progress as we try each year to improve our ability to identify those situations, characteristics, and conduct that influence the risk that 18 will smoke, drink, get drunk, use illegal drugs, or abuse control for prescription drugs. over the past 17 years, we have surveyed thousands of american teams and their parents. we have learned how teen attitudes in the attitudes of for server good questions about drug use such as if you wanted to get marijuana, how long would it take to get it? and what portion of parties are alcohol and drugs available? from so many years of research, a child who gets to age 21

without smoking, abusing alcohol, and using illegal drugs is virtually certain not to do so, and no one has more power to influence that decision then to paris. -- then parents. in focus groups we conducted to prepare survey questions, every year we focus on teenagers to make sure the question we ask is the right one and to find out what is on their minds. now teenagers discussed social networking as it relates to substance abuse. for the first time in any of our surveys, in order to explore the relationship, we asked teenagers questions about social networks. there are two other first spirit

of we examine the relationship between 18th and -- there are two other first set. the results are profoundly troubling. this reveals how all the anything goes world of programming on what attitudes put teenagers at sharply increase the risk of substance abuse, and the results drive home the need for parents to better appreciate their power to give children the skills to keep their heads above the water of corrupting cultural currents their children must never gave a curio henry j. -- occurrence

their children have. this puts them at increased risk of not smoking and drug use. compared to teenagers who do not spend any time on a social networking site, those who do are five times more likely to use tobacco, three times more likely to use alcohol, and twice as likely to use marijuana. no wonder. with what is on facebook and other social networking sites for teenagers to see. half of the teenagers who spend any time on social networking sites have seen pictures of kids drunk, passed out, and using triodes. -- using drugs. 14% of those who spend no time on the website in a particular

day have seen this. especially alarming are that almost half of the teenagers who have seen kids drunk or passed out or using drugs on fees both -- facebook were 13 years of age or younger. more than 19% first saw such pictures when they were 15 or younger. this should strike fear into the hearts of parents of young children. unfortunately, the survey reveals most parents do not appreciate erisa's of teenage social networking. nine out of 10 parents -- do not appreciate risks of teenage social networking. nine out of 10 parents do not think they are likely to use drugs, and only 64% of parents say their teenager has a social

networking page at a monitor. the time has come for those who operate and profit from social networking sites like facebook to deplore their technical expertise to curb such issues and to deny such use of those sites to children and teenagers who oppose pictures of themselves and their friends drunk, who jane -- teenagers who oppose pictures of themselves and their friends trump or passed out. -- drunk or passed out. the survey also provides parents with what they should know about so just of teenage television programming. teen-agers who watch so just of programming in a typical week are likely to use tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana. the relationship of social

networking images of kids drunk, passed out, or using drugs and suggestive teenager programming to increase risk of substance abuse offers grotesque confirmation that a picture is worth a thousand words. in the cultural sees into which we toss our teenagers, parents are essential to preventing substance abuse. our survey findings underscore the points made in my book, "how to raise a drug-free kid. for better or worse, parents have more influence over the teen cost risk of substance abuse than anyone else. i would like to thank the president who is here for administering the telephone survey and for his work in developing the survey and

analyzing data as he has done for many years and for the man who worked on analyzing the survey. let me go to these slides to take you through this in a little more detail. every year we have survey advisers who give us a review of our survey and review our analysis. this year we did two nationally represented surveys, one by telephone. one over the internet about half boys and half girls and the parents of about 500 of those boys and girls. each year, we asked teenagers

what are the top concerns, and as you can see, alcohol, tobacco, and drones, along with social pressures, -- and the along with social pressures are a top concern. we as parents, what do you think your teenager's top concern is a low amount considered tobacco, alcohol, and drugs a top concern. on to social networking and substance abuse. we said how many hours of a typical day be used and on facebook or a social networking site. 12% of 17-year-old say they spend time on those sites. 30% say they spent no time. i am talking about 12 to 17-

year-old spirit of those who they aree, you can see five times more likely to smoke, three times more likely to drink, and twice as likely to use marijuana. why? we asked if they had ever seen pictures of kids getting drunk or passed out, or using drugs, and 40% said yes. if you note here, 12% were 10 and 11. we asked them in a typical day

-- 50% of those who spent time on a social networking site saw those pictures. 14% did not see those pictures as well. if they have seen the pictures, there is a much higher risk of substance abuse. they are more likely to drink and to use marijuana. we ask kids every year, do you think you are likely to try drugs in the future? kids who have seen these images on social networking sides say they are almost three times more likely to try and drugs in the future. then we said, how fast can you get substances? you will see the ability to get

their hands on alcohol and, marijuana, and prescription drugs are much greater. they are twice as likely to be able to get out of hall, four times as likely to get marijuana, and almost three times as likely to get prescription drugs. the question was to you ask reality shows. ?ou watch teen-age drama a in a typical week, about a third of the teenagers what some, of much higher percentage of girls than boys. 46% of girls and only 19% of the ways. -- of the boy is.

we then checked against the use of substance, and they are twice as likely to smoke, almost twice as likely to drink, and about one-and-a-half times as likely to use marijuana. we asked whether who -- how fast they can get these substances. who is watching these shows are more likely to get their hands on alcohol and marijuana and control prescription drugs. a much higher percentage of those kids. we ask a question because there have been so much attention for cyber bullying. we asked these twelve to 17- year-old says if any of them

have posted anything mean on any of these web sites. one in five teenagers have said yes, they have. cyber bullying teenagers who have been cyber bullied are twice as likely to smoke, twice as likely to drink, and twice as likely to use marijuana. it has some affect on these kids. they are more likely to say they think they will try drugs in the future. then we as parents questions about what they thought of their teenagers social networking. we asked if you thought spending time on these sites made it more likely you would drink or use drugs, and 87% of parents said

no with respect to alcohol. we also out of they thought the harmon out wave -- harm outweighed the benefits. parents are much more likely to be concerned and parents of 16- year-old or 17-year-old syrian we asked teenagers about several attitudes. and we said, and you agree with this statement -- never a friend of mine uses illegal drugs, it is none of my business. those who agree with that statement are more likely to smoke, twice as likely to treat, and three times more likely to use marijuana.

and now we asked about the statement, i should be able to do what i want with my own body. kids who agreed with that are four times as likely to smoke, twice as likely to drink, twice as likely to use marijuana. we put a third statement out there. we said it is not a big deal to have sex with someone you do not care about. kids to agree with that were five times more likely to smoke, 2 1/2 times more likely to treat an -- to drink and two times more likely to use marijuana. we asked parents, and you agree completely with the other parents about how not -- what to say to the children about drinking?

where parents do not send a consistent message, the kids are and more likely to treadrink, we ask them about what to say to their children about drug use, and as you can see, these are kids of parents who do not send a message clearly are three times more likely to use drugs. also, we asked are you likely to try drugs in the future. a very important message for parents to give the same message for their teenagers. not surprisingly, when parents

smoke, their kids are more likely to smoke, and where parents who smoke marijuana, their kids are much more likely to smoke marijuana. prescription painkillers and -- there has been a lot about where do kids get a prescription painkillers, so we have some questions about prescription painkillers in the home. we ask kids whether they knew there were prescription painkillers in the home. 14% said yes. about half said no, and almost a third said they did not know. the kids who said prescription drugs were the easiest to get are those who believe there are a pain killers in their home. similarly, they are the kids

much more likely to get prescription drugs and a short time -- in a short term. every year we ask about schools , and the message is sad. you can see that since 2007, we have made no progress getting drugs out of high schools in this country. 60% of students are going to schools where drugs are kept or sold. it has been an average of a quarter of schools where drugs are kept. there is quite a sharp difference and has been for many years between private schools and public schools. private schools they are much more likely to save the schools are drug-free. we are not able to separate

religious schools. we do not have a large enough sample. what is important about whether drugs are in school, schools where drugs are kept or sold are much more likely to drink or use those drugs, as you see here, and they are much more likely to be able to get their hands on all costs -- on alcohol or marijuana or controlled prescription drugs. they are getting it from a classmate, not from somebody in a lousy neighborhood with a trench coat on. a couple of other notable findings. we notice last year only 5% of kids who have never used tobacco tried marijuana, compared with

61% who had ever used a backhoe, and that came through just as strong this year. 6% of kids who never use tobacco, have not smoked marijuana, 68% of kids did. this is a relationship with a lot more work from the scientific community -- the relationship between nicotine and marijuana. we ask every year how fast can you give substances. you can see cigarettes are the easiest substance to get. no. 2 goes back-and-forth beer.en marijuana and dea i noticed a significant jump in 2010 in which kids to say marijuana is easiest to get. as has been shown in the past, kids who attend religious

ceremonies regularly are much less likely to smoke or use drugs, and they are much less likely to say they think they will try drugs and the future, and the last slide -- family dinners. there will be a full family dinner report in september on family day, but more often kids have dinner with their parents, the less likely they are to smoke, drink, and use substances. family dinners are clearly a surrogate for parental engagement. i think what is really important about social networking is i do not think anybody thinks we ought to have 12-year-old 17- year-old supposing images of themselves drunk or using drugs

or passed out during your -- passed out. it seems there is an enormous responsibility on the part of facebook and similar social to take stepsfites to get it off their sights. this is inexcusable. they have the technology to deny the kid is the ability to go on their sites. that will be a valuable deterrent, and we think it will be an enormous help to our children and to parents trying to raise healthy, drug-free kids. thank you, and any questions i would be happy to take. yes?

>> on the cyber bullying section, you show the relationship between kids to have been cyber bowling are more likely to use alcohol -- cyber and bullying are more likely to use alcohol and drugs. people who do that, are they under the influence of alcohol or drugs? >> we do not ask these questions. >> did you intend to ask them in the next survey? >> we will go to the focus groups again and see what is on the kids' minds, and that will have an impact on what we survey, but that is a good question. >> i have been realizing that makes it much easier for cyber and bullying to do those kinds of things when they are under the influence.

>> thank you for presenting these findings. this is a chicken and egg question. you mention that family dinners are probably a proxy for parental involvement. along the same lines, and we are talking about the amount of time kids spend on facebook and what they see there, do you view that as a cause of substance abuse and other risky behavior, or is it a proxy? if you had asked this question 15 years ago but ask, are you at a party on saturday night? is it as a kid hanging around kids to drink now are more likely to see those pictures on line answer are just -- and are

just seeing it on line because they are up the party, or is that something that triggers it. >> we are talking about an association. one invective is to identify conduct or characteristics note to the increase to raise a kid will use substances, so a parent can know that. you will notice how these things can cluster. a kid who spends time on a social networking site are more likely to use drugs. they are also more likely to be able to get them faster, so the point is if you are a parent and your kids are coming home every night saying, i have got to watch and jersey shore and spending an hour or two on the social networking site, that ought to be a signal to you. you ought to monitor what your

kids are doing on a social networking site. you ought to realize there is an increase the risk. >> leaving aside this straight question of whether 18-year-old and younkers should be able to post these pictures, -- and younker should be able to post these pictures, are you cutting off the avenue and making it so they can move someplace else? >> many kids will create a much better world to look at, and i do not think we are necessarily moving it to some place else. you have to look all the things kids are subjected to. there is an article in march of this year about social networking that talks about sexting and other inappropriate conduct and the impact that has on kids. there is something unhealthy about kids watching that.

