we have seen an economy where one vested interest, a small group of financiers, have acted in their own interest and have held a gun to the head of the rest of the british economy. we have seen social mobility go down. we have seen an education system where despite all the good intentions, i will not denigrate the good intentions of labour when they came into power, i did not vote for them but i shared the enthusiasm that they would do something different after 18 long years of the conservative government. i agreed with all the declarations about education. i supported that. why is it, then, that despite

all those good intentions and all that money, so many of those intentions and good money has been wasted on central direction. it has not released the potential and the opportunity that the educational system is supposed to instill in every single child, no matter their background, no matter and what their parents do, no matter how much their parents have a bank fund. did you know that a child who is bright but poor will be overtaken in the classroom to pay a child who is less bright but wealthier by the age of seven? after that, the gap tends to widen. if you are a child born in the poorest neighborhoods in sheffield today, 2010, you are most likely to die 15 years

before a child born in the wealthiest neighborhood of the road. that has not changed. the gap has widened, not narrowed. what i say to everybody who wants fairness in britain, everybody who believes a liberal, free, progressive society is one where every individual is treasured and cherished, where every single person is given every support they need to live out their dreams, i say to do we need to do something. different. we need to clean up politics and change the structural deficits but we need to go further. we're introducing the most radical form in the tax system in a generation. did you know that the tax system is so unfair that a

multimillionaire from the city of london will pay a lower rate of tax on their capital gains then a cleaner does on their wages? did you know that despite 13 years of labor, the bottom 20% of taxpayers in this country pay more in taxes of a proportion of their income than the top 20%? that has to change. we say raised the threshold so you did not pay taxes on the first 10,000 pounds you earn. and to not give the high earners twice as much tax breaks. let hard wire fairness into our tax system once and for all. let us use some of the money of

that 15 billion pounds of cuts that i talked about to deliver a smaller class sizes to our schools so every child it's the fair start in life they deserve. those are the values, principles, convictions and the motivations that drive me forward and drive the liberal democrats forward. i am so excited that you would turn up in the first place but that you are also so keen to make your voice heard in this general election. this campaign has transformed itself from what could have been a boring, tired, conventional campaign where the campaign managers of the two old parties score ever more mind-numbing clicks on each other into a true people's election where you choose and nobody knows what the outcome will be and nobody will second guess you.

asked demanding questions of us. push as hard. when you go into that ballot box, it will be a small box but a big opportunity to finally do something different for a better and more fair future. thank you very much. [applause] >> have you got a microphone? you were so enthusiastic you will have the first question. >> on sunday, you said that you absolutely would not support gordon brown-led coalition.

having listened to some of your comments, it seems like you may not be so certain. so that we can make an informed judgment, did you clarify whether you will or will not support gordon brown if the returns [unintelligible] . >> yes. what i said and what i said time and time again is it is clear for me that i am -- that people are constantly try to speculate about this or that about and comes after the general elections. however, i think there are one or two outcomes where one could figure out what everybody's reaction would be. i said that i think the party that gets the most votes that does not have an absolute majority would have a moral right to seek to govern.

the other circumstance i just pointed out as possible under our political system is that you could have a party, the labor party, losing the election, but because of some dusty old convention which has taken root for reasons that have been lost or mystified, nonetheless still have the gordon brown camping out at number 10 forever. that is another side of how crazy the system is. i have not changed my tune since the said that. it would be presumptuous for me to try to constantly stair into my cristobal but what i can do a -- crystal ball but what i can do is say that if the party has fewer votes, it seems to me that

it would be incompatible with that action by millions of people to take individual decisions and the ballot box to them have gordon brown continue. how could anybody justify the refers? party comes last and still carries on being prime minister? in this weird and wacky world of old politics does any of that sound normal. i do not think it is democratic warfare and i do not think it should happen. >> and 2003, -- in thousand three, the liberal democrats with the only major political party who voted against george

bush and tony blair's invasion of iraq. we now know the invasion has been a humanitarian catastrophe with hundreds of thousands rociraqis killed and other than that, it is an illegal war. you said you believe there is enough evidence to suggest the war was illegal. what a liberal democrat government that thinks the war is illegal welcomes the iraqi -- pay reparations to iraq? >> i do not have any fully fledged plan to pay reparations and the way that you suggest. do i agree with your assumption? i am not a lawyer but i have

listened to very accomplished lawyers. the dutch inquiry they also concluded it was taken illegally. [unintelligible] the record shows it was because of my campaigning that gordon brown started an inquiry. it was so hobbled by the government by the secrecy and conventions is it only will scratch the surface of this legal and moral issue. that is one reason why many people who were not in government voted in larger

numbers to invade iraq. there were more labor mps who should go to the inquiry to explain why they decided to do this and when millions of people in britain did not want to. we need to establish comprehensively this legal issue and because of that, we are not yet at the point where we could possibly -- properly consider reparations. >> i appreciate your talking about fairness but i also believe that fairness and britain is also fairness in britain's international affairs. 45,000 people die every single month in the conngo.

this is due to illegal exploitation of resources. my question is what is your party willing to do to implement laws that prevent companies in the u.k. to stop the illegal exploitation of the congo and what can condoleezza people do to work with your party -- congolese people do to work with your party? >> what is the legal aspect you are referring to? with the legal explication. there is a blood war going on. >> the first thing we need to do, and you are in a better

place than anybody to do this, is to alert the world to what on earth is going on. this is in a different context but we came across help death we can be -- how deaf we can be to the world. i saw some levels of poverty and deprivation and malnutrition which were a shocking eyeopener. it did not seem to register on the public conscience at all. the first crucial step is exposing what is going on. seeking the presence of the media. there they are. they will highlight the plight of the people who are otherwise and voiceless and forgotten. secondly, we are all consumers.

if there are companies that are exploiting, the products they are seeking to sell to us that they're doing on the backs of many thousands of people, again, you have to mobilize consumer activists which is something that i think universities should be leading the way in. thirdly, mobilized the government of the day to reduce its influence with the un and others and to their pressure on these companies. it isn't economic giant, the single largest market -- it is an economic giant. those are the three steps i would take.

>> where do you stand on inheritance tax? >> we would leave inheritance tax where it is. one of the many dividing lines is about inheritance tax. what the party is saying about tax reform tells tax reformdems. -- tells you about dems. if you like closing the loopholes, conservatives strikingly, the most it extensive tax cut is an inheritance tax reserved for double millionaires.

i simply cannot understand how they plan to be speaking to the nation to people who are losing jobs and having houses repossessed and they want to spend billions of pounds of your money, your money, i'm giving tax breaks to double millionaires. you are staying standing up because you are so dumbfounded. [laughter] >> my question is regarding the tuition fees. i read today that in autumn, you would be implementing phase one saying that tuition fees would be eliminated next year. is that saying that we would not have to pay tuition fees and next year because that would save me over 3,000 pounds?

how could you do that considering the current economic climate? >> yes, that is exactly what it would mean. we have always been against tuition fees. let me state very clearly, the reasons why we think tuition fees discourage people from going to university, particularly from modest backgrounds. we think it is just unfair that you graduate and you have not taken your first step and to the working world to be saddled with debt around your neck. debt shoots up to 44,000 if the labor party has their way. the third reason is look what happened at our economy. it has been held below the waterline because of excessive

debt. since when is get an answer to debt? -- debt an answer to death? debt? if you bring people into the world with a starting point of debt, it is just wrong. we used to have a policy before the greed and the banking system credit these terrible problems, we used to have a policy of getting rid of tuition fees and immediately put up because money is tight, we are doing incremental steps over six years. you are quite right, the first is removing the tuition fees if you are on your first

undergraduate degree in your first year of study. next year, it would move on to people. how many part-time students are there here? >> you are spectacularly and rep. a very significant number of students are part-time students. we would do it bit by bit until everything is a polished. it would amount a commitment of 1.7 billion pounds. when we as a country has spent one trillion pounds of bailing out the banks, we have already sent the side savings because of the structural deficit, do you think 1.7 billion pounds is an unreasonable amount is to find to give you the freedom to start your life once you graduate,

free of this terrible dead weight of debt? absolutely. [unintelligible] >> you can expect 70 to 80 applicants per graduate job. >> the first answer to that is no economy creates jobs by imagining at or waving a magic wand. economists create jobs this money is circulating and companies are able to invest. i think one of the biggest problems at the moment is that what we have at the moment,

money is not circulating anymore. the banks we billed out, instead of lending money to households so they can invest and deal with cash flow problems and innovate and create new jobs, they want to get out of state control as soon as possible and be reprivatized. as they are holding the money. this problems of them according money and not lending money is one of the biggest issues in the economy today. the banks, last year, promised they would lend billions of pounds of extra money, your money, to keep the wheels of the economy going. they lent $41 -- 41 billion pounds left. the government said it would let the banks off the hooks

altogether by only and posing gross lending saying they can take back more money than they actually land. c-span -- actually a lent. there are many other things we want to do. we want to use some of the savings in the first year to invest in things the economy needs anyways, public transport, clean energy, which we think would be job rich but we also want to give a 90 day guarantee that if you do not find a job, you will get an apprenticeship or work. so that we cannot repeat what happened and the recession of the early 1990's, john people sit at home and feel lonely and

down and getting no reply from cv's. if we cannot help you it least remained busy and motivated and surrounded by other people, it is a terrible tragedy. there is evidence it will become increasingly difficult for you to find any state of war. that is a social strategy -- tragedy that we must avoid at all costs. critics you support the breakup of the nhs, in which case, what would you put into place? >> what i said is i think nhs is too centralize.

ed. >> do you work there? what do you do? >> i am a clerical assistant. >> it is the glue that holds the country together. if it is a part of our identity. i absolutely want to protect the finding -- founding principles of equity and access. the fact is not mean that i am going to apologize for what i think is excessive [unintelligible] we now have more bureaucrats than hospital beds. the government's own figures show it will take one person 491 years to fill up -- fill out all

the requests for doctors. it should be driven from below which is what i want to see a change in nhs and have it be put back into the hands of the people. i think private care trusts should be directly accountable and elected. they are accountable to us. i think nurses and doctors should enter employee-owned muzzle of agency owned hospitals. i think they should have control over the budgets. we can retain the beauty of the nhs but to give people,

patients, nurses, physicians, or control over how it works. something is wrong when you have an nhs where you have 5000 managers but the increase in nurses was less than 2%. the maternity ward were my third son was born in was threatened with closure and yet they sent billions of -- to spend billions of pounds on computer systems that do not work. i would use that money to protect the nhs services. i am being given the signal so i have to stop. thank you very much, indeed. thank you. [applause]

>> after the event, we talked to journalists and students about nick clegg's popularity and comparisons between his campaign and barack obama's. >> he has made to this campaign the most unpredictable and more than one generation. he also has qualities, his campaign has qualities, that remind people here and in the u.s. about barack obama's campaign. it is bringing people into the political told that would not normally be there or boating. just the emergence of the liberal democrats is an actual political force rather than a forgotten third party has the real possibility of changing the british government and british politics. it has made us of americans think about ross perot and ralph nader.

he seems to have a more real chance of being involved in the government as opposed to being an interesting phenomenon that comes and goes. it is partly the nature of the political system and because the tories and labor and not have anything close to 50% support. it looks like the pied will be divided three ways. his best scenario was boiler. he now looks like power broker. he will have enough support that one of the other parties will need him to govern all though now there is the real possibility that maybe he gets more votes than the others, as well. he has gone from ignored to interesting to now something real it seems in british politics. you hear a lot of people here saying the same things that american voters said in 2008. i am tired of the parties as

usual. american politics as usual. that is what you are hearing here. that is what has led people who do not like the liberal or conservative -- labor or conservative. they have a candidate now who seems to be different and speaks to them differently and holds campaign events differently than others have in the past. >> i thought he came across as very competent and he was not obviously making things up as he goes along like cameron does sometimes. i was impressed overall about what he was putting forward. some of the questions were quite difficult, especially the ones on congo. he clearly has a lot to think about on that one. >> have you heard him speak before? >> only on television. never in person.

in person he is even better and more impressive. >> have you watched the debates? >> yes. he has come out as a strong contender from that. i fall it quite a lot. none of my friends know who it was until the first debate. i have always followed the liberal democrats, as well. they have their own personalities, as well. he has a big influence, as well, compared to gordon brown and david cameron, he comes across as very charismatic and something fresh and new. . .

he is very president barack obama-esque. >> what other issues are important to you? >> i am about to finish university in two weeks. i am wanted to find a job. i hope the economy is going to improve, so that i can get a job. i would like to see some reform and the house of commons be more democratic. >> the funny thing is, people

here are already comparing him to a barack obama. i have seen obama speak. his cat phrases -- his catch phrases bart, "-- are, " fired up and ready to go." this person's catch phrases art, "if i may make a 1/3 point." student turned up today in huge numbers. they wanted to love him. what they got was a lecture notes. many of you may remember michael dukakis who lost to george bush's senior several years ago. he used to talk to the audience

as if they were taking notes. of course, they were not, which is why george bush told them the same thing at 50 times. this candidate is a bit like that, telling everybody every detail of what he wants. that is great, but it does not get the juices flowing. >> why is he doing so great in at the polls? >> because he is indifferent. people are fed up with -- because he is different. people are fed up with the gordon brown. they do not like david cameron. he looks like he could beat from the tv series "madman." >> is there anything similar about his theme or message to barack obama's?

