the chair: on this vote the yeas are 364. the nays are 37. the amendment is adopted. the unfinished business is the request for a recorded vote on amendment number 7 printed in the house report 112-267 by the gentleman from new york, mr. bishop on which further proceedings were postponed and which the nays prevailed by voice vote. the clerk will redesignate the amendment. the clerk: amendment number 7 printed in house report 112-267 offered by mr. bishop of new york. the chair: a recorded vote's been requested. those in support of the request for a recorded vote will rise and be counted. a sufficient number having arisen, a recorded vote is ordered. members will record their votes by electronic device. this will be a two-minute vote. [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house

proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of representatives.]

the chair: on this vote the yeas are -- on this vote the ayes are

174. the nays are 225. the amendment is not adopted. the amendment -- the unfinished business is the request for recorded vote amendment number 8 printed in house report 111-26 -- 112-267 by the gentlewoman from new york, ms. slaughter, which further proceedings were postponed and on which the nays prevailed by voice vote. the clerk will redesignate the amendment. the clerk: amendment number 8, printed in house report number 112-267, offered by ms. slaughter of new york. the chair: a recorded vote has been requested. those in support of the request for recorded vote will rise and be counted. a sufficient number having arisen, a recorded vote is ordered. members will record their votes by electronic device. this also is a two-minute vote.

[captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of representatives.]

the chair: on this vote the yeas are 161. the nays are 237. the amendment is not adopted.

for what purpose does the gentleman from new jersey rise? mr. lobiondo: mr. chairman, i move the committee do now rise. the chair: the question is on the motion that the committee rise. so many as are in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is adopted. accordingly, the committee rises. the speaker pro tempore: the chair of the committee of the whole house on the state of the union reports that the committee -- that that committee has had

under consideration h.r. 2838 and has come to no resolution thereon. for what purpose does the gentleman from new jersey rise? mr. lobiondo: mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on h.r. 2838. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas seek recognition? >> i send to the desk a concurrent resolution and ask unanimous consent for its immediate consideration. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the concurrent resolution. the clerk: house concurrent resolution 86, concurrent resolution directing the clerk of the house of representatives to make corrections in the enrollment of h.r. 2061. the speaker pro tempore: is there objection to the consideration of the concurrent resolution? without objection, the concurrent resolution is agreed to. and the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table.

for what purpose does the gentleman from texas seek recognition? >> mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent to take from the speaker's table the bill s. 1487 and ask the house for its immediate consideration in the house. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: senate 1487, an act to authorize the secretary of homeland security in coordination with the secretary of state to establish a program to issue asia pacific economic cooperation business travel cards, and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: is there objection to the consideration of the bill? without objection, the bill is read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas rise? >> mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from wisconsin, mr. ryan, be permitted to revise and extend his remarks and insert extraneous materials into the record. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas rise?

mr. farenthold: mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent that, one, when the house adjourns today it adjourn to meet at 10:00 a.m. on monday, november 7, 2011. two, when the house adjourns on that day it adjourn to meet at 2:30 p.m. on thursday, november 10, and, three, when the house adjourns on that day it adjourn to meet at 2:00 p.m. on monday, november 14. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered.

the speaker pro tempore: the chair announces the speaker's appointment pursuant to section 100 it of the intelligence authorization act for fiscal year 2003 t.l. 107-306, as amended by section 701-a-3 of the intelligence authorization act for fiscal year 2010, p.l. 111-259, and the order of the house of january 5, 2011, of the following member of the house to the national commission for the review of the research and development programs of the united states intelligence community. the clerk: mr. conaway of texas. the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order.

members, please take your conversations off the floor. the chair's prepared to entertain one-minute requests. for what purpose does the gentleman from pennsylvania rise? mr. thompson: unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. thompson: thank you. the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. members, please take your conversations off the floor. the gentleman may proceed. mr. thompson: madam speaker, on october 9, 2011, good friend and long-time scouter, john milton

kreiner ii passed away at the age of 53. a life marked with accomplishment and overcoming barriers, john was born in 1958 with down syndrome. despite life's challenges, john and his parents always focused on the possible not the limitations. he graduated from state college area high school and went on to receive certification in hiram g. technical schools and was later employed with the state college area school district. a member of troop 339, boy scouts of america, john received the eagle scout with gold palm, sill ver, honorary camp director. he attended four b.s.a. national jamborees serving as a staff member. was an honor member of the lodge of the arrow and honorary member of penn state university's al >> phi omega. he was a member of the grace lutheran church where he served as usher, greeter, and memberle of sunday school class and state special olympic silver, bronze, and gold medal winner in

swimming. he was a true inspiration to all who knew him. well-done. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas rise? . mr. poe: request permission to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. poe: madam speaker, during the hot days of summer you the veterans of foreign wars went to battle with the veterans administration. they were claiming the v.a. was preventing the free exercise of religion at the national cemetery in houston. the v.f.w. says the chapel at the cemetery was closed. the chapel became a storage shed. the members also said the director of the cemetery censored prayers and prohibited the religious ceremony during the burial of veterans. the v.f.w. sued the v.a. and the v.a. naturally denied the whole thing. recently a federal judge approved and agreed to an order requiring the chapel to be reopened, the bible, the cross, the star of david to be returned

and said that the v.a. must not interfere with free speech or the free exercise of religion at burials. madam speaker, it is ironic that americans have gone to war, fought for the principles of the constitution, then when they come home they face a government that is hostile and the denial of first amendment rights to the citizens when these veterans are buried in v.a. cemeteries. now the veterans have won a battle against the government that wanted to deny them the american freedoms they fought for in lands far, far away and that's just the way it is. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. for what purpose does the gentleman from nebraska rise? >> to address the house for one minute, revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. >> madam speaker, the department of health and human services recently proposed a rule that would require all health plans to cover in full and consequently every american to subsidize procedures and drugs

that are unrelated to medical necessity, traditionally considered electives and that can be very ethically divisive for many americans. mr. fortenberry: why when 75 cents on every public health care dollar spent on the management of chronic conditions, such as cancer, or heart disease and stroke, is the health and human services department prioritizing free sterilization, for instance? this is distinctly unrelated to our nation's priority health care challenges. i can only conclude that this is ideologically driven and most perniciously affects faith-based institutions who are the backstop for compassionate care for the poor and vulnerable in society. many republicans and democrats have expressed very serious concerns about this, no american should be forced to choose between their faith and their job. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. for what purpose does the gentleman from north dakota rise?