it is human nature, and we think it would be an important, healthy factor for these kids should not be on social networking seifites. >> thank you. >> thank you all very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> this is a dinner honoring co- leader is ahead of the dedication center of the -- ceremony in the national mall. we will hear from a few more speakers including madeleine albright and the u.s. trade representative ron kirk. you can also join us tomorrow when civil rights leaders are honored. some participants include the

rev. jesse jackson and the president of the national council. see that live at noon eastern time on c-span. until our live coverage resumes, we are going to the pentagon briefing and said china appeared on track to build a modern military by 2020. >> good afternoon, everybody. i am the deputy secretary of

defense for east asia, and i am aboutto talk to you - security developments regarding china that we delivered today. i will offer a few broad thoughts on our report, a couple of points about the administration, and walk you through some degree of detail what is in the report this year, and then we will have time for questions you may have. the report is transmitted to congress, but it is our report that we coordinate across the entire u.s. government, so it does reflect a perspective held

broadly by the u.s. government. we very much anticipated to be factual, objectives, and analytical, to provide input and innovation for policy makers for them to consider as they contemplate u.s. policy and the relationship between the united states and china. this involves other countries vireo -- other countries. let me offer general comments and then reviewed the report itself. numerous questions have been

made. it contributes to rules and norms end enhances and he sat around the globe. the united states is pursuing a comprehensive relationship with china capable of addressing the challenges. china's expanding military capabilities have been able to contribute to public who could afford humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. they have allowed china to pursue capabilities we believe are potentially destabilizing. it may contribute to into regional tensions and a desire to use. -- and anxiety.

the spill help gain military advantage or resolve disputes in it -- this will help a military advantage or resolve disputes in its favor. this is so we are able to gain some transparency end strategic understanding to forge that comprehensive relationship, and in many ways, i would suggest to the report who read not simply a nines and analysis but a set of issues -- was an analysis but a set of issues we would like to be able to discuss with our chinese counterparts, the issues we think it is important to be

able to understand. we know our chinese friends have a question for and about us, and that is the kind of discussion we think contributes to regional and global security and stability. over the next decade we believe there will be a number of elements in play as they try to integrate a number of platforms and to develop concepts including a joint operations. as the report discusses, there are a number of new chinese the forms and weapons systems that have reached maturity -- chinese platforms and weapons systems

that have reached maturity. these are new systems that exceed global standards, but these efforts to integrate across systems and platforms will be a key marker of china's military efforts going forward. we believe it continues to be on track by 2020. however, china's ability to sustain military power at a distance today remains limited. as many of you reported, on august 10, of china commenced nitriles which aircraft carrier -- commenced trials with aircraft carrier in ukraine. is conveyed our expectations that trials would commence this year. the aircraft carrier could be

operationally available by the end of 2012. it will take a number of additional years to obtain the minimal level of contact capability for the carrier to be necessary to start to operate from the carrier itself. china continues to invest heavily in underseas and warfare. this is complemented by the investment in its anti-air warfare. they have increased - construction of of days, and we believe it is enough to hold a number of missiles and air derricks. china continues to invest in capabilities including air missile systems.

this past january, china conducted a flight test which its efforts.fo china is also investing in space programs. china completed 15 space launches in 2010. turning away from forced development to another issue are known that is of interest to you all is cross trade relationships. in the political and diplomatic, amount -- economic, and cultural fields, they have continued, but china's military shows no sign of slowing its efforts to

prepare. in addition to planning for contingencies, china places a high priority on maritime claims. an increased naval presence, including airborne platforms and possibly one or more aircraft carriers and would provide an enhanced power production and -- power capabilities with all of the implications that implies. pla has also demonstrated the ability to have limited peace term deployments. this includes increased participation in international humanitarian relief efforts. long-range transport aircraft under improved logistics have

made these a practical reality. these peacetime operations provide a valuable experience and also serves objectives. china costs military operations are supported by robust increases in government funding. in march 4 of this year common a half of 12 to protest -- of this year they have a 12% increase in budget. pla has also made modest but incremental improvements in transparency, but there are a number of uncertainties that remain. we will continue to encourage them to improve openness and i've been away -- and active away the promotes the diplomatic interest now -- act in zero way that promotes the diplomatic interest of the community.

expanding missions call for continuous military dialogue between our defense and security establishments. this is a dialogue we believe can help expand cooperation where our natural interests converge and also provide the ability to discuss candidly those areas where we may have disagreements. such engagements we believe are especially important during times of friction and turbulence in the bilateral relationship. during this january of 2011 summit, president obama and hu jintao confirmed that a stable military relationship is part of a positive comprehensive u.s.-china relationship. we believe and will continue to use military engagement with china as one of several means sioux encourage china to play a

constructive role in the region and to press china to partner with the united states in addressing common security challenges, so let me wrap up by saying we hope the report, which we thing has a lot of very interesting and useful information and analysis will contribute to the many debates on going with respect to the military dimension of chinese military modernization. let me turn to your questions. >> you said in the beginning of a chinese military was destabilizing, and then you went through a long list. can you specifically say which parts you considered to be destabilizing?

>> i said it was potentially destabilizing, and that speaks to the importance of being able to have sustained, continuous, and reliable discussions, an engagement so we can better understand china costs intentions, of's thinking and approach so they can better understand ours. given the lack of transparency dealing with the improvements but still exist, you have a potential to run into situations where there may be of misunderstandings and the potential for anxiety driving a destabilizing dynamic. >> it is not just the aircraft

carrier. it is the fact that the chinese are not transparency and not -- transparent enough. >> it is a combination of the lack of understanding coming out that has been created by their system, but it is also the close there are very real questions given the overall trends and trajectory in the scope and scale of china costs military efforts. i would not put it on any one particular platform or system. there is nothing magical about one particular item when you put together the entirety of what we have witnessed over the last several decades, and we see these trendlines continuing into the future. that raises questions, and that

is why we think it is important to have the dialogue and discussion, to understand each other better and to contribute to stability. >> the military balance has a shift in china costs favor -- china's favor. is there a point we are anticipating? the second question and this when the general was here, he mentioned across the strait. i do not know from this report which you would estimate for of valuation. >> -- for evaluation.

>> there is not a particular thing kuwait. csi smith -- particular tipping point. that comes as some disappointment, but there are trends that now continue to point to a very challenging and non-military and secure environment across the strait. that is a set of issues we are committed to working with taiwan to address. meeting our commitments under the taiwan-relations director to ensure the time line as self- needs, andability it that is something that continues to be a concern to the apartment of -- the department of defense. i will let several chen tried to

characterize his own, what he meant -- his own comments and what he meant. >> there have been reports that china highest begun building its own indigenous carriers. can you comment on this? >> we think china is undertaking an effort to build its own aircraft carrier, and this is addressed in our report. our indications are that now and we will see chinese and indigenous aircraft carrier being developed in the future. >> did you share this report with the chinese government, and if so, what was your message to them?

the shows the helicopter tales of being left behind. were they able to obtain information about certain ethnic -- about stealth technology from that? >> so far the report has been reached to congress, and our second most important audience, which is you all. we have a number of engagements with a range of people in the united states and overseas to provide briefings on the report. you will excuse me if i will take a pass on going in details to any of the messages we will be delivering on any of those discussions. i will also take a pass for all the reasons that you known and

not comment on the pakistan issue and helicopters. >> is there anything in this , as a that you feel hasn' professional military students, buttresses a case for itself a f-16's/ >> luckily i am not a professional student of chinese military capabilities, so that gives me a pass on that question. there is no question that is a challenging security environment across the street, but i would point out is a challenging ,nvironment across the strait and i would point that out across a number of dimensions, and we are working closely with taiwan, as we have a crossbows

political parties to make sure they have the capabilities they need, and we will continue to do so. >> has the pentagon rejected the sale of half-sixteens >> i know there have been reports to that effect. is there a recommendation saying you do not recommend them? >> as i have said before, this is an issue we continue to work are in on a daily bases, and the united states will the flight to taiwan on the defense

capabilities it requires. >> would you seen a contradiction should they decide that f-16s would not be sent to taiwan. on the other hand, they are continuing to move in the a vantage of china. >> this is a challenging security environment across a number of different dimensions. it is not one where there is a silver bullet but will change everything. we are consistent in working

with taiwan to make sure they have a self-defense capability its needs. >> can you detail any military exchanges between the u.s. and china, and which interaction between the sides and they have made those pledges to be more transparent. >> we have dealt with the number of discussions and meetings over the course of a year, and i would be happy to provide you or anyone else that is interested with this, but since january we

had a sense coordination talks. we have had zero working group meeting. last week there were a number of people from my team here in the pentagon in beijing for discussions about transparency and other related issues, so there has been a fair amount of stuff going on at the working level, even as we have had these senior level contacts. one other thing i would point to is that we have established at the strategic economic dialogue and a new joint civil and military dialogue, something secretary gates had called for when he was in china in january to allow us to discuss sensitive

security issues, those things that might be most troubling for stability in the bilateral relationship in a setting that brings together those civilian leaders of those sides. that does speak to our efforts to institutionalize and even these sorts of dialogues and discussions with the people's republic of china. >> where does cyber technology factor in tune in this? >> we have some analysis of where we think the chinese are cyber rome in the report, and i guess i should do the commercial but says this is really a report. i say we really do like it to speak for itself. there is a lot of good stuff in

here, so i recommend you dive into the report to pull out some of that analysis. it is no secret that cyber is a realm for a deeper understanding between the united states and china and is necessary. we have some insurance about some of those things we have seen, and we want to be able to work through that with china. >> you know that this is the report's subject to an interagency review. can you give us any insight into why it took so many months? were there any sticking planes? >> i realize the region were there any sticking points? >> -- were there any sticking points? >> bureaucracy is grinding away at a daily basis.

this is a very complex and important set of issues, as i know you all to appreciate. to turn not a good product that we were able to coordinate across the u.s. government, because we think it benefits from that kind of coordination, simply took time. i wish it did not. i wish we were able to turn it out quicker, but i think the results, when you have the chance to read through the report, speak to the benefits of taking the time to really turn out new products that i think really has a lot of very good coaching, content, and analysis. >> i did not see discussion of china's holding of american

deaths, and i am curious how you see these -- american debt, and i am curious how you see these issues. >> those are included in this report. our current congressional mandate read a little outside the scope of the reports and outside the expertise of the department of defense. i will simply say this is extraordinarily complex economic relationship that we have with china and an extraordinarily complex relationship that creates challenges on both sides, and i know that is receiving a lot of high-level attention from our leadership, including vice-president biden and from china's leadership. >> you mentioned some of the humanitarian disasters in china

was may be engaged in. house great of an emphasis do you see them -- how great of an emphasis the see them playing on this? >> china is still in the relatively early stages of engaging with the international community as a provider of all sorts of goods and services, but this is something we view as a positive developments to join with our partners around the globe in providing those sorts of assets. that helps us respond to the threats of piracy and helps respond to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief needs and playing a positive,

constructive role in global affairs. that is a good thing for the region. >> are they interested in the same and regions in the u.s. herrmann -- the same regions in the u.s.? >> this is something we should address. they are in the early stages of developing when you're your -- of developing. i would point out they have close to 18,000 people who have participated in peacekeeping, which is a sizable contribution. in the back row there. >> how big is it common and can

that be seen in a positive light? >> this is something that does not come as any surprise to us. this is the development of chinese have been working on for a number of years, and it is not out of the norm of the source of development given the development of military operations over the last couple of decades. whether or not this proves to or proved to be something destabilizing affect'' enand raises pressure remains to be seen.

it underscores the importance of allowing us to reach greater strategic understanding and aim for a degree of strategic trust, not just between the united states and china but with other neighbors as well. >> the report also talks about the chinese have. what kind of capabilities to you find of most concern? >> there is no single capabilities i find to be most troubling or of most concern. it is the overall trajectory of modernization efforts, and the fact they are working across a number of different issues that is something we need to keep an

eye on. we need to ensure we have the capabilities in place to safeguard our national security interests to work with our partners are in their capacities and capabilities, and we need to engage with china so we can have a deeper understanding with the approaching issues in the naval and maritime domain. it seems like they resent the enterprise itself. is china mistaken in thinking of this report as a hostile act towards china? have you ever received more nuanced feedback?