>> he is young and a different. that looked good when you are fed up with the people you have got. barack obama had a way to make people listen to him and get people to sign up for the campaign. he is doing very well because he is not one of the old party. he is new, young, and heaven knows we need new things in this country. >> the three candidates to be it britain's next prime minister held their debate earlier this week. we showed it to you live, and we will show it to you again on sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern, here on c-span. >> tonight, on c-span2, a tribute to the civil rights

leader who died last week. we will hear from former president bill clinton and secretary of state hillary clinton. that is at 8:00 p.m. eastern. saturday, a discussion on the diversity and the federal judiciary with a judge who is the first african-american to serve on the court. that is at 7:00 p.m. eastern. following that, almost 3000 journalists, politicians and celebrities will gather for the white house correspondents' dinner. our coverage includes remarks by president barack obama and nbc "tonight show" host, jay leno. that is a saturday at 8:00 p.m. on c-span. what next, the navy secretary talked about energy policy. later, an update on the cleanup effort of the gulf oil spill.

then later, president barack obama talks about the gross domestic product figures that were just released. now, the navy secretary talked about the future of the navy and effort to become less dependent on the fossil fuel. he also responded to questions about the navy's role in regards to the oil spill. this is about one hour. >> and thomas vilsack was an astoundingly good governor of iowa. he is continuing and that as secretary of agriculture. i am going to talk about that partnership. i am incredibly fortunate to have thomas vilsack as a

friend, and america is very fortunate to have his talent as secretary of agriculture. i am honored to be here, to be speaking with you. the first speaker at this club was theodore roosevelt. i do want to point out that both peter roosevelt and franklin roosevelt or assistant secretaries -- both theodore roosevelt and franklin roosevelt or assistant -- were assistant secretaries of the navy. [laughter] there was a time when the navy only had three commissioned brigades, the united states, the

consolation, and the constitution. we had a tiny navy, and one which had never fought. since the days of the revolution, the navy had been pretty quiet, although you could make a pretty good argument that the reason america changed the articles of confederation to the constitution that we have today it was because we could not build a national and navy to deal with the barbary pirates. that was one reason for the changes in philadelphia in 1789. in 1798, then secretary of the navy had three ships, a few

marines to sail on those ships, and a decidedly limited navy. today, things have changed a little bit. some of the things that allen talked about. today, we have two hundred 86 ships in our battle fleet -- we have 286 ships in our battle fleet, over 3000 aircraft and 9000 people. we have a budget north of $150 billion. but the numbers do not tell the story. what i would like to do is spend just a few minutes doing what i call navy and marine corps 101. what do we do? why do we need a date -- why do

we need a navy? why do we need a marine corps into a's world? we are everywhere. if we are doing our job, we are usually somewhere far from home. we are in combat today, in the things that you see and what you report on day after day. the more than 19,000 marines in afghanistan. there are also, today in the middle east, in iraq and afghanistan, 12,000 sailors on shore, doing things like running provincial reconstruction teams and doing counter-ied duty. we have more and sailors on the ground there and we do at sea. we also have ships off the horn of africa fighting piracy.

we haven't shipped around africa engaged in partnership stations. we have ships engaged in partnerships in asia and south america. we can do everything from high- and conventional warfare, through regular warfare, through humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, to partnership building. we do it all with the same equipment, and the same platforms, using exactly the same people. we have to be flexible. we have to be ready. as smart as the people who do the planning, as far-sighted as we can be, we simply cannot provide for every eventuality.

we have to be trained. we have to be ready. we have to have a frame of mind that does not get us into one way of thinking, but is flexible to meet whatever challenge comes at us, whether it is a rescue operation in haiti, or whether it is flying combat over afghanistan in support of our soldiers and our marines there. one of the overlooked things about what we do in the navy is the engagement of around the world, day in and day out. you can search people. you can assert equipment. what you cannot surge is a trust. day after day, american warships, sailors and marines are going into countries and partnering with those countries, doing humanitarian assistance

mission, training the local navy and marines, and meeting with local citizens and leadership. oftentimes, the navy is the only face of america that the leadership of these countries will see, in particular, the population of these countries. i think the navy, in that engagement, in that partnership the building, has become an integral part of how people view america, and of our diplomatic efforts around the world. the big difference in the united states navy in the 40 years that have passed since i served, is not so much the equipment, although that has gotten a lot

better, and it is not the technology, although that has advanced beyond my imagining four decades ago. it is the people who served. i served with a lot of a very dedicated, very skilled, and very motivated people. but they simply could not touch the sailors and marines we have today in terms of skill level, in terms of education level, in terms of commitment, in terms of all of the things they have to know how to do. we are the only country on earth that can produce the numbers and the quality of people that today serve in our armed forces. we are the only country on earth that pushes the responsibility down to the second class seaman

in the engine room, to the lance corporal on patrol. the marines have a term, "of the strategic corporal." we have that in spades in the navy and the marine corps. i want to talk about one specific thing that we are doing that allen mentioned in his introduction. we are trying to change the way the navy get and use energy. we are simply too dependent on foreign fossil fuels. we would not let, we would not allow our warships or our weapons to be billed -- built by the countries that we do allow our ship to be powered by, their fuel. this is a strategic and

vulnerability for us and one that has to be addressed. we are doing a lot to make sure that we meet the strategic imperative. the matter of energy independence is a matter of our security. it is a matter of making sure that when we need those ships at sea, when we need the aircraft in the air, when we need the marines on the ground, we have the energy produced right here in in the united state to do that. we used a lot of energy. the federal government uses about 2% of all the fossil fuels used in america. department of defense uses 90% of what the federal government does. the navy is about one-third of the department of defense's requirements.

outside of the overall strategic reasons to do this, there are the tactical. the example that i like to use is getting a gallon of gasoline to a marine front-line unit in afghanistan. you have to put that gallon of gasoline on a tanker. you have to take it across the pacific. you have to put it into a truck and truck it over the hindu kush, and down through afghanistan. as you do this, you have to guard it. one of the most dangerous assignment to date in afghanistan is convoy duty. we lose marines in a convoy duty. we lose sailors in convoy duty. and we take marines away from what marines should be doing, fighting.

engaging. helping to read build a country -- to rebuild a country. if we can reduce the demand for energy, and we can produce it locally better, we have made our marines better fighters. today we have a solar powered water purification unit in afghanistan. today, marines are using a spray-on insulation. they are reducing the amount they need, and they are changing the way we get energy. i have set five goals for the navy in energy. the biggest one is what alan mentioned. 10 years from now, one decade, have all energy use is -- half

of all energy use is in the navy will come from non-fossil fuel sources. in 10 years, our bases ought to be at net zero. they should produce as much energy as they use. we have one basic today in the california that produces more energy than it consumes, and it is putting excess energy into the local bread. we have done some things that some of you reported on. last week, we flew the green hornet, and f-18 or net -- hornet. if you recognize the green hornet, and i know you are of a certain age. it was an f-18 that flu last week on a mixture of regular gasoline and by-fuel -- bio-

fuel. the bio-fuel was made from a small, non-edible seed. it can be grown in every single state in this union. this brings me to one other thing that this energy push is doing. we can, through partnering, with thomas vilsack and the department of agriculture, we can help american farmers. we can help move america to a new energy economy. it is a move that america has to make. it is a move that we cannot afford to fall behind on. we signed an m.o.u. in january

to coordinate our research and to work together. we had our first big event in hawaii. hawaii has a big navy, big marine presence. hawaiian farmers are also having difficulty, as sugarcane is leaving. hawaii is the most dependent of all 50 states on imported, foreign energy. we are going to help of three of those things. the two obstacles that we have identified to beating our energy goals -- reaching our energy goals, one is the price of alternative fuels, and second is the lack of infrastructure to deliver those fuels. in a flip on the line from a field of dreams, if the navy comes, they will build it.

if we create a demand, if we create a market, it the military does what the military can do, which is be a market leader, which is create the demand early, we can drive the price down, we can help american farmers, we can help american small business, and we can cause of that infrastructure to be built. at the same time that we are moving toward these new course of energy, -- new forms of energy, it is imperative that we also do less to do the same job. we launched our first hybrid chip last fall. it was built in my home state of mississippi. it uses electric drive for speed of 10 knots or less. on its first voyage around south

america to its home port in san diego, a big ship saved almost2 almostmillion in -- almost $2 million in fuel costs. over a lifetime, we could save a quarter of a billion dollars in fuel. we are prototyping that to be retro-fitted on our guided missile destroyers, as a that we can move that further out into the fleet. we are doing a lot of things, and we are getting a lot of help. operation three -- operation free, a group just out of the

military, has made it their goal is to wean the united states from foreign sources of energy. we are getting help from the department of agriculture. we have groups working with the department of energy to make sure that we are coordinated. we are working with the administrator of the small business administration and to make sure that small american businesses are included in this, because so many of the good ideas, so many of the things that are going to affect us in the the future, come from those small, entrepreneurial businesses that have the audacity to think about things in a different way. we are doing a lot of things, but we are doing them for one major reason. it makes us a better war-

fighting force. it makes us better at being in the navy and marine corps and that america needs. america, america's navy has always led when we have changed sources of energy. we changed from sales of two coal -- from sales to coal in the 1850's, we changed from coal to oil in the early part of the 20th century. we went nuclear and power submarines in the 1950's. every single time that we made one of those changes, there were people who said, "you are abandoning one source of proven energy for one that you do not know whether it will work, and

by the way, it is it too expensive." every single time, there were those naysayers, and every single time, they were wrong. i have every confidence that they will be wrong again. the navy and the marine corps do not back down from a challenge. the navy and the marine corps will kill every mission given to them, including -- will fill every mission given to them, including helping us become energy independent. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much for your time, mr. secretary. the questions are being passed along as we speak. the first question, in terms of the approach you're taking to reduce your fossil fuel use,

coup d'etat about some of the initiatives and you are pushing -- could you talk about some of the initiatives you are pushing to reduce your fuel is used? >> i gave one example. we are installing smart-grade technology on all of our bases using stimulus money. i do want to say that this administration, the president has laid out a vision about energy conservation as a national security issue and economic issue as well as a climate issue. we are doing that. we are also doing a lot of smaller things. in san diego, they did an analysis of where their energy was going. a lot that it was going to move water to irrigate plants, grass.

they went and changed it all out to artificial plants. when they told me that i thought, well, this is going to be ugly. i was thinking of astroturf in the 1970's. but i could not tell the difference most of the time, and their energy bills have dropped dramatically, as well as their water usage. those are a few of the things. we have a 50,000 non-combat vehicles. they turn over about every five years. just by changing the vehicles we by, by buying more electric, more hybrid, more flexible vehicles, we are lowering the amount of energy we are using, and we are going to cut fossil fuel use at least in half and the next five years. >> related to energy questions

are questions of climate change. last year the chief of naval operations established a task force in response to retreating arctic ice. what steps are you taking to make your ship capable in the newly opened arctic ocean? >> the arctic could be ice-free and the summers within a quarter of a century. it is going to require us to make that a normal part of our surface and our navy patrolling and protection, making sure the sea lanes remain open. i do not think we need any different kind of a ship's or any different kind of aircraft, we are just going to have to think about it differently and include this as part of our normal, tactical and strategic operations. >> how will the navy's 286-ship

structured be affected by competition from the expanding chinese navy? >> we have 286 ships in our fleet today. we put in, earlier this year, in the president's budgets, building an average of 10 ships per year over the next five years, 50 ships. over the course of the next 30 years, we have a plan that shows us getting into 320 ships by 2020. the floor number that the chief of naval operations has used is 313. this administration has gotten us on a ramp to get to more than 313 by the end of the decade. in order to do that, we have had to be realistic about what ships

are going to cost. we have tried to be realistic about how much congress will appropriate for naval shipbuilding. in order for us to build the ships of that we think we need, building the ships that we have put into the plan, we cannot afford cost overruns. we cannot afford it scheduled to slip. while we go industry visibility into what kind of ships we are going to buy, mature technology , we l. industry stable design. we should not be designing ships at the same time we are building them. on the other hand, if we do that, and i think the navy is doing that, industry owes us

some things, as their largest client. they have to make the investment in infrastructure. they have to train the work force. they have to show us that prices and number of hours and taken to construct a ship go down with each successive chip in the class. i will give you two programs that are giving very well right now. virginia class submarines are coming in on budget and ahead of schedule. andt.a.k.e -- t.a.k.e. drive supply ships are having the number of hours it takes to build that ship go down. we are paying very close

attention to how much these ships cost, or we simply will not be able to build them. what you have been publicly addressing the navy's transition to allow e-mails to serve aboard submarines. have you selected the first group of candidates, and when would deployment begin? >> we are in the process of starting today, selecting the first group of candidate. the reason we are starting today is that there was a notification period to congress that expired yesterday. we will be looking at the naval academy, nrotc and ocs. the poorest group will be officers that go on. it is about an 18-month pipeline from the initial selection to when they report to their ships. the first two types of submarines that women will

deploy on our ballistic missile submarines and guided missile submarines. we have had a lot of interest, a lot of interest from some very impressive young women. we are going to look at case by case at lateral transfers. for every ship there will be at least one more senior officer who will transfer latterly, probably from the supply corps, to be a mentor for the brand new, a newly minted officers that are going on aboard. we have 20 years' experience with women on services ships, and frankly, we could not run at the navy without women. this is something that is absolutely the right thing to do. it is going to make us a better navy. >> what does the deployment of women say about changes in the

naval culture and in american culture? >> whatever it says is good. more than half the technical agreed -- technical degrees in engineering and science are being granted to women today. we simply have to be competitive and recruit in in that group. i think it also says that we recognize that when it comes to serving your country, there should not be a gender impediment to that. >> in terms of training, what can be done to help train soldiers that lead to a mindsets that lead to actions that make people view them more as helper is rather than outsiders who may not have their best interests heart? quest --

>> you are seeing that the training today with sailors as well as marines. every marine who goes to deployment takes a small paperback book that talks about cultural awareness. marines, in particular, have been very innovative in this. in afghanistan, for example, they have teams of female marines that go into areas and talk to women that simply will not talk because of their culture, to our male marines. marines are involved a lot in engagement, involved a lot in making sure that what they do is not culturally offensive, wherever they are. part of this partnership that years of talking about -- that i am talking about, is becoming a

cult -- becoming comfortable in many different cultures. i talked about the lance corporal. oftentimes, that is the only american people have seen. he or she is the base of america. they have been incredibly well trained for that. >> moving to current issues, could you please comment on british petroleum's request for technical assistance in the cleanup of the gulf of mexico -- request for a naval assistance in the cleanup off the gulf of mexico? >> northcom is department of defense and component in that.

we are standing by and ready to provide whatever assistance they need. homeland security is the one agency that has people picture of this. they are doing a very good the job right now of coordinating all of the different responses that are being made to this crisis. >> are you anticipating the department of homeland security will ask you to play a role? >> we are spending by -- we are standing by for whatever role they would like us to play. they have a great grasp on the subject. whatever they need, we will try to provide. >> during the cold war, we had an incident at sea agreement with the soviet union and to ensure it that an accident at sea would not become a major international incident. would you agree to the same kind

of a treaty with iran? >> i think our sailors, marines, commanders of our ships and our task forces are very well trained. they understand the difference between an accident and something that is not. they also understand what steps have to be taken before any -- they have to operate under the rules of engagement. i do not think an agreement like that is particularly necessary. i think that the navy and the people who command the ship, and the people who serve on the ships, have a good handle on, and are trained to respond to things like this in the appropriate way. >> how well the role -- how will the role of men and women in the marine corps and navy evolve as

fewer men and women are needed to operate your warships? >> the navy has shrunk by about 60,000 people over the last few years. we are down to a core of about 324,000 sailors today. the warship that we are building, one example i will give is a combat ship. the ship i served on had 1000 people. the guided missile destroyers of today, which is as close to an equivalent ship as what i served on, have 280 in their crew. a combat ship, which is very fast, able to fight in a much shallower waters, has a crew of 40. with the people pivotman of the

weapons system, and the crew growth -- with the people to man their weapons system, the crew grows up to 80. it says that we have a lot of faith in those people. those 40 people that are commanding and running is pretty big warship -- and this is pretty big warship. but, as time goes by, the world always changes. the things we have to deal with are inevitably going to change. that is why in our training, in what we buy, in how we plan, we have to be incredibly flexible. we have to not get stock -- get stuck in one way of thinking about issues.

we have to be ready for whatever is new that comes over the horizon that we have to deal with. i am very comfortable and confident that the navy and marines can deal with anything, and that we are buying platforms that are flexible enough that they can meet any eventuality as well. >> congress has required that new service combatants and entity is ships be nuclear- powered. is that feasible? >> actually, congress said we should take a look at it. to make the business case, the financial case, for nuclear- powered ships outside of aircraft carriers, it has to be -- oil has to be at about $150 per barrel. for a sustained time.

absent that, the up-front costs are just too big for us to build the number of ships that we would need if they were nuclear powered. but again, we do not know what is going to happen in the future. we don't know what other types of fuel will be available or what technology breakthroughs will happen. we are not really in or out, but we are trying to move away as rapidly as we can from fossil fuels. >> do you support the house bill renamed the department of the navy as the department of the navy and marine corps. >> things have been working fine for the last 212 years. my position is that whatever is named, i want to be the

secretary. [laughter] >> when will we see the first nuclear destroyer or cruiser? >> we have already seen them. we have had a nuclear-power cruisers in our fleet. they have all been retired, decommissioned now, but they came into the fleet i believe in the late 1970's. they began to de-commissioned in the 1990's, and earlier in this decade. we have proven that the concept works. >> will be u.s. navy's expansion be able to keep up with the expansion of the chinese navy, a ship for a ship? does that even matter? >> i do not think that is the test, regardless of who you're talking about. i think the test is your capabilities, not simply numbers. >> looking at budgetary needs, how is and the navy going to pay

for a new ballistic missile sub without torpedoing its budget. >> i talked about the fact that we were trying to be realistic in the 30-year shipbuilding plan. we're trying to be realistic about what ships cost and what congress would appropriate. we were also trying to be realistic about what was coming down the road. the replacement for the ballistic missile submarine will begin -- the ohio class ballistic missile subs will begin to retire in 2027. those ships, if the cost what the estimate is today, they will not a big hole in the surface uneasy -- surface navy and also

an attack submarines. but 17 years is a long time. one reason we put that in there was to be realistic and to start the discussion on what sort capabilities we are going to need as a navy, not just in our ballistic submarines or our surface fleet. what i cannot control, what this congress cannot control -- what i can control, what this congress can control, is about 10 years in terms of what ships we are going to build. there will be decisions made along that will have a big impact on that. truthfully and realistically, five years to 10 years, passed that, you're getting into far more speculative and decision making than i am willing to do.

