>> also on "q&a". a look at the role of race in drawing congressional and state legislative districts. now, a discussion on the future of limited government and the 2010 elections. you will hear remarks from journalists from "the weekly standard." this is an hour and 25 minutes.

>> thank you. "thjetle of my paper i,s, e keynesian state." this will be in relation to the economy. this paper had its relations this summer when i heard that glenn beck had [unintelligible] and saw it was a kind of response. it was not an economic response, it was a political response and the thought that runs through is this will never work politically, leaving the economic theory aside which he also criticized. the general theme of my paper here is the estate that comes

into being as a consequence of trying to implement keynesian policy kind of defeats in the hands. a big government of the kind that has evolved will implement the kind of a surgical keynesian policy, a more limited government would do it a lot better. in a certain sense, the big government that comes into being theoryonsequence of his thei makes it more difficult to implement keynesian policy. in response to some of the things that have been said, i do think that the growing size of the government is compromised in the institutions of self- government. this picks up speed as time goes on. this is not necessarily a criticism.

everyone can say that every political tendency that gets a foothold will over time run its course and lead to excesses' of a self-defeating kind and perhaps that is what is happening with canes. -- keynes. he is the most influential political and economic writer of the 20th-century. and he wrestled with all the great problems of that era. great books about world war 1 and the theory published in 1937. each had a different theme but rose from an underlying assumption, which was that world

war room and one had destroyed europe and america and a new one had to be built up in its place. i am not sure will be able to get through all this, but that is the general theme of the keynesian state. the u.s. has the oldest and one of the few constitution's organized around the principles of limited -- liberty and limited government. there were to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and prosperity. for more than two madeiras, americans have understood their national enterprise in terms of the language of liberty and freedom. let freedom ring, they have said. or do not tread on me. lincoln spoke of a new birth of freedom. equality, although simplcertaina principle embedded in american

life is unlikely to displace freedom. when soldiers go abroad, they are not promoting quality but to defend freedom. even though there is a wish to expand the government, do so in the name of freedom or rights. it was strange to look that americans have built a big government. one that is approaching in size some of the european governments they denounce as socialist and collectivist. after the recent automobile and bank bailouts along with a stimulus package of $800 billion, government spending at all levels surged to 45% of gross domestic product. compared to a postwar average of around 36% or 37% of gdp. an average among the countries of the european union of 50% of gdp. nor does there appear to be a limit to the kinds of programs the government may support or how much they will borrow to

support them. several state governments, calif. among them, have grown so large as they are approaching insolvency. even as we speak about limited government, our governments have assumed nearly unlimited powers to tax, spend, and regulate. just as a side point on the stimulus package, whether or not it worked economically, politically, it represented an expense into the powers of government. think of it this way. $40 or $50 billion of that money went to california. a lot of it to public employees who were able to recycle some money back into the election campaign. it is true that we have reached a showdown between big government and private

enterprise. or for purposes of symmetry between big government and limited government. it is heartening to think that in this battle, limited government is likely to come up the winner. the great majority of voters prefer a regime of limited government and free enterprise as against one of high taxes, redistribution, and regulation. the big government coalition has proven difficult to dislodge. why should this be so? one -- one obvious reason is that there are so many voters who received benefits from the government as compared to those who pay taxes to fund them and many advocates occupy influential positions in the press, universities, and the professions. this is all true. more ominously, the modern state appears to have changed its character in the process of

expansion. we're used to government as a neutral institution open to influence or capture by rotating majorities in the society. that is the longstanding vision of representative government. the federal government, along with some of our state government such as those in california, new york, and other places, have developed interests of their own that are resistant to pressures arising from the electorate. these governments more resemble political parties, with the capacity to mobilize support for their own expansion. government is not only big, but it is an active force capable of fighting back against those who seek to limit its powers. government is no longer the pass a political force as it was at one time or has been conceived of in political theory. my thought here is this. in the past, different groups in

this society have fought for control of the government. free labor, a slave states. later on, labor unions and big business. these troubles have gone on since the beginning of our republic. increasingly, we have been line of e a new government. the political parties have lined up along that line of conflict. that is a new line of conflict and one that has arisen from the growth of government. our traditional system of limited career has been compromised but not entirely overthrown. what has emerged and how we might go about restoring a liberal state unlimited leverage that is essential for prosperity and national strength. we need a new terminology to describe this which operates as a vested interest in its own right. for want of a better term, it is

the keynesian state, after its principal featheoretical archit. throughout the 19th century and the 20th-century, the u.s. and great britain were governed according to the doctrines of classical liberalism. they envisioned a liberal state with liberty as it's essential principle. the powers of government were limited and powers were divided and checked to avoid concentrations of power in the state. constitutions of state were written according to the same design. most importantly, the state was designed to respond to civil society. to the society -- and not to direct the civil society.

james madison riding in 11791 -- writing in 1791 feared the public is becoming disorganized. leaving the government to that self directed course which it must be owned is the propensity of every government. this is what the framers feared and what they rebelled against. a government that asserted superiority over civil society and sought to direct and guided. the system was designed to keep the government checked and controlled by forces arising from the society. during the depression decade of 19 -- the 1930's, to developments challenged these institutions. the first was that because of popular pressure come on national governments to yangon the responsibility for managing their economies to maintain full employment. prior to this time, the tools

that states had to promote economic growth were limited. the valuation of currency, and tariffs to protect domestic industries. the second was the john mccain's -- keynes formulated the basis on which this would be done. regime has been displaced by new one operating under different assumptions. book, he mountedbu an attack on the classical school of economics. the influential doctrine of free markets and laissez-faire markets. one to prove that there

existed no automatic adjustments in wages, prices, and interest rates that would correct the slide in employment and output. might reach equilibrium at levels below on employment. he argued that this is what happened in the 1930's. the market for labor did not work as advertised because despite high levels of unemployment, workers would not accept lower wages that producers could afford to pay them. was due to the development of labor unions, he suggested. the more some saved, the less others would invest. in order to arrest the death

spiral, the state had to step in to borrow and spend. the state can eventually reduce its spending and borrowing when the economy operates at close to full capacity. he looked forward to a time when the state would take over the investment function. he believed the state can make calculations according to broad social events. this is not true from experience. even though his concept of the investment state was widely popular at the time and also in the early postwar was abandoned by his followers today. he looked to overthrow the classical theory of economics and the theory of limited government. he assigned the state an

unprecedented role in maintaining the economy. this had to be permanent, not temporary. as his followers pointed out, if this state would intervene, it could also intervened to prevent them from happening in the first place. the state would steer the market in capital societies because the marketplace could not function without it. keynes never spelled out a theory of the state to correspond with his economic theory of public spending. he did acknowledge in his last chapter that in order to maximize and maintain full employment, the state would have to take on functions never envisioned by the 19th century proponents of limited government. these included setting tax rates and interest rates to promote consumption and directing investment toward socially useful answer. he was never specific as to how the state should organize itself to carry out these functions.

the classical economists had a theory of the state that dovetailed with theories of the market. what is the keynesian state? his friend and biographer said he believed such decisions could be placed in the hands of experts operating in the public interest, much the way we eloped central bankers to control the interest rates. in democratic systems, the elected representatives control public spending in response to demands from constituents and interest groups. he assigned duties to the state but never stop to think how these functions could be grafted onto the political system that was designed to include them. this is true in the u.s. where you have developed all these constitutional limits and traditions, which prevented such

an enterprise from coming into being. his theory came along too late to be much use to fdr. the general theory was published in 1937 while the new deal was in place by 1936. fdr discovered it was possible to build a long-running electoral coalition on the basis of public spending. this was a political but not an economic inside. it suggests how they would eventually evolve with mutual reinforcement. with politicians pressing for it for a different set of reasons. this is generally what has happened. it is music to and it was music to a politician's years to tell him he could spend money and pilot public debt and win votes of what purpose of growth and prosperity.

-- for the purpose of growth and prosperity. keynes's theory came into its own in the postwar period. it guided labor governments in great britain during the 1960's and 1970's. kennedy's tax cuts represented an application of keynesian doctrine. keynes's there is remain influential. as we see from your daily demands from paul krugman and others for more stimulus to counter act of the slump. the government has a ball from a logic that does not necessarily -- evolved from a logic that does not necessarily come from his theories. they want public spending for

different reasons and it is the politicians to make the choice. we can see this in many ways. the federal government's disastrous intervention into the housing market and on the recent stimulus package which was passed out funds to various clemons and interest groups with little regard to any overall design. if way abstract from his writings, we can see what kind of political arrangements were likely to evolve as a consequence of trying to follow his prescriptions. we can develop the outlines of the keynesian state in theory and has as it has to build. there must be a redistribution so the state can command the resources necessary to steer the economy. in 1932, the federal government spent about 3% of gdp. some far too low to exercise

keynesian powers. today it's been somewhere around 3% of gdp and steers more at lower levels. consonant with its fiscal powers, [unintelligible] whose authority embraces the economy as a whole. subunit in a federal system lack the capacity to carry out keynesian policies which may make decisions to counteract them. the state must mobilize a sustained demand for public spending such that the resources at its command are continually increased and never reduced especially in periods of slums. it must able to overcome countervailing demands for taxation. to accomplish the same, one of the political parties must organize itself around public spending. with the expectation that its adversary may organize itself around efforts to limit that spending.

the institutions of limited government inherited from the past must be weakened and gradually disabled in able to open up space for the growth of the keynesian state. these institutions in the u.s. would be federalism, many state governments are dependent on transfers from the national government today. they operate increasingly as some units of the national government. no question that over 70 -- the ideals of federalism have been compromised. doctrines that circumscribe powers in the economy or enshrine economic liberty or freedom of contract. we know the supreme court between a civil war period and the 1930's had a doctrine that was quickly overthrown in the late 1930's.

political roadblocks and artificially limiting the sphere of government. keynesiang to good logic, those who receive benefits are not the same people who contribute or benefit from growth. keynesian coalitions began to work against the original ends of keynesian policy which is economic growth. cannady promoted a tax cut in the 1960's and you cannot find anyone in the democratic party who would promote tax cuts as a way of implementing keynesian policy. they are interested in spending that money. the above may be inferences from keynes's writings.

they provide a fair description of what has happened politically in the u.s. in the postwar era. as traditional garments have given away to new regime's shipped by keynesian goals. it is the breadth of the organization that six makes the state are to reform. now, i made the point earlier that the modern state has developed ways to mobilize its own policies. it provides grants through the federal system to advocacy groups and to local governments which will press for more. the most effective instrument is the public employee union. an institution that transform

state and national politics and which has gained control of the democratic party. turning a more into an instrument of the state. public employe unions date only to the 1960's when the government and -- in many northern states allow for collective bargaining for public employees. many states filed suit later. there followed a wave of strikes, mainly by teachers' unions which petered out in the 1980's as the union's discovered how to when demands through political pressure. nyc was the first of the government's to face insolvency due to the political influence of public employee unions. many states and localities will follow suit in the years ahead. probably not those where unions are weak or nonexistent. thus, the question arises as to what might be done to slow this down or reverse this process of government growth and to restore

some of the institutions of limited government which have eroded over the years. the tea party movement is an encouraging sign. their embrace of free markets and the founders' constitution is definitely a positive sign. some have said that the republican majority should start by thinning out the extravagant forest of programs by a narrow but -- that are supported by a narrow interest groups. many groups that receive money from the federal government augments the power of the government coalition. one could make an effort to trim back the political influence of public employee unions by curtailing their political activities. some have spoken about repressing the balanced budget and tax limitation amendments. this would be difficult to do. it is worth discussing.

