the

higher level of education and more education. i would therefore urge anyone out there who is having a hard time getting a job to seriously consider using this as an opportunity if you cannot find a job, to get some more education if you can possibly afford it. of course, that is the problem, because many people simply cannot afford it. my earpiece has disappeared. let me look for it. host: we will go to the next call while you look for it. on the democratic line, go ahead. caller: it is hard to believe that the economy is going badly when you see at all with that thousand dollar product and people standing in line for it.

they give the tax breaks and they exchange names after seven years are over. host: let's take your first, because we want to get some more voices in your before the end of the show. about apple and ipod, how can the economy be doing so badly when he said thousands of people are lining up to buy ipod and i phones? guest: the short answer is that people are able to -- if they have a job or even a part-time job, they're able to express some discretionary spending. not very much, a lot of people have to trim their sails and be very economical, but if there is a product that everyone wants to @@@@@ @ @ @ @ one of the problems we have

with this recovery, so-called recovery, when we do find ourselves in a recovery, one of the problems is that many people will not be able to use their homes as essentially cash machines the way they did between 2001 and 2007. during those years as you recall housing prices were going up so fast that it was very easy for people to refinance their homes or get some sort of a home loan based on their home as collateral. and so that produced an awful lot of cash, a lot of money that people used to buy things with, even though wages were not going up. these days, though, those homes cannot be cash machines. also, many people are worried about keeping their jobs. you need two incomes in most families to pay the bills. and therefore, the chances that one of those two incomes is either going to be jeopardized by a loss of jobs or a loss of

ouhours at work, or attending fr of a loss of a job also is putting a crimp in people's spending. people do have to replace their cars. they have to replace their clothing after a while. other things, appliances breakdown. we're seeing a little bit of an uptick in spending, but not much. one final thing that may explain your ipod example, people who are in the top 10% of income earners, those people tend to have most of their assets in the stock market. people below them tend to have most of their assets tied into their homes. people who have most of their assets in the stock market have seen that the stock market -- a little bit of a stock market improvement over the past three months has given them a feeling that they have more cash.

it made them more willing to spend. but we cannot have a sustained recovery simply on the purchases of the top 10%. the middle class is still, for very understandable reasons, holding back from the malls. host: we have a twitter comment from a viewer who is winning in about unemployment benefits. we will go to philadelphia where carol is joining us on the independent line. caller: i'm enjoying listening to this morning, professor. i have a couple of questions i would like you to respond to. host: we are running out of time, so can you- caller: a brief overview of myself, two of my daughters have lost their jobs in the last few years. wherwhy is washington refusing o

recognize people who are trying to support families? host: we will have to leave it there. guest: washington's response to the problem that many people are having just keeping their homes, i do not think it has been adequate. there are reasons for the obama administration has held back from as much support for, let's say, bailing out homeowners as otherwise. it does not want to create a kind of encouragement of irresponsible behavior. it does not want to make people who have kept up their mortgage payments feel that they are johnsochumps and less advantaged relative to people who are getting help. but you are right, the combination of loss of jobs and at the same time having these very crippling mortgage payments has made life very

difficult for a large number of americans. most people are under water these days. they owe more on their homes than their homes are worth and they are getting behind on their payments. they are in trouble not because they took on too much home or too much borrowing, but because they have lost their jobs. they did not anticipate, as nobody did, that the job losses would be as deep as they have been over the past two years. washington has got to do a better job helping people who are in trouble with their mortgages and their homes or now. host: some people on our twitter page are wondering where you even need a and your peace. let me just let them know that you cannot hear the phone calls without it. with that, we will take one last want your guest: -- one last one. guest: yes, i'm not deaf. i need it just so i hear you.

host: sorry for the trouble. go ahead, caller. caller: my question is this, suppose in the beginning instead of the stimulus, they had just turned around and declared either a six months or a one- year income tax cut off. in other words, you would get your income tax in your paycheck instead of having it deducted ahead of time on your income tax. wouldn't this have done exactly what you were saying? keep up consumer demand because people would have more money in their pocket and everything else. and it would have gone directly to the consumers immediately so that it would not have been delayed. i will listen to you on the air. guest: that is a good question. about one-third of the stimulus was tax cuts. business tax cuts primarily.