>> why is the navy buying another type of destroyer when you have already said that a different type is better for a threat? >> it started out as 830-odd and ship program. it was truncated a few years ago. secretary gate truncated it to three ships. one and two are already under construction. others are in training for the third one. the reason that we went to secretary gates and now the navy is going back to restarting the one type of ships is that it

offers us far more capabilities than the other ship, at a lower price. the president has given to the navy a large responsibility in terms of ballistic missile defense for the world. if 51 is the platform that can do ballistic defense, the 1000 cannot. that is the reason why the 1000 was a truncated and we are opening up a line and beginning to build more 51's. in fact, we have requested eight over the next five years. >> will you released the naval report investigating congressman murtha's debt at the hospital -- death at the naval hospital? >> yes.

>> what is the minimal number of sailors and marines is that you could see on future warships in an effective and maybe -- an effective and navy? >> i talked about how we are reducing crews. the rest of that question is one i hope i've learned pretty early in my career. it is hypothetical. nothing good has ever happened when i have answered a hypothetical question. [laughter] >> so, hypothetically, how many ships do think the u.s. navy should have? [laughter] >> actually, not hypothetically, u.s. navy need a floor of 313 ships in its fleet.

this administration is on track to get us more than that in the next 10 years, to 320 ships. the chief of naval operations has said 313 is a floor, not a ceiling. just as important as numbers are capabilities and the mixture of ships and that you are building. a very different kind of a ship is going to be the backbone of the navy. >> a couple of a follow-ups from the earlier questions. you mentioned the challenge posed by piracy of of africa. how is that the navy participating in these operations, and how is the cooperation with non-nato naval forces such as china and india? >> we have a task force combating piracy. nato also has a task force, as does the european union.

there are a lot of other countries, 16 in all at last count, that have individual or more ships under the tasking of their home countries. we engaged in routine and navy to a navy communications in these waters. we have to. we are all out there for the same reason. we are all fighting the same people. we all need to know where other people are. so, the coordination so far, and i anticipate in the future, has been very good at a chip to chip, and 82 navy level, and i think -- at a ship to ship and navy to navy level. >> in regards to the oil spill,

why are you still standing by? >> whatever is being requested of us, we are furnishing. homeland security is the over all agency in charge. they have -- they are controlling this very big response effort. i have a piece of the picture. i do not want to piecemeal it in terms of talking about what is being sent there. >> industry has to look at the efficiency of how ships are built. it should also be looking at maintenance costs. what efforts have you seen in that area? >> when the marine corps or the army comes back from a war, they assess the equipment, vehicles and weapons that have either

been lost in combat or worn out and are just no longer useful. they have to buy new ones to get ready for what ever is coming next. the navy reset every day. wheat reset in stride. our reset is called maintenance. we simply have to maintain our ships. yes, we are looking at ways, and we are working pretty closely with industry on ways to reduce maintenance costs, but also, we are looking internally, because we have to make sure that we get the maintenance that every one of our ships need if they are going to meet their life span. the navy has an operations and maintenance account which is a crucial account for us. it makes sure that we have enough funds and makes sure that we get those ships maintenance

on a routine basis. >> how is the navy being affected by the prolonged process of enlarging the panama canal? >> we cannot get a big ship through. i will digress for a minute. the wit of the panama canal was determined by nav ship. it was exactly two feet wider than the largest battleship of the time. we in the navy have long since built a much larger ships. we have adapted very well to get into places and other ways than through the panama canal. i do not think, operationally, it is going to mean that much one way or the other in terms of how we operate.

>> when will the navy decide whether it is going to have a multi-year deal for a new super hornet? >> we are working on that right now. we have had a proposal from a manufacturer. it is being worked in terms of whether or not the savings are there that will justify all- year, and we are hopeful that it will be resolved very soon. >> how do you anticipate the new u.s. nuclear submarine fleet to be affected by president barack obama's proposals to reduce the size of our nuclear arsenal and are dependent on nuclear weapons? >> ballistic missile nuclear submarine fleet is one of three legs of our triad. i think that it will always be

an important leg of that triad. it probably, arguably, is the most survivable leg of that. a very large part of our fleet is not ballistic missile submarines, it is attack submarines. there are one of the most flexible platforms that we have. >> we are almost out of time, but before asking the last question, we have a couple of matters to take care of. first of all, we would like to remind our members and guests of future speakers. tim kaine, chair of the democratic national committee will be discussing his party's prospects in the 2010 elections. the owner of the washington capitals will be addressing as. on may 26th, barbara bush, the daughter of former president

george w. bush and president of the global health corp. will be speaking. second, we would like to present our guest with the traditional national press club mud. -- mug. [applause] we do appreciate the time you have to spend with us this morning. we understand you're going to have a meeting this afternoon with other officials. we would love for you to give us a call and tell us how that goes. when this nation is in wartime, as the sailors and marines find themselves to playing four or five times to fight in the iraq or afghanistan, how are they coping with high level deployments? what is the navy doing to help families cope without a father

or mother, serving on a multiple tours of what will soon be a nine-year award? >> you are absolutely right. we have a very high operational tempo. there are a lot of deployments for both marines and sailors. on any given day, 40% of our ships are deployed, and more than 50% are at sea. is not just the sailors and marines, it is also the families. the navy and marine corps are doing remarkable things in terms of reaching out to families, helping with child care, helping with some of the stresses that multiple deployment have. health care issues, things like that. it is a truism, but it is no less true that our forests, the

people in our force, are that most valuable things that we have. the last thing i would like to leave you with is that in spite of high operational tempo, in spite of multiple deployment, in spite of the stresses that have been put on the navy and marine corps, this is the most resilient group of people i have ever seen. the morale, the level of dedication, and the level of a recruitment and retention that is going on right now in the navy and marine corps is simply astounding. you and all americans should be exceptionally proud of the young men and women who wear the plot of this country. it is fewer than 1% of our country that wear the uniform of this country. they are the most skilled and resilient people i have ever,

ever had the honor to meet. thank you. [applause] >> tonight, a news conference on the gulf of mexico oil spill. also, remarks from president barack obama on the gross domestic product figures for the first quarter. after that, a discussion on a job creation with new york city mayor michael a bloomberg and white house economic council director lawrence summers. . >> federal officials said they plan to investigate the cause of last week's explosion, including the possibility of criminal act s. this is 40 minutes.

>> i want to thank all those who came down to see the effects of the oil spill and the effects on our coast. we appreciate the phone call from the president yesterday. we are urging the federal government and bp to deploy more resources. we must do everything we can to contain the oil spill that threatens our wildlife and vast natural resources. if not effective, the area of will be impacted -- the erika -- the critical area will be impacted. we must do everything possible to protect our coast. i do have concerns about the bp's current resources the

inadequate. we need more help from the federal government and others. we need to protect our coasts. we need this with clean up. we've been working with local officials -- we need us with cleanup -- a swift cleanup. we have been working with local officials. i want to update you on some of the state's steps. last night, i sent letters to secretary gates, secretary napolitano, requesting the federal status to activate the national guard resources. they told us they were working very hard on that. it would provide at least 90 days active military duty for national guardsmen in response to the threat. they could help provide security, medical capabilities, and engineers, and

communications support in response to this threat. we had to respond to four storms in recent years. are ready to respond to this recent oil spill. -- they are ready to respond to this recent oil spill. we want to immediately activate 600 guardsmen. they're ordering 1500 protective suits. they are prepared to help support the cleanup efforts. we want to make sure our small businesses are protected from the oil spill. we have written to the secretary of commerce, requesting that we receive support from their economic development administration for commercial and recreational business -- fishing businesses. it will provide restoration for fisheries and commercial and recreational fishing businesses. we're one of the top producers in the lower-48 states. it is one of the top recreational fishing destinations in the country. this will adversely effect the

productivity of our state. it is critical that our fishermen and their families have the support they need to get through this. we of asked the u.s. small business corporation -- we have asked the u.s. small business administration to enable us to ask -- help the small businesses in our city will be impacted by this oil spill. we ask them to temporarily consider loan repayments for businesses impacted by the oil spill, and also those who have 2005 and 2008 as be a disaster and economic injury loans as a result of hurricanes. we are working hard to report -- support the efforts. we need to deploy assets to engage and held the federal government and bp. we're opening of the version. -- a diversion to try to help will not penetrate deep into coastal marshes. we're working on a second on a defense in the marshlands to try to preserve some of our most

fragile and important assistance -- ecosystems. we're working to identify oil spill coordinators. the office of homeland security is deploying security to help their emergency responders as well. we have a mobile command center here. we have a mobile command center at the coast guard site. the department of wildlife and fisheries has closed lower but unsound area to shrimpers. they will close the upper breton sound area at a later tonight. the the part of wildlife and fisheries has deployed 40 -- the department of wildlife and fisheries has deployed 40 biologists and has additional biologists stationed to respond when necessary. residents of coastal areas of southeast louisiana, including new orleans, maybe detecting an odor from the oil spill.

they have requested continuous air quality testing and monitoring. they will increase the frequency of air sampling. those samples will receive expedited turnaround by the laboratories. i banged the administrator -- bi thank the administrator. with also activated the joint the barman of social services -- we have also activated the joint department of social services in case they're needed. we're working with the department of wildlife and fisheries to train inmates so they can help assist our agencies. they are also training national guard trainers so they can train the guardsmen to assist the cleanup efforts. we offer these resources repeatedly to bp. we are awaiting a detailed response from them on how best

to deploy these assets. in a precautionary move, we're working with wildlife and fisheries to close the oyster beds along the eastern louisiana coast. specifically, harvesting areas two through seven. we have been told that 20 rapid response teams have been mobilized. there will ultimately be 50 in place. offered to help clean up the wetlands -- we have offered to help clean up the wetlands. i want to thank the secretary

napolitano and others who have helped us. is my pleasure to introduce secretary napolitano. >> good afternoon. i am pleased to be joined here on the gulf coast with governor jindal. we have just landed from a flight over the area. we have just convened a meeting with our state and local partners who are engaged in a coordinated effort on what needs to be done to protect lands from the spill and also to be sure we can have a quick and effective cleanup. we're paying extremely close attention to the work being done here. as the president and the law has made clear, british petroleum is the responsible party and they are required to fund the costs of the cleanup operations. we continue to urge them to leverage additional assets to help lead the response in this

effort. it is clear that after several unsuccessful attempts to secure the source of a leak -- the elite, it is time for them to supplement their current mobilization -- the leak, it is time for them to supplement their current mobilization efforts. we're here to make sure the resources are being used wisely and to the greatest effect in minimizing and our mental effect. the president has ordered that the -- and in minimizing environmental effect. the president has ordered that we respond urgently. we have anticipated and plan for the worst-case scenarios since day one. -- and planned for the worst- case scenarios since day one. response began as a search and rescue mission. the coast guard responded immediately following the april

28 explosion. -- april 20th explosion. we're helping inform the investigation on the causes of the explosion did it left 11 workers presumed dead and three critically injured -- of the explosion. it left 11 workers presumed dead and three critically injured. we began to direct oversight and support of the cleanup and containment efforts. we set up a command center here. we are working across the federal government to ensure a strong and steady battle rhythm. yesterday, i announced the designation of this bill -- the spill is of national significance. this means this is a substantial release of oil or hazardous substances which require sustained involvement of senior officials across the government.

aside from being an acknowledgement of the seriousness of this bill, it also commits the coast guard to dedicating additional senior agency staff and resources to the response. the environmental protection agency also has the same authority with respect to inland waterway spills. the coordinated federal partnership, including the department of homeland security, continues to overseeing bp's deployment with a combination of tactics. as you know, they began conducting controlled burns, designed to remove large quantities of oil from the open water, in an effort to protect shorelines, marine, and other wildlife. they continue to use chemical disbursements, which along with natural dispersions of oil, will address a large part of the select -- slick. hundreds of thousands of gallons

have been used. among other responses, activities include spinning -- skimming and significant booming efforts to try to protect the shoreline spirit nearly 220,000 feet of boom have been deployed -- shorelines. it nearly 220,000 feet of boom have been deployed. approximately 1900 personnel are currently deployed. over 853,000 gallons of oily water have been collected so far, using 300 vessels and dozens of aircraft. the department of defense is fully integrated into the homeland security department and is fully supportive of all response activities. the navy assets have been involved since day one. d.o.d. continues to offer whatever is needed as the

situation develops. the secretary of defense has approved a request for two c130 aircraft to dispense aircraft capable of covering up to 250 acres per flight, with three flights a day. the coast guard has requested additional assistance. the navy has sent thousands of feet of employable -- inflatable equipment and personnel to restore -- to rid -- to support the efforts of the coast guard. we need to take steps to ensure

the safety of our wildlife and our precious land. >> thank you very much, secretary napolitano. thank you to all of you who are here. i want to recognize the leadership of admiral and the federal team who have been here on site. it has been a team effort across all of the agencies of the federal government by secretary david hayes. they had been monitoring this minute by minute -- they have

been monitoring this minute by minute. we have a long way to go. not know exactly where we're going. we're confident that the federal team -- we do not know exactly where we are going. we're confident that the federal team is doing everything they possibly can. as soon as we learned of the explosion, we came down here to help the district -- the search and rescue efforts. as time has passed, we know this edition is still dangerous. british petroleum -- the situation is so dangerous. british petroleum as a massive oil spill for which they are responsible. it threatens natural resources around the gulf of mexico. our focus remains, as it has for the last 10 days, on overseeing the efforts to secure the oil and minimize the damage. i pressed the ceos of bp to work

harder and faster and smarter to get the job done. i have asked other companies to bring their global expertise to the situation to make sure that no idea that is worth pursuing is not pursued. the president obama -- president obama's direction is to make every resource available to respond. cannot and will not rest until bp permanently seals the well head, and until the cleanup every drop of oil. the weather presents a challenge. we have a strong interagency effort we have plans in place and resources deployed -- we have a strong interagency effort. we of plans in place and resources deployed. we have questions about safety. i have ordered immediate inspections of all deep-water operations in the gulf of

mexico. we have issued a stay feed -- a safety notice to all operators responding -- reminding of them -- reminding them of their responsibilities to conduct full test of their equipment -- all tests -- full tests of their equipment. the assistant secretary for land and minerals, along with the inspector general for the department, will lead this effort. it will provide recommendations that we can -- they will provide recommendations for improving overall safety and management. they will provide oversight and support to mms, as the conduct their joint investigation, which was ordered by secretary napolitano and me just a few days ago. those who are responsible will

