redistribution. i'm talking about fairness in taxation. i would have no interest in seeing that person's tax rate raised on his $50,000 of income. i think the tax rate for the middle class right now is too high. i would propose a come down by more fairness in the taxation of the extremely wealthy and corporate the multinational corporations who are not paying their fair share through avoidance schemes largely overseas to the detriment of american workers in the process, those are the bills we need to go after. i have no interest going after middle-class income taxation. i would like to see it lowered as an inducement to sort of take this economy forward in a way that we need to. >> do you considered ken wealthy having a million dollars in the bank? guest: i admire his efforts over

the years. i think the fact that a million dollars earned him only about $50,000 a year in income suggests we have an economy that needs some fixing. this gentleman has worked hard his whole life, he accumulated in the minds of many of our listeners today an enormous fortune, but it barely keeps him stable with the demands on his family. host: our next to been in kansas. ron brown, a junior. caller: my question is -- if we were to give higher taxes for millionaires or the wealthy, would day received special benefits due to their higher contributions to society? guest: i don't think anybody's contribution to society is more or less than anyone else's

potentially. people of means have a very nice life and they should get nothing for paying a fair amount of taxes. one point i would make to you and your fellow students that you are going to hear in objection to the policy that i am proposing is that making rich people wealthier, that there is a concept called trickle-down. it began under president reagan and said you should make wealthy people wealthier because they spend money in productive ways for society and somehow it is better than making the middle- class more comfortable. wealthy people have everything in life that they can possibly want. they have every refrigerator, every car, every house, every piece of clothing that they can possibly one. when you make them wealthier, as we seem to want to do in this country so unfairly, the crime

is to the middle class who could use tax relief much more than any wealthy person would ever benefit society from getting wealthier. host: thank you. the next caller is from barbara, a democrat in kansas city. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. thank you for being there, to your guest that i have a question and comment. my comment is, i am retired and my retirement comes up to about $19,000 a year and they say people at low incomes don't pay taxes but they took almost -- overtake -- 2000 out of my pay and they returned a thousand dollars so i did pay over $1,000. people that say that people with low income don't work hard -- i worked hard all of my life and that is why i have this modest retirement because it was

returned to me. what i would like to know is, when they say $1 million, anybody making over $1 million will be taxed at this higher they mean anything over a million -- the first million dollars would be taxed the way it usually is or what ever but what you make over -- like, if you make 1.1 million you might pay an extra -- and i would like to know how much is enough. iuest: that is my point and am glad you raised it for the viewers and listeners today. the gap between your $19,000 of income and $1 million of income is so enormous that there has to be more fundamental fairness within that gap.

it annoys me greatly that the president is fixated only on the families making more than $1 million. 800,000, 700,000, 100,000, depending on where you live and how you conduct your family, can be seen as a tremendous amount of wealth. so, i think it is highly important that we focus first on the needs of the middle-class. the fact that you do pay taxes on $19,000, barbara, when the press and pundits would suggest you pay no taxes is obviously a live. living as you knew -- due in kansas, you pay local taxes and state taxes and fees and surcharges that are every bit a tax. we have to have much more fundamental fairness to the middle-class in this nation and it starts way below $1 million of annual income. host: patriotic

millionaires.org is the website if you're interested in seeing what mr. hindrey's group is all about. we have a millionaire's line if you would like to call lynn -- could you just pay more taxes if you wanted and not take some of the deductions may be taking your taxes, etc.? is that a solution? guest: it certainly is a solution potentially in my single case and what i do in response is i give away large amounts of my income as the alternative to the unfair tax rate that i think i am encountering. i have set my estate up so that all of my wealth is going at the time of my death to philanthropy and other charities. but to suggest that volunteerism

is the solution to this tax problem is not even -- naive. i remember having a debate with a gentleman from bbc. he insisted that the call me by my first name but i was supposed to call him sir. and his suggestion was the same as yours, that we would both do it voluntarily. and i had a sense by his demand that i call him certification that he was not likely to follow my lead. we have to have a laws because people avoid them if they can and a particularly avoid them if they can be enriching themselves in a moment at the magnitude we are talking about this morning. host: a senior from lawrence, high school. mattie is a senior. go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call.

my question is in regards to herman cain's proposed economic plan, nine, nine, 99% tax on personal wealth, 9% corporate tax and 9% national sales tax and gets rid of the payroll and the state tax. in your opinion, does this plan has any potential to work for the u.s. economy, and if implemented, what would be the potential effect? guest: it is a failed plan. when you push the numbers through, it would actually shifted more tax burden to the middle class and not alleviate the concerns i am trying to address. just take the example of the 9% sales tax. the women and men of lawrence, kansas, on average spend a very large amount of their income keeping their families -- families fed, housed, and educated. i did not do that. i did not spend a large amount

of my income. so a sales tax on my spending is as a relative number would be much less than the sales tax perhaps on your family. what we have to have that very specifically is a rising tax rate that moves up for all taxpayers, does not have these stop points that peter talked about earlier. people should pay social security tax throughout the entire range of their income. it should not stop arbitrarily at around $95,000 or $100,000. at the same time, my tax rate as a person of means, a person of wealth, should be many factors higher than yours as you leave lawrence, kansas, to go off and start your own career. you should have almost a nonexistent tax rate in the early part of your career and if you are successful as i have been, it should have risen quite

dramatically. and mr. cain possible so somehow tries to put you and me and the same box -- mr. kane bang's proposal.- mr. cain's host: richard from texas. republican line. please, go ahead. guest: i would like your opinion, please come on the alternative minimum tax which was opposed to only affect less than 3% of the population but it is affecting the middle-class for decades. i also want his opinion -- i agree with a progressive tax, but it should start at 1% for people making 10,000 a year and go up to 40% for millionaires because we are all part -- are part of the same country. we all receive benefits from the

government and everyone should contribute to that. host: thank you very much. guest: i could not agree more with the latter suggestion. i think a scale of 1 to 40 would be quite appropriate. as i tried to say to mattie a minute ago, as she leaves lawrence, kansas, to either go off and further education or begin her own career she should almost pay no taxes, which the caller just suggested would be at the 1% level and would rise to 40%. as for the at&t, i think the amt has to be abolished for the middle class --. it is an example of tax policy run amok. it was targeted at less than 50,000 taxpayers. because it was poorly written, within a relatively short period of time it began to apply to the entire middle class and it is a tax on the middle class that

should never have happened. it is just one more example of burden is shifting from the extremely wealthy to the middle class which is the principle that i hold most dear. so, again, the solution here is not this little fix called a buffet rule -- buffett rule, which i think would be great if it is all i could get. but the solution is tax reform that ends with a progressive tax scale on the order of the 1% to 40% the gentleman alluded to. host: another student in lawrence, kansas. taylor is also a senior. >> thank you for taking my call. is it a possibility that some millionaire -- millionaires in the country could leave it there taxes are raised? guest: you know, if that is the possibility i would welcome it. if they don't have an of patriotism and sense of

responsibility to this nation to pay their taxes i'd prefer they not live here. we do have a system called unitary taxation. if you leave the country simply to avoid paying taxes you have to give up your citizenship and frankly it is a citizenship i think they deserve to give up if they have that attitude. this is a great place to live. of the american dream should be something that we should be so proud of even though it has been tarnished in the last decade- plus. i hope they leave. that would be a happy day for me. if you do not want to pay your fair share of taxes, leave. you are not going to cost me much anyway because you are avoiding taxes as it is. host: jim, independent line. you are on with leo hindrey. guest: great to talk to you. i was listening to charlie rose and i had an economist talking about tax rates in successful countries like in the

netherlands and scandinavia where they pay higher rates and don't have -- they have a progressive system rather than the over simplistic flat tax. item wondering if you know anything about other nations and -- i am wondering if you know anything about other nations. guest: i know jeffrey sacks and charlie rose and i admire both of them greatly. the irony of your question is that i could move my family to europe and i would pay a higher rate of tax on my income than i pay here in the united states. that is the tragedy. and what jeffrey was talking to charlie about was the fact that we stand out from among other nations today, in my opinion, for our tax on fairness and not for our tax fairness -- unfai rness. it is a tragedy because peter

announced a few minutes ago that we continue to have a jobless recovery with 29 million women and men in real terms unemployed. where are we going to get the resources to address their needs if you don't get them from people like myself and others that are being unfairly taxed on the positive side of earning more income than i am entitled to. host: abbey is a sophomore from lawrence high school. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. understanding that large corporations are hoarding large amounts of cash instead of hiring new people and expanding businesses, what steps do you think the administration can take to create certainty for these jobs so they will start spending their cash and create new jobs? guest: the number -- the amount of money they are holding in their treasuries is about $2 trillion.

and i have had the privilege of being a chief executive of many large companies. and the one thing that will incent you to spend capital is confidence and right now so many of these corporations and employees and workers and america have no confidence in where we are as an economy. we need a jobs bill but we need one that is more robust and will produce millions of new jobs and not a few hundred thousand. we need a true were partnership between government and the private sector at this particular point in time. neither is able to find the 20- plus million jobs we need to find today simply to put the women and men to work who are unemployed in real terms. we need new trade policies particularly with china so we did not continue to lose jobs to china by the millions. and we need, as you said, this fundamental tax reform that i have been talking about at such

great length this morning. finally we need to acknowledge as a nation that we have to have a manufacturing policy. much of the $2 trillion is sitting in corporate treasuries because we do not have, despite every other nation in the world having one, we do not have our own manufacturing policy that would give them the confidence, as i said, to spend those money on job reasons. host: almost out of time. trying to get another student. i hope natalie wilkins is ready. a senior at lawrence. go ahead with your question for leo hindrey. guest: good morning de caller: good morning. how would you personally like to see the money gained through increasing the taxes for the 22,000 millionaires to stimulate the economy? guest: i think that is a wonderful question to end this conversation on. i would put it into java initiatives, mostly on the

short-term around infrastructure -- job initiatives, that would put the most number of men and women back to work immediately. i would target the out of school unemployed youth in the country. there are about 5 million young women and men, half of them with a high-school diploma and half with a bachelor's degree of one sort or another, who are unemployed. that is the most immediate use of the resources that i would find from unfairly taxing the wealthy. down the road there are many things i would look to do to help people like yourself and your fellow students to sort of revitalize this e economy and get us as close to full employment as we possibly can as soon as we can. host: what do you think about the act by wall street movement happening right now? guest: i am and admired. i am grateful that within the last 48 hours the movement has extended its concerns to the

area of jobs and unemployment. i think it was highly appropriate that all of the women and men down there were calling out the misbehavior and the legal actions of the banks that put us into this predicament in large part. but the answer to our problems is going to be found in job creation, and it was gratifying, as i said two days ago, to see the movement shift and to my delight would be if the movement suddenly shoot -- shows up in flint, michigan and dayton, ohio, and buffalo, new york, as a combined jobs and financial reform initiative. that would be a happy day for me. host: patriotic millionaires.org is the website. thank you for being on "washington journal." we also want to thank our students from lawrence, kansas.

lawrence high school. there are a couple we did not get to. sorry we ran out of time. we tried to go a little longer but we appreciate your time. coming up next is jack buckley, commissioner of the national center for education statistics. this is our continuing series -- america by the numbers. we are going to look at student achievement and the nation's educational report card. >> fine new books for your fall reading list -- this weekend on c-span2. september 19, 1881, president james garfield is near death, mortally wounded two months earlier by a crazed gunman. can this millard on political intrigues and the destiny of the republic. and "after words" susan herman blames the patriot act for damaging the lives and liberties of american citizens.

she is attitude by former bush assistant attorney general. and a concentration camp survivor has a message for today's youth. life and liberty worth fighting for. find a schedule for this and every weekend online at bokktv.org. >> during deliberations the only people allowed in the supreme court east conference room of the nine justices. who gets the door? >> i was paying close attention to the discussion and i failed to hear a knock on the door. brennan on my left and rehnquist on my right both got up and answer the door and made me feel like i was about two feet high. i learned from that that one of the most and pour in jobs of the junior justice is to remember you are a -- most important jobs of the junior justice is is to remember you are a doorman.

>> sunday night on "q&a." >> "washington journal" continues. host: now on your screen is jack buckley, and he is what the national assessment of educational progress and he is the commissioner of the national center for educational statistics. what is the national center for educational statistics? guest: it is a federal statistical agency for education. we are responsible for measuring all aspects of american education, from pre-kindergarten all the way to continuing adult education and labor force. host: how you gather the information? guest: a wide range of sources and methods. we actually date back to -- a predecessor to our office dates all the way back to 1867 when we were tasked with counting the number of schools and students and also universities in the united states. we rely on sample surveys but

also administrative data that we collect on school districts and colleges and universities. we also assessed, the national assessment of the occasion of progress, and assessment or test we give to hundreds of thousands students. host: you are part of the federal department of education. what is the assessment test? and do you administer that? do you write and administer it? guest: it is actually a series of assessments. a variety of subjects. primarily for, eighth, and help break the 12 gray levels but there is an old a series of assessments but -- that goes back to the 1960's and 1970's that tax -- test by eight levels and keep it for trend purposes. but the main series of assessments, fourth graders through 12th graders. the content is actually set by a bipartisan political body, assessment governing board.

they may tell us essentially what to -- they tell us essential -- essentially what to test and win. -- when. we figure out how to do this and then go out to the field and test students in mathematics and certainly in reading or english language arts, history, physics, geography, arts, economics. depending on the year. host: do you just look at public schools, or homes will, chartered, private? guest: we can't get to home school students but we can get to everyone else. public and private school students and the public school students included the charter schools. for our state representative samples, every two years we actually assess a sample large enough that we can report on scores of not just the national but the state level, in that case they are religious public school. but nationalize we include private. host: jack buckley, you are the

last word in your group, statistics. let's look at educational statistics. a state proficiency standards. you say that they vary widely. explain what this is. first of all i want to show our viewers. this is tennessee and it goes all the way through the 50 up to massachusetts of here. what are we looking at? guest: one thing i want to make very clear is what we are not looking at here is actual performance. this is not how the states rank in terms of how their students are doing. this is actually -- what we are trying to show you here is the proficiency standard or test scores of the states compared to each other. the point of this is to show -- since no child left behind, reauthorization of the title one elementary and secondary education act, states have had their own testing programs.

required to test public school students in grades three through grade eight and high school. but i also set their own content, assessment content, and their own proficiency level where they say this is a student that is proficient. what we are showing here is by using a common yard stick, like for a great mathematics, you can see how widely the bars are said. massachusetts, it sets a very high bar to declare the students are proficient. host: this is the massachusetts bar that has been set. putting their standard on to our scale so you can compare it across the different states. it turns out massachusetts it is also high-performance. host: does your group measure of performance as well? guest: absolutely. host: all right. over the last 20 or 30 years, do you know how much is spent on education on k-12?

guest: it is in of 4 billion range. a very large sector. host: 2230 years, what has been in the improvements, and have week improved in educational standards and our ability to deliver education? guest: on the whole, i would say we have. this is one of the things we track. we will get to that i think on a couple of our leaders lives. we can look at one now that shows -- one way to look at that point and maybe another one that shows a little more optimistic view. this particular graph we are showing is for fourth and eighth graders, nash -- fourth race to the top. national averaging on the reading assessment. it goes back to 1992. most recently here from 2009 all the way back in 1992. what you can see is some slight improvement as you go all the way back.

if you compare the most recent 2009 scores, 221 for fourth graders and 264 on our scale for a greater some modest improvement going back to 1992 but on a whole not a lot and more recently, rather flat. host: what does 221 mean for the fourth grade reading score and what does 217 mean and what would the four-point difference be? guest: scales -- scale scores. if you have not been following along time it is hard to put it into a symbol context. the best way is to map them -- if you look at a full report you would map it to different types of mathematics -- or reading, in this case -- students they would more likely to correct if they had scored at that level. the national assessment governing board actually sets achievement levels which they give a name to, which we saw on

a previous slide, they should do basic, proficient, an advance, to give -- basic, proficient, and advance. but the governing board calls proficient is defined as a public process that has a lot of input from students and teachers and parents as well as education experts that the fines competence over challenging subject matter. host: jack buckley is our guest, commissioner of national center for education statistics part of the department of education and it put out the annual nation's education report card. we divided our phone line below the differently. parents, students, and educators.

mr. buckley, math scores. everyone is talking about math and technology today. they seem to have been significantly raised. it is 20 points significant from 1990 to current time? guest: i would say so. the achievement levels i was just describing -- for example, fourth grade mathematics assessment, the national assessment governing board said the basic level is a score of about 214 -- basically a lobar. the building blocks really need to be proficient over challenging materials. a that is where you see american fourth graders were back in 1990, just below, at 213. you can see over the last 20 years a pretty steep grade of improvement. host: why is that? guest: it is hard to say why. a lot going on in the education world over 20 years, even at any given year. certainly the changes in state

assessment policy and focusing really on making sure that all students are given scores broken out within schools under no child left behind help to shine a light on the lowest performing students and make it harder for schools to abrogate them out of the picture. i think that is certainly not -- a factor. you have to make a lot of changes in how you are delivering instruction. host: why fourth, eighth, and 12th grade? guest: as i mentioned briefly, we started back with an age sample. way back we looked at 9 year olds and 13 year olds and 17 year olds and it made some sense but it is much harder to find them because they are split across grade so we made a transition, grades that are not right at the end or the beginning of a transition period. most american elementary schools both through k-5.

fourth grade catches them when they had a lot of material but not at the very last year making transition. similarly four middle schools, mostly grades 6 through 8, so eight frigates them at the end where they had opportunity to have instruction. in terms of 12th grade we wanted to measure student at the end of their k-12 education, but that could be problematic because maybe 12th graders might not be as entirely engaged as an 11th grader. host: jack buckley, does your center do policy? guest: no. we are a federal statistics agency so we are a non-partisan group designed to tell everybody the facts and help them people interpret or certainly point out whether or not we think somebody's story is supported by the evidence. host: you are confirmed in december of 2010 as a non- partisan position and runs

through 2015 so it could potentially run through two different administrations. let's take some calls for jack buckley at the national center for education statistics. we will continue to go through some of the charts as well. david is an educator from california. guest: high tech robotics executive -- when our school system failed academically it decided to work on education reform. one of the things that isn't being talked about is in the state of california, our previous and current administrators for public education -- -- oconnell are continuing to go well -- go around and tell the public we have had 10 straight years of api improvement. if you look at our nape scores,

you will find zero improvement over the same period of time. the disconnect between api and nape scores is the biggest reason why we don't get real reform. we continue to have political educators tell the public we are improvement -- improving, that the reforms are working when your statistics show we are making zero progress. host: national center for educational progress, the score we are talking about. what is the api? caller:api is this a test that is supposed to correlate with nape scores. guest: a great question as something we see fairly often and one of the driving purposes for nape, one of the more useful reasons why we have it is to try

to provide this common yardstick for metric. as i mentioned in the beginning, what we see is because of this sort of complicated nature of patchwork assessment in the united states, that each state gets to set not only its own curriculum and content on assessment and performance test scores on the assessment and because of the variation some states will show very different trends in terms of student performance growth. we also assess school districts, large, urban districts. on our own assessments they may be showing some growth -- on hours we did not always track. sometimes the opposite is true. phalarope where some state programs did not show it. -- we have also found some growth where some state programs did not show it.

