kasich, rick scott -- no one is saying that there should not be a dispassionate look at what we do, but unions in wisconsin agreed to the demands. and they were not even given the respect to have a meeting with walker. he wanted >> some say how can you support gov. walker. why did he go after public sector unions and not private- sector unions? >> there are a couple of things going on. to randy's.

about -- it is important how this stuff is presented and address. i believe it was safety and fire workers. police and fire. >> right. that is one of those litigations that is now happening. >> on the other hand, if we think about president obama's strategy on health care reform, there were an interesting array of organizations who were smart enough to get behind obama during the 2008 campaign. part of the way that the making occurs in a democratic society is that sometimes in the issues are addressed in a manner that is less principled than we might like. the reality is that there are two issues on the table when we talk about the wisconsin collective bargaining one is that there was the short-term fiscal crunch. not only is she right that we

had indicated that there were going finally to the table to talk about redressing some of the issues with both health care and pensions, but they fundamental issue is that there were not want to make a change in the fiscal ship. to me, more fundamental question is that wisconsin, just like every state government and federal government, has been living with on its -- living beyond its means for decades. the problem is that we have had governor after governor and state after state that have been content to kick the can down the road. the real rationale for trying to roll back collective bargaining and to go after teacher contributions, the pension, and health care was not because it would actually help with the 2012-223 -- 2012-2013

deficit. it was because it would change the trajectory if you look five years to 10 years out at a fiscal position of the state. >> what do need to change but the bargaining rights to do that to? >> because school boards have made it clear the day like the intestinal fortitude to negotiate or to do a good job of curtailing -- one example, the wisconsin teacher pension system still is that employers will make a 6.8% contribution to the pension system on behalf of employees. employees were meto make 6.2%. so 13% of payment on top of each employee. in addition to that, there was a 4.2% contribution made entirely by the district. so they were paying 17.2% of each teacher contribution and

employees were not making a single contribution. part of the composition was $56,000 fully loaded with benefits. that was $100,000 apiece. school boards and superintendents who are engaging in this over a decade have suggested that they are frankly probably not to be trusted in these kinds of negotiations. >> so gov. walker to a local control over these issues. >> on a talk about this, first of all, public collective bargaining, at the federal level, was illegal until 1952. and there is a famous letter from frank and resolute to the president of the national federation of employers that they realize that the process of

collective bargaining is usually understood and cannot be transplanted into the public sector. it has a limitation when applied to public personnel management. this is fdr. the reason why it has unique and insurmountable problems is that, it isey're too generous, i an affordable. >> also, ronald reagan talked about how important collective bargaining was, including in the public sector. he gets people focused -- >> this is so complicated. >> i know. but what i am saying that, if fdr were alive today and his successors, he would have a very different view of it for the following reason.

i think you'd have a different view for the following reason. there is a fundamental difference of understanding in terms of the workplace and would you can do using collective bargaining. i actually want to go back to the wisconsin situation for second. there has been a lot of negativity about unions in the last 20 years. in bad economic times, what we have seen a lot of people do is say that they have benefits that are here. we have benefits that are lower than this. why this should there not be a race to the bottom? that is a very different ideal than america normally has.

america is usually about help, not fear. but you can see the economic and worst that we have rain now that kind of negative, the same thing that you said about when health and transportation, we look at the-before the positive. education, a lot of times, uc districts -- you see districts that are doing well and have public confidence -- you see a connection between public confidence and districts that are doing well. you see in education, sometimes, the only opportunity in a capitalist democracy that is provided to all kids. it is different in different states. you see a service that is really about hope, not fear. so there is a distance between those of us -- or in education

and those people who are around that our reporting about it or thinking about it in this negativity. collective bargaining, it is the vehicle by which to create not just economic dignity for people, but to actually create voice to enable the tools and conditions that teachers need. that is what collective bargaining has done in districts that have actually worked effectively, both here and abroad. that gets missed in this entire debate. for example, in new haven, one of the most innovating and interesting contract in a long time -- they actually use collective bargaining to problem solve. in toledo, in the last few months, with the cuts that they had, they used collective

bargaining to problem solve. that is different than the whole issue in terms of pensions and things like that. a lot of that was statutory, not done through collective bargaining. when the public was confronted with should people's rights be stripped away, wisconsin, ohio, two-thirds of the public in the winter said no, their rights should not be stripped away. does it mean that we have to use these rights responsibly? yes. but when you think about what has happened in america these days -- even you said we do not trust our elected officials, so let's strip their right to actually do something. that is not accountability. accountability should be the next election where people are accountable for what they have done. this is true in terms of --

separate and apart from the collective bargaining issues in this country, the other underlying issue that is very disturbing is voter suppression, voting rights. there have been many states that have actually -- and many of these new republican governors -- who actually attempted to change the rights in many of these states. that is happening -- 36 states have changed the voting laws to change the contribution of employees. in wisconsin and, that was done, but there were also tax cuts and capital gains. where is the fairness here? when you have entities who pay

less taxes as a corporation than the wisconsin custodian, where does the governor say we need to go after this in terms of benefits when the average benefit across the nation is about $400 to $450 a month? where is the fairness when that happens? yet no one on your side of the debate talks about taxing billionaires. >> i think arguing about taking the collective bargaining offer of the school board, the school board was elected by unions. we have examples where reformers come into office, causing the

union to mobilize, if that is the dynamic, does not make sense that that is some perversion of democracy? then we have to address it by taking some of these rights away or something else like that. >> first off, we now argue using the exceptions to make the case. there have been lots and lots of elections, whether it is school board elections, senatorial elections, other kinds of elections, where lots of people have gotten engaged. i have often seen the role of the union exaggerated when it comes to elections of school boards or other kinds of things. i have watched the role of money in all of this totally and

completely changed the relationship everywhere. people should have the right to engage politically. that is part of our democracy for. but separate and apart from that, take the situations like merrill control against elected school boards. is any of these structures better than any of these other structures? in new york city, we supported mayoral control. the union stepped up to support that. we felt we needed a more cohesive accountability system. i suspect that, when this system of merrill control experts, there will be very little support for it because of the way it was used. you could say the same thing about everything.

if a district is not focused on how we educate kids in a real way for the knowledge economy, they will be called to account. everybody will be called to account. what they have been saying is let's all step up and tried to do far more to deal with the real issues which is how do we, as the economy races forward and we see so many differences in terms of the knowledge and skill that kids need, at the very same time that the bottom is falling out for regular folks, how do school districts in gauge? that is the real issue. >> when she says we are trying to balance the budget on the backs of kids and teachers, fire will not talking on the right about taxing of the upper brackets as part of the solution

to. >> -- as part of the solution, too. >> the reality is that we have been living beyond our means as a nation and in these states for 20 plus years. as of 2009, pension funds -- pensions were underfunded by $1.206 -- $1.16 trillion across the nation. we absolutely will be raising taxes. if we went ahead and did the tax increases that president obama suggested this summer, a tax on corporate jets, putting an end to the bush tax cuts for the rich families making more than $250,000 a year, that would raise about $85 billion next year. given that we will be born $1.50 trillion, we are only are the

$1.40 trillion toward the future next year. of course, that would also mean that our top marginal tax rates for families making two hundred $50,000 plus in your average state will be about 55%. we can certainly take them higher. that is 55% when you take the federal rate they are paid, the state and their social security contribution. 70% of each dollar earned when ronald reagan came to office, there were concerns that you would discourage economic productivity among people when they're paying 70 cents on the dollar to state and local and federal government. but you can certainly go there. the reality though, even if you make those tax increases, you make only $300 billion a year. it is terrific, but we're still spending $1.20 trillion we do not have each year for the

foreseeable future. i am sympathetic to her point that we will have to generate more revenue. but the notion that, if we do so, that will alleviate the need to dial back unaffordable promises is nothing but a fairy tale. we also need to take a look at an affordable promises that have been made by irresponsible politicians over the past 20 to 30 years. that will address both national entitlements, like social city and medicare, and also state level instruments, like pensions and health care. i am sympathetic to the point that we need to be talking about all of this. i totally agree. but the reality is that we will have a choice very shortly. the marginal dollars in the state, will it go to pay for education for our kids or will it go to pay for retirement promises to retirees?

frankly, i know which side of that issue i am on. >> this is maybe far afield from what instructional practices teachers would use. but there is a constant macro and micro issue that we all face. as rick was saying that, i wreckage -- i recollected back to a union force that we had to do with these issues. the fairly modest pensions that are done in the public sector still cost a whole bunch of money. the issue becomes, when the market goes wild as it has going right now, how will the pension costs be sustained?

we thought let's have a modern pension system. no spiking. there should be cost and contributions in terms of both employers and employees. but this is the point that i think rick is missing in all this. there have been modest salaries in the public sector. retirement benefits are part of that salary. the macro point is this for america. what happens 10 to 20 years from now when no one has a retirement benefit? people will be 70 years old and 80 result could what happens? what you see in the polling we have done is huge retirement insecurity. brick is talking about how we solve -- how we actually make the situation in terms of retirement insecurity worse on the macro level by getting rid

of it on a micro level. what we need to do is think about what happens in this country long term when you have people getting older and older and working until they are in their 50s and 60s and what happens afterwards. that, in some ways, the public sector bargaining solve that by saying modest wages but also deferred compensation in terms of pensions. that is a big long-term problem. >> one more point, rick, and then we will turn the page. >> i think we disagree to a fair bit on how modest teacher compensation is. the teacher pay in the u.s. is $54,000. fully loaded, it is summer in the low-$70,000.

-- it is somewhere in the low- $70,000. let's also keep in mind that the typical teacher work here is 190 days. i think there are a number of issues to talk about teacher compensation in current dollars and reasonable people can come at this in different ways. she is exactly right that the issue here is long term. one relatively simple way to start talking about getting retiree health care and pensions under control in the public sector for teachers is to take the norma teacher retirement from 30 years to 40 years. so teachers will be expected to retire at about 65 rather than 55 or 57. that is a legacy of a much earlier era when we thought the public sector pensions as befitting a very different

demographic profile in terms of how long we expected to live. certainly, i think she is right that there is good and serious room for people to talk about how we build these solutions in ways that work. but i suspect that if she were to try to put together before a team of even admirable aft teachers that it would not be received particularly well. >> i am giggling as you talk about that because, at the same time as we have seen those proposals, we have also seen proposals that say let's look at experience and let's be fairly negative about experience and let's just have -- i do not actually subscribe to it. i subscribe to we need your

teachers and experienced teachers and we need some kind of balance. but you cannot action, on the one hand say that teachers should actually work longer and on the other hand say, but, by the way, we will not actually give them the opportunity to work longer. there are a lot of teachers who actually work 30 to 40 years. there are also folks who, at their 20th or 25th year say that they need to do something else or i am tired. frankly, one of the things we need to do is actually two things like have different kinds of career ladders for teachers so you can do something different with those skills. i actually think we're losing huge -- at the very same time that skill and knowledge is important, we need to maintain that kind of experience. but i do not think we don't have

to confront those kinds of long- term security issues. teachers are not gazillionaires. what they do, as part of the benefit package, if you are planning and saving for retirement, that is really good for the economy and that is really good for a community. but the last thing i want to say is this on economics. i think there is a fundamental misstatement that happens. we saw it in the debt ceiling debate. it is about that. the last democratic president in the united states of america actually ended his presidency not with a debt, but with a surplus. that was a decade or so ago. what is the fundamental reason that we have the debt that we have right now?

we have three wars that we are engaged in right now. we have tax cuts that were never paid for. and we have prescription drug benefits that were never paid for. so there are a bunch of different reasons that we are in the crisis that we are in. a lot of it is not because of the education spending that we have done over the course of time. frankly, what has happened is that we will actually this invest from our kids at the very same time that the economy's changing and then say that the promises that were made to first pensions to people who actually worked in this field when there was modern seller sit -- smart sellers should not be paid. there's something fundamentally wrong about that. -- when there were moderate salaries should not be paid. there's something fundamentally wrong about that.