states could begin to opt out of federal grants programs as some are doing and challenges to be mounted in the courts against some federal programs as many states are challenging the health care law. there are many such ideas. the point is that the hour is late and the hill a steep, and the advocates of limited government should be bold and -- in pressing things they might not have dared to press before. if these remedies do not work or cannot be tried, there is always bankruptcy and insolvency. -- waiting in the background as options of last resort. increasingly, it is money sooner or later there will have their turn. thank you very much. [applause]

>> roger asked me to speak about how the law had screwed up society. i accepted because as long as i do not have to talk about the muslim brotherhood, i will speak about anything for 20 minutes or so. in the first 219 years of our existence, the u.s. fought in numerous wars against foreign powers and took 5 million prisoners of war. most were held very briefly. some were executed as war criminals. between those opposite ends of the spectrum, most were detained for some weeks, months, or

years. there was one common feature in all this during treatment. it was exclusively controlled by the executive branch of the federal government. whether the question for consideration was whether enemy operatives should be captured or which operatives should be interrogated and how, or what should be released, decisions were made by the government officials constitutionally responsible for the conduct of war. almost all the time by military officers. more fundamentally, it was understood to be for them to decide who was the enemy. to sort out the commands from the civilians. it was for the commanders to determine the battle. the law was thought to have little or no bearing on any of this. this did not mean there were no

particles in place. the so-called laws and customs of war are centuries old. older than the u.s. it was understood that the existence of such particles which are better thought of as guidelines or rules of reason than laws, that was not tantamount to control by the court. still less to the existence of protocols until the powers to a single national authority. no longer is that the case. in 2008, the supreme court transferred responsibility for the detention of enemy combatants and very likely for other aspects of how the enemy is treated in wartime from the commander in chief of the armed

forces to the federal judiciary. the astonishing ruling was a triumph for the progress of block which includes justice anthony kennedy, who was appointed by president reagan when the nomination by judge bork was defeated. the majority held that the rights and privileges of the u.s. constitution, the framework, the american people created to secure them from foreign enemies somehow extends to those foreign enemies. it extends to alien terrorists who are detained outside the u.s., outside what used to be known as the limited jurisdiction of the federal courts. alien terrorists who only -- whose only connection to our country is a hostile one. and whose goal is to destroy the very system that was there to

protect them. it was only natural that most of the commentary focused on the specific constitutional rights at issue. the right to habeas corpus. the rights that have a neutral judge. reviewing the legality of the confinement by the authority. for americans concerned about the erosion of liberty, the shot across about came toward the end of the lengthy ruling. he wrote our opinion does not undermine the executive powers as commander in chief. on the contrary. the exercise of those powers is vindicated, not eroded when confirmed by the judicial branch. was not our servin but our master. and it is no longer the limited

from work through which people -- is the omnipresent rule by which our actions are judged legitimate or illegitimate. those who claimed the power to say what the law is. they presumed to be the final word confirming or nullifying the decisions of society's elected representatives and those of society itself. needless to say, it was not always this way. there is in america because americans were a confident, self determining body politic. they were confident in their basic decency, unapologetically rooted in judeo-christian principles. the worst of determining in to buy a respects. it would have been thought inconceivable to surrender responsibility for the body politics most critical decisions to a contingent of people who work politically accountable.

second, americans were possessed of a healthy skepticism about the capacity of law and an equally healthy humility about the capabilities of even the wisest among us to anticipate and legislate for every contingency. the genius of the constitution is that it not only resists prescriptions but accounts for the human urge to impose them. the framers appreciated that the essence of the legislative authority is to enact laws, to prescribe rules for the regulation of society. they also realize that left insufficiently checked, the lawgiver would give our liberty. the preservation of liberty was the constitution's overriding purpose. other government actors had to

be endowed with a bigger is competing authority. sufficient to fend off what hamilton described as the propensity of the legislative department to intrude upon rights and absorbs the powers of the other department. fending off begins with the state which competed with the central government not only in terms of power but for sovereignty. while the constitution has proclaimed by we the people, it was by the sovereign states that federal authorities -- federal authority was created. the constitution was adopted by the ascent of the individual states. they're a sovereign power remained intact and it was in the state that the framers foresaw a government that would be most consequential to the daily lives of individual citizens. as madison put it, by this

superintending care of these states, all the more domestic and personal interests of the people will be regulated and provided for. with the affairs of the estate, people will be more familiarly and my nearly conversant. the members have their ties of personal acquaintance and friendship. the point is clear. to be accountable to the people and to advance freedom, most government would have to remain limited in scope. accessible to and accommodating of those whose interest is served. federal power would be remote and it would become increasingly remote as the nation group. that did not make it evil but it did increase the potential to [unintelligible] conferred needed tod on th

be few and tied to those few interests that were truly national in character, such as the common defense, the conduct of the interstate and international commerce, and the integrity of the currency. to further ensure against tyranny of the federal lawgiver, congress's authority was diluted by division. chambers structured to serve different popular interest. the other federal branches were assigned their own powers. the executive powers were in a minute -- and were enumerated with some exactitude. the framers took pains to enumerate them. this conjunction of control over executive prerogative insured against those powers being destroyed, as the framers knew they would be if other branches were permitted to share or cooperate. even in thought. to be concrete, congress may

enact law but is powerless to enforce law. at the federal level, la maybe enforced by the president and while lawmakers in viewed their -- enforcement is every bit as much a part of what makes the local law in the constitutional sense. department has the market cornered on law. all three branches must take seriously the obligation to carry at their duties in accordance with the limitations imposed by the constitution. congress may not enact statutes that encroach on the constitutional powers that are assigned to the president. the legislature may need -- neither seize power outright or prescribe laws directing that presidential power be shared with some other branch or independent regulator.

the fact that congress may not use all this way hardly means that it will not do so. congress has tried several times to seize presidential power. it attempted to usurp some commander in chief authority with the 1973 war powers resolution. even more commonly, congress has tried to force presidents to share their power. this was the story of fisa. the statue that was debated so contentious the during the bush years. directing the executive branch to seek approval before eavesdropping. congress does this thing -- these things because they're human. their propensity to use their powers to intrude on and observe the provisions of other government actors is innate. it cannot be repealed. separation of powers is not just

-- does not rely on anything so static and inadequate as a lot to police said. we are a body politic, not aid -- a jurisdocracy. it obliges the president to ignore congressional laws that the great authority and assumes the ballot box will be enough incentive to suppress the urge to press the executive power to its limit. the framers tried to create a powerful president but not an imperial one. there werene several restrictio. enabling the president to defend his office in doing that, the framers were less concerned with

the presidency than they were with liberty. they understood the concentration of too much power in one government nobody would be freedoms death knell. they understood the ramparts of liberty could be weakened by law. which is to say by unconstitutional statute. unlike the details of presidential and legislative authority, the powers were not painstakingly enumerated in the constitution. this is a bit of unwisdom on the part of government founders. the explanation for the framers's oversight in articulating the limitations of

judicial power lies in their understanding of the nature of the judicial power. this is probably best articulated by hamilton in the famous exurb from federalist 78. the judiciary was assumed to be to always and inevitably be the least dangerous branch because it was in daily powerless. in thinking about government, the framers were moved by considering first is dangerous, not its virtues. congress could only in that plot and to the president could only enforce the law. the judiciary could do neither. judges would be dependent on congress to sustain them. courts inferior to the supreme court would be dependent on congress for their existence. no court could enforce its own edict. judges are dependent on the executive branch to carry out their orders. could he pronounced that without

the capacity to direct society strength or will, the judiciary may be said to have neither force nor will but merely judgment. judgment turns out to be quite a lot. the reasons for this airplane. the constitution does not prescribe the limitations of judgment. it leaves the judiciary to find its own power. this produces the premise of the protection of liberty. authority must be reasonably definite in its scope so that it can be balanced by power that is at least of equal measure reposed in the hands of other government actors. by assuming that there judicial power was in daily finite and it was to find a competing powers of the president and they states to overwhelming to challenge, the framers failed to anticipate

the willfulness and forcefulness with which jurors would flush out the meaning of judgment. ironically, they also undermined the purpose of having a written constitution. without the majesty of fundamental law would be a simple enough matter to overturn judicial excesses. the political branches would reverse them by statute. by enabling the judges to define their authority and to swallow them in the commands of the constitution that cannot be amended by statute, the framers laid the groundwork for doing what the constitution was intended to avoid. concentrating in a single office the power to erode and usurps the authority of other governmental actors. in this, the judiciary becomes not only the most dangerous branch, but to invoke the popular phrase, the most dangerous branch on steroids. this is because it is

unaccountable by design. the point of this political insulation was to enable it to render judgments without fear or favor. if nothing limits those judgments, a willful judge is encouraged by his insulation from politics to do the immensely on popular thing. whether it is to endow a foreign terret this with privileges, we define marriage, a social engineer the armed forces, or what have you. of all the things the constitution could have failed to corral, the judicial power was probably the most problematic because of our culture. the inherent weaknesses of legislative governments or not only well known but in many ways the driving impetus for adopting the constitution. similarly, the perils of abuse of executive power worlwere well

known. there was controversy over creative the presidency and consensus about ensuring the office did not become one article. by contrast, the idea of law connotes the order a good society must have to forge. we're a nation of laws. we generate reason and the law is seen as reason without passion. to be law-abiding is to be a model citizen. the tug the law has the power to [unintelligible] as long as there is law that [unintelligible] to be a legitimate and expositor of a lot. a pronouncement will have cachet that no other government actor

can boast. if the court is engaged in an active willfulness, the fact that the court is a court and it is reporting to judge with the constitution has to say will be a difficult hurdle to overcome. with this leeway, the metastasis of judicial power has been a simple matter. not easy or quick but simple to explain. it began by judges climbing -- finality what the constitution means. the controversial nature of this claim is underscored by the sparseness of its indication. to say nothing of the disaster of dred scott. it is no longer subject to

discussion, much less debate. judges are deemed to be endowed with the power to overturn the popular will. this becomes even more problematic, and arbitrary as it becomes more difficult to reckon with the constitutionally actually says. when "equal protection clause " is taken to endorse an equal protection. that living constitution is a method to give effect to the progressive measures to favor strictures imposed by document they saw as outmoded. individual liberty was anathema to progressives in their grand

central planning scheme. in time, the courts developed their incorporation documents. selectively mining the bill of rights for provisions to be mandated on the states. not the provision as written but the provisions as interpreted by federal judges. perhaps more significantly, the supreme court finally acquiesced in fdr's vision of speedmmon clause a s a bump. there was no area of commerce that the national government could not regulate. even to the point now of requiring that american's purchase health insurance as a condition of living in the u.s. most ominous is the evolution of the courts so of perception. that is displayed in its forays

with foreign law. judges regularly cherry pick international law to impose obligations the u.s. either has never ratified or has ratified only on the condition that these obligations are to be enforced by diplomacy, not lawsuits. that is, these obligations are political, not legal. finally, to touch on an area here we are indebted t, the judiciary has revised the tort statute. at the time of the adoption, this was a narrow concept, limited to such universally condemned both acts as piracy and aassault on foreign

