we know a lot less about the connection on the nuclear front, but we do know, courtesy of the israeli air force, the north korea was building a nuclear reactor in exterior of -- in syria of until israel destroyed it in 2007. i do not think there were constructing that reactor, which was a clone of what they had at yeonpyeong, because of north korea's common border and long cultural ties with syria. nor was serious financing it. i think we will find out that ultimately it was a three-week joint venture paid for by the iranians. it leads to the question, if they were doing that in assyria, what are they doing -- what else are they doing in syria? but what are they doing in other countries where we're not looking, like burma? this iranian nuclear program is >>, so, this program remains a

threat. the are an ins are much closer to a nuclear weapon than the more optimistic estimates. in any of them, that is not the only test. part of the tests is the breath, scope and depth of the nuclear infrastructure, and that is proceeding along with the construction of the heavy water reactor in iraq. all of this is continuing while we are still waiting for negotiations to begin, let alone 60. i think iran's terrorist threat is now even more obvious as well. the press this week, of course, is filled with reports about the overthrow of the government in tunisia, the challenges of the government in egypt and yemen, but let us not forget that at the same time iran is doing its best, and i'm afraid with

considerable success, to subvert pro-democracy progress in other countries. in iraq, i am very concerned that is by the end of this year in fact american oaks forces are withdrawn, that we will see iranian influence growing, and the government or a successor will basically repress the opposition in iraq, and undo a lot of the good that has been done there. even more dramatically, right now, as we need, the hezbollah terrorist organization has succeeded in imposing a new government in lebanon, dependent on the has the law block in parliament, that i think very much puts at risk the progress of the cedar revolution in has -- in lebanon.

has the law has three offices in london on in the hands of people essentially subservient to them, meaning subservient to iran. the risk, even in some of the other countries, egypt and yemen and in particular, is that the extremists of a different stripe could take advantage of the instability in those countries to get rid of regimes that may not look like jeffersonian democracy is to us, but which in retrospect would look a lot better than the moslem brotherhood in control in egypt, or al qaeda in control in yemen. yet, while all of this is going on, it's still mystifies me that we have not been able to conduct a referendum in the western sahara after all of these years of efforts to allow in a true democratic fashion the real residents of the western sahara

to express their views on what they want for the future of their country. it is a great strategy, and i hope not a lost opportunity in the region to show what legitimate democratic institutions can do. as you can tell, i am wildly optimistic about the next two years. [laughter] >> i think it is an issue that deserves more attention in our national political debate. obviously, like everybody else, i understand in 2008 we had an economic crisis. the economy was in great peril, and americans understandably wary first and foremost about their own livelihoods and their families. all of the evidence we can see is not because of the administration's policies, but in some cases despite them, the strength of the american economy

is about to reassert itself. i think we will see a real economic recovery this year and next. i am optimistic about that. in any event, as i said at the outset, foreign adversaries are not waiting to see how that turns out. they are not really all that interested in whether we restructure our domestic health- care system or not, although i do like to say that both can daunt -- kim jong il and -- that kim jong il would undoubtedly prefer the public option. [laughter] >> this is something the president should be able to handle along with domestic affairs. i think all of us as citizens have an obligation as well to insist on it -- to say to our candidates and leaders that we want to know more on how you plan to address the challenges we are going to face in the rest

of the world, because no matter how strong our economy is here, if we are not facing those challenges adequately, long-term the future of the united states remains in jeopardy. if i do not think that has happened enough in the past two years. i think it is very important for congress and others to raise it on the list of priorities going forward, and i hope all of you here today will help out in that effort. thank you very much. [applause] >> and, as i said, i would be delighted to answer questions about what ever i have covered, where the huge arena of subjects i did not cover in the interest of time. i do not know if you have microphones. perhaps you do. perhaps you could identify yourself for the benefit of others in the room. yes, sir? c-span.org -- [unintelligible]

>> what is your opinion of the way it administration has handled [unintelligible] >> obviously, there is a lot we do not know about what is happening in egypt. i would have to say the regime is facing a real threat. i do not think this is up passing fancy. it might have began with social networks reporting the event, but obviously, there is deep- seated dissatisfaction with the regime. i think the risk is very, very grave. the baby gets thrown out with the bath water here. i think egypt is a different situation. this is not just about the leader or the leaders son. is about the military's government that is ruled egypt since king farouk was overthrown. i do not think it will go

easily. i think there could be enormous turmoil on the streets, and real potential danger for stability in the country as a whole. that is why i think the development today that the muslim brotherhood called its supporters out into the street really shows why this is a problem that may not have a very good solution. it is like everything else in politics. this is about choices. if the choice were between the current regime and a functioning civil society and the other, that would be one choice. that is not the choice that we have the the moment. the more likely choice, unfortunately, might be the regime against the moslem brotherhood, and the consequences of that would be extraordinarily dangerous for america, israel, and other friends and interests in their region as a whole. in terms of how the administration has handled it, i think the reaction has been

confused, although in fairness, i would say nobody saw this coming, including some of the leaders of the opposition who were partying outside of egypt when the demonstration began. so, i think it may not be entirely justifiable, but it is understandable that the initial reaction has been somewhat confused. my recommendation would be to have -- to stay pretty low key. there is too much we do not know. i would like to hear much more about what the ground truth is in egypt, but i think it would be a mistake to underestimate the seriousness of this threat and the risk to american interest of this not turning out in no way that leaves us with a stable, friendly government in egypt. that has to be the touchstone of our policy, to protect our interests and those of our friends and allies there.

>> where you see the hugo chavez regime colin back -- going? >> i am very worried about it. i think that all of us for too long have treated him like a clown rather than a threat because he behaves like a clown, so it is entirely understandable. i once heard president bush called him castro without brains, which is a pretty good description. i do not think you should allow his behavior to diminish the threat that he poses. i think he poses no threat to fragile democratic societies in the western hemisphere. -- poses a threat to fragile democratic societies in the western hemisphere's. he has intervened in ecuador. he provides arms assistance to

the guerrillas in colombia. his efforts to take on argentinian debt i think pose a problem to that country. i do not know to what extent he is involved in the mexican drug cartels, but i would not be surprised if he is doing it just because more trouble for us. he is, in a very material sense, a different kind of threat than castro was, even during the height of the cold war because the soviet union always held castro on a pretty short list economically. he was able to do what they wanted him to do. given the price of oil where it is, hugo chavez does not have any extern all master, and he has income, unfortunately. if that is not bad enough, we can see that in the past several years he has reached out to comment in a shot and the iranians, contract to the -- of

medina shot -- and the iranians, contract with the russians for nuclear reactors, allowed iran to send the -- setup the largest embassy in the world, i believe, according to reports were there are working hard to circumvent sanctions that have been imposed on venezuela. if his people believe that then as williams uranium reserves are second only to canada in the world, cooperation between venezuela, russia, and iran could be very troubling in terms of nuclear issues in this hemisphere. the regime is a real threat. it appears to be entrenching itself inside of venezuela. i am afraid that our reaction, at least as demonstrated by dealing with what happened in honduras, is to try to appease

him, in hopes that he would tone down his policy. there is no evidence that that happened. i think the democratic regimes in latin america would prefer a little more american leadership on the question, although i do not think they will put it in those terms. i do not think they will get it. i think we have another administration in a long series that says we will come into office pay more attention to the western hemisphere, and then does not do it. >> a m from radio free asia. -- i am from radio free asia. [unintelligible] what you think is the best way to handle north korea, and what do we need or what do we have to do? >> let me point out that it was chris hill who said that. i have been saying that for eight years.

i believe in the power of redemption. i believe -- chris can apologize to me and everyone else that he ignored. welcome to the right side of the bait, finally. the north koreans will not be talked out of their nuclear weapons program. that is as clear as it could be. i think the united states has to focus on the only ultimate solution to the north korean nuclear weapons problem, and that is the peaceful reunification of the peninsula. as long as the regime exists, the nuclear weapons threat will remain, and no one should have any illusions that we can appeal to the north koreans somehow to loosen up their policy for the good of their people. the north korean population now is on an individual basis for --

four to 6 inches shorter than the population of south korea. that is what the policy of the north korean regime has done by creating a prison camp that is now inhabited by 23 million people. any regime capable of doing that to its own citizens is not going to be persuaded by the idea of improving the life of its citizens. so, the question obviously is how do you accomplish reunification? i think the answer is that it has to be focused and consistent pressure on china, to persuade china that its current policy needs to be north korea is schizophrenic. china says we do not want to have north korea with nuclear weapons because we do not want to destabilize northeast asia. it will effect our economic growth. i take them at their word. i think that analysis is entirely correct. the chinese are not willing to

do anything that might risk destabilizing the region, which they properly worry could be collapsed very easily, because they do not want reunification. they fear a reunified korea would bring american troops to the river on the border with china. they did not like that movie in 1950, and they do not like it any better today. i think they have to be persuaded that they should get on the right side of history. the two koreas will be reunited. china would be a lot better off from its own perspective to support reunification, and the expanded trade relations it will inevitably enjoy with a reunited korea. i think the chinese leadership is divided. i think the older generation still remembers those glorious days when the communist parties of china and north korea were as

close as lips and teeth, as they used to say. good luck with that. i think the younger generation of chinese leaders, and by that i mean people in their 60's, take a different view of north korea. they see it as the baggage said it is. they see the-effected is having on stability in northeast asia -- the negative effect it is having on stability in northeast asia and china themselves. you do not move china on this issue easily or quickly. it takes, i think, extended dialogue and pressure, and we're not doing that. that is the direction i would move in. >> i hope to see ronyon 2012. having said that, i want to get your thoughts on turkey. also, get your thoughts on the unrest currently going on in

terms of coastal and albania. -- kosovo and albania. >> i think turkey is moving away from the west. i think that is a great tragedy. i think we have seen this movement for some years. our inability to win turkish approval to bring in an infantry division across turkey, our nato ally, to deal with saddam hussein in 2003, was an early warning of that. if i do not think it is irreversible. i think turkish democracy remains strong. i think it can be changed. the signs are certainly very worried at this point. i am worried about kohl so low and what it might mean -- coast of low and what it might mean. i think that the breakup of yugoslavia is still not finished evolving, and the prospects for real turmoil there remains. again, it is just one of those foreign policy issues that it is

far -- hard to find out who in the administration is focused on that. like so many other issues, it seems to get lost in the shuffle. i think that is unfortunate, and potentially dangerous in southeast asia, as would be a turkey that went over the edge into a harshly, up politicized- muslim kind of authoritarian government. i think that would have major impact on europe and the united states as well. maybe we will do one or two more questions. >> with the increase in the chinese defense expenditures doubling over the last year, granted much less than what we have in our own budget, it will probably continue to increase. do you see in the future, the chinese military looking to

maintain a defensive posture, or will they start looking at transoceanic navy's next to follow along with that, with your comments -- navy's? to follow along with that, transgressions by north korea will be met with air strikes. how'd you see china jumping in on that? >> let me try to take on first the general question about the chinese military expenditure levels, and military expenditure levels around the world. secretary gates is fond of saying that the u.s. defense budget is larger than the next 13 or 22. the point is we have a big budget. that is right. we face a lot of threats. we are the only worldwide super- power. we have a lot of obligations other countries do not have. i do not think we really know

what china's defense budget is. they publish a figure that might or might not be related to what the actual budget is. no. 3, this is not a question in many cases of what the outcome of military hostilities between the united states and china would be. nobody is asking for that. nobody should want that. we should be trying to prevent that, but as the chinese capabilities built up, they are at an absolute minimum dramatically increasing the risks and costs to the united states of behavior for our allies. i am not entirely sure we understand what the full development of chinese capabilities is. secretary gates said when he was there that that was really

surprising, said the ex intelligence official. and the same official that canceled the f-22 stealth fighter on the ground that we did not have to worry about competitive stealth technology at that level. wrong again. let me be clear. i understand we are in a period of great budgetary constraints, but i also understand we face threats and uncertainty about the direction those threats will take. that means the perfect -- the pressure on our defense expenditures is going to have to remain. my final point is that it is not a measure for the united states that we are ahead of other countries if it came to hostilities, which we do not want. i do not want the united states to be in a fair fight. i do not believe in fair fights.

i want to win overwhelmingly, because that reduces the cost in american lives and risks to our interest. the more overwhelming our capability is, the less likely you get into hostilities to begin with, because not only do you have an extraordinary deterrent effect, you have a dissuasive effect on countries who say we are not even going to go there. it is not worth the expenditure to challenge the united states. china is obviously well past that point. how would this play out? how would these additional air and naval capabilities work? not in direct conflict with the united states, at least not for the foreseeable future. that is not what we are talking about. what we are talking about, i think, in the short term is taiwan. taiwan does -- china does not

want to have our war over taiwan. if they want it to fall into its lap and they will do that by threatening hostilities and seeing how the united states react. when they worked up the pressure on taiwan in the clinton administration, president clinton sent two carrier battle groups and i was the end of the problem. how many in this room think barack obama would send two carrier battle groups to the taiwan strait if taiwan were threatened? exactly what i thought. i have posed that question to a wide variety of audiences. if i were living in taiwan, i would be nervous. what china was to be able to do is to be able to project power out p.m. the famous first island chain, and make it very hard for the united states to come to the defense of taiwan's -- defense

of taiwan. to the point, president obama would say i would rather worry about health care than to what -- taiwan. then, the chinese would achieve their objective of getting taiwan back. that is the scenario they would like to see played out. one has to say that the risk and the cost of potentially protecting taiwan's, you could see in congress, at least i would worry you could see an increasing lobbying of people who would say "let it go." when that attitude spreads, it does not stop that taiwan. in terms of north korea, the government of south korea now takes, i think, a more realistic view than its two predecessors did. i think they understand better than we do that the real issue here in the short term is the

regime transition in north korea. it is by no means -- this is not like england where the eldest son -- when prince charles, when queen elisabeth, finally goes to her reward, there is no doubt prince charles will finally get to be tamed. since he was born eight days before i was, i know how old he is, and how long he has been waiting to be king. he will be and no one will overthrow him. if that is not true -- that is not true in south korea. while there is a risk, there is also a tremendous opportunity. the regime in north korea is very fragile. it could come out easily. we should talk to china to avoid

problems if that were to happen. there were real instability, we would go in to try to secure nuclear weapons, prevent massive refugee flows, and we do not want to stumble into something as a result of not having communicated. i do not think there is much evidence at all that we are in serious discussion with the chinese on that point. i think this is further evidence of just a lack of attention to some of the issues and challenges that we face. >> a quick question on the program for broadcasting in to north korea, to try to get information passed the government to the people. do you think that has had any effect? >> i think it is very important to do that. i think what we learn from defectors in north korea is that information that comes out

-- comes in from the outside is actually disseminated among the people very widely and very quickly. i do not want to paint an optimistic picture, but i am just saying the population is hungry for information had and would welcome the opportunity is it a rose to see this regime history. just keeping them informed, letting them know the rest of the world has not forgotten about them, and that we are serious about trying to do something about this regime is very worthwhile. i think it is an idea that has widespread support. south korea, finally -- i was always amazed in many visits to south korea to see how indifferent students and professors were to these grotesque human rights violations taking place in the north. i think that is changing now.

i think people have seen, because of the shelling of yeonpyeong island, which is sad that it takes that to happen, but i think it is a change in the understanding of the threat posed by north korea, and i think we should all try to take advantage of that. ok. thank you again very much for coming. [applause] >> thank you for joining us. we do have dr. ferris to talk about the war on islam of fascism. be sure you are on our e-mail list. you will automatically get notification of the next forum. be sure you are on it. thank you again for being here. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> comments from former u.s. ambassador to the u.n. and john bolton of the national security challenges. he also talked about the ongoing protests in egypt this week.

we were planning to bring in coverage of the violence in egypt. tens of thousands are taking part in the violence today. least two people are dead. sources are reporting that the nobel prize laureate was taken into custody. we are planning to have that live, and we will have that here, on c-span. coming up, live coverage of the congressional black caucus deficit commission looking at how the economy is effecting minority communities. we will have it when it gets under way. until then, a discussion on efforts to reduce the size of the federal government.