>> teachers enter the profession with an implicit understanding. teachers who have been in the field have entered the field with a certain understanding about compensation and benefits. when we think we have once of deals on the table and some people self righteously telesis doesn't work, there's absolutely -- tell us it doesn't work, there is absolutely the feel that we are being dealt dirty. >> let's get back to some of these other issues. you both are against the demagoguery. [laughter] i think you both agreed that, in the wisconsin case, there's some evidence that they were willing to do.

although rick's point was that it would only happen in the short term. and that this retirement situation is a big issue. perhaps you both agree that there is concern that to solve the debt crisis there will be disinvestment from kids. there is this intergenerational continue m going on. -- -- there is this a generational situation continuing to go on. >> we have made a set of bloated and unwise commitments to the elderly. when we started medicare 45 years ago, the poverty rate among the elderly was substantially higher. today, the poverty rate among

the elderly is about half of what it is among american children. we have tied a substantial resources and spending dollars on the over-65. i think the pension and health care compensation as part of it. if we are serious about doing right by our kids, we ought to be putting more dollars into the kids. but we also need to have the intestinal fortitude to say that we cannot do everything in the world that would be swell to do. one of the things that is required is that we have to take a hard look at what we have promised we will do for the elderly. >> i do not want to get too much into social security and medicare. but i think there is clear disagreement. and randi's point that there is

a race to the bottom and not a race to the top. >> right. this is an interesting economic discussion we're having on the macro level. it would not surprise rick then i come from mckenzie and belief -- from a keynesian belief that you have to try to create jobs and find a way to fill those jobs. but one of the things i am haunted with right now is that, at the same time that we have 9% to 10% unemployment, regardless of what the sector unemployment rate is for folks, there are jobs available in the united states that are not filled because of the skill mismatch. that is the kind of thing that we should be working on on the micro level right now. it is the kind of thing that, if we actually had in different

communities -- what of the business needs? what are the skills of people? are there ways of creating a match? is there a role for community colleges and others to create some wraparound services around schools in order to do that? these are the kinds of problems that america should be able to solve right now as opposed to ultimately simply thinking about the big math problems. at the end of the day, when you have an economic downturn, the likes of which we have had now, which most americans did not create, recklessness and wall street and recklessness in the white house have -- when you have this, you also have the safety net kicking in for more and more people which means you have more and more of a burden on state and localities -- food

stamps, medicaid, all of these other things, unemployment -- they kick in when people have less and less jobs. then there are more jobs available and people pay taxes. there is more revenue. there's more in the coffers. there's more surplus. i actually get to this debate saying stop, stop, stop. one of our proposals in terms of pension funds is that this tremendous amount of capital in pension funds in the country, let's use it for infrastructure. let's use it to create jobs. this use it for some of the things we need to do. let's do things differently now that america used to do. we are so timid about doing a new big things. that is one of our ideas and that is one of the things that

we have talked to pension funds across the country about. >> for those of you watching on line, you can send us questions. we will get to them in a little bit. you can ask questions on twitter or e-mail us. we started this discussion on the question of teachers feeling under attack. is there anyway for reformers to promote the kind of changes we're talking about here, curtailing pension benefits at health care benefits and changing evaluations and making jobs less secure -- is there any way of reformers promoting that agenda that will not make teachers feel under attack? are these policies that they just will not like or is there a communications failure? >> if the policies are how can

we take something from you as opposed to how can we make education better -- if it is framed as we are going to take something from you, of course, there will be reaction to that. if these are policies that say let's start with -- let the kids know and be able to do the 21st century and how will we hope all kids, not some kids, get their, then that is an engagement that everyone should be involved in. >> but is that not the steven brill point? we all love kids. >> i did bring one prop. it is actually hard to create a trusting innovative environment. i have been a boss for a long time.

i was the president from 1999 to 2000 at the american -- 1999 to 2008 at uft. it is much harder as they've lost to build a culture of collaboration and trust -- as a boss to build a culture of collaboration and trust. this is not kumbaya. when people talk about it as kumbaya, it trivializes our work. the issue in terms of teachers is that they are on the ground actually being the ones who implement all of these high- minded policies that we talk about. the question becomes how do you engage them in that implementation? the implementation is often the

hardest, even things we would all agree on. teachers should be qualified, whether you call it effective or qualified. how you make that happen? how do ensure that that is real? how do you ensure -- take another policy. on this stage, i'm not sure, but i think we probably agree that there should be high standards for children. and i think we probably agree -- [laughter] let's get our sandals on and air guitar. [laughter] and i think we agree that there should be some common core and some may not. how do then ensure that that happens?

if we engaged in the conversation that we, that would be one thing. but if we engaged in the conversation saying i am about to tell you that you have to work harder, but i am lopping off 20% of your cellar because nobody can afford it and you should be happy that you have a job, that will not be a pleasant conversation with anyone. worse, it will be hugely demoralizing and it will be a step backwards, not a step forward. >> what you think about this? >> i think she is right. when you tell people that they will not get as much as there used to getting or they think they're entitled to, they will be upset. unfortunately, think that is a position that leadership has got us to. there are two strands of reform. one strand is directly centered around instruction and pedagogy and all the stuff where teachers

know more about it than anyone sitting on the outside looking in. i think that makes all the sense in the world to approach these things in a collaborative fashion where we give teachers opportunities to lend their expertise, to shape what we're doing, and then holding them accountable. >> would you support what she was saying a backing some of that kind of stuff into collective bargaining agreements? >> absolutely not. i think it should happen outside the framework of collective bargaining. but the collective bargaining frames it in a way that legitimizes a unpredictably -- unproductively. some have talked about united mine workers and the knew you newsom for some time. -- the new unionism for some time. i wish to god we could do or

affected by it -- do more affectively looking at this and coming to conclusions without a managing that the other person has to bury it. i think there is a second strand of reform. when it comes to staffing ratios, when it comes to benefits, when it comes to compensation structures, what we are doing is talking about saying to people we have increased nominal per pupil spending -- nominal her people spending -- nominal per people spending threefold. this has necessitated more hiring, lots more benefits, lots

more bodies that we cannot train adequately. we should have fewer educators, pay them better, but, at the end of the day, educators mere not feel that this is a good trade- off and these kinds of policy determinations are frequently going to have to happen whether or not teachers are comfortable with them. >> on the economics, i am actually troubled by some of the global spending conclusions that i hear all the time. when you impact the numbers, you see what that spending is for. we had a 50% increase from the early 1980's to now in terms of special needs children. and the spending on special needs children is higher than the spending on children that do not have special needs. is that an important value?

probably so. but that is what some of that number is. also, in the countries that out- retirement and health benefits are not in their equation. that is about 13%. it is an apples to oranges comparison. when you take that out of the comparison, the numbers, in terms of as a percentage of gdp, look more similar. what is this actual spending on teachers for? what we have actually seen on the ground is that class sizes have not gone down. if you're a high school teacher, for example, you are working with 150 to two hundred kids a

day. how will you have the gauge meant to win sure -- again, -- how will you have the engagement, how will you create the environment that creates the connectivity and critical thinking with 400 kids? when you hear his numbers that student-teacher ratios have gone down like that, what we see on the ground is an increase of testing coordinator years -- creditors. an increase of test issues. an increase of those types of things as opposed to -- this is part of the reason why, if we use collective bargaining the right way, the contracts become really and flexible. the biggest challenge we have is something that chancre said a long time ago.

shanker and feldman said before hand how do we actually change schools from this industrial model to a knowledge model? how do use collective bargaining in a craft model? how do we do these kinds of things? some of these experiments. green got was one of those ideas. a lot of the tools and conditions that teachers need as well as the accountability that might patrol and others are talking about, how -- that mike patrella and others are talking about, how do you do these things? 100,000 schools in the united states. we could try some of this kind of experimentation.

can we build a new system? not the entire system, but build some experiments like this. >> sort of like charter schools. >> it was supposed to be a lot of what charter schools were supposed to be, but look at what they have become. they are a lot of what -- they are a lot like the original system but without contracts. they have talked about extended time in the edwards moscow. it is not extended time -- in the edwards middle school. it is not extended time per se, but how you seuse it. they use the extended time to engage kids and to use data

correctly. how do you actually use collective bargaining to try to break through this industrial model, come up with different kinds of models, and get the kinds of tools and conditions, but use collective bargaining as a leveraging agent to do this? >> the teacher evaluations and this larger issue of finding a way to weed out low performers and terminate them if they are not doing their job -- some say that this is a lot of what these discussions come down to. we have a system that do not timely or cost effectively take out the performing teachers from the cluster. -- from the classroom. >> i think it has been driven --

again, much like district giveaways in terms of benefits and restrictions, reformers have gotten into this habit of scapegoating unions while letting school boards and superintendents off the hook. if you look at the new teacher project would it work -- which idget work. we have a district that is failing in having effective educators and seeing that they approve or no longer go to class. then they throw this all on the unions. i think they are mistaken. i do think that they end up sharing some of the culpability.

i would like to see them calling out sapless school leaders and superintendents. it is too often a convenient course as compromise amongst school boards, almost superintendent, and most teachers where everybody agrees that nobody shall be called to account. in that way, everybody ends up owning responsibility. when we talk about teacher evaluation system, there are only to wish to go about it. one is a robust and sensibly articulate system in which we are building a lot of room for managerial judgment in which we are taking into account full evaluation, including how much they contribute to their teams on how much they work, in which we are real tersely and systematically soliciting information or whether if they are responding responsibly to parental query's.

unfortunate, the policy-makers are completely concerned that they cannot trust schools to make responsible judgments. we have heard unions say that schools will make politicize or capricious judgments. the compromise is a simplistic -- one-size-fits-all state evaluation system. i do not think that this is a particularly good or sophisticated solution. because few people like the status quo and few people are in the position of -- >> we have here in the district of columbia of the impact system. it is in the early days and it

needs to be tweaked. but it has led to hundreds of teachers leaving their jobs. they feel like we finally have accountability in public schools. there were teachers that had been failing students for a long time. what is wrong with that? >> the last -- the superintendent for michele re actually fired more teachers than the impact system has done. yet that fact would never gets out there. this back. first off, evaluation systems have been broken for a lot of the reasons that rick said before. it is really hard to actually fire people. what happens is that people

don't and they blame something else. they will blame tenure and other things. it is hard. it is a hard thing to do. >> it is hard because people do not like to do it. >> yes. people do not like to look at someone else in the eyes and say you are fired. >> or you are doing a lousy job. >> there are some people who do like that, but most of us do not. [laughter] let's not go through the list of people who do. with the union did is that we actually spend some time in the last couple of years saying how do we do this right? we saw that you cannot just take -- we used to actually do what

rick suggested, finger-point at administrators, say you are wrong, say you have not done what you need to do. we stopped that. saying we started doing is what is the right way to do this? number one, we know that confidence matters. any school teacher you talk to will tell you that they want teachers teaching who know their stuff and how to engage kids. the first iteration that our union tried in terms of getting at this was through a peer review process. some school districts did it and some did not. the second iteration, in this generation, that we have tried to do, in 2010, after a lot of work with their leaders and looking at evaluation systems,

the drive by evaluation of having administrators sit in your classroom once a year or twice a year does not work. given that this generation of test scores do not actually a line to what kids need to know and be able to do. having said that, we need to have evaluations that both measure what teachers are doing in the classroom, how they engage, but also whether or not kids have learned. what am i teaching and whether or not kids have learned. we tried to come up with the framework that does that, that includes to some extent -- you all notice because it is the only thing that got attention -- that includes test work and practice. there are some who are using

this kind of evaluation system. it is very different in two respects. number one, the system we are talking about is not simply about sorting. it is primarily about supporting teachers to grow their craft. no. 2, it is something that was done with teachers, not to teachers. >> so you have your ideal system in place. at the end of the day, it does not just sort and support, but there will be some teachers who do not make the grade. >> absolutely right. >> is that 5% of the teachers, 10%? >> if i said any percentage like that, the blogs all around town will be that "weingarten says that x% of teachers have to go."

what you need is a system that has credibility. all the sudden to teachers are fired in a district or two thousand teachers are fired. the real issue becomes is their real credibility for that system? frankly, that is what we need. we are in a huge r&d process right now. i think that the bottom falling the state and local budgets will make this worse, not better. two years ago, i was much more optimistic that we could do this. this is really time intensive. any principal that does not say that is someone who is not telling the truth. if you actually want to spend some time really doing good evaluations, whoever the mentor is or whoever the evaluators, you have to sit with the teacher could use it, what are you trying to accomplish in this lesson? you watch the lesson. use it with somebody after the lesson and say did we accomplish that? then you talk about what else you need to do. you look at student data to say

did kids actually get what i was trying to teach? was there that type of engagement? the real issue, the issue that is never on the table is that, if we want to have really good evaluations like they do in singapore, which is about continuous improvement, yes, it is about 40 people who ought not to be in -- it is about sorting people who ought not to be in the profession. it takes a lot of time and that kind of time costs money. where will we find the investment to do that? >> work? -- rick? >> 2 points. i think the issue here is what the one we raised before. when it comes to a devaluation as a form of will, i think there is a constructive role. the system in which, especially using today's relatively crude

value methods, including that is smart and healthy. i think there are things that teachers will resist. when we talk about using those thoughtfully constructed systems to terminate teachers, the nature of the union, if it does not represent the good teachers -- legally, it represents all teachers who are members -- to be enthusiastic about removing low performers, i think there will be much more room for collaboration on the formative side than on the removal syed. >> that is why we have imbedded in the process -- on the removal side. >> that is why we have imbedded in the process -- well, our union at the last national convention adopted this evaluation from work. when we put all the pieces

together, our executive council adopted this. i am not saying it is easy. but we represent all teachers. you have to make sure that teachers are treated fairly. but i think it can serve teachers and that the kennedys in which they live and work when one says that the union's job -- and the communities in which they live and work when one says that the union's job is to give them the tools that they need that they would not be able to get along. an individual teacher without that kind of collective work cannot. i am not saying you are wrong in terms of how hard it is. i am saying that there are unions across this country, new haven, baltimore, abc, toledo, new york city, who have actually confronted this and said that we have to be about fairness, but

we have to be about quality. >> let's get some questions. we have a couple of members of the press. to honor the first amendment, we will let them fire first. are there members of the press would like to ask a question? now? anybody? ok. we will open it up more broadly. we have a question from twitter. this question is for randi. if unemployment is 9% and 3 million jobs are open, does that not point to the needs for college and career standards? >> yes. but i do not want to wait 12 years to try to figure that out. let's figure out how, in a community right now, where there are jobs available, how we can reskill people to get to those

jobs. >> in the back. please tell us who you are and where you're from. >> let me just say for the record that i am also for reskilling and i am also for getting people into good jobs. >> i will direct a question to randi. i hear that one evaluation beyond the test scores and among the things you mentioned, including a culture for learning for students coming to school, for doing their work, for believing they can do the work, some call it is soft skills. teachers say that it is a huge piece for them. >> yes. >> could you elaborate a tiny bit? [laughter] >> the framework set we have spoken to are also about

creating a culture and a climate for innovation and for opportunity to grow. there are things that need to happen. how do actually have the tools and conditions? let's even talk about time. how do you have the time to ensure that kids are actually engaged with one another in productive work doing teamwork kind of work, things that are not tested on standardized tests, due in the kind of critical thinking and problem solving -- doing the kind of critical thinking and problem solving that is so necessary in this fast-paced technology- driven economy? is the environment -- is their opportunity to create that kind of environment? the way in which we try to

test this is something we call 360 degree accountability. it is not just accountability up-down, but down-up. do people have the tools they need to have an environment for kids? most people go into it saying our schools safe, are the kinds of red services that kids need? i am delighted that in the columbus school, what schools are doing. one of the first issues is whether or not wraparound services are important. i am delighted that one of the fordham schools is going to have this wraparound services in columbus. dealing with the kinds of ancillary needs kids may have for the kind of out to you deal with -- how did you teach a soft

skills, that is part of our evaluation system, creating opportunity. people get this in business. i watched rahm emanuel at the last clinton global initiative give a greeting, and the greeting was about chicago and his role of being to create an in fibernet -- his role being and to create an environment that was conducive to growth business. the superintendent's role is also to help create an environment that is conducive to learning. that is part of our evaluation guest. >> it is interesting you mentioned the superintendent's role. steven brill thinks he should be superintendent -- [laughter] >> i have a great job that i love. >> i will ask each of you what you think is the weakest parts of the argument. i will start with you, rick.