host: georgia. chris is a parent. caller: how are you guys doing? how are the students supposed to get smarter when the public school system is losing more and more money every year? my kids don't even have textbooks. they just get a printout and they are supposed to use print out. i graduated in 1993, and to look at how the system works now, i would have to disagree with your guy right here because we need a lot more than what we are working with right now. guest: i think it is absolutely true the public school system in particular is facing a real resource constraint, a shortage. the department of education has been trying to address that in a variety of ways. a large part -- at least our piece of the stimulus part of the money went to what is called the state system education fund,

going directly to states to the public school system to make sure we have enough teachers in the classroom and we have things like textbooks. but as the recession has continued it has been very difficult and it is a priority for the secretary right now. host: c-spanjunkie tweets in -- a, is that something that you measure and do you find it is a consistent thing nationwide? guest: it is something that we measure and it is fairly accurate. we measure a few different ways. we have longitudinal studies where we track students as they enter college, and we all -- also picked up data from the college and university themselves and it sounds about right. there are a lot of students who enter post secondary education who needed remediation in math and also english and other subject matters. it is a huge challenge for

colleges who will then be held accountable ultimately for preparing students for the labor market if they are getting stiff is delivered to them not ready for college level instruction. host: what is the national dropout rate for high school students? guest: a good question. it should not be an interesting question but it turns out kind of hard to measure. we collect a variety of statistics. one thing we commute -- compete annually for the nation and also the states is something called the average freshman graduation rate. rather than drop out rate what we are looking at here is a big percentage of income -- an estimate of the percentage of income and ninth graders, high- school freshman, a graduate on time in four years. what we see is looking back to the 1990's, that it is fluctuating between about 70% to about 75%. i think it was last 74.4% of

incoming ninth graders credit rating on time in four years. it is not an overwhelmingly high number. we would like to see a lot more. host: this is from 1994. between 70% and 75%. does it translate to 25% high- school dropout rate? guest: it does not. because this is measuring on- time graduation. some of the students will be left back, repeat a year. host: this is the dropout rates from 1980 until 2009. the screen -- this green line is hispanic, black in the middle and white in the bottom. they have all kind of gone down. but the hispanic dropout rate seems to be nearly twice as high as either the black or the white. guest: that gap has been fairly persistent. as you can see.

what we are measuring year -- proportion of 16-24-year-olds in american house -- i schools who are either not -- households not in the education system or do not have some sort of graduate diploma or credential including ged. it is a household estimate looking at folks who should be in school or have a degree it and don't compared to a total number. we do see a decline -- if you look at the white number at the bottom -- a level -- little over 10%. you see a similar decline, a trend objectively -- but the hispanic gap as large. host: a lot of your statistics -- these three groups, but also asian. how come there is no asian dropout rate? guest: i think the sample there was probably too small to be stable over most of the period.

if we do not think we have a valid estimate we will not show. host: san diego. harold is an educator. go ahead with your question for jack buckley. caller: i am a retired teacher. i taught for over 35 years. and i finally ended up writing a book about why children don't learn -- the name of the book is -- daffodils, capitalism and white children do not learn. you can get the book online. and you can get it at any bookstore. but i go into the hundreds of years of psychological destruction and the pollutions and things that have calls the children to have problems, that

caused them to have learning problems. i think it would be worth everyone's while, if you are interested in education, to read this book. i go into why it merit pay could actually destroy public schools. i go into why no child left behind was going to fail matter what'. and white teacher evaluations are so difficult. host: your last name? caller: doerr -- "the square of daffodils, capitalism, and why children don't learn." host: mr. buckley, does your center measure no child left behind? have you been able to test whether not it has been effective? guest: i would say our data on

things like nape and the dropout rate, the sorts of data one would need to evaluate no child left behind. as a statistical agency we are not charged in delivering the final word on a policy like that. but one of the things written into the law was a change to nape to facilitate the evaluation, we move it from a voluntary state sample program to be a mandatory program every two years in reading and mathematics at ages 4 through 8. it addresses specifically one of the problems one of the callers had and california, that we have a test across the states, rather it then looking at the state's own assessment. it is written as an integral part of our nation's assessment program. host: what is the population of k-12 age group in the u.s.? guest: i should.

i get it wrong but i think it is around 40 million. host: about -- out of 300 million. pennsylvania. is it randy? caller: good morning. what would you say the average score would be for those children who answer, say, a spelling bee contest? and what is the highest score possible? thank you. guest: on the fourth and eighth grade reading assessments, probably the most relevant for a star speller, the highest score possible is 500. i don't have any data actually on the sub-population of the folks who are experts spellers but i would guess they were in the advanced levels -- probably if they were a fourth grader, probably around 238 or 240, proficient, but they would have to be at least 240 to be a successful spelling be contested

but that is speculation. host: jack buckley, poverty gap. does it make a difference in education? guest: absolutely. one of the trends that we see consistently across any measure of educational outcomes over time is absolutely consistent with the gap between student to come from families that are relatively well off. one of the ways we measure it -- it is hard to measure social economics -- social economic status. what we use is eligibility for national school lunch program. whether or not a student comes from a family whose income makes them eligible for free or reduced price school lunch. a couple of things. you can see in 2009 to percentage of students eligible for free lunch or reduced price compared to those who are not eligible. 54% -- host: 54% overall and the u.s. are not eligible.

40% were eligible. guest: were eligible for one of the two -- host: reduced or free lunch. guest: cent -- said as a percentage of the federal poverty level. just because you are not eligible does not mean you are comfortably in the middle class. host: those eligible for free lunch seemed to have the lowest test scores, reduced price, medium test scores, and not eligible significantly higher and this seems to be consistent over the last seven-eight years. guest: even back to the 1990's or as far as we go back you see the gap is a fairly consistent. host: texas. richard is an educator. you are on the c-span talking with jack buckley from the center for education statistics.

caller: i really appreciate the job your doing. guest: thank you, sir. caller: it is a tough job. i am retired now. i was an administrator for 37 years and i dealt with testing scores. we grew -- moved from comparing state by state, using the same tests and measurements, and we moved to no child left behind where we got away from making states accountable so they do not have to compare so much with the other states. and i saw a lot of games being played politically. it was very discouraging. we are being constantly compared to nation's going to school the 10 months out of the year and we are just going nine

months, and we are on the same accountability scales. number two, many of those same nations at the sixth grade level take their lower functioning kids and move them into vocational education and they do not show what on the achievement test as much. i would like to see some testing. i love the accountability that no child left behind was supposed to bring but they did away with accountability. guest: i am not sure i would agree 100% that no child left behind reforms did away with accountability but you're absolutely right the system did change. some southern states, which already had strong state testing programs using some nationally referenced tests, for example, did see some changes where they were free to set their own standards and held to the particular details of the law.

but i would argue that accountability is still there. just some of the measurement change. as mentioned before, one of the reasons for the expansion of nape is we do assess every state with exactly the same tests, so we can hold the states accountable to each other every two years in reading and mathematics. host: market is a parent in seattle and you are on with jack buckley. caller: three quick questions. number one, i would like for you to comment on the statement teaching to the test. recently voters in washington state eliminated our state assessment test -- thinking it was just taken away from the quality of education in the classroom. at the federal level it is fine but what value does that have affecting teaching in schools

3,000 miles from washington, d.c.? and what would be your argument that the federal the part of education is needed at all rather than leaving education decisions and direction at the state level. guest: some pretty big questions and i will try to take them in order. certainly when people talk about teaching to the task, when they're using it in a negative sense they are usually saying there is some sort of test device for a high-stakes purpose -- i did to bring students or teachers or schools and because of the pressure, high stakes pressure, it will distort what it's done in the classroom. where teachers who may have had a broader curriculum, might focus on drill and kill, just focusing on a particular format that is on the test. our assessments are not high stakes at the student or school level so there is not a lot of preparation for them. this is something you are supposed to have learned in your material. i would also say in general teaching to the test does not have to be a negative thing if you are writing tests were

teaching to. if you have an assessment that really covers the curriculum standards you once stood up to learn and it is not just a bunch of memorization items, as is possible to both teams to the test and have it worth while. and what can we say about the quality of teaching -- my agency measures of lot of things. we are not just a testing agency. so, we survey national represent and of samples of teachings -- teachers. we look at students longitudinal lead over time. if you put together i think we are able to say quite a bit about teaching and teacher quality. finally, i guess your question is whether or not we need a federal department of education at all. host: and federal statistics. guest: two different things. i would argue we absolutely need a federal statistics program in education, otherwise we would have no idea where we are with anything.

the look of performance, or basically anything at all. of course, the federal department of education's role is much broader than measuring and monitoring. the much broader role that a place is providing subsidized student loans to post secondary students. providing grants to and federal subsidize land -- lending to students going to college. you have to look at the entire range of what the federal department does. what we do even k-12 is pretty small. there is a saying the department of education does not actually educate anyone. we tried to talk to the states and listen to the states and find out where we should go in policy across the areas. host: "black-white achievement gap persists" is the headline on this chart. guest: in addition to studying gaps among rich and poor we also look at gaps between or among the different races and ethnic

groups. the data is showing here really there is another persistent gap between white students and students to identify themselves as black or african-american. what you can see here is 20 years of data over time, that shows while both groups have improved in their eighth grade mathematics scores, in this example, the gap still remains quite large. 32-point gap. if you look back to the fourth grade that we showed, bigger than the entire growth we have seen in the country in the fourth grade level and bigger than the entire group we have seen in 20 years over all in the eighth grade level as -- overall. host: this tweet for you -- guest: in general when you can start to look at more than one factor rather than economic status, or race, you can see some differences, improvement. but we find that even if you

held constant social economic status and it only looks at the middle-class or upper-middle- class, you would still see an achievement gap. the gap is smaller but still there. race alone predict a gap even independent of socio-economic status. host: the same gap persists between hispanic and white achievement? guest: it does. you see the trajectory. while both groups have improved scores over time the gap is also the same size as it was 20 years ago. although the proportion of hispanic students has greatly increased overtime and the mix of what they are has changed, too. you're looking at different groups over 20 years. host: are all of these charts available on your web site? guest: they are. and a variety of reports of different sources. host: barbara from st. paul, minnesota, is an educator. you are on with jack buckley. you got to turn down your volume on the tv.

caller: it is down. i taught in minneapolis public schools, low income kids, and one thing you never hear people talk about is always blamed the teacher. we are not dealing with the student we have today. we are trying to teach children to day like we did 60 years ago. i agree, you get a high-school degree, what you do? you get a job at mcdonald's. it does not mean anything. talking about the massive dysfunction people have to deal with with the children we have right now. children coming from broken homes, alcoholism, drug abuse, abuse in the homes. and as a teacher we spend a lot of time being a mother, social worker. i worked with level five kids kicked out of every junior high or high school in minneapolis. it does not work to try to teach the children we have today like we did six years ago. guest: i think there is a lot of

truth in that. one of the things we try to do is shine a light on academic performance at the national, state, and the large urban district level, but not necessarily try to explain why we see those differences. we do measure a lot of the factors that are clearly linked to why we see the differences and a home environment of students. for 40 or 50 years it has all -- always been a big predictor. this is something folks have looked at and always understood as a huge factor in educational outcomes. the question is for other folks, beyond that -- just us do in the measurement, is what kind of policy do we develop. host: a couple of more charts. science and technology, and to keep -- engineering and math, stem. asian is green, white is red, black is below, and hispanic is

orange in this chart. what does this chart mean? guest: another thing we do is a transcript study when we look at graduates around every four or five years and we pull a sample of their transcripts and we look at the course taking. we are looking at the percentage of students by ethnic groups that took and enhance mathematics course. we have figures for the science courses. the percentage has gone up over time of students who have taken at least one advanced mathematics course. here we define it as algebra two or higher which is not that advance but it is among -- there is a persistent gap on the transcripts in terms of who is taking any kind of advanced math at all. host: does this say that a 94% of asian pacific islanders have taken -- guest: into thao 9 has taken out of the two or higher.

host: down to a minimum of 70% of hispanic. why is it important to measure this by racial group? guest: i think the socio- economic status or free lunch eligibility statistics can be more informative but we have been required to disaggregate by race by law. we report out by gender. by region, state, and also by socio-economic status. host: we are almost out of time. what about urban, rural, suburban differences. we have a chart. if you can give us an overview of what the differences. guest: what we are trying to show is -- similar to the chart we looked at, it tests gaps in advanced placement mathematics and science course taking. similar persistent gaps in terms of who takes advanced placement math. one big wanted to know is does it vary by where they are.

and you can't take advanced placement if it is not offered in your school. one thing whether this undertaking -- taking it and the other is whether they have access. this is looking at the access question. disaggregating from city, town, and rual and with and looked out looking at a relative percentage of disadvantaged minority students. one thing that really jumps out is if you look at the bottom is rural -- a lot of students and those schools simply do not have access to advanced placement math. even if they were high performing that stood as they would not be able to take advanced placement. host: when it is less than 10% minority in the rural areas, 53% have access. guest: pour right rural schools, appalachian, likely only half -- host: this is the one figure that seems to deviate. guest: it is the lowest but

remember it is a small number of students overall compared to students in the cities and suburbs. anything getting down into the 80's is something to be concerned about. talking about 10% or more, up to 20%, with no access to advanced placement math. one way they are trying to get around it is distance education. you can offer it on line. science is as hard because there is a laboratory component. host: this is the one that everyone looks at -- national one. u.s. math scores, lower than average. all these countries here are higher than us. all these countries over here are lower than us. you have 10 seconds. guest: program for international student achievement that looks at 15 year olds every three years in reading, math, and signs, and united states performs below the wealthy country average on mathematics, about average in reading and

science. something of perennial interest as we continue to track our performance and we see it relative to other countries. host: the website nces.ed.gov. jack buckley, thank you for being here on our series america by the numbers. the house is in session. it is pro-forma only today. the chaplain: let us pray. creator god, eternal presence, spirit of life in whom we breathe and live, we come into another day that has never been. a new day, an empty day waiting to be. its possibility and potential filled with only that which we bring to it. as we pause in this moment, may we have the wisdom, humility and grace to lay aside the

fear, scarcity, pain, mistrust and violence that has consumed so many of our yesterdays. where discord has been our nemesis, may harmony be our friend. where suspicion shades our perspective, may trust bring light to see clearly and know your presence in ourselves and others and in all creation. this is our prayer. fill us with love, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control so that these may be the gifts we bring to this day, to our work, our lives, our country and our world.

amen. the speaker pro tempore: the chair has examined the journal of the last day's proceedings and announces to the house his approval thereof. pursuant to clause 1 of rule 1 the journal stands approved. the chair will lead the house 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. without objection, the house stands adjourned until noon on tuesday next for morning hour debate. >> that wraps of the house today. among the issues next week, a

printer in increments with columbia, panama, and south korea. you can fall live house coverage here on c-span when they return. the senate is also coming in for a pro forma session today at noon eastern. late yesterday, senator reid implored a procedural tactic that had not been used since trent lott used it in 2000, according to "congressional quarterly" in order to limit politically motivated votes by the minority. here is how dan friedman reported. the senate sank unexpectedly into a procedural fight over republicans could offer amendments after the chamber votes to cut off debate on a bill. that bill was the china currency bill. he wrote, it was a fight rarely seen in the past six years and has put off debate on that bill and others until next week.

next up, we are going to show you the debate following the vote regarding majority leader read's tactics. it is my understanding that senators corker, wicker and vitter wish to speak postcloture. it would be better for everyone here -- and, you know, an hour, if you want to speak for pan hour, that's fine. i have to place to go. but if you could -- if we could all have an idea as to how long senator corker, senator wicker, and senator vitter wish to speak, it could help us manage what's going on here. so if i could direct this expression through the chair to my friend, senator corker. the presiding officer: the senator from tenton. mr. corker: thank you for recognizing me. i really don't want to speak. here's what i want to happen. i think members on both sides of the aisle feel like this

institution has-to-degraded into a place that is no longer a place of any deliberation at all. and i'd like for you and the minority leader to explain to us so that we have one story here in public as to what has happened this week to lead us to the place that we are. that's all i'm asking. that's all i want to know. explain how the greatest deliberative body on a bill that many would say was a messaging bill in the first place ended up having no amendments and we're in this place that we are right now. i'd just like to understand that. mr. reid: mr. president, through the chair to my friend from tennessee and others who wish to listen, we moved to this legislation with a very -- the china currency with a heavy vote. 79 senators who wish to proceed to that. once we were on the bill, i have

-- i partially filled the tree, and why did i do that? because i found over the last congress and nine months that when i try to have an open amendment process, it is a road to nowhere. it just hasn't worked. we haven't been able to effectuate a single bill being passed that way. regardless whether that's right or wrong, that's what i did. senator mcconnell wanted to offer an amendment on the president's jobs bill. to do that, he -- and that in effect tied us down because he wasn't willing to let us move to any other amendments. i was willing to move to other amendments. specifically, everyone that was involved in this process thought that senator hatch was entitled to an amendment because his was clearly germane and relevant. but without going into he said,

he said, the fact is that no amendments were offered, even though i was happy to have some amendments offered. now, what has happened over the last nieng months -- nine months is that -- and hurricane katrina this went on last year where we and even this went on last year where we learned about this. when cloture was invoked, senators -- it was led by senator demint and then senator coburn picked up on this quickly. as soon as cloture was invoked, motions to suspend the rules were filed. now, as i said today, that was done in this instance. now, i know that my republican friends say the reason we did that is we couldn't offer amendments on the underlying bill. i disagree with that. i think people could have offered amendments, but we're at the point where we were. we had nine or ten amendments relating -- nine or ten motions to suspend the rules.

i worked all day, much of the time later this afternoon, with the senator -- with senator mcconnell trying to come up with a list of those amendments. a list of those amendments that had been suspended. i had to get approval of my caucus to move to all of those amendments. i couldn't do it. i couldn't. i, in effect, made a number of my senators very unhappy by moving to amendments that are extremely difficult. they are not -- the only amendment that i am aware of that's germane to what we were working on is senator hatch's amendment. the rest of them are not germane. they may be good amendments, great message amendments, causing a lot of pain over here, but i agreed to do seven of the nine. and senator mcconnell said that he needed at least one more. i couldn't get one more. so, what procedurally took place here is this:

i believe that, as i indicated in my opening statement, that rule 22 dealing with cloture says that when cloture is invoked, it is a finite -- it's finite, ends debate on that issue. unless there are amendments that have been filed that can be dealt with during the 30 hours. there weren't any in this instance. so i have been here quite a while, and one of the most unpleasant things i've had to deal with over the years has been the vote-a-rama when we do the budget thing. we've had 60, 70, 80, 120 amendments filed. urpdz this procedure that has recently been -- under this procedural that has been recently been adopted by the minority in this instance, there's no limit to how many amendments can be filed. today there was nine or ten. this has to come to an end. this is not a way to legislate. and that's why the motion to overrule the ruling of the chair

-- that's why i made that. i think this is something that was discussed in great detail at the beginning of this congress. i had a number of senators on my side who believed very strongly, as my friend from tennessee has just described, that the senate has become a place that's very difficult to debate anything. and so senators merkley and senator udall joined by others wanted to change the rules. and at that time we believed -- and the parliamentarian and all the law that we were familiar with -- said a simple majority could change the rules dramatically. as how to relates to filibuster and all other kinds -- other things. i had felt that -- i felt that certain changes were important, and maybe we should ease into this. that's why we are not reading the amendments now, as we used to do, be forced to do on occasion. and we had a gentleman tion agreement that there would be

motions to -- motions to proceed would not be opposed to generally. i would not fill the tree all the time. and as a result of that, senators merkley and udall, much to their consternation because i didn't join with a majority of my caucus -- opposed what they did. because i was hopeful that we could get back to doing some legislating that we had done in the past. now, i feel very comfortable that what we're doing and what we did today is the right thing to do. my staff this morning when i talked about doing this, the first thing they said to me, well, what if you're in the minority? let kneel everyone within the sound of my voice, if i -- if i were in the minority, i wouldn't do this. i think it's dilatory and wrong. just as i have sea said when we were -- just as i've said when we were in the famous debate that's now famous dealing with the judges issue that we had the

nuclear option. i said, if i were in a position to exert when i felt was the nuclear option on jurnlings i wouldn't do it. and i wouldn't. i think we have to do a better job of legislating here under the rules. and so even though perhaps senator merkley and senator udall were disappointed in my advocacy to not massively change these rules, i went along hoping that things would work out better. what just took place here is an effort to try to expedite what goes on around here. and, am i 100% sure that i'm right? no, but i feel pretty comfortable with what we've done. there has to be some end to the dilatory tactics to stop things. cloture means end. it's over w. mr. mcconnell: mr. president, who has the floor? the presiding officer: the minority leader has the floor. mr. mcconnell: i'd like to give my very, if i may, to the -- the presiding officer: the

majority leader has the floor. mr. reid: i yield to my friend, the republican leader, to respooned to any questions that the senator from tennessee may have. mr. mcconnell: yes, let me -- the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: for the benefit of our colleagues, let me explain what exact happened. iit is not complicated. it was pretty clear, whether you liked this bill or didn't, it was going to pass. you could tell that by cloture on the motion to proceed with a very large majority. so i don't think my good friend, the majority leader, had to worry about whroarnst whether or not his bill was ultimately going to pass. the question was whether there were going to be any amendments at any point to the bill. and my conference made a decision, actually against my best advice, to go on and invoke cloture on the bill after we had had no amendments. and the reason we had no amendments is because the majority leader used a device that we've all become all too familiar with called filling up the tree.