mr. berg: permission to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. berg: mr. speaker, with each new overreaching one-size-fits-all mandate, the obama administration continues to burden the states. with unnecessary cost and regulations that are hindering job creation. that's why today i introduced the regional haze federalism act. this will rein in the obama administration and prevent a federal takeover of state haze management. states like north dakota continue to act responsibly to create well research plans and to implement e.p.a.-mandated policies. yet it's clear that these efforts to play by the rules aren't enough for the obama administration. the administration's overreach would cost north dakota over $700 million. those costs will directly increase rates to our consumers across the state.

if we are truly committed to creating jobs and lowering energy costs we need to empower the states and rein in president obama's overreaching e.p.a. thank you, mr. speaker, i yield the remainder of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. are there further requests for one-minutes? the chair lays before the house the following personal requests. the clerk: leaves of absence requested for mr. danny davis of illinois for today, mr. heinrich of new mexico for today and mr. jones of north carolina for today after 11:30 a.m. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the requests are granted. under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the gentleman from new jersey, mr. andrews, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the

minority leader. mr. andrews: thank you, madam speaker. i appreciate this opportunity. i'd like to thank the members of the house staff that are staying beyond voting hours for our opportunity to speak and i promise i will reward your efforts with brevity. this is the end of another difficult week for a lot of americans. for too many americans it's another week without a paycheck. for many americans this is the week that their unemployment benefits expire and they will have no income next week. for many americans this is the last weekend they'll be in their home because the foreclosure is about to be executed upon and sadly for so many americans this might be the last time that he or she closes the doors on their business. this time they close it for good. our constituents and neighbors are hurting. hurting desperately.

and i think there's been far too little attention paid to those problems here in this institution. i hope that when we return after what is our 12th recess of the year we will get to work on the jobs problem for our country and try to put our people back to work. as vital as that jobs crisis is, we can never put our country in a situation where we are not paying attention to threats to our security here at home and around the world. and i do want to spend a few moments this afternoon talking about what i think is a very significant threat and that is the threat of iran developing a nuclear weapon. it is to the credit of the chairwoman of the international relations committee, foreign affairs committee, ms. ros-lehtinen, and the senior democrat ranking member, mr. berman, that yesterday republicans and democrats on that committee came together to pass what i consider to be very

powerful legislation that would work against the propagation of nuclear weapons by iran. and i think that legislation is something that i hope will be brought to the floor promptly and supported by members from both sides. i think it's important to understand what more we could do and why it's so important to do it. this is another productive day throughout our country. people are going to work in our cities and our small towns and our suburbs. they are going to classes at universities and schools, they are visiting their loved ones in hospitals. it is, thank god, a normal day in america where we can do the things we want to do. but you know, a day 10 years ago in september of 2001 started like a normal day, too. september 11, 2001, was a beautiful, blue-sky, crystaline day and it ended as one of the worst days in the history of our country and the pain of that day is felt by people around this

country, not just in the new york metropolitan region, not just in washington, d.c., not just in pennsylvania, but around the country and around the world. i fear and dread that a similar day could come from a scenario almost too terrible to imagine. imagine a group of terrorists who are able to assemble a substantial amount of money but not an impossible amount of money. let's say about $2 million. and they're able to commandeer the services of scientists who are evil enough or hungry enough that they would lend their skills to the destructive task of making a small nuclear device, what we call a small improvised explosive device, a nuclear i.e.d. and they don't need a missile to deliver this nuclear i.e.d., they need a uhaul truck. so they assemble the i.e.d. and they load it on the back of the uhaul truck and they drive it to a place where there's a lot of

innocent americans. the capitol mall right outside of this building. a sports arena for an nfl football game. time square -- times square. a church or a synagogue or a mosque where people are about to worship. and they detonate the nuclear i.e.d., the consequences are huge numbers of deaths in the immediate area of the explosion, a significant number of people sickened and eventually dying from nuclear poisoning, the contamination of the area of the explosion and a devastating blow to the psyche of the united states of america. how could this happen? is this possible? well, it's possible only if terrorists get access to what's called fizzle material from which you can make a nuclear bomb. fisile material can only come from three places. you can make it and it takes a

very significant industrial complex to do so. you can steal it, that's a problem that we're working on trying to prevent. or you can have a government that gives it to you. because that government is committed to a terrorist agenda. my colleagues understand that the risk of iranian nuclear proliferation includes firing a missile at u.s. troops or u.s. allies in the middle east. it most certainly includes that risk. but it's not limited to that risk. i think the greatest risk of iranian nuclear proliferation is the risk of fissile material being handed off by the iranian government to a terrorist organization that then assembles a small nuclear i.e.d. and brings havoc and death to innocent people in the united states of america. how do we stop that? how do we prevent that from

happening? that was the focus of the effort of the foreign relations committee -- foreign affairs committee yesterday and i think it should be the focus of our country and civilized countries around the world. now, it's important to understand the history of this problem, the context of this problem, the risk of this problem and what i believe is a solution to this problem. the history is this, of all the nations in the world, only one has conducted a nuclear weapons research program and systematically lied about the fact that it's done so. and that one nation is the republic of iran. the source is a document from the iaea, the international agency that monitors nuclear development, from september 24 of 2005, when that organization said that they were uncertain of iran's motives in failing to

make important declarations over an extended period of time and in pursuing a policy of concealment until october of 2003. this is not a political view of an american legislator or an ideological position of a journal, this is the official statement from the international agency that watches nuclear weapons. that's the history. along -- a long history of deceit and concealment. what's the context? how is iran behaving in the present state of world affairs? first of all, they're killing united states troops in iraq. here's what the state department's 2010 country terrorism report had to say about iran. despite its pledge to support the stabilization of iraq, iranian authorities continue to provide lethal support including

weapons, training, funding and guidance to iraqi shi'a militant groups that target u.s. and iraqi forces. this is a country that's actively engaged in an attempt to kill american soldiers in iraq as we speak today. secondly, their brutality extends to their own people. systematically, let me highlight just one chilling and horrifying example reported by amnesty international on the 11th of october of this year. of 2001. an actress has become the latest individual to face a sentence of flogging. flogging. she was sentenced on or about october 8 of 2011 to a year in prison and 90 lashes. this is not the middle ages. i'm not reading from a historic

treats i from the year 800. i'm reading from a sentence passed down by an iranian court less than a month ago. what was her offense? her offense was she appeared in a film called "my tehran for sale" in which she appeared in one scene without the mandatory head covering which women in iran are required to wear and appears to drink alcohol in another. her husband denied that she had consumed any alcohol but the exact charge was levied and this woman is in prison as we speak and once a month is beaten because she appeared in a movie in a way that was culturally offensive to the regime. . this is a regime seeking a nuclear weapon. what else in the context? what else are they up to? well, let's listen to the statements of the president of iran.