be held accountable. the lessons we learn will help guide us as we responsibly and safely develop our nation's energy resources. i will now introduce the in minister for the environmental protection agency -- the administrator for the environmental protection agency. >> this is a tragedy. my heart goes out to those who are presumed lost. it has involved -- it has evolved into an environmental challenge of the first order. it is not unprecedented in the needs -- in terms of the need to respond. we need to use the lessons we learned the past. we need to be flexible and willing to move quickly to adjust to the situation as we find it on the ground here. epa is certainly a part of that. from the beginning, we have been in support of the coast guard as they moved swiftly to search and

rescue and the efforts around it. noaa's been trying to predict when this would make land fall and figure out what the situation would be pared we have had to change our approach. -- would be. we have had to change our approach. it will require a team of people focusing on multiple aspects. some of which present data challenges and questions we began -- questions. we began air sampling yesterday. some states have permanent ear monitors along the shoreline. they are working with us. -- permanent air monitors along the shoreline. they're increasing the frequency of their sampling. you can go to our web site where

you can see the results of that air monitoring. you can see other things that we would not normally look for. with two mobile -- we have two movilbile labs. there is a concern about odors. we believe that is probably do, in part, to this bill. there is a large sheen, a verry -- to this spill. there's a very large sheen, a very large spill. the data collection has begun. as we get more data, we will put it up on the website and interpret it. ism -- it is important to

understand what it means. water sampling begins today. in order to understand and help the fate and transport of material that is already in the water. that is the a coordinated effort between state and local governments, and noaa. we're building on existing data babases that we are the have struggled with mexico research center. -- that we have with the gulf of mexico research center. the resilience of the people of the gulf coast has gotten through -- got us through many challenges. we need to make sure we're getting the best ideas from those who know these marshes and coastlines like the back of their hands. we need to meet the high tech

solutions with low-tech or no tech solutions to preserve people's livelihoods. i will stay. i am planning to be here for two days. i might call my family and extend that. we will stay as long as we need to to make sure that we're ready and able to be partners in responding to support a local governments who are out there and trying to stand up their people and get their communities ready for this response. thank you very much. i would like to introduce my colleague. >> thank you. i am very pleased that you have joined us here as we try to address this very unfortunate event. since this began on april 20, we have had three priorities. stop the flow of oil, minimize the impact, and keep the public informed.

we have mounted the largest response effort ever done in the world. we have utilized every technology available. we have applied every resource requested. we continue to try to stop the source of the flow. we continue to develop new options to address the continued flow of oil at the seabed, and also to minimize the impact to the environment. we welcome every new idea and every offer of support, both from state government and federal government. we had an idea submitted to us 48 hours ago about the sub-sea operation of dispersals. that operation will begin in just two hours. we have invited in experts from other oil and gas companies. members of the department of defense are with our team in houston looking for new ideas. like everyone, we understand and completely agree that we need to bring this event to closure as

quickly as possible. we need to address the impact as fully as we can. bp's resources will be made available to do that. thank you. [inaudible] >> could you identify your -- >> sorry. ray henry, i work for the associated press. can anyone from the coast guard or bp talk about the role that the cementing played in the explosion was the mark what happened in the process? does that figure into the investigation? >> doug suttles, from bp. we do not know what caused this. the government has initiated their investigation. we have launched our own internal investigation as well.

since this began, we have had one focus -- stop the flow of oil and minimize the impact. we will actually find the cause. the equipment on the seabed will eventually be recovered. we will hope to discover and learn things from this event to make this never recover. -- recur. >> on behalf of the coast guard and secretary napolitano and myself, we have signed a joint investigation between the department of the interior and homeland security. the investigators are on the ground trying to determine the facts. this will be an ongoing investigation. there are no clear answers as to what caused this unprecedented event. it is being very difficult to deal with.

>> thank you. i am from bloomberg news. do you know the daily cost of these operations? has the drilling of the relief well started? thank you. >> the current costs are between $6 million and $7 million per day. as the oil approaches the shoreline, the costs will increase as we mount additional moving activities and cleanup activities where it has occurred. the relief well obligations should begin -- operations should begin tomorrow. i should also say that a second drill ship will be arriving tomorrow. it will be available to deploy the subsea recovery system, or attempt additional interventions on the existing well.

>> governor jindal. a lot of people in venice, louisiana -- they are buried angry with bp -- very angry wit h bp and they are considering filing suit. is the state also considering filing suit? how does that change your dynamic -- the dynamic of your relationship with the company? >> our focus is to mitigate the damage on our coast, our fisheries, and are ecosystems. one of the suggestions we made -- we are concerned. encouraged them strongly to seek even more assistance from the federal government. -- we have encouraged them strongly to seek even more assistance from the federal government. our focus is making sure that we deploy the resources to protect

our coast line and that the cleanup starts as quickly as possible. there'll be time later for litigation. our focus has to be on protecting our coast and our wetlands. many people's livelihoods will be negatively impacted. many small businesses -- that is why we have asked the department of commerce and the small business administration to help them. we want to do everything we can to help them get back on their feet. >> supreme -- sabrina williams. you said you are calling on bp to operate smarter, do more --i am addressing this to secretaries salazar and napolitano. you called on the be to operate smarter, do more, specifically, where are they dropping the ball? >> bp has all hands on deck.

this is a matter of global proportions. they have some and their global resources to focus on this issue. -- summoned their global resources to focus on this issue. encourage them to reach out to the entire industry -- we have encouraged them to reach out to the entire industry. i asked the key to put together a team to take -- i asked bp to put together a team to make sure we're maximizing the efforts here. this incident has huge ramifications for what happens with respect to energy development in the oceans all around the world. we have a lot to lose here in terms of an energy resource and in terms of environmental values that we cherish. the oil and gas industry has a tremendous amount to lose in

terms of their global economic value. they are putting tremendous resources into trying to figure out the problem, in terms of stopping the flow from the well. under the federal law that applies to this, the responsibility for responding to this spill is with the company. at the highest level of british petroleum, in writing, they have assured us that they have the resources to respond to the challenge. >> [inaudible] operator. >> operator, do you want go to a question? [inaudible] >> can you hear me? >> ian, dow jones.

i have spoken to two industry experts whose jobs are to estimate oil spill size is based on satellite data -- sizes based on satellite data. using the information available in terms of how thick it is, they are estimating a spill that is five times what bp is saying. bp says 5,000 barrels a day. they are saying 25,000 barrels a day. are you confident in the 5,000 barrels a day number? what is that based on? are they bp's figures? >> i would caution you not to get fixated on an estimate of how much is out there. the most important thing is that we started corralling resources for always -- for a worst-case scenario from day one.

we have solicited the help of the whole of government and the private sector to approach this response. >> so you are confident in those figures supplied about the barrels per day? >> this is doug suttles. since the beginning of the sinking of the transition -- transocean, we could monitor with remote operated vehicle cameras. we have been monitoring the amount of flow. we cannot meter that flow. as the events unfold, we can monitor what is on the surface of the sea. we have a unified command, including noaa scientists. our best estimate was 1,000 barrels a day at first. as we began to gather more data,

we revised that number to 5,000 barrels a day. that did not indicate a change in the amount of flow. it indicated a change in the estimate of the flow rate. this is highly in precise. -- imprecise. we continue to respond to about your response -- prepared to deal with that, in the eventuality that the rate is higher. >> [inaudible] >> state your affiliation. >> could this affect oil production? could there be a halt to future oil production? is that a consideration? especially in deep water? >> the oil and gas -- which this

nation currently depends on -- very much comes from the gulf of mexico. about 1/3 of the domestically- produced oil and gas resources come from this region. we want to make sure that those operations are safe. we have dispatched the inspections to do what we have to do to make sure those are operating safely. the president this morning directed the department of interior and the secretary to report back to him within 30 days with any recommendations on any kind of safety measures. at this point in time, we are still doing additional work and research to determine whether or not there are other safety procedures that need to go into place. the oil and gas production continues to come from the gulf coast and feels the economy of this nation -- fuels the economy of this nation continues to flow

today and will continue into the foreseeable future, until we determine that there may be a problem. we want to do this based on fact. we want to do it based on the best science that we have. >> state or affiliation. -- your affiliation. >> secretary napolitano, you sounded critical of bp's response so far. are you critical of it? what do you think is missing from it? >> well, i think -- i think there is reason now to know more than we knew originally. originally, this well was drilled with the expectation

that if there were an explosion or a failure, that a block- -- blowout preventer would close off leakage into the ocean. when it failed, bp took actions designed to try to take other actions along the well to close off leakage and the oil flow. none of those worked. i think i share the disappointment allof all, in the fact that none of those worked. we need to move more speedily. we need to move speedily to protect wetlands, marshes, the

ecosystem here. the federal government stands ready not just to support bp, but to move aggressively to work with the state of louisiana, the parish president in the effects it areas -- the parish presidents in the affected areas. we want to work with all of those who are threatened by this oil spill. because it is now approaching land fall, we need to make sure there is an effective and easy claims process, so that people can know that they will not be financially damaged themselves, personally or in their businesses, because of this. we also have to have an effective process where we have all of the resources of the

federal government linked up with the state. not just in louisiana, but also moving east to mississippi, alabama, and perhaps even as far as florida. we are making sure that response is bare. -- is there. it is strong, cornyn, designed to minimize the harm -- it is strong, coordinated, designed to minimize the harm to our land. we will work to make sure that british petroleum meet its financial obligations, an obligation it undertook in exchange for the ability to drill. it is a partnership. it is an effort in which

everybody is standing here as involved. we have an effective stake. those with the most effective stakes are the men and women who live in the coastal areas of louisiana, mississippi, alabama, and florida. their utmost in our minds. >> please state your affiliation. >> the associated press. this is a question either to the admiral or to whoever might know. of the vessels that have been brought in, how many were able to work today with the rough weather? can it work? >> earlier someone actually said that the weather is a challenge. several days ago, we had two

good weather days in a rolw. we had very good success on the water, including the in situ burn test, which looks like a great tool to use moving forward. when the wind comes up, we cannot do much on the sea. during good weather, we can apply all of our tools to limit the impacts and hold this offshore. when the weather comes up, we cannot do that. as i am talking to you, we're not able to operate our skimmers. >> thank you, ladies and gentlemen. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> coming up, remarks from president obama on gdp figures

for this year. after that, a discussion on job creation with the mayor of new york, michael bloomberg, and lawrence summers. also, a discussion on the immigration bill in arizona signed into law last week. after that, all look at u.s. and israel policies toward iran. -- a look at u.s. and israel politicians -- policies toward iran. tomorrow, a gathering at the white house correspondents association annual dinner. there will be your marks by president obama and ndc "tonight show" host jay leno. you can watch that marmite at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span -- you can watch that tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> c-span, you can connect with us on facebook, twitter, and

youtube. signup for our schedule alert e- mails. >> president obama says the gdp growth is evidence that his administration's efforts to shore up the economy are working. he also talks about the gulf of mexico oil spill. this is about 10 minutes. i have dispatched the secretaries of the homeland security and the interior, as well as several others to ensure

that we continue to do everything necessary to respond to this event. i expect there reports today. as i said yesterday, -- their reports today. as i said yesterday, bp is responsible for the costs. we have been working closely with state and local authorities since the day of the explosions. there are five staging areas to protect sensitive shorelines, approximately 1900 federal response personnel in the area, and more than 300 response vessels and aircraft on the scene 24/7. we have laid approximately towards 17,000 feet of protective boom, there are more on the way. i have ordered secretary salazar to conduct a thorough review of this incident and report back to me in 30 days on what, if any, additional precautions should be

required to prevent accidents like this from happening again. we're going to make sure that any increase is going forward have those safeguards. we have is beached -- any leases going forward have those safeguards. we have dispatched teams. i believe it is part of our overall strategy for energy security. it must be done responsibility -- responsibly for our workers and our environment. the economy and the livelihood of the region are at stake. we will continue to update the american people in the situation -- on the situation in the gulf going forward. i would like to say a few words about the economy. every three months we measure the total output of goods and services of our businesses, workers, and government. it determines whether our economy is shrinking or growing

-- the single-broadest measure of america's economic health. at the height of our economic crisis, that measure was delivering grim news. day, it is a different story appeared in the first quarter of last year, our -- today it is a different story. in the first quarter of last year, our economy shrank. today, we learned our economy grew at a rate of 3.2%. our economy is in a much better place than it was one year ago. the economy shrank four four quarters in a row, and it has now grown -for three in a now- for four quarters in a row, and it has now grown for three in a row. we're creating jobs. we're heading in the right direction. we're moving forward. our economy is stronger. the economic heart beat is growing stronger.

i measure progress by a different pulse. what do the american people feel in their own lives, day in and day out? i spent a few days visiting with people in small towns in the midwest, places where the damage done by the worst recession in our lifetime is profound. they're trying to recover from a shock wave of lost homes and lost businesses, and more than 8 million lost jobs. it is a tragedy that has families and communities across america feeling like they're on life-support. while today's gdp report is an important milestone on our road to recovery, it does not mean much to an american who has lost his or her job and cannot find another. for millions of americans, our friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens who are ready and willing to get back to work, "you're hired" is the only economic news they are waiting to hear. they are why the work of moving

this economy forward remains our focus every day. the government cannot replace every job that has been lost. that is not the government's role. it is america's business, all across the country, the private sector businesses that have always been and will always be the engines of our job creation. our task is to create the conditions necessary for those businesses to open their doors, expand our operations, and ultimately hire more workers. that is precisely what we have tried to do by cutting taxes for small businesses, by backing thousands of loans, supporting billions of dollars of landi ending, by investing in potential areas of job growth, like clean energy. i've visited workers in iowa -- i visited workers in the iowa.

the plant is alive and humming with more than 600 employees at work. that facility has capitalized on its growth by taking advantage of an advanced energy manufacturing tax credit in the recovery that we passed last year. it allowed it to add equipment, staff, and hire new workers. the program was so successful that it was oversubscribed by a ratio of three to one. i have called for an additional $5 billion investment into these programs. every time a new factory or plant opens or expands, it becomes important to more people than those with employees. it becomes an economic lifeline to a community, capable of supporting dozens or hundreds or even thousands of jobs indirectly. the ceo's and workers here could tell you the same thing.

where did he go? there he is. this company produces smart meters to help businesses and consumers analyze real-time data about how they use energy. they help improve energy efficiency and save consumers money. they're critical components gri of the components electricd of tomorrow. -- they are critical components of the electric grid of tomorrow. they're using their tax credit to meet demand, adding production lines. at one plant they have hired 40 new workers. at another, they have hired 120 new workers. two of them are here.

james recently found himself laid off from a local plant, after plunging in for 20 years. he and his wife are both working there to help form a clean energy future for their daughters. there is a president of a company that produces advanced batteries -- batteries for energy storage in the next- generation vehicles. vice president biden traveled to michigan to announce that his company was one of the 48 to win a recovery act to grant for advanced battery technology. that grand help them hire 44 new workers. it is supporting -- that grant helped them hire 44 new workers. it is supporting them did it will allow them to hire another

120 workers, more than 1000 by the end of the year, and more than 3000 by the end of 2012. they lost their previous jobs in the recession. they were hired by this company to help manufacture the batteries of tomorrow. they have begun construction on a facility which is scheduled to go online in july. they have begun designing another facility. they have plans for a high- volume facility. they were looking to build that factory in asia, but instead they chose the state of michigan. it will be one of 30 to go fully operational over the next six years, manufacturing electric- vehicle batteries and components here in the united states of america. this is what is possible in a clean energy economy.

these folks right here. this is what happens when they place their bets on american workers and businesses -- our bets on american workers and businesses. we will continue to do this across our economy. we have a long way to go. there will be more ups and downs along the way. today's news in another sign that we're on the right track. we are going to keep doing everything we can to help our businesses power our recovery. we want a more hopeful and more profit -- more prosperous seven days in the future. thank you very much, everybody -- we want a more hopeful and more prosperous future. thank you very much, everybody. >> when are the solar panels going on the roof, sir?