>> i do not know the princeton joke. i will try and learn it. i thought it might be useful to address something that has been in the background of the panel all morning and is illustrated by the last two presentations. we seem to face this dilemma that we want limits on government, but not on national defense. you might say going back to the earlier discussion about president coolidge, about his mistake, he limited government but he also limit it our military capacity. maybe that was not so good.

i want to talk about that for a bit because i think in all lot of ways, that is one of the things people talk about with the tea party movement and other contexts. the republican party is divided or conservatives are divided between people who put the priority on small government and national defence and these things are in conflict. i should allude to that discussion this morning about coolidge and was he responsible for what happened to in 1939 after president roosevelt's spending spree, we have the 17th largest army in the world. it is not just small government that conservatives stand on defense. it is wrong to think of these things as sharp alternatives.

to start with, the founders did not present it that way. rather, the reverse. if you look at the federalist papers, one of the things that is striking is how much they come back to the theme of, we need a strong national government to defend us against foreigners. the federalist 41 has this great passage. he is talking about anti- federalists want to limit power to maintain a standing party. how could readiness for war in times of peace be prohibited unless we could prohibit the establishment of every hostile nation? it could be only regulated by the danger and means of attack. this is not hamilton who enthused about national defense.

it is adams. we have to give the government all the power it may need. the second thing that is worth mentioning, it brings me to the subject of an earlier talk. it cannot maintain adequate national defence if you do not have the resources. it is important to have a successful economy because otherwise, you cannot maintain a navy, as hamilton says in the federalist. it cannot maintain a military preparedness. you see this in europe. they do not have the resources either in britain to maintain a navy. hamilton says in private, so he speaks more candidly than in the federalist. he was not a big enthusiast for

republican government. he thought liberty was more whatrtant but he did say, is good about republican government is the spur it gives to energy in the people. we always think about how often as the executive but he was concerned about energy in the people and that is the basis of economic vitality. to have people who are ready to take risks and people who are able to -- motivated to go out there and do something in private life. the third thing, planning is what people want to do. not just socialists, but even keynesians, they one to make sure that -- what to make sure that the product is distributed.

they want to redistribute. planning is the enemy of strategy. you cannot plan in advance for dangers that have not developed. did you think about foreign policy, there is something -- if you think about foreign policy, there is something childish about thinking of planning in advance. it leads to schemes that are dangerous. the un was a kind of new deal project and the people who put it together were people who had just worked in the new deal and were thinking about planning for peace. a lot of what andrew said captures this. when to bring courts in two monitoring -- once you bring courts into chaperoning and monitoring, it did i get more effective defense. -- you do not get more effective defense. that turns out to be true even on matters that you think courts would know something about, like conducting trials. our courts had nothing to say

about nürnberg. it took less than six months to organize. from the bang of the gavels to the people who were executed, it was less than a year. we are 10 years into debates about how to try people at guantanamo and we have two trials. it is unbelievably slow and tangled and stupid because it is -- they're not thinking about security. a central point. the judges are sane we have to make sure that the law, even the love for is maintained. -- law of war is maintained.

it was understood to be contingent. we were not going to moderate if the other side did not. we would adopt our understanding is the other side did. an international convention about war, the geneva convention is been forced by a domestic car. that had never happened before even though we had these conventions going back to 1899. it was always assumed that everyone we had to adjust how we implement it, depending on what the people we were fighting did. the people we are fighting, their way of dealing with prisoners of war is to cut off their heads and show that on the internet. i am not saying we should do the same but that would call for adjustments in our understanding of the adjustments. you lose a lot if you put it in the hands of the judges. finally, which goes to something

fundamental today, there was this idea that started with the progress of. if you have a state that is benevolent, that has schemes of redistribution that takes care of its people, you will have more national cohesion and that will make you a stronger nation. there's something about that that seems plausible. our experience shows that even though it might have seemed plausible, it is wrong. what that effect of taking care of everyone teaches is that people can be bought off. you do not have real enemies. they do not understand the incentives you are prepared to offer them to behave better. we see the fruits of that kind of welfare state, foreign-policy dealing with iran. the ball administration keeps saying, you do not understand. we can make it attractive for you to give up your nuclear weapons.

there can be a lot of incentives. we can be friends. it teaches americans that benevolence is a universal solvent and you can trust and you should trust because that is our domestic system, bringing people together by benevolence states. the fundamental thing that ties together from the time of the founding until today, the idea that you want to defend private property and limited government, but you what the resources and the capacity, the flexibility to have an effective defense. people need to be able to defend themselves. .

>> he said i recognize the eliptical machine he had there, because the same one is in my gym, except i have to stand in line to use that one. it's rather a different approach that we have to people who organized the murder of 3,000 innocent people than our enemies have. but i'd like to see if anyone on the panel here would like to have anything that they would like to say. if so, please speak into the

microphone, any response, andy or jim, to jeremy? >> i'll just make a brief comment. i certainly agree with everything that jeremy rabkin just said. certainly defense is an area, a subject, that requires energetic government and is in no way inconsistent with limited government. it's a function of the national government, its chief function. i would say that the domestic coalitions that have been built around the states are not entirely sympathetic to strong defense. they see that money that is spent on defense as money that can be transferred to their causes. so in this way, you know, what we have called big government or i call the cansian state in some ways underminings national defense. one of the first things the courts did during the new deal

period when they reversed course was to, as i say, get rid of the economic liberty doctrine and to basically render the commerce clause an empty vessel. and for a long time the courts feared to intervene into events of national security. certainly this was true during world war ii and the cold war. but i think that andy has made this point that they have built up to this position over a long period of making aggressive decisions more in the domestic field. i mentioned the commerce clause, but we went through the entire period of the warren court and beyond where the courts have made claims. they were accepted and they stood up and there's no reason to believe that when they enter this territory that they will meet much resistance either.

i want to add something about judges, because i'm not sure it was clear enough. >> i'm sorry, is that better? i want to add something about judges, because i'm not sure it was clear enough from my remarks, which i think are -- at least i tried to be more directed toward the problem flowing from the structure of government, where responsibilities are reposed rather than personalities. i can tell you from practical experience, i actually had the good fortune of -- roger mentioned judge mukasey. but in national security cases, appearing before judges who cared passionately about the national security of the united states. those judges all directed me to turn over all sorts of

information that we should never be turning over to the enemy in wartime. and they didn't do it because they were predisposed because they were judges to do it that way. they did it because the judges' institutional responsibility is not the national security of the united states. the judges' responsibility is to do justice to the parties that are before the court in a litigation. and the problem here is not about personalities, it's about structure. if you take your national security decisions, which are the most important ones made by a body politic, and you put them in the hands of the actors who are, number one, not accountable to the people whose lives are at stake, and number two, whose responsibilities are quite the opposite, to make sure that the outcome in a litigation not only is fair, but appears to be fair, the inevitable thing that will

happen is that you will ratchet up due process rights for the terrorists. . it's inevitable. and you have to change the structure, not because judges are bad actors. most of them actually, i think, probably have done their best to make sure not too much of what we shouldn't be giving up in wartime we had to give up, but the reason, i think, for having this -- having this debate about how to deal with terrorists is precisely because you want to get out of the structure that forces you to do the suicidal thing and get to a structure, which allows you to hold back national security information, but at the same time have outcomes in these trials. because we're going to have these trials eventually that

have integrity and that hold up and are -- and that our allies overseas will cooperate with. >> i think i was struck by jim 's comments about the welfare state ultimately of course is not about strong defense and the spirit of the welfare state isn't consistent with either some sense of national honor and greatness, or more concretely, even the kinds of basic toughness to believe that you should defend yourself and a preemptive act against enemies who are building nuclear weapons and that sort of thing. so a kind of wishful thinking assumption that actually doesn't work that well at home, but would if the country is reasonably sort of spsk in spirit and doesn't have too many criminals within its

shores. it doesn't work when you have too many criminals or unassimilated immigrants, but works toll reable at home and people wish it would work abroad. i mean, it's a beside thing for europe and a bad thing for us. but out's a good thing politically, at least in the u.s. the early welfare state, which was pro strong in big defense, at least. let's call it the harry truman, john kennedy, scoop jacksons. if you think of jim's account to the kind of coalitions you can build up was stronger than the democratic party's welfare state which has lopped off a large chunk of the economy that do depend on military matters, which don't have any great investment now in that party's control. i mean, there's quite a lot of people who have served -- do serve in the military, are fond of the military, who feel that that party doesn't pay attention to their well-being.

and i think as a practical matter it's an opportunity for those who want to resist the -- i mean, it's not just, as jeremy said, that being pro limited government is not inconsistent with being pro strong defense as a practical political matter. the george mcgovern-barack obama welfare state is weaker than the f.d.r.-scoop jackson welfare party. >> i want to make one point about that. if you go back to the 19th century, instead of welfare spending we had civil war veterans pensions. and huge amounts of money were shoved out to reward people who had fought for the union and were going to continue to support republican candidates. if you come to the 20th century, big programs, big part of federal spending is the veterans administration in the 1920's, providing benefits for -- ok. and this is, i think, what true nba and kennedy and scoop jackson were -- truman and

kennedy and scoop jackson wanted to do, reward the veterans. but they are becoming a smaller and smaller part of the male population, because we have very much smaller military forces. so, i mean, i'm not so optimistic, well, we have to get the veterans' vote and that will put us over. it's not as big a vote as it used to be. >> a the pro-military vote is a very big vote, actually. my other point is sort of an optimistic point, slightly -- not against, but you may be correcting jim's slightly fatalistic presentation of the political economy of the cansian state, which is an interesting and important presentation, that the way it works is kind of a vicious cycle of public sector unions, getting benefits, who then use those benefits to elect politicians with whom they negotiate for more contracts, so they can spends more money. this is california in a sense. on their own benefits. and somehow the taxpayers or

the taxpayers become a shrinking part of the population and it gets overwhelmed and the only thing to save it is bankruptcy. and even then it's not clear it saves you. you might sort of drift into decline, instead of having a snap-back reaction. it's been a fear of critics of the welfare state, since the early 19th century. a lot of people have seen this dynamic as a possible dynamic and resist it. it's not inevitable. and what strikes me in american history is how the limited success is not that dynamic. it's not as if the proponents of welfare state spending have had the upper hand politically for that -- that consistently, really. roosevelt ran out of steam very quickly. if he was successfully buying everyone off in the 1930's, you would have thought the next stages of the new deal agenda would have had irresistible force. but there was a huge amount of resistance to big government in