he's not the person who really runs the country. the so-called revolutionary council does, but he's involved in its government, president ahmadinejad, here's what he said. thanks to people's wishes and god's will the trend for the existence of the zionist regime is downwards. and this is what god has promised. and what all nations want. just as the soviet union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the zionist regime soon be wiped out. this is the regime that's attempting to acquire a nuclear weapon. and finally we were all, i think, stunned by the reports last week that individuals who allegedly had ties to the iranian government were indicted in the american court system for allegedly plotting the assassination of the saudi arabian ambassador to the united states on u.s. soil.

now, madam speaker, i would hasten to point out as you well know, in our system these are allegations, not facts. and so we cannot say that these things are true, but i can scarcely think of a time in the history of our country where we have indicted foreign nationals or u.s. citizens for an alleged conspiracy to murder a foreign diplomat on our soil. perhaps these individuals will be found not guilty. perhaps they will be found guilty. but the fact that there was probable cause to make such an assertion is deeply shocking and disconcerting. this is the regime that is attempting to achieve a nuclear weapon. now, how close are they? here's a report from may 24 of 2011. the world's global nuclear inspection industry -- agency, the iaea, frustrated by iran's refusal to answer questions,

revealed for the first time on tuesday that it, meaning the u.n. agency that watches nuclear weapons, it possesses evidence that tehran has conducted work on a highly sophisticated nuclear triggering technology that experts said could be used for only one purpose -- setting off a nuclear weapon. this is the regime that says it is trying to acquire centrifuges and nuclear power plants to create nuclear power for its people. but the quote that i just read is from the international agency, not from u.s. intelligence, not from our allies, not from those who oppose the iranian regime, but from the neutral international agency which, frankly, has criticized the united states on occasion, from the neutral international agency talking about what the iranans are up to. now, it's classified information as to how close they are to

receiving this, and we all under an oath not to talk about that classified information, but the public record is replete with information that the iranans are aggressively pursuing pursuing such a weapon. here's an academic analysis that talks about how such a weapon could be used by a terrorist group that would be the beneficiary of an iranian handoff of fissile material. based upon this professor's analysis, this is written by the executive director for the project on managing the adam jeffrey lewis from the john f. kennedy school of government at harvard university. the article was called the economics of nuclear terrorism. here's what professor lewis had to say. a terrorist organization like al qaeda could plausibly build a nuclear weapon for less than $2 million. now, of course that's $2 million after you have received the fissile material, or bought it.

well, such an organization would now have a willing partner in tehran that would own and be able to produce such fissile material. we have an urgent economic crisis in our country, we need to fix it. we have a lot of other problems we need to fix, but this is happening. and we cannot let our attention to our economic crisis take our attention away from our duty to prevent this kind of catastrophe from happening, innocent people in the world. what do we do about it? what's the solution? how do we go forward in a way that stops the iranians from getting this fissile material. to the credit of this congress, both parties, and president obama, the united states imposed bilateral sanctions on the iranians about a year and a half ago. and to the credit of the united nations security council, the united nations security council imposed modest sanctions on the iranians about a year ago.

there is some evidence that these sanctions are beginning to work. the united states sanctions which were led by then ranking member ros-lehtinen now chairwoman and by then chairman berman, now ranking member, and frankly that relied upon the work of senator kirk in the senate, focused on a gasoline embargo. it's an odd fact but iran, which is a country which exports crude oil, imports about 40% of its gasoline. because its economy is so dysfunctional that it cannot refine its own products. before the u.s. sanctions were imposed, the price of gasoline -- a gallon of gasoline heavily subsidized in iran was 38 cents a gallon. today it's $1.51 a gallon. what does this mean? it means that an iranian citizen who used to have to work one hour to fill their gas tank once a week now has to work five

hours to fill their gas tank once a week. this is not a huge sacrifice, but it's making a dent in the economy of iran. it is our intention, obviously, not to in any way punish or jeopardize the well-being of the iranian people. they are our friends. and we want them to be our friends and allies for years to come, but the simple and i think compelling logic of these sanctions is we are compelling the iranian leadership to choose between pursuing their nuclear weapons ambitions but suffering economic consequences, or abandoning those nuclear weapons ambitions and having the opportunity to restore their economy to some basic degree of health. by the way, at a time when crude oil prices were rising, the iranian economy stagnated. they had a negative growth of 1% last year and they had stagnant growth the year before that, so

at a time when they should have been enjoying robust economic growth because of rising crude oil prices, they were stagnant because of the effectiveness of these sanctions. perhaps the best evidence of effectiveness was from president ahmadinejad himself who this week stood before their parliament defending a cabinet member of his accused of some wrongdoing and said one of the reasons why they had to engage in the wrongdoing was their economy was in bad shape because, quote, we can't do international banking transactions, anymore, close quote. there's some good news. what i'm suggesting here is that the house should move rapidly to embrace and support the legislation that the foreign relations committee marked up yesterday. and i think that legislation will enjoy broad republican earn democratic support -- and democratic support, as it did yesterday, i believe it was approved unanimously by the committee.

i would then urge our administration to work with the congress and sign such legislation and implement it. now, listen, i, madam speaker, i fully understand that sanctions alone may not be sufficient. and i'm not here today to argue for that proposition. what i am here to argue today for the proposition is that the sanctions we have imposed thus far have shown some signs of success. and i think this is the time to intensify those sanctions, not to weaken them. i think this is a time for us to intensify our unified national resolve on this question. and despite our very profound differences on matters of economics and social policy, which is what a democracy ought to have, that there should be no difference between us on question of standing in a unified fashion in favor of more intense sanctions against iran. the need is urgent and compelling. madam speaker, if someone had

stood in this chamber in the mid 1990's and said, if we don't focus our intelligence efforts on an obscure group of former mugea had a dean rebels in afghanistan called al qaeda, if we don't do that, the day may come when we'll have a domestic pearl harbor, when the world trade centers will collapse, when thousands of people will perish, when the pentagon, our own airspace, will be attacked by civilians in our country. i think one would have thought that the member was auditioning for a tom clancy film. it would sound very fantastic, very unlikely, and almost like science fiction or a spy thriller. i wish september 11, 2001, had been fiction. i wish we did not have to go to those funerals and comfort those families who suffer even today. i wish that were the fact. and there will be some who will

say the scenario we talked about earlier, about a nuclear i.e.d. exploding in time's square, the national mall, or nfl football game is too provocative or too sensational or too scary. i hope they are absolutely right. i hope it's total fiction. but i think we ought to know better. i think we ought to know better that there is a regime which has demonstrated its deceit, which has man fested its evil toward its own people and to our troops in the middle east. that has used language that is more than just purple hang language. it's language -- purple language. it's language that goes beyond the pale of annihilation and israel and all that would stand with israel and now standards accused or persons alleged to be tied to that regime now stand accused in our courts of participating in a conspiracy to assassinate a foreign diplomat on our soil.