you think we need to get managers more discretion, and yet in most places they have a full discussion today to terminate untenured teacher is, and yet they never do. is that a problem with your theory of leaders and managers? >> yes, and that is why we're a part winning up with these relatively -- why we are winding up with these relatively crude one size fits all systems. reformers and policy makers, rather than default to the judgments, are saying heck with it, we're going to write these relics of the automatic trigger said tuesday law, and teachers, whatever kind of complicating factors in the site, are going to be evaluated and removed based on relatively simple measures. >> randi, last in, first out.

indefensible, right? >> security was a proxy for fairness. one of the things that evaluation systems will go will be to make last-in first-out moot. the only regret i have with the way in which this debate has gone on in the last six months is it as obfuscated the whole impact of large amounts of layoffs on children. and what we are starting to see in the school districts -- first off, we saw a bunch of unions actually find ways to mitigate the layoffs and it cuts to student services. whether you are talking about toledo, new york city, it mitigated -- eight obfuscated the fact that there are real impacts with this level and

magnitude of layoffs. in the absence of this level of magnitude of layoffs, evaluation systems about performance will mean that experience matters to some extent, but you are not going to have an impact of last-in first- out. >> it would be willing to say goodbye to last-in first-out? >> what we're saying is that nobody is going to call that question anymore, because if you are really about evaluation -- >> there are state laws saying you must use a last-in, first- out. >> the question is this -- if there are similarly situated people who actually performed well, and that situation experience should matter. what i am saying is that if

people really believe -- >> you can watch all of this event online in the video library at c-span.org. we will take you live to the pentagon for a briefing on the defense department's 2011 report to congress on military and security developments in china. we will hear from debbie assistant defense secretary for east asia -- deputy assistant defense secretary for east asia. >> i will offer a few broad thoughts on the report. a couple of points about the administration's overall approach to china. and then i will walk you through it in some degree of detail, hopefully not too painful, what is in the report this year and then we will have time for whatever questions you may have. the report, as many of you know, is a report from the sec. defense transmitte -- a report

from the secretary of defense and transmitted to congress, across interagency any type of u.s. government, so even though it is a dod report, it reflects the views held by the by the u.s. government. we very much into this report to be something that is factual, objective and an analytical, to provide input the information -- it puts an inflammation for policymakers in the legislative and executive branch to consider as they, applied the development of u.s. policy in a bilateral relationship between the united states and china. this year's report contains new information on a number of topics, including new section on china's eve of a maritime strategy -- evolving at first time strategy and its growing at involvement engagement with other countries. let me first, as i said, offer a

couple of general comments on u.s.-china relations and that the overview of the report itself. as you know from statements that numerous senior u.s. government officials have made, the united states welcomes is strong, prosperous and successful china that contributes to international rules and dogs and enhances the security and peace both in the -- rules and norton enhances security and peace in the asia-pacific region and throughout the globe. we're pursuing a comprehensive relationship with china capable of advancing our shared interests. china's expanding military capabilities have allowed it to contribute to delivery of an international public goods, from peacekeeping and counter proceed to disaster relief. however, the pace and scope of china's sustained military investments have allowed china to pursue capabilities that we believe are potentially destabilizing the regional military balances, increase the

risk of misunderstanding and this calculation, and may contribute to regional tensions and anxieties. such capabilities could increase beijing's options for using military force to gain diplomatic advantage, advance its interests or resolve military disputes -- resolve disputes in its favor. this very much speaks to the logic that we see for sustained and reliable military-to- military dialogue and military- to-security dialogue between the united states and china so that we are able to gain at the sort of transparency and strategic understanding that is necessary for -- that is necessary to forge that positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship. in fact, in many ways, i might suggest that the report can best be read not simply as a piece of analysis, but really as sets of

questions that issue that we would like to be able to engage in dialogue and discussion with our chinese counterparts. these are the questions and issues that we think is important for us to be able to understand. we know how chinese friends have questions for and about as, and that is the sort of dialogue and discussion that we welcome and we think contributes to regional and global security and stability. over the next decade, from 2011- 2020, we believe there will be a number of critical elements in play as we look at chinese military modernization as teh pla a times to integrate and never knew a complex plot from state and have developed and develop -- including a joint

operation that network-centered warfare. as the report discusses, there are a number of new platform said weapons systems that have reached maturity in recent years and others that we believe will soon become operational. these are the systems that are on par with or exceed all standards -- these are new systems that are on par with or exceed global standards. it will be a key marker in china's continued military modernization efforts going forward. we believe that the pla continues to be on track in its goal of building a modern and regionally focused military by 2020. china's ability to sustain military power at a distance today remains limited. many of you know, as many fruit reported, a tragic end date --

many of you reported, china conducted sea trials. our report, written and what it needed before the settlement, convey our expectation that sea trials would begin this year. it will take a number of additional years for an hour to achieve the sort of minimal -- for an air group achieved the sort of mental ability aboard a carrier that would be necessary for the peace corps to operate from the carrier itself. -- than to start to operate from the carrier itself. this is not limited by chinese investment in new service combat is designed for anti-service and at night air warfare the pla has completed construction of a major naval base and this is large enough to accommodate at a

mix of ballistic missiles and submarines and large service demands, including aircraft carriers. china also continues to invest heavily in our capabilities, including higher aircraft and long-range service to aircraft missile systems. this past i were, again, as many of you reported, china conducted a flight test of the next- generation fighter prototype, j- 20, highlighted china's ambition towards its avionics and capable and kids. china is also investing heavily in every of the space programs. china conducted a record 15 space launches in 2010, which includes civilian and military systems. turning away from forced development to another issue that i know is of interest to you all, cross straight relations, as the report assesses, in the political

diplomatic, economic and cultural field, cross-strait relations after to need to approve the past couple of years. but despite his political warming, the chinese military shows no signs of slowing its ever to prepare for its cross-strait contingency. in addition to preparing for taiwan contingencies, china places a high priority on asserting and strengthening its maritime territorial plans. the increase pla naval presence in the region, including surface, some service and airborne platforms, possibly one or more of china's aircraft carriers, would provide delay with an extended capability with all the implications for regional rivalries and power dynamics that that implies. the pla has also in recent years demonstrated the capabilities to conduct limited peacetime deployments of moderate forces outside asia. this includes multiple rz

deployments, increase in participation in international humanitarian and disaster relief efforts. investment in large and the beast ships -- investment in large amphibious ships have made these submissions a practical reality. these types of operations provide the plo with valuable operational experience and also serve prc diplomatic objectives. the modernization efforts are supported by robust increases in government funding. on march 4, beijing announced a 12.7% increase in its military budget. that continues more than two decades of state budgetary growth. the pla has been modest and incremental improvements in transparency in recent years. there are a number of uncertainties that remain. we will continue, we do continue to encourage china to encourage

transparency and openness and and it is that support the strength and common political and economic and diplomatic interests of the region and the national committee. the complexity of the global security environment, as well as the advances in china paused a military capabilities and expanding military operation conditions, calls for continuous military dialogue between our two defense and security establishments. this is a guy like that we believe can help us expand practical cooperation -- this is a dialogue that we believe can help us expand practical cooperation where our interests converge and give us the opportunity to discuss it candidly those areas where we may have disagreements. such engagements we believe are especially important during a periods of friction and turbulence in the bilateral relationship. during the january 2011 summit, president obama and prc president hu jintao affirmed

that a military-to-military relations is a part of a positive and comprehensive u.s.- china relationship. we believe that we will continue to use military engagement with china as one of several means to demonstrate u.s. commitment to the security of the asia-pacific region, to encourage china to andy a role in the region, a to partner with our asian allies and partners to address common security challenges. let me wrapup by offering that we hope that the report, which we think has a lot of a very interesting and useful -- we hope as a lot of a very interesting and useful analysis -- will contribute in a responsible fashion to the many things that are ongoing with respect to china's military modernization. with that, let me turn to your questions. >> you said in the beginning that the chinese military is

destabilizing and then he went into a whole list of things the chinese have done. can you to specifically say which part of the buildup you consider destabilizing? >> i think i said it was a potentially destabilizing, and that speaks, again, to the importance of being able to have not just between the united states and china, but between china and other countries of the region, deep, sustained, continuous and reliable discussions and engagement between our military and security established so that we can better understand china's intentions, china's banking and approach, and so they can better understand ours. absent that, and given the lack of transparency, even with the improvements i cited that still exist, that is where you have the potential to run into situations where there may be

misunderstandings or miss calculations where you have the potential for anxiety to arrive at a destabilizing dynamic. >> so it is not the actual build up of the stealth fighter or aircraft carrier. it is the fact that the potentially destabilizing aspect of the chinese are not transparent enough and talking enough. >> it is a combination of the lack of understanding that is coming out, that has been created by the opacity of their system. but, i mean, it is also because there are very real questions, given the overall trends and trajectory in the scope and scale of chinese military modernization efforts. i would not put it on any one particular platform or any one particular system. there is nothing particularly magical about any one particular item. but when you put together at the

entirety of what we witnessed over the past several decades, and we see these trendlines continuing off into the future, that raises questions. as i said, again, that is why we think it is important to be able to have these sorts of dialogues and discussions that will allow us to understand each other better and will help to contribute to regional stability. >> the report has addressed the same trend in the taiwan strait that the military balance has shifted to china's favor. in this report, is there a tipping point that we are anticipating, like 2020? the second question is when the general was here in washington,

he said that there is no -- [unintelligible] across taiwan, across the strait. i don't know what the u.s. estimates for evaluation. >> there is not a particular tipping point, which in may, has saw to stop a disappointment -- which i know may come as something of a disappointment as one thinks about how to construct the project newspaper headline. but there are trends that one points to that continue to point to a very challenging military and security environment across the strait. that is a set of issues that we are committed to working with taiwan to address, committee to meeting our commitments under the taiwan relations act in the context of the policy and the self defense capabilities that it needs.

that is something that obviously continues to be a concern of the department of defense and, indeed, the entire u.s. government. i will let gen. chen clarify our characterize his own comments and what the intent and what he meant. >> image and aircraft carriers in your spoken -- you mentioned aircraft carriers in your spoken remarks. there are reports that china has indeed begun building its own indigenous carriers. can you comment on those reports? >> we do think that china is undertaking an effort to build its own indigenous aircraft carriers, and our expectations -- again, this is addressed in the report -- without we will see chinese into just aircraft carriers -- is that we will see a chinese into to this aircraft

carriers being developed in the future. >> did you share this report with the chinese government or embassy? if so, what was your message to them? and the pakistanis showing the helicopter tail from that bin laden raid to the chinese -- were they able to obtain info about technology from that? >> it has been shown to congress and our second most important audience, you all. we have an number of engagements with a range of people in the diplomatic community, both here in the united states and overseas, plant over the next several days to provide briefings on the report. you will excuse me if i take a pass on going into any details on the messages that will be --

that we will be delivering at any of those discussions. i will also take a pass for all the reasons that you know i cannot comment on the pakistan issue and a helicopter to. -- helicopter tail. are a hot button issue. is there anything in this report about chinese capability, buttresses, and-a 16's for tie what? -- f-16's for thai what? >> i am not a student of chinese military capability, so that gives me a pass and your question. there's no question, i don't think it is eager to anybody, that is a very challenging security environment across the strait.

i would point out is a very challenging security and in farm across -- challenging security environment across a number of different dimensions. we are working very, very closely with taiwan, as we have for many, many years now, across administrations of both political parties to make sure that they have self defense capabilities that they need. we will continue to do so. >> as the pentagon rejected the new sale of f-16's? there have been reports out of the region to that effect. >> i do not know if there after reports out of the region to that effect. >> status of -- [unintelligible] have you had a recommendation to the white house is saying we don't recommend -- >> i was of the offer that there are no decisions had been made on arms sales -- i will simply offer that there been no

decisions made on arms sales to taiwan. we could he to work on this decision on a daily basis, consistent with our obligations of the taiwan relations act, the united states will provide it to tie want the self defense capabilities it requires. >> would you say a possible contradiction should your department or the u.s. government decide later on that sold toill not be taiwan on the one hand. on the other hand, the report that the military balance on the taiwan strait is continuing to the move -- continuing to move to the advantage of china? there is a potential contradiction there. are you concerned? >> as i said earlier, it is a challenging security and farm across a number of dimensions, not just one. and not just a security environment where you take the

tipping point question and turn it around where there is a syllable of double all of a sudden change everything. we are commit -- whether it's a silver bullet double all the sudden change everything. we're committed to working with taiwan and the one-china policy to make sure it has the self defense capabilities that it needs across a range imagines. kev -- range of dimensions. >> to detail any military scene is going on between the u.s. and china at the entrance of transparency? in the aircraft carrier trowels, will there be any action between the two sides for the first high-profile event? >> we have gauged with -- have engaged with the pla on a number of working level discussions and

meetings over the course of the year. i would be happy to make sure we can provide you or anybody else that is interested with the full list. but since secretary gates went in january of this year, we have the defense policy coordination talks, which are held at -- at my level we've had a working group meeting of the cult of agreement. just last week there were a number of people from my team here in the pentagon and the joint staff that were in beijing at working level discussions. transparency, a number of other related issues. there is at a fair amount of stuff that has been going on at the working level, even as we also had these senior level contacts. the one other thing that i would point to is that, as many of you may know, we've established a

strategic and economic die like this year -- strategic and economic dialogue this year, something secretary gates called for when he was in china in january to allow us to discuss sensitive security issues. it those things might be most troubling for stability in the bilateral relationship. a setting that brings together both civilian and military leaders on both sides at a fairly senior level. that is not strictly a mill- mill engagement but it speaks to our engagement to deepen these sorts of dialogues with the people's republic of china. >> where does a separate capability it fit into the mattress of china's development -- where does cybercapability fit into the metric of china's development capability that you describe is potentially

destabilizing? >> i guess i should do a commercial here that says this is really a report, and i say this with all sincerity, that we do want to let you speak for itself. -- that we do want to allowed to speak for itself. there is really good stuff here. it is no secret, again, that cyber is a realm where deeper engagement between the united states and china, said that we can work on common rules of the road and away forward, is necessary. we have some concerns about things that we have seen, and we want to be able to work through that with china. >> you know that is a report that is subject to link the interagency review, but it was also due in march. can you give us any more insight as to why it took so many months to actually do this? were there any sticking points in interest discussions about this?