""washington journal" continues. host: you are looking at dr. paul light. he teaches public service and has an expertise in the federal work force. nice to see you again. thanks for being here. guest: nice to see you. host: over the course of the st year they have done research. i saw a number of different statistics. what is your best estimate of how many federal workers there are in the u.s. today? guest: we are dealing with estimates first of all. the contractor community will not tell us. they consider the number of workers to be proprietary information. every time we rolled out an estimate, they criticize it. i always say what is your estimate and they say they will

not release that. i think that we might have 7 million or 8 million contractors that work for the federal government. twothirds of which deliver services. evything from computer program to is the analysis and consulting and all the way down the hierarchy to security panda serving food in the federal cafeteria. we have a very large work force. we have another 3 million parent folks that get their paychecks in part from the federal government under grants. those are highway construction grants, which treatment facilities, construction grants, research at universities and so on. so let's put it at 10 million their perilous at the federal civil service about 2 million or 2.1 million. and add the military and now that 14 million. if you really want to go bare,

throw in the number of state and local employees that work for the federal government under un- funded mandates. we don't know how many there are, let's say that its 40 million or excuse me 4 million. now it's getting pretty large, almost as large as the manufacturing sector. federal employees are the tip of the iceberg. we don't talk much about freezing and reducing number of contractors. we cannot live without them. host: we will stay with that 14 number. you have statistics on how the federal work force has grown since 1999 when it was 11 million. that number is wrong on the bottom. 4.4 million contractors is correct. and 5.1 million contractors in 2002. those numbers keep going up. why do they ke going up?

guest: because we keep buying labor from the private sector. we don't like to increase the number of federal employees, because it looks bad, looks back to the american public. instead of increasing the number of civil service employees -- that has gone up under obama by 300,000, but its increase of lots under bush because there was heavy spending on defense and national security after 9/11. we bought a lot of stuff for the iraq war, build military bases that were exclusive. the procurement budget in washington has been going up and that's where you get the purchase of labor. two kurds of their procurement budget is for services, that means it is almost entirely labor. that is where these numbers really rise. host: let's involve the phone lines in the discussion about the size of the federal work force and what you as citizens think is appropriate. are you getting too much services from the federal

government and are there too many people employed in the public workforce as opposed to the private sector? the phone numbers are on the screen. in this segment we have already -- also added a line for federal workers. we will put that on the screen because we wld like to hear your perspective from inside the federal bureaucracy as well. if we can put that on their id iair. we will get that on there as our conversation progresses, federal workers will have an opportunity to join us. let's get to some video. president obama in his state of the union on tuesday. >> we live and do business in the information age, but the last major reorganization of the government happened in the age of black-and-white tv.

there are 12 different agencies that deal with exports. there are at least five different agencies that deal with housing policy. then there is my favorite example. the interior department is in charge of families when they are in freshater, but the commerce departmentandles them when they are in -- of salmon when ey are in fresh water, but the commerce department handles them when they are in salt water. i understand it if the department handles them when they are smoked. [laughter and applause] we have made great strides in the last two years in using technology and getting rid of waste. veterans can download their electronic medical records with a click of the mouse. we're selling acres of office space that has not been used in years, and we will cut through red tape to get rid of more.

but we need to think bigger. in the coming months, my administration will develop a proposal to merge, consolidate, and reornize the federal government in a way that best serves the goal of a more competitive ameca. host: before you answer, i would like to play an earlier clip, 1999, vice-president al gore. >> reinvention and reform is not a way to scale back our ambition or tighten our belts for its own sake of this sacrifice for a first principle. it is in fact a recognition of this fundamental truth, that we cannot chase our highest ideals unless they are grounded in workable, practical, responsible self-governance. we need governments that are as flexible, as dynamic, as focused on serving their customers as

the best private companies around the world. we need to adopt the very best management techniques from the private sector to create governments that are fully prepared for the challenges of the information age. host: the point being that administrations for many a decade have been talking about reorganizing, restructuring the federal government. yet the numbers we showed show that the numbe keep going up. what is the challenge here? guest: you know, al gore was right. george w. bush made an effort. richard xon did. lyndon johnson did. every president in his office promises a better government, but it is quite hard to do. i was delighted that president obama mentioned reorganization the other night. great. about time he stepped into the conversation. but let's be serious about what a real overhaul of the federal government would mean. he talks about a real overhaul

dating bacto the 1950's, since the last one. my dad was an auto parts dealer. i have a couple of friends whose parents were in auto parts. when somebody comes in for an overhaul, they're not talking about changing the spark plugs. they're talking about pulling the engine and doing a top-to- bottom job. the president is right to look at consolidation and overlap, but he has to expexpand the agenda. getting toome of the principles al gore listed, and getting to them hard through change. if he does not stepped up with his own big plan, the house republicans will be doing it, and that will be a lot more daging to how well government works. host: let's go to florida. net, on the republican line. caller: i would like to make a comment about employees and salaries. the deral employees have

ballooned up in terms of numbers. , federal employees get about 60% more than the private sector. that is ridiculous. the private sector should be higher than the public employees. california, we are in trouble because of the fact that the federal employees, unions, and so on and so forth, are much more paid highly and their health care insurance is very high and expenses. so that is why they are in budgetary trouble now. host: dr. light, the caller is referring to exames we have all heard. stistics across the united states, how do public-sector salaries compared to private sector?

guest: you have to be careful about the rule of averages. republicans have been saying the feds are more hily paid on average than the private sector. that may be true, but there is a distribution in there. the feds are at the high-end with senior managers. but it turns out they are underpaid compared to the private sector. said that the middle and the bott, there is a lot of variation in salary structure. people who a in favor of the current salary structure will tell you federal employees are more educated, more seasons, which is code word for older. -- more seasoned, which is code word for older. honestly, its a difficult comparison to make, and we have not been doing a good job of doing it. president obama opposed a salary freeze, republins in the house have sniffed out the problem

there. he did not impose a freeze on automatic pay increases due to time on the job. that has got to be part of it, i am afraid. president obama will have to get on that as part of his reorganization plan. host: omaha, good morning. june, you are on the air with dr. light. caller: i am making $7.25 and can barely make it, and the post office people in omaha, nebraska, are making a lot more money. they get all these holidays off, paid, overtime for the weekends. they work as many hours as they can, but i would say that is the first place to start cutting down and freezing their pay. talk a little about the whole federal work force, not just about federal employees. let's talk about contrtor employees and throw the

grantees into the mix. if we are going to talk about downsizing, we have to include the hidden workforce. i think if we did a job-to-job comparison between federal employees and contractors, we would find the contractors are spending a lot more on labor than the federal government. that is not to dismiss your concern in omaha about the difference between how much federal employees are making, and i think federal employees have to make a sacrifice right now. presidt obama made that point. you just cannot be raising salaries every year and allowing automatic pay increases due to time on the job during this period. federal employees have to sacrifice. contractors have to sacrifice. so do grantees. let's put itll on the table and impose a real hard freeze on

federal salary increases, but let's include the whole work force, not just the one we can say. host: are the postal service considered federal employees? guest: they are quasis. the postal service is a quasi- government organization that is supposed to run like a business. theoretically it is supposed to make a profit like amtrak. but it has one huge deficit. why? well, the post office, unlike federal express and ups, they have to deliver everywhere. they have choice but to take the mail out to the rural post office, the rural post box. fedex does not go certain places. they get to pick and choose their certain destinations. most of their activity goes to major urbanreas. part of the problem with the stal service is that it was built to serve every last american. i think we want them to do so,

and they are running a huge deficit right now. we will have to do something to fix that agency. it has been downsizing for years, which is a good thing, but it still has a long way to go. they are talking about eliminating saturday delivery. it is a goo question that your caller raises, and we have to do something about the post office. has gotman darrell eisissa that on his agenda and we have to do something about it. host: our next caller is a fel worker in huntington, virginia. good morning. caller: you just addressed my specific job. i am a rural mail carrier in virginia. when i had to step chains on my vehicle,nd go past areas with

no guard rails where i could lose my life litally if i make move -- i wish everyone was talking about salary cuts -- everyone who was talking about salary cuts would remember this. i do not remember anyone in congress talking about reducing theiearned pay, the earned benefits, and most of themake a generous salary, people who are very wealthy. they pay otheir capital gains >> we will leave this at this point, as the national black caucus is getting under way with three panels. this is live coverage on c-span. c-span.org -- [unintelligible]

>> made by the president's commission on fiscal responsibility and reform, we are concerned that some of the measures, some of the recommendations will directly impact, and in some cases, harm vulnerable communities. the congressional black caucus has a 40 year history of presenting fiscally-sound and responsible alternatives to the budgets offered by both republicans and democrats. a glaring omission from various debt reports is a thoughtful

analysis of how their recommendations will effect the nation's most economically vulnerable populations. recognizing this, the cbc has formed its own debt commission to focus on the recession, particularly of the communities of color, as well as the coaches to deficit reduction and their applications for a vulnerable -- approaches to deficit reduction and their applications for the vulnerable population at large. that is why we are hosting this to address the federal budget deficit while protecting important safety net programs needed by many communities. top african-american economists have come from all over the nation to share with us. i will be joined by my colleague congresswoman maxine waters,

congressman bobby scott in chairing three discussions. we are also joined by congresswoman dr. donna christiansen from the u.s. virgin islands. our moderator is today are jonathan capehart, of ocala the washington post" and -- "the washington post, " and jamal's louis. i'm from texas originally. i have never seen mass panic by a sprinkling of snowflakes like i have seen here, in washington, where it snows every year. nonetheless, you have taken time out of your busy schedules to come and share in this

exciting, and what we believe to be necessary discussion today. we will begin with panel 1. the moderator, like me, is from wichita falls, texas, and she also happens to be married to a dear friend, my colleague and former cbc chair if elijah cummings. dr. rockamore leads a firm that looks to advance social change strategies for the world. she is a former adjunct professor in the women and politics institute at america unit -- american university. she has also served as the vice president of research and programs of the congressional black caucus foundation, as a senior resident scholar at the

national urban league. let me also just say that as a pastor in my real life, we look at check books as a statement of who a person is. we think quite often that if you would like to see the real beliefs of a human bit -- human being, go to their checkbook. it will reveal what they believe in, what they support, what they like, and what they want in the future. what is true of individuals is quite often true of nations. we believe that the united states budget is a declaration of who we are. are we a nation of compassionate people looking to put forth a budget that describes ways in which we will make sure that every citizen in this country,

including vulnerable populations, are cared for and can be found in our budget? with that in mind, we put this program together, and we look forward to hearing from the men and women who are giving of their time to come out and work with us, and to present, maybe, another side of what we have been reading about. i will present now, dr. rock amore. >> thank you, chairman emanuel cleaver. i would like to give my congratulations to chairman emanuel cleaver and his colleagues for doing an excellent job of launching what is absolutely a necessary process -- the first-ever

congressional black caucus commission on the budget deficit, economic crisis, and wealth creation. what is going on in the country? if we know that the u.s. is experiencing a severe economic and budget crisis that is primarily caused by the great recession, which is a combination of the financial crisis and the housing crisis. we know that we are running significant deficits and that we have of very large debt. just yesterday, the congressional budget office released projections for 2011 that if nothing is done the federal budget will show a deficit of close to $1.50 trillion, 9.8% of the growth -- gross domestic product. we also know that we need to spend. there is no need for investment. investments by the federal government have the ability to stave off the ill effects of the recession.

we have tension between spending and revenue. early last year, the president of the united states, president barack obama, actually appointed a commission called the national commission on fiscal responsibility and reform. they deliberated for the better part of last year, considering various measures in the discretionary budget of the united states, the mandatory spending that we do, and certainly they also look at tax reform. they came up with their own proposal. the proposal did not pass the commission. the commission actually required that 14 of its members to actually vote in favor, and they did not reset threshold's. however, we are of the understanding that many members of congress, particularly those in the senate, are actually considering using those proposals as the basis of what they will consider going for. now, is this in the best interest of the african-american

population, of people of color, of the country? these are the questions we will be considering today as we talk about the recession, and certainly the impact on the debts, and what we need as americans, and as people of color. we know the recession has had an impact that is different and people of color. african-americans especially have higher unemployment, higher rates of foreclosure, and dire poverty levels. he will hear later on today about the devastating effect the great recession has had on the black middle class. here to speak to you today is an auguste panel of experts. in looking over the agenda that was pulled together, the experts from today's session largely are comprised of experts that are aligned with the closing the racial gap -- wealth gap

initiative. it is cross-racial, and comprised of leading economic experts from across the country based in los -- based in both academia and think tank organizations. with that, i would like to introduce into our lineup. before i do, we have some very, very important members of congress it. we have cumbersome and maxine waters from the great state of california. -- we have congresswoman maxine waters from the great state of california. [applause] >> we have congressman bobby scott from the great state of virginia. [applause] >> we have cumbersome and the christians and from the virgin islands. -- donna christiansen from the virgin islands.

we have congressman green. and we have to embezzlement when more. thank you for joining us. -- glenn more. dr. margaret simms is a member of the urban institute. she was the vice president at the joint senator for political and economic studies. dr. simms has held economic appointments at atlantic university and university of california at santa cruz. she has edited many books and monographs on that the -- on black economic well-being, and has written extensively. dr. simms is the editor of the black political economy from 1983 through 1988. shi'ahs and elect a member of the american academy of arts and sciences, -- she is and how

elected member of the american academy of arts and sciences. after dr. margaret simms, we will be joined by dr. darrell gaskin. he is an associate professor of health economics at the johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health, and is also the deputy director. her -- his primary interest our health-care disparities, safety net providers, and access to health care for minority, uninsured, and other vulnerable populations. he earned his ph.d. at the johns hopkins university. he earned a b.a. degree in economics from brandeis university. dr. william spriggs was the chair of the department of economics at howard university, but is now the assistant chair for policy in the u.s. department of labour.

in his role, dr. sprague's brinks -- dr. spriggs brings a unique sensitivity. in the spring of 2008, dr. sprague's co-authored -- dr. iggs code-authored. i have to say, he was also the director of the national urban league think tank here, in washington, d.c., and my former boss, when i worked there. was that, we will go in order that i introduced them, and i ask you to hold your applause until the very end. thank you. >> thank you. mr. chairman, other

distinguished members of congress, i am pleased to be here to kind of kick off a conversation, and in my remarks, i am there is a consensus among many economists and policy analysts that the federal debt needs to be reduced from its current level. in order to do that, the annual federal deficit must also be reduced. however, there are significant efforts is among those who studied this issue on several things. when deficit reduction should begin in earnest -- how fast the budget gap needs to be closed -- and how much of the gas production should be achieved through spending reductions and how much protect increases. the national debt, the total amount that the federal government owes to others, has grown rapidly in the last decade average 62% of gross

domestic product in 2010. it will continue to grow in the absence of over action to change this path. this is a source of concern for many. a large debt can be problematic for at least two reasons. first, the larger the debt, the more concerned there is the credit towards might not be willing to continue to hold it or increase their holdings. second, this debt has to be serviced through interest payments. projections indicate that the current debt will require future interest payments that will of -- in commendation with medicare, medicaid, and social security payments, crowd out all discretionary spending. however, i think we need to make a distinction between the fact that something needs to be done and the timing and the speed at which it should be done. many think that this is more important to plan now for how

the deficit should be reduced and how the debt should be reduced that it is to take immediate actions. we need to have a plan going forward for how to get onto a sustainable path. it make 10-20 years to get their, to get to your preferred destination, but it is easier to plan ahead and do that and probably in some ways less painful. there are many paths to federal debt reduction. the national academy of sciences' fiscal future committee on which i served described four paths to debt control. they more or less bracket recommendations that have been made by others including president's commission on fiscal responsibility and reform. the low path in the committee's

review would pull spending toward revenues which are now in the neighborhood of 18 and 19% of gdp. this would mean a much smaller public sector and would require the sacrifice of many public programs. the proposed hike that would move revenue toward spending and eventually reach about 1/3 of duty pay resulting in a much larger public sector than we have now. intermediate pats, there were two proposed. that would keep the budget around 25% of gdp. these intermediate paths would allow for any number of combinations of program adjustments. one path that was proposed would protect the elderly and another one would tilt more toward the gender generation. none of these past, there was no balanced budget. the idea is to bring the deficit

under control. it could be somewhere around 2% of gdp and things would move fairly well. many of the current proposals would follow our -- or closely paralleled the low path. expenditure reduction proposals has focused on three areas, social security, medicare and medicaid, and domestic non- defense spending. all three areas are important too vulnerable populations. , low income, and minority groups. african-americans and hispanics are disproportionately represented among the low-income population. looking at families with children who had incomes below 200% of poverty in 2007, that was before the recession had its effect on families, we find that african-americans were 22% of

these families and hispanics were 30%, about twice their representation in the overall population. african american families were less likely to have a working family member even before the recession than other low income families. this was due in part to family structure. hispanics were much more likely to work full time but still be low income. because of their low income, minority populations are more likely than others to be beneficiaries of income support programs. african-americans are 12.4% of the u.s. population and hispanics are 15.1%. there are higher percentages of the participants in a number of government programs. some statistics show that african-americans and hispanics are disproportionate recipients of programs such as temporary assistance to needy

families, supplemental nutrition assistance program, and medicaid. if they work, these families are more likely to be eligible for the earned income tax credit because of their low earnings. the eitc appears in the budget the same way that expenses do. it is the only tax expenditure that is as visible as if it were a support program. the other tax expenditures we somehow don't see visibly. that is perhaps interesting. people of color are also more likely to seek or be eligible for government assistance in an effort to improve their economic position. in terms of work force investment act programs, african americans are almost twice as likely to be enrolled in a work force program as their representation in the overall

population would suggest. because of relatively low earnings during their working lives, african-americans and hispanics have fewer resources to see them through their retirement years. their benefits from social security while lower than those of their white counterparts constitute a much larger share of their income. since minority workers have been much more likely to be in physical demanding jobs, they are more likely to turn to disability programs when there health and stamina fails. due to earlier debts, their survivors are more likely also to be recipients of social security under the survivor aspects of the program. there are a number of ways of approaching the deficit reduction without making these vulnerable populations bear a disproportionate burden. one way to put at least part of the burden on closing -- to put

part of the burden on the close a gap on the revenue side through increases in taxes or introduction of new taxes. given that we are in a recession, that may not be something you would undertake now but it could be something that could be planned for so that it would move into place as the economy recovers. there are also ways of reducing or modifying programs that not all of the burden is borne by low-income groups. i just mentioned a couple of examples. these come from a number of sources. the national academy of social insurance has put out several publications that look at how you can modify social security programs. among them, they mention three, increasing the contribution cap to 90% of earnings, scheduling future rate increases that would

not take place for a number of years but having them in place just as was done in the 1983 revisions and it allows people who can't to plan. it proposes to treat all supplemental retirement annuities as 401k's. you would not only be able to preserve the basic social security but you would be allowed to provide for better benefits for the lowest income workers and the oldest old. another way to shift and make some raid -- reductions or cuts is to reduce discretionary programs through selective combination of reductions and block granting that goes to state and local governments. you would probably not want to do this immediately. you could do it based on program objectives and the effectiveness measures. there are a number of subsidies