these are people we should be concerned about. and as we look at the question of whether such an attack could happen, i think the answer is unequivocally, yes, it can. our responsibility is to -- equally, with equal unequivocation say no, it won't. no, it won't. we will use the resources at our disposal, our international appliances, our economic leverage, our diplomatic skill to try to move the iranians to the point where they would accept a reasonable deal which says if you want to have nuclear power plants in your country, that's your sovereign right. but you must buy your fuel from outside the country and you must abandon your ability to manufacture and synthesize fuel. that's a reasonable and fair settlement. we should use every tool at our disposal to encourage the iranian government to accept such a settle. as any wise president should do

as president obama has done, as president bush did before him, as president clinton did before him, as president bush did before him, as president reagan and carter did before them, any prudent american president must reserve the right to defend our sovereign interest with whatever tools are necessary should the need arise. i pray the need will never arise and i think if we act intelligently, force fully, but urgentsly i think that we can avoid that day and avoid a situation like i described earlier. so, madam speaker, thank you for this time this afternoon. i'd like again to thank the staff for its indulgence and commend the chairwoman of our committee and the ranking member . i look forward to supporting their legislation, broadening our unified bipartisan national effort to stand strong against the tyranny and evil of this regime and for the welfare of innocent people throughout the world and our country.

thank you very much. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields. under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the gentleman from texas, mr. gohmert, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader. mr. gohmert: thank you, madam speaker. it's a pleasure to be here on the floor to hear my friend from new jersey's comments. very well thought through and i feel sure we could find some commonality in our concerns and appreciate them. thank you. one of the things that under the debt ceiling act that was passed early august was a requirement for a vote on a balanced budget amendment. there is different versions of the balanced budget amendment.

one has most of the things we hold dear, not only requirement of balancing the budget but also a cap on spending as a percentage of gross domestic product, and also an increased supermajority in order to pass any tax bills, raising taxes. my concern has been that we had a wave election last november. we got over 80 new conservative freshmen, and we haven't cut spending like we should. and more and more compelled that we need a cap on spending. . all of our members support that but the question will be, what version of a balanced budget amendment will come to the floor for a vote and because i've

become increasingly convinced this year to the point where we are now, madam speaker, i would request that my name be removed as sponsor to h.j.res. 2. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. gohmert: thank you, madam speaker. i really do appreciate the comments of my friend from new jersey, mr. andrews. there's a lot going on in the middle east. and it's not looking very good for those who love freedom, the right to make their own choices. because you find in some of the documentation of those who have pushed, supported, -- supported rebellion, the so-called arab spring, their definition of freedom is the freedom to live under shari'a law and be completely governed by shari'a law. that's the freedom that their

arab spring brings. and it's been interesting, there's an article here from "the washington examiner" by gregory cane. the title says, "obama becomes silent cow on libby shari'a." the -- libya shari'a." the article from gregory cane, i'd just like to read this record, with each passing day we're learning more and more about the people president obama tossed us into bed with in libya. here's a headline from "the london daily mail," a british newspaper. quote, now the rebels impose shari'a law as islamic rules become basic source of libyan legislation. unquote. in the story below the headline, readers learn from the chairman of libya's national transition council that the country's new parliament will have an islamist tint that, quote, any existing

laws contradicting the teachings of islam would be nullified, unquote. and that men will be allowed to have as many as four wives. again, the question must be put to president obama, president of the united states. exactly how do shari'a law and polygamy reflect american values? remember, when -- and i'm inserting president into the mention of the president obama, remember when president obama justified american and nato air strikes in libya that support the rebel forces that topple the regime of muammar gaddafi, he claimed that preventing bloodshed was an, quote, american value, unquote. but there was bloodshed aplenty at least on the side of gaddafi

forces. gaddafi himself was a victim of the bloodshed. and the circumstances of his death that have come to light shed more light on what a sham president obama's claim of acting to preserve american values really is. in a separate "london daily mail" story about gaddafi's death, the paper printed the photo of an unidentified rebel who claimed he was the one who killed gaddafi. quote, we grabbed gaddafi, unquote, the young man said, quote, i hit him in the face, some fighters wanted to take him away and that's when i shot him twice, in the face and in the chest, unquote. later it was revealed that more was done to gaddafi than this young rebel merely shooting him in the face and chest. some reports say that before he died gaddafi was sodomized with either a knife, bayonet or some other sharp object.

so let's recap. number one, president obama commits american forces as part of nato and i'll add, when he did not have the sense to come before congress and make the case here, as many of us on both sides of the aisle have been advocating, no matter who the president is, republican, democrat, if you can't come to congress and make the case as to why american lives and american treasures should be put at risk, is it really something we ought to be doing as a country? now, resuming the article, again, president obama commits american forces as part of nato to supporting a rebel faction in libya whose goal is to overthrow gaddafi. president obama does this while having absolutely no clue about

what kind of people make up this rebel faction. number two, the rebel forces prevail, primarily through nato air strikes. it was nato air strikes that took out gaddafi convoy fleeing that allowed rebel forces to capture the deposed libyan leader. number three, gaddafi ends up in the hands of what can only be considered a mob. he's beaten, tortured, possibly sodomized and fatally shot in what has been oxymoronically described as mob justice. his body is then put on public display in a meat store. number four, secretary of state hillary clinton flies in to libya and announces with the smug arrogance we might expect from an official from president obama's administration, quote, we came, we saw, he, gaddafi, died. unquote. number five, leaders of libya's

national transition council announced that shari'a law will prevail in libya. number six, president obama is mum on number five. he, president obama, hasn't said one word about the blatantly false account of gaddafi's death that interim libyan prime minister initially gave reporters. he hasn't condemned the, quote, mob justice, unquote, that led to gaddafi's death. the beating, the torture, the alleged sodomizing. he hasn't mumbled so much as a syllable about gaddafi's body being put on display in a meat store. president obama hasn't said one word about shari'a being the law of the land in the new libya. the man who was unavoidable for comment when it came to justifying america's intervention in libya has now