>> my expectations are that our chinese friends will have some critical comments to say about the issuance of this report. we have tried to explain to them in our military to military engagement. i hope they look at it as an encapsulation of the sorts of issues that we have questions about. we would like to be able to engage in discussion and dialogue with them. if we're able to have that sort of robust reliable continuous dialogue, that will lead to more popular -- a more prosperous relationship between the on states and china. thank you very much. i hope that was helpful.

>> we are back live now at the washington convention center where the mlk foundation is honoring leaders of pace. they will hear from madeleine albright and ron kirk. this is one of the events leading up to the official dedication of the martin luther king, jr. memorial. it officially opens on the national mall this sunday. something else that we are covering that will convert -- honor pioneers in civil-rights. some of the speakers include the rev. jesse jackson. that is tomorrow here on c-span at noon.

the second part of this dinner honoring leaders of peace is getting under way a little late. the dedication of dr. king's memorial on the national mall is still scheduled for sunday. despite forecasters' promising whether from hurricane irene, which is scheduled to reach this area, on monday. andrea mitchell has taken the podium. >> [inaudible] the great force behind this

monument and the memorial that we are about to dedicate this weekend. the foundation -- mr. harry jo hnson. [applause] >> thank you so much. thank you so much. andrea mitchell, thank you so much for all that you do for us. [applause] thank you, thank you, thank you. members of the king family and other special guests better with us tonight, hello,

everyone. thank you for joining us tonight on this most auspicious occasion. to enter a mitchell -- andrea mitchell and dr. suzan johnson cook, we thank you. how is everyone doing this evening? [applause] during his short term here on earth, dr. martin luther king, jr. once said, our lives began to end the day it becomes solid about things that matter. tonight, as we celebrate that world vision and commitment to peace and justice and inspires the leaders here with us this evening, we are mindful of the fact that we stand on the

shoulders of those and refused to be silent about things that matter most. truth, justice, equality, and opportunity for all. to that end, as we begin making our plans for the dedication week, we wanted to be sure that our celebration included time to remember dr. king as a leader with a world vision. for that, we owe him a debt of gratitude. [applause] my friends, it is truly an honor and privilege for me to introduce our next guest. he is a trailblazer in his own right. the former mayor of dallas,

texas, our current united states representative, the honorable ron kirk served as the president's trade adviser, negotiator on trade issues. to me, he is a great friend. he told me once we were at the democratic national convention 8th years ago, i am tired of sending me these letters asking for money. i'd give you all the money i'm going to give you. please welcome ambassador koran kirk. -- ron kirk. [applause] >> as a fellow texan, i cannot tell you how proud i am of this wonderful project. even though that was the cheapest way for harry to ask me for more money, i am so honored

to be a part of tonight's kickoff of this wonderful week. you will be pleased to know, as i listened to the remarks from arm brothers from general motors, i started ripping pages out of my speech. so much of what did i say it -- so much of wanted -- so much of what i wanted to say, they said. i could not help but think so much about my own experiences growing up in austin, texas. that was a segregated as any other city in america. like so many of you here, i grew up a first generation beneficiary of the civil rights movement. before i go further comment for me to comment on what an honor for me to be here as a son of the civil-rights movement, it is my privilege to honor added knowledge the children of dr. martin luther king, who are with

us tonight. [applause] you have heard from previous speakers call each of us views of dr. king's work and how it is either inspired our life's work or in foreign debt. i cannot help but think how dr. galvanizing work demonstrated the combination of theology and ideals to inspire individuals to take action, but collectively and individually. to transform our society. cause i had a conversation with one of my good friends here, i hope the weather does not ruin the weekend. if any group of people knows about pricing -- praying, it ought to be those of us gathered

in this room today. i grew up in one of those little churches in the south. all we had was our faith. i grew up in a church that my family built by hand. every little shotgun church you have seen in the south. we have all those wooden block letters with scripture on the wall. in my church, we recited john 3:16 every week. we set it so many times that we began to play around with it. one of our times we were inviting -- one of my cousins said, do you know what this means? i said, yes. ko'd so loved the world, he did not send a committee. when i think about dr. king, it breeds like to that. god does not send committees. a committee never would have moved america to move past

segregation. it took people like martin luther king and so many others. i am privileged to travel all around the world as the face of the united states, i am inspired and humbled to see that same spirit of self-determination and faith in the work and the lives of people. as you heard from our wonderful ambassador to south africa, we are witnessing dr. king's work coming to life in places like libya, egypt, in the middle east and north africa. mother's and father's embrace the global principle. to me, that is the spirit of dr. king's work. that is the genius of this message.

people intuitively understand. the democratic rights, give people the power to shape our own destiny and future. they also understand that increasing individual freedoms helps on leash liberty it and give contra premier worse the freedom to empower themselves to create a better life -- ought to burn yourself to create a better life for themselves and their families. it seems fair to me to say that dr. king's life and work helped shape a strong foundation for global development. his efforts inspired a universal call for social justice that has helped moved hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and just a few generations. we all know there is so much more to do. tonight is an opportunity to celebrate the genius of dr. king's mission. i am honored to have the

privilege to introduce our evening's final speaker. the 64th secretary of state of the united states of america, the fabulous, the wonderful, the brilliant comic the intelligent, the gorgeous madeleine albright. throughout her extraordinary life, she has been committed to the idea that america should lead the world, even as we strive to perfect our own union and live up to the highest principles here at talf. she continues to pursue these goals today in both a public and private career. as chair of the -- she provides strategic perspective to dynamic leaders who are driving the global lead economy and creating jobs around the world.

as chair of both the national democratic institute for international affairs and the global project, she helps guide institutions dedicated to giving individuals a greater voice and shaping their futures. france, please join me in welcoming madam secretary dr. madeleine albright. [applause] >> thank you very mad. thank you. thank you very much. thank you very much for your kind words. i really am delighted to be here. andrea mitchell, it is a pleasure to be here with you. in case you are wondering what pin i have on tonight, i have a

lincoln pin. it describes a lot of what we are doing. i am honored to join with all of you in celebrating the life and legacy of dr. martin luther king, jr. harry johnson, thank you so much for your effort in making all this work. this is your week. we have already heard a lot about dr. king and much more will be said between now and sunday, when the long awaited memorial is officially dedicated. as we share our thoughts, we should never lose sight of his core mission. as a leader of the african- american community and his quest for racial equality and social progress here in the united states. it is appropriate that we highlight his inspirational role in south africa's struggle against apartheid.

tonight, we place special emphasis on the universal relevance of dr. king's message. he was the man who spoke to all races, nations, genders, and creeds, and to every generation the words that once filled atlantis baptist church and that were proclaimed from the steps of the lincoln memorial have not lost any of their power. the message that ultimately prevailed over enormous odds in birmingham, montgomery, and selma is vital wherever people yearn to live together in dignity and peace. dr. king was a dreamer. this does not mean that he was naive. in his career, he was beaten, thrown into jail, spied on, and threatened. while still in seminary, he wrote about the viciousness of

racism and it made him out the essential goodness of man. a month before his untimely death, he preached in atlanta, why it is a continual story of shattered dreams. -- life is a continual story of shattered dreams. he talked about the war that wages within each of us. dr. king had seen too much of life to believe in the finality of any victory or in the moral purity of any nation or people. his knowledge of human character and his realism about the obstacles to progress make even more compelling the prescription that he offered to. hope, faith, commitment, and compassion toward one another. he knew that a world of peace and justice could not be achieved by a small steps or by

minor adjustments to our thinking and policies. he told us that such a world could not be indented even by the most startling advances of modern technology. he warned us that we could not break through as a society if we were always looking around to see what everybody else was doing. so that we would be shielded from the criticism that true leaders face. dr. king did not ask us to become a flock of good shape. he asked us to join in creating a revolution. a non-violent revolution based on the principles of true democracy. a revolution grounded in our need for one another and in our recognition that the court =, not because we're all the same, but because we are equal in are intrinsic dignity and worth. he asked us to insist that morality be at the core of international relationships among every nation and everybody

on the face of the globe. we may wonder today whether that is a reasonable standard to set. after all, nations have economic, political, and security interests that often come into conflict. we americans have enemies that have attacked us and who proclaim their hate. it is far easier to talk about the retentive power of love that it is to apply the cons -- the redemptive power of love that is to apply that concept. we cannot always live up to the standards that dr. king established. we should admit that. if we ever failed to acknowledge morality as a guiding light, we are truly lost and we should never forget that. dr. king did not expect to see a universal brother and sister had dissent from the clouds to cleanse the earth of suffering and strife. he asked each of us to put it

beside our arrogance and to accept the fundamental proposition that every individual accounts. we are tied together in a single garment of destiny. this is the principle that every individual -- it must be at the heart of everything we do. if we truly believe done that, we will have the first -- if we truly believe in that, we will have the best possible platform for world peace. we will have the unity we need to attack world problems. we will have the capacity to reach across social and political boundaries so that we might benefit from the contributions of all people. we will live up to our nation's highest ideals. we will honor in the best possible way the life and legacy

of dr. martin luther king, jr. thank you so much for letting me participate in this moment. thank you. [applause] >> madam secretary, thank you so much for those wonderful words of inspiration. would you please give madam secretary another round of applause? [applause] i would ask backed martin king join me on stage for a special presentation. [applause]

>> would you please welcome them to the stage? [applause] >> i would like to present to the secretary of state one of our gracious of words that the sculptor carved.

it sits on a base of actual stone that came from -- we would like to present this. i would like to present this on behalf of the memorial foundation, the king family. [applause] i would also call to the stage of the sculptor. [applause] >> mr. ron kirk? [inaudible]

ok. [applause] >> ok, thank you. as we take our seats -- thank you. as we take our seats, all of you

are very special. i do hope that you had a wonderful evening. before we close the evening, we are honored to have a very special guest. would you please welcome to the stage mr. steven wonder -- stevie wonder? [applause] [applause] >> thank you so much for coming. >> it is truly an honor to be here.

the beginning of this celebration of the memorial of dr. martin luther king, jr. i want to personally and emotionally thank harry johnson for making it possible for me to see the monument. he made it possible for me to go up and touch the face of dr. king. [applause] what i would like to do before i say anything more is through the wonder foundation, commit

$10,000 a year that will allow as many people who were blind to go up and a cherry picker -- in the terri picker to see this. [applause] if that doesn't cover it, i have to sell more records. [laughter] as i touched the memorial of dr. king, i think of what i hope we all will do. we hope -- i hope we will remember the meaning behind the monument. i hope that we will remember the

people who are poor who are suffering and that our spirits are tall enough. as i touched the body, i hope remember theus meaning behind the memorial and remember those who are without health care and be tall enough and big enough to do something about it. [applause] as i touched his face, i want to remember the meaning behind the beumenta and i want us all to

tall enough to remember those young and old, children that will determine the destiny ultimately by what we do today to make sure that they have education and those without funds will be able to have money enough. i have been blessed by the grace of god and does the celebrates -- and as we celebrate, those who are christian and those who are muslim, all of you from all over the world, christian, muslim, and other faiths, will remember it is not about the religion. it is about the relationship. god bless you, and thank you.

[applause] >> he wants to play a song. [applause] ♪ >> i wanted to do this song because i read it -- i wrote it in 1972 on the birthday of dr. martin luther king, jr. ♪

people hand in hand have lived to see the milk and honey where is the dream this is a vision in my mind

truly free at last to have we really gone this far or is this a vision in my mind i know that things are rain -- green they only turn to brown when often comes around i know just what i say today is not yesterday and all things have an ending ♪ but what i would like to know

, a place like this exist so beautiful or do we have to find their wings and fly away to the vision and our minds i am not one who makes believe i know that leaves are green they only turn to brown when autumn comes around i noticed what i say -- know just what i say today is not yester day and all things have unending -- an ending

what i would like to know is good a place like this exist so beautiful or do we have to if bind our wings -- find our wings and fly away to the visions, the vision to the vision in our minds the visions in oru minds vision in our mind

vision in our mind to the vision to the vision in our minds ♪ >> thank you. [applause] >> would you please thank the great and wonderful stevie wonder? [applause] at this time, i would like ambassador kirk to join us again for the benediction.