for businesses that could be adjusted. in some areas of discretionary spending, increases might be needed if the u.s. economy can fully utilize its resources. for example, investments in education and domestic infrastructure and with increased productivity as with investments in research and development. if we don't make these a investments, chances are that our growth path will be much lower and problems that we have with regard to revenue generation and safety net programs will get worse, not better. you can make many of these adjustments in a way that pose domestic non-domestic s -- defense spending. to 1999

levels. thank you. >> first i would like to thank the congressional black caucus and the hon. emanuel cleaver for giving me an opportunity to share my perspective on this pressing problem. i also want to certainly acknowledge our facilitator, miya and the other panelists who are here. >> could you speak to the microphone? >> i also want to add that while i may health economist, i am also an ame zionist minister. in some ways, my perspective on these issues not only reflect my

academic and scholarly research also my practical experience with dealing with people who have found themselves in difficult experiences. my advice to the congress would be to address the current economic crisis. let's not be penalized but pound foolish. butet's not the penny wise pound foolish. there are those who believe in a so-called limited government that says that the only road for the federal government is to provide national defense. however, if you look around the world and look at nations where the only effected is the service of the national government to provide a strong military, i think most of us would agree that we would not want to live

in such a nation. you don't have to think very hard to come up with one of those examples. we should be clear about how and why we find ourselves with this skyrocketing debt. the policy of the cutting taxes, shipping services to the private sector, and devaluing and demonizing person to give their lives to public service in the civilian sector, that policy is bankrupt. this worship of the private marketplace is a panacea for all that ails our economy and all in our societ is just falling. anyone who was taken a course in the first principles of economics knows there such things as market failures and that market failures require government intervention competitive markets and your competition do not always lead to the best societal outcomes

and competitive markets work best under ideal conditions. in reality, conditions are not always ideal. sometimes, competition ends up being a race to the bottom instead of a race to the top. this is one reason why i make public health economist today gary the health-care marketplace is complex and it is full of market failures that required government intervention. these market failures in the health-care marketplace, this is not new information. an article by a nobel laureate lais these bins out as early as 1963. these are things which we already know about the health- care marketplace. in light of that background, there are three areas where it think the congress should be careful when addressing the budget deficit we should not

renege on our obligation to care for the poor and vulnerable persons in our society. we should not forsake our responsibility to care for the elderly and disabled citizens. we should not neglect our investment in the public health infrastructure which will benefit from and is necessary to insure our communities are healthy. some of these federal programs were established in the time of roosevelt and this makes our nation great. it separates us like separating the sheep from the goats because we care for the least of these. at that time, when a nation is recovering from the deepest recession of our lifetime, it is unwise to cut spending and raise cut -- raise taxes.

the last thing we should cut is our nation's safety net at a time when more americans rely on the safety net for their very survival. to be clear, we must protect medicaid. it is only 7% of the bush should and provides health care -- it is only 7% of the budget and provides health care for many people almost 72% of medicaid enrollees are already in case management programs. these programs are designed to cut costs, improve quality, increase access, and eliminate waste. cutting medicaid is penny wise but pound foolish because it limits enrollment and reduces reimbursement to providers, especially physicians.

both of these measures only cost more and delay care until people are sick enough to be seen in emergency room and that ends up costing society more. the affordable care acted includes several provisions. it helps people with chronic conditions or bundles payment to help rationalize care. the elimination of payment for health care-acquired conditions. these are things we should proceed with. another program we should protect as medicare. opponents of medicare who want to destroy the integrity of the program by turning it into a defined contribution program look at the pending datasets and the trust fund that the next generation will face and cried like chicken little about the sky is falling.

medicare is the safety net for our seniors. many of us in this room are too young to remember the burden that elvis imposed upon a generation of seniors and their families before congress had the wisdom to enact medicare. as i have told my students at the university of maryland and johns hopkins, it medicare did not exist today, it would be you and your families who would care for your grandparents. what medicare does is it allows us to collectively care for the seniors and takes the burden off of individual families. medicare as a dedicated tax base that should be adjusted to meet the needs of future generations. by raising the payroll tax ceiling and adjusting the ability age or program of measures that to be taken to preserve medicare for the next generation.

the affordable care act also includes several provisions that improve medicare such as implementing accountable care organizations, bundle the payments, eliminating payments for health care-required conditions, and one important provision that is included in the affordable care act is closing the doughnut hole in medicare part d. that is the portion after a certain amount of expenditures, seniors are left on their own to cover their health care -- their prescription drug expenses. this has been important affect on low income seniors who do not have the financial resources with which to cover those resources. by closing this donut hole, a senior is no longer have to delay or foreclose their prescriptions and a no longer

have to choose madison over other necessities. if we cut here, all we will do is incur higher costs in the future. the other thing i wanted to raise is that we must protect the nation's public health infrastructure. this is why i am concerned about talk about across-the-board cuts in discretionary spending. there are programs that promote community held to benefit everyone and particularly vulnerable populations. this starts with smaller agencies such as the ctc and the health resources and services committee. the substance abuse and mental health administration, these agencies run programs that are critical to investing in health and health care disparities that negatively affect communities to

recover. communities of color suffer from high rates of mortality and have lower access to quality health care services. these agencies sponsor programs that promote disease prevention, health care screenings, lead the fight against communicable and cry diseases and did bonds community health centers and they promote and train positions and other health-care workers who work in underserved areas and they provide substance abuse on treatment. small cuts and these agencies can have large impacts on the community and these impacts are disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable in our society great instead of reducing our deficit and debt, backed poor and disabled children and

seniors, let us talk about real shared sacrifice and let those of us who are more affluent the first in line. thank you. >> i also want to start by thanking chairmanclaever and stianson.e chairchhri thank you for inviting me to join this panel. thank you dr. for them warm introduction. beckham for all the good work you continue to do on behalf of everyone. i want to applaud the cdc on vulnerable american communities and to help you investigate how this economic crisis affects wealth creation.

you heard from dr. sims that when we think about the budget deficit, it is often put in the context of the long term. the long term is now when you think about the future, we can look at those who are under age 10. they are the ones we're talking about. when we look at those who are under 10, well over 40% of them were latino or african-american. of that over 40% who are our future of that 40%, one out of three currently live in poverty. that is our future. those of the people we are talking about balancing the budget and -- in the long run. those 40% children, one in three living in poverty. earlier this week the president spoke passionately about what we

must do to win this contest for their future. there's competition across the globe for jobs and industries in our time and how to secure prosperity for ourselves and future generations of americans. as the president's stated, is it about -- it is about winning the future. the economy is growing again. more than 1 million private- sector jobs were created in the last year. we know there is still a lot more work to be done for the millions of people who are either out of work or struggling to offset their rising cost with their shrinking paychecks. the overall unemployment rate of 9.6%, african-americans, a 16%,

that is unacceptable. the president has said it is unacceptable. my boss knows it is unacceptable barry we cannot live with these and employment rates. together, we can win the future by innovating, out educating, and of building the rest of the world and ensuring that we prepare workers for good jobs of the 21st century. when we talk of a budget priorities and what we might think about in terms of the deficit, i want to spend time talking to you about those things we are doing for delays probably currently have, those or unemployed and those who are marginally employed to get a sense of what the budget does. at the department of labor, we want to highlight how the current budget serves to prepare the most vulnerable workers for good jobs in the 21st century. specifically, i even wanted to further highlighting because i

really want to talk about how those programs are connecting african-americans to employment opportunities. the last fiscal year, over 4.3 million participants served by the department's wagner program. when you look at cutting, that to you would be cutting, access to employment services for 4.3 african-americans. the work force investment programs that we have served over 570,000 adults, roughly three in five of those were african-americans. ba will -- we look at what we were doing with specific grant programs, the ones that sometimes people say we can't cut the big problems -- the big programs, maybe we can truck -- cut the small programs.

20 -- over 20,000 african americans were served. when you look at the last fiscal year of those who were helped because of displacement from trade, close to 12,000 of those workers who received trade adjustment assistance is were african-american workers. when you look at a program that is trivial because souks about farm workers, our national former jobs program provides funding group community-based organizations and public agencies. over 1000 individuals received intensive training and they were african-american. when you look at the big problem we face in terms of those who are leaving incarceration, those who need to be reintegrated back into society given the

opportunity to get good jobs, when you look at those programs that assisted over 26,000 people in our reentry programs, all almost 60% of those served were african-american. when you look at what we did on the recovery act. these funds have ended but when you look at we did with the recovery act funding. , we had open men a african- american served. 44% of youth served through the use to fund or african- americans. programs such as youth bill which is designed to give job

training and education opportunities to young people who are from low income households and who are at risk so they can help to gain skills and to rebuild their communities. over 8400 of the people, the young people serve to that program, that is 60% or african- americans. we are working hard to make the budget dollars go and that communities of color received attention to accept -- to not accept the unacceptable unemployment rate. the unemployment insurance system which had a boost up and benefits banks to help from the cbc kamal almost 2.4 million of those americans who drew

unemployment benefits were african american last year. thanks to thebcbc and others have successfully fought for the extension of unemployment benefits to give us additional 13 months. as president obama said when he signed that extension in december, 2 million americans looking for work lost their jobs through no fault of their own can now with certainty no that they will not lose there emerges the unemployment insurance at the end of the year. that would have been in december. over 600,000 americans would have faced being cut off from that safety net if those dollars had not been extended. every dollar that goes to support the unemployed workers gets recirculated into the economy many more times. there are extra dollars from the

takeover of tax cuts. that is what we did in the last fiscal year. that is what the budget goes to do. that gives you some context for people who are served on the ground. looking for it and thinking about what we need to do -- we just recently announced competition for $500 million in trade adjustment assistance grant competition to community colleges. that money will be used by community colleges to develop new curriculum to retrain workers and get new jobs in emerging sectors. it is programs like these that will help to reverse the trends of growing unemployment and economic crises and vulnerable communities. if we continue to look forward and if we think about winning the future, and you think about what the budget does now, you can get a sense of what is being

-- with a means to cover access to bomber will populations. if we lose sight that our future is here today, that those under age 10, those children, those 40%, one in three of that 40% living in poverty are our future. that is what the budget fight is about. it is about having programs that connect those children to their future, our future. that is what we have to win. >> thank you. we were joined by the hon. sheila jackson lee will join us again shortly. \ \ the gray / state of texas. from the great state of texas. >> yesterday, a new proposal was floated.

it was a debt-service perk first policy. first policy. if this proposal is approved, the nation would pay its debt service on the desk before any other expenditures. that is approximately $140 billion. per month. that is the third highest monthly debt service ever. usually, the debt services anywhere between the third and fifth highest expenditure in the national budget. the proposal is before so security, medicare and anything else. we pay debt service. what impact would such a policy

have overall and what would it have that there is no consideration given in the budget close to the top four of the vulnerable populations, the aged and the young? >> it seems like that is only binding if they say that when we run out of money, we will not spend anything else. currently, the debt service is paid and other things are paid and we increase our deficit. if their point is that we will pay the debt when we run out of cash like when you have more months of that you have money, you don't spend for the rest of the month. that could have serious ramifications.

medicare is paid out of its own trust fund. the trust fund may be running out of money but that is the place it comes from and the same is true for some security. we are -- for social security. these are either discretionary or they may be mandatory but you want to just the eligibility criteria so we reduce the expenditures. i think we would really be concerned that this is a binding constraint that will have an adverse affect on the populations we want to protect. >> can you clarify the difference between deficit and debt? >> of the deficit is the annual budget -- the deficit is the annual budget. it is between the revenue taken and the expenditures you have. there's a deficit if you spend more on the outflow than the

interloper the debt is the accumulation of all deficits that have not been paid off. it is the difference between putting it in a household analogy -- if you spend more each month then you take in, you are adding to your debt and your debt is bigger than your monthly deficit. it is true that for the nation, the debt is the accumulation of all of those deficits in the past that not been repaid. we have a question from the dais. be at the to microphone. come on up. >> thank you. thank you to the panelists and the chair and the committee for putting this on.

dr. gaskin, you knew my question was coming to you, right? you met a very potent of moral and ethical argument for why not cutting programs like medicare, medicaid, s-chip and so forth. in the affordable care act, we are modifying medicare through those things you mentioned, the accountable care organizations, medical homes and supervisions and there is one study that shows that kind of care and prevention could save between $652 billion - 1.4 trillion dollars over four years in medicare spending. you offered another report which showed that if we eliminated health disparities, we could save approximately $1.24 trillion over four years.

how can use the studies to make an argument and impact how we go about doing this deficit- reduction. ? we don't get to score things like prevention. had we factor these two reports into this discussion? >> -- how do we factor these two reports into this discussion? >> we have to change the paradigms in the way in which we think about both health care expenditures and expenditures on infrastructure that improves health. and a growing society has to have a healthy population. m, pointed out, 40% of the persons under 40 years of age are of color. if we have higher rates of

diabetes and hypertension and higher rates of stroke, if we're going to tolerate those higher rates of disease in this population, it will eventually cost us more money in the out years to care for them. it makes perfect sense to me that we need to do the things we are supposed to do now in terms of providing both access to quality health care, access to quality foods, the things -- access to the environment that allows these young people to grow up and live healthy lives. if they are healthy, they can be productive workers which turns them into taxpayers which is something we like. if they are working, they're not actually drawing on other public

services that potentially impact the nation's budget. the way in which we change -- the way in which we think about these days, some of these things are actually investments in good health. they are investments so that people can be productive citizens, not just on consumption for today. >> do you? they know why the congressional budget office is not for primary prevention? >> no, i don't. >> congresswoman? >> within a 10-year window, they had a lot of the prevention impact outside that tenure window. >> we have experts and we don't have a roving microphone. we certainly have experts is down here. i will throw out some questions and i want you to enter them if you know the answer. i would like to invite you to

ask questions and then we will open up to our audience. i had a couple of things i want to quickly throw out one is the question of the deficit commission proposal which casts so security in the light of the deficit. it is somehow linked to it. it was framed in a larger media as being linked to and perhaps causing the devin said. can you actually tell us, dr. sims, what the distinction between social security is and why it is not connected? >> so security is funded out of its own trust fund. the dedicated social security taxes or fica that we pay goes into the trust fund. the current payment to recipients go out of the trust fund. sometimes, people get confused about many aspects of that.

you don't get yourself security out of any other tax. iran has.e that the it is a self-contained place. it has amazes me out years. it is currently not running a deficit. but the current projections are that inflow will not be enough to pay current levels of benefits some here in the future. in the not too distant future for those of us who are younger. it has a separate adjustment. it is not part of the current problem. implicit in what people are trying to have you money, some house so security will dip into the general

revenue. there is no indication that that would ever be the case. >> dr. spriggs, for african- americans, this is actually the great depression. for younger african-americans, this is a huge depression. you talked about the work you are doing and certainly the illustration is doing to address that issue. is the work you're doing sufficient for the magnitude of the challenge of the african- american community? and what else needs to be done, if not. ? >> by order of magnitude, if you took all the downturns of the 1960's, the downturns of the 1970's, the downturns of 1980's and take the jobs lost and the

'60s, '70s, '80s, as a number of jobs we lost in this one recession. when you looked at how long it took us to stop loss of jobs in those previous three sessions, take the one that occurred in 2001. for over 24 months, the economy continued to lose jobs. in order of magnitude, not as many jobs as we lost this time but we continued to lose jobs. the first 30of months after 2001, we were losing jobs. we have succeeded in stopping job loss in nine months. even though this was a more severe downturn. in order of magnitude and dealing with the problem, we at least succeeded in stopping job

loss. we have at least return to to say we are gaining jobs at a faster pace pace that has occurred before. it has not addressed the problem totally because the unemployment rate for african-americans has continued to rise after we start to gain jobs. when you look at young people whether black or white, this is the worst job market that young people i've ever faced on record. we don't have records from the great depression. we can imagine what the data looks like. this that we ever recorded is the worst on record. we invested a huge amount of money and job training to make sure that as a command of this, those young people would be well prepared. thanks to the work that the cbc put in on the recovery act carried over $500 million got invested in job training and a

large part of that went to green job training, particularly aimed at young people. particularly a and that the community.er's is early to judge this. we will see how all of that plays out. in the end, it may not be enough. we may need to do more to make sure that we actually have the jobs in place. we do know that we have achieved stopping the job loss in a record. time and we have started generating jobs and we have made huge investments in the train link to the investments we're making it the federal level. as the recovery continues to

take strength, we have to hope that is the right direction. >> i just want to make two quick points. one is on the job creation of the obama administration who inherited a huge deficit. we made it an affirmative decision to deal with the health care instead of the deficit situation. we made a deliberate decision and the deficit, as a result, is unacceptably high. we have the social security system which is a system where all the money goes a micelles security -- we have complicated that situation with last year's tax cuts. we cut thec ore payroll tax but

have made it home by going to the general fund and putting money back. that involves the general fund. next year, we may decide to make a poor decision and not put the money there. this is supposed to be a one- year thing. unless we get right back on track where we have been with so security all along, so security will be in jeopardy. there are many people in congress that don't think that is not a bad thing. they want to privatize it anyway. we need to be very careful about the impact of the tax cut bill where the flow of money in fact does involve the general fund or at least one year. we need to make sure that is not a permanent. >> thank you congressmen. i want to emphasize that he said the tax package may think more complicated. the payroll tax holiday sounded

great and it has some negative outcomes if we actually look at 2012 and beyond. it is actually tied to the security fund. with that, and thank you all so, congressman, for contextualizing the fact that the obama administration did inherit a huge deficit and have been trying very hard to address the issue of unemployment and recession on top of a huge debt. with that, i would like -- i would like to join me in thanking our analysts and lending as their expertise. we are now ready for our next panel. we will be getting ready for our next panel, thank you.