thereby allowing no amendments that he doesn't approve. and he said we're open for amendments. but what he means is we're open for any amendment that i approve. so he filled up the tree, and prior to cloture on the bill, controlled whether any amendments would be allowed and chose not to allow any as a practical matter. so against my best advice, my conference decided to invoke cloture on the bill, so we were moving toward approving the bill with no expression whatsoever. and so we have in the postcloture environment the motion to suspend kh-rbgs has not been -- which has not been abused by this minority. not been abused by this minority. the majority leader in effect has overruled the chair with a simple majority vote and established the precedent that

even one single motion to suspend, even one is dilatory. changing the rules of the senate. and if you look back at this bill, what we've had in effect is no amendments before cloture, no motions to suspend after cloture, no expression on the part of the minority at all. and i don't know why anybody should act like they were offended by nongermane amendments. this is the u.s. senate. we don't have any rules of germaneness. no, we don't. any subject on any bill can be offered as an amendment. we all know that. now, the fundamental problem here is the majority never likes to take votes. that's the core problem. and i can remember when i was the whip in the majority saying to my members over and over and

over again when they were whining about casting votes they didn't want to vote that the price of being in the majority is you have to take bad votes. because in the united states senate the minority is entitled to be heard. not entitled to win, but entitled to be heard. that is the core problem here. i say to my friend the majority leader, nothing personal about it, we are fundamentally turning the senate into the house. no amendments before cloture. no motions to suspend after cloture. the minority's out of business. and it's particularly bad on a big that has the support of over 60 members, as this one did. if you're not among those 60, you're out of luck. now look, this is a bad mistake. the way you get business done in the senate is be prepared to

take bad votes, and at some points if 60 members of the senate want a bill to pass, it will pass. if 60 members of the senate don't want a bill to pass, it won't pass. and it is more time-consuming. and i assume that's why a lot of people ran for the senate instead of the house, because they wanted to be able to express themselves. this is a free-wheeling body, and everybody is better off when we operate that way. everybody is. whether you're in the majority or the minority, because today's majority may be tomorrow's minority. and the country is better off to have at least one place where there's extended debate and where you have to reach a supermajority to do things. so i would say to my good friend, the majority leader, i understand his frustration, but you were going to win on this bill. you didn't need to jam us. you shouldn't jam us on any bill. but on this bill, you were going to win. now some of us think we were

wasting our time because as the senator from tennessee said this wasn't going to become law anyway. we're sitting around here when we ought to be passing trade bills. the president asked us to vote on his jobs bill. i wanted to give him an opportunity to have a vote the other day. you guys didn't want to vote on what the president was asking us to vote on without any changes. but you could prevent that, and you did. look, let's don't change this place. america doesn't need less debate. it needs more debate. and when 60 members of the united states senate decide to pass something, it will pass. i think we made a big mistake tonight. and as soon as we all kind of cool off and think about it over the weekend, i hope we'll undo what we did tonight because it's not in the best interest of this institution or the american people. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: the senate should function like the senate, and i acknowledge that. but we have major pieces of

legislation that have been brought down as a result of not being able to have finality of that legislation. unending amendments, not germane, irrelevant. the small business administration bill that passed in the past years easily. we had the economic development administration bill, passed easily. job-creating bills that we had an open amendment process, they were brought to -- simply stopped. now there are rules of germaneness in the senate. there are rules of germaneness in the senate. and let's think about these amendments that i agreed to. there are others i didn't agree to, but the amendments i agreed we should have a vote on. not that i wanted to have a vote on them because they had nothing to do with the underlying bill. nothing. and there are rules of germaneness that that should be the case. mr. mcconnell: rules of germaneness before cloture? mr. reid: the demint

amendment right to work. cornyn amendment on taiwan. we had a vote on that. hatch amendment, that is relevant and germane. barrasso, not so. cole federal funding. mcconnell, jobs act. mr. president, part of cloture is enforcing germaneness. that's what it's all about. we're happy to do germane amendments. but the fact is the republican leader himself decided not to have amendments on this bill. i agreed to amendments on the bill prior to cloture. if everybody doesn't know that, they should because that's the way it is. so, mr. president, we have to make the senate a better place, and i think a better place is to do what was done tonight. get rid of these dilatory amendments. i mean, this is -- we would be happy if poor senator bingaman could get some bills out of the

energy committee. we could do something on cement. we could do something on -- if we could get some bills out of the foreign relations committee, we could maybe look at foreign aid. these things are dilatory and only unnecessary in an effort to divert from what we're really trying to do here, and that is legislate. the issue is this, mr. president. i believe that what we did at the beginning of this congress was the right thing to do. but as the weeks and months have rolled on, wasting months of our time on a c.r. that was done on a series of c.r.'s one week, two weeks, three weeks, funding government until october, a few days ago. what a waste of time. we have spent months, months on raising the debt ceiling. months and making it nearly impossible, if not impossible, to legislate on other matters. and when we get a chance to

legislate, we shouldn't be held up by these dilatory matters. i'm welling to legislate. i'll take a lot of hard votes in my career and i would be happy to vote on these. but there has to be an end to this. i'd be happy if my friend -- mr. mcconnell: let me make sure i understand. there aren't any rules of germaneness precloture in the senate. there aren't any. any amendment can be offered on any subject. and that's been one of the great frustrations of every majority down through the years, and we all know that. so my friend, the majority leader, in order to prevent votes on unpleasant amendments, fills up the tree and decides himself that he's going to confine the amendments to those that are either germane, relevant, or put another way, of his choosing. of his choosing. mr. reid: what was that? mr. mcconnell: of your choosing. whatever you want to allow. my friend keeps talking about wasting time.

wasting time to him might not be wasting time to us. who gets to decide who's wasting time around here? none of us. none of us have that authority to decide who's wasting time. but, the way you make things happen is you get 60 votes at some point and you move a matter to conclusion. and the best way to do that is to have an open amendment process. that's the way this place used to operate. i've been here awhile. i know this isn't the way it's always happened. this is not the way we always operated. and we did get things accomplished. not by trying to strangle everybody and shut everybody up, but by allowing the process to work. and when the senate gets tired of the process, 60 people shut it down, and you move to conclusion. that's how you move something

ahead, not by preventing the voices. i mean, we have sat around here two days in quorum calls. you all notice that? we could have been voting on amendments. sitting around in quorum calls. talk about a waste of time. mr. reid: mr. president? mr. president? mr. president? i'm going to respond to this. i don't know the exact number now, but almost 30 judges are waiting to be approved. people who are waiting to change their lives for their patriotic duty to public service. we can't -- i can't file cloture on all those: there's 29 of them. we, mr. president, have been stymied here in this congress in getting things done. holding up nominations for judges. holding up nominations, some people have been on the executive calendar for a long, long time. it's unfair. that's what's going on.

we can do all the make-believe that my friend, the republican leader, is talking about, about what great things should happen around here. i'll tell you a few things should happen. we should be able to move matters through here that have been happening since the beginning of this country. nominations, for example. we can't do that because my friend the republican leader, an candid as he was said his number-one goal was to defeat president obama. that's what's been going on for nine months here. this issue relating to these dilatory tactics on these motions to suspend the rules is part of that game that's been played. i agree. let's get back to legislating as we did before the mantra around here was defeat obama. mr. leahy: mr. president, would the majority leader yield for a question? mr. reid: i'd be happy to yield. the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. leahy: mr. president, i pose this question, and i look around this floor, with the

exception of senator inouye, my dear friend from hawaii, nobody has served in this body longer than i have of the current membership. nobody. i keep hearing this talk about 60 votes. most votes you win by 51 votes. and this constant mantra of 60 votes, 60 votes, this is some new invention, i tell my friends based on my history. so my question to the majority leader, whether we were here with a democratic majority or a republican majority, does he remember a time when judges who were confirmed unanimously, every single republican, every single democrat voting for them out of committee would then sit on the calendar for three, four, five, staoeuplgs six months --

sometimes six months because there's not an agreement to vote on them without a 60-vote supermajority. i cannot remember any time in 37 years. i don't know if the majority leader recalls such a time. mr. reid: the senator from vermont has been here longer than i have, but he's absolutely right. i would also, mr. president, add this. the republican leader said, and i think this says it all, today, extemporaneous remarks from his position here where he's now standing -- and i quote -- "if 60 senators are in favor of bringing a matter to conclusion, it will be brought to conclusion. that's what happened a few minutes ago." and that's what cloture is all about. that's what cloture is all about. i believe in cloture. as i've indicated several times earlier, i wasn't in favor of changing the rules relating to cloture as some of my colleagues did. but i think this is a step forward. it will make this process work a lot better. i want to tkwraoeld to my friend

from -- yield to my friend from mississippi. yield for a question. the presiding officer: the senator from mississippi. mr. wicker: i want to thank the distinguished majority leader for yielding. i will not take long. i've been in the senate four years now, and i think my colleagues know i don't come down to the floor and spout a lot of hot air. but i but i have to be heard tonight, and i will agree with my friend, the majority leader, on one thing. this is no way to legislate. he said those words a few moments ago, and i agree. we have become accustomed to a procedure, and i have disagreed with that procedure, but it has been the regular order during the time i have been here, and that is the usual practice is a bill is brought to the floor and

the majority leader immediately offers every amendment that can possibly be offered in a parliamentary way, thus filling the amendment tree and preventing other senators from offering amendments. then cloture is filed and we don't have an opportunity to have a full hearing. i am told this has not always been the practice, but we have been accustomed to that practice. what happened tonight is far different from that, and i think that's why my friend from tennessee propounded the question to the majority leader. we had a bill and it may be a messaging bill, but if it were passed, it would be a significant piece of legislation. i think both sides acknowledge this. and no amendments were allowed precloture, and no amendments

have been allowed postcloture, and the majority leader this very day after the cloture vote assured the senate that we would be operating under an open process, he said those words. of not only that and perhaps the majority leader when i finish in just a moment or two could -- could correct me, but i believe i heard the majority leader say we would be allowed to offer motions to suspend the rules on a number of amendments and debate would be allowed. now, what occurred was senator coburn offered his motion to suspend the rules on his amendment, and we assumed that we would be able to do this on at least a few amendments, but

the very first amendment that was offered, the majority leader suggested to the chair and made the point of order to the chair that that was dilatory, one amendment. one amendment, and that was deemed dilatory by the majority leader and the parliament correctly instructed the chair to overrule that suggestion by the majority leader. upholding the precedence of this senate. and one by one, democratic members of this body had to march down and vote to overrule the parliamentarian of this senate for the very purpose of shutting down the chance to offer one single amendment. when the -- when the majority leader well knew he had the votes to win, but our rules

have, i thought, been designed and i think our society is designed around the concept that the minority has an opportunity to be protected, the minority has an opportunity to be heard in this body of all bodies. and what we have come tonight unless we can remove that is we have changed the rules of the senate on a messaging bill, on a matter that the majority leader had the votes on. so that is my objection. that is why i am so disturbed about the overreaction and heavy-handedness of this move. this is not a matter of supporting of one bill that he wants to get us out of town on. this is precedent, and we

have -- unless we can change it, we have forever changed the right of the majority to be heard postcloture, and i am saddened about that. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: first of all, let me tell my friend that amendments could have been offered pre- cloture, and my friend said he thought we would be able to offer some amendments postcloture with their motions to suspend the rules, and that's what i said would happen and i agreed to that. seven amendments. now, people were saying well, you choose the amendments. i didn't come up with those things. they came up with them. they are the ones they gave me. i guess i was supposed to pick and select which ones they did. that's what i did. i could not get agreement on some of these amendments. i have explained that in some detail previously. now, also everyone should recognize motions to suspend the rules are still available.

they are just not available postcloture. the rule 22 provides -- quote - "it is the sense of the senate that debate shall be brought to a close." that's what it says. i'm sorry my friend is disappointed, but i think the play book that he is reading from is not really accurate. mr. mcconnell: i would say to the majority leader -- the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: the senator from mississippi is accurate. until the vote we had just a few moments ago, motions to suspend postcloture were appropriate, and no longer are they appropriate because, as my friend from mississippi pointed out, we have in effect changed the rule. a senator: mr. president. mr. reid: i yield to my friend from tennessee. mr. corker: first of all, i want

to thank the leader for taking the time to explain from his perspective what has happened. i guess what i'd like to -- mr. president, to understand is when amendments are offered, why don't we just go ahead and vote on them? i mean, it's become standard procedure -- mr. reid: could you start over? i was interrupted. mr. corker: that's no problem. i want to thank the leader for taking the time to explain from his perspective what has happened. here is what i don't understand. we have a cloture motion, a motion to proceed on a monday. it's thursday night. we have had no votes on anything other than a cloture vote. i guess what i'd love to understand is why don't we just immediately begin voting on amendments. we could have been done with this bill yesterday. instead, everybody cools their heels, waits around while some negotiation takes place. it's sort of a self-appointed rules committee, and then at the

end something like this happens. i'd like to understand from the leader's perspective, mr. president, why we don't just go ahead and vote on amendments. again, we could have been done yesterday. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: mr. president, if i could just respond to my friend, people around here are talking as if this is something that never has happened before. this has happened -- i don't remember all the times that i have been in the senate that the chair, as brilliant as our parliamentarian is, and the chair does his best to sustain what the parliamentarian wants, he is not always sustained. there are all kinds of examples. and i have been involved in a number of those. so it -- this isn't as if it never happened before. we did this with the understanding that what is going on here is dilatory, and that's what the majority of the senate felt. i would yield. mr. schumer: would you yield for a question? mr. reid: i would be happy to yield to my friend. mr. schumer: i would like in the form of a question to the majority leader also try to impart some -- because we're all

frustrated. and the senator from tennessee and i talked about that frustration at the beginning of this session in an attempt -- obviously, it hasn't worked terribly well -- to try and straighten this out. and you are frustrated. we can talk about the specifics here, and the one point i would make is the majority leader, isn't that true, mr. leader, offered on the floor, he said i will allow amendments on this bill yesterday, and the only amendment that was sent to us was the amendment to have a vote on the president's budget, is that correct? that was before cloture was filed. mr. reid: that's right. mr. schumer: and it was not widely known on this side, but the majority leader had offered amendments on this bill. but the question i want to ask and i want to make a statement -- or i want to lead up to the question. you're frustrated because you feel the tree is filled all the time and you can't make amendments, but we are frustrated because the 60-vote rule, which has always been used here, is now used routinely,

which it never had been done before. judges, district court judges. i have been here in the senate 13 years, i was in the house 18 years and followed the senate, cared about judges. it never happened before. routine appointments, assistant secretaries of this, deputy secretaries of that, 60 votes. and on bill after bill after bill, the procedure of this place works that somebody has to object. that's why you file cloture. otherwise, we could proceed. in the past, the motion to proceed was not routinely blocked. and almost every single bill -- important bills, obviously. no one thinks the health care bill should have passed by 51 votes, but on minor bills, we

had a filibuster on technical corrections to the transportation bill. route 287 was written down 387 by mistake, and it was filibustered. 60 votes. so our defense is to fill the tree. but what we ought to try to do here -- and as i said, the senator from tennessee and i futilely tried earlier this year and maybe calmed things down -- is maybe use this flash point to try to come together and work that out again. that may be the -- that maybe the minority would not filibuster routinely everything, appointments, judges, minor bills, save it for the major bills, and in return i agree with the minority leader, the republican leader, the deal around this place is the majority sets the agenda and the minority gets to offer amendments. that has been the rule since i got here and it's one of the

reasons, you're absolutely correct i say to my friend from kentucky, why i left the house to run for the senate, but it's gotten to an extreme. you would say, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would say it got to the extreme because we always fill the tree. we would say it got to the extreme because you filibuster everything and require 60 votes. we only have 53, we know that, on everything, judges, appointments, minor bills. and if we're going to bring this place back to order -- and my friend from tennessee, the junior senator from tennessee, if we're going to bring this place back to a way where we can legislate, we are going to have to both sides back off and we're going to have to figure out how to do that, which we haven't very adequately yet. just one other point before i ask my question. the senator from west virginia had a few of us on his boat this

week, and a number of the freshman senators from the other side of the aisle were on the boat and i was on the boat, and we began to talk about they were asking why is the place so mixed up. i was explaining some of the greatest joyce i have had in the senate and the house were conference committees and offering amendments and things like that. and we all said together why can't we get back to that? but let me say that it is not simply filling the tree and preventing amendments that has caused this problem. it is routinely requiring 60 votes before the senate gets a drink of water. and so my question to the majority leader is this -- would he be willing -- and we need a little bit of a cooling off period. would he be willing to sit down

with the minority leader and others in an effort to try and figure out how we can get back to somewhat more of a regular order? in regards to what i said. mr. reid: to my friend and to others who are listening, so everybody understands a little bit of the frustration that i have, we all went through the battle on the fema bill. everyone remembers that. people in the dark bowels of this building someplace typed that bill up. they made a mistake and had a comma, a comma in the wrong place, a comma in the wrong place. i asked consent, that was a technical correction, could we get that done. there were already press releases out from my republican friends, we're not going to agree to any consent on anything. so you talk about frustration,

there is plenty of it to go around. mr. president, i want to try to end this on a high note. i love this institution. i've devoted most of my life here in this building. not only as a long-time member of the house and the senate but i lived here going to law school. i worked in this building. i was a cop in this building. i love this building, i love this institution. i don't want to do anything to denigrate the institution. maybe there is blame to go around. i think there probably is. but frustration builds upon frustration, and as a result of that, we have situations just like this. so here is my suggestion: i think that just as we had a cooling-off period as we indicated that we would on that fema c.r., we had a cooling-off period, the republican leader and i agreed that that would be

the right thing to do and we came back and worked something out. we did it very quickly. it wasn't to everyone's satisfaction, i had people upset, he had people upset but we did that. it would be my suggestion that we do what i originally suggested, i think we should go ahead and do final passage on this matter on tuesday night, and do the judge first and vote on the jobs bill. and we'll do the trade stuff. and i am happy to not only sit down with the republican leader and, you know, i'm sure we can all cinch up our belts and as i -- they say in the old and new testament gird our loins and try to do a better job of how we get along here. i've talked to the republican leader only briefly about this, but i had a discussion with my leadership today, and one of the things that i was going to announce and so here it is, one of the things i want to do is

have a joint caucus. i want to have one with democratic senators and republican senators and at that time we can all talk about some of the frustrations we all have. i wanted to do 25 the first week we got back after the next recess. i hope that doesn't -- all my people don't know about this and certainly i haven't finalized this with the republican leader but i think that would be a good step forward, that senator mcconnell and i could be there in front of everybody else together, questions could be asked, statements could be made, and we could see if that would let a little air out of the tires. but -- and i'll be happy to next time we get cloture, in that event sometime in the future, to sit down and find out what, if anything, we should do postcloture on matters relating to people who are frustrated. so that's my statement, mr. president. so i -- i'm not asking for consent on anything, but i

would hope that we could all leave and i would have senator mcconnell and i would direct the staff to come up with something, an arrangement comparable to what the debate last night sustained ever read with a vote of 51-48. joining us from capitol hill is stephen dennis to cover the vote and the debate last night. explain to us what the significance is of this procedural vote last night in the senate? >> it is a little complicated. the bigger picture is, with a simple majority, harry reid and the democrats basically altered longstanding precedent which allowed people to get the votes of of these votes to suspend the rules even after you have got

the 60 votes to go ahead and debate on a bill. this is a rarely used tactic, but basically, the republicans tried to use last night, basically, a tactic that has not been successful since 1941 but the republicans were pretty close to actually using this tactic to amend this china currency bill last night. you need 67 votes to suspend the rules for one of these amendments after cloture. there was one of them, on a farm dust regulation, that was potentially going to get 67 votes. harry reid did not want to allow that vote, did not allow the boat, and basically, when republicans insisted on having that boat, -- vote, reid and the democrats nuked the ability to

use this again. basically, if you try to have the suspension of roles after you get cloture, it will be considered dilatory, meaning you are just doing it to delay things and clogged things up. it is a real power play on the part of the democrats, the kind of thing the democrats have avoided doing. they have not messed with the filibuster, for example. push to reformig some of those things. this is still tinkering on the edges of republicans were warning last night, asserted in the house, where you could have the majority control the entire amendment process. republicans have no clear opportunities to get a guaranteed author of some kind of a vote.

