ed under bush but a lot of the energy for this started under the clinton years in the 1990's. getting to the spirit of what this memorial is about here, thanking the people who came before us for their service to our country. we do not want to forget the cost of our freedom. host: in the years since world war ii, had there been meetings japanese soldiers and german soldiers and american soldiers? guest: yes, it has been happening more and more. there is a friend of mine who is stars in onwon bronze vietnam, and he is taking people island-hopping to a lot of people are engaging with the japanese on what happened in those battles. it was a little slow in the pacific theater. the european situation has been dealt with for decades, but it is only in the past few years

that we are dealing with the pacific and the united states. host: we are so pleased to have doug brinkley here at the world war ii memorial. thank you for being with us. part of the national park service, located just across 17th street from the washington monument, in between that and the lincoln memorial, open 24/7. thanks for being with us. enjoy your memorial day weekend. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the chair lays before the house a communication. the clerk: the honorable, the speaker, house of representatives, sir, pursuant to the permission granted in clause 2-h of rule 2 of the rules of the u.s. house of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate

on may 27, 2011, at 9:10 a.m. that the senate passed without amendment h.r. 754, appointments, congressional executive commission on the people's republic of china, national commission for the review of the research and development programs of the united states intelligence community, with best wished, i am, signed, sincerely, karen l. haas. the chair: -- the speaker pro tempore: the chair lays before the house a demunecation -- a communication. the clerk: the honorable, the speaker, house of representatives, sir, pursuant to the permission granted in clause 2-h of rule 2 of the u.s. house of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate on may 27, 2011, at 9:23 a.m. that the senate passed senate 627, that the senate agreed to senate concurrent resolution 4, with best wished, i am, signed,

sincerely, karen l. haas. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the house stands adjourned until noon on tuesday next for morning

>> over the three-day memorial day weekend, commencement addresses from across the country, leaders from politics, business, and entertainment all offering their advice and insight to the graduating class of 2011 at 3:00 p.m. at 10:00 p.m. eastern memorial day weekend on c-span. >> this weekend \ on c-span 3, ben bradlee and robert woodward of watergate.

associate professor at george mason university talks about the foreign policy of president reagan and will visit fort myer, va. to learn about the oldest active infantry unit, the old guard. get the complete we can schedule at c-span.org/history or have it e-mailed to you. >> remarks from republican presidential candidate newt gingrich at a women's bachus in new hampshire. the former house speaker talks about the 2012 presidential campaign, health care, tax reform, and immigration. this is his first visit to the state since announcing he was running for president. from the portsmouth country club in new hampshire, this is a little over one hour.

>> the campaigns are beginning to take form. in less than eight months, new hampshire will hold its first in the nation presidential primary. this will help signal which candidate has the best chance to beat barack obama. and and the era of big government and expanded. the citizens of new hampshire take this leading role seriously. new hampshire people tend to be well-berth on the issues facing the nation and how these issues impact their personal lives. they critically evaluate their potential leaders in numerous local events, i can account for that. they take measure of the person, not based on the biases of

various news outlets and pundits but based on personal interactions and observations. we're very fortunate to have such an opportunity today. we are especially honored to have one of our party's most experienced and qualified candidates, the former u.s. speaker of the house of representatives, newt gingrich. his history evidences that life committed to public service. perhaps no one knows better his way around congress. he has been a representative, a minority leader, and the 58 speaker of the house. he heralded a revolution in the 1990's ending four decades of democratic rule in the house. he co altered the contract with america and congress balanced

said nation's budget in the 1990's. his resume of congressional life is extensive and impressive. it includes being a college professor, forming a network of successful businesses, and not- for-profit groups, writing numerous books in different genres, producing many award- winning documentary films, and working as a political consultant and commentator for many news networks. let's welcome a true american leader, newt gingrich. [applause] >> thank you for that

introduction. i am delighted to be here. i want to talk to you about what i believe will be the most important election of your lifetimes. it is a decisive moment of choice for america. to do that, want to ask you two questions that i think will x help -- explain why i'm running. how many of you believe that america is seriously in the wrong direction? ok? how many of you agree that getting -- forcing washington to change to the right direction will be an enormous fight? you just explained why i am running. [laughter] [applause] i thought about this a long time and talk with my family long time. i did not run when i might have

in 2000 or 1996 or in 2008. today, the catastrophe facing this country is so enormous that as a citizen, a grandfather who wants his two grandchildren who are 9 and 11 to live and the freest and say this and most proper -- prosperous country in the world, i felt compelled to become a candidate. i think there are three characteristics we need in a successful candidate for 2012. the first is it has to be somebody who can articulate our values and our policies so clearly and so decisively that the country will understand that the crossroads we are at, from my perspective, are fundamentally different. he has to do it so well that in

october 2012, our candidate has to be able to debate barack obama and decisively clarify for the country how big the choice is and how bad the last four years have been. that is not enough. winning by defeating obama is not enough. it is important. it is a vital step. changing washington is more than changing the president. the bureaucracies, the judges, the policies will remain run unless we change them. the second thing you have to have, i think, is somebody who actually has the knowledge and experience to run a system in washington once they win. in the 1990's, we reformed welfare. two out of three people went back to work or went to school. it was the most successful and talk of reform in your lifetime.

in 1996, i also shared a medicare reform task force. we save medicare at a time when -- when people thought would go broke. we passed the first tax cut in 16 years including the largest capital gains tax cut in american history. the result was that unemployment went from 5.8% when i was elected to below 4% shortly after i left. finally, having reformed an entitlement, having cut taxes to create economic growth, having reduced the unemployment rate which also, by the way, not only meant less money on medicaid, less money on food stamps, less money in unemployment got it meant more money coming in because more people were paying taxes because they had jobs. as a result of all that, policies we initiated led to four straight years of a balanced budget and we paid off $405 billion in debt. the problems are bigger today.

we will need even bigger solutions. i think i can offer you a track record of having successfully managed a very large scale change and that was with a liberal democrat and the white house. i can assure you that if you have president gingrich, speaker boehner, and majority leader mcconnell, you'll be amazed at how much we get done. [applause] this is not about collecting a caretaker to preside over the obama disaster. this is about the feeding obama and fundamentally replacing many of the institutions of the left in the first six-nine months of 2013. third, because the challenges

are so large, we need solutions that are equally large. what i have done for the last 12 years since i left office is i have worked at the center for health transformation at the american enterprise institute, at the hoover institution, at the national defense university, at the defense policy board, and a variety of health agencies. i worked as an advisor thinking for the scale of change we need. i think i can offer americans a fundamental choice. on the one hand, the you have the most effective food stamp president american history. on the other hand, i would like to be the best paycheck president in american history. [applause] on the one hand, you have a man who goes to brazil and praises the brazilians for drilling offshore. i would like to be an american president to implement an american energy policy keeping the money in the united states and creating jobs in america. [applause]

on the one hand, you have an obama, somebody who says we would like to be your best customer, the brazilians. that is exactly wrong. the president of united states cannot go around the world as a purchasing agent for foreign countries. he should go around the world as a salesman for american products and american companies to create american jobs. i would like the brazilians to be our best customers. [applause] you have today a president of united states who cannot control the american border but lectures the israelis on their border. first of all, i believe the israelis have every right of self-defense against terrorism and i have no intention of lector and israelis and how to survive in a region where there are people who want to kill them every morning. [applause]

and second, i want you to know that as an historian, i am absolutely convinced that we have every right to and every ability to control our own border if we have the will and determination. my goal would be by january 1, 2014, to have 1% control of the american border. to give you a sense of scale, if that required that we took have the bureaucrats in the department, and security and moved them to texas, new mexico, and arizona [laughter] i am prepared to ensure that no one will be able to say that we did not control the border and the president's speech in el paso was a disgracefully dishonest campaign speech that was an attempt to fundamentally mislead the american people. i wish that president obama would quit being a candidate and try to be president of united states and try to tell the truth

about the challenges america faces. [applause] this campaign will focus on three areas -- economics, which includes jobs, health care, the deficit, all the things people are concerned about. the nature of america -- i believe in america exceptional in an ugly president obama has a different vision of america. i think this is the central defining election of whether the declaration of independence still matters and the constitution still matters and i think that is a fundamental choice for america. third, national and homeland security. let me talk very briefly about american exceptionalism and then i want to talk about economics. they are related. we are the most extraordinary country in american history -- in human history. it is not because we are personally extraordinary. it is not because we are bigger,

smarter, more powerful. it is because we're the only society in history whose founding political document, the declaration of independence, starts by saying "we hold these truths to be self-evident." that is an important concept. the founding fathers were not developing an ideology. they were trying to understand the truth about human nature and the truth about how people operate and govern themselves and so they were digging very deeply into the very nature of being human. they said we are all created equal, something which the reason obamacare waivers fundamentally denied and every american should have a waiver from obamacare from now until 2014. picking and choosing is a fundamental violation of the declaration of independence. [applause] it goes on to say that we are

endowed by our creator. this is the crux of the american system. we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. does that mean? it means that power comes from god to each one of you personally. you are personally sovereign. you loan power to the state. the state never lost power to you. obama believes in the european model -- washington decides, we obey. we believe in the american model which is the power ultimately rests with a system which is why the constitution begins "we the people." it does not say we the judges or bureaucrats or politicians but it says -- but it doesn't say we the news media. it says we the people. that has huge implications. it means that as the republican,

i will have a contract with america. it will have seven bills. one of the seven bills will be the 10th amendment enforcement act to take the constitution and return power to the states so the people can move power out of washington. [applause] obamacare is a fundamental violation of the basic rights of the declaration of independence and should be repealed in its entirety in the first 30 days of a new republican president and a new republican senate. then we could go back and start over but we should repeal every single page of obamacare in the first 30 days of the gingrich presidency. [applause] the rights we are in doubt with our include life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness. there are two parts to the pursuit of happiness. happen is in that age meant wisdom and virtue, not hedonism and acquisition. [laughter] the founding fathers all believe that white people could remain free and the polish people would end up in a dictatorship. second, they don't guarantee happiness. they guarantee the right to pursue happiness. there is no provision -- this is a fundamental debate with obama -- there is no provision for a federal department of happiness. [laughter] there is no provision for have been this stands for the under- happy. there is no provision for a right to sue if you are unhappy. it if he told the founding fathers that a politician would be so arrogant that they would walk in this room and say i will take from the overly happy and redistribute to the under lee happy [laughter] they would have said that is

corrupt and a dictatorship and is a fundamental violation of america. it was the pursuit of happiness that led the welfare reform. people concluded that, in fact, giving people money for doing nothing crippled them. it taught them dependency. weaken their ability to stand up and pursue happiness. it taught their children a terrible role model when we reform welfare, 92% of the company agreed including 80% of the people on welfare and the result was two out of every three people on welfare when to worker went to school for their incomes improve, their lives improve, their future improved. when we apply this principle straight out of the declaration of independence to a unemployment compensation, it is fundamentally wrong and destructive to give people money for doing nothing for 99 weeks. what we should do is replace the

current system with an unemployment system that says for the first four weeks we will help you buy time to look for a better job. if you can't find one in four weeks, you must sign up for a training program with a business so we are paying you to do something to improve the human capital of the united states and we the people are getting something for the money we are giving new but we are not going to give people money for doing nothing. [applause] last year we get $140 billion to unemployment compensation. $140 billion invested in worker training quebec is one of the most competitive countries in the world. the germans pay 50% more for a manufacturing labor and have the lowest unemployment rate in 19 years because their government favors manufacturing. they retrain their workers to

remain productive. the government goes overseas to sell german goods. turn to economics and health care in the context of american exceptionalism. america only works when americans are working. the current economic policy is a disaster. this is the longest period of unemployment since the great depression. every recession since world war two, we would right now be in the second year of the recovery. yet, the obama policy, this is a simple phrase -- job killing policies kill jobs. [laughter] this administration in regulation and tax policy and psychological attitude is the opposite of ronald reagan. ronald reagan came in at the end of the carter years where we had 22% interest rate and we were sliding into the deepest recession until the obama recession. in that time, ronald reagan had

four goals. an american energy program, tax cuts, deregulation, and praising offer for norris and business people -- and praising our entrepreneurs and business people look up every day and went to work. greta make people feel good about creating jobs. obama wants to attack people for creating jobs. reagan says it is terrific if you succeed in america. obama says it is not that good to be successful. let me take away your money. obama is consistently on the side of the european socialist model which by the way as lead to a disaster in europe. in january, we have 40 pairs -- 45% african-american teenage unemployment. that is a disaster. we want every american to get a job. our goal should be let's get back down to 4% which should be the natural unemployment rate at 4%, we take a huge step toward

balancing the budget because we of millions of people leaving food stamps, medicaid, and plug in and go back to work and pay taxes. no single step will movie to a balanced budget faster than a full employment economy. that will solve the housing problem. people have to be earning money to raise the price of houses. washington to try to find a solution without solving things. it is not possible. creating jobs is our first goal. the first that there is an american energy plan. we have $500 billion of your staying home. we would be vastly better off. i am for drilling and using oil and for using gas and for using col. i am for biofuels and appropriate, say, of effective nuclear programs. i am also for wind and solar but use all our energy resources, we have more, energy than any other country in the world.