but let me respond to your question about why personal tax cuts might not have had as big an impact as stimulus spending. the thinking is that people take their personal tax cuts and they very often pay off their own debts, which is fine. it is completely rational from the standpoint of individuals, but it will not get the spending bill in the create additional jobs. or they may take their tax cut and they may go to the mall and they spend money on various products that, really, are coming from china or from abroad, not stimulating jobs in the u.s. many economists think that the best way to stimulate jobs in the u.s. is to provide infrastructure projects, to provide help to state and local governments. in other words, to get money into the system that will generate directly -- directly

create jobs in the u.s., even if the second order, that is, people who get that pay then go to the local mall and buy something from china. nevertheless, there will be a multiplier effect that is still significant. i think that was the logic behind the decision to give most of this in terms of a stimulus in terms of either a state and local government aid and relief for infrastructure. host: one of our twitter comments now is -- do you agree with that? guest: i have always agreed with that. here's the problem. tax breaks to corporations assume that corporations need the tax breaks in order to create jobs. but they will not create jobs until they know that there are people out there, consumers who

are going to turn around and buy things. without enough consumer demand -- and this is the core of the problem right now. consumers are 70% of the u.s. economy. without enough consumer demand, companies will not invest in new jobs. they will keep the tax breaks. or they're going to amass a lot of money. this is exactly what has happened with big companies right now. they are sitting on a pile of money. they're not turning it into new jobs. they are either using it to expand operations abroad where there is demand for goods and services, or they are using it to buy other companies. we are seeing a bit of a boom in mergers and acquisitions right now. or they are using it to essentially buy back their own shares of stock as a way to boost their share prices artificially. but they will not and are not going to use their cash, whether the cash is from tax breaks or

any other source of cash, to create jobs until they know there are enough -- enough consumers there. that is that we have got to crack. that is the critical issue with regard to getting a vigorous recovery. host: robert reich is a professor of public policy at university of california berkeley. >> let's meet another winner in c-span's student cam documentary competition. through a five to eight minute video, we asked students to tell us about one of the country's greatest strength or a challenge the country's facing. today we talked to matthew he will, m, a ninth grader at bloomington high school south in bloomington, indiana. thanks for talking to us today. >> thank you. >> so tell me, the title of

your documentary is breaking news, the end of civility. how did you come up with that name? >> well, brandon dame -- bren dannielynn came up with it at first. the whole thing was about news. so the breaking news, the kind of breaking news story like you hear on the news channels and then the whole topic was about the end of civil discourse in the us in media and cable news and we thought that was a big problem and we thought that that had really contributed to it so we put the two together. >> do you think cable news has contributed to the end of civility? >> yeah. we thought it does. that's pretty much why we picked the whole thing. because we thought with so many news channels and everything that people, with ratings and they were really concentrated with getting people to watch and tune in, that they were pretty much getting rid of civil discourse and having people say things that were outrageous, yelling at each

other, just to get ratings to go up and to get people to tune in. >> and how do you think cable news has changed over the past couple of years? >> i think it's gone from more of just a -- i think it started off with just trying to relay news to people and tell people what was going on but now i think it's gotten into more of a competition for ratings and more towards entertainment, just trying to entertain people, get them to tune in in, get them to watch so they can make more money. >> how did you arrange your interviews in your documentary? >> since we live in bloomington, which is the home of indiana university we sent out an email to the i.u. school of journalism, asking -- explaining what the competition was, what we were doing and asking them if anyone could help and we got the couple emails back saying that people would be interested in doing that. we set up times and places and then went to talk to them. >> what did you learn from talking to everyone from the

journalism school? >> well, we kind of learned what they thought, how they thought the problem kind of came up. we asked them some of the same questions that you're asking, like what they thought of, news, and how they thought it's changed and it really allowed us to get a better understanding of news itself. >> do you think that america has benefited from having more news outlets? >> no. i think it's kind of -- that's probably one of the main factors on why the news -- cable news has contributed to incivility. because with so many news channels, you get more and more competition and they feel they have a bigger need to get more viewers so they can compete with their rival news -- cable news channels which gives them more intendtive to yell, scream and do things that get people to tune in. >> and in your documentary you mentioned public trust in the media. what's your opinion of the

public trust in the media right now? >> i think people do -- i think more people do trust it. i mean, as we showed in the video, it has gone down in the past few years, but i still think people still trust the news pretty well just because they don't really know much about what goes on. they don't really -- they -- me and brendan, we didn't know much about it until we started seeing it and researching it and seeing how they compete for ratings and the need for that and i don't think people really understand much comb that. i think they trust it right now. >> so what are your plans after high school? >> right now it's just to go to college. i mean, i've been thinking about medical school and stuff like that. but i don't know. i guess i'll come to that bridge -- i guess i'll cross that bridge when i come to it. >> thank you for talking to us today. and congratulations on your win. >> thank you. >> now let's watch a portion of matt's video. >> the decline of civil discourse has become -- become an obstacle in the pursuit of

knowledge through news. mass media informs our political decisions, media bias is not simply a problem of part of sanship. it is a problem of peace or war, of solving our problems or descending into confusion. has incivility become the driving force behind our television journalism today?