>> does that mean republicans will not be able to bring up an amendment vote on the president's jobs bill, the original plan of the president? >> harry reid had agreed to a vote on one of these motions to suspend the rules to bring up the jobs bill and have a procedural vote that the republicans could say this is a vote on the jobs bill. the democrats had agreed to that, and the republicans could have gotten that vote last night that they would have given up on that farm dust amendment. that is the way that things stood. they could have had the jobs bill boat when it pushed the farm dust, reid said you are not going to get any votes. there was not even a procedural vote on the jobs bill, and that

means democrats will control how the bill comes up next week. they are going to make it more plausible -- palatable for their members. they did not want to be in a position of having several of their members vote against the president's own package before it comes up in a way that they actually want. they want to be as unified as possible, so they do not want to give republicans the opportunity to say there is a bipartisan majority opposing this package. >> stephen dennis reporting on the roll call last night in the senate. you can read his report at rollcall.com. one of the many reporters we follow on twitter. coming up later today, we are going to take you to the value voters summit, going on all day

in washington. we are covering it now on c-span 3. it will be on c-span later today at 2:00 eastern. >> before the presidential election of 1916, charles evans hughes was a lawyer and professor. though he lost his bid for the presidency, his impact on political history remained. serving as a secretary of state and ultimately chief justice. he is one of the 14 men featured in the new weekly series "the contenders." tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern. for a preview, watch a number of videos about him, visit our special website for the series c-span.org/thecontenders. >> if you think a bill of rights is what sets us apart, you are crazy. every banana republic in the

world has a bill of rights. every president for life pass a bill of rights. the bill of rights for the former evil empire, was much better than ours. literally, it was much better. we guarantee freedom of speech and of the press, big deal. they guaranteed freedom of speech, the press, street demonstrations, and anyone caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. that is wonderful stuff. of course, just words on paper. >> justices antonin scalia and stephen breyer testified before the senate judiciary committee over a wide variety of questions, including the constitutionality of -- >> up next, and john boehner

among the speakers yesterday at the aspen institute washington ideas forum. this is just under three hours. [laughter] i know i'm getting older, but the fact i can walk is news? [laughter] >> well, to all those who were expecting brian williams, i'm -- i'm just pinch hitting as he was called off to -- to anchor our special report about the president, who'll be speaking in a little while, but -- >> you mean, [inaudible] the president than me? >> i mean, you know. [laughter] i know where i am, ok? [laughter] >> sorry. [laughter] >> mr. vice president, it's good to see you. >> it's great to see you, david. >> there's a lot to talk about this morning, but i'd like to start by asking you what you think the world has lost with the passing of steve jobs.

>> you know, i was watching some of the shows last night and his commencement speech in '05 at stanford. if you haven't seen it, you ought to see it. but -- and someone said -- i'm paraphrasing -- this guy democratized technology in a way that he put in the hands of ordinary people instruments that were only heretofore available to nasa scientists, to docs in an operating room. and he -- he put in the hands of ordinary people the ability to do some extraordinary things. and i -- that struck me, that he democratized the use of the most advanced technology on earth. and he -- so i think his contribution is huge. and also his attitude. i -- watching him saying he gets up every morning, looks in the mirror, and asks himself

whether or not, "if this were the last day of my life would i be doing what i'm doing today? "and that seemed like how he approached life. and i think that's a hell of a good way. my dad said it a different way. he used to say, "it's a lucky man or woman gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they're about to do, and thinks it still matters" and it matters. >> is that democratization of how we get news and information that he was instrumental in ushering in, what kind of impact has that had, not just on news and information, but on the political and policy debates in the country? >> well, i think it, in one sense, it's made policy debates a little more difficult to focus and have in a way that there's no one -- i remember when i first got elected, 400 years ago -- [laughter] and david halberstam had just written "the powers that be" and i remember thinking, "my goodness, this concentration of power -- three networks and

three outlets" and i thought to myself, you know, "this is, you know, halberstam's point about it should be more open." sometimes i wish there were only three. i'm not being facetious. because there was a marshaling of the single most important issues of the day in one place where the debate could be, a fora that was always available, that you had 70 percent of the people watching the evening news. there was -- and it was news. but the flip side of that is this democratization has taken on the ability to literally bring down governments, bring down tyranny, to fundamentally alter the way people organize themselves. so, on balance, it is -- it is much, much healthier. but it does have -- i mean, there is no -- there's no governor on any of this. there's no editor. there's no -- so a lot of material gets out into the public sphere that is just specious.

but my view is, and my deceased wife used to always kid me when i'd say this, i'd say, "i have great faith in the judgment of the american people" and she'd look at me and say, "i wonder how much faith you'd had, had you lost your first election? " but -- [laughter] but i really do. i think the american people and the people around the world are digesting this and starting to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. so, i think, on balance, it's overwhelmingly positive. >> why is the economy getting worse? >> the economy is getting worse for a number of reasons. let me be precise. it's not that it's getting worse. it's not getting better at the rate it should get better. and there's a number of reasons for that. domestically, the things that we can control, i, quite frankly, will not surprise you to hear me say i think that -- that playing brinksmanship with the national debt was a serious mistake. i think that us being downgraded is a psychological impact on the markets here and people's thinking about where we were.

it is -- it is not within our power, but it is within our orbit that the scare, the default, the possibility of the default of greece, whether or not the europeans are going to build a firewall strong enough with a billion or a trillion, $700 million dollars to prevent the contagion to move to banks in france or the collapse of italy. there are roughly, depending on the estimate, 30,000 to 50,000 apartment -- 50 million -- 30 million to 50 million apartment units in china that are vacant and people worried about the real estate bubble there. but we should focus on the things we can control, we can now control. we can now give it a jump start by passing this jobs bill. every -- every -- the vast majority of the -- of the independent validators said it would create between 1.7 million and 2 million jobs. it would increase the growth of the gdp by up to a couple

percentage points. and, so, the things that we can control are the things that frustrate me the most that we're not able to get done. >> well, what is going to get it done? the president's campaigning for it. we'll talk about it later this morning. but, even though you believe you're right, you know in this town that's not always enough. >> no, it's not. >> so what's going to have to happen for it to get passed? >> well, i think what's going to happen for it to get passed, i think we have to challenge -- and i, as you've reported, i have a good personal relationship with eric cantor. i like him a lot. he's smart as heck. i have a great relationship with john boehner. but i know what they're against. i don't know what they're for. and i worry whether or not -- there was a report that pete sessions, the congressman from texas, one of the senior staff members either for him or the republicans, said, after the job bill was introduced, "obama has his back to the wall. why should we help him now?" the reason is to help the united states.

i look at the element of the bill. i don't know any republican against cutting the payroll tax for businesses as well as for employees. we had 50 of them supporting a one year ago including some of the most conservative members. i don't know any republican out there who has taken a position that we should not be improving the infrastructure. i don't know any republican who has taken the position that it does not make sense for us to figure out a way to get those 6 million people who are paying 6% on their mortgages to pay four% on their mortgages. yet, i don't know what they are against. as the president said so pointedly, this was one month ago, we have 13 months to have this campaign. we will have all kinds of fights but these folks cannot wait. how many people do you all know will go to bed tonight staring at the ceiling, literally

wondering whether they will be in that house next month? >> the president is campaigning, too. he is talking about tax hikes on the way and selling this bill. he is very much in campaign mode. do you support with democrats are saying about the surtax on the wealthy? >> absolutely, we said this is how we would pay for but we are open. you have all overwhelmingly millionaires think they should pay more. tea party folks think millionaires should pay more. the middle class thinks, republicans think, what is the problem? what is the problem? >> as somebody who understands technically how to move legislation, what happens that gets a pass? >> we have to go the people. that is what the president has decided to do and i have been, as you know, that has been my point of view for a while. you have a lot of folks who were elected last year to the

congress in 2010 who are in districts where it will not matter. you have many folks in the state of pennsylvania, five folks who are tea party-associated represent swing districts. we should go to the people. we should be asking everyone of those congresspersons what are you against? the only way we will change its best is not by a changing -- by getting the leadership of the republican party to take on their membership. we will only change it if we communicate to the american people what we are proposing is sound, reasonable, and something there is no good reason why republicans have supported in the past will not supported now. >> does the economy slipped into recession if the federal government fails to stimulate further? >> i don't think the economy will slip into recession if this does not pass. i do think it stays sluggish and stagnant if this does not pass.

there is a concern about recession and i know is one of the things you have talked about off and on "meet the press." there is a real concern about europe. we are working as hard as we can with their counterparts, the secretary of treasury, the president, encouraging europe to do what they know they have to do but is politically very difficult to do, to build this fire wall. you can picture a worst-case scenario in the euro a zone that could have an international contagion that could be really bad. >> i am reading the new michael lewis book," boomerang." he says eric subprime crisis did a lot of damage to our banks of the government can still build a banks out. here you have countries that are actually destroying their banking systems. can the euro zone survive with countries like greece failing to

meet its budget target? >> it can but this is a wrenching moment that there are going through. that got to have an alter call here. will they take the risk they need to maintain this union? our belief is that they can and our belief is they will and our ardent hope is that they will. if you read that book and i have not read it, but there is a lot of talk about it, if you think about what our republican friends are talking about now -- i listened to john boehner and he really is a friend and in a speech in the chamber and the talk about liberating the economy. the last time we liberated the economy, we put the middle class and shackles. everything they are talking about are the very things that got us in trouble.

liberate wall street from the new constraints on them, talk about how we will increase tax cuts for people, particularly at the upper hand -- all of the things that we have tried before and the very things that got us where we are are the things that are being proposed. we have to have a head-on debate in this country about the frustration. the frustration is what we have done has not totally corrected the problem, that people are still hurting and we understand that. there has to be a debate whether we continue along the path we are talking about and make the kind of changes we have been unable to make like fair distribution of the tax burden. i was just watching see nbc as i came in -- cnbc and they had a corporate guy on their talking about corporate tax cuts.

we think corporations should pay 28% to make us more competitive worldwide. the problem is like this guy pointed out is that industries are paying 35% but the financial sector is paying 20%. our problem now is getting everybody to get in the game. it is not that we're slowing up corporate tax reform, corporations are in disagreement because there will be winners and losers. we talk about the buffett rule, i called the reagan rule. this is ronald reagan, 1985. some of those loopholes are understandable but in practice they sometimes make it possible for millionaires to pay nothing while the bus driver was paying 10% of salary and that's crazy. do you think the millionaire should pay more than the bus driver or should he play -- pay less ta?

>> but most millionaires to pay more. warren buffett is an out liar. >> all millionaires, not all, the vast majority of millionaires pay more money than the bus driver. on a progressive tax rate, they don't pay at the rate they should pay. what warren buffett was talking about is is effective tax rate, i forget what he said it was, 20%, and his secretary making $55,000 or whatever was is paying 28%. that is not what teddy roosevelt had in mind. that is not what has been the process for the last 100 years. >> let me ask you about what is happening in wall street. what about the occupied wall street movement? do you and the president's stand in solidarity with those protesters? >> [laughter] >> that is a fair question let's

be honest with one another. what is the core of that protest? why is it increasing in terms of people it is attracting? the court is the bargain has been breached. with the american people. the core is the american people do not think the system is fair or on the level. that is the core of what you are seeing on wall street. that is what started -- there is a lot in common with tea party. the tea party started because of tarp. they thought was unfair and we were bailing out the big guys. the people on the other side are saying the same thing. the bargain is not on the level anymore. in the minds of the vast majority of the american people. >> our banks the problem in this economy? >> they are part of the problem in the economy. there is this overwhelming the

reaction to bank of america putting a $5 fee. the american people know, they don't guess, they know that the ceo of bank of america or anybody in that business is in the business because that guy making $50,000 got bailed out. it put his financial security on the line when his government said we will come up with $1 trillion to bail him out. then they turn around and say that we are likely only projected to make $17 billion next year. the middle class folks, these guys with a debit cards, are on their back and we will charge them $5 more. at a minimum, they are incredibly tone deaf. at a maximum, they are not paying their fair share.

of the bargain. middle-class people are getting killed. >> the lead editorial in "the wall street journal" this morning. they are responding to your roles. are they not supposed to be profitable when there are restrictions on overdraft protection and so forth? >> that is a little bit like saying to my kid -- i say that here's the deal -- i not only don't want you driving the car when you don't have a license. but my son says i can i do any more so i have to steal a car. i have to get around somehow. [laughter] you know what i mean? come on. >> is that really the analogy want to make? [laughter] your suggestion that it is a crime -- i know you're not suggesting that, you're suggesting that they are wrong in seeking to make a profit in a

different way based on new regulation. there are people who will hear this and say this is the problem with these guys. they are fundamentally a against business. >> 99% of the american people will not think that. i'm not worried about how that will be perceived by anyone listen to this program. what i am worried about is the failure of the bank to understand that in a circumstance where it was viewed by the congress responding to the american people that the tax in effect that was being placed on the purchase of goods when they swiped a card is now forcing them to go out there and add another fee when they are already making a profit. you can make a lot more profit. there are many things they can do. when you charge extra for bags and airlines, people are really angry that they have heard for the last 25 years out airlines are going bankrupt they say they

hate fest but if they don't do it, the airline will go bankrupt. nobody thinks the bank will go bankrupt right now. they are more liquid than they ever were and are not making money, that is what they're thinking. you cannot blame the american people for feeling an overwhelming sense of frustration at this moment when they are hanging on by their fingernails and all the sudden they come along and say even though we will make a healthy profit next year, we think we have to have this additional income. >> let me ask for accountability in the economy. the president's job approval stands at 42%. they say the approval of handling -- his handling of the economy is pretty low. the efforts that you have made as an administration turned the economy around or they didn't and they appear to not have done that. either you are accountable or there is only so much government

can do. >> it is two things -- if you look at all polls that you have cited before as well, a clear majority of the american people blame the financial strain on the last demonstration for did understand what got us in this trouble. they understand it was no regulation, no documentation loans, these wacky instruments they are taking risks on, being leveraged 30-1, etc. we are in charge. they are looking to us to fix it. they are frustrated and i don't blame them. if you are raised in households where someone in the house lost their job, you understand the frustration and anger they feel. we are in charge we have turned it around. we have but for the local, in the last two months, we create 1.7 million jobs that that is not nearly enough.

has been offset by the failure of the republicans to support the stimulus efforts to to help for the counties and cities and states. they have laid off 300,000 teachers. we have taken a hit. they understand that we have kept it from getting extremely worse. we made it better but not good enough. i think what the 42% represents is how they feel. they don't think enough has been done. that is what i think is what you are beginning to see. that is why i think we have to take this to the american people and say this is what we want to continue to do to keep us on the road. it is like a car is out of the ditch and it is moving along but it is only going 25 miles per hour. they are used to going 60. >> that doesn't sound like a lot of accountability to me. the stimulus plan was a big and

you got it passed. health care reform was big which you initial thought was a bad idea in terms of political capital and later supported it, that the past. that was sold as part of our economic security. things have not turned around. c-span. there are either limitso what government can do or you -- or you are a position to say we are in charge but is the other guy's fault. >> there are limits as to how fast government can make up for eight years of profligate spending, no oversight, putting two wars on the credit card, a health-care bill on that credit card and a prescription bill, and a tax cut a several trillion dollars. it takes time to get that done. there are limits on how rapidly government can work. there are also limits on what government can do when one party

decides we will do nothing. we will do nothing. nothing. we will do nothing. let me say it again. what have they proposed? to stimulate economic growth except the same exact things that "liberated the economy before a." get rid of dodd-frank. let wall street goats -- go back to its ways. make sure you continue the tax cuts for the rest. increase tax cuts for the wealthy. that has not worked. it is very difficult in an environment where one team says not only are we not going to compromise on moving it forward, we just think the old method that got us here works. the american people, their frustration is real but at the end of the day, you have heard me say it before that there used to be a major named kevin white in boston. i went up my first year at age

30 to do an event in boston. kevin white was phenom elected in 1970 and in 1972 he was in trouble. the press got him as he came out of the mayor's office and said, how do you feel now? and all their forget what he said. he said don't compare me to the almighty. compare me to the alternative. [laughter] this is about the alternative. >> your view is you talk about whether the jobs bill will be passed. you say this president does not have a partner on capitol hill? >> i think he does have a partner in the bulk of the leadership but they are seriously hamstrung. i can tell you -- without

violating confidence -- i think john boehner would tell you, i think eric cantor would tell you -- we had a much bigger proposal. i was personally negotiating with them as to how to deal with the debt crisis. and they could not sell it. i believe that if just eric cantor -- i am telling you this straight -- i have a bad habit of saying what i believe for a >> i don't want to get in the way of that now. [laughter] this is just joe biden's impression. i truly believe that if eric cantor, joe biden, barack obama, john boehner were allowed to settle a deal in the room, we would have had a deal but that is not how it works. >> they're not strong enough leaders to get it passed, is that your view? >> my view is that their party is not the republican party that

we all know. one of the worst things that have -- at that has happened to us is that we need a strong republican party. we need a republican party that is united. we need a republican party you can sit down with and say, ok this is a deal. can you deliver on the deal? part of what this is about is going over the heads of the congress to the people, to their constituents, and make the case. for the people to respond either to our arguments or to theirs. and decide whether or not they will put pressure on their congresspersons to support this jobs bill or not. >> you said not the almighty, the alternative and this is not strong republican party. >> it is not united republican party. >> is a strong enough of a republican party for its to be this president? >> absolutely, it is strong

enough to beat both of us. no matter what the circumstance, at the end of the day, the american people right now, many of them are in real trouble and a larger percentage have stagnant wages and a significant majority of the american people believe that the country is not moving in the right direction. that is never a good place to be going into re-election. , whether it is your fault or not your fault. it is sometimes irrelevant. what i am counting on is what i read out there, this judgment of the american people to decide. they know the whole we are in and i know how far we have come out and they are dissatisfied how fast we are going and they will have to choose whether or not the path we have set the country on is the path that we should continue to go or should we go back to liberating the

economy in the terms of ." >> the president said this week he is an underdog. with the enthusiasm with which he was swept into office, the tears on election night because people were full of hope in his leadership -- how in the world did that happen? how did he become an underdog for reelection? >> when franklin roosevelt came into office, we had been in flat depression for two years. no one had any doubt about how we got there. when we got sworn in, and we have the inaugural parade and the president and i were sitting out there on pennsylvania avenue in front the white house, the afterwords we walked back into the oval office. he sat behind a desk in the togolese said, "we bought into high."

if we had been sworn in on march 20, it would have been clearer where we got where we have been. that does not matter. we are in charge now. the fact of the matter is, the american people are dissatisfied with the state of the nation at the moment. that by itself is enough to make you the underdog. if you looked at it in statistical terms -- former president impositions where unemployment has been as i have very difficult times winning. it is just looking at the facts. at the end of the day, this ends up being the situation where the american people will have to make a choice. our job as leader is is to lay out clearly for the american people that this is not a referendum. this is a choice. if you don't like what we are doing, understand it. we got it. >> will you prevail? >> i think we will win. >> who is a against you?