we're the third largest oil producer in the world after saudi arabia and russia. imagine what would be like if they liked having oil and gas. [laughter] second, we need a totally bold new tax program. i will outline five steps. they will be very controversial and i look forward to the controversy. i believe we can create enormous economic growth and i believe if you take the obama tax policy of $2 trillion in increased taxes plus the obamacare increase taxes versus the gingrich plan to reduce taxes, i think the economy gets to be dramatically bigger very fast under the gingrich plan. i want to argue over whether you want a bigger economy with a true network or a small economy with a huge deficit with everybody on food stamps. those of the two futures we're facing. i would do five things on taxes. first, i would freeze and may

permit the current tax rates of there would be no increase in taxes in 2013. it is wrong to raise taxes in a recession. second, i would abolish capital gains tax. we would have a zero capital gains tax. with a worldwide market. the more and we abolish the capital gains tax, cash will be transferred into the u.s. at an enormous rate in order to invest here and you would create many, many new jobs and factories and new companies. if you think people cannot biggest about, the nyse-listed out in amsterdam. 40 american companies have moved to amsterdam. our tax code is so destructive. obama drives companies away. i want to bring companies here. that is a fundamental difference in approach. third, which ago to 100% expensing for all new equipment whether you are a farmer, a

factor, a doctor, hospital, a business -- if you buy equipment you should write it off in one year. we want american workers to have the most modern equipment in the world so they are the most productive workers in the world so we can compete with china, india, germany, or anybody because our workers are more productive than theirs if we have a tax policy which favors them. fourth, we should take the highest corporate tax rate in the world, 35% at which level general electric pays zero because at 35% is worth their while to hire 375 tax lawyers to find every loophole. i want to debate liberals in this because the gingrich tax plan which is a 12% corporate tax rate will actually get more money out of general electric than the liberal tax rate. at 12%, there will fire half the lawyers and write a check. [laughter] [applause]

finally, we should permanently abolish the death tax. the death tax is a fundamentally immoral tax which says you can work are all your life, do everything correct all your life, save all your life and some politician can take out the money away from you. there is no justification for a politician taking money away from people when they die. no one should have to visit the undertaker and the irs the same week and we should abolish the tax permanently. [applause] let me talk briefly about two more components. reagan did deregulation. let me talk about a project -- on deregulation -- i would abolish sarbanes oxley which is

a destructive bill which particularly hurts small and medium-size companies and has produced no useful information. i would also abolish the dodd- frank bill from last year which is a disaster for the banking and finance industry and will further cripple job creation in the united states. i would fundamentally replaced the environmental protection agency which has become an anti- jobs, anti-local control ideological said radicals trying to impose their views on america. i would create an environmental solutions agency which is a science and technology incentives to solve the problems and it would be instructed to cooperate with local communities to apply common sense to have a good economy and a good environment but not to impose from washington a set of rules written by radicals. [applause] finally, and deregulation -- i

would create a 21st century food and drug demonstration which was assigned the task of collaborating from the scientific laboratories all the way through to the patient to maximize the speed with which we bring new solutions to save lives. a 21st century fda will save lives, increase independence, lower the cost of health care, create american jobs, all of which are the right thing to do. you cannot get it done today. the food and drug administration has become so bureaucratic and so hostile to developing new ideas in their approaches. this kind of change changes all underlying pattern. the lasting want to mention is and i look forward to taking your questions -- we have a project on our web site which is newt.org. i would be grateful if you

signed up. we will have a project called "on the first day." this is how it will work. on the inauguration, january 20, after the inaugural address, i will take one hour, good to a room where c-span will cover it and any other tv that wants to a and i will sign between 5200 executive orders. it will decisively changed the direction of government within hours of being sworn in. we don't know most of them are yet. there will be an open process and you get to look around and think about what you would like us to do. the promise is that we will take in ideas all this year and for the first 10 months of next year. -- nine months of next year. on october 1, during the election, we will post all of

the executive orders so they can be part of the final debate of the campaign so people can understand that this is where obama is and here is where newt is. i kentucky with the first four are. -- i can tell you what the first four are. the first executive order will abolish all the white house czars as a bad moment. [applause] -- as of that moment. [applause] the second executive order will reinstate ronald reagan's mexico city policy that no taxpayer money will be used to pay for abortions overseas. [applause] the third executive order will

reinstate president george w. bush's policy of enforcing the conscience provision that no doctor, nurse, no pharmacists, no hospital can be compelled to undertake a procedure which is against their religious beliefs. [applause] the fourth executive order will direct the state department to accept the capitol as designated by the host country and to place the united states embassy in the capital. the u.s. state department has refused to move our embassy from tel aviv to jerusalem. you can be the most destructive dictator on applied but we accept your capital. if you are the only stable democracy with rule of law and the middle east, we humiliate you every morning by insisting our embassy stays in tel aviv. this will be changed with a

fourth executive order as of that date. i hope we can find somebody as strong as john bolton to be secretary of state to decide we will fundamentally overhaul the state department and fundamentally get a state department to implement american foreign policy on american terms. [applause] that gives you an overview. i want your help. i need your help. i did lots and lots of support. i will be backed off and and i would be glad to answer questions. if you come to the microphone, anybody can ask any question you will star with all the citizens and at the end, we will let the news media, and ask questions. would anybody like to ask a question?

>> where do you think george soros that's in this administration? >> i think he is an enormous influence on the administration. if you read the book "the argument," he outlines clearly how big a role torsos -- george soros played in organizing the left-wing interest groups. thank you. [applause] >> good morning. i am one of the three rockingham county commissioners in this county. such a big part of our job as managing about $6 million in

health insurance costs for our employees. , another million and half dollars for the prisoners in our county jail and this does not get to the cost of workers' compensation, disability and the rest of it. i have been frustrated and disappointed that in all the discourse from obamacare to the ryan plan, there is little or no discussion about getting on top of the actual cost of health care. it is all about who will pay for it and frankly, my opinion, rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic which is the cost of health care in this country. i have been following your work on health care transformation, among other things. i wonder if you have a few comments this morning on the subject of the actual cost or the control of the cost of health care we all need theme that is a great question. you are absolutely right. [applause] >> when i stepped down as

speaker, i decided -- i spent about a year and a half studying science and technology to get my head clear and get back to understanding intellectually what was developing. i thought would focus on two big areas -- health and national defence. i concluded that health is about 10 times more complicated the national security. it was so big and so complicated, i knew i could never personally master it. there was too much. we created an entire center for health transformation which you can say at health transformation.net. we have to the been developing these ideas for nine years. i start with the basic premise that there are two fundamental things wrong with the current system. the first tents to deal with the acute care. people talk about health care when you should talk about health and health care. i learned this from nestle's,

the largest food company in the world. i was talking about patient- centered care and they stopped me and said that is exactly wrong. you want to catch people before they are a patient. they said there are three things to change pension -- patient's status -- attitude, activity, and nutrition. you have several different groups to try to deal with. i would say for your employees, i would design a health centered insurance program. and the worst case, i would insure separately from the insurance companies and reinsure the cost. i would start with their attitude. there is a company in green bay, wisconsin which is a food company with about 6000 am pleased, $4.2 billion per year. they have a program where there are four levels of insurance policies. if you do an annual checkup and

you quit smoking and you exercise and you take care of your diabetes or whatever your condition is, you get the least expensive. you work your way up to where if you refuse to do anything to take care of yourself, you pay the most. this implies responsibility, not victimhood. i would start with that. second, you should contract for cash. go out and talk to doctors and say if we paid you on the spot, no red tape, no hanging around, and we ought to do after the payment, what would you charge us? prices would drop dramatically. i have a good friend was a reconstructive surgeon. that is a plastic surgeon prefer to call themselves. [laughter] he is a really good friend. he said about half of his patients are cash. about half of his patients are

insurance. he said there has been no increase in price for his cash patients since 1993. they call everybody in this town to get a price before they come in. you cannot do that for a stroke. you cannot do that for a car wreck. you should reward people if they go to a minute clinic and you should charge them more of the go to an emergency room. [applause] in medicaid it should be scandalous the number of people who abuse emergency rooms which is the most expensive way to get care. there are practical steps you can take that can dramatically reduce the cost of care. i am sure the folks at the center would like to work with you on the project. yes, sir? >> there is no society that is as heavily burdened as hours by the cost of litigation.

it is not just in the medical field with everything we do is burdened by excess of defense of things. what can we do about all this litigation and all the costs that all the rest of us pay for the parasites, lawyers. ? [laughter] [applause] >> first of all, i think civilization requires some lawyers. [laughter] remember, when shakespeare says we first kill the lawyers, that was the guy wanted to establish a dictatorship. however, it is one thing to have rule law where you need lawyers and another thing to have the exploitation and abuse of law which is what we have right now. jackson health in gallup, new mexico did a study of doctors and asked what percent of your medical practice and your

friends medical practice is defensive medicine? their estimate was that defensive medicine now costs $800 billion per year. even if you assume that is off by half, $400 billion per year and absolutely unnecessary tests and procedures just to have the paperwork in case to go to court. this is the challenge -- i have good friends in texas who spent seven years and keep the trial lawyers and past litigation reform. it was a big project. their growth litigation reform into the texas constitution because they did not trust the texas supreme court which is made of lawyers. you have thousands of doctors per your moving it to taxes. texas.