>> thank you. from the mountains to the prairies, to the monument, god has blessed america with our wonderful leaders. two of the minister is that marched with dr. king are here and i'm going to ask them to join me for the benediction. [applause] once again, if you could stand. did a wonderful king family, thank you for sharing your father, your uncle, your brother with us. we love you so much.

to all the king family. shall we pray? >> accept our petition, dear god. 4 give us our sense because there are many. -- forgive us our sins. we come in an awesome sense of celebration. trents for the world and america for the better. a willingness to maintain his dignity.

those who lived in the aftermath, we thank you tonight. thank you for their insights and there will to serve. as we celebrate this weekend, we leave for more determined to than ever to feed the hungry, help support -- help the poor. amen. >> thank you, lord. you brought us from a long way. amen. >> good night. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome india.arie and idan

raichel. >> ladies and gentlemen, idan raichel and india.arie. [applause] ♪ >> good evening. i just arrived from israel.

a long flight. a great honor to be here. totally deadline, so good morning to you all. -- jetlagged, so good morning to you all. >> good evening. i know you have had a long night already. we have a special song that we want to share with you. if we could just have your attention for a few minutes. ♪ >> icing is right now for my grandmother. sh -- i saying this right now for my grandmother. she was a domestic worker. she saved so many lives and she was actually at the i have a dream speech. listen very closely to the words. this song is called "gift of

acceptance." are y;all with me? ok. in case you could not hear very well, this is idan raichel. ♪ ♪ i honor your choices and you can undermine -- honor

mine whether you are red, black, yellow, or white weekend debate until the end of time who is wrong or who is right i honor your choices and you can honor mine ♪ can we give up our need to be right give the world ♪

♪ gold lives in our hearts or in the universe ♪ can we give up our need to be right and give the world the gift of

acceptance ♪ they call you israeli and they call me american i looked at you and i do not see a country i did see my friend i honor your choices and you honor mine ♪ we want peace, love, prosperity

can we give up our need to be right ♪ [applause] >> thank you so much. thank you. ♪ >> we also have a dream in the

middle east. ♪ ♪

♪

♪

♪

[applause] ♪ >> we are around 85 musicians and singers that come from all over. we are trying to create bridges between cultures. it is a great honor for us to be here. ♪ ♪

♪

>> thank you. india.arie, thank you. [applause]

>> we thank you for coming so far. a word about stevie wonder. we all know there would not have been a national holiday for dr. martin luther king, jr. without him. our thanks for this wonderful surprise. to harry johnson, to madeleine albright, to suzan johnson cook, to all of you. this is the kickoff to what is going to be a fabulous tribute to the great american and global hero. we are inspired by the legacy. it has been my pleasure and my privilege to have shared this

first event of the weekend with you. thank you so very much and good evening. [applause] >> as we just heard from andrea mitchell, this is just one of the events leading to the dedication of the new martin luther king, jr. national memorial on the washington mall. it will officially open this weekend. we will have more from the mlk foundation tomorrow. that program will recognize a number of individuals to of help promote civil rights in the u.s., including the rev. jesse jackson and u.s. attorney general. our live coverage is noon

eastern. a reminder that the official dedication of the memorial will take place this sunday. it is the 48th anniversary of the march on washington. president obama and members of the king family are scheduled to speak. our live coverage will be at 11:00 eastern on c-span. former first lady nancy reagan invited marco rubio to give a speech at the ronald reagan library in california tuesday night. he spoke about the role of government in america. the senator escorted mrs. reagan to received before he began his speech. this is 50 minutes. >> good evening. for those of you who do not know

who i am, i have the honor of being a trustee of the ronald reagan presidential foundation. [applause] before we get started, i would like to ask all of you to please turn off your cell phones. if you could all please remain standing for the pledge of allegiance once mrs. reagan is here. ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor to welcome former first lady nancy reagan, escorted by a senator marco rubio. [applause]

[applause]

[applause] [applause] [applause]

[applause] [laughter]

>> in honor of our men and women in uniform who defend our freedom of around the world, please join me in the pledge of allegiance. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all your your -- for all. thank you 3 much. please be seated.

i would like to take a moment to recognize some people with us today. your governor pete wilson and his lovely wife and a better half gale. [applause] the united states representative and his wife sharon a superior -- his wife janice. and a man from edison international who was a u.s. ambassador for the agencies of food and agriculture. [applause] from the ventura county board of supervisors, peter.

all of our representatives from the c.m.e. valley research -- from the simi valley counsels. last but not least, i would like to extend a special thank you to the general electric co., of presenting sponsor of the rumble and reagan centennial celebration. -- the ronald reagan centennial celebration. mrs. reagan, honored guests, ladies and gentleman, ronald reagan was known as the great communicator. we are honored to have as our speaker of freshman united states senator who won "the most talented speaker in politics today." [applause]

perhaps a new great communicator. the son of exiles from fidel castro's cuba, senator rubio learned from his parents the values he has championed in public life now, the same values ronald reagan championed -- family, faith, neighborhood, work, of peace. in his maiden speech, he recalled his early days. "i come from a hard-working and humble family," he told his colleagues. "yet i consider myself a child of privilege. i was left to be raised in a

strong and stable family, and i was as close to be here in the united states of america. " -- i was blessed to be here in the united states of america." after being elected to the florida house of representatives, he quickly showed his leadership ability and was elected speaker of the house. the youngest person and first hispanic ever to hold that office. [applause] in 2010, he decided to run for the united states census -- senate. the bearing of brilliant to resume himself common-law mark rubio made his campaign not about past privileges but about

guiding our nation's future. he called for cutting domestic spending, holding the line on taxes, ruling by federal regulation the strangles economic growth and -- rolling back federal regulations but strangle economic growth and a clear foreign policy sounds like someone else we all admirer. goo[applause] in washington, senator rubio has stood by the principles on which he campaigned. during this year's debt stage, he defined the issues at stake when he wrote, "our generation's greatest challenge is an economy that is not growing alongside a national debt that is. he warned, if we fail to confront this, our children will be the first americans ever to inherit a country worse off than

the one their parents were given. ronald reagan once said of the title so many had bestowed on him, i was not a great communicator, but i communicated great things, and they did not spring full bloom from my brow. they came from the heart of her great nation. ladies and gentlemen, at a time when many of us worry about how we can attract the highest quality to public office, please join me in welcoming a young leader who speaks for a new generation. in the tradition of ronald reagan, united states senator marco rubio. [applause] >> thank you.

thank you. thank you stereos and -- thank you. thank you very much for this opportunity. let me thank you for that introduction. talking about my so-called communication skills. i appreciate you not setting the bar to hide. thank you so much. thank you for this opportunity. i will talk about what this means to me, but i must say this is one of the highest honors i have had to speak in this place, and earlier i was able to walk through here and meet people from all over the world who were touched by the extraordinary life of an extraordinary man. the contributions he made were tremendous, but the contributions to the world were even greater this reminded me what a privilege it is that i

would get to speak to all of you from a place like this, and i am honored i -- and beyond any words i could use to describe it. thank you. [applause] i have a distinct honor, because not many people can say -- the only people who i have not walked down an aisle with our year. new one is my wife's and the mrs. reagan, who was here. now i was born and raised in ronald reagan's america. he was elected when i was in fourth grade, and he left office when i was in high school, and those are important years. those are the years that form so much about what i know about the world and our nation.

that era can be defined by the cold war and by the end of it. ronald reagan did not just believes the soviet union and communism could fail. he believed it was destined to fail. he believed all we had to do was the american, and that would happen. but the find ronald reagan across america in the time i lived -- that's the find -- defined ronald reagan in the time i lived. he defined america more than anyone else was able to do before. it has always been important for americans to do that, but i stand here before you today at a time when defining the proper role of government is as important as it has ever been. the answer as to the proper role

of government not really lies in what type of country we want to have, and i think the majority of americans share a common vision for what they what our nation to be. they want our nation to be two things. they wanted to be free and prosperous, a place where your hopes and dreams can be brought to fruition, that you can be who god meant you to speak, no matter where you were born, no matter how much misfortune. if you have a good idea, you can be anything if you work hard and play by the rules. they want us to be compassionate in america, a place where people are not left behind. we are not going to let our children be punished for the

errors of society, so we are a nation that aspires to two things. prosperity and passion, and ronald reagan understood that. america's leaders set out to accomplish that, but they reach ed a conclusion that has put us on this path. republicans and democrats established rules for government in america that yes, we will have a free economy, but we will also have a strong government who will control the economy and will take care of those in our society who are falling behind. while it was well-intentioned, it was doomed to fail from the start. it was doomed to fail because it forgot to the strength of our nation begins with our people and that these programs

actually weaken us. it was institutions in society that now assumed the role of taking care of one another. if someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. we saved because we had to. all that changed when the government began to assume responsibility. all of a sudden for an increasing number of people it was no longer necessary to save, because that was the government's job. as the government crowded out institutions that did this traditionally, it weakens our people in ways that undermined our ability to maintain our prosperity. we built a program without any account for how we were going to

pay for it. there was no thought as to how this was going to be sustained. when social security started, there were 16 workers for every retiree. today there are only three for every retiree, and soon there will only be three. program after program which were crafted without any thought as to how they would be funded in future years. they were done with the best intentioned, but because it weakens our people and did not take into account the simple mouth of not being able to spend more money than you have, it was destined to fail and brought us to the point where we are today. it is a startling place, because the 20th-century was not a place of decline. now americans of the 20th century built the richest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world, yet today we have built for yourself a government that not even the richest and

most prosperous nation can afford to pay for, an extraordinarily tragic accomplishment if you can call it that, and that is where we stand today, so if the finding the proper role of government was one of the central -- is defining the proper role of the government was one of the central issues of the reagan era, it remained so now. people are going around saying, we are worried. let me add something, because i think this is an important forum for candor. i know it is important to blame the current president, but the truth is the only thing this president has done is to accelerate policies already in place and that were doomed to fail. all he is doing through his policies is making the day of reckoning comes faster, but it was coming nonetheless. what we have now is not sustainable. the role of the government and the role the government plays in

america cannot be sustained the way it is. some are worried about how it has to change. the good news is it is going to change. it has to change. that is not issue. the issue is not about whether the role the government place in america will change. the question is how will it change. good will it change because we make the changes necessary, or will it change because our creditors force us to make these changes? over the next few moments, i -- i doadvocates tuno you not think i have to given the make of of the crowd, but i hope to advocate such what we have is a golden opportunity afforded too few americans. we have the opportunity could -- to cross the proper role of government in our nation that will allow us to come closer than any americans have ever come to our collective vision of

a nation where prosperity and compassion exist side by side. [applause] to do that, we must begin by embracing certain principles but are absolutely true. number one, the free enterprise system does not create poverty. it does not leave people behind. people are for, and people are left behind because they do not have -- people are poor and left behind because they do not have access to the free enterprise system, because someone has denied them access. this truism is expressing itself every day. every nation on the earth that embraces the free enterprise system is pulling millions of people out of poverty. the free enterprise system creates prosperity, not the nice

it. the second truism we must understand every did not see nice debt -- not denies it. the second truism we must recognize is that poverty does not create our social problems. our social problems create our poverty. [applause] let me give you an example. all across this country at this very moment, there are children who are born into and living with five strikes against. they are born into substandard housing, being raised by their grandmothers because they never knew their father, and their mom is either working two jobs or just not home. these kids are going to struggle to succeed unless something dramatic happens in their lives. these are dramatic because they