pulled a complete act on this issue. president obama has made silent cal coolidge look like a motor mowlingt. that's an article -- mouth. that's an article in "the washington examiner." then interestingly from the "american thinker," article by andrew bossen to, liberated libya, al qaeda flag aloft benghazi's courthouse. the courthouse in benghazi is the iconic seat of the revolt which toppled gaddafi. libya's, quote, immoral equivalent, unquote, to egypt's tahrir square. during the tumultuous months of libya's brutal civil war, it was here that rebel forces established a provisional government, propagandist media center, crowing to foreign

journalists about their, quote, heroic, unquote, struggle for freedom. and here is a picture of the al qaeda flag. the article goes on, one can now see both the libyan rebel flag and the flag of al qaeda fluttering atop benghazi's courthouse. got a blow up of that right here. just so those who felt so compelled to assist members of al qaeda, we knew there were members of al qaeda. we didn't know how many were part of the libyan rebel forces, but we knew there were members of al qaeda. we knew that there were people who were rebeling against gaddafi that, as much as they

wanted to kill gaddafi, want to kill americans. and now we also know nato forces, as the president kept saying, oh, no, we're going to leave that to nato forces, the united states military makes up 65% of nato's military. it's american. so let's look and recap the good that we've done in supporting those members of al qaeda who took out gaddafi. with whom this administration had lawful dealings before they decided to support taking him out and hiding under nato's name , took action to see that he was thrown out and now killed,

brutalized. so here we are. the al qaeda flag flying over the courthouse in benghazi. that's the daylight photo. over here on this third we have the nighttime photo and once again there is the al qaeda flag waving proudly over that historic courthouse in benghazi. going back to the article from the american thinker, according to one benghazi resident, islamists driving brand new s.u.v.'s and waving the black flag -- the black al qaeda flag drive the city streets at night shouting, quote,s i lambia, no east, no west, unquote. a reference to previous worries that the country might -- or would be between gaddafi opponents in the east and the pro-gaddafi elements in the

west. a long quote from someone. earlier this week i went to benghazi courthouse and confirmed the rumors an al qaeda flag was clearly visible. its arabic script declaring that, quote, there is no god but allah, unquote, and a full moon underneath. when i tried to take pictures a guard wearing a green camouflage outfit rushed towards me and demanded to know what i was doing. my response was straightforward. i was taking a picture of the flag. he gave me an intimidating look and his, quote, whom speaks ill of this flag we will cut off his tongue. how about that for an american value? i recommend you don't publish these. will you bring trouble to

yourself, unquote. what glorious american values. our president assured us that without the support of congress, without even a debate in congress, he had to rush headlong into helping these people that turns out, as we were concerned might, al qaeda. we had to help al qaeda with whom we had declared war basically by the president of united states after 9/11 because they had declared war on us. and so this president, without coming and having a debate, decides he's going to go help these people before he knew who all exactly we were helping. because they reflect american values. going back to the article. the author says, he followed me inside the courthouse but luckily my driver was close by and interceded on my behalf. according to khalid, the guard had angrily threatened to harm

me. when i again engaged him in conversation he told me, quote, this flag is the true flag of islam, unquote. well, how about those american values? that our president used our treasure, put our military members at risk in order to effectuate. now we've got the al qaeda flag flying in libya. in benghazi. over the historic courthouse that was the headquarters during the assault on gaddafi. we found out on 9/11 there were people in the world who were at war with us and it turns out they have been at war with us at

least since iran. since those days when a naive but well-intentioned president named tarter -- carter had declared the ayatollah khomeini as a man of peace coming to iran . same president who gave away the panama canal that so many valiant americans lost their lives digging, creating, defending, was given away. and we had a price to pay for that at some point doug down the road for this country. but we're already paying the price and have been since 1979 for the administration at that time, while i was in the army at fort benning, watching those things happen, knowing it was a crime for me as a military member to criticize anybody in the chain of command, which was

president carter, we had to bite our tongues as we watched that administration welcome in the ayatollah khomeini. so many lives have been lost, so many people tortured, killed, we've got christians on the run all over the middle east, christians being killed around the middle east, the last christian church has now closed in afghanistan. that we sent american treasure and lives, lost so many american lives in order to rout the taliban and then we turn the country over to what the people there tell us is a very, very corrupt administration. having met with leaders of the northern alliance, with a few other members of congress, it's clear we have not done a good thing in forcing a centralized

government in a country that cannot sustain it without mass corruption and brutality. we also know from the recent comments of the -- of karzai himself, he's prepared to make peace and be an ally of people sworn to destroy us. afghanistan can be salvaged but it -- we have to be smart in the way we do that. at the same time, we know that more of the 9/11 hijackers were from saudi arabia than from any other country. it certainly appears that there are people in saudi arabia who have made massive amounts of

money because of our dependence on their oil, who have used that money to fund terrorism. that has been used against the united states. -- against the united states to kill our precious minnesota and women of our military. we need to become energy independent. we need to get rid of any department that has -- that has had as its avowed goal for 32 years to get off dependence on foreign energy and every year has done a poorer and poorer job of that. although they have made some nice contributions for people at so lind rah and other -- and solyndra and other bankrupt companies. it's time to get rid of the energy department, it's time to get serious about stopping the dependence on foreign energy. we know we've got enough

natural gas we can actually do that now. have at least 100 years of use of natural gas and i am fine taking a percentage of the royalties the government could get of natural gas produced, oil produced on -- produced on our own federal land and using it toward alternative energy, but i am not, as most of my friends are not, in favor of borrow manager money to throw at companies like solyndra that cannot make it on its own or like the solar company in nevada, the friends of leader harry reid. also getting massive money, 42, 44 cents of every dollar of which ehad to borrow to throw at their friends who have gone bankrupt. it's time we started using some common sense. you don't rush in to help in a rebellion until you know who you're helping. and this administration did not

do that. because to think that they knew who we were helping, is really unthinkable. that's my hope and prayer, this administration did not understand who it was helping that would one day fly al qaeda flags over a building where housed government in libya. and we have sat idly by and watched iran grow greater and stronger in strength in its move toward creating nuclear weapons. just as my friend from new jersey was talking about, iran getting closer and closer to having nuclear weapons, plural,

our strong ally in the middle east who is becoming surrounded by those who want to take it out, israel, is a threat for losing its very existence. an existence that was acknowledged and affirmed unanimously in the united nations before it was taken over by people who sympathized with those who fly the al qaeda flag. back in those days, it was a unanimous decision. how could a country, a jewish state like israel, not be created after the worst genocide, holocaust, in the history of man. they needed a cupry of their own. and what better place than in a