>> tomorrow, 3000 journalists, politicians, and celebrities, gather at the washington hilton for the white house correspondent association annual dinner. there will be remarks by president obama and ndc "nigel" boast -- nbc "tonight show" host jay leno. >> coming up, a discussion on job creation with mayor michael bloomberg and the white house economic director lawrence summers. also, a look at the arizona immigration bill. after that, a look at u.s. and

israel policies toward iran. >> the people who are coming to us for rest and housing markets wanted to have security that the that exposure to the housing market. that is what they got. >> the senate hearing with goldman sachs executives went nearly 11 hours. see this at the c-span video library. every program since 1987 is free online. >> now a discussion on job creation with new york city mayor michael bloomberg and larry summers. this is part of an event hosted by the center for american progress. >> good afternoon, everyone. i am roger altman.

it is my pleasure to introduce a particularly exciting event and the final one of today's program. especially fortunate to have three truly extraordinary individuals joining us. first, our panelists -- everyone in this room and in the city and around the country knows of larry summers. larry is the director of president obama's national economic council. he served as secretary clinton -- he served on the administration under president clinton. he has other quite important to competence. it always seems that he did all of those things before he turned 30. [laughter] i am always reminded of the line which a friend of ours uses -- that larry is the youngest american ever to turn 40. [laughter]

i have had the pleasure of knowing him and being his friend for what a long time. i consider him not only brilliant, as everyone else does, but fascinating and very wise. i have never had a conversation with larry where i have not learned something meaningful. further, at least in my view, history is going to look upon america's response to the financial and economic crisis of 2008 and i2009 very favorably. larry will be credited, quite deservedly, as the key architect of that historically important response. thank you for being here. then, or other panelists -- our

other panelist. ellen degeneres once walked out -- [laughter] you will like this. she once walked out at the oscars to introduce paul mccartney, saying, "this man needs no introduction." i am quite tended to do that here with this -- tempted to do this with the next panelist, but i will not. mike bloomberg, mayor of new york, is a person of singular achievement and talent. i use that word carefully. i have lived in new york most of my life. he is simply the best mayor that new york has had in my lifetime and even in the much longer life

time, for example, bob rubin. -- of bob rubin. [laughter] much of today's conference has highlighted the relationship between education and employment and wages. i would particularly point to mayor bloomberg's achievements relative to the new york city school system. it is one of the most difficult challenges on earth and one that i know quite a bit about. he has made remarkable progress. i hope people talk about that today. he is also, as we know, one of america's greatest entrepreneurs in greatest chief executive officers -- and greatest chief executive officers did there are few symbols of american enterprise that are stronger than his company, bloomberg lp. thank you for being here today. the most skillful moderator in

the world -- charlie rose. i am sure that everyone watches his show every night. if you do not, please leave now. [laughter] but it is, far and away, the deepest and most serious show of its kind in the country. if you want to see a subjects explored seriously and in great depth, that is charlie's show. you can see that he is still fairly young, but he has interviewed everyone from alexander the great to george washington. [laughter] is moderated every important discussion since a constitutional convention. i will turn this over now to him. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you, roger. it is good to see all of you here. this is an important subject and one that is on the minds of many americans. i know that all of you and the

panelists have thought long and hard about this. let me ask each of you, from your own perspective, where you said. how do you see the job picture today, in terms of unemployment and job creation? >> i cannot help but be a prisoner of my past as an economist and try to be a little bit analytical about it. i will try that for just a couple of minutes. that should not blind us to the fact that this is a terrible, defining problem for our society. .

>> and that indicator and many like it tracks what is happening to the unemployment rate. there is another way of making the same point is they have these studies of how dramatic different life events are and in many cases, losing a job one has had for a long time is second and not very far behind losing a spouse and is actually more traumatic for many people van being divorced. this is a profoundly important

problem for our society. it is the task of economists to analyze it and the more bloodless way so you can think hard about what the right solutions are. to think about joblessness in america right now, we need to think about three separate dimensions of the problem. the first is the cyclical to mention. we are in the midst of the worst recession and a sense of continuing impact since the second world war. it is, at root, a financial crisis but reflected things that went down in the financial system and spread to the rest of the economy.

that depressed demand and therefore, destroyed jobs. if you ask why it is the joblessness picture today different than the jobless picture three years ago, the dominant reason is that we have this profound recession and the solution to recession lies in increasing demand. and that is done by making financial markets work. that is done by temporary role for government in providing demand. that is done by creating environment to great confidence that spurs and business investment and spending goes to the picture that is being painted of the long run of the country. that is what the president paused recovery act and its financial recovery program or about and there is no solution to any of this that does not run through having a strong

recovery. what has so far been a temporary break down of the relationship between the economy as measured by the gdp and the unemployment rate. you had taken the standard relationships that economists used to project the relationship between gdp and employment, and you projected that, you would not have projected unemployment as high as it is right now. you would have projected it a point or 1.5 points lower. to put the point in a different way, you would not have

projected that productivity growth would have been very rapid in the second half of 2000 9 at 7% annual rate. that means the demand is taking fewer people to produce the stuff that is demanded. nobody knows for sure what the future holds. maybe things will restore to normal in which case we will see more job growth than would be justified by gdp over the next year or two. that would be my test but not one i would hold confidently. alternatively, things may have happened that led to permanently hire productivity growth which in some sense is a good thing but will complicate the challenge of generating adequate demand to meet what is even greater potential with more

productivity. the second jobless phenomenon is this breakdown of the relationship between gdp and employment. the third phenomenon, and there will only be three, i promise, is in many ways the most profound one. the one that ultimately is most important. it is a breakdown in the economy's ability to provide viable jobs for those would come in an earlier era, worked with their strength. the best way to put it is this -- 40 years ago, one out of 20 men 25-54 in america was not working. today, the number is not one out

of 20, it is one out of five. a good guess based on extrapolating the trends in this area is that when the economy recovers, five years from now, assuming we the return to normal cyclical conditions, one out of the six men who are 25-54 will not be working at any point in time and as you would expect, the rapes are twice as high or more among the -- de rates -- the rates are twice as high or more among those who do not have the education. that is a reflection of the fact that large categories of jobs that once existed, large categories of demand, have

simply fallen away. dominant to laly due to technol. it does not take very many people to build a car wherever that car is produced. that is the dominant explanation. the secondary explanation is that with the globalization, the jobs that are done in the lower and have tended to migrate abroad. so, for the long run, long after this recession, finding ways as a country of developing the skills and potential of all americans, not just the majority working becomes a critical priority and thinking

about why and how public policy , while being responsible, it can promote the demand for that lower wage labor becomes a central and i did not say how, there are millions of policy issues around just how did do this. i do not see how anybody can look at the wholesale destruction of construction jobs, the number of people working in construction, the state of our infrastructure in many spheres, and not think that something ought to be done to increase the extent of our national effort to around public

investment and is a disproportionate employer of some of the group's that are hardest hit. >> that is from a policy perch. how about from an executive purge? >> there is the recession, which we should not be surprised about. things start to build, things get better. government encourages everybody and we have a downturn to put us back to reality and everybody says never again and we start the cycle over again. i have been alive for only 68 years and i have seen 10 of these things. we will get through this. we have to make sure we do not destroy our capital markets. and the end, it is the capital to solve the problem. we did not have jobs and the construction industry because capital is necessary to let

businesses expand. some of the more fundamental things larry talked about or the real issues in this country. one is immigration. we need more immigrants, not less. to some people, that may be counter intuitive. you only have jobs when people start businesses. who wants to start a business? the experience of immigrants that come to our country is as they worked very hard and slowly over time the redress toward the mean of being the average. that is the history of immigration. that is why our country has been so great. we have always had these waves of immigrants that have come here and added to our culture and cuisine and religion and language but they were the catalyst for new business. people have done the study of the prison and -- of business is being formed, the number that just had a green card is quite

dramatic. i would try to convince congress, not easy, i understand, issue a green card to anybody who wants to come here and start a business and keep the green card as long as you have 10 or more employees. that is a practical thing. this would do it. it would do it relatively quickly at virtually 0 expense for the federal government. second thing that is different, larry talked about technology. the fact that the percentage of men went from one of the 20 to one of the five are unemployed, part of that is good because the reason i think for it is the opportunities for women to enter the work force and how they have taken advantage of it. if you look at universities and high schools, it is women, women, women, graduating more and more and attending more and more. it is a time bomb for our

society that we have a big group of men that are dropping out. it is partially because women who did not participate in the work force other than nursing and teaching are hurting because fewer women want to go into them because they have more opportunities. you see a handful of big corporations in america run by america. 10 years from now, you will see a heck of a lot more because there are working their way up to the latter and getting the experience and demonstrate they know what to do. there are fundamental things of people not starting businesses. we do not educate our kids well enough. if you want to go to work for the sanitation department, you have to have a high-school diploma or ged. that is to drive a truck and keep our streets clean. you have to have a high-school diploma. think about the number of kids who drop out of high school all around this country. they could not get jobs in our

sanitation department. why? the technology is greater all the time and we want people who have shown that they have the drive and the self discipline to get through school and the maturity that going to school gives you. otherwise, we cannot provide as good as service as we want. if i were the president, i happen to think that obama's legacy will be how good a job he does and reforming public education. he has taken it on and has a great secretary. he has the right people. how he is going to convince this country that you cannot let your religion get into the way of education. we are making that mistake throughout this country. you cannot let your views on who should be teaching and if we want to protect certain groups of teachers. we have to have the best and brightest.

you have to fix immigration. the economy will, with time, get better. we have to make sure we do not heard it. honestly, technology. technology is always going to make people more productive. you can go back to when the steam engine came out. there were always these destructive technologies that were going to destroy the work force. in fact, we've managed to work our way through it and became stronger on the other end. we need to have more skills and more opportunities to do so. the same thing is happening around the world. we are not the only ones with these problems. not being able to keep up with the demands of the work force are a universal problem. i think that you said, i would describe it as a barbell effect. it is the middle jobs better automated or not being in demand but if you take a look,

you have the jobs at the entry level where you have to work in a restaurant, those kinds of jobs, picking apples, these are jobs, there is nothing wrong with them, that is the way our ancestors started. working on a push cart or whatever. the entry level stuff, tourism in new york city, for example. we work very hard and tourism because they create those kinds of jobs. on the other end, you have very high and jobs were you or somebody else measures performance. if you think about it, people while against big bonuses and high salaries against some people and say it is not fair. no company pays compensation higher because they want to be nice guys. you cannot even pay your compensation based on how much people contribute. you pay your compensation based on what it means in the

competitive market to get the people you want and keep them and then, if that cost is too high, you are out of business. people always think that companies looked at all their products and set the price higher. you set the price based on what the market will bear and you try to find a way to have your expenses lower than that. >> do you want to speak to with the mayor said? >> as the mayor was speaking, you are supposed to respond to the other panelists. at first to talk about immigration. i thought it is better -- probably best for me to stay away from that topic. >> i had exactly the same response. >> where did he go next? opportunities for women. [laughter] i thought it might be safer to stay away from that. [laughter]

>> capital markets. you can go to capital markets. >> let me say two things. i think the mayor's emphasis on education as what is ultimately an most profoundly important, you cannot put enough emphasis on that. there are a lot of troubling statistics people throw around. we still have the largest share of our population -- of our work force that has graduated from college, of any country. but we are now out of the top 10 in the fraction of those between 25 and 35 who have graduated from college which means things are headed very much in the wrong direction.

that is a ton about the provision of opportunity. this is something i studied a great deal when i was at harvard and the way of oversimplifying it would be the dumbest rich kids are far more likely to go to college than even the smartest poor kids. we have a major problem of around equal opportunity. it is probably the thing the president has done that has gotten the least attention relative to how important it is in terms of very substantial increases in the pell program that college graduation cap by 2020 and it is something that is hugely important. i've basically related to everything you said. i think that, so, i would have a less philosophical of the

current -- build a sock and -- philosophical view of the current crisis than just another cop-down cycle. -- up-down cycle. this was a much closer brush with armageddon then we typically see every few years. this financial crisis was, by some counts, the seventh in a generation where millions of people have lost their jobs because of a financial system that was supposed to manage and distribute risk but ended up creating risk. i totally agree with your admonitions about the need to preserve the flow of capital, agreed about the importance of preserving meritocracy and

compensation and payment but i would think that these event force some fairly fundamental reflection on but between i financial system that has grown massively and grown massively as an absorber of talent. the broader economy, larry katz has done surveys, i do not remember the precise data on the fraction of harvard graduates who find their way into finance, and it changed in a revolutionary way from 1980 to this decade. that was highly related to the compensation. i am not sure the boulder -- the total benefit to the broader society means that was entirely a step toward greater economic

efficiency. >> my alma maters, a lot of them went into medicine but that is another issue. >> speak to the difference in the capital markets and financial reform. >> 100% right. there was a sunday morning when i got a call from the heads of banks who said i am not sure we can open on monday and what can you do to make sure washington understands just how serious the situation was and i think larry and tim and hank paulson and a bunch of people here who to date you can second-guess some of the things that paulson and geithner did but last -- but that morning, nobody knew how things would turn out and they have to make a very big decisions and you have to bear on the side of throwing as many things at the problems you can and hopefully one of them will work. i think history will show that they got this country through a

very difficult time. my perception of all of this financial crisis, and i did not mean to make light of those who lost their jobs or houses, because it is tragic. but why did we get into this situation? i would blame everybody. we all wanted more credit, easier credit. we were out there encouraging home ownership as a social policy and incidentally, 90% of the people that got their homes would have not gotten without this expensive programs still have their homes. the matter how tragic the 10% is, i think history probably show it was a good thing for america to encourage homeownership and make the opportunity available to a lot of people who were starting up the ladder who would otherwise not have gotten there. congress was certainly behind it. the banks made money that way.