>> i have spent 30 years trying to figure out the democratic party. [laughter] with little success, i might add. i have no idea >> mr. vice president, thank you, i only wish this was sunday morning. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> the walking and talking vice- president is leaving. i thank you mr. vice president. next up, we have speaker of the house john boehner who vice- president biden just told us was a friend of his. he is being interviewed by national journal's majel

garrett. >> hello, hello. you are on the wrong side. move over. >> speaker, whatever you say. just following directions. welcome, mr. speaker. the president of united states will have a press conference in about 10 minutes. as you know, i have some vague familiarity with the cable news industries will give you an opportunity you don't often have which is to look into the cameras and asked the presidents of the united states -- >> mr. president, why have you given up on the country and decided to campaign full-time instead of doing what the american people sent us all here to do and that is to find common ground to deal with the big challenges in our economy and our country what a great way to get started. >> is present was just on the

stage and he said the following -- that there was rough agreement between yourself, eric cantor, the vice president, and the president on the debt ceiling. but for the inability of either you or mr. kantor to control your rank-and-file house republicans, the deal would have gone through. he implied that the republican party is divided and weak and that is what is holding the country back and prevent a bad deal. would you like to address that? >> i sure would. >> i thought you might. >> all year i talked to the president about the need to do what i call the big deal. i thought was critically important for our country to deal with the debt problem we have and the best way to get their would have been for him and i to come to some agreement. i can tell you that i put every ounce of effort that i can and

could in to try to come to some agreement. the president said he needed revenue. i told the president i was willing to do revenues but only if the president were willing to really look at fundamental reform of our entitlement programs which is a big driver of our deficit and debt. i put revenues on the table even though the president never said, not one time, ever said yes to any meaningful reform of our entitlement programs. when the president called me and asked for $400 billion of more revenue, but for he agreed to any changes need talent programs, i decided we would never get there. we could never get the president to a point where he would say yes to real changes in our entitlement programs. i am out as far on a limb as i could possibly walk.

i am trying to come to some agreement. it takes two to tango. the president would never say yes. >> let's look at the legislative record for your first year in congress. you have had both for your own republicans have to fight your own request to vote with them. that indicates to the white house and the larger audience that there are times on significant votes where you need house democrats to support or you can i keep your own side together. does this not weaken your hand legislatively? >> there is no question it does. i don't have the strongest and i could have. when you look at my colleagues, and these are not freshmen members by and large. these would be more senior members. it is a story that has been misunderstood most of the years.

some of our members just one more. i want more, too. >> the one more what? >> they want more change. they want faster and i don't disagree. when you got senate controlled by the democrats, you've got democrats and the white house, my job is to move the ball down the field, get things done on behalf of the american people and i try to get as much as i can buy want to be able to move the ball down the field on behalf of the american people. >> will you correlate those desires with what is a historic and perpetually low assessment of congressional performance in polls dating to july of this year? i have been around capitol hill since 1990. i have never seen consistently a disparity of 70% or more of disapproval. how much of that is your fault? how much is the fault of being unable to get things done and move the ball down the field?

>> the united states -- the congress has been the favorite whipping boy of the united states for hundreds of years. the american people are concerned about our country. they are concerned -- the concern i have since turned to what i would describe as fear. when they watch washington, they don't see the kind of answers that they expect. we've got a unique system. right now, we have divided government. when we are having principled arguments in opposition with each other, the american people don't like to see it. i understand that. our job every day is to listen to the american people, to express their will as we try to address the big challenges that face our country. >> you helped create the super committee. what to the public expect from

the super committee? do you have a sense that it will not make its stated goal of putting a proposal before congress by november 23? >> based on my experience with the president and my long conversations with the president and vice president over the course of this year, i believe that the congress and the administration, our government has to act. we have a big deficit problem. we've got a big debt problem. the problems in europe continued to loom. \ their problems are larger than ours. it is incumbent upon us to show the american people we can do the right thing and frankly, i think it is also incumbent on us to show the rest of the world that they can address their big challenges as well as a result, i am firmly committed to ensuring that the so-called super committee come to an outcome in a successful outcome. >> will include some kind of tax

revenue? >> i will not predict what the will or won't do. there has to be an outcome. >> does your willingness and the conversations with the president entertain increases in revenue send a signal you would like the super committee to act upon? >> i made it clear to republican matters -- members of the super committee that i expect it will be enacted. there has to be an outcome. the sequestered that was built behind this is ugly. it was meant to be ugly so that no one would go there. i don't underestimate how hard it will be to come to an agreement by the so-called super committee. we have to get to one. we cannot let these challenges continue -- we can't keep kicking the can down the road. it has happened in washington for far too long. >> there is a currency bill on the floor of the senate that had

a motion to proceed votes and 61 co-sponsors of identical legislation in the house. you said you -- they said you should bring it to the floor. rob portman supported this legislation and you are not supporting it. why is a dangerous and will you reassess it if it passes the senate? >> there has been concern on my part and from a lot of quarters here in america about how the chinese manipulated their currency. there has been every effort that you can imagine out of our treasury department or the last seven or eight years addressing this with the chinese. there has been a significant improvement in the valuation of the chinese currency as a result of those conversations. for the congress of the united states to pass legislation to

force the chinese to do what is arguably dark -- very difficult to do, i think is wrong, it is dangerous, you could start a trade war and a trade war given the economic uncertainty here and around the world is very dangerous. we should not be engaged in this. i have made it clear where my position is. i frankly think that the president agrees with me. why isn't the president speaking of? is he too busy campaigning? why isn't he out there making it clear that this is ill- conceived? i believe he agrees with me but he won't say it. >> to your point about exports and imports, if charles schumer was here he would say we send about $100 billion in imports and the chinese sent three times that amount and a lot engage in

a trade work as it would harm -- part hurt them economically. is china a currency bully? >> they have a lot of challenges in china. i have always believed that engagement with them was the right thing for our country and the right thing for the world. building a commercial relationship between the chinese and the united states is in both of our interest. they are probably the largest buyer of united states agricultural products. there is a balance here. for the long-term good of our country and for the future, for our kids and grandkids, maintaining this solid relationship is good. in any relationship, it will not be perfect read we can find a lot of imperfections in this relationship.

the administration needs to continue to work with the chinese to get their valuation of their currency correct but this is not an appropriate role for the congress of united states. >> you mentioned campaigning -- to what degree are you all -- relieve door alarm the sarah palin is not running for president? [laughter] >> i like sarah palin. i know sarah palin. i spent a couple of days in alaska with her before she ended up in this odyssey of the last few years. i think she made the right decision for herself. i think she can play a role in the upcoming elections and i wish her well. >> do you want to run the campaign trail with house republicans who are seeking seats or once they are trying to defend? >> i think it would be very helpful. >> you mentioned the president spending an

inordinate amount of time campaigning are you saying that is complicating your efforts to achieve results for the american people? >> let me put it this way -- i have had my share of disappointments this year. i was disappointed the president and i could i come to agreement on the big deal, disappointed we could not pass some strong her legislation in the house from some of my own colleagues but nothing has disappointed me more than what has happened over last five weeks. to watch the president of united states give up on governing, give up on leading, and spend full time campaigning. we are on the hill legislating. we have moved dozens of bill to the united states senate that are just sitting there that would help create jobs in america. no leadership from the president.

i cannot tell you how dangerous our situation in the economy is. and how dangerous the situation in europe is. yet the president some 14 months before the election throws in the towel and decides he will spend all this time campaigning. we are legislating and he is campaigning. it is very disappointing. >> a few months ago, the vice president said he believes you are a partner of his and the presidents. your declaring here and now the president is no longer a partner of yours. >> i will sit down with the president on any day at any time which i already have all your but i will continue to do that to seek common ground. yes, we have different ideas about what the appropriate role the federal government should be in our country and our society and in our economy. just because we have very different views does not mean

that we should not be seeking the common ground. he sent his jobs bill up. mr. kantor and i sent him a letter back last week outlining areas where we thought we could find common ground whether it be the free trade proposals, whether it be the infrastructure ideas and the long-term highway bill and whether it be one of the tax credits that he outlined. that is our job. our job is to find common ground to help our country. while the american people know we are not always going to agree, they do expect we will get something done. it takes two to tango. all year i have reached out to the president by you have to have a willing partner. all your i have asked the president to send a trade agreement. and here we are on the eve of a visit by the president of south

korea and we will have to move the trade bills with expeditious speed in order to maintain our very good relationship with a very good ally. >> this country is approaching the 10th anniversary of the war in afghanistan. the country is conflicted about that ongoing war. what has achieved and how much longer should continue and relating to the war and terrorism, as president obama been as effective, more effective, or equally effective as president bush? >> over the course of the last three years, i have been supportive of the president's decisions in iraq and afghanistan. when there were questions or concerns, i will raise them forthrightly but by and large, the president has continued the effort to take on the taliban, to take on al-qaeda and help

ensure that america stays secure. i think our number one responsibility as a federal government is to insure the safety and security of the american people. i think that making sure in afghanistan that the enemy does not have a safe haven in which to plan, train, and executed tax on americans here and abroad is the goal. we need to have success there. so far, the president has done just fine. >> there would be those who support the president and say that other joan -- other drawn strikes has made him more effective prosecutor than george bush. >> when you look at the prosecution of the war effort against the enemy in the tribal areas, there is cl-- there has clearly more been done under present obama then-president bush in terms of more aggressive

efforts. >> let me broaden the conversation. america lost one of its great innovative minds last night, steve jobs. he had a career that was innovative in the early stages and was fired and sidelined and came back. that is in some ways consistent with your trajectory in washington. [laughter] >> what is the question? [laughter] >> broadly speaking, what has steve jobs tot you in america about the power of innovation and would you ever or have you ever worn blue jeans and a mock turtleneck in public? [laughter] >> that would probably be no and no. we live in the greatest country in the world. our forefathers give us an economic system that produced opportunities for our citizens, like any other country in the world.

i came here for one reason -- to make sure that those opportunities were available to our kids and grandkids. i think a lot of americans do not believe that the opportunities we have, all of us in this room, will be available to our kids and grandkids because we are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. it is america's free enterprise system. it is americans openness and diversity that has allowed us the opportunity to succeed and the opportunity to fail. you cannot have one or the other. you'll always have both. i just think that the government has gotten too big. it has gone way too involved in our society. it has become with to expensive. all of that gets in the way of what i would describe as the american dream. in america, i tell audiences, i

was born with a glass half full. i am the optimist. if i was and, sure wouldn't be here. i sure wouldn't be here. i want all americans to believe and understand that they could do whatever they want to do. they can succeed. they can innovate. this is america. i used to go to law schools but i don't do that anymore because i ended up into many poor schools with great kids. most of them will never have a chance because we -- they are in a run school. i get all worked up over it as you all know. my message to these kids and these schools is listen -- you can grow and be whatever you want to be. i think most of us have to work for 11.

a living. go do something you like. go succeed at something you want to succeed at regardless of what is. >> mr. speaker, thank you very much for your time. >> thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> thank you, mr. speaker. next up we have former president of pakistan pervez musharraf and we have our leader here who makes all this possible, david bradley interviewing him. thanks, david. >> mr. president. good morning, mr. president and good morning everyone. i was struck as i began to do background reading by the fact that president musharraf is exactly 10 years older than i

am. the volume of what he has worked into his 68 years says surpasses my 58 years. -- he give you sure can't was born four years before the great division of india and pakistan. his earliest memories were being on that night train traveling to pakistan as it was being created as a country. there were many families in one apartment. the family moved to ankara, learned turkey and was not a model citizen and high school. he had three teenage boys. he was in the military. he was chief of the army staff for 13 years and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and in an odd and surprising bloodless coup, became ceo and president of pakistan. there have been six

assassination attempts. he has fought in two wars. he has won maris, two daughters, two pekingese dogs, a fantastic run. let me begin with the bloodless coup. tell us the story. it was 1999 and your overseas. >> yes, i was, i was in sri lankan. . i return from their and was traveling on a normal commercial flight. i think it was about 250 passengers. i think 90 of them were school students. as we approached karachi and we came down to about 8,000 feet, the pilot called me to the cockpit and said it was important. when i went there, i told -- he

told me we were not being allowed to land and we were being told to go up to 21,000 feet. then they said you cannot land and pakistan. they said get out of pakistan air space. that was quite a shock. i presumed that this must involve may or why else would such an order be passed. we rose to 21,000 feet and initially the pilot said we can either go to an airfield in the gulf or in india. that would be unimaginable for me to land in india as an army chief. therefore, when we rose to 21,000 feet i was told that we don't have fuel to get out of pakistan now. i said to tell the people -- i was not in contact with anyone on the ground -- the negotiation

was between the pilot and air traffic controller to allow us to land there. he was taking about five or six minutes because he was passing messages to the prime minister of pakistan and getting messages back what to said. this was taking a lot of time. i told him to land in karachi their respective of permission and he said there were objects on the runway and all the lights have sought been switched off. all this kept of ongoing until finally he said we don't have a fuel. they allowed us to go to a recovery airfield. it was north of karachi. action took place on the ground while we were traveling. i was not in contact at all with

the army. the pilot called a message from the air traffic controller from an army general that we are in charge and we need to come back to karachi and land. i went back. the pilots said we had just enough fuel. to karachi. go back when we landed, we had about eight minutes of fuel. when i landed, i was in charge of pakistan. [laughter] >> how many of us have had bad lights and not had it worked out that well? it is 1999, in 2004 there is a global poll taken. president musharraf is the most popular person in the world. we saw relations being strong.

you were publicly supportive of president bush and supportive of the united states and the war on terror and responding to billion dollars in securities. roll forward to today and the poll in pakistan shows that united states is viewed as the number 1 and external threat to the country. if you talk to u.s. policy- makers, there is a very acute concern about the way pakistan is going and whether it is a good ally. it seems that the best thing we could understand is what went wrong? when your president, did you already see the relation slipping away between the united states and pakistan? >> now they are, yes. in my time, there is no doubt in my mind we had a degree of trust and confidence. i believe relations between states have quite a lot to do with interpersonal relations. interstate relations have a lot to do with interpersonal

relations between the leaders. i would like to proudly say that i had a relationship with president bush and colin powell. there were no doubts or misunderstandings. we could bring up each other and talk directly by general colin powell used to say let's talk general to general and that was very straight up talking. that used to resolve issues. i wonder whether that exists now, that understanding, that mutual confidence. maybe it is not there and therefore, yes, there's a total breakdown of confidence and that is what is harming the relationship. >> what do you think the united states does not understand that makes pakistan not trust us. ? what do we not understand about why they are upset? go into tooant to much detail about the history.

there's a history in the past when we were a strategic partner with a united states all along since having independence. we were fighting with the united states against the soviet union in afghanistan. suddenly, the and i stayed with the area with no rehabilitation or resettlement. when that happened there was a strategic policy shift in the united states. sanctions on pakistan and india, a two or seemed negatively by the people of pakistan. we felt we had been used and betrayed. this is the feeling in the people of pakistan. >> is there a feeling like that today? >> yes, the feeling now is that this happened and for 12 years we were talking -- we were totally abandoned. we were all on funding for self with whatever was happening in afghanistan.

the move -- and was hiding coalesced into al-qaeda. pakistan was all. van 9/11 happens and the united states appears on the scene again and we are in the lead role and people are asking how you will show that we will not be betrayed again? will we be used again? this has a historical past. which has led to mistrust and the antipathy against the united states at the people's level. from 1979, everything was happening through pakistan. beyond 1989, i told you what was happening. now we are planning to leave in 2014, that has its impact on the people again. pakistan. has pakistan. i am not in governess and not speaking on behalf of the government of my personal view

is that certainly there must be some analysis going on as to what will happen in afghanistan if the united states leaves an unstable afghanistan. are we returning to the situation in 1989 when they were ravaged and every ethnic group is fighting each other or are we returning to 1996 when two groups, the taliban and the alliance were fighting? one of the two situations will be there if you leave an unstable afghanistan and its impact will directly the on pakistan and secondly be on india. and then of course the world. we have to be very conscious what the implications of quitting in a situation which is unstable in afghanistan. we have to analyze all this and the effect on pakistan. >> it is hard for americans to understand the frame for

which many pakistanis view this relationship. the significance of india in the framing of pakistan -- what is the concern that pakistan has? do you think we don't understand that? >> yes, i would not imagine that you don't understand. i can say that you may be show a lack of concern. we have fought wars with india, there's the kashmir dispute which is terrible and i strongly believe has to be resolved i'm a strong believer that we have to resolve these disputes and have peace. i have been called in india a man of war because i have fought two wars and that a military man and a soldier. i would say i'm a man for peace.

i understand the ravages of war which may be very few people understand my son is named after my best friend who got killed in action. therefore, i understand the ravages of war and how much to suffer. therefore, i am anti-war. >> what is the ambition? >> unfortunately, over the past decades since 1950, our independence, [unintelligible] this has been happening over these decades. we must resolve these disputes. in the past year for years, the manifestation is in afghanistan. there is some kind of proxy in afghanistan going on between pakistan and india. india is trying to create an

anti-pakistan and afghanistan. >>why? what is the ambition? >> it must be to weaken pakistan, to have a week pakistan said that it can be dominated, so that it does not have any confrontation that does not go well with india's vision of dominating the region. >> it is not a military concern. it is a preeminent trade -- >> i think dominating a country are moving against a country does not mean that they want to take over pakistan. i don't think that can happen. after all, they helped bangladesh get independence. they have not taken over bangladesh. it implies dominating foreign- policy, dominating economic

policy, there trade, there commerce. that is how you suppress and how you control or dominate another country. >> where does this problem rank your concerns? is this the largest concern you have? >> it is not such a great concern. if at all, we don't have this problem in afghanistan. we know afghanistan's intelligence, their diplomats, afghanistan's soldiers, all the army, security people -- they all go to india for training. we had offered them training facilities free of cost and pakistan to all of them. not one man has come to pakistan for training. the go to india. therefore, we received intelligence, diplomats, soldiers indoctrinated against pakistan. this is what we must understand

must stop. india must stop it and zero united states must understand that pakistan is concerned what is happening in afghanistan. i would say that the united states needs to understand pakistans sensitivities. >> i see a lack of concern. >> let me turn to another issue. the first is where bin laden was found. if he was there for five years, and if he was, he would have been there during your presidency. this plan explain why they did not know this location? >> -- explain why they did not know this location? >> it is a terrible thing that

happened. it has to be clarified by pakistan because people i know all do not believe there was the issue to the issue of -- the issue of complacent. why do i say that? if i were to give some rationale or reason in, first of all, if you go there for five years, that means two years was in my time. whether anyone believes it or not, i did not know. therefore, i am 500% sure that i did not know. there was no complicity in those two years now, in these three years, i do not think there was complicity because first of all thatdy in that area neknew

osama bin laden was in sight. all of the pakistani television stations have interviewed people around, and not one of them said we knew osama bin laden was inside. he is not using any communication. you are thinking and human intelligence, and that is what people are telling you around. secondly, a lot of people here think this house had such high walls and a huge house. i'm sorry to say. i've seen this on television, but you do not have walls from their houses, every house around pakistan has a wall. i do not see that this is anything unusual in the height of those walls, and i cannot see that house to be anything unusual at is slightly bigger than an average house. i do not see anything unusual.