again, we'll have live coverage of the president's news conference coming in about 4:350er7b. first, though, a conversation on the tarp fund, government assistance to financial institutions, that also from this morning's "washington journal." as a reporter with probepublica.org, an investigative website. you have to the "eye on the bailout" on your web site. outflows, you have $514 billion. this includes money spent, investor, or long. then money federal government act about $207.3 billion, money returned unpaid to the treasury as interest, dividends, fees, or to repurchase stock warrants.

it looks like the net outstanding is about $306.7 billion. "the wall street journal" reported yesterday the treasury department is predicting financial assistance to banks will come in at about $89 billion. where did they come up with the figure? guest: it was a private estimate given on background by treasury officials that they did not make public. you cited the "washington post" report, and that was also some numbers given on background. this is not something the administration has come out and said publicly on the record so that they might be held more accountable to it. there is a little bit of an art to that -- $89 billion as altman calls. they threw in spending by the federal reserve, that is spending that went on but not

appropriated by congress under the tarp the way most people think of it. that is what we are tracking on our site, the $300 billion number, that is part plus the treasury taxpayer bailout of fannie and freddie. that total still stand -- stands north of $300 billion. host: secretary geithner writes this morning in "the washington post" on the opinion page g-8 latest estimate conservatively puts the cost at $117 billion and if congress adopts the feed proposed in january, the cost to taxpayers will be zero. how did he come up with those numbers? deguguest: these are taxes they are proposing to try to recoup some of the losses in the bailout through taxing is essentially the operations of largest banks. along those lines, it is kind of

important to note that when you talk about losses from the tarp , for various reasons billions and billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars went to the wall street banks. a lot of that has come back. there is pretty much general agreement that the government could be made whole on that part. a the losses are mainly from the bailout of aig and the bailout of the auto company. and beyond that, the steps the administration has taken to stabilize the housing market, particularly the modification program which they say they plan to spend $50 billion. that is all money out of the door not coming back. host: you finish your thought. guest: the plan is to tax the banks to recoup the bailout, but just for a frame of reference it is good to remember where losses are actually coming from.

host: let us take specifically each company that was part of this federal assistance. can you go through and tell us which companies received a bailout money? the top ones, not the smaller banks, and what is the status of those banks? guest: the biggest chunk is the bailout of fannie mae and freddie mac. that stands at $126 billion. they are not done yet. general motors, i believe it is around $50 billion. there is the biggest banks -- bank of america and citigroup. general motors is still a question mark. they have not pulled a profit. they said they it might do so this year. how well they do this year will ultimately determine how much the government can recoup from that the bailout.

bankamerica and citigroup -- bankamerica was able to pay back the money it received and the government made about $4.6 billion profit on the need that they gave parrot -- that they gave. citigroup paid back $20,000,000,000.20 $5 billion the government holds as common stock that they will sell all over the coming months. others, the other wall street banks -- wells fargo and j.p. morgan chase -- they have returned the money. j.p. morgan shays, that bail out individually, and with a profit of about $1 billion and the government will auction off the warrants it is holding on with wells fargo, and i think that should pull about 1 billion as well. so, as i said, when you have aig, you put more than $45

billion into aig. it is not clear we are done there, either. some parts of the bailout are an ongoing story like aig, fannie mae and freddie mac. whereas of the wall street banks, that has been winding down for about a year or so. >> we are talking to paul keel about the status of the bailout repayment, the banks but that taxpayer money and whether or not they are paying the government back. the attack could be $89 billion -- the tab could be $89 billion. timothy geithner writes for the writes fortqarp could be $117 billion. why the two different numbers? is tarp one program and $89 billion figure the wall street journal wrote yesterday include several programs? can you help decipher between

all the numbers being thrown out there? to guest: it is part science and also part heart. what geithner comes out, that seem strictly limited to the $700 billion tarp bill that we passed in october of 2008. totally separately, we took over in essentially the government took over fannie and freddie in september of 2008 and we have been bailing them out since then. that is a totally separate tab. that is $126 billion and rising. the government has not even put a plan together about what they will do about fannie and freddie. i think it is kind of premature to kind of say with any confidence what the losses might ultimately be. like i said, "the wall street journal" estimate, $89 billion, they get that from throwing in the federal reserve, which is an important amount of spending to

keep in mind but it is separate, that is the federal reserve, not taxpayer money appropriated by congress. it is confusing. host: do fannie and freddie have to pay the government back? guest: the plan was for them to pay them back, yes. they are government awards at this point. there is not much more the government can do to them in terms of financial penalties. fannie and freddie have been paying dividends, but for the most part they have been able to pay the dividend because the government has been bailing them out so in a sense we were getting back our own money. if you take it into -- they have been paying back in the range of five or $6 billion. they are paying some back but right now they are way and the red -- in the red. host: christian on the republican line.