lead to public policy betony five the proper role of government. the number one objective of our economic policy from a government perspective is simple. it is growth. it is not distribution of wealth. it is not picking winners and losers. the goal should be growth, the creation of jobs, and the equality of opportunity through governmental policies. often when i give these speeches, members of the media get frustrated. we do not have to reinvent this. it has worked before, and it will work again, and they are simple things like a tax code that is easy to comply with. [applause] like a regulatory framework that does not exist to justify the existence of the regulators, that does not exist to accomplish --

that does not exist to accomplish through regulation and rulemaking what they could not accomplish through congress. it is the proper role of government to invest in infrastructure. government should build roads and bridges, but it should do so as part of economic development or infrastructure, not as a jobs and government should invest in our people at the state level. education is important. we must educate and train our children to compete and succeed. our children are going to grow up to compete with children in india and china, children who are learning to compete in the 21st century themselves. this is the proper role of

government, within the framework of creating an environment where economic prosperity is possible. it is important we remind ourselves of it. i will gladly accept the label of conservatives. conservative is not about leaving people behind. it is about empowering people to catch up, to give them the tools then make it possible to access the hope, the promise, the opportunities america offers, and our programs to help them should reflect them. there are people who cannot help themselves, and those folks will always help. we are too rich to leave them to fend for themselves, but all the others that can work should be given the means to empower themselves to enter the workforce, and our programs and policies should reflect that. we do need a safety net, but it

cannot be a way of life. we must help those who cannot stand. now i believe in america's retirement programs, but i recognize these programs are not sustainable for future generations, so we must embrace future policy changes for these programs. i believe you cannot make changes to these programs. my mother is in her eighth decade of life, and she is on both of these programs. i cannot ask her to get another job. she paid into those systems. so security reduce social security and medicare cannot look the same for me as it did for her. if we want america as we know it

to continue, we must except now and begin to make changes for those programs for us. [applause] these changes will not be easy. speeches are easy. going out and doing them and will be difficult. is never easy to go to people and say what you have always known will have to change. it calls on the specific and generation of americans, those of us decades away from retirement, to assume certain realities that we will continue to fund for a system we will never fully access, that we are prepared to do what it takes so the our parents and grandparents can enjoy the fruits of their labour and so that our children and grandchildren can inherit the fullness of america's

promise, so every generation has been called on to ensure that it continues. we are not the only ones. i would argue that we have a pretty good, yet i take it is fully approved. -- fully appropriate that we are being asked to stand up and respond to the issues of the day, so we should understand how special and unique america truly is. when i was a boy, the world looked very different from how it is now your -- how it is now. they urged our public policy leaders to understand that america would have to share this planet with an aggressive form of government that perhaps was destined to overtake us as well. there were many who discourage our leaders from talking about

the inevitable decline of communism and how it was destined to fail. there were many who accepted it as how it was to be. that is what they told us. one person at least did not believe them, and he happened to be the president of the united states. he actually believed all we had to do was to be america, that our example alone would one day lead to the decline of a system that was unsustainable, because he understood that the desire to be in a compassionate was universal, a desire to leave your children better than yourself with something we desire as americans, because he

understood the principles this nation was founded upon was that all people are endowed with certain unalienable rights. it is our natural right, and the government's job is to protect those rights, not to grant them to us. [applause] this is the natural state of man superior -- state of man. all we had to do was to be america. all we had to do was to be prosperous and free. all we had to do was be a voice for this anywhere in the world were the principals were

challenged and oppressed, and eventually time was on our side. when i was in fourth grade, the soviet union was a co-equal power with the united states. before i finished college, the soviet union did not even exist, and so many people have no idea what it even was. to me this is extremely special. i will tell you why. during the 1980's, there were two people who deeply influenced me. and one was ronald reagan. the other was my grandfather. we live part of our life in las vegas, and my grandfather loves to sit on the porch and smoke cigars. he was a cuban. three cigars a day. he lived to be 84. this is not an advertisement for cigar smoking. i am just saying. my grandfather was born in 1889

to an agricultural family in cuba. he was stricken with polio at could not work the fields. they sent him to school. he was the only one in the family who could read, and because he could read, he got a job in a cigar-rolling factory. they would hire someone to read for the workers while they work. the first thing he would leave was the daily newspaper in rio and then he would read some regions and now first thing he would read was the daily newspaper. then he would read some novels. he became extremely knowledgeable about history, not to mention all the classics. he loves to talk about his three. my grandfather loved being from cuba. -- now to talk about history. my grandfather loved being cuban. he knew without america the nazis would have won world war

ii. when he was born there were not even airplanes. when i was born, an american had walked on the surface of the moon, and he knew he had lost his country and the it only thing preventing other people from losing theirs to communism was this country, this nation. it is easy for those born here me to take for granted how unique this place is, but when you come from somewhere else, and you lost. you did not have that luxury. my grandfather did not know america was exceptional because he read it in a book. he knew it because he saw it with his eyes. the powerful lesson is the story of ronald reagan's legacy. it is our legacy as a people, and it is to we have a chance to be again, and it is important to

all of us, because being an american is not just a blessing. it is a response ability. as you were commanded to do long ago, let your light shine the four men that they might see your good works and glorify your good father in heaven. as we gather year, we are reminded upset we do we are reminded that being allied to the world is not just our common history. it remains our common destiny. thank you. [applause]

thank you. >> of pretty good communicator, wouldn't you say? the senator has agreed to respond to questions. we collected some from body and, so i agreed i would read them. if your mother asks you to except the v.p. spot, what will

you say? [applause] >> did i get heckled? is there another question? it is a great honor to be thought of in that way. i have no interest in serving as vice president for anybody who could possibly live all eight years. it is a great honor to do it. it took a delayed reaction. i love being in the united states senate. i believe we can make a difference. i really do. what happens is devoted to you start thinking about it, it starts affecting everything you do.

you're afraid to take a position on a certain. the reality is i am not going to be the vice-presidential nominee, but i look forward to whoever our nominee is. >> the next one is a young conservative who followed you from the start of your 2009 senate campaign. good his question is how you think the republican party can do better to protect people of his age. >> we need to be the party of prosperity and compassion. the ball all want prosperity, we want to make sure we -- they all want prosperity, but we need to make sure we live in a system where we do not leave people behind. there is only one system where that is possible. that is free enterprise. there is only one system where

people who are employees can become employers. there is only one economic system where you can start as their bedroom out of your home. -- start of a spare bedroom out of your home. that is the american free enterprise system, and that is not just young people. that is all people. that is what people want for their future. i wish government spending programs created jobs and prosperity. that is a lot easier. the american free enterprise system has eradicated more poverty than all the government programs combined, and we have to convince people of fat, and if we do, that question will not even be an issue before lawong. >> how do we get hispanics to

align their votes to conservative values? >> i would say to you that americans of hispanic descent want desperately to give their children the chances they never had. my own personal story, and i think it is typical, is my parents have some tough breaks in their life in terms of losing their country. they were very fortunate to be able to come here. i do not know when it was that my dad realize, i am not going to be able to do the things i dreamt, but it will become the mission of my life to insure my kids have the chance to do all the things i could not do. i do not know when that day was, but that they happen. he would never have been able to do that anywhere else in the world. my dad was a bartender. later in his life he was a bank would are tender.

-- of bank with a bartender -- he was a banquet bartender. he stood behind the bar so one time his son or daughter would stand here like this. it would be unimaginable 25 years ago to believe that one day i would be speaking in front of ronald reagan and -- in front of nancy reagan at ronald reagan library. they never wanted me to go into politics, but they did say something very simple and profound. you will have a chance to do things we never had a chance to do because you are an american and you live in america, that as a powerful thing. that is the hope and dream of all americans. it is especially true of americans of hispanic descent. the only economic system where that is possible is the free enterprise system. there is a reason that in these other countries, the same

people dominates a decade after decade. hear an employee can put their boss out of business if they have a better idea and work harder. the american free enterprise system is the only system in a world where that aspiration has any chance of succeeding. we have got to do a better job of communicating about, and if we do, the rest will take care of itself. [applause] >> they get easier. >> in the upcoming budget battle, what position do you take between the defense talks for higher military spending and the anti-tax and groups? >> on the tax front, our tax code is broken. it is a mess, and there are things that got there because of good lobbying, not good public

policy, so the tax code has to be reformed. it has to be simplified. it has to be made more fair with an eye towards economic growth and job creation. that should be the goal of everything -- economic growth and job creation. i believe in tax reform. my opposition to tax increases is not a religious belief or even an ideological one. it is a common sense one. increasing taxes kills job, and i have challenge people to show me a tax increase that creates jobs outside the government. on the defense side, there has never been an excuse for ways, and if there are wasteful contract in practices in a sense, we shall believe those out, but the world is as dangerous as it has ever been. if for some reason we think

weakening the fence is something we can afford to do, they are treated weakening defense -- if for some reason they think weakening defenses something we can do, they are mistaken. weakening our national defense is not the way to balance the budget of the united states of america. [applause] >> what is the best idea to get across to our liberal friends to help them stay away from spending, spending, spending? >> i think there are americans who love their country, who want a nation of prosperity and compassion, who think government is the only institution in society that can do that, and the truth is there is no nation on earth that has been able to

do that. it is not because they are ill intention. it is because they are wrong. [applause] the proof is on our side. in february of 2009, this government borrowed $800 billion and put it into the economy. the things they have us for are not working, and they are not going to work curio -- to work. the policies have not worked, and they will not work now. the only way to empower our people to truly tackle poverty is to grow our economy, and the american free enterprise system is the only way to do that, so i am not sure we are ever going to convince our liberal friends that, but i believe we can convince the vast majority of americans that. [applause]

>> if you could give the tea party one idea or a topic for them to focus on, what should it be? >> i think they are focused on it, and that is the proper role of government in america. [applause] all this screaming and shouting back and forth in washington, this debate used to be an ideological debate, left versus right. now it is a mathematical reality. the federal government's sense $300 billion a month. it only takes in $180 billion. that means it must borrow $120 billion a month. you cannot do that much longer. s&p did not downgrade the united states because congressmen are mean to each other. they downgraded the united states because they see all this money, and they know we cannot

continue to do it, and i think that is exactly what the tea party movement and a growing number of americans are focused on we are not an anarchist. it is important government does the things they should be doing, but when it goes beyond its proper role, whether you are well-intention or not, it does harm, and it is doing harm. regulations are killing jobs story of -- regulations are killing jobs. our tax code is killing jobs, so as maligned as it may be, the tea party movement has and continues to be a collection of everyday americans who believe this is the greatest nation in the history of the world, that it can stay that way, but that that is not the way it is headed and it needs to reverse. that is what the tea party is about, and i think that is what

it needs to continue to be about. >> this person from the audience says, honorable senator rubio, what do you see as the role of government in developing citizens with the principles of our founders. our public school system does not seem to be doing that. >> developing our systems is a function of families. our schools and government end weuld be a tool, not where send our kids to be raised, and i know there are real problems out there, and there are kids struggling to succeed because of assets that are not their fault, but that does the reality, and i would say it is important to remind ourselves of our founding principles, and some of these simple truth. the one i thin is powerful the people need to embrace is one i

have heard from a lot of people, and that is our rights do not come from our government. our rights come from our god. [applause] protectnt's job is to those rights. those are the founding principles of our nation. without the principal in place, the american revolution was just another colonial rebellion. without those principles, that is all the revolution was, a bunch of people who wanted their own country. we said, the reason we want that is because we believe people are born with these rights. we believe set we want a government which will protect these rights, and that is what the principles of our founding fathers were, and the more we remind people of that, i think the better off we will be in terms of public policy. [applause]

>> this is the last question, and it came from thought audience. where do we send a check to support your presidential run? [applause] >> thank you, thank you very much. s thank you very much, senator, and i would like to remind all of you that dinner will be served in the air force one pavilion in just a few minutes. staff will help escort you to dinner. i would like to ask everyone to remain seated while mrs. reagan

and the special guest support. thank you for a special evening.