i was in oklahoma recently because 18,000 doctors have moved into texas. i was in no qualms about a year ago and they said we have the worst of all worlds. our doctors are moving into texas and the texas trial lawyers are moving into oklahoma. [laughter] this is a good example of why i always tell people that i am not running for you to send me to the oval office and go home. no one person can change these things. i am running to recruit millions of people to join in a long, hard effort. particularly in the senate, i think we can pass litigation reform in the house. in the senate, the trial lawyers have a number of republicans who are favorable to them. there is a huge grass-roots movement to convince those lawyers that maybe you will not get reelected if you don't vote

for litigation reform. i think this is one of the three or four things we must have to do in order to be successful. you put your finger on it. [applause] >> i know you have been divorced and you are familiar with the family court system. family courts generally allow loving father is only a few days a month with their children. it is harmful to children but it is also a terrible civil rights violation when the government dictates how much time a father or mother can spend with their children. what your thoughts on family court reform? >> i am in favor of fathers having rights. i have been approached by a number of fathers' rights groups. the laws that group over time have a female bias. they are not economically right. we live an age that is different

from 50 years ago. i was divorced, as you know, i am close to my two daughters and our grandchildren that required a conscious effort with my ex- wife to work together to make sure that the children were not the victims of our problems. i think it is very important that we have a much greater sensitivity, that both parents have rights and responsibilities. just as we should insist that the melt pay their fair share of raising children, which also insist there be some opportunity for the children to know who their fathers are. [applause] >> i'm a business owner. i am concerned with the death. i think it is 25% of the taxes goes to the interest on the debt. that has me concerned. would you be in favor of raising

the debt ceiling? very good speech, thank you. >> that is a great question. you want to set as your goal balancing the budget and paying off a large part of the debt and buying back the $3 trillion in bonds that the chinese hold. when we set out to do it in 1995, we thought it would take seven years. in that particular period, it took three. we balance the budget within three years. given the scale of the mess that obama will leave, i cannot promise you can do it in three but you can make enormous progress in the first year or two if you're serious about balancing the budget. that should be our first goal. i think speaker john boehner on the debt ceiling had a very good idea. think about it as a rheostat and not an off switch. for every dollar of spending cuts that the president gets, he

gets or $1 of debt ceiling increase. he gets $1 for every dollar he accepts the spending cuts but there are no circumstances where we should be blocked by obama and the media into giving them a blank check of additional borrowing power without fundamentally changing the spending pattern of the united states. it would be a disaster for this country down the road for us to give them a blank check debt ceiling that is to have a confrontation this summer and refused to raise the debt ceiling until they are prepared to bear some responsibility for the financial situation of the united states. [applause] yes, ma'am? >> i am wendy jones. i'm a business owner and nurse. there are lots of parts of obamacare that are not good, may

we talk about healthcare? i don't often hear that at the national level. two things that are positive which occurred was up to 27 years of age, you are able to go under your parents' health insurance if you did not have health insurance elsewhere. i wish you would look at that verse is just getting rid of all obamacare. the second piece is parity and health care. that means laurel, mantle, and physical health care is very important. -- that means oral, mental, and physical health care is very important. i hope you look at health care and look at the needy who really need that parity, not just the dollars. thank you. >> let me explain my view about obamacare. out of the 2800-page bill, there

are probably 200 could pages. i didn't trust the washington staff so deeply that i would never let them partially repeal the bill. you have no idea at 3:00 in the morning what they will slip into it. i would say repeal the whole bill and then start hearings and there are pieces that are worth looking at and we should look at them. frankly, there are other ways of solving these things that are more powerful that should be looked at as ways of solving these things. my only goal is, i carry around a slogan that i think is the most important governing slogan of the next 20 years. it is a little on the head but i will use it to explain this health problem. it is to plus two equals four. we made a movie about pope john

paul ii going to poland. it was just recognized by the vatican is one of the three best documentaries on john paul ii. when we got there, we found he has started a big fight with the soviet empire. for 10 years, the polish people were constantly in turmoil. they're dealing with a dictatorship so that had to be clever otherwise they would get killed or go to jail. we have an original solidarity signposts that says "for poland to remain poland, 2 +2 always has to remain four. ." one of my goals is for the women's organization -- you can make the size under on, they are not very hard. show this to your neighbors. if they agree, get them to

register to vote. [laughter] if they disagree, they are probably liberals still leave them alone. [laughter] [applause] let me go back to the second part of your question. i served with bob kerrey on the alzheimer's group. i looked on -- i work on mental health issues. my mother had bipolar disease. we have a family experience that is very real. i believe in something beyond parity. i believe in inclusion. i believe that in the future, when you go see a doctor, they will worry about three characteristics -- -- four characteristics, your spiritual life, your social life, your mental life, and your spirit alive of all relate. -- and they all relate.

women are three times more likely to survive breast cancer than women who are isolated. if you have a breast cancer patient, one of the first things you should find out is what are their social relationships? women who exercise together and have social relations in a program called silver sneakers are 62% less likely to have depression medication. they are 62% less likely to be depressed. that is because they have friends and they are doing something and they are not isolated. women have a hot very high requirement for social relationships. many -- men have a high requirement for beer and television. [laughter] they are fundamentally different organizing principles. at a serious level, i think form -- from medical school on, we have to refrain how we approach to human beings. there is a reason that the

alcoholics anonymous 12 step program, a first step is recognizing you have a problem and the second step is recognize there is a higher being. one federal official said we could finance that except for the second step. [laughter] they asked if we could come up with an 11 step program. they misunderstand how big the second step desperate i am with you on including all of those characteristics. i also believe that you made a key point. we have been trapped into the insurance focus mentality when community centers and other devices may deliver better care at dramatically lower cost. we may want to think about very creative new local solutions that have a multiplicity of organizational structures and do not fit a one-size-fits-all washington mandate. yes, ma'am? >> my name is representative pamela tucker.

i would like to understand your thoughts on a national right to work and our federal laws regarding labour relations. do hampshire right now would like -- would like to become the 23rd straight to have a right to work. >> for our viewers on c-span, when i learned earlier today that i was going to bring land, i double checked. [laughter] they can visit new hampshire and the in greenland or berlin or a variety of other cities. i don't think the walls in berlin -- first of all, this is a state matter and you have to decide for yourself. my bias is in favor of right to work state. we have seen a continuous growth. there are many american auto factories in right to work states. they may have foreign brands but they are american factories. they are creating jobs in america.

this national labor relations board decision that boeing could not open a factory in south carolina because it was moving from a closed state to a right to work state is such a threat to the entire american system that i am urging the house republicans to zero out of the labor relations board. [applause] the two key people on the board are both interim appointments. the president nominated somebody so radical that even when the democrats had a huge majority in the senate, they could not get him confirmed and he has an interim appointment. dave then hired a general counsel who is also not confirmed for the general council decided that he would block boeing which was to create 8000 jobs in south carolina. we're in the middle of a deep recession and boeing is the

largest exporter in the united states. they want to build the dream minor in south carolina to export. the obama administration is blocking 8000 jobs and wonders why the recession is going on. i think we should actively and aggressively say that if the national labor relations board wants to break the law which is what they're doing -- it those of you think boeing made an inappropriate decision, the current chief of staff, bill daley, was on the board and voted to build the factory. this is how bad this is. i think it is very important that we bring the national labor relations board under control. i also think you'll see a continued trend toward right to work states. unfortunately, unionism, instead of being pro-change, pro- productivity, unionism has been a conflict which has made it harder for us to compete in world markets.

if you look at the craft unions, a number of them have big training programs and makes serious efforts. some of the industrial unions and many of the public bureaucracy unions have been anti-work and anti-productivity. >> hi, mr. speaker. i'm also from greenland. i would like to say it is nice to have the old newt back. when you win the election when you win the election, can you get all these things done, without having a clear majority? >> i cannot imagine winning without having a clear majority. we will run an election that is so clear that there is and protect the left is killing jobs

and putting us in debt and risking the future and there is a right side that is giving us a better future, we are either going to win the argument -- which i think we will --or we will have a landslide election of epic proportions, or we would lose. i cannot imagine we would not pick up additional house seats if i win. i believe president obama is giving us the finest argument to paint two futures of america and to win the argument and as a

consequence, what i think will be a historic majority. [applause] >> my question, how do you intend to beat mr. obama, a man who has the potential to amass millions and possibly billions of dollars? and he has the media behind him. >> i will tell the truth. that is line 2 +2 matters. he can outspend us and still lose. if you go back to the 2000's six, every republican senator who law spend more money than the democrats. california, jerry brown was outspent. the fact is, particularly running for president, it comes down to people you see in your living room, the people, you hear from them, not your consultants or advertisers. that matters in primaries.

if you have a message that israel in the general election and people know it's real, --i believe it is impossible for the president to try to turn all america into a chicago machine. -- if you have a message that is real. people would re- elect someone who has failed in performance. there's not enough money in this country. if we have a candidate, that is the key thing. ronald reagan beat carter -- ronald reagan carried more states against carter than fdr carry guns torpor to overpower the reason was reagan had spent years getting to a clear message. -- ronald reagan carried more states against carter than fdr carried against hoover. reagan said a recession is when

your brother-in-law is unemployed. a depression is when you are unemployed. you might imagine as a historian that it may come up with one name change sometime next year. one more question and then i will go to the news media. >> thanks for being here. my name is judy and i live in peace kingston, new hampshire. i have just received my medicare card through the mail. so i have become interested in medicare. i was wondering how you would change paul ryan's plant. >> good question. let me start by saying, to show you how despicable the democra'' campaign is, a picture of paul ryan pushing a grandmother off a

cliff. i don't thinthink every americad condemn a campaign showing something so false. it is disgusting. [applause] yesterday i was at a medical center and a man walked up who works there. he said my 85-year-old grandfather knew that you were coming and asked me to ask you if his social security and his medicare were going to be taken away. because he is generally frightened. the president of the united states ought to tell every single part of his party to quit doing this stuff. it is truly remarkable that a president would do this. this is the third time in my life we have had another scare campaign. first was against reagan. the country to figure out it was

a lie, they got so angry, they beat carter by a landslide near the second was 1996 against us. when the country figured out it was a lie, they reelected us. by next fall, we will win this thing decisively, because seniors will begin to realize -- remember, the obama budget just went down 97/0 in the senate. so what's your solution for medicare? their answer is to attack paul ryan. how are you going to fix medicare? attack paul ryan. something bathetic about a great national party with control of the senate and the white house --franklin roosevelt said we have nothing to fear but fear itself. now the democrats say nothing but fear. i believe we can offer a better medicare program with

improvements that are real, that are based on choice. we could allow those seniors who want to to have a health savings account, making a universally available if you want it. if you don't want it, don't get it. those seniors who want to could have a right of private contractors so that you could have your doctor without worrying about washington bureaucrats. there are a number of things we can do that our volunteer. the government does not say you papago to walmart. somehow walmart convinces you. -- the government does not say that you have to go to wal-mart. we can listen to the american people. we can develop better solutions. we can save medicare, absolutely. we did a book two years ago whose title was simple in hopes washington would notice. it's called a " stop paying the crux." -- crooks."

we showed that the total government is such a bad manager of your money that in medicare and medicaid to pay between 7100 $20 billion per year to -- they between $70,000,000,000.100 $20 billion per year to crooks. you are more likely to pay a crook in medicare and medicaid than you are to american express. i believe you can apply common- sense ways of improving the system that every senior will applaud, every doctor will applaud. the only people screaming will be liberals dedicated to bureaucrats running your life and their answer is rationing. nobody should do that. obama model is to ration care for you by an unknown bureaucrat without a doctorate degree who has never seen you setting

abstract rules that may or may not have any impact on your life. that is a terrible alternative. when seniors understand those are the alternatives, they are going to prefer one which gives them choices and not one which russians for their care from washington, d.c. [applause] any reporters who want to ask questions? >> one quick thing, mr. speaker. i would like to welcome you to greenland, new hampshire. i want to thank you for speaking with us and answering our questions. it is an honor. >> thank you very much. glad to meet you. yes? >> thanks for doing this. >> that was newt gingrich in new hampshire. now minority leader mitch mcconnell speaks live with reporters about the senate republican agenda.