really, from the late 1930's all the way through the early 1960's. there was that spurt in the 1960's and 1970's which was pretty dramatic and since then there's been a lot of resistance. now we've had a little spurt for two years and there's again resistance. not the ratchet effect that the spurts produce the expansion and the resistance simply holds the line or maybe tweaks it back a little bit. and the question is could you have sort of rollback, not just containment of big governments, welfare states, liberalism. and i think the answer may be yes. but conservatives shouldn't be too fatalistic. one line of argument sometimes, and jim did mention this, is this fewer and fewer people think taxes and everyone votes themselves benefits, and the upper half of the income strata, who are paying taxes, are being exploited. but, of course, actually elm peercally that's not where the impetus for big government liberalism has come from in the last 20, 25 years. if you look at the voting

tables, the upper class, the taxpayers and the wealthiest taxpayers have become more liberal, more democratic in their vote. that's one of the big developments of the last 20, 25 years. the strongest -- the lower classes remain very -- the poor remain strong democrats, most of them. but it's the -- the greatest resistance come from people who objectively, from a cansian state kind of analysis, probably benefit from big government. the working class, lower middle class, there's a huge resistance now to the expansion of the welfare state. and it strikes me that one should just be careful. it shows the cultural and other factors which play a large role, not just a kind of narrow version of economic self-interest. people do care about their children and grandchildren's well-being. they don't just look at their own balance. a lot of people at tea party gatherings -- this is a point to the left, where they smirk about it -- are benefiting from big-government program or who have relatives who work in the public sector, probably getting

benefits from lower taxes, they're not in the upper bracket. benefit from the progressive tax code. but they have a sense that it's bad for the country. and i don't think conservatives should get -- and i don't think jim is this way, but conservatives shouldn't be too fatalistic or economically deterministic that somehow this ratchet effect is unresistible or even irreversible. i do think it requires a lot of creative thinking on issues like public sector pensions, which is fronts and center right now, about how to change the underlying dynamics. it was the position of franklin roosevelt that public sector employees couldn't be unionized. half the people worked for the government bargained with the government. it's not like a private sector relationship and one could have a radical change over the next few years over the state and federal level and the way public sector employees are

unionized, that's something to strive for now, now that it's become clear how this has played out. so there are some real opportunities for rollback, if i can use that term, not just for containment. >> very briefly, jim pearson is right in one regard that seems to me very important about these public sector unions that we're speaking of. they will be reformed by bankruptcy. so they will not be reformed by reform. they will be reformed by bankruptcy. that's too proximate for it to be stopped. i hope on other levels reform by bankruptcy will be stalled by us or will get there before the bankruptcy gets there. i just want to say two things. i very much admire jim's paper, and it's an important concept when you have an economic theory behind state, as we seem to have in the modern day. but the cansian state in the

united states was born before kane published the theory. we had our own homegrown system all over the place from the time of william jennings bryant and the trouble on the farms and the idea that you pump money in. there isn't enough money. it had to do with the great gold standard battle. and what's very funny is two of them were called castings and foster. you imagine people who are simultaneously genius and also quirky, like "the wizard of oz" to be discredited. fostering castings wrote a book called wro the road to plenty" that roosevelt had in his library that said you spends and spend and the economy will get better because the money flows and words that portendsed velocity. and f.d.r. wrote as governor of new york in the 1920's, "too good to be true." and i actually want to have

that framed sometime soon. so we had the kanesian impulse and some of it was political and some of it had to do with inflation. and secondly, very briefly, kanesianism has to do with that dumb planning that we spoke about vis-a-vis the military, because government spending is too slow, and five-year plans, and that's really what eisenhower was talking about with the military industrial complex speech, and it's also what we're talking about when we say we're fighting the preceding war. politicians always fight the preceding war, because that's easier in terms of getting the appropriation. >> and they know how it turns out. >> and they know how it turns out, right? because we saw what we need. so the kanesianism intensifies this era of fighting the preceding war. >> just a few comments. as i was preparing this paper i looked at the record of deficit spending in the united states from world war ii onward.

and in the 1950's and 1960's, deficits were a very small percentage of the g.d.p. i think in the eisenhower years it was less than 1%. there were three or four years where eisenhower actually ran surpluses. and it was true in the 1960's. we began to develop chronic deficits in the 1970's. the only exception to the chronic deficit problem is that it's increased and that divided government in the 1990's, when we actually ran a surplus or two and were balancing the budget. the kansian problem is that if the state runs chronic deficits year after year in periods of growth and prosperity, it loses the capacity to run those deficits in periods of slumps. so you will accumulate, over a period of years, such a debt that you won't be able to exercise that latitude in times of slump.

and that's a kind of a political problem. our deficit now is close to $14 trillion. it's approaching 100% of g.d.p. if we only ran those significant deficits in times of slumps, well, we could probably manage it. but the political process makes that very difficult. a second points i would make that is we've developed what i would call the moral hazard in the federal system. that is, we know that there are moral hazards out in the banking system, as people know they're going to be bailed out. but is it possible that a state like california will spend so much money and be so extravagant in their spending and reward their public employee unions, because they know they'll get transfers from the federal government? i think someone told me last night that california is writing in a big number in terms of federal transfer into their budget so they won't have to cut their spending. if every state thinks that way, that we can run ours noose

bankruptcy and then receive transfers from the federal government, we will encourage precisely that behavior. and we are creating that on top of the moral hazards we built on top of the banking system. >> i think you've all seen probably that bumper sticker that says "it's a good thing that obama doesn't know what comes after trillion." i'd like to -- i'd like to, at least for a couple of minutes, if anyone has any comments or questions, to invite those energetic individuals to the microphone. priscilla. >> my question is about obama and the constitution. and it occurred to me that his syllabus at the university of chicago might provide some interesting insights into what his personal philosophy is. has anyone seen it or know -- on the panel know about it?

>> it's rather misleading. first of all, he wasn't a professor, he was an adjunct. he had one course. it was about voting rights. it wasn't constitutional law overall, it was about voting rights and minority rights in voting and how to protect minority voters. so it was basically the law of community organizing. >> any other comments or questions? well, if not -- yes. >> i have a question for amity. you mentioned that public sector unions could be reformed by bankruptcy from the states. do you think bankruptcy should be even a strategy of the states to avoid paying the unions?

>> no, i don't. but it's possible they do. >> states can't declare bankruptcy right now, so it's a very interesting question why they can default on their debt. that's what we're saying when we say bankruptcy. it's an interesting question. some people suggested this, that maybe the federal government should look at actually a bankruptcy chapter 11 for states, and it would be a way for them to act more rationally to deal with their creditors and the people to whom they've made various obligations. this is a case where we've been in uncharted territory. we've never had this high of federal deficits or states to have the abilities that they have in terms of going to the bonds markets in the last 20, 30, 40 years ago, off-book obligations and pensions, and i think it's a very interesting and challenging question. it's a great opportunity, though, because it is a crisis

in this respect. i think rahm emanuel's statements is one of the stupidest or damaging statements made by a chief of staff, that, hey, we're in power and there's a crisis, let's do what we want. the american public is not fooled by that. this is a crisis which has to be dealt with, not as an excuse to do other thing, but actually because it's a real crisis in state finances. i don't know what to do about it. they've done some good work at manhattan and elsewhere, but i'm not sure we have right now the solution, the right way to get -- not only to solve the immediate problem, but to restructure the way states govern themselves. >> can i mention one solution? there is one and it's quite radical. the treasury -- they had municipal bonds. they had government bonds, of course, liberty bonds, world war i, big part of the financial world war i and also

municipal bond. when the income tax rate went to 77, the municipal bond market flourished and grew and grew and grew right after world war i. so melon thought a constitutional amendment to deprive municipal bonds of their special tax advantage. he wanted to raise taxes on the rich. and the reason was he thought the money was wasteful. that capital was flowing to unproductive places, as now, and that also states were wasteful and they would eventually run into trouble, states and towns. that failed and some of us in this room might say that was good. but he achieved his end another way, which is, he cut the income tax so much that the tax advantage of the municipal bond was much reduced. it no longer seemed so attractive. and if you look at the streds on a chart, municipal bonds versus other bonds, like

commercial bonds -- commercial paper or federal government bonds, you will see that spread narrows in textbook fashion as the income tax rate drops, because the relative attractiveness of municipal bonds goes away. and that suggests that there are ways -- you know, there are ways to deal -- maybe municipal bonds are a big part of our problem. and their treatment. >> this is a question, i guess, for the lawyers on the panel. is it certain that these contracts would not survive a default? public sector contracts. i mean, why should we think that they might not be protected in such a way that -- they could survive a default. >> the 11th amendment. >> different states have different provisions, as i understand it, for their contracts with -- the different contracts, obviously, with public employees. some look, at first glance, to be absolute hard core. they're first in line for all obligations. some are clearly not. i mean, some are more like

private sector companies, which clearly can renegotiate forward-looking obligations. some can renegotiate fast obligations, some are ambiguous and there's a lot going on at the state level. arizona had a ren h-referendum -- referendum. i also think in a crisis one can go to people, as one does in bankruptcy and say, you know, this wasn't an obligation made in good faith. you worked for the state in 20 years and we said at the time that we'll pay you forever, 80% of your departing salary. but we can't do it now and we need to renegotiate either with a relevant union or pass a constitutional amendment that changes the agreement going forward. so i think it's very ambiguous politically. this is a case where the judges will make everything worse, since this will all be litigated right and left.

>> we have had states default in the past, right? >> yes. >> and you cannot sue them over that. they do say, sorry, we're out of money, and then it's hard for them to borrow, right? >> they default to their creditors. i don't know that we've had contractual agreements with employees. it would depend on state law, i think, wouldn't it? who comes first in line and those kinds of agreements? after g.m., who we might have thought was first in line may not be first in line. that's one of the question marks now. >> but g.m. could have been in federal court, which gives you a lot of leverage, right? and michigan can't be. >> right. >> well, i think a delicious lunch awaits us at the back of the room. i'd like to thank the panelists for a very enlightening morning. [applause] thank you all for coming. [applause]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> tonight on q&a, stephanie flanders of the bbc on the knick situation in the u.k. after that a look at the role of race in legislative districts. and later, another chance to see that event on the future of limited government. >> tomorrow on "washington journal," michael auslin of the american enterprise institute. also, a discussion about the latest study on u.s. drinking water with olga naidenko.

and then we'll examine food policy in america with national formers union government relations vice president chandler goule. that's live at 7:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span. >> tomorrow, american university's campaign management institute continues hosting its training program for people interested in working on political campaigns. some of the seminars include opposition research and the use of polling. the two-week program includes seminars with pollsters, media consultants and other political operatives. our live coverage starts at 9:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span. >> you're watching c-span, bringing you politics and public affairs. every morning it's "washington journal," a live call-in program about the news of the day, connecting you with elected officials, policymakers

and journalists. during the week watch the u.s. house and our continuing coverage of the transition to the new congress. and every week night congressional hearings and policy forums. also, supreme court oral arguments. on the weekends you can see our signature interview programs. on saturdays, the communicators, and on sundays, "newsmakers," q&a and prime minister's questions from the british house of commons. you can also watch our programming any time at c-span.org and it's searchable in our library. c-span, washington your way, a public service created by america's cable companies. >> this month "q&a" example pants to two programs each weekend -- expands to two programs. a program of planned cuts to a variety of government programs, and to compare it to what is happening in the united states.