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>> coming up, we will have more live coverage of the black caucus to have as a commission, looking at the current economic situation and how it is affecting minority communities. we will have live coverage of the next panel starting shortly. in the meantime, the situation in egypt grows more desperate. we are planning to bring in coverage of violence in egypt courtesy of aljazeera as tens of

thousands of people are taking part in anti-government protests today and they have been all week. at least two people have died. president obama is expected to come to the podium to talk about the situation in egypt and we will bring that to you live on c-span. earlier today, hillary clinton had remarked on was going on in that nation. we continue to monitor the situation in egypt very closely. >> are deeply concerned about the use of violence by egyptian police and security forces against protesters. we call on the egyptian government to do everything in its power to restrain the security forces. at the same time, protesters

should also refrain from violence and express themselves peacefully. as we have repeatedly said, we support the universal human rights of the egyptian people. included in the right to freedom of expression, association, and of assembly. we urge the egyptian authorities to allow a peaceful protests and to reverse the unprecedented step that has taken to cut off communications. that there are_ deep grievances within the egyptian society. the egyptian government needs to understand that violence will not make these grievances go away. as president obama said yesterday, reform is absolutely

critical to the well-being of egypt. egypt has long been an important partner of the united states on a range of regional issues. as a partner, we have -- we strongly believe that the egyptian government needs to engage immediately with the egyptian people in implementing needed economic, political, and social reforms. we continue to race, with the egyptian government as we do with other governments in the region, the imperative for reform. and greater openness and participation to provide a better future for all. we want to partner with the egyptian people and their government to realize their aspirations, to live in a democratic society that

respects basic human rights. when i was recently in the region, i met with a wide range of civil society groups. i heard from them about ideas they have that would improve their country. people of the middle east, like people everywhere, are seeking a chance to contribute and have a role in the decisions that will shape their lives. as i said in doha, leaders need to respond to these aspirations and to help build a better future for all. they need to view civil society as their partner, not as a threat. >> i have two rather direct questions about egypt.

is president mubarak finished? the second question -- are you condemning the violent crackdown against protesters? >> i think we have been answering those concerns for quite some time. as president obama said yesterday very clearly and as i said in doha, it is absolutely vital for egypt to embrace reform and in sure that it not only as long term stability but also paid as progress and prosperity that as people richly deserve. egypt has been a strong partner of the united states on a range of regional and strategic interests. as a partner, we believe strongly and have expressed this consistently that the egyptian government needs to engage with the egyptian people. implementing needed

political and social reforms. we have consistently raise this with the egyptian government over many years. we also raised it with other governments in the region. there is a constant concern about the need for greater openness, greater participation on the part of the people, particularly young people which is something i was very clear about in doha. what will eventually happen in egypt is up to egyptians. it is important for us to make very clear that as a partner of egypt, we are urging that their on the partint

of the security forces and not a rush to impose very strict measures that would be violent, and that there bay -- whether via a dialogue between the government and the people of egypt. at the same time, we would urge the protesters to engage in peaceful protests which they have every right to do. the deep grievances that they are raising deserve to be addressed. the real question we are focused on is how can we support a better future for the people of egypt? that response to their aspirations. as i have said before and as the president has also said, the egyptian government has a real

opportunity in the face of a very clear demonstration of opposition to begin a process that will truly respond to the aspirations of the people of egypt. we think that moment needs to be seen. we are hoping that is. >> i have a son -- >> comments from secretary of state clinton after a meeting with the vice president of columbia we are live in the white house briefing room where we are standing by for remarks from white house spokesman robert gibbs. we are hearing that president obama may make a statement on the anti-government protests taking place in egypt. apparently, two people have died in that

>> we are planning to have live coverage of the address when it happens here on c-span.

[crowd murmurs]

[crowd murmurs] >> we are standing by in the white house briefing room for spokesman robert gibbs. he is expected to talk about the anti-government protests that are happening in egypt. we are also hearing that president obama is apparently going to make a statement on those protests. this from the associated press this afternoon. an official is saying that the u.s. review its $1.5 billion in aid to egypt based on events unfolding in the country where the authoritarian government is struggling to extinguish street protests. u.s. citizens are urged to avoid

non-essential travel to egypt. the official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the situation. we are planning to return to our live coverage of the congressional black caucus's deficit commission as they are looking at how the recession is affecting minority communities, as we wrap up our coverage of the egypt situation here from the white house briefing room.

>> this is a two-minute warning for the press briefing. two minutes until the press briefing starts.

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[no audio] >> good afternoon. i apologize for the delay. obviously we are watching and monitoring very closely a very fluid and dynamic situation. i will do my best to answer some of your immediate questions. we may take some of those again as events -- as we can all see

events are changing very quickly. >> has president obama spoken to president mubarak about these issues? >> let me start by giving a little bit of rundown on the president's briefings thus far today. overnight he received a memo from national security adviser on the latest situation. i think you all have been briefed on the fact that the president's pdb was about 40 minutes in the oval office. this morning entirely on the situation in egypt, which convened not too long ago, about 12:30 a deputy committees meeting in the situation room where we heard directly from ambassador margaret scobey from

egypt, and the state department and others. that briefing was relayed back to the president not too long ago in the oval office. so throughout the process, the ambassador and covers -- and others in the government have been in touch with the egyptian government. president obama has not spoken with president mubarak. we are monitoring it very fluid situation. -- of very fluid situation. this is not about picking a person are piquing the people of the country. as you heard, we are deeply concerned about the images and the events that we see in egypt today. we monitor those events closely.

the security personnel in egypt need to refrain from violence. protester should refrain from violence as well. we have said that throughout this. needs tothe government' turn the internet and social websites back on. the legitimate grievances that have festered for quite some time in egypt have to be addressed by the egyptian .overnment' immediately violence is not the response. a space has to be created for a meaningful dialogue that addresses those very legitimate grievances. our belief in their right on the freedom of expression, of association, and of assembly, we have outlined some very specific

things that the government must begin to do immediately. >> you say these legitimate grievances have to be addressed. what can the president to if these matters are not addressed? >> first and foremost, this is a situation that will be solved by the people in egypt. i will say this, we are monitoring closely the situation, as i said. we will be reviewing our assistance posture, based on events that take place in the coming days. that is certainly part of it, but this will be solved by the egyptian people. it is important, there is a very

important opportunity for the egyptian government to address grievances that have been in place for a number of years. >> from a white house perspective, can you put what is happening today and the last couple of days in context? the see it as a crisis that is teetering on something much broader? >> obviously we are monitoring this in a number of places. we saw what happened in tunisia. as i said yesterday, i think you have different countries in the region at different stages of political development. i don't want to generalize across a series of countries. >> what does the united states think of the egyptian military

[unintelligible] and what do you think the military's role should be? >> again, as we have urged repeatedly for many days, we urge a strong restraint. this is not a situation that should be addressed with violence. security forces and the military should use restrain in anything that they do. >> there have been reports of clashes between the egyptian military and the egyptian police. have you heard anything on that? >> obviously we are monitoring the situation. i don't have an account of everything that is happening on the ground.

>> what is the united states doing about eightaid? >> we will be reviewing our posture based on events now and in the coming days. >> has the president and having any phone conversations at all with other allies concerning the situation in egypt? >> there have been a number of meetings throughout the government. there is another of higher level principals meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning, but i am unaware of any calls at this point that have been made. >> i am wondering why this message that you are delivering from the podium and we heard from secretary clinton earlier today, why the president isn't himself making those same comments on a phone call? it seems that it would be more powerful if the president could pick up the phone, call president mubarak, and make the

same remarks? >> we are in continual contact throughout levels of our government with the egyptian government. i think you heard the president speak quite clearly yesterday on this topic. what is also very important is, we have not waited for the events of the past several days to bring up our concerns and the concerns of the egyptian people about what i said, association, assembly, freedom of expression, internet freedoms. those are discussions that are had at every opportunity when anybody from our government meets with the egyptian government. when the president last spoke with president mubarak, he brought these concerns up. when we spoke in cairo, these

concerns were brought up. i would say only in terms of going forward, we continue to monitor a fast-paced situation. >> talk to us about the role that egypt has played in that region. any concerns and all that this situation could hurt the relationship? >> again, i think we have seen the role on issues like millie east peace in the middle east peace that historically, the government of egypt has played. that is important, but there is a responsibility that is had by the government of egypt regardless of the role that they

have played internationally or regionally over the course of any number of years. they also have to address the grievances that have built up for those same number of years within the country of egypt. this is an important opportunity to institute concrete and legitimate political reforms to address the concerns of the egyptian people and make some substantial progress. that is what we are looking for. >> what is the u.s. still support countries and regimes that we know do not respect human rights? >> we have documented the concerns that some have had for quite some time, as is the case

with a country like china. we have a whole host of bilateral issues that we deal with countries on, as we did in the recent trip. there were economic security and basic human rights issues that presidente when the meets with his counterparts. our belief is, it is important to have those conversations very directly with those leaders. if you walk away from the table of engagement, you cannot deliver that message in a face- to-face manner, and the president believes that is tremendously important. >> you talk about urging restraint. has that message been

communicated from the united states directly to the egyptian military? >> it has been communicated not just from this podium, not just in the remarks of the secretary of state, but at levels within the pentagon to the egyptian military from the state department, from the words and conversations that have been had by ambassador scobey. also in the words of the president yesterday. >> do you believe that the time has passed for mubarak to make these changes that you are calling for? >> absolutely not. i think the people of egypt want to see clearly and quickly, legitimate steps taken toward concrete reforms. the time for that to happen has most certainly come.

>> he said that he has not talked to president mubarak. him?he tried to reach the >> not that i am aware. there is a very fluid situation, and i have no doubt that there are conversations happening as i briefed about egypt and a whole host of levels and issues. >> why is the president not standing where you are standing right now? >> again, we are monitoring a very fluid situation. >> i don't doubt by the time i finish here, it will have changed more, and made several times before we all go to bed tonight. >> has there been any discussion of concerns expressed by people overseas [unintelligible] >> again, i think we have seen a

very clear and consistent message across all levels of our government, in our interactions with the government in egypt and in cairo. the statements i have made publicly here and the messages that have been communicated most recently by secretary of state clinton just a few hours earlier. >> he said we would be of being our [unintelligible] what kind of change in posture could there be? are you talking about cutting off aid? >> at this point i would just leave it to the fact that we are watching very closely the images and events that you are watching and how that could very possibly impact our assistance to egypt.

>> is there planning going on now for the possibility that he would be overthrown? >> there is a robust set of meetings that are being had to discuss all whole host of issues right now in egypt. a whole host of meetings are going on. >> deeply concerned, urging restraint. to this point, u.s. officials have come out -- is it time to come out and condemn the violence? >> urging restraint and in seeing violence is obviously very counter to what we believe should be had. we would strongly condemn the use of any violence on either side during this situation, absolutely. >> it seems that your delayed today because we were waiting to see if mubarak would have

anything to say to his people and perhaps a global audience. is the white house trouble that he has not come out, to our knowledge, to say something? >> we were delayed for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which, i wanted to make sure that we have the very best available information as we come out here. we are monitoring any and all actions and words that are coming out of the country and will continue to do so. >> is this kind of a classic foreign policy dilemma for the u.s., where he may not be great for his own people, but you have to worry about who will replace him? >> i don't think it is a good idea for me to get into hypothetical. i will say this, and it is certainly not hypothetical. the situation should be addressed through concrete reforms.

that is what the people of egypt demand. that is what they deserve. leaders of any country in any region of the world have to be responsive and responsible to the people they govern. that is certainly true in this instance and it is true need in every country around the globe. >> as secretary clayton spoken to president mubarak? >> i don't have an up -- an updated list of calls -- has secretary clayton spoken to president mubarak? >> can you share with us what world leaders the president has spoken with in the last 24 hours? >> the president -- we are in touch on a whole host of levels.

i would refer you to state on some of this on what contacts have been had. obviously we are watching this. >> has any thought been given to [unintelligible] as ambassador to temporarily? >> not that i have heard. the meeting discussed the security of the embassy, the security of american citizens inside of egypt. there are no reports at this point of americans in distress, but obviously this is an ongoing situation that we are monitoring. contingencies have been discussed, and obviously they

are pre planning for a lot of that in the pipeline for a whole host of contingencies. the state department has issued a travel alert to any united states citizens considering travel to egypt, and urging people not to pursue non- essential travel at this time. >> has the united states through the ambassador or officially condemned the house arrest? >> i did not hear the ambassador discuss it directly. again, this goes in to our concern about expression, association, and assembly. this is an individual who is a nobel laureate, who the president knows and has worked with on a host of nuclear

security issues. as the once head of the iaea comedies of the top of activities that the government has responsibility to change. >> it sounds like we could still hear from the president some time today. >> as the situation changes, all of that will be evaluated. >> he said that if he is arrested, it would feed into your concerns. why aren't using the term outrage for some of the things we have seen? is there a sense of making an equivocal statement when you talk about violence on one side versus violence on the other side? >> this is not a solution that will be solved on either side with violence. i will be honest with you, i have been down here for three

days discussing this issue. i have not equivocated on the seriousness of the situation. we have not equivocate in on our very public posture that violence is not going to solve this. what will solve the grievances of those that are protesting in egypt is the government addressing those concerns. free and fair elections, something we outlined yesterday. we condemned the continuation of emergency law last year when it was extended. it has been in place for three decades. that should come to an end.

this is certainly a situation that will be -- that will not be solved by violence. the government's response cannot be violence. the government's response has to be to hear, to understand, and to act on the concerns of its people. >> apparently the british company vodafone is a company that turned of internet access for the people of egypt. is there any thought to pressuring vodafone to put that network back on? >> let me take a specific company question, and make sure that i am clear on whatever role in the company is playing. obviously without getting into the individual company, which i will check on, it is our strong

belief that inside the framework of basic individual rights are the rights of those to have access to the internet and to sites for open communications social networking. >> beyond what you said today, how has it been conveyed to the egyptian authorities that billions of dollars in u.s. help could be in jeopardy if they don't change their ways? >> i don't know every conversation that has been had at every level in this government, but suffice to say this is something that has been discussed. >> de see any evidence at all that anything you have said, the president or secretary plant has said it has changed the equation on either side, the government or the protesters? >> i would have to ask for an

evaluation of some of that in terms of measuring some actions based on media. i do know that the people of the country are rushing what is said. we see some limited amount of information that comes out in social networking sites before they were shut down. they are very attuned to our words about their individual rights. >> on the communications question, are you guys having a hard time understanding and the griot everything that is going on in cairo and elsewhere, or are you pretty clear on what is happening? >> we got a very thorough rundown from the ambassador who is at the embassy right now.

>> the terms of that shutdown of the internet is not affecting your ways of getting information? >> we have a host of ways to gather information. >> i don't know every conversation that has been had. but suffice to say, i think i was rather clear on what i said. >> could we call it a warning? >> i think we have been very clear about what needs to happen. violence in any form should shop at -- should stop immediately, and grievances should be addressed. we will monitor what is and what has happened, and future events as we undertake a review of our

assistance posture. >> it sounds to me like a warning. if they don't improve their behavior, their assistance will be terminated. >> i think we are watching very closely the actions of the government's, of the police, of all the security forces, and all those in the military. that their actions may affect our assistance would be the subject of the review. >> i wonder if you could give us any information you have about the composition of the protesters? what proportion of it is from the brotherhood or -- >> let me see if i can get some guidance on that. i think you have seen over the

past several days the manifestation of these grievances expressed themselves in protests by what you would consider to be the egyptian middle class, in the very base concerns that have about their political reform, but i don't have any update on that. i can check and see if there is anything on that. my guess is that this is the predominant subject. >> is there any thought that what went on into needs to have some impact on this, and do feel that any sparks from the violence in egypt might affect any other arab countries?

>> as i have said the past couple of days, i don't want to generalize across the region. countries are obviously a different stages in development politically. i think it is safe to say that we are monitoring events throughout the world. >> can you talk about the involvement of the muslim brotherhood in this? should they be treated as a political party with privileges? >> i do not think that the grievances of the people of egypt are of a monolithic political belief. i think that is well documented, and we have documented it, the grievances of those who feel they lack the basic individual rights that we

enjoy and that we have enumerated over the past several nights. obviously we are not in touch with the muslim brotherhood. >> are you at all concerned about the role that the muslim brotherhood my plate in egypt's political situation? >> i don't think -- i am not going to get into forecasting in a very fluid and dynamic situation what may happen. i would refer you -- i think it would be a misinterpretation to believe that the events that we have seen are based on the beliefs of one set of people.