>> good morning, everyone. this is a good place to start, looking back at this work period is what have we done to move us in the direction doing something about debt and deficit. we know the co-president of the president goes to deficit -- president's deficit reduction clematises this is the biggest crisis in american history. the debt is the biggest national security threat, not a military adversaries. what are we doing to adapt the ball and to try to begin to do what we all know we need to do. this week we had a vote on four different budget proposals. the president's budget proposal in december received no votes at all. the house-passed budget received the votes of almost all

republicans, as did a creative proposal by one of our own members, senator pat to me, and not a single democrat -- senator tuney, and not a single democrat. we ought to ask what is the senate democrats' plan not to do somethin -- plan to do something about this? we have asked the parliamentarianism you can vote on a speech. the answer is you cannot vote on a speech. so when do they plan to step and help us deal with the most predictable crisis in history. the good news is there's a discussion underway with the president at the table and the vice president on a bipartisan basis. i remain hopeful that in connection with the decision to raise the debt ceiling that we

will do something significant about deficits and debt. that is our best opportunity. it is the only discussion in town going on with the most important democrats in the country at the table and that the president of the united states. he is also the only one of 307 million of us that and sign a bill into law. from the senate democratic perspective, there is no plan at all. with that, let me throw it open for what you all might want to talk about. >> vice-president joe biden feels there should be a billion dollars in debt reduction [unintelligible] >> i will not put a number on it. all this silly talk about how medicare is not going to be part of the solution is nonsense. president clinton yesterday

said "i don't think the democrats or republicans can conclude no changes should be made in medicare." position toimilar predicti congressman hoyer. i believe the vice president has said similar things. medicare will be a part of an agreement to begin to reduce our long-term debt. so i am not going to put a number of the overall package. we all know what the driver of the debt is. we go to every year on 40% of the budget. medicare, social security, and medicaid are the drivers of the debt.

you cannot get a comprehensive solution or pathway to a solution on our debt and deficit problem and leave entitlements aside. i will not put an overall number on what we are trying to achieve, but i've said repeatedly that in order to get my notes, it's going to take short term there that is meaningful casks at least in 2012 and 2013. -- meaningful caps. you know for sure if you get caps on discretionary in 2012 and 2013, that will hold up. this gives you enormous output because you have adjusted the baseline. and then long term, entitlements. if you spend a line down words, since we don't vote on them

every day, it is credible and it does hold up your the best example of that is the generational social security tax that president reagan did in 1983 with tip o'neill. that needs to be fixed again. social security ran a deficit this year of $50 million, but it did not -- but it did hold up a quarter century, never changed. those are the kinds of things it would take to get my vote. >> day you think there won't be any recess appointments next week? and did majority leader harry reid agree to that? >> those discussions go on between myself and the administration. i was confident there would not be any recess appointments. but all of us did feel that the leading without having quoted on a budget was a mistake. that was the letter that all 47 of us assigned to senator harry reid. that was the reason that

senators sessions objected to having the adjournment. i was confident there would not have been in recess appointment this week based on conversations i had with the administration. >> talking about libya, [unintelligible] >> senator mccaskill and senator john kerry and the administration have been talking about -- senator john mccain and senator john kerry and the administration have been talking. senator john mccain has been to benghazi. he mentioned to me yesterday that he has spoken with senator harry reid and the anticipated, based on what harry reid told him, that we would likely turn to such a revolution within a week or two after we get back.

>> on the ryan bill, might it be a liability to the polls next november? given the results of the new york special election, that this budget might be a liability? >> i can only " president clinton again. standard & poor's has sent us a signal, the u.s. is on the verge of having its credit downgraded. the united states of america. all this talk about how you can do anything about the big crisis that they're talking about without medicare is nonsense. medicare will be part of the solution. the 2012 election will take care of itself. about a year-and-a-half from now. i would think -- that we will hopefully have done

something significant by then. it's the american people feel they want to punish both sides, because it will take both sides to do except, coming out of the conversations going on right now led by the vice-president. challenge ofcal talenl reforming medicare, some say the republicans want to take medicare away from seniors. >> when president clinton yesterday and congressman hoyer yesterday, who is the argument with? it is among themselves. you cannot do anything about the single biggest problem we have without impacting medicare. the good news is for current medicare beneficiaries, we're not talking about them. we are talking about down the road.

so, i think we will have done something significant to alter the trajectory and long-term on medicare before -- well before the election. we don't know what the issues will be in next year's election. >> do republicans need to do a better job of communicating this in a way that it gets public support? >> i don't think it's that hard. i will quote bill clinton and senate lawyer and boles. i don't think this is an issue we should be apprehensive about. i think everybody in america is concerned about whether or not we are going to have the same kind of country for our kids that our parents left behind for us. so there are whole lot of things that will be impacted.

if it were up to me, we would be discussing social security as well. it ran a deficit this year, not some time in the future. the important thing to remember, to remind people, the beneficiaries of entitlement programs, is that we are not talking about them. we are talking about having sustainable programs for future generations. once you introduce that fact into the discussion, i think the political anxiety that people feel is bound to go down. i have been drawing a lot of conclusions out of new york here before -- i think drawing a lot of conclusions out a of a new york race a year-and-a-half before the if the election is kind of foolish, not to put you down.

>> this group comes up with big numbers, trillions of dollars of cuts, without substantially hurting medicare, that would not get your vote? >> that's right. >> if congress does not vote to increase the debt ceiling, that would not necessary lead to defaults, do you agree? >> this is a great opportunity. one of the problems of a complex legislative system like we have, which i am all in favor of, texas and balances, the founders did a good job, but there's the issue of how to get something done. nothing focuses the attention of both branches of government in one place like the

decision to raise the debt ceiling. it puts everybody a table on a bipartisan basis. everybody knows something must be done. so this is why this is the critical moment. actually an opportunity to come together. what i don't understand is all of the hammering and about the politics of it. at the risk of being redundant, after reagan and tip o'neill came together and altered their trajectory on social security, which included raising the age limit in 1983, and ronald reagan won the national election, carrying only 49 of 50 states. anything we agree to do together will not be an issue in next year's election. the public will look at that and they will conclude that if both sides felt this was necessary and i might not have liked this part or that part, but if both sides of this was necessary to do, i don't think either side

will have to worry about political fallout next year. >> center, on medicare, do you favor the premium support plan in the house resolution or some other kind of changed to curb the growth of medicare? >> i am not going to tell you what i think we ought to do in here. but i expect that to come out of the discussions that are going on, led by the vice-president. >> speaker john boehner said he will allow the debt ceiling vote only if spending cuts are more than the debt ceiling raised. do you agree with that? >> you had asked me to put a number on it earlier. i will not. i have a sense of what i think is significant and i will not get more specific than what i have told you. we need a 302-a, which is a top

line for 2012 and 2013 that continue to push discretionary spending down and we need significant entitlement reforms. i am not going to put any numbers onyx. -- on it. i am just telling you what it would take to get my vote. not the relevant will be the reaction of the markets to this. standard & poor's and others. they need to look at this and conclude this is not smoke and mirrors. this is not a promise to do something some day maybe. this is the real deal. these guys have come together,, understood that admiral mike mullen and boles were correct and they are doing something important and sustainable to get our house in order. that's what it would take to get my vote. the details of it, i am not going to share with you guys. i love you all, but i'm not

going to negotiate this deal with you. [laughter] i would encourage you to ask your question in a different way. >> it is often said legislation this summer form of compromise. if you insist on putting medicare on the table, why not include -- >> medicare is on the table. >> why not also consider comprehensive tax reform? >> you are still trying to get me to negotiate now and that's not what i'm going to do. we spend too much. i am confident taxes are not going to be a part of it. medicare is on the table. that has been demolished by the people who are participating in the talks -- that has been acknowledged. it's going to be a part of any final agreement.

>> senator, the patriot act, pushing that across the finish line, you sent it to the white house and they made a decision. are you concerned it will not pass equal muster with a judge and it could jeopardize cases? >> that's a better question addressed to them. they did the research and their lawyers apparently advised them this was permissible. i have not looked at the and the legality of it and therefore don't have an opinion. >> recess appointments, in your conversations with the white house, are you comfortable with this war no longer being on the table? >> our talks were about the issue of recess appointment this week and i was confident they would not do that this coming week.

we will not talk about particular individuals. >> if you do this together there will not be political fallout, you said. the last big thing that was done together was hard. you ended up facing ads against you for taking a lead role in that. how do you think in this environment today -- >> i was talking about entitlement reform. the 1983-1984 decision and election are pretty close analogy to what we are in the process of considering doing here. it was entitlement reform. it could have clearly been argued that it impacted benefits, because social security age went up under that

agreement over a period of time. no question, it impacted beneficiaries long-term, not short-term. i think that is a clear analogy, a clearer analogy to what we are involved with now as opposed to an immediate financial meltdown, which is what we were confronted with in 2008. >> the defense of marriage act [unintelligible] >> i support the defense of american act. i have not given any thought to the question you asked, so i think i will not respond. >> senator, i was wondering why you voted for a grand paul -- rand paul? much deeper cuts than all the

other budgets. >> i believe my kentucky colleague is extremely serious about reducing government spending. he is serious about it. he has my respect for continuing to press us to do more. he did a lot of work on the budget. i think it deserved my support. >> you have the version of the defense authorization bill coming your way. the white house talking about a possible veto threat over the authority over possible guantanamo bay detainee's and reducing nuclear weapons, where do you stand and what is the final bill going to look like? >> i have no idea. i have not looked at the details of the house-passed version, nor have we crafted one in the senate. i think i will not enter a

hypothetical like that with so many moving parts. >> the question about taxes, and you are willing to say medicare is on the table. are higher taxes on or off the table? >> as i have said repeatedly, we do not have a tax problem, we have a spending problem. everybody knows that. that is what i need to be talkingabout, how to get spendi. >> are taxes on or off the table? >> if there is tax reform, if any of those revenues are used not to reduce the rate but to go towards the reduction of the debt, would you object to that? >> i am really not going to negotiate the deal with you. but what i have said is, to get my vote -- i am not trying to

exaggerate my own importance here. i am not going to speak for anybody else. but to get my vote, we have to do significant entitlement reform. the president does not seem to want to do social security, even though it ran at $50 billion deficit this year. i am assuming we will not do that. we should, but i am assuming we will not. everybody has conceded, including the people at the table, including congressman hoyer. medicare is on the table. so all i am doing is stating the obvious and saying to get my vote, we would have to do sending long-term that would make sure that people on medicare still have a program. i mean, the president's own trustees of medicare and social security, which include two of his cabinet members at least, declared just last week -- this is the president's own cabinet,

just last week, that medicare is in trouble soon. so to suggest that it is not a part of the discussion -- when i say it is part of the discussion, i am stating the obvious. >> biden is saying that the revenues are on the table. >> he can speak for himself. i am talking about what it would take to get my vote. how many more? [laughter] not that i am not having fun. >> would you insist that there be spending cuts that go along with that? >> the house is found a way to pay for it. it is always desirable to pay for these programs if you can. thank you, everybody. >> thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> the republican senator who left the gang of six is our guest this weekend. the gang of six for the bipartisan group of senators working on tax issues. reporters asked senator tom coburn about why he left and his thoughts on debt reduction. that is sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern here on c- span. and we will be live again at 12:30 p.m. eastern as a member of the palestinian legislative council and the palestinian liberation organization's executive committee talks about issues in his region. we will have live coverage as he discusses the implications of the arab political unrest for palestinians and middle east peace negotiations. >> over the three-day memorial day weekend, commencement addresses from across the country. leaders from politics, business, and entertainment all offering their advice and insights to the graduate in class of 2011.

at 3:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. eastern, memorial day weekend on c-span. this weekend on american history tv on c-span3, washington post journalists on watergate and the fallout for president nixon. an associate professor from george mason university talks about the foreign policy of president reagan. we will visit fort myer, virginia to learn more about the army's oldest active infantry unit and its role in military and a presidential burials. get the complete schedule on line or have it e-mailed to you by pressing the c-span alert button. >> republican presidential candidate tim pawlenty says there could be no more sacred cows when it comes to reducing the federal deficit. he spoke wednesday at the cato institute in washington, d.c., and called for changes in social security, including raising the retirement age and ending cost- of-living adjustments for wealthier americans. this is about 40 minutes.