we knew there -- if we knew he was there, there would be security around. would such a personality be left alone? why would he not be used as a bargaining chip? why would i have not used it as a bargaining chip? therefore, i think this is a pure case -- another point -- people misread that this -- this town. it is a town of 500,000, roughly. people go and stay there. it is absolutely (anyone going through the mountain goes -- is absolutely open. anyone going through goes through to the mom.

they are free to open -- through the mountain. is not a wild place, or 8 cents place that we are talking about. -- or a fenced place we are talking about. there was no complicity, therefore there was negligence that must be explained by pakistan. why was there such serious negligence? we must not believe that it was complicity, because that would be very serious. that means because we are all of -- that means we are not together in the the war on care. >> let me explain that he intends to win the presidential election in 2013. i will be returning to my office, where i'll be very busy

with important things, and when we see you next, you have left another adventure. thank you forthcoming. >> thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [applause] >> now for something different. we have had a lot of very accomplished and famous people, and there have been many friends in the room, and there is overlap here in that chris is one of my oldest friends in washington. i met him when i first arrived, now more than 30 years ago. so, chris, will you come up? chris is going to get lost his take on politics and the movies, -- give us his take on politics, and the movies, and many other things. somewhere in there, can we stand, and can we handle the truth? >> thank you thank you, margaret.

should i stand or sit? >> you could stand. >> the lights are terrible. >> you still look good. >> where is the microphone? can you hear me now? >> verizon. >> it is a commercial. i have been interested in politics for about 60 years, and i have been fascinated by the cultural difference in the two political parties, and they tell you a lot about predicting the future, the past been prologue. starting around 1952, but i began to pay attention to politics in this country, the eisenhower-stevenson race, i noticed the cultural difference between the two parties. when we used to watch the

conventions of on television, they used to carry them -- to- devil, there was a voice -- gaveled-to-gavel. there was a woman's voice. she would say in a high voice, will the delegates preach to the aisles? you would hear this all week long. at the democratic convention, you know what happened after she said that? nothing. they are tabled koppers. they do not clear the aisles. they feel like they feel. you watch the republican convention, and when the person of the podium with yellow will the delegates please clear the aisles, something amazing happened, they did. that is the difference between two political parties. go to a movie in america, and

try to go early, state and minutes early, and look around at all the people that are there. they might have a small candy bar. they are all republicans. [laughter] >> paul, go ahead. i'd bet big money they're all republicans. wait until after the ads are finished, the trailers are done, all the previous, the movie has started, and the theater has gone pitch black, and you will feel someone trying to push back -- passed you. they will have trash cans of popcorn, giant jobs of coca- cola, and will be mumbling happily something about what time it started. they are all democrats. this is our country. so, when you want to predict the next election and how it is going to go, think of the republicans as an orderly crowd.

they actually are organized. they are an organized political party. they are like a country club, or the knights of columbus. when they have to pick a chair for next year, a president, they look around, mumbo among themselves in an orderly fashion and say -- mambo among themselves in an orderly fashion and say whose turn is it? and bad guy or woman gets the job -- and that a guy or woman gets the job. democrats are like kids at an urban playground, excited to be there. but the poor kids with a brand and no net. they picked their candidates on who has a hot hand, who hits the baskets. he gets the ball. never met him before, but he has a hot hand, you give him the ball.

kennedy, the first time he ran one, obama the guy -- obama 1. the republican party, i have been watching them since i was 6 years old. from 1952, 2004, three names have been on the republican ticket in every year but one -- the same three names. they are predictable nixon, 52, 58. bullish. bob doll, 1976, 1996. they brought back exciting bob doll 20 years later and updated him.

richard nixon came back in 1968. john mccain, after the destroy him eight years prior they brought him back. they run you when you are old, tired, and have been there. they are predictable. democrats on the other hand kill their wounded. carter? who? mondale? al gore had to go live in a cave with a beard, out of penance. when you lose for the democratic party you are not forgiving. it is romney. it is his turn. if you want to predict based on history, it is romney, but one other possibility -- this could be a year, 2012, just like 1964, the year the republicans want whiled and picked goldwater.

it could be one of those crazy phenomenal ears when they do something very non-republican, and of course i have prominences -- reminiscence. the item reality of primaries, the unpredictable popping up of candidates. none of the above phenomenons primary after primary. somebody keeps saying check, check, check. please stop. the weird phenomenon of donald trump been number one or two. stop. the weird phenomenon of hurricane -- herman cain moving toward number one. the mitt romney phenomenon where he cannot get past 25%. they really know this guy, and

75% of the republican party cannot say yes to mitt romney. is a tissue rejection? assistant outside thing coming into the body politic that has to be pushed out? i crave excitement, so i hope this is one of those years. here is where i think romney might not be the nominee even though he is clearly the one with the conventional wisdom say it is inevitable. in 1 million years, mitt romney would never go to a tea party meeting. looking for, knowing all he knows now, he would not go to a tea party meeting. he is not a tea party guy. he was asked if he was a tea party member, and he said they do not have membership. he refuses to say obama is a socialist. he will not get in bed with

these people. he thinks he is better what than them. he is. listen to him and dr. bob are not. you cannot tell them apart. newt gingrich and orson bean sound exactly alike why why pension to these things? here is a question -- alike. why do i pay attention to these things? there is one way that president obama gets reelected, and i see no other way for him to be reelected given the reality of american politics and our history, and the way we are basically baseball managers as voters. the baseball manager does not like -- dislike one pitcher were like another pitcher. he looks out and sees how they are doing. we are the baseball manager in this country.

when they're not getting the other side out, they slowly walked out to the pitcher's mound and ask for the ball. it is the great american tradition. if the pitcher has had a good day but a bad inning, they cheered him when he leaves. people liked gerald ford more than jimmy carter. they elect george herbert walker bush of great deal, but said it you cannot put out the other side. you do not have it anymore, so they put the other guy in. it is dignified, and it is done what it will then ask for the ball from barack obama? to me it comes down to this, and it is up to him, he has is strongly, compellingly, and successfully focused his campaign coming up, the debate coming up, the election coming up, and the voters' decision not on who caused this mess that we are in right now, not on how bad

it is now, certainly, but on what he, barack obama, can do if he gets four more years. when he will do with the treasury of four more years. he has to talk about that and sell that. we all know it is not all his fault, and we all know it is not all the republicans' fault. it is about the future. thank you. [applause] >> thank you for the time. i will be back. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you, chris. we have steve clemens interviewing dr. henry kissinger, who despite something grave having happened to his foot, is it a torn ligament? he managed to come down from new york. we thank you for doing that. >> thank you, margaret and dr.

henry kissinger, a disgrace to be with you. i know you were expecting walter isaacson, who is a biographer of steve jobs. we know about the sad news of steve jobs' death. walter was a biographer of henry kissinger, and dr. henry kissinger was sharing with me that he agreed to speak with walter but he was predisposed to the 30-year war ending regarding that book. >> there is a difference between my wife's attitude toward walter and mine, and i declared a few years ago step i've fought this 30 year wars, and it was over. my wife finds 100-year wars, and

it is not yet over. [laughter] >> one of your main passions has been to explore u.s.-china relations in the strategic road map there. i'm inclined to do what steven colbert did with you and say you have a new book out, what is it about? [laughter] >> it has such a confusing title. [laughter] >> you were the 56th secretary of state. you won the nobel prize in 1973. you bet an accomplished and storied career. you have probably more than any other america -- american talked with elite members of china police than anyone else. i'm interested in how you see the vector of china today. we of the fifth generation of leaders about to be merged and takeover, and eight peoples were

liberation army analyst looking at the national security report issued by president obama said america is in strategic contraction. if you could buy stock in the united states or china, which stock would you buy? >> well, i would not accept the proposition that this is about who will win against the other because that will get us into a situation that has analogies to prior to world war i, were self tefillin -- self-fulfilling prophecies produced a conflict. so, economically, china is obviously growing at a faster rate than we are. it is hard knocks to admit that

we are in strategic -- it is hard not to admit that we are in strategic contraction when we are withdrawing from afghanistan, iraq, and the national consensus seems to be developing against military convention -- contraction abroad. is it possible for these two major countries to develop a relationship which assures that east side -- each side can secure national security and contributes to the challenges before the world, many of which are unique and unprecedented? that is the fundamental challenge of the relationship. if we get ourselves into the frame of mind of the potential military confrontation, then

every other country around china and in time every country in the world will have to make a choice. >> do you not think they're making choices today? as i said in beijing last year, and i met some of your staff, you could see the wind brush by my head as foreign ministers were coming in and out of beijing. i live 1 mile from the white house, and you do not get the energy. >> it is inherent in the tremendous economic growth that china has undergone in the last two decades. therefore, the chinese are growing, but we have to distinguish what is part of the chinese design and the strategic situation.

fundamentally, in so far that it is a contest between the two countries, it is different from the cold war situation. the soviet union had no influence where it did not have armies. depend on the reach of its military capacity. the chinese approach to foreign policy is not based primarily on military practice. therefore, we first should not conceive our foreign policy primarily in terms of a conflict with china. secondly, we have serious domestic issues that we must deal with, and with the united states is not a dynamic country, -- and if the united states is not a dynamic country, the

situation you describes requires a vital america -- if you look to the elegance -- elements involved, is one thing to look at the chinese growth rate, but if you look at the changes and the problems associated with a rapid growth that is happening in a political framework that was created several decades ago, and when you consider that the family, the cultural revolutions are coming together, it is wrong to think that china has no problems domestically to deal with, and that they could uniquely conduct foreign policy without any constraints. >> i once asked the chinese minister of foreign affairs what is china's grand strategy, and he told me we do not need a

grand strategy as long as the americans are distracted in small middle eastern countries. to a certain degree, the world has been fairly good, excepting of the power that china has been investing in infrastructure, and seems to be focused on securing strategic resources. this country does not seem to trust the market or the future quite as much as the european and the american model. does the united states need to worry that if it is the less than big normal market economy, for its alaska big, normal marketing, -- the last, big, normal market economy? >> one has to think about that. putting china aside, the big get

that happens today is the globalization of the economy, and the nationalization of politics, and the impact of the global economy has to be dealt with by national units, and that creates a propensity [unintelligible] china in the largest economy of this time therefore has a tremendous impact. i would not agree that china does not need a strategy. the distinguishing the aspect in my experience with china is whether you agree with them or not, they are strategic thinkers. their approach to strategy -- they have a word, for which there is no english word.

it reflects the bundling of all of the elements that are relative to the solution of a problem, and the momentum that thinking requires through the ability to bundle all of these things i need four sentences for just one word. it shows a certain difference in approach. [laughter] >> let me ask you, when i read this book, there were a couple of moments where i wondered if henry kissinger was still henry kissinger, the realist making these cost/benefit calculations. you talk about a concept called strategic trust against a system of strategic threats, and you would like to see u.s.-china relations move in that direction. have i learned from henry kissinger, it is not sometimes imagining the world you want, but the world you have.

have you become sentimental about china? >> fan and we now have a public conversion -- and we now have a public conversion. [laughter] >> i am often described as a realist, then, the question is how do you define reality? i believe, and have not changed my philosophy, that for foreign policy meet a correct assessment of the principal elements that are -- need a correct assessment of the principal elements that are shaping the thoughts of each other, and you have to understand the international system has an element of equilibrium because otherwise it is drawn, has no restraints

[unintelligible] every issue turns into a conflict. that is my basic view, but conditions have changed fundamentally. when the soviet union was the other major problem in -- power in the world, we were dealing with a country that based its impact on its military capacity, and that was confronting us within each decade what some explicit military threat -- with some explicit military threat. [unintelligible] the chinese, the world in which we live, is not so dependent primarily on the balance of military force. of course, without military balance, you cannot have any other foreign policy. if i were to describe what i see

as the chinese objective, historically, it is the fear of the surrounding countries. each of it is less powerful than china or has been historically. uniting and bringing pressure on china, and even conquering it. what is the american concern with respect to asia? we do not want to see asia under the domination of one country. but as we fought in world war two about in -- that is what we fought world war two about in asia. now, if we deal with this primarily with military containment, then we are stimulating the basic fear of china.

if [unintelligible] it will bring about a reaction which we will not accept. i believe it is in the best interest of both countries to see whether it is possible to develop a cooperative approach in the face of a challenge which we can both define. in the last chapter of my book, i quote a memorandum about china and the result has been dented inevitably lead to world war i, but another result was that if the leaders in 1914 would have known what the world

would have looked like in 1980, they would have done something else. i want us to try to do something else. ook.y at the end of the bloc [unintelligible] [laughter] >> i say as a historian, am i optimistic about this and i say no. it is our task, and it is their test. it is meant something we can do alone. it requires that both sides look at what can be done. >> we have time for one last question, there would be remiss in not asking you to think through if you are the president's national security advisor or secretary of state today, looking at america's

situation, and if i think back to the time that you and richard nixon inherited your white house, you did not come in at the time of great global confidence in the united states. there was enormous doubt about the direction the united states going.ught opening to china was made a lot easier with 1 million russians along the border. >> it would not have happened that fest with out it. >> yes. huge chain to a global credit with the normalization and opening to china. you changed the way the world looked at the united states and it showed the united states is having a defining effect on the national -- international system. is there an opportunity for the u.s. and a time of doubt about itself to change the way global gravity works and to demonstrate the way -- away but we still

have the ability to be the primary shaper of the international system? >> if there is, i have not discovered it. i think it is a different problem right now. there is not any one most that i think we can make, -- move that i think we can make. i would hope that somewhere in this process, the debate that is going on right now, it gets slips into a higher level and some sort of national unity with respect to key objectives and develops. you can not end foreign-policy every eight years. there has to be effective foreign policy for its entry, not because it had super

brilliant leaders in every generation, but because it had steady and reliable foreign policy. we can meet leaders by our performance. we cannot be leaders by doing one dramatic thing that changes everything. i cannot think of what that most would be. >> on that clear and optimistic note, dr. henry kissinger, thank you very much. [laughter] [applause] >> we have a former vice president and liz dick cheney,

which i would find the toughest interview available -- possible if my daughter were to interview me. steve commons will moderate path this is an interesting opportunity. having a vice president and his immediate predecessors did it predecessor within an hour of each other is enviable. people know joe biden is a distinctive and important vice president, and dick cheney might be of all the president's one of the most powerful, distinctive, and some who used that office in many ways that others have not. i once was talking to walter mondale and had written a critique of the issues going on, and walter mondale took credit for powerful vice presidents by telling me his was the first vice president's office in the white house.

when i was in the middle east last year with liz cheney, we see the world a little different, led been a senior official in the state department and worked closely with her father and various campaigns and issues, but where we came to convergence was the national security decision making process. that might bore a lot of people. that is not who is up, who is down, who has been stabbing someone in the back. which of the personality out of it, and had a discussion about the structure of decision making and how one organizes the executive decisions that, particularly in points of crisis. even though ms. cheney is known by her father as the ceo of this important book "in my time, a personal and political memoir" i wanted to challenge which is to

give her father tough questions. this is not a normal engagement of a journalist with a talent. there are obviously important ties between them. i also want president dick cheney to fess up on what he did not agree with in his daughter's management of this book. liane gentleman, please welcome former vice president dick cheney and his daughter. >> you mentioned vice president joe biden was here just a while ago, and i understand that he said president obama has fixed the economy, and i wonder whether you might explain if you agree with that comment. >> it is all his. obviously, we have serious economic problems. joe and i disagree on a number of things and that would be one of them. i do not think the economy has been fixed. it needs pretty radical tax

reform, reduction, regulations, and so forth, and i do not see the administration putting for the policy at this point that is going to do the job. >> and do you see given the state of the economy a pass for president obama in 2012? >> i think he will have trouble. somebody suggested that president obama might be the jimmy carter of the 21st century, that he will get one term, and that he will leave under certain that similar circumstances under what happened to the economy in rough shape. >> back to the book, during your time as vice president, you took some heavy criticism, including possibly from some folks in this room, and ella is hard to

believe, but some folks that are -- i know it is hard to believe, but some folks are on this stage. does it bother you? >> when you are a former vice president, no. [laughter] they were up against jay leno and david letterman. you need to have a thick skin. we have some special problems on our watch. every administration does. in our cases was -- it was the war and terror, the aftermath of 9/11, pursuing tough policies and we believed was necessary to protect the country. i would argue it worked. we had 7.5 years without another mass casualty attack against the united states, but that involve things like enhanced interrogation techniques, and the terraced surveillance program, -- terrace surveillance

program, and things that broke china, created controversy that some people did not agree with. my job was to be the point man on some extent to those policies, and a lot of them were classified, or important elements were classified so you cannot talk about a minute ng.lic setting so, i ended u so i ended up fully accepting the criticism. is what it is. i took my fair share of shots, but did not feel personally abused, except once or twice. [laughter] >> some have said even in light of the success in my national security area, particularly of the bullish 43 administration, that the most effective, or one of the most effective national

security teams that we had seen was actually the george bush 41 team. would you agree with that, and they talk about why people see that as being particularly effective? >> i would probably defer to henry kissinger on who had the best team. i think the three of us worked well together in the first george bush administration, partly because we all worked together before. i had been gerald ford put the chief of staff. jim managed the campaign for us in 1976. there was an established set of relationships. there were a couple of other rules that we were bombed by. we got together every wednesday morning when all three of us were in town for breakfast, and the staffs from the various departments and quickly learned that if you wanted to get something done and decided, a good way was to get it on the

agenda for the wednesday morning meeting, but they also knew we were talking to each other all the time, so would cut down and not -- the amount of noise inside the system and the number of leaks that would have otherwise happened. basically, no one ever accused jim baker of the not leaking, but we work hard to avoid the kinds of conflicts that could come out of that, and we were successful. our personal relationship was good. >> best job you ever had? >> netjets i ever had? well, each -- best job i ever had? well, each one was unique, but if i had to pick one out, working for ford as chief of staff after watergate, been vice president of the united states

have a lot going for them and were great jobs. [laughter] >> a little the difference there, but if i had to pick just one hour probably say secretary of defense. >> why? >> because of the association of the u.s. military, and the time that we were there, i had the opportunity here, it was the end of the cold war, all we were able to do some remarkable things -- and we were able to do some remarkable things in rearranging our military forces, if you will, and then of course desert storm, and the opportunity to work closely with the men and women of the u.s. military, senior military leadership, and so forth was really remarkable. >>. when you look at the 2012 spate of candidates, on our side, what gives you hope, and what worries

you? >> how is she doing? >> pretty good. i might as that one. -- of asked that one. >> i have not endorsed anyone. i have stayed carefully away from the contest. if they needed my it lies i would keep it to them privately. -- my advice, i would give it to them privately. these next couple of months are going to be important, because there will be an opportunity for the voters to get a look at them, but and i think there is a lot yet to be proven out in terms of confidence, capability, experience, the ability of the various candidates to deal with tough issues, especially in the national security area. the economy is so dominant as a political issue at this point debt that is what everyone is focused on, but i am also very

concerned that we do not lose sight of how important it is to maintain our vigilance in the global war on terror, a term i still use, and that we do not do permanent, lasting damage to our national security capabilities as we go through this budget process. i think what is causing the debt are the entitlement programs and the fact we have not dealt with social security and medicare on a long-term basis. you can not save enough out of the defense department to solve the debt problem. if you take too much out, it will do serious damage. when i took over as secretary of defense we had 18 active divisions in the u.s. army. today we have 10. there has been a dramatic restructuring over the last decade or so, the last 20 years, really. there is no cold war force still

out there, maybe some systems left over, but i do not think there are big savings to be had in defense, and i am very worried that we could end up doing serious damage. i want to know what the candidates think about that proposition, and how they propose to deal with the defense issues and the budget questions going forward. >> when you get the national security set of issues, you said just last week that president obama ought to apologize for some of the criticisms, and in particular his statements about us abandon ideas in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 .ould yo could you respond to that? they admitted the but they said they abandoned our -- we abandon our ideals, but they do not

think that is out of bounds. >> right. i brought up the subject of the president's speech in tyrolean 2009, and i was asked by the injured -- in cairo in 2009, and i was asked how that fit in terms of the drone strike on anwar al-awlaki. that was a situation when he went to cairo that we did sort of over-reacted to 9/11, walked away from our ideals, that president obama had been the one that brought a end to torture and ordered that they're not be any torture, implying that we were torturing, and we were not. in light of the fact that they are obviously pursuing fairly aggressive measures, which i support, and did the right thing with that drone strike,

nonetheless there any point now where they executed, in effect, an american citizen with a missile strike, and laid that alongside our intense interrogation program, i thought maybe they might want to reconsider the criticisms they levelled at us back when he went to cairo in 2009. >> ok. >> did i leave something out? >> yes, but we could talk about it later on. when you look at the five republican presidents since eisenhower, and you worked closely with four of them, which was the best? >> well, obviously i am not want to answer the question. [laughter] >> i hope she does not give up.