in new haven, conn. caller: i wanted to talk about one aspect of the bailout nobody seems to mention. the fed doing the back door bailouts. they do it in a variety of different ways. first of all the did it by removing a lot of the toxic securities on all of these banks balance sheets, which comes up to well over $1 trillion. we don't hear about that. they also allowed the banks to change in their accounting rules so they don't have to write off any of the losses they are taking in housing. they also did the purchase program, $1.25 trillion for the bad mortgages. and they are also giving out a 0% money in to banks like goldman sachs, morgan stanley, j.p. morgan, etcetera. so, there is a lot more to this bailout than just the $750

billion we hear about all the time. in fact, bloomberg reports of the total bailout -- and we just always hear about tarp but we do not hear about talf and other programs. bloomberg totals that it could be up to the $13 trillion range. host: what about those numbers? guest: like i said, bailout tabulations are part heat and science. but there are financial analysis type firms that have looked at this. i think the most reliable member, in terms of money going out of the door related to the bailout -- like the caller was talking of but would reserve spending and a range of $3 trillion to $4 trillion, the bloomberg estimate up to $12 trillion and sometimes you hear up to $20 trillion. that is kind of maximalist, if the programs that they announced were to be completely maxed out.

that is where the get the $12 trillion to $13 trillion but it is really not an accurate estimate of how much money that is gone out the door. not to underestimate the importance of what the caller was talking about. there has been a lot of federal reserve activity. when you talk about the general health of the wall street banks, their ability to pay back some of the money, that has been made possible to a large extent by the federal reserve supporting them in a variety of ways and also the treasury department. the housing market has been almost entirely stabilized by the government since the crash. so, it is sort of an artificial environment they have been operating in beard i agreed that you -- operating in. i agree you should not dismiss the role the federal reserve has played in it. caller: when i hear the news internationally and nationally, it literally makes me want to

laugh. there are thousands of bernie madoffs in new york and washington who are looting the national treasury into absolute ruin. the coming collapse of of the united states dollar is written in stone and the jews in this country have literally destroyed -- host: we will move to ocean city, maryland. . i don't think anybody would give somebody a bonus for anything other than meeting their goals.

thank you. guest: well, we have a financial reform bill the extent to which it will reform bonuses is unclore. but, you know, i sthi everyone agrees that it's important to ks you know, fix -- it's important to, you know, fix a system. but that's not going to happen on its own. we are essentially operating under more or less the same system we had when everything fell apart. so, you know, financial reform is a big deal and right now it's not entirely clear that it's, you know, what's going to happen. host: that's what secretary geithner is writing in his piece this morning in "the washington post" endorsing the senate bill, the senate financial regulation bill, arguing for the legislation. if you are interested in reading that. paul, some have criticized this legislation because they say it

still allows the banks that taxpayers gave money to to be big. in other words, they'll still be too big to fail. can you explain that criticism and what the legislation will do? guest: well, i mean, there is one school of thought that it's the largeness of the banks, the largeness of the banks that caused the collapse. there's another that, you know, essential low an issue of leverage to the extent they were borrowing to such an extent that, you know, when the dominos started to fall they were -- their troubles were compouned. i think the treasury has taken pretty commonsense approach, not an aggressive approach in terms of how to sort of provides some frameworks, some transparency, to prevent some

of the gross excesses that occurred from happening. enough in setting strict limits on the banks in terms of how much leverage they can have. host: michael, republican line. caller: good morning. it is funny. we get a lot of these gentlemen on your show and other talk shows and people the right pieces in the newspaper, talking about what the stimulus package is supposed to do. the truth is that much of this money has been wasted. regulation must be done, but i cannot understand wanting to throw people in jail like madoff, but what about all the politicians? people that have taken kickbacks.

why are they not in jail? the government creates the laws and the problems. timothy geithner never paid his taxes. i would be in jail. i do not understand all of that. host: maria, democratic line. virginia. argue with us bella i think we lost that phone call. from old, independent line. -- ronald, independent line. caller: everyone should have to pay the same amount in taxes. host: were you able to understand that? guest: yes. caller: i guess a general point

is that, to the extent that they were bailed out and given the money, i still think that there is legitimacy. there are other things beyond this to be concerned about in terms of their operating at the great expense of government support and the system that we have that allowed a lot of risks to be taken. that system is still in place. host: this is from a viewer. "loans from although companies save money in the economy. please put to rest the idea that the u.s. took over the auto industry." how much money did they receive

this year? how much have they paid back? guest: they have received upwards of $50 billion. they have paid back a little bit of that, however most of the government's investment is in the form of ownership of general motors. how much they get back is entirely dependent on how much the share is worth fell . 2009 found them still struggling. they have been out of bankruptcy. that was their first quarterly report out of bankruptcy. the ceo said that he expects to fully profit this year. and -- poll a profit this year