>> good afternoon. over the years, cato has had good relations with several prominent people from minnesota, including gene mccarthy, the former senator, who was a regular commentator on our daily radio show. and also tenpenny who worked with us on social security and the need -- also, tim penny, who work with us on social security and made it an ownership program. you could leave the assets to your loved ones. he still works on those things. so we're glad to have another

person from minnesota with us. the governor is here to speak about fiscal policy and specifically how we can get our federal spending, which is out of control, under control. following his comments, governor pawlenty has agreed to take a few questions from this audience dealing with the substance of his talk. for those who might have questions on other subjects, following the close of this program, the governor will hold a press availability outside of this building. we would therefore appreciate it if the media refrain from asking questions at this particular session. the cato institute, perhaps as much as any policy group in the nation, believes government spending is far too great at the federal, state, and local levels. we also believe that the true tax on the american people is

the resources extracted from the private sector and employed in the public sector, which is to say spending. which is why we are delighted to have governor pawlenty with us today. cato publishes the biennial governor's fiscal report card, and last year only four governors received a grade of "a." 7 got f's, and probably should have been more. but governor pawlenty was one of the ones who got the "a," and he got it in minnesota, with the legislature controlled by the dfl party that never saw a tax hike did not like. chris edwards, does our report card for us. if you read it, it describes a truly admirable fiscal record on 10 pawlenty's part, full of vetoes, balanced budgets, tax cuts, and spending cuts.

chris also edits our downsizing government web site. it is a department-by- department, agency-by-agency analysis of how we do the size of the federal government. one last comment about chris edwards, he is also the analyst to first brought to the nation's attention the pack -- the fact that the pay-in benefit packages that federal workers exceed that of their private-sector counterparts. calls to freeze federal pay made from that analysis. tim pawlenty has a law degree from the university of minnesota and was first elected governor of minnesota in 2002. subsequently having been reelected in 2006. more recently, he was vice chair of the republican governors association, playing an important role in the gop's remarkable pickup of 11 previously democratically-held governorships.

as i mentioned, is talk here about the need and a means for reducing the size of the federal government. please welcome the former governor of minnesota tim pawlenty. [applause] >> well, good afternoon. thank you for being here today. i want to thing ed and the cato institute for their important work and for their gracious hospitality in hosting these remarks today. i appreciated very much. the work of the cato institute has been at the forefront of the cause of trying to limit government and have it live within its means and to have a proper and a limited relationship with the people of this great country. i know the conservatives all across the country look to you and to the cato institute for really good research, a great ideas, and the work you do and continue to do is valued and appreciated. so thank you to the cato institute. i want to start off today by reflecting on sending that

conrad hilton said. use one of the great american business leaders. when i was younger, i remember hearing about an interview on one of the late night shows where he was asked towards the end of his career -- now if you had to look the american people in the eye and tell them some that you have learned that is a profoundly important lesson or something you give them as they take away, what would it be? he said, well, i guess what i would tell them is pleased that the shower curtain inside the tub. of all the things he could have commented on, he picked that one, and i think there's a message in that for us and for the topic here today. which is that we have to use common sense. we have to make sure that we do the basic things right in the ways we know have served this country so well for so long. and if we had the time to go around this room and talk to each person, you know, starting with kim and then going to hillary, and i think it is ted behind hillary, and ask each of

you to share with this group more broadly, please tell us your american story and what you value the mess, what brings you the most passion. tell us about what you have learned in terms of your life successes, your goals of your disappointments. i think you would hear inspiring stories about people's faith and their families. we certainly here inspiring stories about people having dreams and trying to build something or looking forward to a future where they are trying to do something new, different, or better. we hear is inspiring stories about the role the community and neighborhood has played in your life. i think we would hear inspiring stories about the role that charity or philanthropy place in your life. i think we would hear stories about people who have had some incredible successes and how they did it and what it meant to them in terms of hard work, risk-taking, and teamwork. a pig we would hear incredible stories about people who tried all of that -- i think we would hear in kernville stories about

people who tried all that and failed and stumbled but got back into the game. we would hear about some people filling life challenges. for some, that might come in the form of financial challenges. for others, health challenges. we would hear stories about neighbors, families, or loved ones pulling alongside in one of those chapters a challenge to the picking you up and giving you some love and encouragement, encourage you to keep going. and on down the list. but what i do not think we would hear very often, at least, is stories about how government came into your life and transform your life in some powerfully positive way, in some powerfully transformative way to the positive. and i share the story with you, because the american story, the story of the greatest and most successful nation in the history of the world, is not a story about the american government. it is largely a story about the american people. and those stores individually, and of course, collectively, add

up to the importance that we place on those values and have described to you. those values that made our people strong and our people good, which in turn means that our government has been strong and good. but it has to be limited. and as government, particularly in recent years and decades, has pushed into our lives in ways that the country has not experienced before and began to expand its footprint by crowding out other non-governmental footprints, for example, pushing into areas that are the responsibilities of parents are families, or areas that were previously the responsibility of charity or community, or pushing into areas that were previously the responsibility of contra prisoners are private markets. as government pushes into those areas, they not only grow their footprints, the not only grow their budgets and a run up the numbers, as we have painfully scene and i will describe in more detail in a moment, but something else occurs that i think it's equally problematic

for our country. the weight of all of that discourages the american spirit. and as i travel the country, there is a great sense around america that perhaps better days may not be in front of us but behind us, that the things we knew and appreciate and value in the form of those values and american common sense are slipping away. people yearn to have the restored. when government comes in and this is we're going to make it more difficult, we're going to make it had year, slower, more expensive, more discouraging, more uncertain, or no thank you, we will do these things, they really weighed down that american spirit. and we need to get that back. together, we need to get that back as a country where we become, again, a common sense can-do country that looks these challenges in the the id is about to describe and says, we can do it. we're going to look each other in the eye and be bold and to tell the truth.

we're going to identify the challenges clearly, but we're also going to have the courage to address them directly and honestly with each other as a team of these problems are so big and so large and so eminent that we do not have the luxury of time. the hour is a lot later than i think many americans realize in terms of the effects and consequences and fallout that is going to come if we do not get this fixed. we also cannot just shove the problem on that the people or the solution on people who are more poor than the us or richer than us. it will take all of us, and the solutions will have to knowledge that reality. that is the backdrop of wanted to share quickly with you. my american story, i grew up in minnesota. it was a meat packing town. a very large meatpacking plant surrounded by some of the world's largest stockyards. my family was a typical hard working blue-collar family. my father, for much of his life, was a truck driver. later on in his life, he got promoted to a dispatcher and

ultimately terminal manager, which we're very proud of that he was able to move up in that regard in his career. but my mother died when i was 16 of ovarian cancer. and my dad, not too much -- after that, for a while, lost his job. he was later able to get other work. but for a while, it was very uncertain. my mother had passed on. my father was unemployed. the community of the meat packing town began to unravel and of the plants began to shut down the a lot of people were facing unemployment and economic insecurity. so i saw the faces of unemployment and uncertainty as a young person. after my mom died, was the only one in my family that was able to go to college. my brothers and sisters did not lack in the capacity, but they lacked in the opportunity. so in the stood things early on, the importance of education as a ticket forward. the importance of doing hard work and doing my individual responsibility. the importance of my faith and

challenging times. the importance of a loving family and others rallied around the times of challenge and giving the pat on the back and encouragement to move forward. people want to know, where does this perspective that you have come from? it does not come from, for me, this perspective of just reading books or white papers or the like, it comes from the stuff of life. you have all had that in your own version of the american story. but now it is what we are facing and what we need to do. we need to make sure that we're very clear about telling the truth about what we're up to. our federal government is sinking. our economy is sputtering. half way forward for most americans in terms of their opportunity and jobs. one to focus on that. i also want to focus on what it will take to get the federal government better under control, including the benefits and salaries of the people working the federal bureaucracy. our federal government takes in about $2.2 trillion a year.

in terms of total federal outlays, they put out about $3.70 trillion in a spending bill think about that. $2.2 roughly in the door. $3.70 trillion roughly out the door. over spending about $1.50 trillion this year. roughly 40 cents of every dollar the federal government spends is a deficit dollars. you cannot run your families like that. you cannot run your businesses like that. we certainly cannot run the government like that. we cannot do that anymore. there cannot be any more sacred cows. so in iowa, we have to look to the good people in iowa and the folks involved in agriculture and the ethanol industry and say, because of this crushing debt and deficits load, i am sorry, but we're going to phase out the ethanol subsidies that the government is providing. we're going to have visited the scene years in florida and all over america, more specific -- we're going to have to say to the seniors in florida and all over america that we're going ty

program but in a way that does not affect the benefits of current retirees. we're going to have to say, you know what, it is time, if you're new to the work force, we're going to gradually raise the retirement age over time. we have to. it will not affect anybody currently on the program or near it, but it will have to raise the retirement age gradually over time. i do not like means testing philosophically, but we're at the point where we're choosing between suboptimal choices. one of the choices we will have to say we're going to means test the cost of living adjustment in social security. so if you're wealthy, you'll not get a cost-of-living adjustment. but if you're lower income, you will. they're similar solutions for medicaid and medicare. we also begun to our other so- called sacred cows. one example is wall street and the financial-services industry and the larger industries all across this country. and to the extent that they're getting subsidies, directly or indirectly. those have to be shut off as well as part of a larger reform.

we have to look to wall street and say, look, the car out, the bailouts, the subsidies, the handouts for you are over as well. the list goes on and on. the bottom line is, there can be no more ducking, bobbing, and weaving about the real problem, the magnitude of it, and what is going to take to fix it. as it relates to federal spending more broadly, there's one part i want to camp on today, and that is how we deal with federal employees, and of course, big government and big unions have coalesced in ways that are not good for the country and not good for the taxpayers. the people who work in government, in most cases, are hard working good people. them,not neemean to bash but the system they work for is out of control and needs to be restrained. people used to be drawn to public employment. you often it would hear people say, i am a public employee. you know, i do not get paid as much as the private sector, but

they have really good benefits. it was kind of a trade-off. people were drawn to public service with that stated kind of swap in mind. but if you fast forward to today, what we unquestionably know is that in many cases, public employees about overpaid and over-benefit it compared to, in many cases, to their private- sector counterparts. that is not fair. we cannot have the people who are getting paid by the taxpayer is getting a better deal than the taxpayers themselves. and of these things have to be reconciled. in minnesota, we did a number of things. the topic is lessons learned along the way. but we need to the basic things first. that is, no better deal for the people getting the benefits and of the pay than the people who are paying the bill. first thing we have to do is continue to freeze the salaries of federal employees, and in my view, public employees more broadly until they're the same or no greater than the private sector employees. in other words, there is a

temporary freeze, and i froze salaries and i was governor of minnesota as well, but unless and until the differential to the public employees is brought down or the private sector meets up with that, we have to continue to freeze public employees' salaries. there's no question about that. and we cannot just measure this in the value of the salary only. there is a current federal system and similar systems that the state level where people make comparisons. they say, look, if you just look at the salary or the cost of living adjustments, they will let the argument that public employees really are not overpaid compared to private sector counterparts. but keep in mind a number of things. we have to look at the total package, but salary and benefits added together. you cannot just look at the annual cost-of-living adjustment. we have to look at these so- called longevity of security stuff the public employees get as they advance in the seniority of their career. more importantly, we have to look at their benefits. most public employees have what

is called a defined benefit pension program. most people in the private sector do not have that anymore, particularly new employees entering into the workforce. in many cases, public employees and not only have a defined benefit plan, which guarantees a result without regard to the stock market is in doing, but in many cases, they also have the defined contribution program, which we have our most people in the private sector have, and they also get a match. so they get both. the point of all that is that we are going to get to transition the public employee work force from a defined benefit contribution plan to what most of the private sector gets, which is a defined contribution plan instead of a defined benefit plan. those things have to be synchronized, changed, and a reformed. how to do that -- in minnesota, to one of the longest transit strikes in the history of the contributor the bus drivers in my state wanted to work just 15

years -- in fact, they had this benefit. the new wanted to be about to retire and be eligible for the government to pay for their health insurance for the rest of their life. it was a major unfunded liability. it was financially upside down. when their contract came up for renewal, as did we cannot do that anymore. it is bankrupting the transit system. and they said, yes we are, and if we do not, we will shut down in you'll have gridlock. you'll be begging us for the deal. so they went on strike. i went around the state and said, if you're not in government, please raise your hand if you get to work just 15 years and then retire and be eligible for somebody else to pay your health insurance for the rest of your life, and no hands ever went up. and i said, do you know that the bus drivers get that? they do? tubing we should do something about that? heck yeah. by the end of the kind of interaction, the public than knowing that there were getting the same kind of deal and were