>> to clarify on the ongoing a question, we are talking about military aid? >> the review would be -- we would review all of our aid to egypt, and i think within the review, within the review is military. >> it has been discussed and we are monitoring events that could affect that aid. >> does this affect our physical and military [unintelligible]

u.s. military positioning? >> we discussed embassies' security and we discussed it is safe to say that there have always been contingency plans for broke in missy's security and american citizens that are in both egypt and many countries throughout the world. that is all i would talk about publicly. >> when president hu was here, there was a lot of discussion about human rights and the need to consider an element of free society or rule of law.

the think china should be concerned in any way about what is happening in egypt? there's such a completely different societies. >> let me make sure i understand. are you talking about our posture toward china? >> the notion of citizens around the world deciding to take to the streets. >> i think it would be -- if i am not going to generalize across the region, i probably should not generalized across several regions. to discuss this as it relates to what other country would be to get my toe into the pool of generalization, which i am certainly not going to do. i will say this. the issues that the president talked with president hu in

china about and the issues that he told all of you that there were to be done, that is the case regardless of what happens in any other country in the world. the president has expressed his concerns about that, and i think he's all those concerns expressed quite honestly by .residents hu >> could not produce a government that is less favorable to u.s. interests? >> i want to reiterate. i don't want to inject into the future -- project into the picture. i don't think that would be a wise use of my time, given the fluidity of events. the government of egypt is an issue for the people of egypt. >> looking at the seriousness of

this situation, is the person you are in touch with in cairo? he said the presidents have not spoken. >> we are in touch -- i don't have a list of every conversation that has been had. we are in touch with the egyptian government throughout entities in this building and throughout this administration. the pentagon is obviously in touch with the military. the state department is in touch with the government directly and in touch with the foreign ministry. there are conversations that are had in many different buildings and at many different levels. >> you have repeatedly said that the u.s. is urging for reform in egypt. concretely, what types of

reforms are you urging for, and also, is this realistic given that the same regime has been in power for 30 years? >> i outlined a couple of things yesterday and repeated them today, the types of things that we certainly would envision. obviously i mentioned free and fair elections. i mentioned our condemnation of the extension of emergency law, and that should be ended. but the grievances of the people have to be addressed directly by the government. there have to be a significant dialogue to address a whole host of individual rights that the people rightly believe are lacking. i think there has to be a concrete process that involves -- i think it would not be

something that would be only enumerated from our perspective. it has to be enumerated and addressed directly from the perspective of those in egypt. >> at the moment, the whole world is watching. in a similar way with the ukraine, at the time it seemed there was an international approach. you cannot tell us that the president or the white house is in contact with their most important three or four western allies to develop strategies, a common strategy and how to react to egypt? >> first and foremost, we are watching a series of events that are rapidly unfolding in changing. i have no doubt that things may well have changed in the time in which i have stood up here. again, we have a very robust

diplomatic effort, and we have contacts and conversations, as i said earlier, in many buildings in this administration with entities throughout the world. the president has not made specific calls on this at this point, but we continue to monitor the situation. we need a strategy by the egyptian government to redress the grievances of the egyptian people. i think the world and several leaders have expressed the same concerns about violence, that , vice-president, secretary stake, and others have expressed. the basic and universal rights that have to be reformed, i

think there is a pretty common response and reaction to the images that we are seeing now. >> much of the demonstration in the last the days seems to focus on president mubarak's apparent attempt to have his son succeed him in elections this year, one way or another. you said the president has talked about basic human rights and non-violence in past conversations with president mubarak. has he ever discussed what many feel is the dynastic succession? >> i don't have a direct answer to that. >> are you following the reports about the whereabouts of mubarak as well? >> we are monitoring the events of the entire situation. >> i think it is safe to say,

without getting into a level of detail or regularity that we are watching the situation that obviously changes day to day, and we will continue to watch and make preparations for a whole host of scenarios. >> for a long time, egypt has been a partner in middle east peace efforts. you said the president has not spoken with other world leaders, but on what level is the it administration communicating with israel, and how might all this affect the middle east? >> i am not aware of every conversation that has happened, but i think it is safe to say

that both inside of here and at the state department, they have talked throughout the region. >> on another topic -- >> let's exhaust this first. >> is egypt in danger of losing its financial assistance? >> i think the review is plate -- based upon their actions. let's be clear, the people of egypt are watching the government's action. they have for quite some time, and their grievances have reached the boiling point. they have to be addressed. we will watch the actions of the government's. i reiterate the urging of restraint for the security

forces and for the military. all of that will go into the review. it is an ongoing review. i don't have an end date. >> i didn't quite understand your answer about vodafone. >> my answer was i was going to take that question and see if there was any other specific information. i don't have any information on that, and i will try to gather it. >> is their company in the u.k. -- >> that part i did know. i have been very clear -- we have been very clear, the president was clear on this just is today and the secretary was

clear. we believe the basket of individual freedoms includes the freedom to access the internet and the freedom to use social networking sites. i don't want to speak about the specific company because i need a little bit more information. regardless of any situation, we believe that the people of egypt have a right to freedom of expression and freedom of speech, and that includes the use of the internet. >> i think what the concern is, what is coming across is that you are tempering your concern -- >> cannot be clear? is there anything i can say that would be more clear than that the people of egypt should have

full access to social networking sites and the internet, that the people of egypt should have their concerns about freedom of expression, assembly, an association addressed directly by their government? i am not tempering one word or one syllable of one word in what has to be done by the government of egypt to address the concerns of the people of egypt. >> but if that means that the government -- >> i don't think i could be clearer. i don't think the people of egypt could be clearer. we have reached a point where the grievances of those have to be addressed in concrete reforms. half too, must, unequivocally. >> you said that the administration is reviewing the assistance posture. on what criteria is the review

being handled? >> the events that we are watching. >> there has not been direct contact between the two heads of state. is that because mubarak is unwilling or unavailable for that contact? >> you have spoken several times about how you are watching the events that are fluid. is there any indication of the president intervened to affect the course of events? >> i think that was apparent in what he said yesterday. he was clear on what the government should not do what the government needed to do. i think the secretary of state has been clear on that. i think the vice president has been clear.

>> ever sent the presidential visit to india [unintelligible] the indian prime minister is also worried about [unintelligible] >> to my knowledge the president has not spoken with the prime minister. >> the president said that china has at -- is now the head of supercomputers. what people are asking now is china up compromising u.s. security [unintelligible] >> let's be clear. as the president said in his speech, we need to take

important steps to win the future. we need to out innovate and educate any of our competitors. i don't think people should be confused about the size of our economy and the size of their economy. our economy is three times the size of the chinese economy, with a quarter of its people. we need to take steps, because as you heard the president say a number of times, people in one state in this country are not competing with people of the next town over or two states away. it is a global economy and we have global challenges. the president addressed and outlined many of them, and over the course of the coming weeks and months we will outline specific plans to address that. >> it >> i will do this quickly

because i need to get back to the situation in egypt. i think jay is tremendously smart. he's extraordinarily hard- working. he has done a terrific job for the vice president. i think you need two things to do this job well. you need to have the confidence of the president and the team in the white house and you need to have the access they give you the ability to do the job and answer questions. i don't think there is any doubt that jay has each of those abilities and i think will be terrific at what he does. >> are you any closer now that the announcement has been made on saying we will hand over the duties to him?

>> i anticipate trends dissident out of here sometime in mid- february. >> being the first president to name a reporter to the job since your ford [unintelligible] >> thousand jobs just last in my head. -- at thousand jokes just flashed in my head. given the nature of this reading, i should probably holster those. let me do this. i think it is a very important point. let's go back now to where we are. we will keep in touch with you. if you have questions, send them our way. this is ben's last day, and we

have made a particularly busy one. tom, we will, endeavor to let you know as much as we know throughout this process. let me go back and look at our scheduling as to when we might want to try to do this a little bit later today. >> the know for sure where president mubarak is? . >> in about an hour-long press briefing, robert gibbs described the u.s. as concerned and on entering the fluid and dynamic situation in egypt. he went on to say that the egyptian people have legitimate

grievances against their government and that the u.s. was reviewing its assistance posture towards egypt. about $1.5 billion annually is given in military and economic aid to egypt. he said the situation over there would be solved by the egyptian people. it is about 11:00 p.m. now in cairo. they are 7 hours ahead of us in washington on the eastern standard time. we want to get your reaction to the anti-government protest in cairo and what robert gibbs had to say, and what you think the u.s. response should be to what is going on in egypt. let's begin by showing you a little bit of al-jazeera

and what they are going through a little transition. it is 11:00 p.m.. . these are live pictures. the army has come in. these are live pictures at 11:00 p.m. in cairo. it is five hours after the curfew was supposed to begin. president mubarak was supposed to have spoken to the egyptian people two hours ago. we will bring it to you as quickly as possible. egyptian state-run tv is on the air as well. their pictures are more innocuous. they are showing street scenes. it is all in the arab. it is a different contrast to what you are seeing with the al

jazeera pictures. to get your reaction to what has been going on in egypt and what the u.s. response should be, brian is a democrat in new york. caller: i was watching the briefing today. i found it difficult to understand why president obama has not come out and said anything about egypt and the attacks today. robert gives was vague. host: what would you like the president to say? caller: i do not know what he could say. i think he needs to make a statement of some sort. i am surprise he has not said anything. host: do you think the u.s. should be having a reaction to what is going on in europe -- in egypt about and what do you think that reaction should be?

caller: it is up to them. it is up to the -- host: the egyptian people? caller: i do not think we should get truly involved. it all depends on what happens. i think he should at least make a statement about it. hillary clinton made a statement. robert gibbs made a statement on it. i think we have yet to see president obama make a statement. host: let's leave it there. michael is in hawaii on our republican line. caller: i have been watching this thing also for the last couple of days. since 1979, -- in 1979, they

took over our embassy in persia. and now the radical muslims have taken over lebanon. i think we should let them have their [unintelligible] and do their thing in egypt and get out of there. get the embassy staff out. get our assistants out. it is going to be a blood wash. the muslim brotherhood -- if they take over egypt, it is all over but the shouting for the western culture. host: mohamed elbaradei returned to egypt during this crisis. he was arrested. you will know him as a nobel laureates and a pretty -- nobel laureate and a critic of the

mubarak government. this is part of what he wrote in "newsweek." "if we are talking about egypt, there is a whole ramble a variety of people who are secular, liberal -- a whole rainbow variety of people who are secular and liberal. it wants desperately to catch up with the rest of the world." jimmy in alabama, go ahead. what do you think about these protests? caller: we need to get american citizens out of harm's way. the united states cannot solve

all the problems in the world. they need to come up with some kind of plan for the people. -- these are basic human rights. we can watch and monitor what is going on. the government has to address these concerns. there is nothing that we can do about all this stuff. we have been involved in a whole lot of ordeals. our responsibility is not to dabbled in everything that goes on around the world. host: robert gibbs reference the ambassador to egypt. she is a career diplomat. she has been the ambassadors since 2008 to cairo. she was appointed by the bush administration. she was previously appointed in

syria, baghdad, jerusalem, and kuwait. the next call is from illinois. go ahead. caller: i am addition. my parents were born there. mr. obama has no standing in egypt. neither does elbaradei. the the one of these people are respected. mr. obama stood -- neither of these people are respected. he stood on the sidelines. the egyptians do not like obama. the syrians do not like him or respect him. right now, mubarak is our best chance. you may not like him or the idea that he has been in power for 30 years, but he is our guy. we need stability. we do not need to be interfering in egypt. let the egyptians handle themselves. i have all the confidence in the world that mubarak will do the

right thing and will be the best for america. host: were you surprised about the turn of events in egypt in the last couple of days? caller: not really. it has been going on under the surface for a long time. it cannot blame this on mubarak. there is a population that is young. they see what his point on in the rest of the world and they want their share. we do not know enough about the situation and who is behind it. the muslim brotherhood could seize control and america would be in serious trouble if they did. host: the pictures we are showing you are coming from al jazeera television. they are mixing between taped pieces from earlier in the day to live pieces. it is about 11:00 p.m. in cairo right now. when you see the nighttime pictures, those are the live pictures. al jazeera has just reported

that egyptian army tanks have cordoned off the british and american embassies in cairo. the next call comes from phoenix. caller: what upsets me is that the president of the united states has not come out and talked on this. you can see in the press today -- they are using his biggest cheerleading squad. they kept saying, you have not talked to president mubarak. you have not talked to any of the region? think about this. he has not even talked to jordan. when this point to happen when the suez canal is taken over? we cannot drill oil in the gulf of mexico. he will not let us drill oil in alaska. wait until america is paying $5 or $6. they are going to think this mr. green is wonderful. we cannot change our energy think for 50 years. he had not wanted to do this.

the men at shell oil is completely right. we have to do this a little bit. we need our oil here in america. host: on the website, al jazeera is reporting that thousands have protested in jordan in the last few days. you probably heard about the yemen protests. one caller talked about the age, the young people in egypt. if you go to the cia world fact book, you can find out a couple of things. their military is construction only. it is between 18 and 30 years. it is all male. they have an obligation of from 12 to 36 months of conscripted military service. then when it comes to the age of the egyptians, it is a young country. the average age in egypt according to the cia world fact book is 24 years old.

there is a population of about 80 million. tom in annapolis, you are on the beair. caller: the print is caller was looking for any reason to criticize the president -- the previous caller was looking for any reason to criticize the present. -- the president. we have to realize that these people and their culture do not have an experience like we do. what the previous caller fails to appreciate it if we are seen as being behind this organic revolution, that can have tremendous an awful consequences for us in terms of our perception in the area. that was an insightful piece you read from "times magazine." this has to be seen from the outside world as being organic. if we can find ways to support

that -- you were just mentioning the aid. i would like to see if we can use that money as a lever without being seen as being behind it and having a backlash. host: that was written by mohamed elbaradei in newsweek. if you go to newsweek.com, you what he had to say. he went back to egypt and was arrested. egypt's military chief happens to be in washington. he is returning home after today's -- after two day. s. he was in the u.s. for the highest level strategic talks between washington and cairo. we want to take you back live to the congressional black caucus.

they have been holding a series of bids and panel discussions looking at the federal deficit and economic policy. this is live coverage on c-span. >> the committee member of americans for financial reform and a member of the roosevelt institute's new deal initiatives. prior to his appointment to ncrc, he worked for planning and research at the fannie mae corporation. he was a research associate at the center for -- research associate at rutgers university. he will graduate degrees in urban and regional planning from columbia and the university of pennsylvania and an architecture degree from hampton university. welcome.

this ought to be a fun and interesting panel. we will let the palace -- the panelists get started. the president talked about the deficit been one of the main pillars of his state of the union address. we thought a response from the republican party and we saw a response from the tea party. it is interesting to listen to everyone go back and forth about these things. we all know we have dug ourselves into a whole. in the a years starting from 2000 until now, president obama inherited the trajectory we are on. we have found ourselves in a whole. -- a hole. the question is, what our values?

how do we make these decisions in a way that maintains our position as a nation that has opportunities for all its citizens. the ones who got us into this trouble have to bear the same kinds of costs, at least the same, as everyone else. and not get off of the look. those are my remarks. i will start with lisa. we will have some questions when the panel is finished. >> thanks. thank you congressman scott and members of the congressional black caucus. it is a pleasure to be here. i love the question you left us with, getting our deficit under control and addressing our economic priorities. i think that is the right way to go into this budget season. for those of us who spent time in the policy wonk circles of

washington, there is the state of the union and the release of the president's budget. i think that is what you have asked us to take a look at here. how could this budget be used to address the deficit? and also to address our economic priorities? i would like to say three things we should keep in mind about the rationale going into this budget year. i also want to say a few things about getting back on the right track and the things to avoid. i want to leave you with our best ideas from the aspen institute on how to go forward and getting our deficit under control. first on our rationale. i want to talk about the growth, savings and investment, and i want to talk about some progress of tax -- some progressive tax reforms. we have a deficit because we

have a huge crisis and recession. this is a demand-constraint economy. means we do not have enough growth. if we could speed up gdp growth, we would not have this fiscal deficit in one year. we should be looking at where are the drivers for growth? where do we create the drivers for growth? revoking the $40 billion in remaining stimulus that was proposed by house republicans is a dumb idea. it will only exacerbate the deficit woes. we have got to grow in order to get the economy moving. that is the first way to reduce the deficit. i want to reclaim the term investment. it has gotten a bad rap. your colleagues across the aisle are claiming it is just a silly word for more spending.

i want to link the word investment to savings and investment. at the initiative on financial security, we talked a lot about how to create a new culture of savings. a nation can only invest what it states. in this country, we have a need to generate true savings at all levels of the economy. we have a huge wealth gap. we need the savings. i think true savings, that policy -- tax policy is the place to do that. we need serious credits that rebuild the savings system. i want to give you my rationale. it is twofold. it is our households that are over indebted and do not have sufficient wealth. it is great for our economy. if we can increase household wealth holdings, stock holdings

and real net worth, we will be putting something into the economy that is vital. those are my rationale -- that is my rationale. we need to do this because it is good for households and good for the economy. that me say a word about getting back on the right track. i think we know that we cannot cut our way to to surplus. deficits -- cut our way to true surplus. it is like my daughter over prone in all my mother's flowers. they will just die-- over- pruning all of my mother's flowers. they will just die. the cost of the real difference

between cost reduction and cost shifting. we have seen shifting burdens and costs to individuals. proposals like about your programs or medicare are huge risk shifting programs. this will hinder growth. finally, the real drivers of the deficit by the costs of health care, not social security. the-the real drivers -- the real drivers of the deficit are the costs of health care, not social security. what are my best ideas? i have three of them. first, it is in our retirement system that i believe we will see some of the smartest tax credits we can use. they will be right on your desk

as you head into this budget season. the president proposed in the last budget $30 billion for something called an expanded sabres credit. it would literally be the first time that tax credits went to the accounts of lower and middle income americans to build their wealth. i think this is a break through policy and i think it is vital to rebuild the nest eggs. it is a refundable tax credit. it is a thicket% match. it is a $1,000 -- it is a 50% batch. if you save $500, you get $500. we should be adding the children. this is the moment. i think it is time to create accounts for all children. let's start addressing the

wealth at birth. we can do it in a modest way with a five with the dollar starts her account at birth. let children at and grow these accounts over their lifetime. the real thing -- it would be arriving at adulthood with accounts that would be valued at $20,000. they would do it through growth matches and through their own at first. that would be a powerful addition. it would add $2 billion to a $30 billion tax that is already in the budget. that would be a revolutionary change. i know the other panelists will be speaking on this. since we have had such a huge loss of wealth through foreclosure and our prices in home ownership, i believe this is the time to start investing in the down payment and in the equity side and the wealth that

americans bring to home ownership. our group has recommended a national system of home accounts. this is matched money. it is for people are saving for a down payment. it is something that could be done in this budget. it is another match, a savings match to build networks and to come back into homes and rebuild what is arguably the both important wealth asset in america. -- arguably the most important wealth asset in america. that is my time. >> thank you. i guess i will start off by talking about the context of persistent racial inequality in the u.s. i will talk about some transform the policies and then some areas in our budget that i

think are regressive in their approach toward attaining funds. the u.s. is characterized by a longstanding pattern -- pattern of racial inequality. for example, the white unemployment rate is 8.5%. the black rate is nearly twice as high at 15.8%. over the past 40 years, there has been less than five years with the white rate has gone above 8%. nearly 90% of u.s. occupations can be classified as racially segregated. blacks are more likely to be crowded into lower earnings occupations and crowded out of the higher earnings occupations. this current crisis is not something that is a one-shot deal for blacks. it seems like we are in a

perpetual state of crisis. wealth is an indicator of social well-being and a paramount indicator of racial inequality. there still exists large ratio disparities in income and education. there continues to be reductions in the education gap, albeit slow. in contrast, despite these improvements in education and income, the ratio wealth gap remains exorbitant and stubbornly persistent. before the current crisis, the typical black person had less than 10 cents in wealth to be typical white family. this disparity is so pronounced that the median latino and black household would have to say what it% of their income for three consecutive years to close the racial wealth gap.