the construction industry made money. we all liked the fact that our pension funds were getting money and our iras were going up and we were getting paid more. one day, you are never sure what is going to trigger the downturn, in this case, think of an insurance company. life insurance companies are built on the fundamental belief that everybody is not going to die at the same time. if everybody dies at the same time, life insurance companies could be argued that they were an outrageous speculation. it is a risk that we understand and is a reasonable risk to run and it's seldom happens. to some extent, not the only thing that went wrong because clearly, you had companies like aig whose balance sheet was much too risky and if we had more disclosure, the marketplace may have kept it from happening, but

we need a lot more disclosure. you did have, all of a sudden, an awful lot more people default on their mortgages than anybody thought was possible. that is why you have the rating company's rate a security aaa and then all of a sudden, it is worthless. it was a fundamental assumption that most people would keep their mortgages and there would be a handful that would default and you work through those and sell more and your profits are diminished a bit about picking up the losses. now, all of a sudden, we have changed the whole idea. the insurance company that we now have is the government. it is the government's job if it is too big to fail, i find it hard to find an industry that has a large work force that is too big to fill. maybe that is the right policy. one thing that worries me is it is more than just wall street or the finance industry, i want to make sure we are going to take

care of other industries. the automobile industry was too big to fail, as well. why did they get into trouble? you could blame the government for that. if we had forced standards after, we had them from 1975 to 1985 when we improved mileage dramatically and then stopped. all of a sudden, they will cut one day and found another group of companies that could beat them. if the government had either stayed away and not protected them or forced them to become better, it might have solved that problem. it is leaving it in the middle which is what the government did. >> we can talk about immigration and capital markets and financial reform. the keynote of this particular date has been jobs and job creation and where the problems lie. how long is it going to take, if we are now in a kind of economic recovery, to get back and what

will affect the velocity of getting there? >> full employment will depend upon two things. it will depend upon the pace of the economic recovery in terms of gdp and it will depend of the uncertainty that i referred to earlier about the relationship between gdp and unemployment. the standard formula of that economists use is take the growth rate, subtract 2.5,/2, that is the change in the unemployment rate. if the growth rate is 4.5 per year, you have reduced the

unemployment rate for one year. the reduced it by one percentage point. make your judgment about the gdp forecast over the next several years, take your guess about whether the formula is going to snap back or continued to be off and you can form a few about movement in the unemployment rate. what i think is safe to say is even on optimistic assumptions, there is going to be substantial unused capacity in this economy measured by the unemployment rate, measured by the fraction of factories that are in use, measured by the paucity of vacancies available to the unemployed workers, measured by the level of income

relative to tread, by any measure you use, the economy is going to be short its potential and is going to be constrained by demand more than by supply for the next several years. i emphasize that point because there is a tendency to gravitate very quickly to measures that focus on the supply side. in the long run, that is ultimately the only thing that is important in matters. in the short run, it is a great deal about demand and one has to be very careful about thinking about things that will increase the supply but not move demand and that is why many of us feel that we have to pick it to a focus on long run problems, as we do that, we need to maintain

an awareness that a very large number of teachers who are the investment and the education to strategy in the future are going to be laid off within the next six months if nothing is done. the agenda of driving this and preventing armageddon, we have made a lot of progress on that agenda. the work of assuring strong and robust recovery is not yet complete. >> do we need another stimulus? >> i do not think framing the question in terms of a stimulus is helpful. do we need to extend unemployment insurance? yes. do we need to continue to provide support for state and local governments to maintain and prevent large-scale layoffs of teachers? yes. or their investments that can be made in energy efficiency that

would be terrific investments measured by internal rate of return even if there was a recession and create jobs, as well? >> yes. is this a major for a major new experiment? absolutely no. >> speak to your laboratory of new york city about austerity and loss of tax revenue and teachers and therefore, the restrictions you have in terms of what you can do. >> about four years ago, we thought the economy could not continue and the markets cannot continue the way they were doing. when you read about no interest loans, there is something wrong with that. there is no free lunch. we started a campaign, we have had seven separate programs, we call them programs to eliminate

the budget gap. cutbacks in expenses and looking for ways to enhance revenues. you can get revenues from fees or fines or taxes or other things we focused on. we cut about 4 4 billion out of our budget. we prepay if you billion dollars in interest and put the $3 billion away and a fund to start funding the liability for retiree raise health-care and tried to make the city government more efficient. we have been combining some small agencies. we are trying to make the government more business friendly so people can get businesses open more quickly. the result of all that is the city itself is balanced. the official balance is out next week. our problem is we live in a state where we sent a lot of money up to albany.

we did a little bit back. we are supposed to say thank you. it is our money. we are supposed to cut back dramatically the amount of money they spend -- they send back because they want to use the money elsewhere in the state to influence, i think it is fair to say, the political reality of the rest of the state. if you talk to mayors all throughout this country, they will all tell you that the federal government again and again mixed the same mistake. they send money to the states and the state never sent it to the city. seattle never got any money from the stimulus. the bottom line is the monies that go to the states cannot get to the population centers that are the future of this country. when the state cut back the amount of money they send back to us, which they will do, it puts us in a very difficult situation of having to make some choices.

with art governor's budget, it would require of laying off 19,000 employees. we won't have to do that but we will have to make some very painful choices. we have a situation where government employees are getting paid more than the private sector. they have pension benefits the private sector no longer enjoys. it is an untenable situation but a difficult situation to address because we are very dependent upon our employees. we have 300,000 employees in new york city. they provide better services, and i argue, than anywhere else. we just cannot afford to have all of them and spend some much. our uniformed services, the benefits equal 100% of salary. it is a situation where it has become very generous. that is true of virtually every city in the country.

every mayor is trying to address the problem. the good news with new york is we did not have the big downturn in real estate because we do not have a lot of second homes and a lot of speculation homes. we never experienced the destruction of the construction industry that occurred in the south and west. we have a construction industry that has problems but compared to the rest of the country, negligible. we also have eight raison d'etre for people to come. people make fun of the cultural things, the gates, the waterfalls, we become the glitzy, the edgy, the where it is happening city around the world. our tourism business is down only 2% or 3%. it is down double-digit and other cities. we have more people working in tourism than any other time in history and this is in the middle of a worldwide downturn.

as the dollar strengthens, it appears not to hurt our situation. we are working hard to bring film and television over from the west coast. that is billions of dollars worth of revenue and hundreds of thousands of employees. we have worked very hard to bring i.t., nobody thinks of new york as an i.t. center. google has for 5000 people. other companies have 4000 or 5000 people. what we are trying to do in new york city, we are trying to make the reason, we want the best and brightest to live there and companies have to come. other places have a strategy of

buying jobs. they pay lares company to come to their city. i want to say larry, the people you need are living here and they are not going to move and you cannot have any choice. we are investing six straight and clean streets and that sort of thing. our delegation to never do enough. chuck schumer has worked very hard, in all fairness, for us. some of the others on some things have and some things have not. our problem is not so much the federal to government. we just have to make new york city be the reason that people want to come and stay there. >> one thing you have said about job creation and holding jobs is when you start talking about the financial community and start attacking certain aspects of the job committed to, you are talking about jobs in new york city. >> we are talking about fire, police, everybody. how do you think we pay them? the money that the financial industry generates. >> with reform -- with reference

to the regulatory reform bill making its way to the senate' ad if that bill was in place, would it have avoided the economic recession that we faced? >> i think that the measures that are contained in the dodd bill would vary substantially have reduced the factors that came together to produce this crisis. if you ask are we ever going to pass a law that abolishes the business cycle or make financial accidents impossible, the answer is no. if you ask have we done things that reduce the incidence of plane crashes by a factor of seven over 60 years and reduced the incidence of automobile fatalities by mile driven by four or five and can we

substantially and importantly reduce financial risk, the answer is yes. i believe this bill does that. how does it do it? the perception of too big to fail and quasi-government guarantee is fueled by the absence of any procedure for resolving a large financial institution that is not a bank. literally, and on contemplated possibility. this bill provides procedures for addressing that situation. the ability to seduce people into misguided financial products that promote risk for them and thereby promote risk for the system is surely attenuated by having a regulator whose criteria of success is how consumers to do it rather than the profitability and accumulation of capital of financial institutions and that is the consumer financial

regulator. nobody can look at what happened in the credit default swaps market during the last decade. the volumes of risk that were being taken in completely non transparent ways and believe that that is prudent. depressants and use of exchanges and clearing houses, like we do for stocks, like we do for a large fraction of commodities, is a proven technique for reducing financial risk by pulling liability and brisk and making runs much less likely into this bill provides for that possibility, as well. it cannot have been responsible to have enormous financial institutions with nobody taking

any responsibility for their comprehensive regulation. yet, that was true, for example, aig, under the rules that we had previously. that is fixed. those mandates, coupled with what is clearly imperative, and international cooperation to assure that these enhanced authorities are used to provide for much more capital and much less leverage, i believe offer the prospect of very substantial reduction in the risk of financial accident. >> by the way, this is not something that is [unintelligible] in human society. if you look at the experience of canada or the u.s. between 1950 and 1980, there are places and

periods. in whic in whciich thes substantially lower and that is where we need to drive toward in creating a system and that is what this bill tries to do. >> you describe it in terms of its impact on new york city. " i think we do need a bill. the consumer protection part is right on. consumer protection probably has to be in education rather than restriction. whenever to try to restrict what people do, you run into problems. you are better off explaining why it may or may not be in their interest. the disclosure part, i could not agree more. in the end, what government can do best is to force disclosure

and let the marketplace work. you cannot have regulation that is inconsistent with what exists overseas. companies will move that part of the business overseas or their competitors overseas will take all of their business. we are a bit naive in terms of how you would separate derivatives from the rest. none of these markets could exist without derivatives. the loan market cannot exist, construction cannot exist, this is just another way of letting everybody swap risk back and forth which will encourage them to provide the capital we need for other things. was it taken to extremes? yes. another problem, and larry mentioned it, we have regulation in this country for different industries. but when those industries are in the same business, we do not

have a business regulator. we have an industry regulator. you think about these groups, they could be doing the same things but they have different regulations. some have state, some have different regulations, different parts of congress oversee or state legislations, you cannot let companies shop for regulators. you have to have something consistent. the problem we have is it is the way we have structured this as opposed to what they do. the industry's never used to do the same thing. as they have changed, the regulators have been unwilling to give up their regulatory authority to a different regulatory authority or to combine authorities. why? from a political point of view, that is where they get their ability to influence the dialogue is a nice way to phrase it. >> i will say something kind of unfair.

we basically agree. we agree on much more than we disagree on. it is more interesting to emphasize what we disagree on. to study the history of regulation of everything state to private sector to airplane crashes, it is all kind of the same at some level. when that stuff happens, plan a for a committee to study it and report back. that is the plan. that is insufficient. plan b is encourage industry to pursue better practices voluntarily. if that is insufficient, plan c, which is an old standby, transparency. have transparency and it will be ok. plan d is to do something about it.

take the consumer area. we do not have a policy based on transparency. you are allowed to sell baby seats for cars that are safe for babies and you are not allowed to sell 86 that are not safe. you cannot sell ones that look good but are not safe that mention with 20 pages of print that they are not safe. i do not understand what the argument is to allow people to sell credit cards with interest rates that jump up to 36% on conditions that are totally at the discretion of the issuer with no notification to the purchaser just because there are 20 pages of small print and which you could have seen that that was going to happen to you. i think some regulation goes to the content of the problem goes for the is a good idea so we

protect people just like in every other sphere. >> larry and i agree on more things. [laughter] i defend his right to be wrong. i always have. we have been friends for an awful long time. to some extent, you are right. we prohibit smoking in public places but not your ability to smoke. you smoke in a public pace -- place, you are hurting somebody else but you grieve their smoke. you go outside in a field and smoke, if you want to kill yourself, it is dumb, but i do not think it is the government responsibility to prohibit you from smoking. we tried certain things to tell the public what to do. there is a great article this month about prohibition and how one guy convinced this whole country to do something that nobody was in favor of. somehow or other, a small group

changed this country. in one year, passed a constitutional amendment. we have made mistakes. i am not opposed to prohibiting people from doing some things that are against what we decide is right for them but it is a very slippery slope and you go to pay lenders my girlfriend is the chairman of the board of the nonprofit that makes micro loans. the interest rate is off the chart. without that, those people would not get it. i do think nobody should charge 37% but what about 27% or 17%? on education, if you want to act stupidly, some people can act stupidly put the course we are now agreeing there should be

regulation and it should go beyond transparency and we can also agree completely that it should be rational regulation and and a whole variety of these areas, you can have unintended consequences. >> ok. i want to move on. by the way, does the commission fit your comments on what we do in this society when we try to deal with the problems that we did not know how to get our hands around? [laughter] >> that was good. >> charlie, that was a brilliant question. [laughter] >> he is not often at a loss for words. >> who is in charge of time? i have three minutes? i do want to pose this big cosmic question. we talk about job creation and we have looked at some of these

issues both in terms of the demographics of where we are and in terms of long-term. in terms of american competitiveness around the world, where are we thinking out of the box and where should we be thinking? i refer to some of the things we are discussing here. where are we -- where did we get our hands on things that will change what will otherwise be a disastrous and polarizing job placement? >> there is a simple way of thinking about it. there is no god-given right that says in a world where members of things are mobile, one place

should be 10 times as rich as others. you want to be much richer than other places, there has to be a reason. that reason has to be that there is something about you that is not present everywhere else. what does that go to? it goes to come up by and large, most americans are not going to emigrate. it goes to the quality of the education they received which is why putting such emphasis on that is important. it goes to the power of the collective. there is probably nobody is so talented functioning individually that somebody somebody else puncturing that individually will not be found.

if it is a cluster, a huge cluster represented by new york city or the smaller cluster represented by silicon valley or the small cluster represented by harvard with a small cluster represented by bell labs, those are much more difficult to replicate. there is the chicken egg problem. you can get it started but the reason people come is because people are there. figuring out how to invest in these non-reputable -- replicable clusters will be essential and that goes to educational issues about innovation it goes to supporting our cities, and that is the strategy and the elements that we have to consider as we consider how to compete. >> let me add something.

larry is 100% right. the less-developed areas, could be another country or a part of america, they have an option and opportunity and ability to leapfrog what has taken everybody else a long time. the ultimate example is the cell phone. the smaller cell phone has more computer capacity and memory than the biggest ibm computer of the 1960's. there are 5 billion cell phones. in africa, every second person has a cell phone. think about that. we do not think of africa -- they have the ability to communicate, and get educated, be entertained, to do commerce, and we are starting to get there. taken i pad and look at the technology. this was inconceivable 10 years ago. we are so short term we cannot

remember that long ago. all of a sudden, countries and places will be able to leap frog everything else and the defense that places have is the concentration. everybody goes there because people are already there. that is the proposition i try to talk about what new york city is doing. it is not the yogi berra thing that nobody goes there because it is too crowded, you go there because it is, -- it is crowded. you can feed off of that. these changes are dramatic. if you really want to worry about something, the percentage of our workforce are college educated, but in the younger group not one thing that gives me a comfort, the percentage of the people living in the york city that are college educated each bill went up -- is going up and it is because of immigrants.

people think that immigrants come here without education and a lot of them had the best education. they come and looking for a green card and if they could get it, they would start a business. people are doing things other places because they cannot get here. we give people the greatest -- we have the greatest higher education system in the world. when people say china graduate's 25,000 engineers per minute and weak credit with 5000, but their definition of engineers, a gas station attendant qualifies. you have to be very careful in comparing these things. we have something and have a chance of losing it. public education and education, everything else is on the list. >> you are doing okay on public education. >> on that note, thank you very much for coming.

[laughter] michael bloomberg, larry summers. [applause] >> charlie, that was great. >> thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> tonight on c-span, a look at the arizona immigration bill. after that, u.s. and israeli policies towards iran. later, updates on the gulf of mexico will spill.