> -- internal discussions about this? >> i realize i could conspiracy is a lot more fun than just this simple truth the bureaucracy's grinding away on a daily basis. this is a very, very complex and important set of issues, which i know you all appreciate. to turn out a good product and to turn out a good product of -- we were able to coordinate across the u.s. government, because we think it benefits greatly from that sort of coordination. it simply took time. i wish that it didn't, i wish we had been able to turn it out quicker, but i think the results, when you have the chance to read through the recport, speak to the benefits of taking the time to really turn out a product that i think -- and i don't just say this

because i am paid to say at -- but i think it has a lot of good coach and content and analysis. -- cogent content analysis. in the back? >> i did not see any discussion of china holding america's debt, and had d.c. this play into the largest a pretty picture between the u.s. -- how to use see this play to the larger security picture between u.s. and china? >> that reads a little bit outside the scope of the report, and, frankly, outside the scope or expertise of the department of defense. i will simply say that this is obviously an extraordinarily complex economic relationship that we have with china. and an extraordinarily complex relationship that creates challenges on both sides. i know we're seeing a lot of

extraordinarily high level attention from both our leadership, including vice president biden on his trip the other week, and for china's leadership. >> you mentioned some of the humanitarian and disaster relief kind of work that the chinese navy is engaged in. how great of an emphasis can you see them placing on those operations? do you see it almost as great an emphasis as the u.s. has placed on it, or do you see it staying aside mission? >> china is in the relatively early stages of engaging fully in the region and at the international community as a provider of those sorts of goods and services. but as i said, this is something that we've view as a positive development, and we want to encourage china to join with the united states and our other allies and partners in the region and around the globe and provide those sorts of capabilities and those sorts of assets.

china that helps to respond at to the threats of piracy, a china that helps to respond to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief needs and that is playing that sort of positive and constructive role in global affairs -- that is a very good thing for the united states, that is a very good thing for the region, that is a very good thing for the world. >> are they interested in the same regions the u.s. are -- is their divergence there? >> this is a question you should address to vote on the chinese side to get a sense of their current thinking. they are still, as i said, in the relatively early stages of developing our own thinking as to how they are going out into the world and to conduct these operations. they have something close to 18,000 folks who have participated in peacekeeping operations in recent years, which is a sizable contribution.

that is a number of different peacekeeping missions. barry back row -- very back row there. >> how to deal is that? can that development be seen in a process like -- [inaudible] >> this is something that, as i said, does not come as any surprise to us. this was double that the chinese had been working on for a number of years. -- this was a development that the chinese have been working on for a number of years. it was not at all out of character or out of the norm of these sorts of development, given the trajectory of the china's military modernization efforts over the past couple of decades. whether or not this proves to be a net plus for the regional for the globe or proves to be something that has destabilizing

effects and raises blood pressure in various regional capitals i think remains to be seen. again, not to sell a broken record, but underscores -- not to sound like a broken record, but underscores the boards of having those stylish -- the importance of having these dialects to have a greater understanding. >> you have been -- the report talks about the other naval capabilities that the chinese have been developing. what kind of capabilities in here do you find most noteworthy are troubling or concern? >> again, there is no single capability that i find to be either most noteworthy are most troubling or most of concern. it is the overall trajectory of

china's military modernization efforts and the fact that they are working across a number of different dimensions of power in that istime commadomain something we need to keep an eye on. we need to ensure that we in turn have the capabilities in place to safeguard our national security interests, need to work with our allies and partners on their capacities and their capabilities. again, we need to engage with china so that we can have a better a deeper understanding of how both -- how we are each approaching issues in the naval and maritime domain. we can have one last question. >> it past years are any guide, china will react angrily to this report. it seems that they resent the

enterprise itself, let alone the context. is china mistaken in thinking this report is a hostile act towards china? have you ever receive more nuanced feedback from chinese counterparts on this report? >> my expectation, like yours, is that our chinese friends will likely have critical comments to say about the issuance of this report. as we have tried to explain to them in our military-to-military engagements, the report can be read -- and i hope they do look at it as an encapsulation of these words of questions and issues that we have questions about, that we would like to be able to engage in discussion and dialogue. it is our sense that if we are able to have that sort of robust, reliable, continuous military-to-military dialogue, that will lead to more positive relationship between the united states and china and will help contribute to regional stability

and security. thank you all very much. i hope that was helpful. >> writing about today's pentagon report, the associated press says the report says "beijing has closed critical technological gaps and is modernizing its military equipment all with an eye towards preventing possible u.s. intervention in a conflict with taiwan. elsewhere in washington, a lot more coverage ahead of the dedication on sunday of the martin luther king jr. memorial read tonight at 7:00 eastern, a gala honoring global leaders for peace. there will be speeches by people like ron kirk and former

secretary of state madeleine albright. that is at 7:00. our coverage continues on thursday, too, as we bring you a look at civil-rights pioneers. among those speaking tomorrow, attorney general eric holder. all this is leading up to sunday's dedication of the martin luther king memorial, which will get underway at 11:00. we will have coverage on c-span, online at c-span.org, and at c- span radio. for politics and public affairs, nonfiction books and american history, is the c-span networks. it is available to you on television, radio and online, and on social media sites. search, watch and cheer our programs any time with the c- span video library. we are on the road with the c- span bus and content vehicles, bring the resources to local communities and showing events around the country washington your way. the c-span networks -- created

by cable, provided as a public service. ♪ >> notice the color of the bourbon. the amber color uc is coming from the jar on the inside of the barrel. this is where bourbon gets all of its color and a lot of its flavor. currently, they have discovered over 200 chemical flavor is just in the oak from the barrel. >> this weekend, we highlight

frankfort, kentucky on booktv and american history tv. throughout the weekend, look for the street and a literary life of the kentucky state capital. on c-span2, vice, corruption and urban renewal. and the life of night it kentucky cavalry soldier jon porter. on american history tv on c- span3, a visit to the buffalo trees distillery, one of only four in operation during prohibition -- for medicinal purposes, of course. and state houses burned to the ground. stop by the third, the old state capitol. this weekend on c-span2 and 3. >> carolyn lerner, the new head of a government agency that investigates whistle-blower complaints, recently said that 80% of whistleblowers regret their decision.

held by th -- she took part in discussions held by the advisory committee for transparency. other panelists include a federal whistle-blower and leaders from the watchdog groups on transparency. this is just over 90 minutes. >> whistleblowing is the topic of today's advisory committee discussion. today we will explore whether we have struck the right balance between encouraging whistleblowing at protecting confidentiality. we will also examine whether a whistle-blowers' are sufficiently protected against retaliation and look at whether the internet has changed how we talk about these issues. today's event is hosted by the advisory committee on transparency, which is a project of the sunlight foundation that brings together an association of organizations to educate policymakers on transparency

issues. you can find out more information at transparencycaucus.org. i would like to thank the cochairs for making the space available to us. i will beg your indulgence, i am at a little sick. hopefully i will not sound too strange today. at the far end the table as carolyn lerner, recently confirmed special counsel for the office of special counsel. next to her is angela canterbury, the director public policy on the project on government oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog that investigates government corruption, misconduct and conflicts of interest. next to her is christian sanchez, a border patrol agent and the floor with the customs and border protection agency, part of the department of homeland security. finally, next to me is micah sifry, co-founder and editor of the personal democracy forum, author of "wikileaks and each of

transparency," available now on amzon.co -- on amazon.com and elsewhere. he did not pay me for the endorsement. i would like to start with carolyn with opening remarks. >> can you hear me all right? good morning. i would like to thank the solid foundation and other members of the advisory committee on transparency for organizing this event. i also want to thank chairman gley for rep quick sponsoring this. this is my first public speaking engagements since i was sworn in as special counsel six weeks ago. it is especially meaningful to be with you today. though i've only been on the job a short time, i feel some urgency to reinvigorate this important agency. i am beginning and a time when our country is in a fiscal

crisis, and as congress tries to tighten the budget, osc's role has never been more important to. at the office of special counsel is a small agency with a big mission. we promote government accountability, efficiency and transparency by providing a safe channel for government employees to report waste, fraud and abuse or threats to public health and safety. government workers are in the best position to auncover wrongdoing. study after study demonstrates that insiders, employees, are the single best source for identifying costly wrongdoing and harm. one recent study in the private sector shows that outside regulators and auditors uncover corporate fraud in only one out of six cases. it is the people inside companies who are most likely to report wrongdoing, because they are the ones who know about it. though these employees perform

an important service, the same private sector study found that 80% of the missile was regretted coming forward because of the name -- 80% of that whistle blowers were guarded, ford because of the negative consequences they suffered. about 80% of the people who come to our agency with the disclosures often in that report retaliation as well. this is a culture that must change. whistleblowing is crucial to making a large institutions more accountable by improving transparency. in the federal over -- and of the federal government should be setting the pace. public servants need to feel confident that they can speak out without fear of retaliation. the government is held accountable for correcting any misconduct that they uncover. creating environment inside the government where open dialogue about problems is accepted and

indeed encouraged is one of my goals as special counsel. in the office of special counsel -- and the office of special counsel is especially able to do this, given its independence. when it is down listthe o -- when it established the osc, is understood for the agency to be effective it must have freedom. while i was nominated by president obama and confirmed by the senate, i do not serve at the pleasure of either the president or the congress. i have a fixed term of five years, and no matter how good a job in do, and i hope is very good, i cannot be reappointed. this unique status ensures that the office of special counsel is not subject to influence or pressure when we conduct investigations or make prosecution decisions. we are able to advocate on behalf of the lowest level employee against the highest

ranking official in agency. osc is also unique because unlike inspectors general, we are not tied to any one agency, and with few exceptions, we have the ability to hold any government agency accountable. congress has mandated that we make it a priority to help a whistle-blowers'. although we are a small agency with a very small budget, about 5% of the budget of military, as mike mentioned, our provides enormous value to taxpayers. it is reflected in save lives, improve government efficiency, some of the cost savings for the federal government. -- significant cost savings for the federal government. disclosures from the federal aviation administration whistleblowers have helped to avoid costly tragedy that could have resulted in the loss of hundreds of lives and billions of dollars. whistle-blower disclosures to os c that is a for flights, the

cancellation of unsafe flight patterns, correcting safety hazards in air traffic control towers. in 2005, hurricane katrina cost the federal government $127 billion. that did not stop the army corps of engineers from attempting to install an untested and potentially flawed flood protection system when a more reliable and less expensive option was available. if the whistle blower had not come forward to osc to report the unsafe practices, the same devastation connected repeated the next time the hurricane hit the golf. -- gulf. n the health area, osc's efforts have led to better treatment for patients in va hospitals, ensuring that surgical instruments are sterilized and doctors were not performing procedures for which they had no expertise. osc's a conscience are due to

the hard work of the dedicated staff that serves the agency. however, it is no secret that prior to my arrival at the agency, it was wracked by controversy and had been without senate-confirmed leadership for 2.5 years. it is going to take time to rebuild this agency. it will take collaboration with each of the agency's stakeholders to do so. everyone in this room has an interest in osc's successful enforcement of good government laws. as we move forward, i want to hear from you about how thae osc can best serve the public interest. for congressional staff in the room, i encourage you to work with my office and refer concerns about retaliation. we want to be a resource and make sure that the complaints are handled quickly and well. finally, while there is much to be done, there are very real limits on what the office of

special counsel can actually do under present law. osc is currently hampered by court interpretations of the whistle-blower law. these interpretations have narrowed the protections intended by congress and also dissuaded osc from seeking disciplinary action against wrongdoers. we will look forward to working closely with many view as congress considers legislation to strengthen the whistle-blower protection act. a stronger whistle-blower law will allow employees to feel safe coming forward and speaking out in the public interest. while no system of a whistleblower protection will be foolproof, there is no question that in the absence of such protection, the public loses a sure source of information about waste, fraud and abuse. a government employee with the integrity and courage to come forward. in closing, i want to thank the organizers of this event for giving me the opportunity to speak today and i look forward to hearing from the other

panelists and taking your questions. thank you. >> thank you very much. angela. >> good morning. thank you all for coming. thank you, danielle, and sunlight foundation and the transparency caucus, the cochairs. i am the director of public policy at the project on government oversight, also known as pogo. we are on the advisory committee for the transparency caucus. my organization for 30 years has worked with whistle-blowers, both in terms of uncovering wrongdoing and exploring solutions through investigations. also, we were to improve protection for whistleblowers. we are not alone. we work with doesn't ever really dedicated, wonderful -- with dozens of a really dedicated, wonderful nonprofit organizations -- government

accountability project, one of our very solid partners in pursuing possible or protections. the word about our funding and pogo. we take no funds from corporations, unions, no government money. it is just private donations. today we will puzzle over whistleblowing, leeks, wikileaks, the new world order perhaps. but when we are talking seriously about cutting government waste and making government work better, we have to talk about making whistleblowing work. as the country is in the middle of this debt ceiling debacle, budget cuts, our economy is in dire straits, we know what a thing for sure, and that is that whistleblowing save taxpayer dollars, and the best proof of this is the false claims act, which has been a huge success. this is the law that allows citizens to tell us and file a

claim when the government is being ripped off. before the law was changed, this was returning u.s. funds in the order of, you know, 20 million a year. in 1986, senators grassley and berman added an incentive and asked a whistle-blower is to bring more claims for, and if they did and there was a successful return of government funds, they would get a small percentage. after that, every year, we have averaged about $1 billion in returns. last year it was $3 billion. carolyn mention that studies have shown over and over again that was always -- that whistleblowers are incredibly effective. some 5000 corporations world wide showed that whistle- blowers cashmore internal fraud and law enforcement, officers and compliance officers combined. surely you will hear from

kristin, -- shortly, you will hear from kristin, was fought waste of taxpayer dollars, but there are other examples. the national taxpayers union strongly supports a whistle- blower protection, along with other ngo's from across the ideological spectrum. it is also why we are very dismayed that right now, the proposed budget for fiscal year 2012 has a nonsensical proposed cut of about $2 million for the office of special counsel. we think that is the wrong way to begin to heal the agency and restore it. it is the wrong way to save taxpayer dollars. i am convinced every dollar we put into the office of special counsel will apply the taxpayer dollars that we can -- will multiply the taxpayer dollars we can say.