paying the bill for, more than happy to change. and that bus system was shut down for 44 days. in the end, the bus drivers came back and were shut out that benefit for new hires and the finances of the system began to correct themselves. i share that story as one case study of how you have to do these things. these are powerful interests. they're deeply ingrained. the incredibly hang on to the status quo with the white knuckle grip. we're going to have to have an equal amount of fortitude and vigor to draw lines in the sand to get change. we also did pension reform in minnesota before it was popular. back in the 2010, i signed a bill that reduced the increases in public employee pensions over time to get them back towards actuarial soundness. that means they had to contribute more as employees. it means if they were not in good financial shape, the projected increases in benefits would be decreasing over time or

be held flat, in some cases down to 0% increases. now we have them on a better path toward solvency. that was done with the unions, by the way, a cooperative change. they did not want defined contribution, so there were willing to take her get on continuing defined benefit. we made this as an interim step to get it on a better path. but now we have bent sued by retirees. it is in court. next, we will have to shrink the federal work force. it has been growing dramatically over many decades, and we now have about 40% of the federal work force scheduled for retirement in the not too distant future. through attrition, we can have a goal of replacing only one of those workers for each two that retire. in government, as you know, there is a lot of work to do in terms of getting on the front end of technology and efficiency and improving these systems in a way that involve demands for

fewer employees but still provide the service and robust ways. i get criticized in minnesota by asme. the gentleman who leads it says i reduce the state workforce by about 11% during a time as governor. he also went on to say that we have one of the leanest work forces in the country. i forget the ratio. i think he said we were the seventh leanest by the measure. he was using that as a criticism of me in a recent interview on television, but i take that as a compliment. is what we need to do in government more broadly. government cannot be the only growth industry in this country. we also have to move all of these systems to performance and incentive-based systems. i say, look, if you have time to come to the cato institute or aei or other think tanks and attend seminars, that is terrific. it is very important information. but all you really need to know about much of government reform is to go to two weddings.

go to one wedding or there is a cash bar. the go to another wedding where there is an open bar. you'll see two very different sets of behavior is. if people have the impression that things are free and begin to consume a in leslie and the provider -- they get to consume it as much as they want and the lie is created that the bill goes summer else and then a third party pays for it, that is a system that is doomed to inefficiency or doomed to failure. that is much of our government, unfortunately. as we talk about education, health care, and much else, we have to reformate with those principles in mind. then me give you two quick examples. i was governor and we put forward one of the first performance-pay systems that were offered statewide for teachers. the teacher unions did not like it. we had to go into special session. i think it was part of a government shut-down, the first in a 150-year history in my

state, but we got it done. so it -- so for the first time in my state's history, we're changing a culture that rewarded security, and many allied mostly to how many years of public employee had been a round, with the correlation to that end of the core mission of schools to student learning is almost zero. so it began to turn the aircraft carrier, that culture, something that is more aligned to performance of the things that are more closely aligned to student learning like teacher development, teacher training on a robust way. and health care is another example. this is profoundly important to the weather does school districts, the state, the federal government, the department of defense, the number one leader in terms of the things growing the fastest in government budgets, and the same is true for families and businesses, is health care abou. we had a debate led by president obama that did not fix the problem. we have a president who said he was going to focus on cost

containment, which is the concern, one of the main concerns for most americans when they think about their healthcare affordability and costs. president obama, in my view, has led to a conclusion that i think is unconstitutional. but beyond that, it will expand access to a system, but he did not fix the system in terms of cost-containment. in fact, it will make it worse. as we work with state employee unions, they said health care costs are going very high for them. they work for us, paying a big part of the premium, and we got to a new system. you can go wherever you like, pick your own health plan and provider, but if you choose to go somewhere that is more expensive, increasingly, we are able to measure whether it is any good in terms of quality, but if you go somewhere that is more expensive and less in quality, you will pay more. if you go somewhere that is higher in quality and more efficient, you will pay less.

80% of state employees migrated to higher quality or equal quality providers, but they are more efficient. the premiums in that program over seven or eight years of my time as governor, were dramatically below market. in a couple of the years, there were 0% increases. why? even in a rudimentary, primitive way, now, people had some scanned in the game about where they were going, what they were consuming, what they were choosing, and it had a dramatic effect because the myth about everything being free was at least partially realigned into people now having to become more informed and more responsible consumers. that model in describing applies across much of government and points the way forward for reform in many of these programs. i will leave the rest of the time for questions and answers, but i will thank you for being here today. i also want to remind everybody that the way forward may not be easy, but it is not complex. we know that this country has

had the most successful, most prosperous track record of any country in the history of the world, and we can look back and see what worked and why. all we need to do is bring those experiences and principles and values to the debate and discussion of our time and apply them to the challenges of our time. will it be easy? no, but it never has been. valley forge was not easy. settling the west was not easy. winning world war ii was not easy. going to the moon was not easy. we are not talking about what is easy. we're talking about what needs to be done and being bold and candid and courageous about getting the problem fixed, and i am in that spirit offering these observations to you today and i welcome your questions. thank you very much. [applause]

>> ok, yes. just shut them out, and i will repeat them. >> i think your response to the -- i would like to get your comments to a response i have heard over the last few months. one came on an nfl broadcasts. joe biden made the broadcast that the game is going to be carried on the armed forces network. i know there is a lot of embassies out there, but 175 countries -- that just blows my mind. the second, it was i heard someone talking about exit strategies. he was talking about europe, japan, and korea, and all those wars ended, i think, years ago, so why do we, with our current deficit challenges -- why do we need to have all these troops in places where i did not think -- the problems were solved, hopefully, decades ago.

>> i think everybody heard the question, so i will not repeat them. this relates to the commitments of united states of america, particularly militarily here and around world. for a governor, i have an unusual amount of international experience. i have been able to travel the world for various reasons, but including five trips to iraq, three trips to afghanistan. i have been all over the middle east meeting with leaders, visiting troupes, doing a variety of other things. i have been to bosnia, coastal, to visit our troops there. led trade missions to south america and india and china and other places. i have had a chance to see the men and women in our military operate in war zones, aubrey as peacekeepers, doing various other functions. i'm not going to stand before you and tell you we should cut the defense budget. we're going to have an opportunity to responsibly and appropriately, based on conditions on the ground, drawdown our presence in iraq and afghanistan in the not too

distant future, and that will help, but your question is broader than that. you raise the question of asia as an example. if you go to asia and see what is at play there in terms of china's influence economically, militarily, strategically, one of the questions that our friends and allies have in the region is this -- "are you going to be here? because of you are not, we have to make other arrangements. we have to start hedging our bets." we have the same question in other parts of the world. you might ask why we want to be in south korea. we have some pretty profound commitment historically because of the korean war, but also, we have a failed state or nearly failed state in north korea with nuclear weapons. we need to make sure that we have a presence as the united states of america in areas that could affect our national security interests and the security interests of our friends and allies, but if you did what i think your question is implying, which is smelly and

dramatically pulled through, take basis down part of asia, then i think you would see a massive realignment of strategic relationships towards china and away from america and asia. i think that would be very unwise. that is not to say that defense cannot be more efficient, that facilities cannot be prioritized, and some of them shut down or reduce. that is not to say that certain weapons systems cannot be scaled back or reduced. that is not to say there are not savings and efficiencies that cannot be found within the department of defense, but if you believe what i believe about our nation's security, which is it is the first and most important obligation of the federal government, and we are going to his party-based budgeting, but the most important thing on top, in my book, that goes right to the top of the list. this is not where we're going to six months or six years warning about the next conflict. this stuff can now have nine minutes. we do not have 50 or 20 years to say, "i wish we would have

developed the system. i wish we had more capacity on the ground to develop the intelligence or the infrastructure, the ability to see this coming." i understand the spirit of your question and i respect it, and i know there are inefficiencies in the defense department, and we should identify them, but the mouth, and redeploy those resources, but not going to stand here or anywhere else and tell you we should cut the defense budget. we can make it more efficient, but i am not for shrinking america's presence in the world. i am for making sure america remains the world leader, not becoming second, third, or fourth in a list. yes. >> when you speak about trimming the federal work force, would you consider eliminating any federal agencies if you were president? >> i would.

we're going to the press questions afterwards, so we will come back to you. >> thank you, governor. i'm interested in your thoughts about paul ryan's plans for reforming medicare, particularly in light of the outcome in the new york special election yesterday, which is seen by some as a referendum on paul's proposal. >> i think everybody heard the question. the leadership and courage of congressman ryan in putting that forward should be noted. before he did that, the president of the united states i think have proposed a $400 billion reduction over 10 years. if you average that out, it would have been $40 billion over 10 years at a time when we have trillion-dollar deficits every year. the president was missing.

he did not lead. he did not put anything on the table of specificity pour any number of reasons, but in my view, he did not have the courage to do what it takes to lead the nation on one of the most pressing and important issues facing the united states of america, and that is how to tackle the debt and deficit. so here comes congressman ryan, the bright, courageous congressman from wisconsin, and he puts a plan on the table. it sparked debate, and after that, the president comes forward, so now, you have the president began lagging behind members of congress in the leadership category, particularly when it comes to these issues. as for congressman ryan's plan overall, in general, the direction is positive. but i am going to have my own plan, so we will have some differences. he chose not to address social security, perhaps for understandable reasons. we will, and we are. our medical -- medicare plan, which we will have out in the

not too distant future, will have some differences. we will be speaking about payment reform and paying providers, not just for volume but quality and results. as part of their compensation, we will offer a variety of choices for people with a can choose to stay in the current program or select from other options. we will talk about incentivizing consumers, so they can make any number of choices that they like. it will be incentivized to make wise and good choices as it relates to quality care outcomes and costs, but it will be different than congressman ryan's proposal. let's go to the back of the room. i think some hands are up. anybody in the back? way in the back, go ahead. >> thank you. would you mind commenting -- two questions, very simple. you mentioned ethanol and you mentioned in the same sentence social security and the

extension of the working age. do you think these two things are the same or equal in importance and relevance to entitlements or to a functional constitutional democracy that has existed for much longer than most stable third-world governments? the second question is -- has your experience as governor exposed you to a history of budget making in your state that has planned for inflation? and if that plan for inflation is not in place, would you as a business person or as a governor take the responsibility to say that you need to plan for inflation, and is not the fault of the employee?

that conversation, has he been -- have you been exposed to as much as you need to in your budget plan, in your budget making to be able to say that it is the fault of the government or the fault of the budget team who have not planned for inflation? >> thank you. there were a number of comments and questions contained in it. the first one, as it relates to my call to phase out ethanol subsidies and the changes i mentioned to social security, which is to say for people entering the work force or new people coming in, we are going to raise the retirement age gradually over time. i did not mean to suggest those are of the same magnitude in terms of dollars. their adjustment to be examples of things that historical people have said you cannot talk about that in iowa. you cannot talk about ethanol subsidies for social security reform or go to wall street and talk about what is going to take to clean up the mess there. that is where we will be in a couple of days. i do not mean to suggest those are the same in magnitude or

nature, but they are meant to reflect examples of the kind of spirit we are going to have, which is to speak truth to what the real problem is and not have any sacred cows. those are some examples. as to your second question about budgeting and my experience, i was governor of the state of minnesota for eight years. we balanced budget every two years in my state without question. we have a constitutional requirement, as almost every other state does. it has to be balanced and always will be. the last budget that i finished ends this summer in about two months, and it is going to end in the black. as with most states, there is a projected deficit in the future, but it is based on a big increase in projected spending that i would have never allowed. that is something that i think would not have happened if i had continued as governor. beyond that, in terms of building in inflation or any other automatic increases in

spending, i do not buy that. we purposely shut that feature off in the minnesota budgeting process. i did not think you budget by assuming automatic increases in spending and open of revenues come in to pay for it. the better way to budget, and i propose this in minnesota, although the democratic legislature would not take this approach, is to limit what you can project for spending based on the revenues that you brought in during the current budgeting cycle. in other words, you could not budget for the future more than the actual revenues that you bring in the door for the current budget. that would lead to a much more measured and conservative budget, and it would end this practice, which you see in minnesota and many other states and the federal government, to some extent as well, which is we are just going to assume that things are going to -- things are on autopilot and going to grow, in many cases not just by the rates of inflation, but multiple rates of inflation. we have healthy human service

programs, health care programs, other programs going 10, 15, 25%, and it was baked into the budget forecast that they were going to go off automatically end of revenues did not come in to support it, you had a budget deficit. i think that is crazy. i think you should assume your revenues will be no greater than what you are bringing in the door and you have to live with that, including automatic increases for inflation. i do not like government on autopilot. i do not like automatic decision making. i think we should force the congress and the state legislature to appropriate each year or every two years what amount of money they have coming in the door and only spend that amount of money. >> one last question for the governor before we have to break for a press conference. >> the gentleman in a purple tie there because it is a vikings color. >> i am a vikings fan. i have been a constituent for eight years. i like what you're saying about limited government, especially with health care.