>> what i am struck by as i look back and as we were doing the book, as a political scientist i was trained to look for common threads, problems, and steams across administrations and converse. as i -- common themes across administrations and congresses. i am struck by the extent that there were it -- drastic differences, especially with the man in the oval office. they all broad different sets of experiences, and have their own strengths and weaknesses based on what was done before they ever got there. they also found it necessary during their time in office to deal with unanticipated situations. if you look at our last administration, george w. bush's

administration, there was a little bit of speculation about the problem of homeland security before 9/11, but 9/11 changed everything and dominated our agenda for the last 7.5 years of all time in office. -- of our time in office. when you think about what the first george bush administration had to deal with, it was dramatically different. we did not anticipate that we would send half of 1 million men and women to the desert, to the gulf, to liberate kuwait, and push the iraqis back into a rack. -- iraq. every administration and support those surprises. in the next administration you would not have bet the richard nixon would have imposed wage price controls on an economy. democrats did not bet on that.

i was a part of that, and i do not put that on my resume. [laughter] >> if you will allow me one. >> i have one, and then i will let you have entered the best secretary of state you ever worked with, or -- 1. the best secretary of state you have ever worked with? >> to w on my list, when did the gentleman you just -- two on my list. one would be the gentleman you just heard from, henry kissinger i say some nice things about him in my book. the other would be jim baker. very different individuals, but in terms of dealing with the problems and issues of the day, the thing that i was always fighting remarkable about dr. henry kissinger, which is why i am saying all these nice things, when you think about the

conditions he had to operate under. it is the only time in history that we had a president resigned under threat of impeachment, and secretary henry kissinger went through that whole process, managed the transition of the national security arena very incredible -- incredibly. i remember one of the first thing gerald ford said after we knew richard nixon was born to resign, he announced that secretary henry kissinger would continue in his current job. he did not say whether the rest of us had jobs, but henry was skirret -- henry was squared away. to manage the affairs during that process, and as ably as he did, the difficult problems that we faced at that point -- de end of the war in vietnam, the soviets, opening to china, and so forth -- that was a

remarkable set an accomplishment under the most difficult positions i could imagine. >> this is unscripted, but given the opportunity, my colleagues at the aspen institute and "the atlantic" have brought in a wide different group of political players, but i would like to ask you a question that it's politics out of it, and ask you thinking of the national security decision making structure that you build, because there has been some critique that you took over a process that was broken, and people could debate whether that was good or bad, but there has been focused on how you get the structure right, as opposed to the question of who was president, the when you have such a complex problems with so many players, could you talk a little bit about gerald ford did

it, how george w. bush did it what is your critique on the obama decision making structure, and does that matter? >> we spent a lot of time talking about structure. sometimes when we get into trouble, like, for example, the reaction to 9/11, we went out and reorganize the intelligence community. i am not sure structure is the problem. there is a great tendency to think we could move the boxes around on the chart, shift or transfer of authority from one place to another. i come back to something i mentioned earlier. i am overwhelmingly convinced that what makes it work are the individuals in key slots and the relationships they have with their colleagues, and it is not enough that you know the others involved, but it is whether or

not you have worked together. we talked earlier about 41's d ay, that we had all worked together in the previous administration. that was a big help. we ran into problems initially. we had the opportunity to support a coup in panama. you might remember the early days of a administration, noriega was still in power, and by the time we got that act together, the crew had failed, and noriega was back in power. what we had not done was function in those jobs as a team. i do not think we will -- we do a good enough job in the transition of getting the new team together and getting them to look at real world problems, and actually go through some exercises, play some more games,

and go back and look at previous times when we have had to use power. what happens in the transition is you bring in the new crowd, a new breed them, scare the hell out of them, and say this is how you unleash america's nuclear inventory on the world, and that is a very sobering brief, but odds are you're not going to do that, hopefully, during the course of your id administration. what you do not get is any sort of work of getting your key national security players together and having them actually go back and looked at what their predecessors did, and pullout 3 or four hypothetical, and have somebody said a couple of good games for you, and let them get used to function in with each other on the kinds of problems if they're actually going to run into.

that has never happened and then on and the destruction that i have been a part of. >> one more question could >> only said you could have one question. >> is there anything -- ' >> before you ask that question, talking about training, and exercises, how much of your past experience did you constant -- consciously think about on that morning of 9/11, when you were suddenly faced with a nation under attack? >> well, it had a big impact. a lot of the program is still classified, but it was a program that existed for how you would preserve the government and the authority of the government in the event of an all-out global conflict, and i have been involved in that program over the years, and we had access to

one place where we had actually done some exercises. it was one of those things that clit in that morning. most important was to -- clicked in that morning. it was important that we did not have all the leaders brevity to one spot so all adversaries could not be decapitate, in respect. we got been attested to a secure location -- dennis has. to a secure location since he was next in line. >> do you think that is why you're able to focus on the specifics of what needed to be done as opposed to the trauma of the fact we were under attack? >> the other thing that was very important was getting the planes down.

there was an important role played their as the secretary of transportation. he did great work for us that morning, but those were our priorities -- to get all of the airplanes down so we could tell which had been hijacked because we had conflicting information. we were told there were six, it turned out there were four, but we did not know that right away. the other thing was taking steps to guarantee the survival of someone who had legitimate authorities as president of united states should that happen. >> do you want to ask a question? >> if you did have a chance during your by presidential tenure to redo, or rethink, or take a different step than you took, what would that have been? do have any regrets?

>> do i have any regrets? i have mentioned -- you want something from my time as vice president? >> well, you could broaden it. >> well, the first chapter of my no, i think basically on balance we got it right, under difficult circumstances. obviously i believe very much in the policies that we pursued. and with respect to what we needed to do to keep the country safe, as i say, for my perspective it worked. we achieved our objective. and some price in terms of my reputation or standing in the polls. but under those circumstances you don't, and politicians like

to be loved. obviously. that's important -- >> do you feel loved? >> do i feel loved? >> he's loved. [laughter] >> well my grandkits probably. probably. liz is responsible for that. no, i think it's, i guess if i had to choose i would rather be respected. and that meant some of the things we had to do had to be done even though we knew they were going to be controversial. and you can't operate under those conditions. and without breaking some china. and i'm sure we did. but if i had to do it over again i would. >> were you really secretly running things? >> no. [laughter] >> really? >> well, let me tell you one

story that will tell you how much power and authority i had. we had a great big dog named dave, big yellow lab. used to take him up to camp david which is my location sometimes. he loved it, chasing squirrels and so forth. one morning i took him down to the laurel lodge, the big dining room where the cabin is and the president's office and so forth. and walked in and there was barney, the president's little scotty. looked a lot like a squirrel. [laughter] don't tell the president i said that. >> i'm sure that's just been tweeted. >> barney took off and our lab dave, he never caught a squirrel, he took off chasing him around the big dining room table. and they made a couple of circuits at the table when i heard the president. he stepped in to the room and said what the hell's going on here? a reasonable question.

so i grabbed and said dave, treat. he loved to eat. got him a dow nutt, got him back on the golf kart, drove up to the cabin where we were staying. got dave inside. about 15 minutes later there was a knock on the door. and it was the camp commander, navy captain. all decked out in his full uniform. and he said sir, until further notice, your dog dave is banned from laurel lodge. [laughter] president never said a word to me. but that will tell you who was running the show. it wasn't me. >> are you sure that introduction came from the president? >> no out about it. the captain was not happy transmitting messages back and forth between the two of us. it all worked out in the end. nobody got hurt. >> i think we can close maybe by having you tell what were the most important lessons you learned from me as we were

working on this book together. i'm sure there's a long list >> well, you had one rule that i tried to abide by, which was if in doubt, take it out. >> no, no, no, my rule was put more in. one of the great satisfactions of the book was working with liz. >> can you die vudge your biggest argument over the book? >> no, because we left it out. [laughter] there's something remarkable about having your eldest child interested enough in how you spent your life to have them sit there for two years and listen to you tell old war stories. and that's basically what we. it really added enormously to the satisfaction of the product. and the project. and i wouldn't dream of doing

another book without her. but at this point we haven't signed onto do any more books. still resting up from the last one. >> i want to thank you both, vice president cheney, for joining us and liz cheney, congratulations on the book and your work. thank you so much for being here. now we're back over to margaret. >> thank you, thank you. >> thanks very much. i will be taging suggestions for next year of father-daughter interviews. we might invite maybe some day we'll get malia and sasha to do president obama. but for now we're going back to our regular programming,

although we have a crowd here. we're going to do another political panel. we have dave wigele joining us from slate to fill in for what i thought might be the absence of jake tapper of abc doing the presidential news conference. i think jake has actually arrived. chris matthews agreed to stay on. we have someone from nbc arriving late. we have national journals, charlie cook. so we're going to pull up an extra chair. we're going to pull up an extra microphone. welcome, chris. charlie. >> who's where? >> just choose. >> are you all miked? i think we're going to need one more chair eventually but in any

event let me go here. >> i'm told to slide over. >> ok. so we'll all be spending christmas together in des moines. i look forward to that. >> speak for yourself. >> the primaries are moving further and further close to christmas. soon it will be thanksgiving. so we lost kristof ongenaetity, we lost sarah palin, she doesn't want to be shackled by the presidency. free to work on fox, do her other things, get the questions ahead of time. [laughter] >> maybe she can have bristol ask her a question. [laughter] >> we can bring thomas to caroline. so reset the char table, charlie, reset the table. >> two thirds is really, really

conservative and one third is the old fashioned republican party. the two thirds that's that that conservative, they either want rick perry or a rick perry. someone like him. whether it's a perry or backman. they want one that is the full spleen of the conservative movement in a really big way. another third wants it not so much. i think you've got, this is really -- the next six to eight weeks are really critical for rick perry because he's got to show does he have the capacity to grow and develop beyond a candidate who's been normally successful in a one party state? because after all, if texas is a two part state, one's a republican party, one's a tea party. so a conservative republican has to be careful. the question is if rick perry grows, develops, matures as a candidate i think this

nomination is his and certainly a nomination worth having. on the other hand if he doesn't and if he doesn't show that capacity for growth, and if the differental between say how romney does against president obama versus how perry does president obama, if it gets wide enough, and at that point republicans have a heart versus hope moment. >> sometimes you hear republicans acting as if anybody can beat obama. he's far enough down so, as chris said earlier, can they take the goldwater type risk, because they want to break with tradition, because the tea party's ascending and whatever. or do they do what they usually do what is go with the guy, chris, who is in line? >> well, i look at the map that tim russert would do so well. it's probably going to be ohio.

there are guys that work with obama right now that think they can skip with dance with the one who brung you. i don't know how you win colorado if you don't win ohio, or north carolina if you don't win ohio. i think you have to start with the democrats. those angry white people that wear big coats to football games don't vote for you i don't know how you win. here's my value judgment, they shouldn't win because they don't represent the people they said they were doing to represent they don't deserve a second term. you got to represent the middle class working person who's very disappointed in the economy, or you failed. the idea you're going to go with the higher tech ore educated person, that's the theory they have that they can reach people, mark pen will argue there's more people making over $1,000 that voted for obama than under $30,000. talk about the two paycheck families that make maybe $70,000. that's the american people you reach if you're a democrat.

bottom line, i think the republicans right now would have a competition in ohio with perry. if they had to vote today. i think the republicans would all vote, the democrats wouldn't vote. the minorities wouldn't vote, the young people would not vote. obama has to get them jacked up. so right now i think you lose ohio to perry. i think you lose virginia and north carolina and colorado to perry. but by the time he gets his game back and begins to talk about the future and republicans show their flaws and get some breaks, i believe in luck. barack obama is probably the luckiest person i've ever heard of. because he ran in illinois against two people that had marital problem and then end up with allen keyes. he had the nomination before he had the senate seat pretty much. he did defeat hillary clinton which was a tough campaign. he ran against mccain when he was over the hill. i think if he runs against romney who's at full strength, i

bet on romney right now. if he runs against perry right now, he would lose to perry right now. next year against perry, that's a good case, that's a good race. that's a pick, in sports terms. >> so dave, let's pick up on obama, he is now looking like the populace, fighting for the guy who's lost his job in ohio. the vice president was channeling him this morning. very fiery, the five dollar seed for bank of america. we're out there for you. no more bipartisan, we're all in this together, democrats, republicans, equal. he's blaming republicans. is that an obama that can win? a place like ohio? is he going to be ever more feisty? >> he could do better. there's economic reality he has to deal with here. he's going to confront a

situation where unemployment, if we believe goldman zach's, i don't know why we would, but 9% unemployment by election day. i think they're grabbing what ever looks good right now. i'm surprised to hear the vice president and everyone in administration talk about this and talk in pretty warm terms about the wall street protestors. these are guys that are been out there three weeks. i was in new york over the weekend. a lot of the kind of people who get arrested when the w.t.o. is in town, or when starbucks opens. but some of these are protesters that get out of control. they're embracing them faster. they're doing that because they don't quite understand why pop list anger in this country went for the right immediately.

>> not to the party of mitt romney. >> right. so perry is the person left who embodies that. we have trump, palin, balkman, they've all gone away. herman cane is that a place to park a vote while you're waiting to fall in love with mitt romney? or rick perry takes another chance to make a first impression? >> well, i think it's two things. i think number one it is a safe place to hang out while you're trying to decide what to do. i think there's a lot of that. but you know, there's just a certain times went into this day, a certain legitimate question of seriousness here. what comes first, your book tour or presidential campaign? when's the next time you're going back to new hampshire, mid-november? >> he sort of let go any pretense it's not a book tour. >> i sat next to him on a plane one time.

interesting guy, nice guy, smart guy. but the thing about it is, if you're not taking your presidential campaign seriously, why should i? >> so chris, we've seen bad debate performances before. what is -- the next one is october 116789 rick perry gets another chance. >> here's an interesting way to look at it. if mitt romney wins 10 more debates they still won't like him. there's no amount. he's the suitor that comes to the girl, or the young woman who wants to date, she doesn't want to go out with him. she certainly doesn't want to marry him. >> i think it's the other way around. she doesn't want to date him, she wants to marry him. >> well, whatever, i get confused. mitt romney is happy, they're not. that's a profound difference.

16 grandchildren, happy, happy person. that means a lot. most guys look at a guy and look at the wife, she's happy, he's a pretty cool guy. they do look at it that way. if she's miserable, looks like there's not something happening, then they don't like the guy. here's my theory, i'm getting into real psychology here doctor, but i do think these things through. i think people like, he's got six reply can'ts as kids. [laughter] i know it sounds a little ethnic. but they are. he's never had a hangover, he's never had a bad day it looks like. he is happy. look at the tea party people. do any of them look like mitt romney? they're angry, they got facial hair, bad hair cuts, they're fester out of "gunsmoke."

they're angry people talking about the cause like the civil war. he's not part of the civil war. he's got no problem with black measures making it in that country. he has no anger that grass roots attitude. he's not mad at people with good degrees, he's got good degrees. he shares none of their feelings about america. that's got to matter. now peggy noonan who's a real trooper hozz come along and written a reagan speech for somebody's not reagan. when senior bush gave a speech about being an inarticulate guy, she could give mitt romney a heart for 45 minutes. it will work because republicans want to believe he's one of them. i'm telling you it will take a transplant with this guy. he's not one of them. they're going to outsource their nomination to a guy that's not one of them, the first time a

party does that. i really don't think they want him. perry they will root for. perry wins one debate and they're going to be ready to crown him. that's what i'll say. the geniuses are here so i'll get out of the way. >> chuck todd nbc, jake tapper abc. >> we have a good excuse. >> yes, the best, the best. we've come up with one theory, is mitt romney too happy a guy -- [laughter] >> to get elected or just in general? >> guess who's theory that was. too happy a guy to be a tea party hero. >> doesn't share their mood. >> to get that angry vote. chuck? >> well, i think his challenge is this i have this theory about the election. when we change presidents, we want more of a stylist i think change than sometimes even a substantial change. if you look at recent history,

when we've switched parties, we've almost gone stylist more than substance. so obama was a stylist type of personality than president bush. president bush on the moral front different than clinton. clinton with h.w. bush. you can keep going, reagan, carter. we can keep this going. what i can't wrap my head around, romney, is he going to seem like too much like obama. the pragmatist in the room. he almost campaigns on it a bit, talking about i'm in the private sector, sometimes facts change, you got to change with. you've got to be able to change. is he going to be too similar to the president. or do they want more of a

brasher personality. that's what i think even the obama campaign worried about not just with christy but to a lesser extent the version perry 1.5, right? perry even after the second debate that the brasher personality, the starker change that the brighter personality change might actually be more appealing to the frustrated swing voters out there who are concerned about, they just don't see the president leading in their mind. they're frustrated. they have nothing getting done but how come you can't do it. >> so is obama's personality changing to the brasher kind to match say the perry? to pick up on the anger. by the end of this he's not going to be romney, he's obama 3.0 and he's really, really angry about what's gone on in the country. >> well, i think the calculation by the white house is that the great conciliator has failed.