we begin with stephanie flanders, economics editor for the bbc. her job is to lead the bbc economics coverage. early in her career she lived in the united states, where she wrote speeches for then treasury secretary larry summers. her interviews were recovereded in the studios of westminster live located across the thames river from the house of part bsh parliament. >> stephanie flanders, what is stefanomics? >> it explains the day of the events, but in a way some of the big issues that are going on. i use it not just to talk about u.k. stuff. although people reading it in the u.s. would finds that it talked a lot about u.k. issues, but the u.k.'s position in the global economy and a lot about the global economy. i'm one who spent a lot of time

thinking about international economic issues and i try and explain those, especially now when they're so crucial to everybody's lives, explain them in a simple way. so there is a kinds of teaching function and also a reporting function. >> what did you learn when you were larry summers' aide back in 199 ? >> well, there was a couple of things. i certainly love him. he's a very smart guy. i learned that it's interesting to have a serious sort of academic economist at the heart of things, at a time when international issues were pretty important. now they look like pretty small change. but when i got there, it was july, 1997. that was just the beginning of the asian financial crisis, which began with this devaluation by thai government but rolled into these other crises. it felt as though there was -- there was a "time" magazine cover of larry summers, bob rubin and alan greenspan as the committee to save the world, and it did sort of feel like

that at the time. and i learned that they did actually think very hard about the economics of things as well as the politics, when they were trying to resolve those crises. but i have to say -- and i think larry summers has admitted this -- it's easier to lecture other countries about taking dramatic moves or nationalizing the banks and closing them down than it is to do it yourself. and that's what they've been finding out the past few years. >> what was his job at the time? >> he was the undersecretary for international affairs. i think the current occupant of that job is brainard of the treasury. and i had dealings with the u.s. treasury as my job. i was writing editorials for "the financial times" here in london. but i had been to school at harvard and i was half american, and i think in my conversations with the international types at the treasury in washington, and it came out that i was an american citizen and they knew that they had quite a lot of speechwriters for larry

summers, he was challenging to write speeches for, so they asked me to come onboard and i thought it was a great opportunity to see things from the inside, see what's at the heart of the power of the global economy, at least back then. >> is there any way to describe the differences between the way americans govern and the way the brits govern? >> i think the quality of intellectual discussion in the media is higher in the u.s. i think the discussion of political issues is somewhat more dominated by policy, rather than sort of crazy, the minutia of washington life. here you tend to get weeks that are bound up with tiny westminster stories that nobody in the rest of the u.k., i think, was interested in. but in terms of the politicians, the politicians in

the u.k. do talk about the issues probably more than the politicians in the u.s. so i was struck by that, that the politicians are sort of caught in a rather superficial level of discourse because they're worried about their money-raising and everything else. that doesn't happen so much here in the u.k. >> we need to get back to stephanie flanders' story. those people in the u.s. may know your sister, laura flanders. what's the relationship to age? who is older? >> she is seven years older the although i get rather disconcerted, sometimes people do ask me. i like to think it's clear, but i'm afraid it's getting less and less clear over the years. but we've had a sort of transatlantic time of it as sisters, because she went to america originally for six months. she was going to have six months in new york when she was 18, when she just left high school here in the u.k., and then was going to come back to college here in the u.k. but she fell in love with new

york and has stayed there ever since. that was in the early 1980's. so we always had a time of going back and fort. i was in the u.k. system. i went through u.k.'s high school and oxford university and then on a scholarship went to harvard as a graduate student. but you've always spent a lot of time going back and forlt. my family were there. my mother was american, although living in the u.k. so i've always felt a pretty close connection. and laura has always been a very activist journalist. and you'll know of her as a very activist work and there's been a fine line between her reporting and her wanting to change the world, which she's tried to do in a lot of different ways. i've always felt that i was rather the boring establishment member of the family, working my way up through the inside and maybe a bit less actively political, so we are interested in a lot of the same issues. >> sisters, and i think she said it herself, is a lefty? >> yes, i would certainly say

that. in the u.s. see would seem lefty, but here she would, toolt she's not in the sort of mainstream and i guess i'm mainstream. >> and she does a talk show and does some writing for "nation." >> that's right. and she now has her own tv show that she's put out on the web and selling to stations by satellite. basically a nightly discussion program of international and domestic political issues. >> all right. the coburn family, which we know a lot of in the united states, what's your relationship to them? >> well, my sister and i, we both had a grandfather called coburn, who was this sort of patriarch of what has turned out to be a quite lefty, but certainly a very journalistic family. two generations of journalists. there are three brothers. alexander, i know, will be familiar with people in the states. another faction of left-wing journalism in the u.s., and there are two other brothers, patrick and andrew. patrick is a very distinguished

international and war correspondent for newspapers in washington, and he and his brother. andrew has written a lot about saddam hussein and about many issues in the middle east. so they are pretty distinguished family. and i knew about them growing up. we got to know them. they're, in a sense, my half uncles, because we don't have the same -- their grandmother was different, but their mother was not my grandmother. but certainly it was sort of part of the vibe as i was growing up that we had this sort of journalistic heritage. and, yeah, we're all quite a crew. i know some people have said in the states that they were a bit nervous that so much of left-wing journalism was dependent on one family. they sometimes said -- i know christopher hitch inns used to worry about that, that we were responsible for too much, at least in america. >> i can say that everybody we talked to in great britain,

when i mentioned stephanie flanders, they mention michael flanders. >> well, my british dad was a very well known entertainer in the 1950's and 1960's and it was known as flanders and swan. they were pretty big in the states. i know from looking at the royalties -- and there are still a few trickling in -- people are still buying and enjoying some of the songs. there's a hippopotamus song called "mud mud glorious mud" which are very witty and british songs about animals. and they are much loved here, and a lot of people of my age and indeed being younger generations, are brought up on those songs. ambassador they not even know who wrote them. but they tend to know the songs and i'm very proud of that. >> so how much trouble is britain in on the economic front? >> it's interesting. if you had asked me that about a year ago, i think people were really gloomy about prospects for the u.k. but there's a funny thing

someone once said, and i like to steal the line, that british people are the only people who are capable of feeling shun beside their own misfortune. we sort of take a glee in things going terribly wrong and we're the worst of this and we're going to lose this, in a way that you would never find in america. people like to talk about how bad our weather is and how bad our economy is. so you have to look past that to think, are we really in such as bad a shape? because we all like to think we're in such bad shape. but there was this sort of worry that there was a lot of control and that we were particularly vulnerable to this crisis because we had put so much story by our financial system. in fact, it's relative to our economy. we are much more reliant on the money coming out of the london city and the financial sector than the u.s. ever was. the u.s. and the rest of the economy t with its financial system, but it's quite small relative to the whole economy. that's not so much true here.

so i think people were pretty worried. and then there's been a sort of shift of focus, not so much because things have gotten a lot better here, although so far, fingers crossed, our recovery is looking quite strong. no one can quite believe it. but also, because things have gotten so much worse across the channel in europe. i think in the eurozone and the other countries, the pressures that they're under, i think, have reminded people that although we have problems, possibly we have more ways out of our problems because we're not stuck with a single currency. we had a big depreciation of our currency, which i hope will make our exporters more competitive in the rest of the world. we're also part of this talk about competitive deprecicicin. because we sort of have -- we have more ways out of this, people are a bit more optimistic about the u.k. but there's still uneasiness when we get these rather good economic figures coming in that

we're still waiting for the other shoe to drop, that it can't be quite this easy, because we are still a fairly small, open economy. we're very dependent with what's going on with the rest of the world, which is so uncertain. >> how does the percentage of debt here compare with the u.s.? >> well, we're in the same ballpark. and i think the question is -- i mean, america, with its unique position and having the reserve currency, at least for the moment of the world, gets off -- gets special treatment, i guess. so they can get away with more borrowing than we can. our borrowing, the deficit, is similar to the u.s. this year it was 11% of national income, which is roughly what i think it's going to be in the states. and that was considered to be an outrage by the incoming conservative government. it's much higher than when the international monetary fund -- when they famously had to bail the u.k. out in the late 1970's. so people were very focused on

that. but with this new government making such strides against some opposition and some concern by economists, i should say, but with this government trying so hard to bring it down, i would say our borrowing is going on a downward path. our debt is still on an average level. it's risen a lot but it's sort of in the middle of the pack in terms of developing countries, whereas in the u.s., there's still -- it still looks like it's going up as far as the eye can see. >> is there any way to compare david cameron, the prime minister, to any politician in the u.s.? >> it's an interesting question. i don't think you would get a similar kind of character. i'm trying to think. i mean, he's very much -- he's quite an establishment figure in terms of his background. he comes from a very, what we would say, posh background. and so do many of the people in his cabinet. so he's sort of a traditional tory prime minister.

i'm not sure who it would be comparable to in the states. but he has become known, at least in the lead-up to this -- when he became a leader he was a fresh face. he was supposed to be a compassionate conservative. in that sense you could compare him to george bush. but i'm not sure that he would embrace the comparison, although in a sense, george bush was also from a sort of more traditional u.s. backgrounds. but i think the key thing about david cameron is that he has at least given the impression of wanting to change the conservative party, make it more modern, in a sense, due to the conservative party what tony blair did to the labour party, make it recognized that things have changed, make it more tolerant than they were 10 years ago in the u.k. and also, have a more open-minded approach to how do you run government. but on things like the budget, that's pretty traditional in the sense of wanting to cut spending pretty sharply. that's something we see here from conservative governments

that we haven't always seen from u.s. republican governments. they talk a lot about cutting taxes, but they haven't always cut spending very much. usually they've increased it. >> your bbc economics editor. what's that mean and what's a day like for you >> well, every day is different, but that means i'm one of the team of senior on-screen reporters. we have about half a dozen editors and the sort of key ones are the economic ones, the political one obviously, and the international and diplomatic editor. we are in a sense -- we're not in charge of all the other output on our subject, because that would be so impossible with the amount of output the bbc produces on radio, online and on tv, but we are supposed to be, i guess, providing intellectual leadership, and that's one thing i use my blog for, on explaining how we should be explaining a story, what the take on a story should be. so my typical day -- well,

today i started at 7:50 on the radio speaking from my home, just after quickly making some breakfast for my kids. i was talking about the irish economy, whether or not they were going to get a bailout from the european union ministers who are meeting in brussels. so that's just a typical day. and it's those kind of issues. the eurozone is an ongoing crisis, and that's something i would be looking at, as well as stuff that's going on in the u.k. >> we have a clip from a report that you made in march. and if you pay close attention, you can talk about the last government's budget and we'll compare that with what this government's doing. >> ok. >> there's still a river of red ink running through white hall, but the good news from mr. darling today was that it's slowly, very slowly, starting to go down. call it a lucky budget. the recession was tough, the chancellor said, but not as tough as we expected, and the

difference is down to our policies. experts have been debating for years whether the government can take credit that it's lower than expected. the number of business failures is lower as well. but the chancellor today did reap the benefits and now thinks for the first time in years that the borrowing forecast was going down. he said the gap between spending and revenues this year wouldn't be $178 billion, as he forecast in december, but $167 billion. the number for future years is lower as well. as a result, the total stock of government debt will be $67 billion pounds lower in 2014 than he thought a few months ago. that's the good news. the bad news is that the total debt in that year will be 20 times that -- more than 1,400 billion. so the chancellor had remorse for -- there's a small giveaway of $1.4 billion, including the

extra winter fuel payments, phasing in the rising fuel duty and that temporary cut in stamp duty for first-time byers. but looking ahead, the plans show he'd take it all back and then some if labour stayed in office. the rise for houses worth more than $1 million carries on. he'd raise fuel duty in future years as well. >> there's a modest giveaway in the short term paid for by the extra money that the treasury is getting from the bonus tax. thereafter it's a modest net takeaway. higher stamp duty, higher inheritance tax and tobacco duty. it's a small takeaway and a small giveaway at the beginning. >> that could sound prudent to the financial markets -- well, as pruents as a chancellor can sound when he's borrowing a pound for every four pounds he spends. the structural deficit, the part that won't go away with the recovery, was 8.4% of national income last year.