♪ >> the congressional budget office said the congressional deficit will be reduced over the next decade because of the deficit reduction deal between the president and congress, but the cbo warn that the policies would more than offset those

savings and change the budget projections. that report is next on sees them. after that we will bring you the martin luther king jr. national memorial gallona. tomorrow we would get an update on the war in afghanistan from the pentagon. the regional commander will brief reporters with western. at 11 eastern of seas around -- 2 unseasonal, around a discussion -- at 11pm, a discussion on terrorism. watch live coverage from the heritage foundation. what caused the demise of american newspapers, the news editor takes you behind the scenes of board rooms across the country. it is one of the books we are

featuring john booktv. more is not always better. we talk about the lack of moderation in american culture and the media's role in reinforcing the need to want more. after that, author interviews from kentucky, and join us for a three-hour conversation with the newspaper editor on racism in america. get the complete schedule on booktv.org. they say unemployment will likely remain at 8% or above. the cdo met wis reporters for an hour and 15 minutes.

>> good morning. now thank you all for coming. i am the director of the congressional budget office. this morning cdo released the update and economic outlook. i would like to briefly summarize the report, and my colleagues and i would be happy to enter your questions. the united states is facing profound economic challenges. cbo estimates the budget deficit will be about 1.3 trillion dollars, which equals 8.5% of the total economic outlook.

that stems in part from the long shadow cast on the u.s. economy by the financial crisis and the recent recession. although output began to expand two years ago, the pace of the recovery has been slow, and the economy remains mired in a severe slump. cbo expects a recovery will continue but that output will stay well below potential output. cdo initially it completed its 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. rapidbe looking for more 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. i am glad we don't have to 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. we don't have a view of how it 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. to our testimony to the senate budget committee. by different ways of extending the expiring tax cuts. there is -- 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 2015, does that mean [inaudible] 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?

[inaudible] >> 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. it doesn't say exactly what the 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. for practical purposes, it involves writing down very precise numbers. we're also trying to be very transparent about the uncertainties that are here and trying to encourage everybody the region this document to recognize the around a specific point estimate, there will be a very large band of uncertainty. >> 1 technical question, one general. the fed, when they said they were going to hold this study for the next couple of years, was that included in your

forecast? and a question about long-term unemployment. where do you guys stand on that debate? >> we did not take on board the recent announcement of the federal reserve. that is one of the reasons why market interest rates are lower than interest rates we have in this projection. we continue to think hard about the role of cyclical forces and structural forces in the high level of unemployment the leafy. and we have, in this report, offered a quantification of those factors. if you want to check later, it is on pages 45, 46, and 47 of the report. what we say there, after emphasizing uncertainty, our

assessment of the total increase in unemployment is about one percentage point. it stems from structural factors and the remaining percentage points now rising from cyclical factors. we talked about specific structural factors that we have in mind. the unemployment insurance benefits. another is the difficulty of the mismatches between the skills and locations of available workers and requirements of particular jobs. and we talked about difficulties that the long-term unemployed have. we reached a brief last year about the effects of job loss during the recession. and it is a discouraging story, people lose jobs in recessions.

they have difficulty finding work. they often earn less money than in previous jobs, and not just in the short term, but for many years to come. in this projection, we think there is a fair amount of unemployment due to structural forces and cyclical forces. in the next 10 years, we expect the cyclical unemployment to come down and the structural unemployment will [unintelligible] the extra ones are in the course of expiring. the mismatches of job-seekers and the requirements of jobs will be worked away over time as it has in past expansions by retraining and moves, and so on. by the end of the decade, there will be a lingering effect of people that have lost jobs and been unemployed for a long time

having difficulty finding work. the unemployment rate that we have at the end of the decade is a little higher. another question? >> about this time every year, the projections of the highway trust fund has been ailing for some time. is it getting worse? >> the particular issue with the highway trust fund is that the authority to collect the tax and the authority to spend money expires at the end of next month. i don't know if we have specific projections about the balance of the trust fund available or not. i don't have it available in front of me. i will certainly check for you.

>> [inaudible] >> our baseline projection is not one that we have isolated in a separate and quantitative way. the >> would you say this is a better outlook? >> let me talk about the economy first, and then the budget. i have sat here twice a year for a few years and have a discouraging economic news every time that i have come. including today.

we have a picture in the other day -- update about the potential thagap. the cumulative gap now stands at about $2.50 trillion because we have not kept our labor and capital refloat -- resources. the projection of that under current law, if our forecast is right, is for a cumulative debt between now and 2017 of another $2.50 trillion. the loss of an economic output -- loss in economic output are not shared evenly. they are very disproportionate to people that have lost their jobs or have lost their homes.

there is a tremendous amount still to come. it still lies ahead of us. whether that forecast is a little better or a little worse that was in january, it is a lesser point of recognizing just how discouraging the economic outlook is now and has been. it makes a real difference in the budget outlook. we have marked down deficits by about $2.10 trillion because of budget control act.

that is a substantial amount of money even by the standards of current federal budget. i think that is good news. i think that the challenges that remain are very large. part of that is that a very big chunk of those savings from the budget control act have not really been worked out yet. they have been rising from instructions of the fallback plan. there is not a set policy that members of congress that a majority have a gree -- have a greed -- have agreed to in specific terms. the cutbacks in discretionary spending are more specific. we have more specific levels set in law.

but to meet those levels, it has not been decided upon. new the end of the budget chapter in the report, there are possible paths that is consistent with the overall cap. -- and nobody knows yet how that might play out. we might try to offer some alternative just to illustrate what the possibilities are. but the allocation of those savings, what parts of what the federal government is going to do that it won't do in the future, as discretionary spending comes down, remains a challenge for this and future congresses. beyond that, there is this expiration of very large pieces of our tax code. some at the end of this year,

some at the end of next year. where many members of congress have made public in their view that we should maintain current tax rates and current tax rules rather than follow current law. and as we show in the report, extending all of the expiring tax provisions would widen the budget deficits relative to the baseline projections. there is a tremendous number of issues that are important in this document. beyond that, we still have debt that is higher relative to gdp that it has been at any point in my lifetime, and it creates dangers for the economy. we have a trajectory beyond the coming decade or the further

aging population and increases in health-care costs will make the budget even harder to put into alignment on a sustainable path. i don't want to diminish what is happening. at the same time, there is no doubt that there are profound budget challenges and economic challenges that remain. >> what we often hear is that the reduction of the deficit is not nearly enough to make an impact in the long term. one of the members put out today that the super committee should be looking at $4 trillion in reduction to make a real dent. the $2.10 trillion is really nothing. i know you don't want to get into a debate with politicians,

but in terms of real reduction, is this package large enough, the 2.1 or the 1.2 that has already been done? >> i would not call $2.10 trillion nothing. as i explained, even taking that on board, if we continue current policies on both the tax and spending side of the budget, we will end up with much larger deficits that would occur under current law which underlines the base line. there is a good deal of work left to do. it is not our place to say how much any particular committee or any particular congress or any particular process should do differently.

>> a great deal of pain because of projections [inaudible] >> yes. if you look at this picture of the unemployment rate, at the bottom of the cover, look at where that dividing line is between the actual history is and what we project. there are other pictures that one could use and other numbers you could look at, but i think that makes the point. >> [inaudible] reducing household wealth, a tendency toward deleveraging. if that is what is driving economic growth and higher unemployment, is there any room for policy to have a significant

effect on that? is that something that we are going to have to work out and weather the storm? >> we think fiscal policy could boost output and employment relative to what would otherwise happen. we did a lengthy analysis in january of 2010 and looked at a range of options. we tried to estimate the effect that those options would have on output and employment. it owuld -- would the little different if we did it today, because the economy has shifted. but the lessons still stands. there are ways for congress to reduce taxes or raise spending. the challenge becomes what to do beyond that. it would weigh on the economy in

the future unless policy changes are made. and it is possible to make those changes and in some way, we need to make a medium and long-term changes because the deficit is on an unsustainable path. one can combine stimulus and restraint in no way that would boost the economy in the near term and not prove to be a drag in the medium term and long term. it requires a combination of policies. it may look like a paradox, but is not really. it is consistent with economic thinking. >> [inaudible] >> it depends on what one does and how much of that one does. what we looked at in that report was general policy, not focused

on the housing sector in particular. of course, there are many ideas proposed, a number of ideas tried to resolve some of the problems in housing and mortgage area. we have not done a comprehensive analysis on those ourselves. although smaller, it is still very big. output is now about $15 trillion at an annual rate. it will be hard to move that very much without applying fairly large change in spending or taxes. the specific effects -- >> are there any changes in your projection of medicare costs? >> unchanged our medicare

projections a little bit. -- but we have changed our medicare projections a little bit. if you look at appendix a, we talk about changes to medicare over the coming decade. they are not particularly large. not particularly large ones. we talked about it, and if people have questions, we can talk more about it. the thing i would like to emphasize is that the number of people over the age of 65 in this country will be about 1/3 larger 10 years from now that it is from today. the most important factor is the greatly increased number of beneficiaries. given the current law for medicare, including the sustainable growth mechanism for payments to doctors and the

reductions in payments to providers and health legislation, medicare spending per beneficiary is not growing incredibly fast. under current law. if it remains unchanged as the current -- is a different question. what you're seeing mostly is a surge in upward beneficiaries from the retirement of the baby boom. this is not news now. this is the court -- this is the sort of thing we have been writing about for our entire existence. it is upon us in force. yes? >> i know this is in the paperwork, but can you describe the difference in size between the expiration of the tax cuts that might happen if the deficit reduction -- and the deficit reduction agreed upon? the tax stuff, is it agreed

upon? >> there are a couple of important numbers that i will highlight for you. we estimate the budget control act reduces estimates by about $2.10 trillion. another number in the report is that if the -- most of the expiring tax provisions were extended, if the alternative minimum tax was indexed for inflation and if medicare's payments to doctors were frozen rather than falling sharply, it would be about $5 trillion larger than baseline projections. if all of those changes in law took effect and all of those policies were extended indefinitely rather than expiring, they would widen the deficit by about 2.5 times the

amount of deficit reduction through the budget control act. >> the 2010 tax act, previously tax cuts -- [inaudible] >> we explain exactly what that means. so you cna rea -- can read the details which are important. we will think of it as the 2001-2003 tax provisions. this is discussed in a number of places in the report. typically at the end of chapter one, there is a table that looks at a number of alternative policies and our estimate of the budgetary effect. we do a scan of every outlook and of faith and we want to look at the pieces of that to see which ones are large and small and how much they matter.

another question? >> very quickly, gais the gap between output and what could happen, is that largely because of corporations sitting on big piles of cash? >> it is because of all of the factors that are causing a sharp fall in gdp and have led to a weak recovery. if you look at this, this is the first chart of chapter 2 of the report. it is not something we know is a fact, but we think it has continued to rise. it has risen, but roughly in line with potential. we have not closed that gap than any important way. why the gap exists is the same

question as why the recovery is so weak. it is a tough question that we have given a lot of thought to. evidence suggests that we recovery's follow the type of crisis that we have had. it is not the same as knowing all of the causal wreck -- mechanisms. i think it is largely associated with household wealth and the desire to save more. trying to be leverage and reduced their debt -- to deleverage and reduce their debt. an important part of it is probably households and benefits -- business is not being confident about their income. for the economy as a whole, it makes you more cautious buying things from me. it can weigh on the economy as a

whole. we have continued credit constraints relative to the situation before the financial crisis. mortgage rates that qualify for fanny, freddie, they are low. some households don't qualify that would have qualified before. small businesses are having trouble getting credit. we also have a very weak housing market. if the level of home construction and other pieces of residential construction were at the level that it would be at in a sustainable way for this country, how they kept pace with the population, where the gap would be on a sustainable pace is about 2% of gdp.