-- pull a profit this year. this has been a dance on the part of the government's. in many ways it was a takeover with the bailout. but they were guided through bankruptcy and the government has tried to take a hands-off approach when it comes to the day to day operations of the company's. is really up to them to determine how much they can lose it. host: richmond, virginia. good morning. caller: i just wanted to say that the bailout was a hoax in the first place. fro[unintelligible] it looked like they were playing together to keep the job market that on, keeping them from

lending money. it was not done right. the four people got nothing. they have two wars going on at the same time. bush and his people are trying hard with lily white people to help them get back in there. but they will never get in with my vote. host: republican line, virginia. we are talking about the status of bailout repayments to the government. caller: hello? host: what is your question or comment for paul keil stalofl? caller: what is the difference between tarp and tarf?

i know that it was paid out to jpmorgan and the like, paid out that a profit. but they continually borrow this money, they keep spending this money and what ever is paid back goes to another program. or something like that. and then we have this stimulus bill. we have spent 1.4 trillion dollars in the past year and i do not see what has been accomplished, other than stocks have gone up if you have stocks. but if you have no stocks it has not help anyone. gasoline prices are going up. what is becausthe talf?

guest: talf was a federal reserve program to helhelp keepe issuance of asset backed securities alive. it encouraged them as the beginning of that type of credit to be issued. the treasury had only limited support of that program separate from the federal reserve, resulting in losses for the treasury. that is a small part of the tarp. i forgot the last part of a question but tlf is a relic --

talf is a relatively small part of the program. host: "i'll look for the economy, corporate earnings, individuals on the sidelines." that is from "the wall street journal." is this discussion related to the stock market going up? >> the stock market has been up since the lows of march of 2009. there is a lot of recent optimism about the economy. at the same time it has been an economy that has not seen a lot of government support. not much more than is normal. it has been on training wheels. we are just getting away from that point with federal reserve support for the bill being the largest part of tarp spending.

and lot of question marks are going forward about how it will continue to be. host: democratic line, michigan. caller: if we have a stake in these companies and the government is making a profit on the stake of these companies, why do we not hang onto that and continue to use that profit to pay down the deficit? host: paul keil? guest: in large part of the profit we are getting in some areas -- a large part of the profit we are getting in some areas are offsetting some of the biggest losses. mortgage modification, automobiles, those are some of the biggest losses.

host: paul keil, what will be done with the money? $700 billion set aside for the banks that were faltering. how much in total of that has been spent? what are the discussions about the rest of the money and how it might be spent? guest: right now we are still under $400 billion in terms of money that has gone out the door. off the mortgage modification program barely got started in terms of spending. in terms of what was left over, early on the treasury took the position that they could use the money that was repay by other companies -- repaid by other companies and apply it to other

programs. that is still their position. at this point i do not think we will ever get to the point where we have spent the entire $700 billion of the tarp. host: paul keil is our guest this morning. a reporter with propublica. "the washington post" won four pulitzer prizes on monday, and propublica became the first online organization to win a prestigious award for print journalism. tell us about the company. what do you do there? guest: we are non-profit with a staff around 40. we do investigative journalism covering a broad range of

topics. in one case we look very closely at a hospital after hurricane katrina. essentially we give our stories away for free. we have partnered with a variety of outlets. we are very excited about the award. host: tell viewers about the bailout guide on your web site. how do you go about tracking this money? guest: this is something we have been doing since early 2009. i am the person putting the numbers in based on reports from the treasury department. sometimes numbers that are

included in securities, there's a lot of hunting around that happens. resources that are created. if you look at what the treasury department provides, they can provide some information in terms of which companies have received money in a way that is not easy to digest. all of these acronyms and program names that can be confusing. we tried a boil down and make some clearer sense and hopefully not too much use of acronyms. host: william, sacramento. good morning. caller: i would have the gentleman investigate the bailout for the ones burying the

biggest burden, veterans -- bearing the biggest burden, veterans. how do they qualify for a home in a job that would give them security to start a family or whenever. coming back from vietnam i paid $500 down, got my wife and son out of vietnam for a $60,000 house. these kids coming back, what is their standing? i have seen that they will lend up to $700,000 from the g.i. bill. host: we are talking about the bailout program. guest: the vietnam vets need part of the bailout. host: tony, republican line. your next. question or comment?

caller: question and comments. there is a consistency of these folks calling in and making racial comments about white folks, like that gentleman from a while ago. host: let me just address the policy. if you want to go to our phone policy and how we go about them, don't you c-span.org at the bottom of the web site page. guest: i know that the art -- caller: i know that there are some things you cannot control. host: we do not screen. you are welcome to give his viewpoint on public policy. once you start with the apart -- inappropriate comments and such, we will hang up and move on. question about the bailout?