if labour wins, mr. darling now says he'd cut that to 2.5% by 2014. >> basically it was a politician' budget. the market didn't get any surprises or shocks. we're looking at the election on may 6 and the budget of the it's probably going to come in two months after the election. the market will move on that. that is when the tough cuts need to be made. >> mr. darling had some advice for companies as well, but business leaders yr underwhelmed. >> it's modestly positioned. there were entrepreneurs and small businesses, but there's big parties still about the shape and size of the deficit. >> to bring down that borrowing, we've had more details of $11 billion pounds in savings the federal government is going to have to make. there will be many more, but there, too, this is a chancellor who wasn't giving much away. stephanie flanders, bbc news. >> they didn't win. >> they didn't win. >> when was the election? remind us. >> it was in early may, and actually, it coincided with an

extraordinary crisis in the eurozone. so when you talk about what my day is like, they were pretty busy in those days, because you had sort of a twin track crises and often it felt like what was going on in the eurozone was more important for the global economy and even for our economy than the u.k. but you had this extraordinary weekend after those results where the conservatives didn't get a full majority, where, for the first time in a very long time, there was negotiations over creating this coalition, which is what happened. and the first thing they did was announce a much tougher approach to the deficit, and indeed, a lot tougher than what had been hinted at during the campaign. although throughout the campaign, as we've said, the politicians are not really talking about what's going to happen after the election. none of them had. >> related to the united states, if you were over there right now working for larry summers, looking over here -- first of all to, the layman it looks like you're really cutting over here, and in the

united states, they're not. will we have to in the united states do what you're doing here in order to survive? >> well, i think that's going to be -- that is the big argument. it's interesting, because when gordon brown was around, when the labour party was around in power, there was this meeting of minds between the democrats and labour. usually in favor of spending and in favor of growth, whereas in the eurozone they were more worried about inflation and they wanted to have slow growth. now, i know from my time working with larry that there's always been a sort of confusion in washington, even among republicans. why would the europeans want to grow so slowly? why would they want to punish their economies? what changed with this government is that we've become a little bit more european in our approach to the deficit and the approach to growth. they still want to grow the economy, but they think the way to do that is by having tough cuts. that is a gamble. they admit it. it's a calculated risk. in the u.s., there's a very strong feeling in the

administration, not just larry summers, but also the treasury secretary, tim geithner who i used to work with as well, that you have to put growth first, that it's just too risky to be putting in place these cuts. so i think the jury is out, but what is interesting is for the first time in a long time, the u.s. and the u.k., who come into this crisis with very similar issues, they both had the boon times, they both ran up the debt, both the public debt and the private debt. they had the financial sector spending spree, they had the housing boom and bust, and they're taking very different approaches to how to get out of it. and the u.s. needs to cut borrowing and is being kicked down the road. >> i did some fast calculations. this is scary to do this, but you can correct it. the prediction that he was making, if i understood it, was that in the year 2014-2015, the united kingdom would have about $2.7 trillion in debt. >> yeah, that sounds about

right. maybe a bit lower. it's $1.4 trillion pounds. >> but in the united states we have about $13 trillion in debt now. >> you've got a much bigger economy as well. >> i mean, what is it, about five times bigger population there. >> i mean, i think we are all looking -- as i was saying before, the stock of debt relative to the economy is going to be the same ballpark, i suspect,. in the u.s.'s case it's going to be a bit higher, but it depends how you treat some of the state debt. it's an exciting debate we cannot have about how you treat the social security trust funds. but we're in the same ballpark. but what is different is that the u.k. have now put forward what most people would say is a credible plan for putting the debt on the downward path, and you're borrowing less but you're also not allowing the stock of debt to rise after the next few years. that's not what's happened in the u.s. >> this is a small thing for

you. probably not for the person that i was talking to last night, who said that if you're over, i think -- is it 65 or 70 -- you get free bus rides. >> 60. gordon brown introduced -- there were quite a few what we would call freebies here that were introduced by him that now cost a lot of money. it's free tv licenses for all the people. that is actually, i think, over 70. >> over 75. i read that this morning. >> over 75. and that's actually a free right to watch me, to watch the bbc. because you know here if you buy tv, you have to buy a tv license, which costs -- well, a little under $200, maybe $175. and that goes free to people over 75, even if they're very well off. now, it's even more extreme in the cases of bus travel. if you're over 60, absolutely everybody in britain can get a card entitling them to free bus travel, sort of out of peak times in london. that is a point of contention.

david cameron was pressured on the campaign, in the election, to stay he would keep it, but, boy, the treasury would like to get rid of it. they think it's crazy to be giving this free travel to a lot of rich pensioners and the rachel derrell people. >> to put it in context, i had a pass for a week here in london. it was about $40 for five days in one zone. >> yes. although that would also have been for subway. this isn't for using on subways, but -- so you do see here there are much reduced rates for people to go on the subways and you see people waiting -- you o see slightly older people waiting outside the subway station for 9:30 a.m., when they can use it. >> free prescription charges and free eye tests. i gather under the national eye system here you don't get free eye tests, or or you wouldn't need them if you're over 60. that it's free.

>> most of it is free for the elderly. most of that people would want to keep, because they want to encourage people to go and get their tests beyond a certain point. it was a very sticky issue for margaret thatcher back in the 1980's, when she introduced some of these charges for the non-retired population. but, no, the bus thing and some of these other things, what they call universal benefits that go to everybody, they are under a lot of pressure. there's a fuel allowance that you get. you get a big check for about $300 or $400 every year just to help you meet your home fuel bills during the winter. and that's great, but, again, it's not necessarily needed by a lot of the people who are getting a check. >> what's this housing allowance that you keep reading about that some people are taking advantage of? and you see the articles. some newspapers did a series of articles on all the cheaters. >> well, it's called the housing benefit, and it's basically help for poorer people. not just, actually, the

unemployed, but people on low incomes to pay their rents. and it was sort of developed partly because there wasn't enough cheap housing for people. so this was a benefit that developed and the bill, i think, has risen to $20 billion pounds, which is a hell of a lot of money. it's sort of more than we spend on our police and it's more than we spend on a lot of other things. and understandably, george osborn, the new chance lor, the new finance minister, came in and said we've got to start bringing this down. i think what worries people is that although there is money going to people, especially poorer people with big families in the center of london, for them to find a house, to have their rent paid, can be a lot of money. can be tens of thousands of pounds a year. people say well, hang on, why are they getting it, when i'm struggling to pay my mortgage or struggling to pay my rent but if you only cut the benefits without doing very much to increase the stock of cheaper housing -- and we have

a shortage of housing, particularly in london -- then you are putting a lot of people possibly out on the streets. certainly you're making them move out of london. so this is one of those things that was identified early on. yes, if they cut money -- we can see why they would want to reduce the bill, and you can see why they didn't want any stories are of people sitting in palatial mansions, it will have a knock on people who rely on those kind of workers for their companies and indeed, in their houses, people have cleaners, child care people. >> back to your report on what the labour party promised before the election. what's the difference? can you give us some specifics, the difference that the cameron government, the coalition government, has actually brought into being? >> well, they had -- there was some tax rises that the labour had introduced, which pretty

much the new government has stuck with. but the bulk of the cuts which were being introduced, the reductions in borrowing, were going to come through spending. also in the case of labour as well. but the conservatives are doing a lot more spending cuts. spending is playing a bigger role. just as a rough guard, allaster darling was planning to cut it by $50 billion pounds over the next four years. under this government it's going to be $80 billion, and that's about sort of 5% of national income. just over 1% of national income a year of tightening. so in a sense, they took what he had done, they stuck with most of it, including the tax rises, but they sort of added another half on top. >> you said earlier that you have an american passport. >> i do. >> do you feel british or do you feel american? >> well, i guess you can sense just talking to me that i speak like a brit and i feel more like a brit, i guess, because i've spent more of my life

here. i went to school here mainly. but i certainly miss the states, and i get a bit wistful when i go back to washington and new york, which i often do. and i feel a sort of kinship with america. i'd be sorry if i never lived there again. i like to think that i'll carry on there again. >> is your mom still alive? >> no, she passed away 12 years ago. in fact, my daughter was born on the 10th anniversary of her death, so she's named after her, claudia flanders. >> picked this up in a lot of the papers this morning. david cameron's photographer and video-maker have left the public payroll after the prime minister bowed to pressure over his vanity staff. we see that stuff in the united states all the time, as you know. is that something that this government is getting caught doing that they said they wouldn't do? >> with any politician who announces that things are going to be different and things are going to be clean, watch my

mouth, read my lips, whatever, they always get caught. it's always a mistake to say you're going to be clean and not do these things. david cameron has been called out for having a photographer and a sort of videographer who's been working with him on the civil service, on the government's payroll. but i would say it's a small piece of it. i mean, having the occupational hazard for elm by cutting waste and having -- made people think that there's a lot of money to be saved in the beaurocracy. it's easy to catch them out. so far there haven't been too many gaffs on that front. . .