my question to you is how do you justify, limiting health care when the medical marijuana project -- you be to the bill which would have cut government out of doctor/patient relationships and kept terminally ill people out of jail. >> almost unanimously, the share of and law enforcement community in minnesota were opposed to legalizing marijuana in minnesota, and i opposed it as well. i think i vetoed at least one of the bills. we just have a respect for difference of opinion on the issue. is not something i support. it is because effort to -- i defer to the judgment, wisdom, and experience of law enforcement on the issue. thank you very much for coming. i appreciate it. [applause] >> thank you for visiting the cato institute. thank you all for coming.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> the c-span video library makes it easy to follow campaign 2012. click on the tab and get instant access to events from announced and potential presidential candidates, all searchable, cheryl, and free. the peabody award winning c-span video library -- it is washington your way. and about 15 minutes from now at 12:30 eastern, a member of the palestinian legislative council will talk about the issues facing her region. we will have live coverage discussing the implications of the arab political unrest for palestinians. >> over the three-day memorial day weekend, commencement addresses from across the country. leaders from politics, business, and entertainment offering their advice and insights to the graduating class

of 2011. at 3:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. eastern, memorial day weekend on c-span. there are three days there"boo -- three days of "booktv" programming. hosted by the national journal's major garrett. new releases with jim lehrer and anne rice, roger ebert, and eric larsen. plus, activist and filmmaker michael more on his upcoming memoir. find the complete schedule at booktv.org. cortex the wordbook to 9970 to. standard messaging with supply. >> elizabeth warren before a house oversight committee this week and was accused of lying to

congress about her role in helping state officials negotiate a settlement with mortgage providers. you can see the entire hearing this weekend, but here is part of it until our live coverage. >> [inaudible] >> originally, this hearing was it 2:00. are you not able to stay for this? >> when asked to change the time four times in the last four hours, including waking people up at home last night -- >> let me be on the record with you. i never made a single phone call about this. be very clear about what you're saying. we have two additional members and eight minutes remaining for the vote. if you will not stay around for the questions, then we are going to stay around and finish this out. i never heard back you had to

leave at 2:15. >> congressman, you might want to have a conversation with your staff. when they asked us to move the hearing, we said the only way we could do this is if i could leave here at 2:15 for a meeting that would be at -- >> all right, then we are going for questions now. you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you. i want to say for the record that i apologize to the witness, dr. warren, for the rude and disrespectful behavior of the chair. the snarky comments about a senate race and the question of your veracity when there was documented evidence that you would be truthful, that this hearing is about impugning you because people are afraid of you and your ability to communicate in very clear terms the threats to our consumers, the threats to our constituents, and possibly very effective ways to combat

them. i think in one respect i congratulate you for installing such fear in the committee, the majority side, and it some segments of the business community, because they understand how effective you are in getting the message out to the american people, that there are better ways to do things. that being said, one of the major questions being asked here is whether there is a need for your agency or the agency that you conceived in light of the fact that there are seven related agencies, all of whom have some authority in the area. these seven agencies have been around for some time. during the time all seven agencies have been around, have financial product gotten easier to understand? has the tight gotten bigger? have they shrunk? or have they gotten much more incomprehensible? >> congressman, during the time these agencies have been around,

i believe financial products have become more complicated and much more heavily laden with fine print that effectively make it impossible for consumers to compare risks and costs. >> with respect to the question asked regarding compared of salaries, would you be able to speculate on what the average salary is of the people who are writing financial agreements, mortgages, and credit card agreements for the major corporations, compared to what the consumer financial protection bureau would be paying? >> congressman, i could not begin to speculate on the difference between the salaries of the government officials who would be hired into the new consumer agency to try to oversee this market and the salaries of those who are writing the financial products, particularly for the wall street companies. i suspect, though, sir, there is

a large differential. >> i suspect you are right. i will yield back the balance of my time in the second so we can get out of here. i just want to say that the question of accountability -- >> i will say this. the german with to vote. he will come back to ask his question. mr. walsh went to vote. he will be back to ask his question. we will give you 20 additional seconds for my interruption. >> that is quite all right. the title of the hearing involved accountability of your agency. i want to spend a few seconds telling about what accountability there has been in terms of credit card companies, mortgage writers, and so forth, over the last decade or so. it seems to me that that is where the real accountability issue has been, that the consumers have no way to hold those companies accountable for the products that they offer. >> we have seen very little accountability among the largest financial services providers and among the largely unregulated financial services

providers, both before the crash of 2008 and after the crash of 2008. i just want to point out -- that has been really hard on american families. has been hard on them directly with they have gotten their feet tangled in credit-card agreements and paid a loans that were deceptive. has been hard on them when they thought they were doing sensible things on mortgages only to learn that they were going to lose their homes. it has also been hard on others in the economy -- people who did nothing to get involved in financial-services but lost their jobs. people who see the companies, the small businesses they are working for, their markets have dried up. it has also been hard on community banks, on credit unions who work so hard day in and day out to work with their customers to be the relationship lenders, to be there over the long haul, and who are getting crushed in a financial turnaround that was not their fault. the problems have gone everywhere. the problem of lack of

accountability is one that is squarely on the industry. this consumer agency is going to do its best to help turn that around. >> i congratulate you on your work. i yelled back. >> my understanding is your staff made an agreement with professor warning -- professor warren that she would be available to the committee for one hour, and if she accommodated your late breaking request made by your staff at 9:00 p.m. last night that she appeared at an earlier time than previously scheduled, it would allow her to leave 1 hour after that, at 2:15 p.m., in keeping with the agreement. it is 2:15 now. she kept her side of the bargain. it is time for you to keep yours. i respect -- out of respect for what he showed to accommodate your request, you should dismiss the witness and get on with the remainder of the hearing. in fairness. we were here. >> i certainly appreciate it.

in reaction to you as ranking member, the original agreement was that we would have a 2:00 p.m. hearing in order to accommodate those which were expected to be here 1:30. knowing that the professor is very busy, we did not want to keep witnesses here while we recess to go vote. so we changed the time in anticipation of the vote we are about to have. rather than dabble in and have opening statements and go to vote and come back 30 minutes later and have an hour of questions, rather than do that, we have tried to work with the witness. in the changing of e-mails, your government affairs staffer talked to mr. haller on the committee staff, and he asked for confirmation on this. he called you up, the government relations head, did not respond to your e-mail, called up and said he would do his best to get you out of here, but we need to accommodate people's questions.

that is where we are today. i understand and i certainly appreciate -- >> i just want to make -- you sound like you have already decided, but one real quick things, they bend over backwards to move things around, agreed to 1:15, 2:15. she needed to get out of here by 2:15. peter mccaffrey and his staff knew this. i just wanted to make it clear -- i know you are going to do what you have got to do, but out of respect for ms. warren, she has her own limitations. she is going to protect our constituents, yours and mine. >> i will respond to the ranking member that the date of this hearing was chosen by ms. warren. we worked with her and her staff diligently and gave them a number of options. they came back with different options. we accommodated those options in

context for a hearing room. we were here before and and a picture, and we accommodated her schedule. that is why it is on this date. furthermore, i am skipping this vote, as are you, to have this debate, rather than simply allow for a few additional minutes. >> i am going to get my vote in. the only thing i am saying is that at the rate we're going, it looks like she will be here until about 20 of, at least. >> i anticipate that the two members will have five minutes apiece, and as the gentleman knows, i kept folks to the five- minute time frame today. i am not trying to cause you problems, ms. warren, but we are trying to accommodate folks. if you wanted to stick around, we're going to have two more members with questions. >> congressman, you are causing

problems. we had an agreement for a later hearing. your staff asked us to move around. we had to change everything on my schedule to try to accommodate -- >> i certainly appreciate that. >> i was told i would be out of here 2:15 because there are other things now scheduled to o'clock 30. >> that was a request, but we moved the hearing so you could get the questions in. >> congressman, you told us one thing -- >> i did not tell you anything. >> we have no one here to ask questions, mr. chairman. >> i have other obligations i committed to based on representations of your staff and our effort to try to accommodate you and rearrange our schedule to accommodate you. >> it was a simple request. your staff had a request. my staff were trying to accommodate you. we are going to get you out of here in 10 minutes. >> we had an agreement. >> you have no agreement. >> we had an agreement for the

time of the hearing -- >> you are making that up. this is not the case. >> mr. chairman, you just did something that i -- i am trying to be cordial here, but you just accused the lady of lying. >> she accused me of making an agreement that i never -- >> i think you need to clear this up with your staff. they have moved this around 50 million tons, and she has to go to another hearing. >> not to another hearing. another meeting. congressman, i would be glad to answer questions for the record. we can do that if you will just as questions for the record, we are glad to answer them, and it will be a matter of the public record. >> i certainly appreciate that. i am trying to accommodate you. i just want to be very clear and make sure this is on the record. there was no agreement about departure time. i just want to make sure as a ranking member i did not make

those representations. i confirmed with my staff before this started the reason why we move the times is so she would not have to wait during a vote in the middle of the hearing. with that, i understand your frustration. but i just ask you to see my side of this thing as well. we thought we had you for more time. i thought i had you for more time. if the gentleman will simmer, i would just -- >> i am cool. i just want to make sure she is treated fairly. >> i understand. we have had more debate than the questions remaining. with that, ms. warren, i appreciate your service to our government. i do. i was just trying to get on the record a few of these things that would seem counter to my questions of you back in march of this year. it is informative, instructive for this committee on the contract of this enormous bureau that you are constructing. so that is why congress wants to

have this oversight. i thank you for your testimony. i will dismiss you now and ask the two members that are not being given an opportunity to ask questions to submit for the record, and i will ask you to turn around as questions as quickly as you possibly could. >> thank you, congressman. >> mr. chairman, thank you very much. >> you can see all of that hearing with elizabeth warren, the new consumer protection bureau head, here on c-span. now, we are live at the carnegie endowment for international peace here in washington. hanan ashrawi will discuss the effect of the political unrest in the arab world. she is also a member of the executive committee of the palestinian liberation organization and the former spokesperson for the palestinian delegation to the middle east peace process. this event is being moderated by

carnegie's vice president for studies, who served as jordan's foreign minister and deputy prime minister. we are waiting for our live coverage to start. we will have that shortly for you here on c-span. >> good afternoon, and welcome to another event that we have at carnegie. it is a particular pleasure of mind to welcome to carnegie dr. hanan ashrawi, who is not only

known to you and the rest of the world but also someone i can claim as a close friend. hanan needs no introduction. she's the founder and executive chair of the dial-up for democracy. she is more things than i can even start to count, but one particular trait that i like about her is that she is someone who has always was interested not just in peace, but also in democracy and reform an institution building, and someone who has devoted all her life for these noble goals.