caller: bardee monitoring the fact that all of the people that receive the bailout money are paying it back? how much of that paying? are they all allowed to pay the money back? is it being accepted? how do you keep track of that? guest of the treasury does print reports on who has paid the money back. -- guest: the treasury does print reports and who has paid the money back. we have a database as to where they're located. with over 800 recipients, the large majority of them are community banks. smaller banks. early on there was a delay in

setting up a system for having the money returned, but that is long past. i understand that it is produced . by and large the smaller banks -- free streamlined -- freddie streamlined -- fredpretty streamlined. looking the banks over to say that they are viable, using the money to loan it out, there was a lot of criticism early on. but i think what has happened is a lot of the smaller banks, it turns out that a lot of the wall street banks do a lot of small

business loans, which is a very tough sector right now. those banks have been hanging on to the money for a little bit of insurance. there was a rule that was passed in february of last year that limits executive compensation for the executives of the banks that receive this money. essentially affecting more people at that company than the money from the government. at the smaller banks that was the ceo. it was a real complaint that fuel the rush to give the money back last year. host: michigan, david. democratic line. caller: i think that the

president did the best that he could with that the bailout. i think that our country is on its way back to prosperity. i watch every morning. all the signs are pointing upward. we should not try to do so much monday morning quarterbacking. but i do think it will take a little time. general motors has paid their money back and come up with positives that are very attractive. i think that everything will work out if people stop wishing for the worst in this country. host: is general motors ahead of

schedule, paul keil? guest of the majority of the government investment is in the ownership -- guest: the majority of the investment from the government is in the ownership of general motors. there is a portion of the aid to general motors that remains in the form of a loan. >> we're leaving this to go to president obama who is at the nuclear security summit. >> collectively to make conacross the street commitments and take tangible steps to secure nuclear materials who wouldn't fall into the hands of terrorist who is would use them. we have seized this opportunity and because of the steps we have taken as individual nations and as an international community, the american people will be safer and the world will be more secure i want to

thank all who participated in this historic summit. 49 leaders from every region of the world. ed to's progress was possible because -- today's progress was possible because these leaders became to talk, take pledges of future action and commit to meaningful steps that they are prepared to implement right now. i also want to thank my colleagues for the cannedor and cooperative spirit that they -- candor and cooperative spirit. this is not a day of long speeches or lectures on what other nations must do. we listened to each other with mutual respect. we recognized that chilly different countries face different challenges -- we recognize that while different countries face different challenges, today's a testament to what is possible when nations come together in the spirit of partnership to embrace our shared responsibility and confront a shared challenge. this is how we will solve problems and advance the security of our people in the

21st century. this is reflective in the commune kay that we have unanimously agreed to today. first, we agreed on the urgency seriousness of the threat. coming into the summit there were a range of views on this danger, but at our dinner last night and throughout the day today we understand the share of the risk. today we're declaring that nuclear terrorism is the most challenging risks to international community. we -- international security. we also agree that from criminals from getting it is through strong nuclear security. protecting nuclear materials and preventing nuclear smuggling. second, i am very pleased that all the nations represented here are endorsed the goal that i outlined in prague one year ago, to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years' time. this is an ambitious goal and we are under no illusions that it will be easy.

but the urgency of the threat and the catastrophic consequences of even a single act of nuclear terrorism demand an effort that is bold and pragmatic and this is a goal we can achieve. third, we reaffirmed that it is the fundamental responsibility of nations consistent with their international obligations to maintain effective security of the nuclear materials and facilities under our control. this includes strengthening national laws and policies and fully implementing the commitments we have agreed to. fourth, we recognized that even as we fulfill our national responsibilities this threat cannot be addressed by countries working in isolation. so we've committed ourselves to a sustained effective program of international cooperation on international security and we call on our nations to join us. it became clear in our discussions that we do not need lots of new institutions and layers of bureaucracy.

we need to strengthen the institutions and partnerships that we already have and make them even more effective. this includes the united nations, the international atomic energy agency, the multilateral partnership that streppingens nuclear security, prevent nuclear trafficking and assist nations in building their capacity to secure their nuclear materials. as i said, today was about taking tangible steps to protect our people. so we've also agreed to a detailed work plan to guide our efforts going forward. specific actions we will take. i want to commend my partners for the very important commitments they have made in conjunction with this summit. let me give some examples. canada agreed to give up a significant quantity of highly enriched uranium. chile has given up its entire stockpile. ukraine and mexico announced they will do the same. other nations, such as

argentina and pakistan, announced new steps to strengthen port security and prevent nuclear smuggling. more nations, including argentina, the philippines, thailand and vietnam, agreed to join and thus strengthen the treaties and international partnerships that are at the core of our global efforts. a number of countries, including italy, japan, india and china, will create new centers to promote nuclear security, technologies and training. nations pledged new resources to help the iaea meet its responsibilities. in a major and welcomed development, russia announced that it will close its last weapons grade plutonium conductor reactor. i'm glad that russia has agreed to -- plutonium that would have been enough for about 17,000 nuclear weapons.