federal whistleblowers are on the front line. sometimes a federal employee is not planning on becoming a whistle-blower at all. they are just doing their job, they are just on the street they come forward, and when they face retaliation is when they realize that maybe they are was lower. many whistleblowers are heroes. but it is only in the movies that they get treated as such. what is it like today to blow the whistle? i am sure christian will share his experience, but for many it is a nightmare. the system is broken, is antiquated, and the law that is designed to protect whistle- blowers, the whistle-blower protection act, has been flawed, has been eroded by flawed court decisions and that administrative practices. as carolyn said, it is essential that we upgraded this law. the mspb, where most law was "

to have the righ -- where whistleblowers go to have claims has added two whistle-blowers between 2008 and 2009. the court of appeals, which has a monopoly on court rubio, approves of the whistle-blower -- are court review, approves of was is, only approved three out of 19 since 1994. you add to this the chilling effect of the administration that has engaged in more prosecutions of disclosure than any other. the message is "be quiet." the result is more leaks. if there were more state channels and better protection for federal employees, there would be fewer leaks. we would have more employees going to those state channels

and warning us when there is wrongdoing. -- safe channels and one is when there is wrongdoing. there is hope, there is an understanding that whistle blowers are guardians and partners in crime fighting. congress has very eagerly in franchise to private sector workers -- enfranchised private sector workers, acknowledge that it is a key component of any accountability plan to have a whistle-blower protections. it is more difficult to convince them to protect federal employees. but the president, and those in the majority and minority in congress, have voiced strong support for a whistle blower protection. of course, we have carolyn lerner as the new special counsel, which is very encouraging. she is quite an advocate for whistleblowers. susan grunman at mspb is also very promising. and there is small bipartisan support for anti--- strong

bipartisan support for anti- leaks, pro-a whistleblower protection measure, and that is the whistle-blower protection act. it was reintroduced this year in the senate by senator akaka, lieberman, collins and grassley. it would close many of these loopholes created by that court decisions. it would expand protections to th -- for the first time there would be protections for national security intelligence workers, those challenging security clearance revocations, which is a very popular form of retaliation. it would expand protections to baggage screeners at airports and to that specific protections to federal scientists -- and give a specific protections to federal scientists. it would allow for more normal access to court. the private sector laws we pass since 2002, those 11 statutes allow for jury trials. federal employees who blow the whistle had been denied jury

trial. the senate bill would allow limited access to jury trials, which we think is an important thing when the administrative process fails. it has some improvements for the office of special counsel. is it everything we have been seeking? is it all that we hoped it could be? no, but it is a pretty good down payment and it would go a long way to improve the circumstances for whistleblowers today. this bill already passed this bill passed in the senate yesterday. there was a red herring that wikileaks embraced in association with the bill. it did pass, in a different version, largely thanks to the white house and partners in congress working hard, and partners of the national taxpayers union.

it was sent over to the senate on the last day of the last congress, and one senator, or maybe two, they hold on it, and left town. this year, chairman issa and ranking member cummins, as well as last year's sponsors have all pledged to move the bill, and we have been working with their staff so we can have a bill was strong bipartisan support introduced shortly in the bill, and we are hoping these reforms will be at least as positive as the senate reform bill, including access to court, and expanded protection for intel and national security workers. whistleblowers are waiting, and many are in science -- silence, and many are without recourse for the retaliation they have

experienced. taxpayers are waiting for the president and congress to deliver on transparency and accountability. i encourage you all to become informed about the bell. staff workers will be happy to speak with you about the bill, and thank you for your interest, and i'm looking forward to our discussion. >> thank you, angela. christian? >> thank you for having me. i never intended to be a whistle-blower, but i am here as a private citizen, speaking on behalf of the border patrol. i am here to speak on the big trail of taxpayers -- beach rail of taxpayers and the amount of money that is being spent on national security. currently, a facility is being built that is approximately $8 million in a small station in washington this region washington. this facility used to be house

by four agents, and now we're up to 40. four agents used to do the job that 40 are now doing. it struck a chord to be at a station where we have nothing to do. you have this new building. they have to house it. they need new agents, new resources, and that is where i have come to terms but if i am working eight hours, i do not need to be working eight hours doing nothing when four agents used to do that. there is administratively on control over time on top of the eight hours that they want us to work, and i simply did not want to work that. it is a burden on the taxpayers right now, especially with the economy, with medicare being cut, with the foreclosures. i had a hard time taking the extra two hours. i am a chaplain, so that was a conflict for me. because of that, retaliation in

the workplace has increased. my family has been terrorized. vehicles have been driving by. so, my mail has been opened. it has been really tasking on my family. to have that in my neighborhood, and i have had my kid just say to my wife "mom, why is he watching us?" it just brings a pause in my wife, and it is testing. she brings the kids inside. the taxpayers are paying us all of this extra money to do nothing on this peninsula, where

there is a water-based border. canada is pretty far away. we are just driving around the peninsula, and because i have spoken out about this administrative uncontrollable overtime, they have started retaliating, and other agents will take it. it is free money. if you give it to us, we both expected. it is just like the facility. if you give them $8 million they start buying resources. to put it in perspective, auo for 40 agents is about $3 million in salaries. supervisors, another thing for taxpayers, they have a government rides, and they

seldom go out for the intended purpose, a patrol of the border, our national security. >> could you talk about what you did before you transferred to this office? >> before i did this, we work in san diego, in a rural area. gangs and all kinds of activity with a crossover in multitudes of more than 40. we would run up into the mountains, and it could be a single agent, myself, or someone else, and we would apprehend 40 by ourselves. that was part of the job. that is something we would not blank. sure, the danger is there, but on the northern border, there is nothing to do. there are no gangs. i have not seen it. it is rare. a lot of the agents are really just going stir crazy for not

doing anything. they are trying to go back to where they knew they had activity on the southern border. here, we are spinning our wheels. as a chaplain, i have heard other agents say they are getting depressed. all of this spending because they want to man that facility. >> so, when you moved from where you were before, where you are busy all the time, to where you are now, where you basically have nothing to do, you were saying they have been mistreating you, driving by your house, and things like that -- can you talk about that a little more? >> sure, the retaliatory effects started since i stopped working my administrative uncontrolled over time.

i've voiced that we do not need to take this money at the cost of taxpayers. so, i have been interrogated. i was interrogated for five hours for speaking up -- continual five hours. repeatedly, supervisors have asked me to go get psychological treatment. it has been things like that that have been tasking. they have taken away shift supervisory duties that normally a senior agent takes. my days have been taken away. just a bunch of retaliatory things -- anything is an excuse to write me up for insubordination. i seldom ever speak about anything. sometimes our briefings, the morning briefing is when you

get a detailed assignment, and those will left up to three hours because we have nothing to do. -- last up to three hours because we have nothing to do. we are spinning our wheels. that is part of some of the retaliatory duties -- retaliatory things have happened. the last one was my chaplain duties taken away. >> thank you. we will talk about this more later on. thank you. micah? >> thank you, daniel. thank you, sunlight foundation, and representatives issa and quickly for setting up this committee. i think it is appropriate that we are meeting today to talk about strengthening whistle- blower protections, not only because it was 233 years ago

that the continental congress actually enacted the first whistle-blower protections -- i do not know if you picked this date knowing this, it was july 30, 1778. also, with the country focused on this debate over the debt ceiling, which is all fundamentally about how we spend taxpayer money, you would think that if congress wanted to demonstrate more seriousness about saving the taxpayer money, that they would add funding to the osc, rather than trying to subtract funding, and similarly they would be adding funding for the government programs like data.gov instead of wacking those budgets as well. it is penny wise and tom foolish.

i do not know how many of you have had the chance to read the paper today. there is of great, appropriate story and "the new york times" which i thought would be worth mentioning to frame my remarks. the headline is -- "bearing rash."of train cas there was a terrible railroad crash that killed more than 40 people. the official chinese news paid very little attention to it, but meanwhile social media in china, which is as robust, or even more than here, in the united states, has been all over the story. within minutes there were people on the scene, doing the equivalent of tweeting, and according to this story, there have been more than 26 million

posts, and a lot of them had the effect of uncovering government this behavior such as railway workers literally buried in the head car of one of the trains in the accident. that was to prevent further inquiry into what the cause was, and when bloggers and cover this fact, they spread the news so widely to the government has been forced to dig up a train and spend it out for further -- send it out for further inspection. what does this tell us about the age we are entering? i would argue that we are into an age of mass participation, and we are going to see more and more citizen watchdogging and

citizen whistleblowing taking .lace the con the conversation is going to be about leaks, but leaking is the wrong metaphor. it makes you think we're talking about a little drip of information that is escaping, when, in fact, the correct metaphor, and i am borrowing this point from a harvard professor, we are living in an age of information tsunami. is, or one ofage the questions is, how should government deal with that? under the 20th century model of government that we now have -- the administrative model, the hierarchy rules, and either use they within the rules, or you are punished, when you try to speak out, as christian sanchez

was just describing. pensively, we have to strengthen protections for people on the inside to speak out, and we also have to recognize that we are seeing the emergence of a whole new paradigm with the boundaries between what government is and what the public is getting blurred, in the same way the old lines between businesses and consumers are also boring. so, i think it is also -- .lurring care at so, i think it is important that the reaction can not be to lash out and punish individuals. it is like the boy putting his finger in the dike. what the united states did in response to bradley manning, who is accused of leaking all of this information to wikileaks, was the wrong response. i should mention that bradley

manning is now held for a year, waiting to go on trial. one year. you would think the wheels of justice could move a little faster. but, the response that we sought after wikileaks started publishing -- sa after wikileaks started publishing things like the afghan and iraq war logs, and the state department cables, was not just rhetoric about trying to harass or assassinate julian assange, but the external factors that amounted to extra-legal censorship. a imagine if when the pentagon papers were being published by "the new york times" that the nixon administration would go after the paper suppliers and sit are you going to keep going -- selling paper to the new york times?

that is effectively what senator joe lieberman did in going after companies like amazon and paypal. it is exactly the wrong response, because it is the boy putting his finger in the dike. the flood is will we have to deal with. i would argue that when we try to suppress information in this age, we make it more valuable and interesting. it is called the barbara streisand effect. that is when she got upset because they they geological survey of the california coastline which it because of a geological survey of the california coast line was public -- because a geological survey of the california coast line was published, and she sued to get the pictures of her house removed. all that did was make people more interested in seeing her house. this is only going to rise. it is not going down.

inevitably, all of that media is going to improve more -- include more and more previously privileged information, including information about waste, fraud, and abuse. the question we should be exploring is how do we deal with the tsunami, because we cannot stop it. >> thank you very much. i would like to start in the context of -- we are talking around some terms -- whistleblowing and retaliation. i would like to make them more concrete. what is whistleblowing, and what are the different types of retaliation that people suffer? this might be sort of a good foundation a question as we kick off the discussion. would you like to start with that? >> sure. whistleblowing is shorthand for when somebody sees something

that is wrong, and they report it. in the government context, there are some very complicated hopops that employees have to go through to ensure their reporting of an issue is covered by the whistle-blower protection act. if it is within your job responsibility to on cover waste, fraud, and abuse, and you reported, you are not covered as a whistle-blower. if you make a report of wrongdoing to the person who is doing the thing which you are reporting, you are also not covered. generally, you know something is wrong, and you reported. what was the second definition? >> what is retaliation? >> retaliation is when something bad happens to you for

having blown the whistle, or having come out with the information, in its most simple terms an example is when an employee in the federal government may have his or her duties taken away. we heard an example today about somebody -- mr. christian sanchez's duties as a chaplain being taken away from him, being referred to a psychiatric evaluation. often, it is even more dire, when someone loses their job or is threatened with termination. they could be suspended, they could be transferred, they could be told to move to another state or another duty station -- really, it is any action that has an adverse consequences on someone's terms or conditions of work. that would be considered retaliation in the federal government.