>> is there a difference in journalism between the two countries? >> there is a little bit -- they

trust their journalist more. they have much lower standards in terms of fact checking. they leave the journalists to make their own judgments on things. that means there is a lot of stories that are not true. the great thing about sunday it is that the stories did not have to be as true. i thought it was a rather worrying expression. you would never hear that any serious newspaper in the u.s. i was taken aback initially and rather impressed by the amount of attention to detail when i was working at "the new york times." how many americans do see coming

to herb blog? >> if i am writing about something global, it will go on the effort -- on the front page of the bbc website. i will then get several hundred thousand hits from that. it is very hard to judge, looking at the comments, they sometimes will be from the rest of the world, but not so much from the u.s., i am not sure. >> go back to what we first started to ask you about. if you work for the chancellor of the exchequer, george osborne, versus the treasury secretary in the united states, what would be speechwriting be like? >> i suspect the speech writing process would be similar. it depends on the person. there are some leaders who are

very careful about their speeches in the want everyone to have seen it before hand. i suspect they are in the minority. most of these guides get in there, and they have people they trust. the people at the u.s. treasury would be tearing their hair out because larry and i would be discussing his crucial speeches at 3:00 in the morning. i suspect that is similar. what is interesting is the u.k. treasury is much more powerful and the u.k. than the u.s. treasury is. i was amazed -- i should have known this going in. but when i went to the u.s. treasury, i was surprised about how important it is. -- important -- impotent it is.

the budget the produces and january is kindly received, and then promptly ignored. the chancellor stands up on a certain day, you saw the report i did on the day in the spring when this happened. they stand up on a certain date and then dealt with there going to do, they sit down, and in a week or so, it will happen. there is no debate. none of the months of painful back and forth that you have in congress. the treasury is much more powerful. when it comes to the rest of the world, no one really cares what the u.k. treasury things. in the case of the u.s., we did have an awful lot of control. some people had said too much control. the irony is that we had a lot more control over many other countries policies them we do

over our own. >> when we watched the cuts being announced over here, 500,000 people are going to be cut in the public service, is that like cutting a fourth of our civil service? is it the same thing? how do you find 500,000 civil servants in a country that only has 60 million people? >> they are everybody. it is also going to be the policemen and the bureaucrats were dealing with the different departments. campbell also be a lot of local authority and local government officials. -- it will also be a lot of local authority and local government officials. >> but controls -- what control does the prime minister have over the local government? >> we are going to give you a

lot more control over how to spend it. they hate the fact that the people they were forced to spend on certain things, it is similar to the states. the state's hate having the federal government control how they spend their money. you'll have a lot less money, but we will stop putting so much control over how you spend it. in that sense, he will have less control over what the local government does. a lot of the cuts will be felt at a local level. >> in the united states, the president says we are going to cut the money to the states. he may never be able to do that because congress will not go along with it. what about here? isn't -- that means it is going to be cut. what they say in parliament,

happens. you would hear about them even in the states because they would be a major loss for the government. things are a bit different in a coalition government because you've got a lot of debates between the two parties that has to happen behind closed doors within the treasury before these things get announced. there is not a new check and balance on the conservative power that would not have normally been there. was to get to the point of announcing it in parliament, but that is the parliamentary system. >> right across this river, the conservative headquarters, still is came to protest the raising tuition. is that going to happen?

if it does, what does it mean for the potential college student? >> at the moment, it has been a very difficult issue for governments for 30 years. how do you pay for university education? when i went to college 20 years ago, they were just beginning to prevent better off families from getting grants and getting minutes money will they read college. i did not pay a penny and my parents did not pay a penny for fees. the fees were introduced under tony blair. the big loss that he nearly suffered was the tuition fees. now those fees are going up. the fee at the moment is capped at 3,000 pounds. it could not be -- that in many universities. -- it could not be doubled that

in many universities. that seems terrible, even though the money is going to be paid up front. it can be paid back once you are earning. if you are not earning more than a certain amount, you would not pay it back. it is progressive in that respect. it is a touchstone issue, but i do not think they will back down. the universities are saying, we cannot pay our way. we cannot stay serious academies if we did not get more money. >> a lot of politicians and people said often that the united states is the greatest country in the world. what does that sound like to a bread box >> -- to a brit? >> they used to be as snobbery as the u.s. that they were about to ego and prone to plan their on trumpets, things like that.

people here, we never talk about what a great economy we are. i think it has changed. there is a respect for the u.s. now, which certainly lasted through any bad feeling about the bush administration. i did not find -- people would rather like to say that the u.s. is a great economy. >> paul passed president obama died in the eyes of most -- how has president obama at dawn in the eyes of most brits? >> there are surprised how much less power he had coming into that meeting to persuade people to do things because he just had the election results and there is a sense that i'm that that is on the back foot, -- that america is on the back foot.

that is a shame. i think people here wanted to see president obama do well. >> i have to ask you about a phrase you used in one of your blogs. i had never seen before. you say the treasury is predictably cockahoop. >> my grandfather would be telling me exactly where it came from because he led the derivation of these things. i have no idea where it comes from direct it is an extraction -- where it comes from. it is an expression about being please. >> when you are in the united states, what do you say that

people say, what? >> that would be quite up there. there are a lot of -- there are plenty of those on there. there are a lot of traditional once -- ones. as someone who is transatlantic, i got pretty used to not using those expressions. i do remember a conversation in the treasury in washington about growth in the future. larry summers was there and tim geithner and ebert talking about the profits in the economy. if it is one. north, that is not going to be so bad. everybody looked at me and said, one. north? i was teased and immersed -- i was teased mercilessly. >> the impact of going to oxford? >> it is one of the better

known colleges in oxford and it is well known for being a place for people study politics, philosophy, and economics. it tells you something about the u.k. that everyone has done the same courses. i had a great time there. it has a tradition of being very politically focused. it produced a lot of prime ministers. a lot of the rhodes scholars used to choose -- we had a lot of interesting u.s. and canadian graduate student there who are now doing exciting things. one of them is the canadian ambassador in afghanistan. >> harvard -- how long were you there? >> i was there for two years. having had a bit of time out, ended up doing not the

government department. i changed to the kennedy school, the school of government. i was quite happy with the two- year course and the freedom of being able to do pretty much anything i liked. it was disneyland for academics. i taught justice. i had a great time. >> did you ever contemplate public service? running for political job? >> i have thought about it over the years. my friend and former college mates have gone that direction. i ended up more of -- on the

journalistic side of things. i enjoyed very much being on the government side in the u.s. once you've gone into the government in some way, even if i went into the government as an aide, at i would then find it very difficult to go back to journalism. it would probably be the same thing in the u.s. the bbc is very crucial and i am glad that no one has ever really questioned the i have an objective view. people do not know what i think about a lot of these issues because i am very careful. that is the way it should be. >> have you been controversial? >> i do not think so. there was one time when i was working for a program where i interviewed david cameron and one of the ways that we wanted to highlight a policy that he had before awarding marriage to give an extra tax break to unmarried couples, somebody

decided it was a good idea to ask him to the personal version. some of the right-wing commentators saw that it was outrageous and that i was carrying the flag for the single parent and showing a left-wing approach. i was slightly trying to make a point about whether it made sense to give money to people who did not really need it in order to get married. >> explain your thoughts about having a partner in -- and two children. is that accepted universally? >> i think it is pretty common. i think last year was the first time where more than half of the

children born in the u.k. were born out of wedlock. it is certainly a very common thing. i suspect that i will get married. it is one of those things that we ended up -- and modeled world -- in the modern world, you spend your time looking for a house and starting a family and you look around and say, we're not married yet. >> in the united states, it is about 30%. in some groups, it is as high as 70%. what is your philosophy? >> it was not a conscious decision. if you meet someone later in life, we met in our late '30s, you end up feeling there is a little bit of a time pressure. i have never been one of those people who dreamed about what my marriage and my wedding would look like. i was not sure that i would get married. it seemed like a bigger priority to find somewhere to live together and start a family than to get married.

the families started a bit quicker than we thought it might take. it was just a question of timing. >> how old are your kids? >> two and four. >> there was announcement made that there would be a wedding. i can tell you from being here and watching it, everything went to those five pages. it went on for 24 hours. show us the relevance of that to this society today. >> i should ask you. i gather that the coverage in america was pretty extreme. >> people flew overnight to be here to report and that. why are people so interested? >> it is all about how much american television had covered

it. about 20 minutes after it was announced, i remember the networks you're going to open " good morning america" to say how it was their first news item of the day. we were very happy that americans were so focused on the royal family. i am not a firm republicans and i have nothing against the royal family. as someone -- i have never really understood the great fascination with them. on that day, people were very happy to have some good news. there was a pretty positive feeling around prince william. people were happy to of something nice to think about. it was on a day were there was a lot of talk about bailouts in the euro zone and other things and it was nice to have those kind of issues off of the front page for a while.

>> they will not get married until 2011. d think it will be a steady drumbeat of coverage until then -- and do you think that it will be a steady drumbeat of coverage until then it? >> they are certainly -- they were the most photograph and followed couple in the world. people be interested in the preparations. what kind of dress was she wearing? interesting timing would be that some of the biggest spending cuts are going to be felt around the country around the same time as the wedding. there will be an interesting balance that the palace will have to strike between cheering every one up because they have not any money and making them

pretty angry at the contrast between a roiled life and everybody else's life. i am not sure i would want to be in the palestine to manage that when. >> let's go back to the cuts. what will people start to cut here? what different things will day notice that is costing either more money or more taxes? >> consumption tax is going to go up at the start of the year. that is the thing that will be different. they ought said it bike -- there was a payroll tax rise. they are doing this consumption tax rise. in the 1980's, margaret thatcher -- for some generations, is that still has resident. people will be focused on that. we should remember that the 20%

-- this is a sales tax on everything but food. it will be 20% on top of the regular retail price. they will notice that money is not going into the in a jazz anymore. the administration -- the national health service. the government has said that they are not cutting -- there will not be a real cut for nhs spending. for the nhs, that feels like a cut. after years for the spending was rising rapidly, it will feel like a cut for everyone else as

well. >> if you have a serious operation and you had your choice, would you go to the nhs or would you pick the best hospital in the states? >> i think that there is a strong feeling that the best hospitals are world leaders. my son has a moderate parts issue -- a moderate heart issue. for emergency care, the nhs has extraordinarily high standards. for some other kinds of care, if you want to get your hip replaced, or some parts of cancer treatments, there would be hospitals in the states that might be better. but they are expensive.

>> what chances do give david cameron for being successful? >> it is all going to come down to the gamble on the economy. it is a fascinating time for me. did does feel quite a black and white. -- it does not feel quite a black and white. on this gamble, where the u.s. has taken one choice and we have taken another, he could be right or it could be wrong. it is a gamble. everything else will flow from that. if the economy is much weaker and cannot withstand these kinds of cuts, the cuts themselves will be harder. if growth is faster than they hope, everything will seem a bit easier than they will have a much better chance of being reelected. but it is very much down to this

economic gamble. >> there is a significant difference of the unemployment rate between the united states and here. >> what has been striking a plea of not have the kind of a rise in unemployment that you have had. we had a 6% decline in national income from what we would -- from the top to bottom. you had a much shallower recession. but you have a much bigger rise in unemployment. larry summers, when he was still in the administration, the puzzling over why that happened. it is this such -- it is such a central feature. hear, people have not recognized enough what a difference that has made to the recovery as well. people never felt as bad about the economy as they did in the

states because fewer people lost their jobs. they kept their connection to the work place. >> thank you so much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> for a dvd copy -- >> a look at the role of race in

drawing legislative districts. also, a discussion on the future of limited government. another chance to see "q &a." tomorrow, the american university campaign management institute continues hosting its training program for people interested in working on political campaigns. some of these seminars include opposition research. our live coverage starts at 9:00 eastern here on c-span. >> the documentary has been newly updated. you will see the grand public places and those only available to the justices. he will hear about how the court works. theou'll hear about how

corps works. learn about some of the court's recent developments. home to america's highest court. caring for the first time in high-definition sunday at 6:30. >> next, a look at the role of race in drawing congressional and state legislative districts. you will hear remarks from the former head of the voting rights section of the justice apartment civil-rights division. as well as state legislators from texas and south carolina. this took place at the national black caucus' annual conference. this is an hour and 35 minutes.