instead, we will use this material to help generate electricity for our people. those are exact low the kinds of commitments called for in the work plan that we adopted today. so we made real progress in building a safer world. i would also note that the united states has made its own commitments. we are strengthening security at our own nuclear facilities and we'll invite the iaea to review the security at our now tron research center. this reflect our commitment to sharing the best practices that are needed in our global efforts. we're soaking significant funding increases for programs to prevent nuclear proliferation and traffic. and today the united states is joining with our canadian partners and calling on nations to commit $10 billion to strengthen nuclear security around the world. so this has been a day of great progress but this cannot be a

fleeting moment. securing nuclear materials must be a sustained global effort. we agreed to have our experts meet on a regular basis, to measure progress, to ensure that we're meeting our commitments and to plan our next steps. and i didn't want to thank president lee and the republic of korea for agreeing to host the next nuclear security summit in two years. finally, let me say chilly this summit's focused on securing nuclear materials, this is part of a larger effort. the comprehensive agenda that i outlined in prague last year to pursue the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. indeed in recent days we made progress on every element of this agenda. to reduce nouck arsenals, president medved invest and i side -- medvedev and i signed a new treaty. setting the stage for further

cuts and cooperation between our countries. to move beyond outdated cold war thinking and to focus on the nuclear dangers of the 21st century, our new nuclear posture review reduces the role and number of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy. and for the first time, prevepting nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism is at the top of america's nuclear agenda, which reaffirms the central importance of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. and next month in new york, we will join with nations from around the world to strengthen the m.p.t. as the cornerstone to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons even as we pursue greater civil nuclear cooperation. because for nations that uphold their responsibility, peaceful nuclear energy can unlock new advances in medicine, in agriculture and economic development. all of these efforts are connected. leadership and progress in one

area re-enforces on another. when the united states improves our own nuclear security and transparency, it encourages others to do the same, as we have seen today. when the united states fulfills our responsibilities as a nuclear power committed to the m.p.t., we strengthen our global efforts to ensure that other anythings fulfill their responsibilities. so again i want to thank my colleagues for making this unprecedented gathering, a day of unprecedented progress in confronting one of the greatest threats to our global security. our work today not only advances the security of united states, it advances the security of all mankind and preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism will remain one of my highest priorities as president of the united states. so with that i'm going to take a few questions. i'm going to start with bill from cbs.

>> the states under no uncertain terms that all cooperation will be done on a voluntary basis, not a binding commitment. what is the like lowhood countries that have been at odds over so many years will cooperate? how can this be enforced? >> well, let us take a specific example, bill. for about 10 years we have been encouraging ukraine to either ship out its highly enriched uranium or transform it to a lower grade -- a lower enriched uranium. and in part because of this conference ukraine took that step, announced it would complete the step over the next couple of years. so all the commitments that we talked about are ones that we've already booked even

before the commoun kay and the work plan is in place. and i think that is strong unanimity about the importance of this issue as a threat to the global and international community. now, keep in mind we have a number of international conventions that have been put in place. not all of them have been ratified. in fact, the united states needs to work on a couple of these conventions dolling with the issues of nuclear -- dealing with the issues of nuclear terrorism and trafficking. but what this does is it sets out a bold plan. and what oim' encouraged about is the -- i'm encouraged about is the fact that we have already seen efforts that have been delayed for years. in some cases since the end of the cold war actually coming to fruition here at this summit. bill, the point is that we've got world leaders who have just

announced that in fact this is a commitment that they are making. i believe they take their commitments very sore yussly. if you are asking, do we have an international one world law enforcement mechanism, we don't. we never have. so in all of our efforts internationally, in every trotey that we sign, we're relying on good -- treaty that we sign, we're relying on the good will of the signatories. that's the will of the international relations. jake tapper, abc. >> thank you, mr. president. the chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said today that pressure in sanctions -- speaking of iran's nuclear programs -- it cannot fundamentally solve the problem. i was wondering if you could clarify exact low what you believe that president hu jintao agreed to if you think

there will be an economic sanctions that the chinese will sign off on and what you have told the chinese in terms of their concern about how much fuel they get from iran what the u.s. can help them with in that regard? thank you, sir. >> here's what i know. the chinese have sent official representatives to negotiations in new york to begin the process of drafting a sanctions resolution. that is part of the p-5 plus one effort, and the united states is not moving this process along. we have the participation of the russians as well as the other memberses of the p-5 plus one, all of whom believe it is important for us to send a strong signal to iran that they are in consistent violation of the united nations security council resolutions as well as

their obligations under the m.p.t. have consequences and they have a better path to take. now, you're exactly right, jake, that the chinese are obviously concerned about what ramifications this might have on the economy generally. iran as an oil-producing state. i think a lot of countries around the world have trade relations with iran. and we're mindful of that. but what i said to president hu and what i said to every world leader that i talk to is that words have to mean something. there has to be some consequences and if we say that the n.p.t. is important, then when those obligations are repeatedly throughouted, that