place where king david rules, 1,400 years before there was a man named mohamed, 1,400 years before the creation of mod erp tai islam. -- of modern day islam. i'm proud to say that jewel rosenberg is a friend of mine. i was visitting with him last night. he's got a prand new book out, can't wait to read it. he has an article in the "washington times," friday, october 21, needs to be entered in the record and i'll do so by reading it. the headline, the title, is "confronting the threat from iran." he write the brazen iranian

terrorist plot to assassinate the saudi ambassador, kill americans an blow up the saudi and israeli empasscies in washington was a wakeup call. iran has murdered americans in iraq, afghanistan and lebanon over the years. now it appears to have ordered terrorist attacks inside our nation's capital. should this prove true, iran has engaged in an act of war. now the question is, who will neutralize the threat from iran before the moola -- before the mullahs develop nuclear war heads. quote, the international community must stop iran before it's too late, unquote. israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu warned in his united nations speech last night. quote if iran is not stopped,

we will all face the specter of terrorism and the arab spring could become an iranian winter. the movement is become manager dangerous. iran has not abandoned its nuclear program, the opposite is true. it continues full steam ahead, unquote, warned major general eisenberg, home front command chief of the israeli defense forces in the september speech. he warned that the arab spring would turn into a quote radical islamic winter, unquote, and quote, this raises the likelihood of an all out, total war with a possibility of weapons of mass destruction being used, unquote. the obama administration is not taking decisive action to neutralize iran. president obama's policy of engagement with the mullahs has morphed into a policy of appeasement and it has failed. yet the white house has all but

take then use of force off the table. in september of 2009, the-defense secretary robert gates said, quote, the reality is there is no military option that does anything more than buy time, unquote. in april, 2010, "the new york times" reported that mr. gates said, quote, warned in a secret three-page memorandum that the united states does not have an effective long range policy for dealing with iran's steady progress toward nuclear capability, unquote. little has changed in the past 18 mt.s. what's more, the administration is pressuring israel not to launch a preemptive strike against iran despite the growing threat of a second holocaust. the american people, however, expect and deserve better. a bipartisan poll conducted in september by democrat--- democrat pat co-dell and republican john mclaughlin found that 72% of americans

think that the current administration's policies toward stopping iran's nuclear policies will fail. they think iran is the nation posing the greatest threat to us, ahead of china an north korea. remarkably, 63% of americans all approve of preemptive military action against iran if economic sanctions do not stop its nuclear program and they have not and it is very clear and i'm saying this parenthetically, it's not in the article, the sanctions have not slowed iran from pursuing nuclear. -- nuclear weapons. it appears clear to those who look very long and study the issue very long that iran is counting on developing nuclear weapons before the sanctions

totally cripple them because they know when they get nuclear weapons, they can then use them to extort the removal of the sanctions. they will not work in time, it's time to face up to that. going back to joe rosenberg's article, war, of course, is not the preferred solution. there are a range of options a serious american president could take to neutralize the iranian threat. but none of them is likely to work unless the president is willing to publicly put the military option on the table and order the pentagon to accelerate planning for massive air strikes and special operations. will any of the republican candidates for president step up? articulating pro-growth economic policies is vital to the 2012 campaign. to be sure. but the g.o.p. candidates must not drink the cool aide that the economy is -- the kool-aid that the economy is all that

matters to the american people. to the contrary, anyone asking for the republican nomination must articulate a clear, compelling, and detailed strategy for neutralizing the threat posed by the apocalyptic, genocidal death cult in tehran. at the next debate, each of the republican candidates for president should be pressed to directly apps the following questions. one, as president of the united states, what specific actions would you take to stop iran from obtaining and deploying nuclear weapons and using terrorism to advance islamic revolution? number two, if you had intelligence that iran was on the verge of billing operational nuclear weapons, would your administration support an israeli preemptive military strike on iran's nuclear facilities? number three, would you as president seriously consider ordering a preemptive strike by u.s. military forces to neutralize the iranian nuclear

threat. former massachusetts governor mitt romney recently delivered a foreign policy address in south carolina in which he raised the iranian threat. quote, will iran be a fully activated nuclear weapon state, threatening its neighbors, dominating the world supply? he asked, in the hands of the itoe las, a nuclear iran is nothing less than an exist ten rble threat to israel. iran's suicidal fanatics could blackmail the world, unquote. mr. romney noted that he would, quote, begin discussions with israel to increase the level of our military assistance and coordination, unquote, and would, quote, reiterate that iran obtain agnew clear weapon is unacceptable. unquote. however, he did not specifically disdiscuss how he would stop iran from getting the bomb and sponsoring terrorist attacks. businessman herman kain has

soared into the to -- cain has soared into the top tyre of candidates with a bold tax plan but spoken little of foreign policy. he identified iran as one of america's most serious national security threats and has been clear about his strong support for israel. drawing on his experience as a civilian contractor for the u.s. navy working on ballistic missile prompt he rightfully called -- has called for enhanced military -- i'm sorry, missile defenses to blunt an iranian nuclear threat. . qui make it a appropriate to updwrade our surface to air defense capabilities of all of our warships all around the world. quote, make that a priority and then say to president ahmadinejad, make my day, unquote. his instincts are right but missile defenses are

insufficient to neutralize the iranian threat. few of the g.o.p. candidates better understand the iranian threat and the dangerous theology of the current iranian leadership which is preparing for the coming of the shi'a messiah known as the 12th imam that former senator rick santorum of pennsylvania. thus far, however, he's not made iran a major element of his campaign. former house speaker newt gingrich, representative michele bachmann, texas governor rick perry have barely mentioned the issue, though certainly they understand the dangers. only representative ron paul among the republican contenders doesn't grasp the seriousness of the twin iranian threats of terrorism and nuclear weapons. quote, one can understand why the mullahs might want to become nuclear capable, if only to defend sthesms and be treated more respectfully, mr. paul has written. congressman opposes economic sanctions on iran, he opposes preemptive strikes on iran.