>> good answer. [laughter] >> we certainly ask the right person. so, as a follow-up question, how does the context of the communication effect how we think about it? you could go and tell your supervisor, someone within congress, within the executive branch at osc, go to the press, go and put information on the internet. as people report information in different ways, does that change how we think about whistle blowing and its legitimacy, and should it change how we think about those kinds of things? >> well, it changes the legal protections set are available to the person per s. carolyn lerner mentioned, there is a labyrinth -- person. as carolyn lerner mentioned, there is a labyrinth for -- of

things for people to be considered. as she said, if you report to the person that is doing the wrong doing, or you are the very first person to have disclosed the wrongdoing. this is part of the case law that has eroded congressional intent that we are trying to fix. i would say we would all be better off as a society. we would have a better government, if we just protected all whistle blowing. if everybody got to go to court, and if we did not put so many constraints on what whistleblowing is. we do not live in that world, so the best we can do is try to make more sense of the law, and make it easier for people to come forward. think about if you know you could be retaliated against, and i think most federal employers

-- employees do, as they have gotten the message they are putting their jobs on the line at the very least if they come forth with something that will rattle their office. think about the cost/benefit analysis you might do given this condition. there is not a lot of benefit. in fact, it is 0. it is all cost for a federal employee. if the least we can do if we are not going to incentivize, is at least make it so they can have recourse for their suffering. >> the only thing that i want to add to that, expanding of my remarks from the beginning, is that if you change the culture of government, and this will not happen overnight, but it should be a valuable thing. we should view it as something that helps people progress in

their careers if they disclose waste, fraud, or abuse, or help with these concerns. it should be viewed in a positive way, not as something that should be covered up for the subject of disciplinary action, and it should not require litigation for someone to feel they have protection coming forward. the message has to come from the very head of each agency. we want people to come forward and make these disclosures. it should be, if not compensated financially, it should be rewarded in some way. finding ways to change the culture in our government, i think, is an important first step. >> let me follow up on that. does it matter the context of that reporting? if it is done -- if you try to go through official channels, for example, and even if nothing happens, or worse, you find you

are retaliated against, and you go and talk to the press, for example, should the concept of whistleblowing and the protections that we are in addition, should it go to protect that -- that we are in addition, it should go to protect that, or are we starting to go to far? >> the context should not matter. the forum, or the context for making a protected disclosure should not matter. it is not relevant. >> i would also like to add on to what carolyn said about leadership and changing the culture. i have a lot of hope you will be able to encourage culture change by working with the agencies. i think they had ignored whistle-blowers in the best of cases, and worse have punished them, or turn them into villains

instead of heroes. but, we need to address the fact that we also have a president who has been very supportive in speeches and behind the scenes in terms of working for stronger protections for whistleblowers. even as an attorney, he represented a whistle-blower, and work on a case for a whistle-blower. i think he really does understand the value of whistle- blowers, but i do not know that everybody got a memo in the administration. the memo they did get after wikileaks was shocking. so, at the end of last year, well, actually, it was january 3 when the memo came out, but they were scrambling between christmas and new years to come

out with something. omb came out with a reasonable response -- please develop how your handling information, supervision, your employees, and your management of employees, your reviews -- ok. this all seems like a reasonable response, until you look at the checklist the attached which said "hey, agencies, do you ask your employees if they are grumpy? do you evaluate their pre and post-employment and visits to web sites like wikileaks?" alarm bells go off, and we sent a letter to some of our partners and said are you really asking agencies? is this the guidance you are giving? we have civil liberties

concerns, employee rights concerns, whistleblower rights concerns, and we think this message is off. the meeting resulted from that letter, and we were told a call right.e rig"you are we messed up. these are just things that were in some agencies, and that list that you are concerned about came from the intelligence community. -- community." now, those are legitimate in terms of the intelligence community. that is really different. they said we also agree, there are concerns. they said we would like to put into balance the civil liberties and whistle-blower protections you are concerned with. we said why don't you put that

into a letter, another memo, and we are still waiting for that. >> there is a similar action in congress for access to wikileaks was caught off both for congressional staff, and both the library of congress. there is sort of a willful blinding to the nature of the information that had been made available where also executive branch employees were threatened with punishment if they were to either during work hours or otherwise go to any of these sites, and it seems like this is sort of a cutting off of valuable information. as more and more of this information becomes available, maybe this is sort of a good, more broad information-sharing question. does it make sense to have the

government say there are places you can look for in for asian -- look for information, areas you can not, areas where you will be punished, whether it is on public time, or free time? is this a sensible response? you can guess what i think, but assuming there is classified information that is being made available through releases on wikileaks or elsewhere, what would an appropriate governmental response be to something like this? >> well, i will take that. for starters, the idea that there are 2 million people to 3 million people with security clearances and access to "classified information" is an absurd. when so many people have access to secrets, they're not really secrets. so, i think it is time to dust off a copy of daniel patrick moynihan called the report from

moynihan's report from 1996-1997. the government does have secrets to keep, and should focus on those, but at the same time it should be regulated a great deal of stuff that is now almost like a system that is out of control. you know, the lesson of bradley manning is when that many people have access to classified information, all it takes is one person. the weakest link, if you will. who, maybe for reasons of conscience, maybe he was having emotional problems, whatever it is, the weakest link is the place where you have to worry

about a failure happening. so, the right answer is focus first on the things that are truly important to keep secret, and strengthen your procedures for protecting that kind of information. at the same time, the rest of the government -- i think we need to move into a philosophy that what government does should be published by default, and secret only when necessary, and not the opposite. this is the 21st century. it is going to happen either because of enlightened action on the part of government, or because we, the people who pay for government, will do it to government, and that will be messy and disruptive. i will give you an example of how this could work. in a less charged area then national security -- when president obama came into

office, one of his first priorities was the spending on recovery. congress passed a huge $780 billion spending package. one of the things he said he would do to involve the public in helping watch that this money was actually being well spent which create a web site called recovery.gov, and he made a couple of speeches where he said we will invite you to help report whether the money that was supposed to be spent on expanding a local elementary school, is actually being spent properly, and it is not just going into the pockets of the nephew of the mayor. but, recovery.gov has never really involve the public in a new way. they have a number you can call,

or an e-mail address you can send tips to, but the idea of engaging week, the people, and inco creating better, more effective government -- co- creating better, more effective government, and also changing the way government works and restoring trust in the government -- when you hear stories like christian's of a small agency allegedly just wasting money, that is fodder for people sang for get it. the government is only the problem and not -- forgesaying forget it. the government is only the problem and not the solution. this idea of engaging at all of us in helping government work

better, it can be adopted by liberals and conservatives alike, because at the end of the day people want smarter, more effective government, more efficient government, and they do not care whether it is big or small. to bring this back to how we approach the issue of whistleblowing, i think the philosophy needs to be that we need to encourage it, we need to reward agencies for having more waste, fraud, and abuse being uncovered, rather than less, and they need to be supported because they think right now that they will be public -- punished because this is a sign of failure, right? if we're going to fix our government, we have to except the we are going to root out some failure along the way, and this is natural to the business world. google's philosophy is fail quickly, and in government, you are not allowed to fail once.

that is why we are still see in this culture of punishing the whistle-blower rather than giving them an award. >> lots to talk about there. recovery.gov, while disappointing in bringing crowd sourcing of government to a new level did have a remarkably low incidence of fraud and waste, and was more transparent than we have ever had before, and it has become the model for government- wide reduction of waste and fraud, and to create a similar website for government-wide financial spending. the president issued an executive order about one month ago to create that. one of our inspectors general, who led the recovery act board,

will now be doing this new board, and chairman issa has a bill to create a similar board, and to create data standards, so that the money we are spending, whether it is reported by the agency or the recipient of government funds, will be able to track it for the first time. there are some interesting first-time transparency policies on the horizon, but to go to line with government and citizens blur, i think those lines are becoming harder. i think the walls are going up. when you have members of congress that have to fund raise, and our of looking at a limited spending by special interests in their election, it means they're going to be representing fewer and fewer

public interests, and citizen interest, and i think i am seeing more and more of government secrecy in the agencies, while we are pursuing more transparency. transparency means different things to different people. to the president and means participation, collaboration, and that is been great, too. then, the accountability peace might get left behind, and that is the popular aspect of transparency, which is the least popular as a transparency, unless you -- that is the least popular aspect of transparency, and as you are holding somebody else accountable. >> we will get to the audience put the questions, but i had one last question for christian -- get to the audience's questions, but i had one last question for

christian. you saw the bad things happening, and you try to respond to it. can you talk more about the process and the push that you received, and how this plays out? >> initially, i wrote a memorandum to my patrol agents, or my assistant patrol agent in charge, describing we would get 12 new agents, and that we would need a purpose, we would need a mission. that supervisors were board. i, myself had been held by one of my supervisors, and it was one of the reasons i wrote a memorandum -- he had nothing to do. he tells me before the shift. i explained that if we do not have any purpose, you will get a backlash with agents that have nothing to do, and that is something we will start seeing

not only for myself, but with others ever articulated that they are depressed. i have walked into a meeting, it was video conferencing, and it was between other specialty details, and i told them i did not have to be there if it was private, but the premise was detailing the boredom of agents on the other side, in other stations, and that this is a problem. so, they are aware that boredom is a problem, and we are wasting taxpayer dollars when these resources could be shifted to other areas where we have an inflow or an influx of gains, and illegal aliens -- gang is, and illegal aliens. because i voiced that, retaliation has started, and it has been pretty taxing on myself

and my family. ask four're going to questions from the audience. -- ask for questions from the audience. we have a microphone. it sounds like it is working. we have one in the back, in the blue shirt? >> my question is to you, miss carolyn lerner. it seems to me in the great tide of government waste, fraud, and abuse, a big slices in the united states military. my question to you is what is your office planning on doing to expand your presence into the military, and i am not talking about acquisitions. that is bad and off. i'm talking about the day-to-day operations of the military, getting stories like your own, and dealing with the exploding costs of day-to-day operations

in the pentagon. >> that is a great question. the department of defense, obviously has an active office of inspector general, and we have already been in touch with folks in that office, and hope to work closely with them. to the extent that our office is limited in terms of what we can investigate, we cannot just go after the department of defense. if we need to have a specific complaint, a specific disclosure. so, in order to do an investigation, where to -- or to bring the attention of a problem to an agency head, we have to be on the receiving end. so, to that extent, we are somewhat limited, but to the extent that we can work with agency's inspector general's, we will do so, and one of the things i am doing is sitting on

the council of the inspector general's, where i need a very regularly with the inspector general's from each of the agencies, including the department of defense, to talk about these issues. >> just a brief follow-up -- the problem from my own experience, as i was in the military for five years, is there is not an avenue like a recovery.gov for troops to report waste, fraud and abuse. if you are going to be an inspector general, they deal with complaints about what my commander is doing. the problem is there is not a resource for these guys to blow the whistle. >> they can come to the office of special counsel. [laughter] >> i encourage that. other than going to be ig, i am

not aware of any other out but, but i hear your concern, and it is an and portent one. >> that need follow up briefly. -- other our lives, but i hear your concern, and it is an important one. >> did you have the power to start an investigation on your own, or do you have to wait until a complaint is brought to you? >> we cannot go after something we read about in the paper or hear about. we actually have to have somebody come to us and say i am aware of a situation. this happens to our disclosure unit. it is a little bit different when somebody has a claim of retaliation. the office of special counsel does not just deal with disclosures and whistle-blower complaints. we have a broad mandate, dealing with complaints from members of the military under the reemployment rights act.

we deal with cases that have taken more and more of our time recently, and we deal with all types of prohibited personnel practices, not just retaliation complaints after somebody has blown the whistle. things like sexual orientation discrimination, political affiliation, marital status, and other types a prohibited -- of prohibited actions are under our jurisdiction. >> how many people are in your office? >> the agency has 110 full-time employees, and we have three field offices -- 1 in detroit, one in oakland, and one in dallas, and we have about 3000 complaints each year, so we have a lot to do with very few resources. >> other questions? in front? >> i have two sides of the coin

for christian. one is on the wasteful spending -- when agents are not driving the baja 500, and they are stuck in the office, how do they spend their time if there is no case work to do? the other question is about retaliations, and if there have been any other invasions of your family's privacy besides sitting in front of the house while you're at work, were opening your mail? >> to answer the first question, i witnessed a supervisor play a musical instrument the whole 10 hours of our shift. that is pretty much one indication that a supervisor

lets me know there is no work to do if the supervisor is playing his instrument all day long for his honor guard. there is nothing to do. another agent has told me that he has seen another supervisor with his gun belt off, and his feet propped up on the desk, reading a 300-page book. those are to illegal examples or i have seen a surprise three management -- two examples i have seen of supervisory and management but nothing to do. we are just following their leadership. your second question -- when my wife and i go to my lawyer's office, we have had vehicles taking pictures of us coming out of nowhere, and the opposite traffic, where we see flashes towards our vehicle, and also at his office, my children will notice that somebody is looking at us, and my wife and i will

noticed someone was taking ictures of us from the ankgle of the building we were about to enter. >> it sounds like they have found something to occupy their time. unfortunately, not the right thing. we had a follow-up question? >> this is kind of a follow-up to the question that was asked by the gentleman who said he was in the military. for the people that are in the government, it seems it there are limited forms. it might not be something they would automatically do -- go to the ose, or the hotline and reports something. on the discussion of this new age of transparency, and other

vehicles that allow people to report information, the two you have any ideas on maybe not even government-specific, but for any organization, where they are getting away from the word whistle-blowers, but looking for disclosure on things that might not be right, or things that might be done better? if there is something that seems promising to allow employees of any organization to make those disclosures in the new era of web access, where people can report things, and blog on things? is there something beside the basic requirements and laws that surround whistle blowing and the formal structure that seems to be promising in terms of the area of getting people comfortable to go out and make disclosures of any type? do you have any ideas on that?