-- a sustainable basis is about 2% of gdp. it shows just about how much a weakness in housing alone can matter for the economy. and how in horne's they are relative to each other and how quickly the fact is -- it is an important question. >> what are you looking at? >> this is the one that looks at the budgetary effects of the policy alternatives. apart from the caps on discretionary spending, the way that the cbo is instructed by

law to construct their baseline is to take the latest level of funding provided by the congress and that continues with adjustments for inflation. this is what we do normally. the caps don't apply to war funding. funding for iraq and afghanistan are not covered. some people have noted that we don't expect to be fighting in that intensity for a while. we have picked a hypothetical. this is not meant to beat any

should digit approach to national security. i think that this is the same scenario we did it in a previous report. don't take the specifics as an analysis of the defense shut agee. this is just meant to illustrate how large those numbers are. we have been doing a good deal of war funding. >> this reduces discretionary spending by 1.1 trillion dollars with about 200 trillion dollars of savings on top of that. we note that there are ways in which the levels of spending we would project with inflation would be lower than what one might think of as maintaining the current government policies.

these projections are really very mechanical extrapolations of current funding. this is not meant to reflect our assessment of the need for funding or the cost of maintaining specific policies through any discretionary spending. this operation is one example. the rest of spending is capped. our projections and the discretionary cap is not specific and what that would mean in terms of the programs or services that would be available. >> these policies continue. >> yes, for the war protection. for the overseas contingency operations, the caps and do not

applied, so we follow our traditional method. all the rest of the spending, the caps apply. we show what projections that we would have if they did not apply so that people can see how much difference the caps make. the baseline projections for everything else follows the levels of the caps. it is complicated. we did an analysis of the cost of implementing the policies and the actual national security policies laid out by the defense department. that would be more expensive than our baseline projections. they have said specific plans for things they want to build and to do and we have a full report which is our independent estimate of the cost of that and

that program would cost a good deal more by our estimates. it would be in the inflated baseline. again, an example of the regular baseline projections that we do for regular spending to not correspond to any particular set of programs or plans in the future. thank you very much. thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

"washingtonow's journal," we will look at the economy and the latest congressional office report. steve forbes joins us. then a conversation on the situation in libya with market ginsberg who was a mideast adviser in the carter administration. then, of the health policy professional will discuss the growing cost of medicare. up next, tonight's martin luther king jr. memorial foundation dinner. we will hear from ron kirk and the former secretary of state madeleine albright. after that, a speech by marco

rubio. watch more video of the candidates, see what political reporters are saying and track the latest campaign contributions with c-span to upside. this helps you navigate the political landscape. there are links to c-span media partners in the early caucus and primary states. >> with the official dedication of the martin luther king jr. memorial this weekend, a number of events are scheduled this week to look at the legacy of dr. king. coming up, we will hear from former secretary of state madeleine albright and musicians stevie wonder. this is hosted by the mlk national memorial foundation project.

>> good evening and welcome to this very special occasion. i want to say to all of you who have moved from the building museum and created this beautiful space here, i would like to say congratulations to all.

when dr. king comes to town, things really shake, rattle, role. good evening and welcome to the first event and celebration at the dedication of the market the king jr. memorial. i cannot tell you how humbled and honored i am to be with you. people come together to welcome us to remember a man of peace and to dedicate -- people come together to remember a man of peace and to dedicate a memorial. for many people of my generation, dr. martin luther king jr. was the defining leader of an era. to my high school class, his dream was our awakening to the crucial and political questions

of our time. he taught us as he said in his nobel prize except in speech, civilization and violence are an antithetical concept and on violence is a powerful moral force for social transformation. one of our most beloved high school teachers was -- -- and their children were murdered by the klan. it might be easy for those of us to forget just how radical his ideas were 48 years ago. after all, at the end of the 20th-century, dr. king was one

of the most admired people in america. according to gallup, he ranked just behind mother teresa and ahead of john f. kennedy, albert einstein, and helen keller. that was not the case years earlier when he delivered the speech at riverside church in titled "beyond vietnam, the time to break silence." i don't have to tell you how controversial it was both within the movement and without. in that church speech, dr. king told an overflow crowd of more than 3000 people that many people have asked why are you speaking about the war, dr. king? why are you joining the voices of dissent, peace, civil-rights telmex. dr. king said that those questions greatly saddened him because they meant that the --

had not really known him. his commitment or his calling. that is why this memorial that will be dedicated this weekend, that is why this memorial matters so much. not only for our generation but for future generations. through his words and the powerful days of his eyes carved from the stone of hope, we can all try to know him, to better understand where he was trying to lead us, to a revolution still unfinished nearly half a century later. now it is my honor to welcome some of the distinguished guest that have joined us tonight from all of the world to pay tribute to dr. king and other global leaders for peace. first, i would like to recognize the premier of bermuda and

members of her cabinet. [applause] we're joined by the mayor of washington, d.c. please welcome dr. suzanne johnson cook. senator clinton has described her as a passionate advocate for the god-given right to people everywhere, no matter which god. ladies and gentlemen, ambassador coke. [applause] >> thank you. your excellency and members of the clergy. all of the organizers, i bring

you greetings from president obama and secretary clinton. we were best friends and we traveled throughout the world promoting his non-violent techniques. they would be so happy that you are gathered here today. i asked in that spirit that you might take the hand of the person around the table next to you and if you might hold that hand as a symbol of peace and strength and love. let us pray. we think you for this day that your hands have made. we ask your blessing on those to celebrate this season and those around the world to have come to join together to celebrate a man and a mission and a mandate for peace. we ask the blessings upon the time we share together and we thank you for the organizers who

have a dream for this weekend to happen. god bless the food, the friendship. less the time we share together. it is in your name that we pray. >> i still have a dream, that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. i have a dream that one day on the red hills, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners, will they be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood? i have a dream that one day in

alabama, little black boys and black girls would be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and sisters and brothers. >> join us to celebrate the unveiling of the martin luther king jr. memorial. >> please welcome eric peterson, the u.s. vice-president of diversity at general motors. [applause] thank you. i have to tell you that i'm very honored and humbled to be up here this evening to represent the men and women of chevrolet, of general motors and the -- foundation. when i did my research to decide what i wanted to say. i ended up coming back to detroit and i don't know if many of you that have followed dr.

king would know that he spent a lot of time in detroit and it was very humbling for as he lifted his speech which was made famous here in washington but he had kind of a preliminary one than he did in detroit that attracted hundreds of thousands of people because the man and the message resonated with the people of detroit. when i compared those speeches and i looked at a letter from birmingham, the one thing that i did find out and i watched was that i understood what our general motors leadership come with the issues that they had to address and how they dressed them. i think a historic fact that is important, especially for general motors, is that our chairman at the time stood on the top of the general motors building and in fact watched a

city birding, which was detroit, during the 1968 riots. at that time, he said, this has got to stop. we cannot let this happen to our city. essentially, by him taking the step, general motors decided that we had to bring leaders then that would help us either from the private sector or from the government to help us and that led to us bringing leon sullivan on to the board. the significant thing was that he was the very first african- american, the very first black to be on our board. that was important. [applause] that feeling that we had on our leadership at that particular time has permitted throughout

our organization as we have moved forward. i have to tell you that it is not by chance that general motors started the first minority supplier organization within the automotive industry. this is not by chance that they started the first dealer program within the automotive industry. it was not by chance that our chairman stood with rev. sullivan and gave the support and commitment that general motors would stand with him in regards to the sullivan principles. i think that many of you that have followed rev. sullivan understood that his principles helped with the abolishment of apartheid in south africa and that was very important to us as far as not only being a good corporate citizen but a good committee citizen. the one thing i continue to remember is that i think of dr. king is with him locked arm and

arm with people that he was representing, he did not know a lot of them what he represented them for a cause. on behalf of general motors and to the moral board, we are committed to lock arms with you as we move forward because of the celebration stops this weekend, then the dream fails. from our perspective, this has to go forward. we have to have to educate our children. we're willing to do that. we're willing to commit ourselves. that is what we are 2. we are committed to work with the board to move this forward. i can tell you on behalf of chevrolet, general motors, we

are pleased to be here this evening and we ask that you enjoy this weekend because this will be a great weekend. thank you. [applause] >> please welcome the president of the tommy hilfiger corporate foundation. >> good evening. it is an honor to be here this evening and i will be very brief but i will wear two hats. one is as vice chair of the mlk memorial board. on behalf of the board directors, i would like to welcome everyone to the festivities and to a wonderful week and weekend of activities that we have planned for you. as president of the -- foundation, i just want to say how deeply honored i am and our company is to be involved in this momentous occasion. tommy hilfiger and i go back.

we have known each other since we were 10. it is kind of cool to be able to run the corporate foundation. when i began as president of the foundation, i could never forget in march of 2000, they called me and said, we have to get involved. i want you to research how to get involved in this organization in building this memorial for dr. king. one of the thing that resonates with me today that they said that we have been true to that i am very proud of my company. the thing that they emphasized was that it is about dr. king, not the company. this is about dr. king. i am very proud to say that our company has been involved a little bit over 11 years. this has been a labor of love and to be here today, i cannot express how wonderful it is that

they want to say to the very small staff of the moral, they are hard workers, they are tenacious. they bring everything they have every day and i salute you and on behalf of the corporate foundation and our company, we .ay thank you and god bless th [applause] >> please welcome what member of -- .his evening sponsore [applause] >> we're honored to be here with you. we're thrilled to be gathering to celebrate the life, a dream come a legacy of dr. martin luther king jr.. i am a board member of -- which is the world's leading

pharmacy benefit management company. we are thrilled to have of foundations serve as this evening's platinum sponsor. on behalf of our board directors, our chairman and ceo, david snow, our executive team and our over 20,000 associates, we welcome you to this historic night and to this week's landmark a commemoration of one of history's greatest leaders. rev. dr. martin is the king. [applause] dr. king challenge just to be a better nation and a better world like honoring and respecting each other's humanity and by eliminating injustice wherever it exists. whether that is an education, in health care, housing,

employment, and we strive to honor the vision of dr. king by providing the highest quality and most innovative drug therapy and management services for over 60 million members. we do this by addressing health- care disparities and also by helping people manage their chronic health conditions. we also addressed the health care needs of the most vulnerable populations and support high performing low income students in reaching their goals to become nurses, doctors, pharmacists. to be tonight's platinum sponsor and to be a part of celebrating the life, a dream come a legacy of an extraordinary extraordinary man.

thank you so much for joining us in his honor and celebration of dr. martin luther king. i hope you truly enjoyed this momentous evening. thank you. [applause] >> thank you for your extraordinary support for this memorial and for the celebration. desmond tutu is at the forefront of world leaders to follow in dr. king's footsteps. like dr. king, a man of faith, unbounded courage, and a nobel peace prize recipient, he received the presidential medal of freedom from president obama

in 2009. he could not be with us in person and he sent a very special message for this important occasion. >> welcome to the first of the events celebrating the dedication of the martin luther king jr. memorial. i regret not being able to attend in person but i am honored to to bring you greetings and to share on this historic occasion. prime-1 of the millions who owe their freedom to dr. king's advocacy of democracy, justice, hope, and loves. dr. king's teachings inspired and established a new era of civil rights in america. he has encouraged new democracies around the world including south africa.

the power of his legacy continues to inspire and guide people searching for freedom and equality. this wonderful memorial will permanently stand in the heart of the american capital city and the values that it represents will reach and resound around the world. for those who stood with dr. king and heard him speaking, it must be hard to believe that 48 years have passed since he shared his dream on the steps of the moral -- steps of the memorial to america's great emancipated. we have waited a very long time for this moment. if there is one lesson you must

always remember, it is that what is good and what is right will always 1 day prevail. this has kept hope alive in many of the world's darkest corners and it has encouraged those following in dr. king's footsteps to continue his commitment to resolving conflict without violence. thanks to dr. king's wisdom and sacrifice, the world to is a more peaceful one. every day, we see the legacy of his hope and vision as people around the world seek freedom, equality, and opportunity through nonviolence. this magnificent memorial to dr.