indeed mr. paul has indicated he does not have a problem with iran acquiring nuclear weapons because he doesn't think the mullahs in tehran would actually use such weapons against their enemies. what's more, he has stated he will not come to israel's defense if iran fired nuclear weapons at the jewish state. this article by joe rosenberg is an excellent article. and he used to be taken seriously. knowing herman cain personally, governor rick perry personally, michele bachmann personally, rick santorum personally, newt gingrich personaly, i know they're all concerned about it. but because of the way the debates have been structured this is not been an issue that's been pushed. and i know all of those individuals well enough to know their hearts and know they do not want iran to have nuclear weapons and will do what's

necessary to prevent it. trouble is, none of those individuals will become president or even have the chance to become president for 18 months. it's time that the american people convinced the american president who helped create the situation where al qaeda flags, our sworn enemies who want to destroy it, we helped them create the situation where they could fly their flags over the libyan courthouse. that's more than a libyan courthouse, it was the -- it was the brief capitol, the headquarters for the people that this president chose to help. a dangerous time.

now, i filed house resolution 271 that's got a slough of co-sponsors, they're all republican, but i would hope that some of my friends on the other side of the aisle would join in with us on this. and, madam speaker, i would hope that people would encourage their member of congress to sign on if they support what's here. basically most of this resolution, it's not terribly can long, just six pages, most of that are whereas is stating facts. this resolution express support for the state of israel's right to defend israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the israeli people and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the islamic republic of iran, including the use of military force, if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an

immediate threat to the state of israel. whereas archeological evidence exists confirming israel's existence as a nation over 3,000 years ago in the area in which it currently exists, despite assertions of its opponents. whereas the dawn of modern zionism, the liberation of the jewish people some 150 years ago, the jewish people determined to return to their homeland and the land of israel from the lands of their dispersion. whereas in 1922 the league of nations mandated that the jewish people were the legal sovereigns over the land of israel and that legal mandate has never been superseded. whereas in the aftermath of the nazi-led holocaust from 1933 to 1945 in which the germans and their collaborators murdered six million jewish people in a premeditated act of genocide, the international community recognized that the jewish state, built by jewish pioneers,

must gain its independence from great britain. whereas the united states was the first nation to recognize israel's independence in 1948 and the state of israel has since proven herself to be a faithful ally of the united states and the middle east. whereas the united states and israel have a special friendship based on shared values and together share the common goal of peace and security in the middle east. whereas on october 20, 2009, president obama rightfully noted that the united states-israel relationship is a, quote, bonds, that is much more than a strategic alliance, unquote. whereas the national security of the united states, israel and allies in the middle east face a clear and present danger from the govern of the islamic republic of iran seeking nuclear weapons in the ballistic missile capability to deliver them. whereas israel would face an exist stention threat from nuclear weapons-armed iran. whereas president obama has been firm and clear in declaring united states opposition to a

nuclear-armed iran stating november 7 of 2008, quote, let me state, repeat what i stated during the course of the campaign, iran's development a nuclear weapon, i believe, is unacceptable, unquofmente -- unquote. whereas on october 26, 2005, as a conference in tehran called world without zionism, iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad stated, quote, god willing with the force of god behind it we shall soon experience a world without the united states and zionism, unquote. whereas "the new york times" reported that during his october 26, 2005, speech president ahmadinejad called for, quote, this occupying regime, israel, to be wiped off the map, unquote. whereas on april 14, 2006, iranian president ahmadinejad said, quote, like it or not

these zionist regime israel is heading toward annihilation, unquote. whereas on june 2, 2008, iranian president ahmadinejad said, quote, i must announce that the zionist regime israel with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal, is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene, unquote. whereas on june 2, 2008, iranian president ahmadinejad said, quote, today the time for the fall of the satanic power of the united states has come and the countdown to annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started, unquote. whereas on may 20, 2009, iran successfully tested a surface to surface long range missile with an range of 1,2 -- with an president range of 1,200 miles,

whereas iran has been caught building three secret nuclear facilities since 2002, whereas iran continues its support of international terrorism, has ordered its proxy, hezbollah, to carry out catastrophic acts of international terrorism such as the bombing of the jewish amia center in bunes arizona, argentina, in 1994, and could give a nuclear weapon to a terrorist organization in the future. whereas iran has refused to provide the international atomic energy agency with full transparency and access to its nuclear program. whereas united nations security council resolution 1803 states that according to the international atomic energy agency, quote, iran has not established full and sustained suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities and heavy-related water project,

1737 of 2006, 1747 of 2007, nor resumed its cooperation with the iaea under the additional protocol, nor taken the other steps required by the iaea board of governors, nor complied with the provisions of security council resolution 1696, 1737 and 1747. whereas in july of 2009's g-8 summit in italy, iran was given a september, 2009, deadline to start negotiations over its nuclear program and iran offered a five-page document lamenting the, quote, ungodly ways of thinking prevailing in global relations, and including various subjects but left out any mention of iran's own nuclear program which was the true issue in question. whereas the united states has fully committed -- is fully committed to finding a peaceful

resolution to iranian nuclear threat and has made balanced efforts seeking such a resolution and to determine if such a resolution is even possible, whereas the united states does not want or seek war with iran, but it will continue to keep all options open to prevent iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and whereas israeli prime minister netanyahu said in january, 2011, that a change of course in iran will not be possible, quote, without a credible military option that is put before them by the international community led by the united states, unquote. now therefore be it resolved that the house of representatives, number one, condemns the government of the islamic republic of iran for its threats of annihilating the united states and the state of israel. or its continued support of international terrorism and for its incitement of genocide of the israeli people. supports using -- number two, supports using all means

persuading the government of iran to stop building and acquiring nuclear weapons. number three, reaffirms the united states bonds with israel and pledges to continue work with the government of israel and the people of israel to ensure that their sovereign nation continues to receive critical economic and military assistance including missile defense capabilities, needed to address the threat of iran and, number four, expresses support for israel's right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by iran, defend israeli sovereignty and protect the lives and safety of the israeli people including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution could be found within a reasonable time. that's house resolution 271 and i certainly hope that more members of congress will join us in supporting that position because time is running out.