-- oil spill. >> saturday night, almost 3000 journalists, politicians, and celebrities will gather at the washington hilton for the white house correspondents association annual dinner. our coverage of his black tie event includes remarks by president obama and jay leno. that is live starting at 8:00 eastern on c-span. >> c-span, our public affairs content is available on television, radio, and on-line. you can also connect with us through twitter, this book and you too. sign up for our schedule alert e-mails at c-span.org. >> now discussion on the arizona immigration bill signed into law last week. this is 45 minutes. we wrote into the law that these questions do not have to be asked if it will hinder an investigation.

host: on your screen now is carlos gutierrez, former commerce secretary. you were listening during the first segment we were taking from illegal immigrants. and what are your thoughts? guest: it is all anecdotal, but if you have all of the anecdotes of, what you get is a very complex situation and there is always a tendency to believe it is actually very simple. it is not. it is very complex. it gets down to individual families, children who were born here, children who are on the high school little league team or high school football team and do not even know that they are here without papers, that their -- that they are here illegally. it sort of demand a solution that recognizes the human dynamic, in addition to the fact that it should recognize our economic necessities.

we need immigrants. what we do not have is an immigration system and policy and law. we are forcing employers to either close their businesses, move their family farms to mexico, or hire illegal workers. it is kind of a lose/lose situation. host: let's go ahead and put the numbers up and we will divide this by political affiliation. and if you happen to be watching this from outside the country, if you are outside the u.s. today and you want to call into you can call in and 202-628- 0184. again, that is for people outside the country. mr. secretary, you served in the commerce department.

was immigration something you had to deal with? guest: absolutely, this probably was my biggest issue i dealt with in 2006, 2007. host: why? guest: president bush wanted immigration reform passed. he asked the senate to come up with a bipartisan bill and i was in those meetings, literally every single day. with a group of senators, bipartisan, who were interested in getting this through. i can tell you, it was jon kyl on one hand and ted kennedy on the other. it was a bipartisan group and we have a 700-page bill, as comprehensive as you can imagine. any question you want known about immigration was in that bill, but it was dismissed by opponents by one word, amnesty. it was not amnesty because you needed, i believe it was 12

years, 12 to 18 years to get in line and eventually get a green card. card. there was nothing automatic about it, or nothing that smacked of amnesty, but again, in a world of sound bites, people dismiss it in a word and is gone. but we still have this problem. host: arizona's new law, what are your thoughts? guest: as a managerial analysis, i think it is a poor use of resources. i think is bad law. but to put the police department' of arizona looking for people who are doing nothing more than working 12 to 16 hours a day and taking your eye off the ball from people who really do want to do us harm, i think it is very inefficient.

i do not think it is representative of the kind of nation we are. host: do you think that eric holder should pursue a lawsuit against arizona? guest: it is a legal question. i do not know. i do not know if that is the way it works. i do not know if that is the way it can work. i can imagine that there will be lawsuits coming from everywhere. and perhaps the only thing that this will change is that arizona will become a haven for lawyers. because lawsuits will be coming from everywhere. but eric holder, that is much -- is as much as a legal question as a policy question. host: you served as commerce secretary, ceo for a long time of kelloggs, and you are currently chairman of global strategies, which is what? guest: we have a group of 22

former officials from around the world. we're a part of a pr firm called apco, very much affiliated with apco. we provide consulting services to companies going overseas, in some instances companies coming to the u.s. and the whole idea is that they have access to this group of people who work all over the world and have great experience and insight and judgment. and we also have the best of both worlds in the sense that we have the resources of a pr firm, in public affairs firm, to be able to use with customers. host: let's take some calls. the first call comes from tom in michigan. caller: everybody is up in arms about immigrants coming over to the u.s. and you really cannot blame them.

basically, they're coming from a purple country and they want to better themselves, which is anybody's idea of -- coming from a third world country and they want to better themselves, which is anybody's idea. instead of making their lives harder, has anyone thought about a kind of buyout to get into the united states? the united states is in trouble at times, but they want to get into it. have them by into getting here, or pay extra taxes. guest: that is a great point. in the bill that we had in 2007, the whole idea was that people would go forward and register and undergo a background check and it would have to pay a fine. and we talked about what the fine should be, but eventthat fe will eventually be agreed to and there will be a fine. and as you said, they will have to pay for the fact that they

breached law. it should be a fine commensurate with the crime. and that is the kind of thing that i hope we can get into a bill and it should be able to agree with. but i think you're absolutely right, these folks came here for very good and noble reason. they came here for the same reason that so many millions of people came here over the last to under 30 or 300 years. host: next call from newcastle, pa., lorraine, republican. caller: hello, my name is lorraine. i thank you for permitting me to be on c-span this morning. my grandparents did it come from italy and i understand the upheaval. but my question -- host: turned on the volume on

your television. just listen to your telephone. go ahead with your question. caller: my name is lorraine. thank you for having me on. host: we got all of that. and what is your question? caller: you were saying that these children are on baseball teams and what not, but don't you think that as a bold we -- as adults we should be responsible for the burdens we put on our children and the things they have to deal with by pulling them off their teams and having to be deported? this is more wrenching for me to hear what we are doing to these young children. guest: i agree with what you're saying. mass deportation is not an option. we have said that all along. in fact, the way we had approached the 2007 bill under president bush was to say, look, mass deportation, to round up 12 million people who have worked

hard, contributed, the great majority have stayed out of trouble, simply wanted to provide for their family, we are not going to round up and put them on buses and kick them out of the country. but we are also not going to hand them a passport. there is a compromise in between and that is exactly what we are looking for. i am so pleased that your report -- you are a republican. i am a republican, too, he proud republican, but very pro- immigration reform. host: and jeb bush has also come out against this bill. but it was an arizona legislature and republican governor who signed it. guest: that is right, and they have the right, constitutionally, to do that. i think it comes down to a very poor resources from a management standpoint.

turning their police department toward people who come to be gardners and working hospitality instead of going after people who are here to do as harm. host: california, jerome, independent. and we are talking u.s. immigration policy. caller: mr. gutierrez, i have a question for you. during your stay with the government working for the bush administration, did you ever consider placing immigration point across the border? in other words, where people leaving this country would possibly be searched and the things they are taking into mexico would be questioned? this is particularly relative to the arms being moved into mexico supplying the gains. these arms are not available in mexico. i have travelled extensively into mexico over the past 10 years and when i do travel i always keep in my possession a

photocopy of my passport and my driver's license and i've been stopped numerous times by mexican police both state and federal and never had any trouble. obviously, knock on wood. most of my mexican friends in southern mexican -- southern mexico are wonderful people and very hard working in family oriented. host: what is your question? caller: during your stay with president bush, have you ever considered whether people moving out of this country should be possibly searched or question? guest: i'm not sure if, and security would have done that. i can tell you in the concept of sharing responsibility for the mexican drug cartels and the drugs that are flowing into our country from mexico, and the violence, that we do see it as a shared responsibility. what they have asked us to do is to help with the inflow of weaponry that is going into

forming this illegal army at our own borders. for our own national security. i think you make a good point. but i do not know if that is being done. as people go into mexico, it becomes the accountability, the responsibility of the mexican customs officials to search who is coming in and make sure they are not bring in weapons. . .

>> he hated it. he was a small-business man, dressed very well. on occasion, he would give the guys grief or answer back in spanish. my mother would say, stop it. >> where you going with this? >> my point is that there is a big effect on all kinds of people that have never been to mexico that have hispanic backgrounds and suddenly you're going to have to start carrying ids, suddenly will be kind of subject to hassle. >> we appreciate the story. i want to ask, what is the cooperation level when it comes to immigration between u.s. and mexico? >> i think it is quite good. i think it is probably the best has been, and on one hand, that

is due to a very strong, determined president and president -- the mexican president. the continuity of having worked with president bush and now with president obama, there is continuity of policy on our end. ked with president bush and now president obama there is continuity of policy on our end. we want to fix this problem. i think if we have the best shot today that we have ever had to work together and tackle and confront this problem. host: virginia beach. dan, republican. caller: hi, sir. i'm not certain that we really know the number of people that we are calling illegal. did they start out that way? did they come here with work permits and overstay a visa. so i would ask your guest to provide us with some clarity on that. guest: the best estimate -- and

these are all estimate -- we typically use the number 12 million. now, i have to tell you 12 million was a number that we used three years ago. but this moves every year because of the work situation, the availability of jobs. it probably has stayed about 12 million. of those 12 million, three million are children who were born here. so they will never understand that somehow their parents have to be deported or they are not u.s. citizens or they are any less americans than any others. they probably don't speak spanish. so, it is tremendously complex. once you get into family by family you find that the disruption is quite remarkable. some people use 20 million. i don't think it is that high so

i would stick with 12. host: we had several callers talk about their spouse being illegal. what changed after 9/11? i thaought getting married was n automatic to citizenship. no? guest: i don't believe that that has changed. i don't know what their specific circumstances are. it could be different if he is a naturalized citizen as opposed to born in the u.s. there are different laws and regulations. i couldn't containing -- i couldn't tell if you that changed. host: are children born of illegals automatic citizens? guest: yes. host: pittsburgh, democrat, mark. you are on. mark is gone so we will move on to jan in mesa, arizona. republican. caller: yes.

mr. guttierrez, i live here in arizona and it is so funny to hear these people tell us what to do because we are in a war zone here. everybody can just make light of it, but it is horrible. when reagan promised us in 1986 or whatever that this would never happen again and that was three million, not 20 million. and nobody else covers our borders. we don't know what to do. and what nobody is telling everybody that wants to do all of this, you know, pathway to citizenship, these illegals will automatically get the same healthcare we get so we will put another 20 million on our healthcare. they will get all of our social services that we can't keep up with now. and you are talking about jobs people don't want. you know, it used to be that carpenters and roofers and pa t painters, we did do tease jobs but we can't do them any more.

they are given to the low-ball workers. so, please -- but i don't think they should talk about anything until they have prove our borders can be closed because not even my politicians have been able to close our borders. host: so, jan, you are supportive of the arizona law? caller: you bet. host: called it a war zone. what do you mean? caller: you don't know what our neighborhoods are like. like 20 years ago our mayor at the time tried to get where you couldn't have -- willis our law -- all these families in a room apartment. 20 people in a wuone-bedroom apartment. it is destroying neighborhoods and it is something we can't fight because the aclu, you say one thing and the aclu is there and the government, we are paying, our federal dollars are going for it and all the prot t

protesters that they are showing in the capital in phoenix, they have pussed them in from texas and california. those aren't our citizens. it is getting -- you don't know what it is like. we don't know who is in our state. some of the stories are touching but isn't it scary when who is in our country? how do we know? guest: it is a great point. and, listen, i don't live in arizo arizona, but i will say that from the sound of it here in d.c., it feels like we are putting a lot of resources, as you say, behind the problem that wae are not really sure if everyone we are after are the people who come to this country to hurt us. it is interesting, but as you say, we don't know who is living

in the country, we don't know who is here. one of the benefits of comprehensive immigration reform is that we will know who is in the country and we will know of those people who shouldn't be here. because they have to come forward and register and come forward and admit i am here illegally. that is when they go through a background check and go tkpwget fine and eventually get a legalization card, not a passport, a legalization card. and if they want to one day have a green card and passport they have to get in line. that will take them a long time to do. but with that legalization card that has biometrics on it and we can get to a stage where if someone doesn't have that card they should not even show up for a job because they are not going to get it. but in that whole process we will find out who is in our country. so, from a national security

standpoint, immigration reform can help us understand how big a problem we have and who is here who shouldn't be here, which is another frustration that national security is often used as an argument against imtkpwreugs reform whereas actually having a good workable immigration system would do wonders for our national security. host: she also talked about the drain which she called the drain on social services. guest: it is interesting that as a country, as we all know we are getting older and there are fewer people paying for more people to get their social security, to get their medicare. so we need to grow ourselves out of it. but one solution as we grow ourselves out and as we grow ourselves into an economy that

can pay for these unbelievable liabilities or debts that we have for future generations, immigrants can do that. they can help us because typically they are young, they work very hard. and as soon as they arrive, some of them are already contributing to medicare, social security and that stays here and is part of the price they pay. but that is one very viable strategy to help us deal with this tremendous tsunami we have coming at us, which is our entitlement programs and who will pay and how are we going to pay for that. host: john kavanaugh on yesterday the arizona legislator who helped craft the arizona bill, said that mexican towns are suffering greatly because young men and middle aged men are coming here so they are bereft of that labor force.

guest: that is true. there was an article recently about how mexico's population growth has declined over the hrlast 20 or 30 years. what is true is that what we get here is what we've always gotten, the most adventurous, the most ambitious, the most industrious, the people who are willing to risk it all for a better life. those are a country's finest in many ways. they may not have schooling but they have all the determination in the world to get a job, to work hard and make sure that their children go to school. so, yes, these are very industrious, adventurous, ambitious people. now the reality is we need them important mexico does because the jobs are here.

again, family farms are going to move to mexico and r&d centers will open in india because we can't find the people here. i wish people would understand that immigration is first and foremost pretty much an economic issue. if we want to grow and if we want to prosper we need immigrants. and we have never prospered without immigrants. and i just want to remind everyone that the last time we put a ban on immigration and declared war on immigration was in the 1920's, right before the great depression. i'm not linking one to the other, but it had -- it was one of those variables that led to this economic downturn. host: prior to becoming c.e.o. of kellogg how long did you live in mexico and when did you come to the u.s. from cuba?

guest: we came out of cuba in 1960 and went to miami for a little while, two years, where we stayed in a hotel. my father thought it was going to be a vacation because this man cannot stay. then we moved to new york and became u.s. citizens. then he got a job in mexico with heinz company, food company. that is how we ended up in mexico. i went to junior high school and high school in mexico. but the interesting thing is, because i was naturalized, when my son was born -- it just highlights the plight of an immigrant and refugee. when my son was born i needed to be in in the u.s. 10 years after the date of my 16th birthday. so i took his application to the desk at the embassy and said i want my son to be a u.s. citizen. i only had eight years. so i walked out without a pass support. it took me 14 years to eventually make my son a u.s.

citizen. because of the little quirk in the law. my other daughter was born in the u.s., then my other daughter, we went back to mexico, she was born in mexico but by that time i had the 10 years because i spent some time in the u.s. so it is very complicated and everybody has their story. but the great thing is that this country attracts the best people in the world, not including myself but people come here to do things. host: just on a practical level, do you think as, if you had been c.e.o. of kellogg's at the time and you went through it it would have been easier for you when your son was born? guest: well, no, i don't think so. what i noticed is when my son became a u.s. citizen, i was i

guess by that time must have been in the u.s. company, i was a corporate vice president, the c.e.o. had an interest in me. no, i had to stand in line with the rest of them and wait my turn and we had to do the exams and when i walked out of that courthouse in grand rafpdz, michigan, with my son -- my son and my wife -- i can't tell you how relieved i was that after 14 years they became u.s. citizens. so i understand this idea of free citizenship. citizenship cost and takes time and something you really want to have. the other myth here is that every person who is here who is not appropriately documented and is working wants to be a citizen. and in many cases they just want to be legal so they can work and one day go back to their hometown, be a hero, take back

some dollars, and build a nice house and retire. that is their vision of the future. it is not to become a u.s. citizen. some do want to be u.s. citizens but it is a multidimensional problem. host: next call for carlos guttierrez is from rochester, new york, shonda, independent line. caller: hi. i called independently but i'm a democrat and i'm an african-american and live in upstate new york. host: what is your question? caller: i was listening to your guest and he saeid men came illegally. that is all we want. i agree with the arizonans. i attend new york state and if i get stopped by the police i have to have i.d. that is the law. everyone in this country should have i.d.