85% of black and -- would have to save 100% of their income for three consecutive years to close the wealth gap. perhaps even more disturbing, the median wealth of black families whose head graduated from college is less than the median wealth of white families whose head dropped out of high school. why is wealth so important? wealthier families are more likely to access capital to start a business, finance expensive medical procedures, expert political influence through a campaign financing, purchase better counsel if confronted by the legal system, withstand financial hardship resulting from any number of emergencies. a commonly held belief is that

in search of immediate gratification, blacks are less frugal when it comes to saving. it has not been starkly been the case. nor is it now -- it has not historically been the case. nor is it now the case. after accounting for household income, blacks have slightly higher savings rates than whites. it has also been found that blacks have a higher savings rate advantage once income is controlled for. careful economic studies demonstrate that inheritance and into a family transfers account for more of the ratio wealth gap than any demographic or social demographic indicators. these familiar transfers, the primary source of americans, are

transfers of resources. why do blacks have less resources to transfer across generations? apart from the failure to endow black slaves with the promised 40 acres and a mule after the civil war, blacks were deprived systematically of property and land accumulated between 1880 and 1910 by government complicity, fraud, and seizures. during the first three decades of the 20th century, prosperous black communities were destroyed by rioters in the communities in -- commits ranging from north carolina to oklahoma. the-communities ranging from north carolina to -- communities ranging from north carolina to oklahoma. there were documented exclusions

from blacks -- exclusion of blacks from the american middle class. the recent report on mortgage lending and raids conducted by the institute on race and poverty -- rates conducted by the institute on race and poverty found that blacks were twice as likely to be denied home loans than blacks in the higher income categories. i earning blacks were three times as likely to be offered a subprime loan that lower warning whites. this gives context to let us know that private acts alone is insufficient to address these racial disparities. the most efficient way would be a carefully targeted race based policy.

these policies are becoming increasingly politically unfeasible, -- in feasible, we need a shift to more dramatic -- and feasible, we need a ship to dramatic -- shift to more dramatic policies. despite persistent racial disparities, public sentiment continues to move strongly away from race specific social policy. all is not lost. the distribution of wealth is so racially disparate, what can be an effective non-race bass instrument to eliminate race- based in a kuala-- 2. race-based instrument to eliminate inequality.

two bold policies, of which one is a child development account. another policy which we discussed earlier guarantees federal jobs for all willing an able-bodied americans. they would achieve some of these goals. the child about a cap would set up trusts for this 2% -- 50% to and the account would grow and could be accessed until the -- access when the child becomes an adult such as -- could be

accessed for purchasing a home or starting a business. financial monitoring by irs many localities- are engaged in home value assessments. this provides another example to measure individual assets. to avoid savings crowd out, the transfer program could be structured in a manner similar to the current income tax program which uses a phase out schedule. this could influence the time in which parents or grandparents or other relatives mike make transfers to their offspring. the children of these offspring could increase the federal bond support for which they qualify.

in order to address this concern, the government could reserve the right to tax future transfers to baby bond recipients in order to avoid the potential moral hazard. does the public sector have the resources to tackle the racial wealth gap? the answer must be a resounding yes. as was pointed out earlier, the federal government's ability to raise $70 billion for t.a.r.p. and the aid to the financial system is indicative of the government's ability to raise an leverage substantial funds quickly. in addition, 82004 report by the corporation for enterprise the bell meant estimates that even before the current financial crisis, the federal government allocated $335 billion of its 2003 budget in the form of tax cuts and savings to promote development policies.

we have an asset building policy already. its faults of this allocation comes from items like mortgage interest deductions, exclusions of investment income on life insurance and annuity contracts, reduced rates of tax on dividends and long-term capital gains, and exclusions of capital gains. the total allocation, which is about 15 times higher than what is spent by the department of education, does not include subsidies or tax breaks given to corporations nor funds from state and local level policies. more recently, a 2009 budget estimates this allocation up $400 billion going to the top 5% of earners. -- the application of $400 billion going to the top 5% of earners. those earning over $1 million per year received over 1/3 of

the allocation. the bottom 50% received only five%. the individuals in the bottom 20 percent -- the bottom tested% -- the bottom 50% received only 5%. to attack the persistent racial wealth gap, we need to shift our policy focus from subsistence transfer programs and at income maintenance to bold sustainable policies that lead to asset enhancement. through tax credits, the u.s. government is already engaged in an asset promotion policy. unfortunately, the bottom 60% of earners receive only 5% of these policies. a baby bond proposal would be more progressive, opportunity

and dancing and a lot less expensive. ultimately, our ideal should be a race-fair rather than a race- neutral america. we would have to seek public provisions of a substantial trust for newborns for families that are wealth poor and the passage of a full employment act. that would go a long way toward achieving this idea. >> thank you. i should say for the record that i gave chapel hill and michigan their shot out. he also worked at yale university. it is a little school in new haven. jim, are you ready? >> good afternoon. is this turned on? good afternoon. i am honored to be here today.

i would like to thank congressman scott, who is sponsoring this particular panel and the other members of the congressional black caucus for allowing me to share my thoughts today on the best way to deal with the deficit and put america back on the right track to a prosperous economy. the current economic crisis is showing how current measures of economic performance mask the reality of life for millions of americans. if you look at the economy and economic statistics -- i look at bloomberg news every morning. you hear conversations around dp -- around gdp been positive and corp. profits sitting on trillions of dollars in cash and other liquid assets. i also do a lot of reading during the course of the day. i am amazed that by the time i get to work, i have read about unemployment remaining high as

9%. that number would be higher if we took into account people who have dropped out of the market for lack of any jobs to apply for. poverty and the severity of property are large and growing. businesses are struggling to keep their doors open. dow creation is anemic. millions of families lose their homes to -- job creation is anemic. millions of families are losing their homes. i wanted to be part of the question and answer period the question was about the bank bailout. didn't it work? i have to say i lane toward thinking it was inefficient. the-i have to say eileen -- i lean toward thinking it was inefficient.

there are two world we are watching. a lot of people are looking right now. you watch news shows, you would say, big corporations are better positioned and they are doing better. it is because they are built out. it is not the invisible hand of adam smith. it is not the organic way the economy works. that is all nonsense. the way you know it is nonsense is that he look at the couple of things. the bailout is continuing. it is continuing through the 0% interest rates. if anyone of us had access to billions of dollars at 0%, you could probably make some money [applause] . i am willing to test that theory by asking the fed to give me about $5 billion for two weeks. i will come back and testify at

i am sinfully wealthy and i am brilliant in business. anyone can be brilliant in business if you are saturated in cash. that is why those large earnings are not good earnings. that is why the bailout continues. the 0% interest has to end. when that happens, we will see the real complexion of the economy. the largest banks are earning those dollars not by contributing to productivity or creating jobs. it is a result of proprietary trading. all you have to do is look at the book of business and you will see something striking and disturbing. banks got billions of dollars for second liens. they are overvalued because they are on houses that are upside down. 22% of loans outstanding are upside down. this is a crisis of phenomenal proportions. we are ignoring it because we

are continuing to bail out financial institutions. you have heard a lot about something called quantitative easing. you can see that the beat goes on. these disparate as outcomes are due to the fact that when the crisis came about, it was because of toxic assets. those talks the assets were disproportionately bad loans -- those toxic that where disproportionately bad loans pedal to committees of color-the most toxic assets -- the most toxic assets were disproportionately that lawrence -- bad loans peddled to committees of color. it has propped them up and avoided the depression. but it has not fixed america's

economic problem. we still have a major financial crisis that we have not fully recognized. now back to my script. [laughter] meaningfully reducing the deficit cannot be achieved by reducing domestic spending. i have to come back to one last thing that was in the conversation with the other speaker. for the last two years, they largest driver of foreclosure has been unemployment. there is a link, as he suggested. meaningfully reducing the deficit cannot be achieved solely by reducing domestic discretionary spending. a sharp act on domestic spending could further damage a struggling economy by triggering less spending and promoting job losses. this is not to say nothing can be done to reduce the deficit. we can close the deficit with

the repeal of tax cuts that act as a further drag on the economy. the congressional black caucus have -- has already identified many of these tax concessions that could be reined in the so i will not focus on them in my remarks. america has more than a budget deficit problem. this nation is experiencing an employment deficit, a competitive deficit, and a shared prosperity deficit. the good news is that addressing these three latter deficits is the most efficient way to resolve the first deficit, the budget deficit. some policy recommendations i will offer will not incur any additional spending. i am sure that is good news for members of congress. others will require new spending to ensure the long-term health of the economy and it's possible that as the levels in the future. in the limited time i have today, i will focus on three

items. the first item i will focus on is the foreclosure crisis. i am on bass and mesmerized by the idea that the u.s. economy the best i am on days to -- i am amazed and mesmerized by the idea that the u.s. economy -- more problems besetting the financial system because we did not resolve the foreclosures. as long as those foreclosures continue, more and more problems. we have legal problems and i can talk about them if someone is interested in questions and answers. there were 9 million foreclosures last year. the largest data collection entity that focuses on this issue estimates that it could be as much as 20% higher this year.

the problem that started in 2007 as the foreclosure crisis has gotten larger every single year. this year will be no different. here is the caveat. it may not be as large this year because of the legal problems of the servicers. they may slow them down. that means we will be pushing the housing problems into next year and into 2013 or even further. that means we will continue to have a drag on the economy. what a drag on the economy is that? they are hammering house prices. house prices are at an historic low. they have dropped below what they were during the great depression. they are still falling. standing foreclosures is essential to shoring up the economy and reducing the deficit. it is worth pointing out that falling house prices have multiple effects on the economy.

the typical family's largest source of wealth is the family home. as the home prices declined, so do the family's net wealth. it takes away additional discretionary spending to the extent that they no longer have housing equity to tap. consumer confidence goes down. coming out of the 2001 recession, it was housing equity that allow us to drive our way out of that recession. that the bubble is gone. or simply, it will never return. the reality is that we do not have anything on the horizon to compensate for that loss of housing equity. i would offer three things related to the foreclosure crisis. we need to increase the effectiveness of the home affordable modification program. that program was allocated $46 billion two years ago. as of the close of december of

last year, $1 billion had been drawn down on that program. the program has worked painfully poorly. i believe if you look at the modifications that directly tap the tarp programs that are allocated, there are multiple programs within the federal government. the one that is camping -- is tapping, there are multiple modifications. the special inspected the general for tarp and several nonprofit research centers go into great detail on a number of things that can be done to improve the h.a.m.p. program without costing any additional dollars. we have to change the bankruptcy

code to allow the outstanding debt to be adjusted by bankruptcy judges. currently, the family home is the only major asset that cannot be modified by a bankruptcy court. going to get on a yacht or a rental property and it can be modified. this restriction serves no public policy purpose whatsoever. you can modify your yacht, but not your home. in the middle of a crisis. we go back to the debate that ensued on the last panel. we do not pass bankruptcy reform. we passed out over $11 trillion in direct grants, loans, guarantees and other support rather than doing bankruptcy modification, which could -- which could have taken 1/3 of the problems of of the table. i think i have said enough about that. i should point out that not everyone is in favor of bankruptcy protection.

opponents say it will undermine the housing market. i smile every time i hear that. how can you get more on the mind than right now? there is no housing market. federallyplete tly supported. it is on life support. even the major proposals of how we get the financial system back onto its legs, almost every private sector proposal is proposing federal guarantees. but we cannot have bankruptcy reform. more effectively, we need to address the government- sponsored enterprises. they are facing massive losses in potentially be hundreds of billions of dollars. unfortunately, the real losses from those entities are not completely transparent or clear to the american public. one of the challenges is that we need to it just principles of

standing on homes and into foreclosure. there is resistance to do that with the government-sponsored enterprises. those are owned by the federal taxpayer or the federal assistance. here is the rub. the losses are going to be the losses. the longer we let those losses occur, the more homes will go into foreclosure and the larger the losses will be. when we are talking about that the reduction, we should have an accurate estimate of what the real losses are g for these's. it did -- we should have an accurate estimate of what the for the gse's. 40th as long as we ignore the cost of

these foreclosures, we are pushing the crisis off into next year and the year after. most of this deficit reduction compensation is going to be pure academics if we cannot get the rudder seriously back in the water on the economy. a couple of other things we could do is we could reprogram some of the dollars allocated toward theh.a.m.p -- the h .a.m.p. program. there are a number of programs, such as the hardest hit fund. it was allocated about $10 billion. here is -- no, the hardest hit program has a dollars billion

allocated toward it. there is a special fha refi program that has close to $10 billion allocated to it. i think we should consider reprivatizing some of those dollars. what would i reprivatize them on? i would agree prioritize them on the -- what would i reprioritize them on? i would reprioritize them on programs for other social services which housing and foreclosure and let communities figure out how best they can solve their own economic and housing crises from this program. we could have something in the neighborhood points the dollars

billion -- in the neighborhood of $20 billion to $30 billion. it would not be using -- it would not require any money. the extreme economic distress we continue to experience is due to structural and economic problems that have long been in the making. the migration of jobs out of the country, shifting income to an increasingly small shear of wealthy households and increasing economic stress for the nation's most economically boat families has been growing for three decades. -- economically vulnerable families has been growing for three decades. the nation is in need of a competitive agenda that would

include policy recommendations on trade, taxation, and spending. i would say, also include in our sector spending, education, economic stability, and shared economic prosperity. some policy changes in the tax arena could go a long way toward offsetting the cost of a car full and comprehensive program. in conclusion, while it is true that the deficit is a major worry, the most extensive changes for the best most gentle challenge for america is what we will invest in our future -- the most substantial challenge for america is whether we will invest in our future. >> thank you. at what point is dealing with become at deficit crisis that we have to deal with

immediately and we cannot put off any further? are we at that point now? how long into the future do we have to deal with it? >> my view is that when you are in a recession, which we are in a recession, it does not matter what the number set. when you are looking at the numbers of high unemployment and growing poverty, that is not the time to say, we need to tighten our belt. we know we need to stimulate the economy. it cannot stimulate the economy by reducing our spending. what you can do is to repeal holes in the whole budget that do not stimulate the economy. there are state taxes and other things that are great giveaways. they're not helping us. they are hurting us because the deficit does count. is not just a matter of is the

deficit high or not. it is, why is the deaths and hawaii? the highest deficit we had came out of world war ii. after that can be high level of economic prosperity and shared prosperity for america. we best in the infrastructure. we cannot need to waste time getting around to that. >> lisa, at what point can we not put the death set off any more? >> there is a little grid we practice on what the conditions were aiming for. the bowles-simpson commission was tried to get to a depth of -- trying to get to a deficit of 2.2% of gdp. prune e saying, not do not

anything now. wait until 2011. everybody is trying not to constrain demand further. that is the challenge now. i love jim's point about [unintelligible] i think it is irresponsible to enter this conversation saying, do not pay any attention to it. i think we are paying attention to it. even the most progressive leaning epi are looking to bring deficits to 3.7% in 2020. i would like to say we are on the move to bring things back. nobody is saying anything in 2011. the most aggressive are saying we make progress by 2015. even if he left it a long, the

congressional budget office says it will be [unintelligible] by 2013. what are we doing now to set it on the right path? i think you heard a powerful argument to deal with foreclosures. what i would also add is that, if there is a call for tax reform, do the tax policies that build household wealth and put something back into the economy. those will be the things that will be the tradeoff and will contribute to growth. putting a tax credit -- i want to send one more thing. putin stocks and creating a new demand for stocks into a child account or through a new kind of ira or pulling 40 million people into a savings system is

a direct stimulus to markets. it is not a welfare give away. we should not be drawn into this where there is no investment that is part of putting things back on the right course of reducing the deficit and growing the economy. >> we have to be careful about the 10 year budgeting when thess a two year a hundred $50 billion tax cut. we -- a two year, a hundred $50 billion tax cut. -- $850 billion tax cut. if we could not cut the taxes of in a lame-duck session, what chance is there that these would not be extended again? at the rate that these tax cuts

are going in, that is $4 trillion for 10 years. that is more than the presidential commission if we adopt all of their recommendations. they are looking at 3.6 or 3.8 trillion dollars. we are on track to spend all of that. if we adopt those draconian recommendations, all we would have done was to get ourselves as part in the whole as we started off. we have to look at all of these. our recommendation was that the would haveng to do and been to do nothing. that would have given us much -- given us as much of a benefit as the commission would have done.