>> we are delighted that you are here for a fascinating experience. redistricting is on the horizon and we are here to year from a panel of experts and we're delighted to have martin here as a moderator. we are delighted that all of you are here from all across america. we welcome you here. we are an organization -- our purpose here today is to learn more about this issue called redistricting and to start us off, we would like to invite to the microphone -- >> thank you. let us pray. our father in heaven, we come to you this morning in

thanksgiving. thank you for all the blessings. we thank you for touching aus would love this morning. we thank you for all the blessings that we have seen. we thank you for all the good things that happened this week. we thank you for the camaraderie. thank you for giving us the opportunity to discuss. what the participants share information with us. amen. >> amen. >> we want to welcome c-span. they were with us on the digital divide and now they are with us on redistricting. i want to thank all of the members of the panel that are here. we appreciate your expertise on this issue. we always welcome are longtime

supporter. give him a round of applause. [applause] it is my pleasure to turn the microphone over to our vice- president. [applause] >> thank you. it is an honor for me to -- we just had an unbelievable prayer breakfast and we all feel rejuvenated, dedicated, and ready to work. welcome. it is also my honor to recognize and introduce our moderator for this morning. award winning journalist and political analyst. i just found out that he and i

have one thing in common. we both share the same birth date. it is november the 14th. when i looked -- when i looked at cnn and i see him come on, i always smile because i know there is going to be action. and there is going to be some disagreement. it is going to happen. maybe some furniture moving. i was trying to be nice. you know that he was named to the ebony magazine most influential african american and that was 2008, two dozen 9, 2010. we also know that he is a former executive editor of the chicago defender. he also has a new book out.

one of the things i can appreciate about mr. marden, and if you want to hear it the way it really is, he will presented to you. we are very fortunate this morning to have him moderate are closing day. [applause] >> november 14 is a good day. i am certainly glad to be with you for this important conversation. today it is also a very important day beyond this conference. to date is also -- all of the

office and the house standup city can be recognized. in the of the alpha tes house, stand up and be recognized. as i tell them all the time, the difference between first-class and coach. i do not mind coach, but it is not first class. one of my good friends, he tried to make a remark earlier. but just in case you forget, when you go home, i want this

ringing in your head, who is your daddy? [laughter] i am a native texan. i was born and raised in houston. i lived in chicago for six years, but i am from houston. important distinction. i want to introduce you to our panel. [applause] next u.s. is -- next to him is anita earls. john tanner is with deep justice

department civil-rights division. next to him as the honorable state representative from south carolina. you brought your own fan club. last, but not least, from my native texas, rodney ellis. [applause] he is a lot -- he is in a little pain. you did not think i was going to pass them over, did you? the whole notion of apportionment in terms of how we are going to be operating in the

next 10 years is so vital. i will ask a political question. it amazes me how this issue was rendered totally irrelevant during the midterm elections. it was as if four democrats and republicans, it really came up, the actual stakes that are at play. from a political standpoint, even if you do not been involved in politics, why is it that this is such an important issue? it's no attention every two years. -- it gets no attention every two years, until after the fact. >> one reason we tend not to raise it is it gives the appearance of being self- serving. we know that it matters. not just for members of congress and county commissioners.

everybody will have to redraw the lines. usually, it appears to be so self serving. it is hard to get the public to understand it until something dramatic happens. >> it is very self-serving to talk about it after the election. it amazes me how it is not a significant issue prior to the election, but afterwards, people said that it is so important. >> but we have a different response. i would suggest to you that it did not give raised with policy makers and people who are in a decision making position. from my perspective, the issue was raised. it just fell on deaf ears. the folklore in a position to make the decision about redistricting and understanding it and the fact that state legislators draw lines.

we recognize that and those of us sadr on the bottom tried to get those on the top to recognize that. -- those of us that are on the bottom. it is as democrats. we are always a day late and a dollar short. because it did not address the upfront, we now have a different frame of mind. what happened on november 2 means to me that the way we were thinking of redistricting, we will not be able to do this anymore. there are different decision makers in place. >> the players got it. when you are trying to raise money, it is because you let

them know that the lines will be drawn. we do have a justice department hopefully that will not be as political as it has been the past. and these that will help us have some semblance. >> if you are and a small state like south carolina and west virginia and all of those, the level of funding will be different. >> how many black state senators in south carolina? >> none. >> we might be big, but it's still too. one in dallas and one in houston. >> it is very important that the

broader community is going to -- is aware of these issues and the ramifications of redistricting. we had an opportunity when doing this since this process to point out that that account was going determine our political representation in the future. we did not do enough collectively in terms of our outreach and our elected officials and government to tide that issue to our representation. >> you are certainly right that it did not get the attention that it deserved. it got more attention this time than previous decades. from the perspective of voters on the ground, up redistricting has traditionally been done in back rooms.

not something that they understand or had an opportunity to be involved in. as the technology has made it easier for individuals to draw maps, over the last three cycles of redistricting, we have seen more community involvement. so north carolina, there was some talk about the impact of our state legislative and redistricting. there was more awareness from before, but not as much as there should be. >> can you leave all the microphones on? >> the one time i think redistricting in my state got more attention than it has gone a long time was in 2003. remember, we had the recounting stuff going on in florida. you have the recall stuff going

on in california. then you have to read- redistricting in texas. into a dozen free, -- they decided mid decade, and they would just do it again. the house members broke the four men went to oklahoma. on the senate side, they were gone about three days. we tried that and we thought we'd be gone three days. it put it on the front burner and the average person should -- could see how it mattered. my republican colleagues picked up five seats in the united states congress by redistricting. people understood that it mattered. >> i want to come back to that point. we're going to break down some

of the things that happens. how race was used in the region by the republicans. >> there was more attention, but there never really caught on because it was an over the horizon issue. it was a long-term issue. this election was about getting a paycheck next week. >> talking to -- tying redistricting to issues is one way to broaden the consciousness. the average american understands that in communities of color, word to many of our relatives are incarcerated and have their right to vote taken away, when people begin to make that connection, i think you could see them understand much more powerfully that that count and

where we are counting will affect our representation. >> do you believe that when it comes to this issue that nationally, the democrats' approach it as doing the right thing? republicans approached it as doing -- i do not mean that in a negative way. they see it as a takeover. democrats say, it is all about fairness and doing the right thing. it is amazing when you look at how different people view this very issue. speak to that in terms of how both parties, in your estimation, of this issue. >> -- a view this issue. >> i will say that i believe

that all parties are operating in their own self-interest. none of them are magnanimous. there is a political calculation going on with republicans, democrats, and that is why it is important that another perspective needs to hit the table. communities of color need to think of up protecting and preserving the representation that they have had increasing the representation going forward. there was a political sea change that just took place. american diversity is at an all- time high right now. there are over 100 million people who are not quite in this country. -- white in this country. we need to focus on the more positive side of the equation. those sobor protecting black representation and speaking about increasing its -- those who are protecting black representation in need to work together to make that dream a

reality. >> i agree that this is an issue for the democrats are interested in justice and the republicans are interested in selfishness. but i'm a democrat. >> did as many as possible, even if we change it midstream. >> during redistricting, everyone, keep your back to the wall. it is not just the other party. it is not just people who are white. it is every person for themselves. your best friend, when it comes down to it, might not be your best friend. >> progressives have to be constrained by this notion of fairness.

when barbara jordan when and, they had that scheme of electing people. democrats controlled the texas legislature. she had to fight with conservative white democrats to make room for others. my first experience with redistricting is back -- i was on the city council. they said, your district is the right size, but your next one is too big, and the next one is too little. you have to take some people from a smaller district -- which precincts to do you want to take out? >> i am young, 29 years old, that is simple. the ones i lost.

>> i can do math. >> take out the ones i lost. >> they said, they are the ones in the middle of your district. you should take out to a better hire and come, and do that are lower in calm. -- to add that are higher in combat and to that are lower income. >> we need to be concerned about this issue. we need to be concerned about not fighting with hispanic legislators. we have to be concerned with our republican colleagues who want to help us. they would like to pass come -- 'em.'em and crack

they want to get rid of people but i might influence. >> that is why i raise that issue. when you talk about the diversity of the country, we will be by 2042 a majority /minority country. in 7 states, -- when you look at political districts, they are blacker and blacker, browner and browner, wider and wider. by design, it that is being done. over the next 10 years, how you fight that when you saw such a see change on november 2, use of state legislatures flipping. how do you fight that?

the efforts to make these districts based upon it racial lines. >> the supreme court has made it harder free to fight that. in the board decision recently, the court said in order to protect a district, you have to draw a district that is 50% or more african-american. the naacp was on the side arguing that if you could elect someone in the district of someone less than 50%, that should secede protection under the voting rights act. it will be harder. i am talking about the part of the voting rights act that covers the entire country, section two. you will have to show that it is possible to draw 50% or more.

previously, many of our state legislators, many of local elected officials, are elected in districts that are 40 -- 42%, 46%. we have seen increasing white crossover vote. >> i agree with that. section 5 of the act, a pretax gains that have been won it -- in gains that have been won. it protects the districts that have been elected minority candidates who are elected from districts that are under 50%. it protects against packing. if you take minorities out of current districts and put them

district,tor ellis' you are reducing their power in the regional district. there are protections that are not present in parts of the country. the way you have to go in the rest of the country is show that this change is motivated by racial discriminatory purpose. that is a complicated task. >> getting on top of the process right now -- some states have to take care of their redistricting in the next six months. states like new jersey. coalitions, and political coalitions, so that finding common ground rather than going

at it in a death grip struggle over this line or a bad piece of territory. we did that piece of territory. if you can come up with coalition plans, and they could put pressure on the process up front. there are caucuses in this room that historically have met that challenge. >> give us an example. the kind of coalition building that you were talking about that has been effective that could serve as a model for other folks to follow. >> i can give you a new york example. there is a caucus and new york -- in new york state black- hispanic-asian legislative caucus. back in the 1980's, that group

first challenge be reduced in plan for new york city -- redistricting plan for new york city. they shot down -- they shut down the ridge assisting -- the redistricting process. they challenged the commission that i have now been appointed to, but then they challenge the commission, the leadership of the state legislature, and they forced the redrawing of additional congressional districts. had those groups not work together, we might have had black legislators fighting hispanic legislators over this piece of territory or that. they would not have achieved a positive result. >> it is important to remember

that there is no cookie cutter approach to the redistricting. each state does it differently. in some states, the general assembly does it. in some states, there are commission cetera appointed to coalition building has to be external and internal. he has talked about the external piece. let me talk about the internal peace and break it down regionally. with all due respect to new york, is a little bit different down south. most southern legislators for the process is done internally, is what is left of white democrats, black and brown caucus members, i do not get together and agree up front that it is totally a ridiculous for all of us to pack in as much as possible into these districts, i

think we are all missing the point. here is what i would like to leave with you. as legislators, the challenge is on august 2 first and foremost stop being selfish. -- the challenge is on us to stop being selfish. we do not need these super majority black populations. i am only expressing my opinion, not the organization's opinion. i believe very strongly that the political climate we are in right now, with the polarization and all of that ball of wax about how we have gridlock, we have the same problems in state houses. did we have become much too partisan. for those of us who care about public policy, do care about people, and processed, it

behooves us to talk about what is in the best interest of democracy and the people we serve and it makes us