>> he's gone. >> it hasn't worked and he needs to draw distinctions and that's what this jobs bill is about drawing distinctions, not necessarily in the content but how it's paid for, all the tax increases on corporations and wealthier americans. so you are seeing more of a primary obama than a general election obama. i think the issue with romney is, first of all i don't think the tea party has a problem with his temperment, but with problem with his record. i think they have substancive issues with and there are a lot of republicans in town, which is why you've seen this thirst to an alternative, not just tea party republicans but they don't trust him. they don't think that they can rely upon him. i ran into a republican official, a well known one the other day and he was convinced that the anti-abortion, or pro life community is going to rally behind john huntsman. that was her theory, not mine. >> the problem with john huntsman is he announced he was running.

if he wasn't in the race, they might be chasing after him. >> that's right. as for romney's temperment he's the only one i see on stage really in these debates who is running a general election campaign already. >> well, he looks president presidential, he looks like he could be on mount rushmore. is that where the republican party is though? do they want -- is the angry group and the republican party angry enough to nominate the guy who isn't looking so -- >> i want to pick up on the her man cane thing. herman cane is not an elected official and a businessman. he's actually -- that's the frustration with anybody in political office. the more you look like you're not part of the political class. i see why herman cane's getting -- >> so will it last? is this real? >> i don't think he is putting

together the campaign to make it real. like you get to a point then you actually have to do something with it. so i don't -- but i think there is an opportunity there. i think there's an opportunity for anybody who can prove some sort of affected leadership, say in the business community. who came out of a nonpolitical class and said you know, enough of this. what i would say is the same version of donald trump. the joke was before a sane version of ross pe rot, or a successful version of donald trump. there's a question about how successful of a businessman he is. i'm sure i've just invited donald trump attacks. that's not new for me. >> you're fired. >> i know, exactly. more like a fred smith, somebody like that, somebody who's just totally had a good track record in the business who isn't connected to washington. and isn't connected -- but that's why there's something about cane tapping into that

part of the republican. >> but perry gets a piece of that by wanting to secede and all the other things, trying to be nonwashington. >> i think he and cane are matched with the tea party republicans. and i don't think either one of them by the way, especially cane, is angry. herman cane is not an angry guy. >> no, no, he's not actually. let me ask, is the tea party ascended, has it peaked? let me go around. give me your thoughts. >> well, it's a part of the republican party, we named it. it named itself but it's always been there. and there's a popularist streak in both party. there is a popularist aspect to the democratic party that every once in a while rises up and uses its influence and picks its head up a little bit. there the question is how responsive and how powerful of a

force are they in a primary? i think is that waning? we'll see. there are establishment republicans betting it's waning. >> i don't think it's waning. i think it will wield considerable power. it will through the primaries. ultimately it's not a majority of the republican party. so it will be powerful but it won't be the be all end all. >> the money people sitting on the sidelines seem to be moving to romney, paul singer, big bundler. so those that don't want the arranged marriage are nonetheless seeming ready to walk down the aisle with romney. is that is in the established part of the party. >> they are, but one the tea party i think will be a factor because it has lots of money. the three main tea party groups, americans for prosperity, freedom works, tea party patriots, i think last year they raised about $69 million. they have businessman who will fund these things to the hilt.

freedom works has a new pack. if they want to mess with romney can keep doing so through the rest of the primaries. the financing, this really is romney's to lose, after christy dropped out, i think you're going to keep seeing these guys fall until monday night. perry has a chance at a debate that will be about economics to prove he wouldn't stumble over and knock the podium down if he debated barack obama. he raised more money than romney this quarter. let's pay less attention to how much money these guys raised to the super packs and the normal packs. people who have a grievance, bob perry, they have grievance and a lot of money can mess with this for quite a while. >> so alec baldwin's head playing rick perry fell on the podium in exhaustion at the hard, hard questions. the economic debate, the bloomberg washington debate. as chris said mitt romney can win them all and still not maybe

get above that 25%. >> see i don't buy that. >> put the 25% in perspective which has been romney's cap so far. >> well, the thing is you're looking at a very, very large field. and you're looking at a lot of people doing window shopping. i think now the singing "somewhere over the rainbow" and pining for a new kid, that period is pretty much over. i think these guys are going to sort -- the republicans have to make some choices right now. my humpling is we've got two candidates who can raise a lot of money, with the durability to go deep into the schedule. i think it will be a fight like obama-clinton. start off with a big field with joe bidens and dodd's and bill richardsons, those get sorted out. two guys going the distance and the question is, you know, perry has a natural advantage because he's closer to the center of gravity. on the other hand, if he doesn't close the sale in terms of being a presentable general election

candidate in order to get those voters between the 40-yard line i think mitt romney will be the republican nominee. if i had to bet right now i would bet on romney being the nominee. >> good. we'll go around the table. we'll never have a huntsman moment. >> who? >> yeah. >> it's romney-perry. chris? >> i think we're not quite at the playoffs left. i think romney has won the eastern conference. i think with christy out, huntsman not getting anywhere he's won that conference title. the other title really at stake, the debates the next couple of times will be about that conference title. so instead of attacking romney who is the pro ported front runner, the western conference, the tea parties will fight among themselves. herman cane, whatever you think in this room, he thinks now he can be president. he's taking shots the last couple of days, crazy shots. real tea party comments that may suggest he has to take all the shots now and maybe win this thing in a fluke, but win it. he's going to be going after perry. bachman has the saber pride,

she'll be going after perry. as long as they're contending for the western conference title they're not going to take on romney yet. still a battle on who will go the long distance. the danger is that it won't be decided through next march. those people like cane will stay in it, maybe to sell books, but he'll say in it. bachman will stay with it until june. and maybe, maybe rick santorum will stay in there. so that perry can't unite the west against romney as he goes against the contest even in iowa. i think it will be very difficult to clean it up and go head to head with romney. that's why i think romney is the favorite in the republican party. >> ok. can we skip ahead to vice presidentle candidates on the republican side. rubio said he probably would not and then he said he would not accept the nomination. what would romney or perry need

to do in their nomination and who could it be? >> i'm not ready to leap ahead. i want to make one point. two points. one is we don't know what mitt romney looks like after $30 million is dropped on his head for being a flip-flopper on conservative issues. and we don't know what he looks like yet. let's see what that looks like in 60 days. we'll have an easier time. the second point is i do believe there is, i buy into the fact that this anti-washington fervor that's out there, the disgrunted democrats and disgrounted moderate republicans. i had christy whitman singing the praises of american select, the third party entity, i do think we're going to have a vacuum moment. if they get their ballot access, and they might. they have enough money to do that. and we know there's a lot of lazy moderate politicians in washington. who wring their hands after they leave office. i always love it. a bunch of ex senators always talk about how broken the senate is. what did you do when you were

there? but you know, if you like give them a free pass, oh, i get to run for president without having to be in a primary? so, we still have to deal with that moment. there's a lot of twist and turns to this. may end up probably being obama, romney and that's the choices. this is a weird environment. >> isn't perry going to have to do -- >> let's not immediately assume we're in for a traditional race when we could have some weird ps going on. >> we want anything but a traditional race. isn't perry going to have to do some self correction of his own on, say for instance immigration? >> he has tried to back off saying it's an inappropriate word. they have a history of

moderating whether it's john mccain, george w. bush, ronald reagan. not like they don't nominate them. the problem is perry after the nomination is lined by people who have a much harder stance on that issue. on illegal immigration. not just immigration. illegal immigration. that's problematic for him. we don't know what romney will look like and we don't know what perry can look like. we still have great pro tension to be a strong nominee. he has not shown that potential yet. that's for sure. but he has great potential and he can do. chris's analysis was interesting. i think it's possible that could ruin his chances. but he's a first seed, if we consider with the ncaa.

>> can we at least call it the southern conference? instead of western? >> palin started it. >> he could sweep, he really could. it's impossible to imagine perry getting into the conservative base. i think there's a lot of, at the republican party has a fairly strong bench i think right now. i think we would all agree, whether it's miss daniels, chris christie and you have the new comers like nicky haley, susanna martinez, sandoval in nevada. i think they have a very strong bench. the democrats do not have a strong bench for 2012. we'll talk about that in four years. >> right. so with like seconds left, so just around the horn once. chris? >> i think it has to be a protestant. >> all right, is it going to be the happy protestant? the happy mormon?

>> the mormon thing has to be dealt with, i think. i think. >> charlie? >> you show up your weakness. that's why mitt romney's list is totally different from rick perry's list. i agree with jake, there's a huge list to pull from. you can make all kind of permutations, whether it's rob portman if you're rick perry, would be a good one. i think motte romney has to go south. i think romney does have to go protest stand. >> you can't have two cults. >> now to balance the happy mormon we need the angry protestant, yes right, very unhappy. they're not that hard to find. >> i think we'll hear about bobby jay again special if it's

perry. he had one bad speech, but bill clinton had one bad speech. he's better than we saw him two years ago. >> fat chance. >> all right. >> really, we have short memories. >> it's not going to work -- >> but not angry. >> got louisiana to start with first of all. >> no, i think the message, i think the one proof is, i think your v.p., everybody says -- i think more and more you're seeing more presidential candidates coming around to the idea use your v.p. pick to send a message as to how you're going to govern. >> sarah palin? >> little less calculating, and i would believe marko rubio. look at the track record of failed v.p. candidates. it's a murderer's row right now. >> i said sarah palin. >> palin, john edwards, how did

that work out? jack kemp. dan quayle actually won. it's not as anyone's political fortunes got better after doing it. >> they think they can win too. i don't disagree with them. the math is on the republicans side. >> this is why i think they'll take the happy mormon. >> but the rubio calculation has to be why should he use his political standing to shore up somebody else? i would believe rubio. i will be shocked if he's the v.p. nominee. >> you've been a great panel. i thank you for rushing here, jake and chuck. >> didn't know president obama had a press conference and had to ask questions. >> i'm assuming there wasn't any news or you would have told us. >> nine questions, 75 minutes. it might be his longest word to question press conference going. >> i asked three questions so i can't blame him for that. [laughter] >> i asked 2.5. >> the two of you had five of the nine? good going. thanks very much. [cheers and applause]

>> margaret, thank you, we've made it through another washington ideas forum and in five minutes we're starting the planning for the next year. i just wanted to say a word. in these sessions we bring in so many different people. if you think today we had former vice president cheney, vice president biden. we had former president mushref with david bradley. the formats we try to bring are very diveers. a lot of ex peerm men tation. daughter-dad teams. we'll think about that, whether it worked or not. we'll kick it down the road. but i do want to say thank you to all of you who stayed with us. thank the c-span viewers and those watching, streaming on live at the atlantic.com and the various other portals that are out there. i want to thank margaret carlson, two of the best partners in putting all this on. also, let me reintroduce,

elizabeth baker. >> thank you, and thank you so much for closing us out in this year before the election year. thanks very much to our underwriters, allstate, bank of america, comcast, exxon mobile, united technologies corporation and university of phoenix. it took a lot to put this on across these two days and we appreciate their support and thank you all for being here right until the end. we hope to see you next year. [cheers and applause] >> who gets the door? >> these are my first or second conference, i was paying very close attention to the discussion as i remember it and i failed to hear the knock on

the door. and billy brennan on my left, bill rehnquist on my right both got up to answer the door and it made me feel i was like two feet high. one of the most important jobs of the junior justice is to remember that you're a doorman. >> retired associate justice john paul stevens, on his new memoir "5 chiefs." sunday night on c-span's q & a. here's a quick look at what's ahead today on the c-span network. in about 25 minutes we'll go live to the family research council values voter summit. live right now, a proposed -- and later, republican political consultant charlie black speaks about his experience working on senator john mccape's 2008

presidential campaign. to take us to the top of the hour, the value voters summit, a portion from that event earlier today with remarks by house speaker john boehner on gay marriage that are making some news. later a speech by majority leader eric can tor. we'll show you as much as we can. >> i never thought in my wildest dreams i would serve in congress, or even run for any elective office. but, like many of you, i saw a need to get involved. today, i've never seen americans more engaged with their governments, more engaged with our founding principles, never more engaged in our founding

document, the constitution of the united states. americans set a new majority to washington with a clear message -- that government exists to serve the people, not to rule it. [cheers and applause] i think the american people deserve a clear commitment for us. to listen to them, to work for a smaller, less costly and more accountable government here in washington. and that's the idea that was at the heart of our pledge to america. governing agenda that house republicans outlined and issued to the american people almost a year ago. that was designed by listening to the american people. put together by house republicans, the will will and the concern and the interest of the american people. we've recently marked the one year anniversary of our political america. american people want to see

their leaders listening, not celebrating. we're keeping our pledge to america. we build it by listening and we're going to continue to listen to the american people. but before i talk to you about a report on our pledge to america, there's a different report that's out this morning. a report from the department of labor. i'm sorry to say the news isn't good. unemployment remains above 8%, the unemployment rate didn't change. and it's been that way for far too long. for over two and a half years, unemployment's been above 8%. even though the president of the united states promised when we passed that stimulus bill that unemployment would not exceed 8%. the unemployment rate for certain groups of people, teenagers, african-americans, hispanics is much higher. after three years of false hopes, and broken promises, americans continue to be left

asking the question, where are the jobs? but all we hear from the powers that be here in washington is more of the same. more stimulus, more taxes, more regulation and more debt piled on the backs of our kids and grand kids. has any of it worked? no! it's high time we trust the american people to liberate our economy from the shackles of this government. [cheers and applause] when it comes to jobs, part of our pledge we pledged we would stop the jobs increasing taxes, and we have. we voted every week to stop government regulations from hammering our economy and the ability of employers to grow our economy. we'll soon pass an act which would require any new regulation from this government that cost $100 million or more to be voted

on up or down by both houses of the congress. when it comes to spending we said we would do something about stopping the spending binge that threatens bankruptcy for our economy and for our country. and, under a republican majority in the house, we have control discretion anywhere spending. we've cut 1.2 trillion of spending over the next 10 years. and the caps are key for jobs because keeping government from expanding, giving the economy a chance to grow. the next step, in this effort to control spending, is to pass a balanced budget amendment to our constitution [cheers and applause]

it requires each house of the congress to pass a balanced budget amendment half october 1, but before the end of the year. giving us the maximum opportunity to have the most significant and real enforcement mechanism that you can imagine. a real requirement in the constitution will be balanced our federal budget. so that vote's coming. we need your voices to be heard in that debate for members of both the house and the senate and both political parties. when it comes to changing the way congress does its work, focusing on our economy instead of focusing on government, we've decided to open up the process. allow the american people to have three days to read every bill before it comes to the floor of the house. novel idea -- [cheers and applause] no more passing the bills so we'll know what's in it. each bill that cops to the floor , which clause of the

constitution avows that provision to come to the floor of the house. and yes, after a long fight, some five years in my case, there are no earmarks allowed in the united states congress any more. [cheers and applause] we vowed to the american people to appeal obama care. moved the congress through the house and it continues to sit over the united states senate. we've rooted out special slush funds. to eliminate them and we're

going to do everything that we can to make sure that obama care never, ever, ever is fully implemented. [cheers and applause] in my opinion he will ruin the best health care system in the world and bankrupt our nation. you all remember that debate during obama care the president vowed, vowed that there would be no public funds used to support elective abortion. we had the big fight because members of congress from both sides of the political aisle wanted to ensure that the principle that have been the law of the land for some 25 years would be contained in this document. the white house did everything to stop it, issue an executive order promising they would do the same thing. i knew right then and there that something was amiss.

and so making sure the amendment becomes the law of the land once again to prohibit a federal taxpayer dollars from being used to fund abortion was passed by the house and we'll continue to press to make this the law of the land. [cheers and applause] our respect for life has never been a political issue for me. i told you, i got 11 brothers and sisters. my mother had us one at a time. i'm sure it wasn't convenient for her but i'm glad they're all here. we also promised to defend the defense of marriage act. [cheers and applause] i have to tell you my disappointment when the justice department decided they were

going to ignore the law of the land, passed by in a bipartisan way by the congress of the united states, signed into law by president clinton. they were going to decide we're not going to defend this law. well, as a speaker of the house, i have a constitutional responsibility. i raised my hand to uphold and defend the constitution of the united states and the laws of our country. and if a justice department was not going to defend this act passed by congress, well then we will. and we have -- [cheers and applause] we have defended the law that the congress passed, we're going to take the money away from the justice department who's supposed to enforce it and we'll use it to enforce the law. [cheers and applause] and so every day this year, in the back of our minds is our pledge to america.

i was bound and determined this was not going to be some political document. that it really was going to be a governing document that would guide what it was that we did every day. in addition to keeping the pledge and part of that pledge was to listen to you. and to listen to the american people every day. you helped us build this pledge. you helped us gain a majority. and it's our obligation to you to continue to listen to you, and do what the american people say. i think all of you know that america's facing big challenges. whether it's our economy here and jobs, whether it's the undermining of our values by this administration, the problems in europe, wars in afghanistan, and iraq, there have big challenges that face us. but i'm a big believer in america because americans are the most resilient people on the face of the earth. and while the days don't like as bright as we would like, inside my soul i know that there really is a shining city on the hill.

if people in this town would work together, listening to the american people, there's nothing that we can't accomplish. [cheers and applause] just remember all it takes is work. i played with jerry faust, they won a lot of state championships after i was there. i was trying to think back to what i learned from coach faust. it boiled down to this. nothing in this world you can't accomplish, nothing you can't succeed in if you're willing to work hard enough and if you're willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary. i look back over my life, look back over my career, that formula's worked pretty well. there's not one of you here that can't look back over your own life, your own career, and realize that has worked very

well for you too. america is the shining city on the hill. we've got big obligation, we have a lot of work to do. help join the fight, god bless you and god bless our great country. [cheers and applause] >> thank you mr. speaker. i don't know about you, but during the november elections of 2010, it was like a super bowl atmosphere around our home. we were cheering about every few minutes. and near the end of that night when speaker boehner realized, there was a man who had come to such humbling beginnings and now being promoted to the third most powerful position in the world, he was overcome with emotion. i was inspired in that moment as

he was. and to his critics, let mess ju say i would rather have a speaker of house who gets emotional occasionally than a speaker of the house in nancy pelosi who made me cry all the time. [cheers and applause] all right our next speaker is a result-oriented congressman who is committed to helping solve problems for america's families. in the wake of the 2010 mid-term elections he was elected by his colleagues in the house to serve as the majority leader for the 112th congress. he has emerged as the leading voice on the economy and job creation. in early 2009 they coordinated the effort in which no republicans voted for the nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill. during the lead-up to the stimulus vote, then minority leader john boehner tapped him to lead up the republican

economic solutions group that produced the republican alternative economic plan, which would have created twice the job at half the cost of the current stimulus bill signed into law. ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome the house majority leader, eric cantor. [cheers and applause] >> thank you, thank you. good morning. thank you gale, thank you all. i want to just commend our family research council and the excellent team that they have in place to put on such an outstanding event.

their lead to reclaim the fight in america is unparalleled. i know we are led in that battle by a man i consider a personal friend, the president of f.r.c., tony perkins. tony, thank you. [cheers and applause] i also want to recognize all the young people here. the students who have come from liberty university, from other colleges. yes, liberty university in virginia! from all the colleges around the country who have brought students here to stand up for the time-tested american values that we cherish. thank you very much. you're an inspiration. [cheers and applause] this year, we are celebrating what would have been president ronald reagan's 100th birthday. as we remember our 40th

president, i'm reminded of a quote of his regarding freedom. he said "freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. we didn't pass it to our children in the blood stream. it must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. " ever since you helped us start the fight to earn back the house, republicans have been committed to changing washington. we said from day one that this congress was going to be about jobs in the economy. we have been fighting to reign in government that has grown far too large and inserted itself into almost every aspect of our lives. simply put, we are fighting to reduce the size of government while protecting an expanding

personal liberty. [cheers and applause] many families in this country are facing difficult times. unemployment is at an all time high, and there's this sense of uncertainty, really about the kind of country we will pass onto our children. when recans assumed our new majority, we committed ourselves to step up, to step up and make the tough choices. and we're doing that with your help, not because it's easy, but because it's right. we continue to say no to out of control government regulation, no to pork barrel spending, and no to politics as usual! [cheers and applause]

we conservatives have a different vision for where we want to take our country. our vision is an america where success is rewarded. we believe in an america that is still the light of the world. that people longing for freedom can actually look to for inspiration. some of you might have heard me tell the story of my grandmother. she lived in russia at a time of great persecution. she, like millions of others of her generation, sought a better life here in america. she found her way to my hometown of richmond, and as a young widow, opened a grocery store and raised her two children in a tiny apartment above it. all she wanted was a shot, a fair shot at the american dream. through hard work and

determination, she knew life would be better for her children. if she were alive today, i know she would be blown away knowing that her grandson would be standing in front of you, today as a u.s. house majority leader. [cheers and applause] >> we will leave this portion of today's event at this point as our live coverage is about to resume. a quick reminder, you can watch all of this or any c-span video at our video library. and we're back live now at the family research councils value voter summit. a number of republican presidential candidates will speak this afternoon. texas governor rick perry scheduled for 2:30. herman cane at 4:14. live coverage here on c-span. >> all right, we've got a couple of very quick announcements that we need to run thug