if you go into that weekly payroll and give 2% per week, you are not going to be able to increase their tax rate 2% in the middle of a presidential election. one of the things is what are we getting for that? people say to run it like a family that never goes into debt. but that is not true. you purchase a house, you spend more than your annual salary all at once. you borrow money to go to college. these are investments. you would not stand that kind of money on a vacation with nothing to show for it. would you go into debt for

education? for infrastructure? to make things better in the future? that is one kind of debt. if we are just balancing the budget, that is entirely different. we need to create jobs. we had a ribbon cutting a couple of days ago in richmond where the federal government guaranteed loans. the federal investment in that was negligible. and yet you had 450 people working for the year it took to do the construction. we had a school where we guaranteed private, low-interest loans. there are a lot of ways that you and create jobs that are expensive. lot of people with paychecks during the summer, a relatively negligible.

we need to look at what we are actually spending the money for and how we can use $850 billion. we can take everyone out tomorrow afternoon for that kind of money. it was spent in tax cuts that were not productive and only increased for a handful of people. >> part of what i get to do what television is talk about politics. politics around this question seemed to be different. republicans are in charge of the house. they want to cut the domestic budget by 20%, maybe even 40%. yet the president stands in front of the congress and says that he wants to freeze domestic spending. that seems to be the two poles of the investigation, between five years and a 30% cut. assuming it will be somewhere between those fitting into those

numbers, there cannot be platitudes. is there a place where we can do domestic cutting? domestic cutting that is going to protect the priorities you think are important about work? >> talking about your marks, they are such a negligible part. the way that an earmark works, if there is $100 million appropriated out of the 200 million, $250,000 for my district is in your mark. spending the same amount of money, $100 million that we spent in my district, you have the same $100 million program. just the president will decide whether my district gets any rather than congress. you save 0 money eliminating your marks. this is what they're talking about around the edges that does not even amount to anything.

i was at a hearing the other day where they were talking about child pornography. the fbi gets 150,000 leads on people distributing child pornography. they could only chase down a couple of thousand of them. there is all of this rhetoric about needing to do more. it was a republican proposal, 4000 fbi agents lost their jobs. we are not talking about the generalities in the spending freeze at the moment. government employees are not just people drawing checks. they are actually people doing stuff. if you cut them, less stuff will get done. like inspection of oil rigs in the gulf. food inspection. head start teachers.

when you start talking about across-the-board cuts -- you did not mean head start teacher is? well, you have to double up somewhere else. by the time you get to actually cutting something it is very difficult. we can cover everything that we want to do, but you cannot do it within $850 billion tax-cut bill and then try to pay for with spending cuts. the non-discretionary appropriations committee spends $550 billion on everything outside of defense. the deficit was over $1 trillion. the appropriations committee could meet for defense and go home and you would still have a deficit. if you are not doing it on the side of taxes, just indicate, as

the republicans have said, that he will repeal medicare. the two will repeal social security. there are a lot of ways to get their. at some point you cannot use platitudes or rhetoric or make a constitutional amendment that will save you, it will make matters worse. you have to actually do a budget. in 1993 we showed how you do a budget. we made some investments and created jobs. we mentioned the charge. you can show the dow jones industrial average going up higher with tax increases and spending cuts, higher than -- higher than any time in history. in eight years it has never done what it did under clinton. if you are fiscally responsible, you can do things well.

but you cannot do it talking about platitudes until they come up with some specific spending cuts. we can assume that they're not going to cut anything. >> i will give derek a chance and that i will open it up to the audience. >> people have some doubt the answer to the question already. i do not have much to add beyond the fact that if we want to address deficits we should perhaps address tax reform to have a more project -- a progressive tax system with it the most getting a lot of the benefits to rate system and government that is more inclusive all citizens. >> any questions from the floor? anyone? anyone? ferris dealer?

>> i do not know about a question. >> [inaudible] in the political conversation there is room to do more and better about making a case against those kinds of things. i am not sure that we have done enough of that. is it clear that there is an opportunity to do more? the case, economically, against tax cuts for high-income was pretty unambiguous and straightforward. i am not sure that the case

against those tax cuts made it past the beltway. i am curious about how to raise the tax reform conversation in a substantive way. but political will does that take? >> tax reform is a generality. once reform you have a bottom line. first of all, you have to decide whether or not you will get serious. that is how we began the discussion last month. we have a very big deficit problem and we will have a tax cut bill where an aggregate is more than the general fund

budget for all 50 states. if you are going on a diet, you do not start on the extreme case. and that is essentially what we do. once you are serious, you know how to do it. the part that i left out of 93 aftert after we didn't, we created record jobs with a down the loans off the chart, the next election we lost 50 feet from the control of congress. you have to have people willing to have career ending boats and we can get the job done the most popular thing is lots of spending and tax cuts. >> how does the rest of the panel feel about tax reform and getting the wealthy back in the game?

>> the thing that stands out in my mind is -- why are we having this conversation about deficit reduction? it was never high compared to a national priority except for certain circumstances. there was a link may between something that they really cared about. that the link is what they now care about. we have high deficits and that is why i do not have a job? they care about the high deficits and i think that one of the things that we need to do is ask ourselves if we are saying when with at the straight jacket on the road that is the wrong road to be on. if you know that this is the road that general custer took back in the history and you know it will not work, but you say it is popular? or do you get off the road and tried to build a political constituency that points out and

connects what you need to do to help it is connected to the people concerned about that thing called the deficit. where we failed is not making a connection to a globally competitive investment program that lets people know -- that is where your job is. it is out of the country. not in the treasury deficit. and we are not doing that. we have almost given up and that is the biggest frustration. when we talk about tax cuts, i do not know anyone who thought they were a good idea. but they went through like a rocket. we have given up before we have even thought. we need to prioritize again and ask ourselves that if we know this deficit conversation is not healthy for where we would like to go, how can we reposition its so that we can do the things we know that we need to do end get reelected while doing it? >> i would ask -- i think that

you are calling a bluff. we have had proposals that were 70% spending cuts. 30% revenue. if we are going to have shared sacrifice, 90-10 is not it. the one place to undo a tax increase is in a divided congress. that is when one department takes the blame. there is a possible silver lining. keep calling the bluff? if there is the wisdom of a tax reform is that a lot of people could do a tax increase when there was a lot on the table. i do not know how serious the

new leadership is about anything that would raise revenue, but i think it is time to keep holding feet to the fire. i think if you have put the right glove on the table. i think that the legacy of reagan is that revenue increases are very hard for any elected official to talk about. and yet sensibly that is what we need to do to get back to that table. >> one of the problems that we have in budgeting is taking virtual and proposed spending cuts, saying that we can cut 10% in virtual ideas and then we actually cut taxes. what we ought to do is wait until we have actually made the cuts. i think you will have a better

balance. that is what happened in the early parts of the 2001 tax cuts. over four years, cutting spending and this year taxes. when you get down to the spending, like medicare physician fees and that kind of thing, where you have to put the money back, you just cannot take the pressure. if we waited to make the spending cut before we had taxes, many of the problems would go away. we passed $850 billion in tax cuts and then hopes that we would cut our way to paying for it and it will not be there. >> we have one question more to answer and then we have to get moving. >> this is a really quick question. i want to know if washington has a revenue problem or a spending problem? the second part of the question is, how can you continue to cut

taxes when our unemployment beset 1.9% nationally, meaning that washington is not taking in as much money -- how can we afford to reduce taxes but at the same time pay down the debt that is better blooming yet only be concerned with creating more jobs to pay more taxes and pay debts. >> i think it is fair to say that the panel agrees with you. [laughter] >> one comment on that, recently, in terms of recession and dealing with revenues, social security was expected to go into deficit in five or six years. they calculate that it might be in deficit this year because so fewer people are working.

putting more of a strain -- >> we are leaving this program to bring you live coverage of the egyptian president. we are going live to al-jazeera news. >> i have closely monitored the demonstrations from the people. my instruction to the government is to provide an opportunity to the message to suppress their views and the madness. following the attempts by some to jump on the wagon and the longer slogans. by regret the innocent as well the and the victims on both the sides of citizens and police personnel. the government committed to my instructions and this was clear. the way that the police handled the demonstrators.

they took the initiative to defend them at the beginning of the administration. respecting the rights of peaceful demonstration. so long as it was what -- it was within the perimeter of the law and the administration turning it into pacts that threatened the public order and the daily life of the egyptian citizens. these demonstrations and what we witnessed earlier stage over the past few years would not have taken place without the huge space and big room of the freedom of the press and the faults of freedom granted to the egyptian people by the reformist egypt is embracing and

the unparalleled joining of the forces of society. in my capacity as the president of the republic and by the show of all of the powers given to me by the constitution as a judge an arbitrator, i always stressed and will continue to reiterate that sobriety is for the people and that will adhere to the right of society so long as it is within the parameters of the constitution. there is a fine line separating freedom from chaos. while i do take the side of citizen freedom to suppress abuse, i do similarly adhered to defending egypt's stability and

security. not to steer it into any threats that may jeopardize public safety and public order whose repercussions are unpredictable. egypt is the biggest country in the region in terms of the population, geographical location, and it is a state governed by the constitution and rule law. we should be aware of the many examples around us that drove people to chaos and mayhem, where they gained no democracy or stability. my fellow citizens, these demonstrations came to suppress all lawful aspirations for

democracy. speaking actions to combat unemployment and fighting poverty, demonstrating corruption. i am fully aware of the aspirations of these people and i am also aware of the degree of your suffering to which i am always attached and working day after day. however, the problems facing us and the goals of ours cannot be achieved through violence or chaos. they can only be achieved by national dialogue and conscious, concerted, genuine efforts. egypt looks at them to live up

and steer away from those steps loot the public and private property, knocking down what we have been spending. i have a thorough belief and conviction that we will continue our political, economic, and social reforms for free and democratic egyptian to side -- society's, embracing the modern principles and opening for the world. i have taken the side and we will always take the side of the poor people of egypt, convinced that the economy is too dangerous to be left to economics alone. i have always been keen on

directing the government's policies towards economic reform and have it sped up to service the people. our plans to provide more educational services and many others to the youth and citizens will remain conditional on our efforts to maintain egypt as the homeland of a civilized and stable people that cannot jeopardize its aspirations to the future or leave it to go down the drain. we will go above the looting and arson that may indicate further plots to shake the stability of

egypt. i call on the youth and each and every egyptian citizen, man and woman, to work for the public interests of the people, standing up for their country. by supporting private and public property, we can achieve the aspirations of egypt and its people. it can be achieved for a better future by the way of awareness, dialect, and a genuine efforts for the public good. my fellow citizens, my address here today loved only as the president of the republic, but also as an egyptian citizen, my faith could to me under the responsibility of this country, exhausting my life in times of war and peace, we have weathered

hard times in surmounted these obstacles when we stood up for them as one people and one nation. when we were not aware of our direction, course, setting the goals right. the course to reform, which we had embraced, has no point of return. we will continue steadily to emphasize our respect for the rule of law. using steps towards democracy. more freedoms to citizens. new steps to reduce unemployment, raise the standard of living, developed citizens, standing by the side of the people of low-income.

our options and our goals will define the shape of our future. we have no other alternatives to achieve them but to embrace general consciousness and struggle. we will continue to maintain what we have turned, cautious of the future of the nation. the incidents that took place today and the past few days, they have left to the majority of the egyptian people fearing for egypt and its future. conscious of further mayhem, chaos, and destruction. shouldering my first responsibility i have maintained homeland security and

citizens' safety without tolerating these fears gripping our people. i would not allow this to haunt our future and our faith. i have requested the government to step down today and i will designate a new government as of tomorrow. to shoulder these duties and track down the priorities for the upcoming era. i stayed once again that i will not be let's or tolerant. i will take all of the steps to maintain the safety and security of all egyptians, safeguarding the safety and aspirations of our people. it is a duty and responsibility for which i have taken an oath

to safeguard and maintain. may god saved egypt, its people, and died of our state. may peace be upon you all. >> there, at last, the president of egypt -- >> we return now to the last few minutes of the congressional black caucus budget deficit commission. >> it does not bode well in terms of a policy. we have lisa give us a very compelling discussion of how we have a demand constrain the economy and we can only invest what is saved. if we should have tax reform and it should create incentives for household savings and increasing

our net worth, cutting -- i love this. it was like over-pruning the garden. getting out there and shopping, claiming the two will grow again, you have actually got to do this strategically. and we have to do something about the cost of health care. we have to do something with the refundable savings credit, giving people incentives. there are provisions in welfare reform where if you save you could provide matching funds. this would help a lot. particularly given the fact that black people, as indicated, have missed -- i keep calling him mr. carver, dr. hamilton, where you talk about how we have no net worth. i really get that.

there are provisions in the tax code while there is very much made of the welfare money that black people get. there is a transfer of wealth for the policy to americans. like the mortgage interest production division. billions of dollars each year based on non-merit. passed with no consequences as of the current law's. all of these asset transfers mean that the top 1% of our population yet one-third of all of these transfers. some people get as little as $5 a ball of the asset transfers. we do need to engage in not just

debating whether or not we are going to expand the bush tax cuts or not. even the bush tax cuts for people under $200,000 per year provides six times as much tax relief for the rich as they do others. we need to throw it all in and get a more aggressive tax program. of course, mr. jim carr was a very boring panelist from the national community reinvestment coalition. but he did point out that the bailouts really worked. give him a 0% interest loan and see what he does with. one of which help homeowners at the same level. what if we had directly intervened? what if we had shored up the value of homeowners wondering

what would happen? he says that the other shoe is about to drop. the foreclosure problems are legal problems within the bank and that all we are doing is deferring the deficit, pushing the housing problems in two upcoming years. housing prices steadily falling and stripped of equity. we should have done some bankruptcy modifications. we are going to have to face the problem that we have an unknown amount of, hundreds of billions of dollars. we need to place the floor of the losses for those programs. reallocating some of that money toward a neighborhood stabilization program for unemployed people. and then we need to do more of that. so, what happens to a deficit

that is deferred? does it dryout like a raisin in the sun? does it stink like rotten meat? [laughter] or does it explode? they use so much for joining us. [laughter] [applause] >> white a summary. [laughter] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> this weekend on c-span 3 will look at the home of frederick douglass. jerry jones tells of the

aggressive naval diplomacy of woodrow wilson. from the nixon library, a focus on daniel patrick moynihan. experience american history television on c-span 3, all weekend, every weekend. see the complete schedule of lime. or you can press the c-span alert button to have our schedules e-mail to you. this sunday we will spend one hour talking with former president bush about his new life and his new book. here is a portion of the interview. >> the latest history book that you read? >> i just finished "the colonel." >> you mentioned theodore roosevelt several times. why? >> the aggressively use u.s. power -- which i did as well. in my case i did it to defend the country. my presidency was defined by

september the 11th. on that day i vowed to use every legal means at my disposal to protect america. one of the interesting things about protecting america in a long run is to encourage democracy. ultimately, that marginalizes ideologues that use motives of murder to spread their view. >> the entire interview will be broadcast sunday night on "q&a." >> we just heard from the egyptian president. we will bring you his remarks again later. first, secretary of state hillary clinton address the situation in europe where violence continued. she says that the government needs to begin to implement economic, political, and social reforms. this is about 25 minutes.