>> i think one thing about the new age is to the degree is in power in people that want to remain anonymous we are talking about whistleblowing, which typically in -- empower people who want to remain anonymous. we're talking about whistleblowing, and typically there are risks that come with that. we're talking about a phenomenon of people making anonymous tips to police organizations, or relative authorities. one thing that is coming, and we will probably see first signs of this later this year is in the wake of wikileaks, there is a new project called openleaks, which is designed to deal with the obvious problems of

wikileaks, which is to say they have a lot of power all centralize in the hands of one individual who is, let's say, a bit controversial, and who has his own agenda about what information should be used for. open leaks is being built by programmers who used to work with wikileaks, and their goal is to make it easy for lots of organizations to receive information anonymously, to verify the validity, and make it available to responsible media. so, once that happens, i think we will see a sort of digital version of more whistleblowing taking place by insiders who do not want to risk retaliation. angela, you said something interesting in your opening remarks, if i heard you correctly about if we do not

strengthen the laws to strengthen the -- to channel whistleblowing appropriately, then we will see more leaking. i think that is right. it is not just leaking now. it is a flawed. it will grow as people realize that the benefits can outweigh the costs. >> well, i also agree with your point about over-classification being a huge contributor to the problem, and we should only be keeping secret our legitimate -- information that should be legitimately classified. in all, my organization has been one of a handful of organizations that have served as a count of outlet for those that have been for mission that they want to disclose. -- has a kind of out with for those that have information that they want to disclose. if we get hundreds of calls per

month. when we are able, when we have the resources, when there is a systematic problem, or one of great importance to the american public, then we will use our resources to help get that information out, and find solutions to the problem, but we cannot do it all. we certainly, right now, are not doing it in a way which opened weeks would provide, or another venue. -- open weeks would provide, or another venue. there are on limited places for people to use social media, but where is the -- on limited places for people to use social have itbut where do they tel mean something? we were urging people to say openly that they were getting

ripped off by this company, or the fees were high over here, and we are going to continue to urge them to do that, but we had to pass a lot to get the consumer product agency to do the same thing, and that was really cost. industries do not want this information out there. i would say it is not going to come from government first. it is going to come from innovators the outside. -- innovators outside. >> we just did a survey of congressional websites from many different types of content, and one thing that we look that was how many pages have a place where people can engage in whistleblowing, and i think it was on the four or five congressional committee websites had a place featured where you can go in and either get instructions, or file a

complaint to the committee. i forget the exact number, but there is maybe something like 58 congressional committees, and two/three are engaged in over said. there are a lot of people that are engaged, but the sites to not have a way for them to engage in this reporting. there are things that can be done to encourage this kind of communications. i also want to highlight something that micah said in his book, and it is a kickoff to all of you. he wrote "whistleblowing is a vital part of a healthy democracy, and a healthy global culture. for people in positions of power, the knowledge that what they are doing might someday be leaked or otherwise exposed

could shift behavior jinnah better direction." so, the question that i have, or one of the questions that i have, is we are starting to see more information becoming available in these types of ways. whether it was 30 or 40 years ago where newspapers played this new role with pentagon papers, too much more recently when anonymous comments and blogs, and these things are changing the social dynamics of what is going on, where the merging of smashing up data helps reveal trends that would be hidden otherwise. by putting together different datasets, we can find out interesting things about people giving a donation two days before a vote, and happen to be the people that gave the money where opponents of that amendment. you can start to see these connections. we are seeing this happen again and again. there is more information available in useful formats, and

we are able to draw more of these connections. what i want to know, since this is happening, is this changing the behavior of government? is the response to clamp down? we have seen prosecution's through the obama administration. is it to open up in different ways to avoid engaging in otherwise inappropriate behaviors? what are you seeing on the ground? what is happening? >> i am seeing not just one thing. certainly, there is a nation, a growing open government -- nation, growing open government culture, and we are talking about people getting together and thinking about how to make agencies more open. what information is considered

high value? if you get the right people in the room, public affairs, talking to the technology people, for the first time, and thinking about government service in a different way, it is very positive, although it is just beginning. there are success stories, but over time, and this will take time to change cultures, especially those resistant to change, but on the other hand, we really have a national security -- i do not know what the word is. it is almost like its own government. it is almost like its own entity. the national security mindset, the national security community -- the buzz word that we have given people a pass for a really long time, especially since 9/11

on pulling the national security. whenever they want to keep things secret. sometimes it is easier to keep things secret, to do things the way you have always done it. it is not always for nefarious reasons. agents -- agencies are the ones withholdly seeking to more and more information, and those that have something embarrassing to hide, also are similarly seeking more exemptions from the freedom of information act, and we are all the time dealing with those. so, i think it is a mixed bag. eventually, there will be a tipping point, where there is so

much information out there, and we have to get to the point where it is easier for information to get out. right now, the process is so designed to require requests for information, so we need to do, for example, label records at birth, so they can automatically be disclosed, instead of, you know, being put into boxes, and requiring people to send the in -- "please send me this." we are getting there, and we are edging toward it, but it will take some time and some work. >> ok. yes? the lady in the front, please? >> when we talk about federal employees, i think we use that synonymous with folks in the executive branch. are there any ideas of extending protections to those in the executive branch?

>> there is a bell senator grassley for regular civil -- regularly introduces that would provide protections for congressional staff. i do not think it is ever had a hearing. >> there was also a recent narrd employee protections for congressional staff. i don't remember all the details, but unfortunately, folks going to the internal reporting agency and congress, i don't know what these statutory interpretation or constitutional interpretation is, there has been action from a legal point of view on that kind of thing. we do see a continuing distinction between congressional employees and those in the executive and judicial branches in terms of sections that are afforded to them.

>> can i add one thing? and there is a congressional accountability act for not dealing with issues and forcing discrimination, the idea of being the congress would make themselves subject to the same laws that private-sector employers are subject to. it has not worked out quite as well as we all have hope. >> what can someone in that position be doing? if you have a magic wands, what are some of the problems described?

>> i don't know if you have taken your complaint to the office of special counsel yet, but in the past, it has been not advisable. we have had whistle-blowers' come to us and we say to stay anonymous if you can. and think about what you are risking. and now, i think the special counsel will fulfill its role and do investigations in no way that has been not happening for a long time. there is the office of special counsel, there is the inspectors general seeking legal counsel

and help from organizations like the government accountability project. also meeting with members of congress and making them aware of the problem. and the members of congress, some committees and some members of congress work very hard on disclosures. it depends on what your issue is, whether you're going to have good luck with congress. congress needs to fix the law, mr. sanchez need better protection. >> the second half of that question, how the magic wands.

what needs to be done to change it so that it works better to protect whistleblowers? with the court rulings, which is necessary? what are the changes that need to be made? >> it does a fair job of addressing major concerns with the current law, closing loopholes -- >> if my office is going to be effective, if congress wants to

listen to their constituents to the council and be able to tell them that you're going to be able to get health, and the resources. his agency's budget significantly and expected to handle 4000 complaints a year. in the way that they deserve to be treated. i would say that we are going to work hard to make congress aware that appropriations that are provided to this agency are very well spent. >> what were the overall appropriations? you know? >> congress house representatives in their current appropriations bill has recommended 17.9, so it is in cuts.

the recommended level when the white house asked for was 19.5. we have requested 20 million. it is a tiny amount of money for the type of work the we do. we're also getting more cases a year. it is obviously important, but in terms of really being a robust agency, we need the resources to do that work. >> staying on that subject for a second, the same way that you're

using electronic media and those microphones and cameras to make a strong case for the vital work that you do, i would love to see the office also enter the digital age and embraces both the ability to have a two-way conversation with the public and help educate the public about the value of what you do so that it becomes of little bit of a higher priority, in terms of the funding that you get. >> those are both priorities. making sure its is interactive and providing meaningful information. it is a really high priority during education and outreach.

going out to agencies and doing programs like this one. i am here today because i want to get the word out. it takes resources, it takes people. and do the website and two out reached, all of the things at we need to do. >> the idea that the work of government only has to be done by people hated by government is one of the culture changes that i am arguing for. that will have to get rid of that idea. certain things have to be done by the responsible people, but the fact is, i am sure the

people watching this, not just the people in this room, instinctively think the support and whistleblowers is a vital government function, and they would be willing to help. you are not stuck with only the resources that you get through the formal appropriation. there are these other public resources. it is not just a tool for better communicating out. whether it is whistleblowing, reports of problems that need to be investigated, or other means involving the public. it is we, the people, not weak, the government. that is part of the mission to keep opening up of government.

i would love to work with your office and other offices on ways to tap into the surplus. the same people that post comments and make edits out of the goodness of their hearts would also be happy to donate time, ideas, attention to making government work better. >> i know that we have more questions, we have come to the end of our allotted time. i like to thank our panelists for and lightning us in this conversation. we'll have the next advisory committee in the eighth to timber early october. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> this is the sculptor of dr. martin luther king jr. at the memorial. the dedication is this sunday

and will tell you more about that in a moment, a number of events leading up to the dedication. and the tougher global leaders and peace, including a u.s. trade representative and former secretary of state madeleine albright. and honoring civil rights pioneer is at a luncheon that we will cover with eric holder among the speakers. that is thursday at noon eastern here on c-span. all of this leading up to sunday the twenty eighth marking the anniversary of the i have a dream speech. we will have live coverage from the memorial. president obama will speak. if you miss any of that, we will have that in the video library. what caused the demise of great american newspapers?

the former managing editor takes you behind the scenes of decisions made in boardrooms and newsrooms in "the deal from hell. including kris aquino donnell on her bid for the u.s. senate seat. ronald e. bishop talks with georgetown prof. deborah tannen on the lack of moderation in american culture and the media oppose year-old focusing on the need to want more. coming next month, just for a three-hour conversation with newsweek magazine editor on racism and the role of media and america. watch more video of the candidates and see what political reporters are saying. we have a website for campaign

2012. it helps you navigate the political landscape with updates from the campaign's and the latest polling data. and links to c-span partners. the congressional budget office today announced its latest projections on the federal budget and the u.s. economy. they talked about the potential impact of the recent debt ceiling agreement. this is an hour and 15 minutes. >> in the morning, thank you all for coming. -- good morning, thank you all

for coming. i am the director of the congressional budget office. this morning, cbo released the summer of the day. i would like to briefly summarize the report and my colleagues and i will be happy to try to answer your questions. united states is facing profound budgetary and economic challenges. it will be about $1.30 trillion which equals 8.5% of the country's total economic output or gdp. the long shadow cast by the financial crisis and the recent recession. although output began to expand, the pace of the recovery has been slow, and the economy remains mired in a severe slump.

the recovery will continue, but the output will stay below the potential output in an amount the corresponds to a higher rate of use for several years. cbo initially completed the economic forecast in early july. he then changed the forecast to reflect policy changes, how we did not have time to include other news including the recent slayings in financial markets. on the basis of the data, we project that inflation-adjusted gdp will increase by 2.3% this year and 2.7% next year. incorporating the economic data of the last month and a half would have led us to reduce expected growth. looking beyond next year, federal tax and spending policy

will impose a substantial restraint on the economy in 2013. we project economic growth will slow before picking up again in 2014 and beyond. with only modest economic growth anticipated, we expect unemployment to fall slowly. the unemployment rate shot in the picture behind me is projected to fall from 9.1% to 8.9% in the fourth quarter of this year and 8.5% in the fourth quarter of 2012. and then to remain above 8% until 2014. although inflation increased, it was spurred largely by a sharp rise in oil prices. we expect it will diminish the second half of the year.

there is emphasis that the uncertainty is especially great and because the present business cycle has been unusual in some anyways. many developments can cause a outlooks to differ substantially. if the recovery continues as we expect and of tax and spending policies unfold, deficits will drop as a share of gdp over the next few years. under the baseline projections that generally reflects the assumption that current law will not change, deficit's fall to 6.2% of gdp next year and 3.2% in 2013. the average 1.2% of gdp during the rest of the coming decade. cumulative deficits will total $3.50 trillion under current

law. and by the end of 2021, and that held by the public = 61% of gdp. still well above what the country has experienced over the last few decades. it serves as a benchmark for policymakers to use in considering possible changes. those projections understate the budgetary challenges facing the federal government. changes in policy that will take affect will produce a federal tax system and spending for some federal programs that differ from what people have become accustomed to. the baseline projections in this report include the following policies specified in current law. first, certain provisions

including extensions of lower rates originally enacted in 2001, 2003, 2009, and 2010 expire at the end of 2012. second, the extension of provisions designed to limit the reach of the alternative minimum tax and the one-year reduction in the payroll tax will expire at the end of 2011. third, sharp reductions in medicare payments for physicians will take effect at the end of 2011. funding for discretionary spending declines over time in real or inflation-adjusted terms. and the official deficit reduction totaling $1.20 trillion over the next decade will be implemented as required under the budget control act.

all of these policies are in current law and clear role in the current law of projections. if some of those policy changes did not occur, much larger deficits and a much greater debt could result. most of the provisions that were originally enacted were extended rather than allowed to expire. if the alternative minimum tax was indexed for inflation and if cuts to medicare's payment rate for providers were prevented, cumulative deficits shown by the lower line in the picture behind the would be nearly $8.50 trillion. rather than $3.50 trillion in the baseline projection of current law. it would reach 82% of gdp by the end of 2021, higher than any

year since 1948. beyond the next decade, the rising costs for health care will push federal spending of as a percentage of gdp. policymakers will have to substantially restrain the growth of spending. raise revenues significantly above the share of gdp or pursue some combination of those approaches. my colleagues and i are happy to answer your questions. start by telling us who you are and what organization you work for. >> they said the cbo did not take into account stock-market volatility and some of the economic indicators pointing down in august. can you be more specific? will the lower economic

indicators contribute to a higher deficit going forward? >> as a practical matter, we can't update the forecast every day. we build our budget projections on top of economic projections, so we settled them in early july. the exception is that we need to have budget projections and economic projections that are consistent with each other. we did go back and update the economic forecasts. but otherwise, we have not been able to take on board the news in financial markets, the latest data on non-financial economic activity and the annual revision that has come out since early july. if we have the information on hand, we would have ended up with a somewhat weaker economic growth in the second half of this year.