it's important for the international community to come together. and what i would say is if you consider where we are, say, a year ago, with the prospect of sanctions, the fact that we have russia and china as well as the other p-5 plus one members having a serious discussion around a sanctions regime, following up on a sore yuss sanctions -- serious sanctions regime that was passed when north korea throughouted its obligations toward -- flouted its obligations toward the n.p.t., it's the international diplomacy that is making it more possible for us to isolate those countries that are breaking their international obligations. and as i said i think several weeks ago, my interest is not what having a long drawn out

process for months. i want to sew us move forward bold low and quick low to send the kind of message that will allow iran to make a different kind of cal could you lakeses. now, keep -- calculation. now, keep in mind, i have said repeatedly that under the n.p.t. iran has the right to develop peaceful, civilian nuclear energy as do all signatories to the n.p.t. but given the repeated violations that we've seen on the part of iran, i think understandably the world community questions their commitment towards a peaceful civilian energy program. they have a way of restoring that trust. for example, we put before them -- i'm saying the p-5 plus one now, as well as the iaea, put before them a very reasonable approach that would have allowed them to continue their

civilian, peaceful nuclear energy needs but would have delayed many of the concerns around their nuclear weapons program. they have rejected that so far. that's why it's important, and i have said so far that we will move on a duel track and part of that duel track is to make sure that a sanctions is in place. the last point i make about sanctions, sometimes i hear the argument that, well, sanctions aren't going to necessarily work. sanctions aren't a magic wand. what sanctions do accomplish is hopefully to change the calculus of a country like iran so that they see there are more costs and fewer benefits to pursuing a nuclear weapons program. and in that process what we hope is that if those costs get

high enough and the benefits are low enough that in time they make the right decision, not just for the security and prosperity of the world, but also for their own people. scott wilson, "washington post." where is scott? >> thank you, mr. president. you have spoken often about the need to bring u.s. policy in line with its trotey obligations internationally. to eliminate the perception of hi pockrass owe that some of the world sees for the united states and some of its allies. will you call on israel to declare its nuclear program and sign the nonproliferation treaty? if not, why would another country see a reason not to sign on to a treaty that you see will strengthen? >> scott, initially we are talking about u.s. behavior and then we're talking about israel.

let me talk about the united states. i do think that as part of the n.p.t. our obligation as the largest nuclear power in the world is to make -- take steps to reducing our nuclear stockpile. and that's what the start treaty was about, sending a message that we are going to meet our obligations. and as far as israel goes, i'm not going to comment on their program. what i am going to point to is the fact that consistently we have urged all countries to become members of the n.p.t. so there's no contradiction there. we think that it is important that we have an international approach that is universal. and that rests on three pillars. that those of us who have nuclear weapons are making serious efforts to reduce those stockpiles, that we all are

working against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and those countries that don't currently have nuclear weapons make the decision not to pursue the weapons and that all countries have access to peaceful nuclear energy. and so whether we're talking about israel or any other country, we think that becoming part of the n.p.t. is important. and that by the way is not a new position. that's been a consistent position of the united states government even prior to my administration. let me call on steven of a.f.p. >> thank you, mr. president. in your meeting with president hu, did he give you any indication that he would heed your call from any markets or exchange rate -- if there is going to be a change, when would you think that taking place? and what happened in the last few weeks to help you move on

from a period of -- quite a stormy period of public disagreements with china? >> you know, the fact is actually that the relationship between my administration and the chinese government has been very productive during the course of the last year and a half. we started off working together at various multilateral forum. the first one in london, the g-20. i then have been out of the bilateral meetings that we had set up a strategic dialogue that looks at a whole range of areas in which the united states and china can cooperate. i made a visit to china that both of us considered very successful. now, there are some areas where we have disagreement.

and those disagreements are not new and i have to say that the amount of turbulence, as you put it, that occurred that was actually relatively modest when you look at the overall trajectory of u.s.-china relations. i mean, at no point was there ever a suggestion that it's not in the interest of both our countries to cooperate and that we have not only important bilateral business to do but also for -- we are two very important countries that deal with issues like climate change, the world economy in concert. with respect to the currency issue, president hu and i have had a number of frank conversations. as part of the g-20 process, we

all signed on to the notion that a rebalancing of the world economy would be important for a sustained economic growth and the prevention of future crises. and china, like the united states, agreed to that framework. we believe that part of that rebalancing involves making sure that currencies are tracking roughly the market and not giving any one country an advantage over the other. and i've been very clear of the fact that it's my estimation that it is undervalued and that china's own decision in previous years to begin to move towards a more market-oriented approach is the right one and i communicated that once again to president hu. i think china rightly sees the