king is well deserved and the world needs the messages that he enshrined today as much as ever. god bless you. [applause] >> he inspires us with his strength and courage. our next speaker is a south african who follows in the footsteps of doctor king. he has long prison and house arrest and his involvements have been fake-driven. recognized with numerous honors for his humanitarian achievements, he founded the world for all foundation to create a cooperative relationships between faith and communities at a global level. it is my honor to introduce the

ambassador to the united states from south africa. [applause] >> thank you. it is difficult speaking in the shadow of archbishop tutu. we all gather in washington to moralize in stone the values for which martin luther king stood and died. and -- this is the long time in the memory of some border could not be more timely that we do it in this year to remember those values because we live in a world where the values of truth, peace, forgiveness, compassion, reconciliation, and so forth are

seen as weaknesses. there denigrated. untreatable as values and as i use of pragmatism and harshness and military as some seem to be on the op. -- up. these volumes are the values for which martin luther king and lived in the foundation's former apartheid was defeated. nelson mandela, and many others have fought against apartheid. they confronted the violence of apartheid with gandhi and practiced by martin luther king.

they confronted the separation and sector -- segregation of apartheid with reconciliation that martin luther king did not fully see the fulfillment of but that africa today tries to hold up in a world that is polarized in in some many other ways. we confronted the conflict of apartheid with emotion and the values of peace and coexistence that martin luther king dreamt of. that nelson mandela and others would start -- the values of trees, the values of condi, martin luther king, nelson mandela, and tutu son not as a commodity to compromise but

something they could trade for reconciliation. and that if you told to the truth, you're not be avenged against but you would be reconciled. the truce would set you free. -- truth would set you free. we do in south africa was divinely inspired but not out of reach of ordinary human beings. south africa and the life of martin luther king has confirmed that human beings are capable of being good. that is human beings are capable of opting for values that are powerful against the harshness of militaryism and violence.

[applause] example that runs like a golden thread from asia to gondi, to africa, to a number of leaders culminating in nelson mandela tells us that faith is not to the polarizing claims of exclusivity but that a state is the constant iteration that our relationship with a mud -- with god must translate into relationships of benefit to humankind and goodness to of human beings. [applause] that faith and religion and the works of a dandy, marks -- condi, martin luther king, was

not to understand yourself as a chosen and others as frozen, but that under god's canopy, that canopy of compassion and mercy, there is place a for everyone in respect of a color, creed, of any other things that marked the difference between people. the difference is the reason to engage not the reason to polarize and isolate. [applause] as a south african ambassador, as i stand here, the statue of mahatma gandhi on massachusetts avenue and as we unveil the outstanding memorial of martin luther king, we are challenged

that the golden triangle of peace, compassion, non- violence, and struggle against adversity must be completed. we pledge that the third and step of that trend will be completed outside the embassy of south africa to complete the memorial for nelson mandela. because washington is the place. [applause] washington determines where we stand between peace and war. between reconciliation and vengeance. where we stand between compassion and harshness. this triangle can guide those to make decisions. 50 years is not a long time to wait for martin luther king. live celebrations begin.

-- may the celebrations began. [applause] >> thank you for setting the tone, for inspiring us. enjoy your dinner and we will be back later. >> please welcome again this andrea mitchell.

>> and i hope you enjoyed your mails. -- meals. and it is my pleasure to introduce the man who has led this campaign to build a memorial mr. harry johnson. [applause] >> thank you so much. thank you so much. andrea mitchell, thank you so much for all that you do for us.

[applause] thank you, thank you, thank you. members of the king family and other special guests better with us tonight, hello, everyone. thank you for joining us tonight on this most auspicious occasion. to andrea mitchell and dr. suzan johnson cook, we thank you. how is everyone doing this evening? [applause] during his short term here on earth, dr. martin luther king, jr., once said, our lives began to end the day it becomes silent about things that matter.

tonight, as we celebrate that world vision and commitment to peace and justice and inspires the leaders here with us this evening, we are mindful of the fact that we stand on the shoulders of those and refused to be silent about things that matter most. truth, justice, equality, and opportunity for all. to that end, as we begin making our plans for the dedication week, we wanted to be sure that our celebration included time to remember dr. king as a leader with a world vision. his concerns were for the rights of all people. those a live across the globe. for that, we owe him a debt of gratitude. [applause]

my friends, it is truly an honor and privilege for me to introduce our next guest. he is a trailblazer in his own right. the former mayor of dallas, texas, our current united states representative, the honorable ron kirk served as the president's trade adviser, negotiator on trade issues. to me, he is a great friend. he told me once we were at the democratic national convention 8th years ago, i am tired of you sending me these letters asking for money. i have given you all the money i'm going to give you. please welcome ambassador ron kirk. [applause]

>> as a fellow texan, i cannot tell you how proud i am of this wonderful project. even though that was the cheapest way for harry to ask me for more money, i am so honored to be a part of tonight's kickoff of this wonderful week. you will be pleased to know, as i listened to the remarks from arm brothers from general motors, i started ripping pages out of my speech. so much of what i wanted to say, they said. i could not help but think so much about my own experiences growing up in austin, texas. that was a segregated as any other city in america. like so many of you here, i grew up a first generation

beneficiary of the civil rights movement. before i go further comment for me to comment on what an honor for me to be here as a son of the civil-rights movement, it is my privilege to honor and acknowledge the children of dr. martin luther king, who are with us tonight. [applause] you have heard from previous speakers how each of us views of dr. king's work and how it is either inspired our life's work or informed it. i cannot help but think how dr. king's galvanizing work demonstrated the combination of theology and ideals to inspire individuals to take action, both collectively and

individually. to transform our society. i had a conversation with one of my good friends here, i hope the weather does not ruin the weekend. if any group of people knows about praying, it ought to be those of us gathered in this room today. i grew up in one of those little churches in the south. all we had was our faith. i grew up in a church that my family built by hand. every little shotgun church you have seen in the south. we have all those wooden block letters with scripture on the wall. in my church, we recited john 3:16 every week. we said it so many times that we began to play around with it. one of my cousins said, do you know what this means?

i said, yes. god so loved the world, he did not send a committee. when i think about dr. king, it reads like that. god does not send committees. a committee never would have moved america to move past segregation. it took people like martin luther king and so many others. i am privileged to travel all around the world as the face of the united states, i am inspired and humbled to see that same spirit of self- determination and faith in the work and the lives of people. as you heard from our wonderful ambassador to south africa, we are witnessing dr. king's work coming to life in places like libya, egypt, in the middle east and north africa.

mothers and fathers embrace the global principle. to me, that is the spirit of dr. king's work. that is the genius of his message. people intuitively understand. the democratic rights, give people the power to shape our own destiny and future. they also understand that increasing individual freedoms helps unleash liberty, the freedom to empower themselves to create a better lifefor themselves and their families. it seems fair to me to say that dr. king's life and work helped shape a strong foundation for global development. his efforts inspired a universal call for social

justice that has helped moved hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. we all know there is so much more to do. tonight is an opportunity to celebrate the genius of dr. king's mission. i am honored to have the privilege to introduce our evening's final speaker. the 64th secretary of state of the united states of america, the fabulous, the wonderful, the brilliant, the intelligent, the gorgeous madeleine albright. throughout her extraordinary life, she has been committed to the idea that america should lead the world, even as we strive to perfect our own union and live up to the highest principles. she continues to pursue these

goals today in both a public and private career. as chair of the -- she provides strategic perspective to dynamic leaders who are driving the global lead economy and creating jobs around the world. as chair of both the national democratic institute for international affairs and the global project, she helps guide institutions dedicated to giving individuals a greater voice and shaping their futures. friends, please join me in welcoming madam secretary dr. madeleine albright. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you. thank you very much. thank you very much for your

kind words. i really am delighted to be here. andrea mitchell, it is a pleasure to be here with you. in case you are wondering what pin i have on tonight, i have a lincoln pin. it describes a lot of what we are doing. i am honored to join with all of you in celebrating the life and legacy of dr. martin luther king, jr. harry johnson, thank you so much for your effort in making all this work. this is your week. we have already heard a lot about dr. king and much more will be said between now and sunday, when the long awaited memorial is officially dedicated. as we share our thoughts, we should never lose sight of his

core mission. as a leader of the african- american community and his quest for racial equality and social progress here in the united states. it is appropriate that we highlight his inspirational role in south africa's struggle against apartheid. tonight, we place special emphasis on the universal relevance of dr. king's message. he was the man who spoke to all races, nations, genders, and creeds, and to every generation the words that once filled atlanta's baptist church and that were proclaimed from the steps of the lincoln memorial have not lost any of their power. the message that ultimately prevailed over enormous odds in birmingham, montgomery, and selma is vital wherever people yearn to live together in dignity and peace.

dr. king was a dreamer. this does not mean that he was naive. in his career, he was beaten, thrown into jail, spied on, and threatened. while still in seminary, he wrote about the viciousness of racism and it made him doubt the essential goodness of man. a month before his untimely death, he preached in atlanta, life is a continual story of shattered dreams. he talked about the war that wages within each of us. dr. king had seen too much of life to believe in the finality of any victory or in the moral purity of any nation or people. his knowledge of human character and his realism about

the obstacles to progress make even more compelling the prescription that he offered to. hope, faith, commitment, and compassion toward one another. he knew that a world of peace and justice could not be achieved by a small steps or by minor adjustments to our thinking and policies. he told us that such a world could not be indented even by the most startling advances of modern technology. he warned us that we could not break through as a society if we were always looking around to see what everybody else was doing. so that we would be shielded from the criticism that true leaders face. dr. king did not ask us to become a flock of good sheep. he asked us to join in creating a revolution. a non-violent revolution based on the principles of true democracy. a revolution grounded in our

need for one another and in our recognition that the court =, not because we're all the same, but because we are equal in are intrinsic dignity and worth. he asked us to insist that morality be at the core of international relationships among every nation and everybody on the face of the globe. we may wonder today whether that is a reasonable standard to set. after all, nations have economic, political, and security interests that often come into conflict. we americans have enemies that have attacked us and who proclaim their hate. it is far easier to talk about the redemptive power of love than it is to apply that concept. we cannot always live up to the standards that dr. king established.

we should admit that. if we ever failed to acknowledge morality as a guiding light, we are truly lost and we should never forget that. dr. king did not expect to see a universal brother and sisterhood descend from the clouds to cleanse the earth of suffering and strife. he asked each of us to put it beside our arrogance and to accept the fundamental proposition that every individual counts. we are tied together in a single garment of destiny. this is the principle that every individual -- it must be at the heart of everything we do. if we truly believe in that, we will have the best possible platform for world peace. we will have the unity we need to attack world problems. such as religious conflict and

bigotry. we will have the capacity to reach across social and political boundaries so that we might benefit from the contributions of all people. we will live up to our nation's highest ideals. we will honor in the best possible way the life and legacy of dr. martin luther king, jr. thank you so much for letting me participate in this moment. thank you. [applause] >> madam secretary, thank you so much for those wonderful words of inspiration. would you please give madam secretary another round of applause? [applause] i would ask that martin king the third join me on stage for a special presentation.

[applause] >> would you please welcome them to the stage? [applause]

>> i would like to present to the secretary of state one of our gracious awards that the sculptor carved. it sits on a base of actual stone that came from -- we would like to present this. i would like to present this on behalf of the memorial foundation, the king family. [applause] i would also call to the stage of the sculptor. [applause]

>> mr. ron kirk? ok. [applause] >> ok, thank you.