>> before discussing the important matters that were a part of our meeting, i would like to say something about the unfolding events in egypt. we continue to monitor the situation closely. we are deeply concerned about the use of violence by egyptian police and security forces against protesters. we call on the egyptian government to do everything in its power to restrain the security forces. at the same time, protesters should also refrain from violence and express themselves peacefully. as we have said repeatedly, we

support universal fewer rights of the egyptian people. including the right to freedom of expression, association, and assembly. we urge the egyptian authorities to allow peaceful protests and reverse the unprecedented step it has taken to cut off communications. these protests _ that there are deep grievances with in egyptian society. the egyptian government needs to understand that violence will not make these grievances away. as president obama said yesterday, reform is absolutely critical to the well-being of egypt. egypt has long been an important partner of the united states on

a range of regional issues. as a partner we strongly believe that the egyptian government needs to engage immediately with the egyptian people in implementing needed economic, political, and social reforms. we continue to raise with the egyptian government, as well as others in the region, the imperative for reform and the provision of a better future for all. we want to be partnered with the egyptian people and their government to realize their aspirations, to live in a democratic society that respects basic human rights. i was recently in the region and met with a wide range of civil society groups.

i heard from them about ideas that they had that would improve their country. the people of the middle east, like people everywhere, are seeking a chance to contribute and to have a role in the decisions that will shape their lives. as i said, leaders need to respond to these aspirations. fanned to help to build that better future for all. they need to view civil society as their partner, not a threat. now, there is a great deal of concern also in our government, mr. vice president, about the mining disaster that killed 21 miners in colombia. we will have our translator

translate these remarks about columbia as we go along. i know that president santos cut short his stay at the world economic forum to join the families of these victims. i would like the people of colombia to know that they are in the thoughts and prayers of all americans. not just for the mining tragedy, but the terrible flooding that in the past few months has claimed more than 300 lives and affected more than 2 million people, encouraging billions of dollars in reconstruction in cleanup costs. >> [speaking spanish]

[speaking spanish] >> the vice president and i had a very productive -- productive and wide ranging discussion on many important issues, we reaffirmed the partnership and

friendship between our peoples. >> [speaking spanish] >> we share common values and a respect for democratic governance, the rule of law, and self-determination. >> [speaking spanish] >> the united states has stood with colombia for more than one decade as they taken on security challenges. >> [speaking spanish] >> we have made considerable

progress together but we have more work to do on security and other issues. >> [speaking spanish] >> that is why we are hosting the second round of the u.s. columbia high level partnership dialogue in march, where we will cover so many of these issues. >> [speaking spanish] >> we are committed to a very broad discussion of issues from sustainable energy to human rights. >> [speaking spanish] >> as president obama said in

his state of the union address, we are committed to a successful conclusion and ratification of the u.s. trade agreement. >> [speaking spanish] >> i look forward to working with the vice president and members of the colombian government to bring that result about. >> [speaking spanish] >> i also commended the administration of ford is making on resolving a long-term disputes having to do with displaced people in the country. we have asked a civil society to

add their voices to a national conversation about human rights and labor rights. >> [speaking spanish] >> i want to thank columbia for their assistance to other countries and and -- their assistance to the people of haiti and afghanistan, in so many ways the leadership

columbia is showing in helping to solve these issues. >> [speaking spanish] the >> we look forward to cooperating in close participation with the vice- president. >> [speaking spanish] >> [speaking spanish] >> [speaking spanish]

>> [speaking spanish] >> i want to say that on behalf of the government of colombia and the president, i would like to extend our thanks to you and president obama for the solidarity and the recent rise in treasury.

>> [speaking spanish] >> in our a broadening changes >> >> [speaking spanish]

it does include drug -- drug trafficking. >> "speaking spanish close brackets secretary of mullah and president clinton the final cuts necessary to achieve

ratification of the free-trade agreement between colombia and the united states. an agreement that helped the people and also worked for the people and government of the united states. >> [speaking spanish]. >> we also really appreciate the running out to the government to extend the anti-trade and it

tends m. the subject -- >> open line -- [speaking spanish] >> as we also agreed to redouble and to support the people to let free and fair leaders and >> and we will

consolidate our high level dialogue that we began last year between the united states and colombia. this has been headed by secretary clinton. we will be strengthening our program to discuss issues ranging from all kinds of democracy, human rights, new technology, energy, and the environment.

>> [speaking spanish] news >> and on behalf of the government of colombia, and its people, i want to thank you very much for recognizing the progress columbia has made as a developing country and in upholding human rights. >> i have two rather direct

questions to ask about egypt. the first, is the president their finished? are you at this point condemning the violent crackdown? >> we have been answering those concerns for quite some time. as president obama said yesterday, very clearly, it is absolutely vital for egypt to embrace reform and make sure of it's not only long-term stability, but also the progress and prosperity that its people rich the deserved. egypt has been a strong partner of the united states on a range of regional and strategic interests. as a partner, we believe strongly and have expressed this consistently, that the egyptian government needs to engage with

the egyptian people in implementing needed political, economic, and social reform. we have consistently raised this with the egyptian government over many years. we have also raised it with other governments over the rim years. there is a constant concern about the need for greater openness and participation on the parts of the people. particularly young people. something that was very clear about. we want to continue to partner with the egyptian government and people. what will eventually happen in egypt is up to egyptians. it is important for us to make very clear that as a partner of egypt, we are urging that there be a restraint on the part of

the security forces. that there not be a rush to impose very strict measures that would be violent. and that there be a dialogue between the government and the people of egypt. at the same time, we would also urge protesters to engage in peaceful protest, which they have every right to do. and these steep grievances that they are raising deserve to be addressed. the real question that we are focused on is how can we support a better future for the people of egypt that responds to their aspirations as i have said before and as the president has also said, the egyptian

government has a real opportunity in the face of this clear demonstration to begin a process that will clearly respond to the aspirations of the people of egypt. we think at that moment needs to be seized and we are hoping that it is. >> madam secretary, two points. the first one is, the vice- president [unintelligible] two years ago asked the vice president to send this through congress? with all due respect, is the obama government going to do this? >> yes. when we have an agreement. there are still negotiations taking place. as the vice president and i

discussed, when we have something agreed upon me was quickly as possible send it to the congress. in the form of agreement that we have been discussing with our colombian counterparts, they know what we need to do to get a successful outcome. we do not want to set an agreement for the sake of setting an agreement. >> you want to change the agreement? >> we are discussing about the clarification and concerns that we know will have to be addressed in the congress. i am being fair with you. we want to pass the agreement. to be able to pass the agreement we have to be able to make the case to the congress. excuse me, this gentleman has the microphone. .

[speaking spanish]

>> i want to point out the great political will of president obama, the secretary of state, the u.s. government and members of congress from both sides of the aisle to move as soon as possible to achieve ratification of this agreement. [speaking spanish] >> i think that's the most important thing. >> we agree and that's why we want to proceed as quickly and effectively to guarantee success as soon as possible. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> egyptain president hosni mubarek asked his cabinet to resign. during remarks a little while ago, he said that he will announce a new government tomorrow. this comes courtesy of al jazeera news network.

>> i'm addressing you in a very defining moment, which mandates that all of us stand and take a pose with conscience. i have been closely monitoring the demonstrations and the demands by the people. my instructions to the government to provide an opportunity to the masses to suppress the views and demands. i then followed the attempts by some to jump on the wagon and monger slogans and i regret the innocent casualties on the side of citizens and police. the government committed to my instructions and this was clear and the way the police handled

the demonstrators. they took the initiative to defend them at the beginning of the administrations, respecting their right of peaceful demonstrations so long as it is within the parameters of the law before these demonstrations turned into acts of riot, threatening the public order and impairing the daily lives of the egyptain citizens. these demonstrations and what we witnessed earlier of rallies that we staged earlier wouldn't have taken place without the huge space of freedom of expression, freedom of press and many other forms of freedoms that was granted to the egyptain people by the

reforms egypt is embracing and the unparalleled joining of the forces of society. in my capacity as a president of the republic and by virtue of all the powers conferred to me by the constitutions as judge and arbitrator, in always stressed and will continue to reiterate, that sovereignty will be to the people and i will always adhere to exercising the rights of freedom and exhibition so long as it is within the parameters of the constitution. there's a fine line separating freedom from chaos. while i take the sides of citizens' freedoms to express

their views, i also adhere to egypt's ability not to steer it into any threats that may jeopardize public safety, public order, whose repercussions to be unpredictability. egypt is the largest population. it's governed by the constitution and rule of law and we should be cautious and a way of the many examples around us which drove people to chaos and mayhem gained no democracy or stability. these demonstrations came to

suppress the aspirations for more democracy and actions to combat unemployment, racing the standard of living, and fighting poverty and addressing corruption. i am fully aware of these aspirations of the egyptain people and i am also aware of the degree of the suffering to which i'm attached and working day after day. however, the problems facing us and the goals sought by us cannot be achieved through violence, more chaos. they can only be achieved by national dialogue and conscious, concerted, genuine

efforts. egypt looks to the youth to live up and steer them away from those who incite chaos and looting and arsons and not examine what we've been building. i have a firm belief and conviction that we'll continue our political, economical, and social reforms for a free and democratic egyptain society, embracing the modern principles. i have taken the side, and always have been, taking the side of the poor people of egypt, convinced that the economy is too dangerous to be left to economists alone.

i have always been keen on directing the government's policies towards economical reforms, to be expedited, sped up, to lift the suffering of the people. our plans to combat unemployment and provide more educational services, healthcare, housing, and many other services to the youth and citizens will remain conditional on our efforts to maintain egypt secure and stable, the homeland of a civilized people that will not jeopardize its aspiration to future so it will not go down the drain. we'll go about the violence and looting which could end

indicate further plots to shake the stability of egypt. i call on our youth and call on each egyptain citizen, man and woman, to work for the public interest of the people and to stand up for their country, not by setting ablaze or assaulting private and public property. we can attain the aspirations of egypt and its people and yet these aspirations can be achieved by a better future by way of awareness and genuine efforts for the public good. my fellow citizens, i address you today not only as the president of the republic, but also as an egyptain citizen, which my faith puts me under the responsibility of this country, exhausted my life for the country, in terms of war

and peace. we have weathered hard times and mounted these obstacles when we stood up as one people, one nation, and set our goals right. the cause to reform, which we have embraced, which has no point of return, we'll continue steadily by new steps, emphasizing the rule of law and steps in democracy with more freedoms to citizens, new steps to reduce unemployment, raise the standard of living, develop services. new steps to stand by the side

of the people of the poor and low income. our options and our goals will define the shape of our futures and we have no other alternative to achieve them but to embrace genuine work, consciousness and struggle. we'll continue to maintain what we have earned and embark on this. the incidents that took place today and the past few days have left the majority of egyptain people feeding for egypt and the future in mayhem, chaos and destruction. i, shouldering my first responsibility, to maintain the

homeland security and the citizens' safety cannot allow this fear to grip our people and, therefore, i wouldn't allow this to halt our future and our faith. i have requested the government to step down today. and i will designate a new government, a new government as of tomorrow, to shoulder new duties and to account for the priorities of the upcoming era. and i state, once again, that i will be not be lax or tolerant. i will take all steps to maintain the safety of all egyptains. i will safeguard the safety of egg in and the aspirations of our people. it is the duty and

responsibility for what i had taken the oath to safeguard and maintain. may god save egypt, its people, and guide our steps, all, and may peace be upon you all. >> the defense department announced its plan to repeal the don't ask-don't tell policy, reversing a 1993 ban allowing gays and lesbians to speak openly in the military. clifford stanley is leading the implementation process and joint chiefs of staff general james cartwright. they also answered questions about the protests in egypt. >> good evening. if i could make a very brief statement. as recently as last night, secretary gates said that he

wanted to implement a three-step process that primarily would have three steps. the first step, implementing or changing policies, the second step training, changes, and then the training of the actual force. as we're doing that, we're doing it expeditiously, quickly, in terms of the first parts of that, and you should have been given two documents. one's terms of reference, which lays out the process we're going through. and the second document gets into specifics dealing with the policy changes that have been made or being recommended. we're working through policies, but that's where we are right now. the first step here now in dealing with the actual laying out the process, what we're going to be doing, has been laid out. what you will see as we move forward and we have three tiers, as we get to the training part, we expect to

start real quickly. these three tiers, starting out with our experts, that's the first tier. the second tier deals with our commanders and leaders. and the third tier is the force. we expect to see essentially not a lot of changes in policy, but there needs to be policy clarification. we're fundamentally focused on leadership, professionalism, discipline and respect. and i have to underscore that every person who serves and wears a uniform, including civilians that work with the department of defense, they take an oath. it breaks into that leadership of discipline and respect. that's my statement for now and we're open to questions. >> general, two questions. one on the timing aspect. you have been dealing with this for weeks on this. there is no end date set in any materials here.

there's been a lot of discussion with the services, so has there -- is there a better understanding than quickly and expeditious i will given to them for timing purposes or do you expect it will take the whole year and, second, i apologize for this, but the timing today, i don't think we can ignore, egypt and if you can address the situation in egypt and what senior military leaders are saying because you are in discussions with their leaders and the situation there is very dire. >> back to don't ask-don't tell first and then we'll work to the egypt problem. as dr. stanley said, we have three tiers. the tiers don't have to be

sequential. they can go on together. when you are dealing with 2.5 million people, we'll probably have problems as we go. what's been key to the meetings, moving along expeditiously is better than drawing it out. i think all of the service chiefs believe that's the case and they can have discovery. we have a feedback mechanism. what have you learned? what's new? what's different? what have you learned as we go through each tier, so we can react and move forward. i think we leave the year there because it's a good goal and it's reachable, but we have to allow for the fact that we may

discover something between now and then. certification by the secretary and the chairman does not require 100% of the people to be trained. it doesn't require 100% of the people. we're going to have some challenges with people like guard in reserve that are not on active duty, finding to them, getting to them, etc., so that will have an impact. because we say we certify doesn't mean we have 100%. when when get to the certification point, i expect that we'll have a good understanding of how long it takes so any of the people not trained at that point will have a good idea of how long it takes. it will probably be more like, the person went to the hospital and they're hard to get to.

on egypt -- we are talking. we're a military, so we plan and we good through contingencies. the key activity is to exercise restraint and to do so both on our part and on our counterparts in the egyptain military. as far as having a position on this and talking about the events, i think the state department has the lead and that's where i'd turn. >> you both talk about three tiers. let's say you are a marine in lejeune or helmond province, when do you think they will get the training? >> i will take a stab at it and then go to the general. the marine core is looking at tier one, two and three.

each service does it by their own call and how they do that. i know the general has other comments on this. >> each of the services have ways that they implement new policy. what we did not try to do is tell them how to do their business, okay? if i'm a marine and i'm in helmond province and what i do probably will determine when i get the training. ideally, we would like to train before they deploy. while they're deployed if you can train in country, we'll do that. if it's not, we'll catch them on the return deployment and catch them as soon as they return home. most units will have windows of opportunity while deployed to be able to conduct this third tier training.

we can get some of it and maybe save some for later if that's appropriate. there may be things out in the field that you will not pay attention to because it's not relevant at this time. >> as a ballpark, when do you think it will start, a month, two months? >> as far as the training goes, we're pretty certain it will be ready in february to start the training because of where we are right now. even with the helmond province -- >> i don't see anything that will drag us out beyond february to get started. >> one last thing, the pentagon report talked about special attention should be given to the 3,000 chaplains because there was a lot of opposition by the chaplains. any sense of how to move ahead on that? >> i don't think there's anything different here. having served, the chaplains continue to serve all who wear the uniform and all working in

the department of defense. with their own faith groups, they follow their own faith lines. there is no new policy coming out there. >> that's what pentagon reports say, special attention. >> elizabeth? >> oh, sure. hi. two questions. on don't ask-don't tell on the training, it made it sound in the booklet like it could be 20 minutes delivered by the commander in the midst of other information. would you disagree with that? it seemed like it looked very brief. >> i don't know that there's a time period, but what's key is that each of the services will tailor it to the way they present training. like we said, if it is in the example here helmond province, there may be reports that are

not relevant to them in the field. that's up to the service to work their way through and document, but it's really important to understand that we do take it seriously. it won't be just kind of a, here, read this, and move on. it will be a training package for which we'll document and be accountable for. >> so it will be delivered orally by a commander? >> i'm sure a certain part of it will be oral by the commander, but he will have training aides as to how they do that. >> on egypt, did any of the -- in the discussions this week with the exchange, do you know if any of the protests came up? >> it would be hard to have ignored the fact that this was going on and it wasn't ignored.

we had -- i didn't participate in it, but there were discussions about, are you watching it more in the hallway than as a structured activity and no section was structured to address the issue, so no guidance was given back and forth between the two services. in other words, we didn't say anything to them about how they should handle it and they didn't tell us how they were going to handle it. at the time they were here, it really hadn't emerged. they finished off yesterday, so there wasn't a lot -- this has gone very quickly. it spiraled up very quickly. it wasn't part of the discussions. they were aware of the news. we were aware of the news. more in the hallway, in between sessions, going back and forth. but nothing structured and no formal discussion on it. >> general, i wanted to clarify. did i understand you to say

that the full implication including certification could take a year, but you are not anticipating extending it? >> it's important to understand that each service chiefs will have access to us and to the secretary to say, we discovered something we didn't anticipate. it will necessitate a pause or something like that. that will be considered in the so-called calculus of when we go to the secretary and the chairman to certify. if there's something we didn't anticipate, we would allow the time. >> but if there's a decision

it, would lie with the chairman and the secretary? >> correct. >> on don't ask-don't tell, could you give us more specifics in terms of what the training will be through all the three tiers, that is, will someone have to sign something to say that they received training? >> even though we're going to focus on the unit level for the force, each individual will have to have some sort of certification. each of the services is handling it a little bit differently, because we track it differently. at the individual level, we'll need to know that cartwright got the training and then is accountable if cartwright later violates a policy. we need to get the training. we need to be able to know that. >> do you have a sense of how much time it will take?

is there a minimum amount of time or a maximum amount of time? >> no. we left it to the services to determine so they could use their standard protocols, so we wouldn't drive them to an artificial schedule. >> did the army chief of staff and his entourage leave yesterday and have you talked to them since given the violence in the streets? >> i did not get a chance to talk to general adnan. but i believe that he is in the united states and will return today. >> has been any guidance given to the services that it should be more than just 20 minutes or what they should cover? >> as i mentioned, the terms of reference that the secretary gave me, that was the first

piece. following that, i just signed a document that laid out the policy areas that they will cover, everywhere from housing to how to do records and emerging data. it lays out everything for them to look at and to modify their regulations. from that, we'll take feedback from them. we've put down -- we've been working with them all along. so none of this is a surprise, because they've been working with us, personnel experts, key people, and tied in with the working group all the time. it's not like a ramp-up from nowhere. they're in sync with what we're doing. >> on the housing and benefits issue, when it comes to same-sex couples, can you articulate what will change and what won't? >> right now, no changes are