they should not have a problem showing the i.d. whether they are illegal or legally here. i don't understand what the problem is. you keep saying these people ar coming over here because they are such hard workers. it is kind of senseless to me as a citizen because we have citizens that can do the same thing they are doing. they are prisoners. we can make our prisoners do the same thing if they are going to say they are hard workers. they can wait in line the same way you and your son waited. my problem is the word "illegal." we need to enforce our laws. guest: and we need to have a penalty or punishment that is consistent with the crime, with the action. i get the impression that no one will be satisfied until there is massive deportation. and i don't think that is the

kind of stain that we want on our history. the interesting thing is that the jobs that are supposed to be available for americans to do are not being filled by america americans. the only reason these folks can stay here is because they are making money. it is because they are doing work. and they are doing any type of wo work. i -- look, i look around places and i see a lot of people working very, very hard. i don't know what their status is. but there are jobs that will not go filled. someone mentioned to me the other day jobs, construction jobs are very manual jobs. we need to recognize 50 years ago about only 10% of our

population had a high school degree. now we are talking about 30%, close to 40%. host: you mean college. guest: no, high school. but think about that. 40 or 50 years ago it was 10%. so, a lot of people were looking -- would get into manual work saying this is not what i want to do but this is good for my family. we have a new generation of people who don't necessarily want to do that, who don't necessarily want to pick lettuce even though it is a job. so, i think that we can make a big mistake by assuming that this tag line that americans will do the job is real and if it turns out not to be real we are in deep trouble. two numbers for you.

the number of h-2-a visas, for farm workers, the quota is 10,000. i have seen estimates, depending on how fast the economy will grow and how fast the exports will grow, that we need hundreds of thousands of workers every year to be coming in to work. we can talk about whether they come in and leave and are temporary, but we need an influx to keep our farms alive. so, since there are only 10,000 allowed legally, we are forcing farmers to either hire illegals or go out of business. and i think that we should give our businesses a pwbetter alternative than that. and that is the federal government's role. on the high school side, this is not just about low skilled. on the high school guide our

quota of 75,000 h-1-b visas which is for students to work here, graduates to work here, are not -- they are filled by the month of january. so, every high tech company and every company is in need of foreign scientists, kids who come here to get a p.h.d. in the best university in the world and then have to go home with the . p.l.d. and join a company that can compete with a u.s. company. we have this wrong. and every country in europe has this problem. russia has this problem, china, japan, all getting older, don't have enough people. their workforce isn't growing fast enough to grow their economy at 3% or 4% or 5%. and they are having a real tough time with immigration. we have all heard the european stories. it is not working, they don't understand it, they don't have a history with it.

russia, china, we understand it. we know000 deal with -- we know how to deal with it. if we get a good comprehensive immigration reform system right that gives us all of the maybe we need, we could have a competitive advantage for the next centuriment host: on our republican line estelle from memphis, tennessee. you are on the air. caller: good morning. with all due respect, mr. guttierrez, i must disagree with you. i think it is people like you that don't understand the system. i work directly with the illegal problem. [inaudible] i'm a banker and i have people to come in. what they were doing is getting social security numbers from people who were deceased.

[inaudible] they sat in there, couldn't speak english. they always had somebody to bring them in. i also -- -- [inaudible]. now [inaudible] works for the social security office. she is upset and other people. this is the system. you give illegals a social security number. they apply for a green card. when the green card gets approved, do you know that these people, who are illegal, breaking the law, go into the social security administration, then they tell them i was working under this number, now i have my green card. i want all of my credits transferred over to my legal number. believe it or not, they change it. and they are doing it today. they have been doing it for years. host: so, when it comes to u.s.

immigration policy, what changes would you like to see? caller: i would like to see them deport deported. i would like to see the system we have in place be respected and followed. host: secretary guttierrez? guest: well, if we deport all of the people who are here, without appropriate documents, who are here illegally, we will suffer for it. we will suffer economically and we will pay a heavy price. now, the point you are making is good. social security numbers and being falsified. that will have to come out and we are going to have to figure out a way of dealing with that and dealing with that in a legal fashion. but until we address it, until

we confront it, we still don't know who is in the country. we still don't have a way of keeping track. and we still don't know who we should be looking into in terminals of their background -- in terms of their background. but for me as a republican, i think our party has always been about growth, prosperity, entrepreneurship, small business, free enterprise. and without immigration we will have none of that. we need immigration to grow, we need immigration to prosper, we need immigration to continue our free enterprise system. we should do it in a legal way. we should set up a system that allows us to do it legally. host: time for two more calls with our guest former commerce secretary carlos guttierrez. manhattan, new york, craig,

democrat. caller: good morning, c-span, good morning mr. guttierrez. any time you pass a law you might get 70 people to agree with it, you might get 30 people who don't agree with it. since some of these people have some problems following the law, what do do you remember with the people who decide i have been doing ok, why should i turn myself in? i will stay under the wire like i have been doing and things are going all right for me now. guest: that is a good question. we can get to the point where, if you don't have one of those biometric cards with a thumb print or something like that, that belongs to each person, that essentially is this legalization card, we can get to the point where, if you don't have one of those you shouldn't even try to get a job because those are the people who we

should be looking for, the people who didn't come forward, the people who didn't register, who did say fine, i came in here legally but i want to work, i haven't committed crimes, i just need to do it legally. the people who don't come forward, that is who we should be trying to stop and not the people who are here to work, which is essentially why i call the arizona law a very inefficient law. host: our last call for our guest is from linda in lorena, texas. caller: i am glad to talk to you with your background and view of the subject. i have a practical solution that could be employed with a system as you are speaking that would

be fair and take the police out of the idea of illegals in this country to american citizens. and that is addressing the drain on our social services system, our hospital systems, school syste systems, and driving without licenses and insurance. my mother was hit by somebody with an unlicensed person and no insurance and he was deported. she had a broken back as a result. no insurance to cover that. they can't afford to pay into the insurance pool even if they could get insurance. guest: that is a great point because once these workers who are here who have a job, who we ne need, have a form of legal station -- legalization, a card that allows them to work in the

u.s., then they have to be part of the system. that system means taxes, it means medicare, social security. it means being part of our system and being part of the legal system. so, instead of being deported before the trial they would stay here for the trial because they would be subject to u.s. laws. so, it is a way of integrating these folks. a and, look, i'm convinced this discrimination a lot of people criticize that they haven't integrated into society. very hard to integrate into society when you are paranoid. but i can tell you this, they don't speak english but their children will speak english and their children will go on to school and will become scientists and engineers and lawyers and business people and they will help our society grow the way immigrants have always done. so, for me this is a matter of economic prosperity and

viability of our country. if we stop immigration, we are going to stop growing. and that should be a concern for every american because i don't think anyone wants to give up our standards of living. host: politically both president obama and the republicans on capitol hill seem to have taken immigration off the table. guest: the president said last night he feels that congress doesn't have an appetite for this. and i have heard other members say that. what people are worried about, republicans an democrats in -- and democrats in the congress, is that some members of congress want to use this to pick a political fight. not to get reform but to pick a political fight in an election year. so, for example, we all heard and it was all over the papers that senator reid went to nevada for a campaign, he got an earful from business people, from

groups about the need for immigration reform. he game back saying we are going to have immigration reform this year. so a lot of people see that as tactical. and i believe we have one shot at this, one more shot. we didn't get it in 2007, we failed. if we don't get it the next time we could be waiting another five years. so, we have to do it right. and if anyone is talking about immigration and just, you know, throwing out the rhetoric on immigration but isn't really serious about passing a bill, then they are doing a tremendous disservice to the country and to the people who are hoping that they will help themm eventually

>> tomorrow on "washington k journal," "inner -- nancy kinner . ari melber talks about how political parties use the internet. and in this placement government exam for high school student and previews sample questions. "washington journal," live on c- span. >> coming up, a look at u.s. and israeli policies towards iran. after that, the latest on the gulf of mexico oil spill and president obama of the gdp figures for the first quarter. tomorrow on "america and the court's." roger gregory talks about

diversity in the federal judiciary, and his experiences as the first african-american to serve on the fourth circuit court of appeals. tomorrow, 3000 journalists, politicians, and celebrities gathered at the washington hilton for the white house correspondents association annual dinner. also remark by president obama and nbc "tonight show" host jay leno. >> the people that are coming to was for risk in the housing market wanted to have the security that gave them exposure to the housing market, and that is what they got. >> the senate hearing with goldman sachs executives went

nearly 11 hours. see every program since 1987, free, on-line. >> next, a debate on u.s. and israel policy toward iran with a new york times columnist someone from "the wall street journal." [applause] >> good morning. i am the director of government and international affairs. i want to welcome the audience in this room to the very important debate, how the u.s. should deal with iran. for the viewer is watching us on c-span, i would like to welcome our worldwide audience on the

webcast. if yours will go to the web site, you can join in this discussion and pose questions if you are debaters. there is an issue vexing the u.s. government and the government around the world, how to deal with iran. supporting their quest for key -- nuclear weapon capability. we will devote the next hour and a half for questions of how that priority can be translated into tangible results. we will begin with opening statements, first with roger. >> the morning, ladies and gentlemen. where i worked for many years, it was the problem from hell. iran makes it look like child's

play. there are no good options, and facilitating the psychosis with historical roots has left -- lasted 31 years now casting a shadow over the world. we need to know something about the country's concern. what is iran? or i spent five weeks last year. more than 4 million kids in college, more than half of those are women. there thirsting for contact with the outside world. they're living in an islamic republic which is here, not sunni like al qaeda. they are largely disillusioned with muslimism. they're not like the guys in the caves, they want pluralism. that is something they have a

question for since the uprising of 1905 against the ministry. that is not going to go away. in many respects, iran is very secular. the psychology is backed by the iran-iraq war in 1988 in which young officers like president ahmadinejad with the help of the west -- they gassed tens of thousands of iranians with chemical weapons. the overwhelming majority despite this experience in the u.s. role in the 1953 overthrow of the democratically elected -- they are attracted to the united states, and there is a yearning for normalization. this is a country worthy friday prayer routine, death to america, has all the impact of

muzak in an elevator. the united states and iran are the natural enemies, and natural enemies, ladies and gentlemen. what about presiding over this? the clerical superstructure, as you know, with a supreme leader who is said to be standing in for the profits, this is an elite with an increasingly powerful and wealthy group whose role in the post elections has been central, and who control the trafficking that circumvent sanctions. 20% of the economy is said to be linked for this sanction circumventing activity. this regime is brutal and consistently so since the election last year. it does have areas of liberalization. it is not a monolithic totalitarian state.

i lived in germany some years, and we should be very careful i respect to the dead in making analogies. last year, the prime minister of israel described the regime as a messianic apocalyptic cult. this year, the defense minister of israel said the regime was not meshugana, and has a sophisticated decision making process. the nature is in dispute. the islamic republic has pursued an ominous but still ambiguous nuclear program. combine that of late with grotesque holocaust denial and outbursts against israel, it has close links with hezbollah, and

a less close links with hamas in gaza. what should th states do? how we help the society move forward for representative form of government and make sure it does not obtain a nuclear device? there are few general principles that are quickly outlined. the first, isolation. not for nothing is that iran was underrated, came to the brink. within months of obama's out reach, they thrived on president bush's axis of evil grandstanding. sanctions. iran has been living with them for decades, and they are inoculated against them. we are dealing with a body that has a heavy dose of inoculation. ratcheting up sanctions, we have heard a lot of words like crushing, crippling,

suffocating, devastating. they tend to inspire more leverage means around them. preservation. the supreme leader, the guardian of the revolution. that is his role. it is a cautious business, building a weapon, threatening is real with one represents cautioned thrown to the wind. it puts the republic at immediate risk. we should recall this in assessing how real threat to iran poses. we know what happens when iran is attacked. saddam hussein attacked iran, and they rallied. they are patriots. do we want to lock in for another 30 years, and bloc and the hard line for another attack? volatility. the iran of today is not the iran -- society and the regime

are moving in different directions. a lot of young people are now firmly in that position -- in opposition. this says patients enquire probing -- the opposition leader has called for another big day of protest and is trying to bring in the labor movement of the first anniversary of the election on june 12. finally, inspections. unlike israel and north korea, and like india and pakistan, it is a signature of the non- proliferation treaty. day after day, they label the centrifuges and labeling what they produce. if iran is going to rush for a weapon, i assume there isn't a vast underground facility we don't know about. they have to reverse engineer thousands of these centrifuges and enable them to produce highly enriched uranium,

presumably under the inspection -- that would not be allowed happened. despite their history of duplicity, we have to bear that in mind. i will conclude by saying, given all this, president obama has been about right. he has been right to pursue out reach an believe that offer on the table. iran can pursue a limited monitor civilian and peaceful nuclear program if it comes clean with the international community, and keep it with an international commitments. he has right that the military option is a terrible option, an unthinkable one. and urged israel who has never been at war -- to refrain from attacking iran. the president has been right to be skeptical of the draconian

sanctions, and look to get the security council with china and russia to vote measures. international isolation, that is iran's fear. the right to beef up -- however remote, to keep a strong focus on israel palestine peace that would then -- the right to denounce. he should have done it more emphatically. right to ratchet down the war and believe that reconciliation could be a breakthrough and momentous for the world as nixon's visit to china. ladies and gentlemen, it is not beautiful or exulting. it doesn't make us feel good, but is about the best we can do in the circumstances. after iraq, we owe ourselves a cause of sobriety, however difficult that may be. [applause]

>> thank you very much, roger. mr. stevens. >> good morning. many things to the american jewish committee for doing me the honor of inviting me to this stage. i am thankful to roger for sharing. roger and i are here because we agree about one thing, and probably only one thing. [laughter] iran is the single greatest foreign-policy challenge that the obama administration will face in the next three or seven years. on other point, we don't see eye to eye. for instance, when what -- when roger wrote on his first trip to iran that the iranians were looking for reform, but were in

no mood for the people, i disagreed with him then. as they played out over the next few months, it did not bear roger out. and when he wrote, referring to the forthcoming june 12 election, that it would be a genuine contest and that it's a rock -- bureaucracy [unintelligible] i disagreed with that, too. all elections are shams, roger. all of them. but you, an american citizen, had a supreme leader where pat robertson offered a choice between two candidates, bupat buchanan and mike huckaby. and finally, when roger was urging that the iranians can be

brought about to a so-called grand bargain, some of them had doubts given the unbroken record of deception and hostility. >> that is precisely what happens sometime in march. president obama had done exactly what he -- we have seen how it has played out since then in terms of the success of the out reached hands. roger, your record of prediction here is not a good one. i am glad your columnist. i think he would beat john paulson in reverse if you were a hedge fund. this gets to the most basic differences between us. the difference is this. at the strategic and ideological level, i take the irradiance

that there were. -- at their word. it seems that you don't. when ahmadinejad says wipe isreal off the map, that is not in this translation. i think he means it. and when he denies the holocaust, i think he believes it. i think in the course of this debate, roger will accuse me of a certain kind of emotionalism. he spoke earlier about the debilitating psychosis, but holocaust denial is something that should scare every single one of us. it is a crime, and we are treated as such. he repeated so often. the regime sends into the streets, death to america or israel.

i think they need it, too. you can't engage your regime and whose central ideological pillar is to hate america and hate israel, hate everything the west stands for. it is to hate rationality as it is developed in the west. you seem to think that all of these phrases are really no more than that. you think they have an incidental bearing in the nature of the regime. he seemed to find evidence of iranian pragmatism wherever you go. you always find evidence of pragmatism in highly polluted take regimes -- lunatic regimes. i think that all of these comments are actually central to the regime. what is the regime when he talks about iran? he doesn't need to convince me that they areic