it would have meant a somewhat larger deficits. we have not done the work we would need to do to quantify that. we still believe taking on the hall of the information available that the economy will continue to grow in the second half of this year. i mentioned, economic forecasting is a perilous business. it is particularly perilous when we have been through a number of years of economic development that are nearly unprecedented in u.s. history. >> your forecast for the unemployment rate seems to show a very gradual decline until we are back to what americans are used to until what looks like 2014. can you give us a sense of the

assumptions there and why those are what you think is the must realistic expectations? >> the most crucial assumption to have in mind is a hooker a lot of fiscal policy. a good deal of the lower tax rates expire. the tax burden rises considerably in 2013 relative to 2012. additionally, there will be reductions in spending in 2013 from discretionary cast. there will be some additional amount of deficit reduction. we did not have a way of determining what policies might be undertaken. so we have taken a very simple approach.

but that accentuated the drama of fiscal stimulus. an important part of what is happening, we have the next few years where we think the forces that have been weighing on the economy will continue and i am thinking of the reduction of wealth, the efforts by households to reduce their debt burdens. we think it will take time for those forces to be worked out. in 2014, there is a large amount of fiscal restraint. we are looking for slow growth and output. and a slow decline in the unemployment rate.

once the fiscal restraint has come on board, we think that the other forces slowing the economy will be waning. we will start building houses again. businesses will do more investing. he by the end of 2013, we are at appoint where actual output is still well below the potential level. we expect at that point that the economy will start to recover more rapidly the way that it has after business cycle downturns. we'll be looking for more rapid growth and a closing of the gap between potential of with in 2017 and the unemployment rate comes back down. >> you were talking about the budget of luck and how there is

more likely a thing that could change that have. what are the things that can change the unemployment outlook? >> a lot less. we talked in the economic chapter about some of the risks of the economy faces. we try to set a forecast for the economy, and projections of the budget better in the middle of distribution. there are both upside and downside risks. those risks include a strong desire by households to pay off debt and rebuild their wealth. it could include a greater uncertainty by households and businesses about the pace of economic recovery and perhaps by government policy as well.

and with european sovereign debt, oil prices have come back down again and could possibly go back up. there is just a tremendous collection of forces that could work to restrain economic growth. whether those accumulate and of that constitutes a recession is a different and harder question. >> there are two parts to the budget deal past of this month. the other is for the super committee that is supposed to be finding savings. in your projections, will there be a long-term difference in the budget picture if the committee fails to do its work? or is the number the same?

>> under current law, there will be an extra $1.20 trillion of deficit reduction. yes, the economic forecast would vary depending on the nature of the fiscal policy changes. for example, if the deficit reduction committee put off the reduction, it would strengthen economic activity and unemployment in 2013. if the committee made particular changes to tax policy, we would try to model the economic effects. is there are different ways of extending the expiring tax provisions, which incorporate marginal tax rates on labor supply.

the of the composition and the timing will leave some imprint on the economic projections. >> [inaudible] >> is not the role of the cbo to a advise congress on what policy they should undertake. the budget picture as we have shown here in this report and in the collection of reports is bleak under current policies. if current policies are extended, who have very large deficits and mounting federal debt. that is not news to anyone on

capitol hill. it is the implication that as lead to the renewed focus over the past year on deficit reduction. but what the right amount is is not for us to say. >> you are saying in 2013, [inaudible] >> we do saint and say in the report as well as on the number of occasions in the past several years that reductions in government spending or increases

in taxes in an economy with a lot of unused resources, and with monetary policy pushing down interest rates to 0, it will slow growth and reduce employment relative to what would otherwise occur. let me be clear about that. the conditions for monetary policy that we find ourselves and that we project would be roughly still true, reductions in government spending or increases in taxes will reduce output and employment relative to what would otherwise occur. at the same time, those actions will be in the second half to higher outputs than would otherwise occur. so there is a tradeoff there in terms of the effects of deficit

reduction enacted and taking effect over the next few years. it is possible, and we have talked about this, how to structure deficit reduction in the way that does not have a large dampening effect on output and unemployment. whilst over -- while still achieving deficit reduction. that would amount, principally, to having the policy changes take effect later. that is not particularly an argument for deferring the decisions, but it is a question at what point in time those policy changes should hit the economy, the advantage awaiting his low or negative impact on

economic growth in the near term. that is the trade-off that policymakers confront. >> $1.20 trillion, do you use something like a half tax increase and have spending cut formula? in other words, how can we explain where the adults will come from, higher taxes, spending cuts, or both? >> a good deal comes from the changes in tax rates and cloth from the expiration of those provisions. and an extra jolt from the caps on discretionary funding in the budget control act. but we have not allocated to spending revenues because we

don't know. we have no basis for making that determination. but what the law says, if the debt reduction committee does not lead legislation, there will be a reduction in spending the obie in each of the nine fiscal years to which it applies. for lack of a better alternative, we have taken that equal reduction. we just picked that as the most neutral choice we could make. we have not allocated into spending more revenues. there is a little bit of complication no. there is spending, something else before you get to the total. i recognize that is awkward, but

we had no alternative that we could pursue. >> of the baseline projection to $3.50 trillion, [inaudible] that is about half of what it was. how do you account for the remaining? >> most of the production and deficits comes from the effects of the budget control act. most of what is left comes from a downer vision for interest rates. both short-term interest rates and long-term interest rates. the essentially follows the movements in market rates. market rates have fallen further so that they are above the rates that are prevalent in

financial markets. the reduction in interest rates has a larger effect on the budget projections. the country has a lot of that. they can save the federal government of a lot of money and higher interest rates can cause the federal government of lot of money. when that is 60% or 70% of gdp, there is also a collection of other changes. we have a nice appendix i go through a piece by piece. >> you don't see any impact? >> we have not tried to estimate the effects for two --

the effects of the downgrade itself. as i said, which did not take the financial or other news except for the passage of the budget control act itself. and in general, we look at models that we have an interest rates in the financial markets. it helps to understand how the rates got to where they are. the downgrade is complicated for u.s. interest rates. for most countries, when people become more worried about the state of the country, the interest rates increase. because treasuries have traditionally been a refuge for people that are worried about uncertainty in the world, it can

lead to some movement into treasurys. people that are concerned about the state of fiscal policy might be moving money out of treasurys. a very complicated set of forces at work. tom glad we don't have assign particular responses to particular events. >> de you have a view on the question of deficit reduction relying solely on spending cuts verses' raising revenues as well? [applause] -- [inaudible] how long do you think congress should wait to impose this without harming the economy? >> you use the word should a few

times, and that does not come naturally from directors. how itt have a view of should be narrowed. what we do have is an analysis of the effects of alternative policy. we have done some of this in a report last year in the cost of deferring action to narrow budget deficits. we have a a little of this qualitatively. the composition of the policy actions to narrow the budget deficit can matter a great deal to the economy. into what sorts of public and private goods and services this country has. i realize we talk about the

need to narrow deficits in general terms. when we look at specific proposals for raising tax revenue, raising tax rates, which we modeled the effects on labor supply and saving. proposing to raise tax revenue by widening the tax space and a producing credit reductions. that might have a positive effect by removing some of the distortions and having those decisions being made based on market signals rather than government subsidies. and down the government spending side, the nature of spending changes can matter. it is difficult for us to model that well. presumably, we provide a greater investments in the country's future and others are related to

current public consumption. on the timing, i think it is a widespread view that decisions about how to put the federal budget on a sustainable path are taken best sooner rather than later. it is not helpful for encouraging household spending, business investment and making the business decisions to hire. we have a tax code that is due to expire. we have potential for large changes in spending programs without knowing what the details are. i think it is a widespread view the earlier resolution of the uncertainty of how fiscal policy will play out will be good in

the near term and over the longer term as well. in terms of when policy changes actually take force, that is more complicated. we think that given the current state of the economy and the current monetary policy, reductions in government spending or an increase in taxes will reduce output and employment relative to what would otherwise occur. they would also benefit reduction in government borrowing. unless he made changes in the medium or long term. the near-term increases in spending with medium-term and long-term fiscal restraint, one would have the benefits of a near-term stimulus.

and one could offset the negative consequences for later in the decade. i recognize that might sound like a bit of a paradox that the economy can be strengthened by tax cuts or spending increases, but to be strengthened in the medium term and beyond what happened or with tax increases and spending cuts. it is not really a paradox, but it is reflecting economic policy. that is how lesson of the analysis that we have done. you can go back and look at the analysis of the investment act in february and march of 12,009. -- of 2009.

by different ways of extending the expiring tax cuts. there is a consensus that these sorts of policies in terms of the overall budget deficit and spending revenues that are most advantageous for economic growth are somewhat different in the next few years than they would be later on because of the particular state that we find ourselves again. >> the number for 2013, 14, and 15 >> there are tables that give the year by year projections.

the unemployment rate on the calendar average is 7.9% in 2014, 6.1% in 2015, 5.4% in 2016, and so on. yes? >> are you saying that the assumption is that there of the $1.20 trillion in deficit reduction and what effect that has on the economic assumptions? >> let me try to do a clearer job. the budget control act and other changes that is imposed, and called for further deficit reduction from special

committee. and the budget control act says to reduce deficits by $1.50 trillion. then there will be automatic reductions in spending over the course of fiscal years 2013 through 2021. the nature of the policy changes, the committee might decide upon and that congress might enact is something that we can't predict. we did need to take on board the amount of deficit reduction because many to have economic projections that line up with budget projections. we need to do something besides the 10-year total. we don't want to be in the business of guessing what specific policies will take effect.

if there is no action by this committee or by congress to enact proposals by the committee, then there will be equal reductions in each of those nine-years in spending. we took the equal reductions and we did not classified as spending because they may propose changes in tax revenues as well. we took the equal amounts year by year that are specified and has a great virtue for being a very neutral sort of assumption. we did not call it the spending or revenues. you will find it in the bottom line for budget deficits. and in terms of the economic effects that fiscal tightening in 2013 compounds, tightening has already affected the specific policies we know about and is a further reason why

economic growth is especially slow in our forecast. >> how can you model that without saying it was [inaudible] >> we have a specific tax proposal, we will of the effects of tax rates. all we're really capturing are the effects on aggregate demand, and later on, the effects of government borrowing on stock and bond output. we did not quantify the effect of that particular extra piece. we do report in chapter 2, in the section on fiscal policy, we estimate of the fiscal restraint stemming from the expiration of provisions and from the budget

control act will decrease of gdp by about 1.5% and 3.5% compared to otherwise. but we only did that experiment once for the body of those proposals. >> how much q estimate that can change, depending on what kind of frustration actually happens here is the they have a good deal of what is actually done? >> it could change for a variety of reasons. the committee can agree on proposals enacted by congress, and it won't take effect at all, or there will be proposals accomplish part of the $1.20 trillion, but not all. there are a lot of possibilities

like that. there is also the further question of exactly how the frustrations will play out. that will not be up to us to decide. we have been asked what we estimate the effect of frustration will be at different parts of the budget. that is a budgetary analysis. the effect on the economy, which could think further about. compared to all of the other -- it is not particularly large. >> [inaudible]

>> if that serves a need for information as well, these are the questions from a number of people on the hill. >> [inaudible] what is the economic impact of the cuts that have already occurred? [inaudible] >> we think that the winning of fiscal stimulus, the growing restraints of fiscal policy is weighing on the output and

employment. in the report, we quantify the effect of the american recovery and investment act, and we report on those effects. will be issuing the report this afternoon. we also quantify in the report the effects of automatic stabilizers, and natural response to taxes and spending, and changes in the economy for 2010. we don't go beyond that to quantify the effect of these particular pieces. i think the question is right that we think that the withdrawal of fiscal stimulus is one of the factors that is

dampening economic growth. the challenge for policy makers is that even though it is being withdrawn, budget deficits will still be very large, and the debt has risen sharply relative to gdp. one of the consequences of large and growing deficits and that that we highlight of last summer his back as it amounts relative to the economy, it reduces the flexibility for policymakers to respond to both domestic and international developments. i think that sort of economic development will be weakness in the economy and it is more difficult for the government to respond to that when that is high. at this point in time, the withdrawal of fiscal stimulus is

slowing the growth of the economy now. and with that as large as it is, accumulating more that has important risks and if left unchanged over the coming years out to the second half of the decade and beyond, it will weigh on output and income. >> have you ever had to do a projection with this much uncertainty and with room for every single variable? >> i arrived in january of 2009. it seems like it has been a pretty uncertain situation ever since then. economic forecasting is a hard business. i spent some time doing that at the federal reserve board and we have people here doing it.

we report every year on the accuracy of the economic forecast because it is an important piece of transparency. we are no worse at it than anybody else. it is harder when one is experiencing variable economic circumstances. there has been no time where we have had a severe recession as we have had now. one can look to other countries that have experienced financial crises and see what has happened in their economy. economies tend to perform quite badly after whole financial crisis. what thet say exactly

causal mechanisms are. it is difficult to know how to apply those lessons to our circumstances. we don't have much experience with this in recent times. it is a particularly uncertain moment. >> does this mean that it may be less trustworthy than other reports? >> i would not put it that way. we have had similar sections about uncertainty in each of the reports i can remember. i don't mean to suggest of this is more uncertain than january, last august, or january of 2010 year ahead what we are trying to do here is provide for the congress, the best assessment that we can.