so it is a particular pleasure of mine to introduce hanan. she will talk about the arab spring, and then we can fully engage in a conversation about this and other issues that i'm sure you are concerned with. welcome to carnegie. [applause] >> i thought the topic was palestine in the context of the arab spring. i forgot. the elephant and the palestine question. you are not going to avoid palestine. it is certainly a pleasure to be here and to be with you and particularly to be with manuel. if by now you have not read his book, those of you who haven't

should read it because you would have curbed -- would have been prepared for the arabs bring -- arab spring. what was wrong with the moderations of political agenda on peace, but they certainly did not about a reform agenda on human rights and democracy. it seems to me that book certainly forecast what is wrong with the arab world. it would have been a very good introduction for what is happening. also, those of you who have not read his national reform plan in jordan, the first time i saw that, i thought it was something that could be the basis for national reform plans all over the arab world. again, you are a pioneer, and you have a sense of foresight that should have been listened to very carefully.

i thank you for being a good friend and for being a person with such as duke inside and foresight. thank you. again, those of you who have read the human development reports should not have been surprised by the rise of the u.s., by the young generation, people feeling disenfranchised -- by the rise of the youths, by the young generation, people feeling disenfranchised. we knew the with the demographic changes, there certainly would be serious upheavals before long in the arab world. all these things were in the making as, unfortunately, most people were taken by surprise, even though certain occurrence were beneath the surface and movements brewing with a certain inevitability. however, again, people were

surprised. we are used to talking about the arab world as a polarized world and the systems as polarized in the sense that you have a national regime seemed as corrupt or a net. the only other alternative being [inaudible] and the people who get trapped in the middle are democratic forces. this certainly is true. we had hoped in palestine that we would avoid this, but ultimately, it also reflected on palestine. we can talk about that later. again, client machines that relied on external recognition also were losing credibility and standing, and they were seen by their own people as being despotic, autocratic, but

certainly, another aspect which has been a board was the fact that they seemed to be helpless before israeli violations and before the ongoing injustice done to the palestinians. they seemed to be incapable of standing up to other arab cultures, and they were seen as doing the bidding and other external forces. many of these were seen as using the security excuse, that we have an external enemy in order to avoid any kind of reform to give a democracy and human rights and accountability and, of course, to persist with a system of abuse of powers and corruption and misallocation of funds. all these within the arab context contributed to the deepening rift in palestine. the competition and politicization reflects

themselves with and palestine, particularly in the 1990's after the rise of hamas. the rift was used and abused, actually, for personal or national self-interest by different countries. when we talk about the arabs spring, of course, we know, it is not monolithic. this is a gross term, and we know each country has different conditions. and there is a great deal of diversity within the arab world. and also, a major feature is that we are in the midst of a period of flux, of change, of transition. in many cases, the outcome is not specific, but what is certain is we are seeing a see change, a definite break with the past and a definite -- in many countries, breaking of the

barrier of fear, which is very important in the context of the arab peoples or the arab masses. many people look at it as reform and change, a cry for dignity, for freedom, for economic reform, for empowerment, for participatory democracy, but still, as we said, a great deal of arab dignity, a great deal of the national air of dignity has been affected -- the national arab dignity has been affected by the continued in dignity of occupation. palestine has never been exempt from the contemporary discourse. it remains below and motivated. even though many people say that the regime's exploited palestine for their own sake, but yet, the people have a very visceral

relationship to palestine, much more so than people thought. they have other regimes accountable for being able to do anything about it. we had several meetings with some youth groups with jordan, lebanon, egypt, tunis, several places, and it was amazing how the young were really committed to the cause of palestine. they said putting our own house in order is a way of liberating palestine. this is something that people like netanyahu and israel tried not only to ignore, but to affect by saying that the arabs spring has nothing to do with palestine. those who know better know that the state of palestine in the heart of the arab world has had a lot to do with the disaffection and the anchor brewing in the arab world. now, the sense of reform and a power meant will reflect on

palestine. again, any emerging representative democratic government will respond to people's power issues, of course. both internally as well as on the national level palestinian case. the same principles apply to all, which bodes well for energizing future arab engagement and and that divine the previous perceived ordeal in previous months, which meant that they are standing up to their modernization. this awakening resonated with in palestine and among the palestinian people as a whole. in many ways, it was seen as reminiscent of the first [inaudible] where you saw the public spirit or solidarity in spontaneous uprising, a sense of self-

respect, dignity, standing up, and armed protest movements, men, women, children facing heavily armed israeli soldiers. this is the kind of integrating energy -- invigorating energy the palestinians went through in the late 1980's and early 1990's, and they saw the error of thing as something -- the arab thing as something reminiscent of that type of movement. of course, all the means of communication, networking, trading information, providing mobilization, have come to be used not just by the arab youth but by palestine. palestinians have always relied on the internet because we are

divided, separated. cyberspace has always been very expansive. the arabs bring provided motivation but also in a sense, common means of mobilization -- the arab spring. identification and solidarity, it triggers further action. the thing is palestine is unique because we are still under occupation. that is the thing. people are asking when we are going to rise, but against whom? the movement for reform in palestine has -- is a very active movement, and the movement for change is still a very active movement. our society has always been among the most intrusive and critical among sit -- civil societies. people looking for the right objective, the right slogans,

some young people talked about focus on the need to end the division, ending the rift. this became a slogan, a rallying cry. as a means of ending the occupation. under occupation, you have the internal and domestic needs, putting one house in order and so on, also democratizing, but you also have the need to stand up to the occupation, and they saw the rift and the division as one way in which the palestinians were weakened and could not face the occupation the way they should have. among the first visible effects of a result of error of reform is the conciliation and unity within palestine. for many reasons -- previously, as i said, the arabic contributed to the explosion of the arabic. now, the arab spring is contributing to the healing of this rift here first, because of

the pressure of public opinion and the youth and so on, two, because of the energize role of egypt, and 3, of course, because of the city in crisis and what that is doing to hamas and one aspect. there is recognition, of course, that -- and we can talk about this later -- that neither agenda really delivered. neither the agenda of armed resistance could deliver, nor the agenda of total commitment to negotiations could deliver. so there was this defection with both. the arabs spring also enhanced the massive popular nonviolent action and resistance. this gave people the sense that this kind of approach would produce results where other

results did not. the most visible is the example of the may 15 marches, not just within palestine but outside palestine. may 15 proved that there is an additional aspect, which is the popular unity of the palestinian people, even in exile. the one aspect was people always look at the palestinians under occupation. may 15 mobilized everybody. even with palestinians within israel. there was a sense of connectivity, cohesion that anywhere we are, we can present the same message. this is something new, and, of course, the fact that some

people tried to stop it or some people tried to exploit it, but this is important. i think you will see a growing movement there. again, another outcome of the awakening is the redefining of arab nationalism. i think we need hours to discuss this, but i think this is important to at least allude to so we can explore this further. in a sense, this is a new bottom-up, grass-roots movement positioned on the basis of shared values, probably global in nature, but also claimed by the -- within the arab world as part of their own people's rights. particularly in discussing issues like this but toward democracy, freedom, a system of

governance, accountability and transparency and so on, these were seen as a means of reactivating the arab world and resolving longstanding grievances, problems, and injustices within the arab system, but also not just intra- arab but inter-arab issues. this was seen as resonating globally more than the slogans of the political regimes that kept bashing everybody in the name of arab nationalism. there is a new sense of a very active redefinition of arab nationalism, which is closely connected to the sense of arab identity, air of dignity -- arab dignity. another redefinition is that of leadership.

the source of legitimacy and credibility. quite often, arab regimes and leaders use their external connections, approval by western countries and so on, as the source of their power and legitimacy and credibility. rather than their own constituency, rather than responding to their own people's needs and rights. again, leadership and credibility do not, as a result of security, control, or monopoly over the sources of powers, be they wells or natural -- wealth or natural resources or control over media and even arms and so on. there are new sources of power and legitimacy now available, accessible. also, there are no longer inherited positions or

connections, or a sense of distinction and privilege and wealth and so on within society. also, not the membership in the ruling party -- actually, egypt and tunisia and others demonstrated that membership in the ruling party, which is corrupt and controlling and monolithic is a liability in the long run. this is what happened. in palestine again, it is going to be a greater sort of more complex situation because it is no longer just belonging to different factions, even no longer just being part of the national struggle or membership or how many times have you been to jail or the usual sort of nationalistic credentials. but there are new elements again. based on renewed definition of

being a meritocracy, access to information, and mobilization, as well as national commitment and being part of the struggle. this meant, by definition, again, the the new system does not have -- the new leadership does not have the access of the old leadership to grass-roots movements, to connections and mobility and street action. they have not been engaging in actual organization on the ground or impact of politics, which has become a major weakness because they have the theoretical know how. they have a meritocracy. they have the ideas. that are not all entirely true, but at least they have them. at the same time, they do not have the experience of organization, a building parties, and building rule -- building real movement, which you need to bring about a

leadership that can really take over. with the weakness of the traditional opposition, as we saw in egypt and other places and even palestine, still, the lack of total prepared this, they knew there would be a time of transition, but we know the system certainly is moving ahead in favor of the new definitions of leadership we talked about and also, there is a new coordination and identification with civil society, whose role is growing and whose influence is growing throughout the arab world. because it was the more oppressed in many ways for it was the most coopted in the arab world. now, it can sort of be part of shaping the agenda. palestine, as i said earlier, exposed be failure of the two agendas. we saw the armed resistance and

unilateral cease-fire in gaza and changes within the political agenda of hamas and the ineffectiveness of only negotiations as a means of solution, given the fact that tremendous pressure was exercised on the leadership and on the -- in order to carry out or accept certain things that totally undermine them. in the eyes and minds of their own people. the agenda of empowerment, a popular action and resistance, but also a need for innovative political programs, linking to the energized arab world and engaging the international community as an equal -- read engaging, so to speak. it is not enough to say that we have popular empowerment. you do have to have an agenda that works. you have to have a political vision of where you are going. this is important if the new

leadership wants to succeed. there is an agenda here in palestine that is committed to going to the united nations, for example, but in itself, it is not an end. it is a means, going to get membership and international organizations is a way of validation and a way of trying to achieve recognition of your borders, your capital, and get access to international organizations that would hold israel accountable. certainly, our agenda should involve nation-building and good governance. regionally, again, the arabs spring showed limitations of the role of non-arab players. i think it was in many cases exacerbated. that bears further study, but we believe it weakened the influence of non-arab players,

and, of course, it exposed israel's failures. something we knew all along -- and occupation cannot be really democratic. but they were caught entirely off guard in the sense that they were desperately trying to resist change. remember when people were calling for regime change and getting rid of mubarak? it was netanyahu calling the americans and saying, "keep him. make sure that you protect him. house democratic are you if you are asking the u.s. to intervene in domestic, democratic popular movement in egypt? the whole approach of israel is only what is good for israel and how it can subjugate the countries around and the leadership in order to maintain the status quo, which is an impossible task. if they have any sense, they

know the status quo is certainly not sustainable. it cannot be maintained at all. even in syria, there were voices coming out saying, "we have a very calm border with syria. not a shot was fired." and so on. everybody was a lot to say that because you will condemn the city and the regime's -- everybody was saying not to say that. an understanding why they are being isolated or why the occupation with delegitimizing israeli policies, claiming that the movement in the arab world is a movement to delegitimize and isolate israel, and this is absolutely misguided. instead of looking at themselves and understanding that the occupation and repression, violence and so on, the worst instruments that israel could use, and themselves being exposed as even obama said,

themselves exposed the true nature of israel to an international public opinion that now is watching and that follows what is happening. netanyahu in essence presented himself and his policies as being very regressive, out of step with the times, trying to hold onto obsolete forms of power and control, trying to maintain in place a system of domination that has no place in the modern and contemporary realities of the arab world. this certainly missed an opportunity to catch up, to engage by presenting a bold vision, and plan -- just present a peace plan, rather than this sense of presenting an overbearing, deceptive smear campaign and engaging in evasive tactics and so on and trying to really cloud the issues