it is also my hope and prayer that the rumors that have gone around about what this administration has told israel behind closed doors do not have support in fact. that's my hope and prayer. because if this administration were to be telling israel behind closed doors that if they move to protect themselves against a nuclear attack by iran without the united states' permission, which would not be given, then israel, since they do not have all of our stealth capability, do not have the most sophisticated bombs we have, will likely lose many planes and will be in need of replacement planes and parts. i hope and pray that the rumor

that they're telling them we will not support them with replacement planes, replacement parts if they defend themselves is not true. but this president, though he's been so vocal about why we needed to go support libya, why it was in our american values' interest, has not talked a lot about what he's telling israel behind the scenes. israel is in grave danger. we have been a friend because we believe in the same value of human life, the same value of freedom, liberty. we owe it to them. our friends, our allies. if we're not going to have the nerve to take action against a country that has sworn to be at war with us and to destroy us

and take us out at all costs, then we should at least not stand in the way of a friend who wants to do so. i have a few more things i want to cover here. there's an article from "national review online" by andrew mccarthy, another brilliant man and proud to say dear friend, the headline, did obama point -- appointee access confidential database in effort to smear perry as islamphobe? terrorism researcher patrick pool reports that an appointee of president obama's homeland security advisory council is in hot water with the texas department of public safety. issues whether he used his privileged access to state a law enforcement -- or access a state law enforcement database to

acquire intelligence reports and then tried to shop them to the media urging they showed rampant islamaphobia under governor rick perry. pool says no story was pub accomplished -- published because according to one press source there was, quote, nothing resembling islamaphobia, unquote, in the leaked reports. the source said, i think he was hoping we would bite and not give it too much of a look in light of other media outfits jumping on the islamaphobia bandwagon. it was the subject of my column last week, there are plenty of islamists and leftists climbing aboard. he was also on president obama's d-8 department working group on countering violent extremism. that's the brain trust that came up with the new obama

terrorism strategy that involves having law enforcement pare back their intelligence gathering and take their marching orders from community partners. i call the new strategy fact fobea. -- factphobia. he had an appearance at a conference featuring itoe la khomeini's chriscism for -- and an aggressive email exchange where dreier, at the "dallas morning news" countered his praise, in which he called dreier a klansman without a hood and warned him, treat people as inferiors and you can

expect someone to put a banana in your exhaust pipe or something, unquote. who better could president opaw ma choose to formulate the strategy. once you read the strategy, you'll agree he made the perfect choice. we have another article from national review online, headline, again from andrew mccarthy, napolitano on al biari. i know nothing, i know nothing. he said that secretary napolitano professes not to know anything about the matter or about how a guy who appears at a conference honoring itoe la khomeini who praises muslim brotherhood theorist and condemns the justice department's successful pross cushion of the muslim brotherhood's financing network and the -- in the holy land

foundation case somehow winds up on the department of homeland security advisory council that helped advise the obama administration's counterterrorism policy. actually it turns out as secretary napolitano testified that actually she, as secretary of homeland security, gave this gentleman the secret security clearance which ultimately allowed him to access sensitive documents, at least two or three of which he downloaded and tried to market to major media sources. i think it is important to note that in the pleading that khalid sheikh muhammad filed, he's a smart man, he may be crazy but he's a very smart man, did his own interpretation in english, so some of the

articles are not quite appropriate but it's -- he sets out a legal document and justifies all the actions he took in working on 9/11's murder of 3,000 americans, he takes verses from the koran and uses them to justify his actions. at one point in his pleading, which we have access to through our website, this was declassified by the judge in the 9/11 case involving five planners of 9/11, it was ordered released on the ninth day of march, 2009. and there are also transcripts of his colloquy with the judge in which he confessed to many other acts of terrorism quite

voluntarily, it was obvious but in his pleading, on behalf of himself and the four other defendants, who were ready to plead guilty, announced they were pleading guilty, before this administration and the attorney general to be, eric holder, announced they were going to give these guys a show trial in new york, so they withdrew their guilty pleas so they could get a show trial in new york. now that's not going to happen and now it looks like four years after these people agreed to plead guilty, which will be december of next year, they will still not have been tried because of the actions of this administration. khalid chic mohamed says we don't -- khalid sheikh mohamed says we don't have your weapon bus we fight you with the act

of god. if our act of fighting you cause fear and terror, then many thanks to god because it is him who has thrown fear into your hearts which resulted, he says in, he meant from, your infidelity, paganism and your statement that god had a son and your trinity beliefs. then he goes on and he says, god stated in his book, verse 151, soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers for that they join companies with al la for which he has -- with allah for which he has sent no authority, their place will be the fire and evil is the heart at of this wrongdoer. he also says, we ask to be near god, we fight you, destroy you, terrorize you, you will be greatly defeated in afghanistan and iraq and america will fall politically, militarily, economically. your fall will be just the fall -- just as the fall of the

towers on the blessed 9/11 day. but this gentleman references that one of the reasons it's ok to kill americans is because many americans believe there is a holy trinity, a father, son, and holy ghost. they believe that god had a son that christians call the messiah. my time is running out, so let me just direct, madam speaker, to the treaty of paris, 1783. such a historic document. the most powerful country in the world at that time, 1783, was great britain. they'd had the most powerful navy, the most powerful military, and yet a ragtag bunch of people who believed so

firmly in the ideas of freedom and being able to practice most of them, in fact a third of the signers of the declaration weren't just crips, they, as martin luther king jr., were ordained christian ministers. and they believed in freedom. and that god was giving us a chance to govern ourselves. so after this ragtag bunch defeated the strongest cupry in the world, great britain, and they sat town in 1783, in paris, and we had there on our behalf john adams, benjamin franklin and john jay, three of our brightest minds, they had to set about figuring out what can we put on paper to have great britain sign that will be so important that they would

not want to risk violating an oath? what kind of oath could we put on this treaty that great britain would be scared to violate? this teety will want them to recognize the united states of america, what can we do to make it serious enough that they would not turn around the next month and say, we had no right to be independent, despite what they signed. there is an original copy of the treaty of paris in the state department. tourists can be -- tours can be taken, i've taken tours all over washington, d.c., until my pastor and his wife were in town a few years back, i had not seep that.

i was taken aback, i've got a copy of, this is a duplicate, of the treaty of paris. two pages. well, it's the first and last page, here. apparently, it says there's 10 articles so we've got the first and last pages here. so how would you start a treaty in such a way that it would scare the strongest country in the world from violating their oath? they figured it out and put it on the document, the biggest letters anywhere in the treaty are those in the first two lines, and they began, in the name of the most holy and undivided trinity. starting the treaty of paris

with "in the name of the most holy and undivided trinity," they knew would be strong enough to scare great britain into not violating the oath that they signed on that document. then, you tie it in with khalid sheikh mohamed's pleading, the very fact that they would sign such a document recognizing the holy trinity, according to khalid sheikh mohamed and his interpretation of the koran, that's justification for killing and terrorizing people that believe in the holy, undivided trinity. there's a war going on and in libya, apparently, we fought for people who want to destroy us. the al qaeda flag now flies proudly over this federal

building in benghazi, libya. congratulations to this administration for making that happen. with that, madam speaker, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the chair lays before the house an enrolled bill. the clerk: h.r. 818, an act to direct the secretary of the interior to allow for prepayment of repayment contracts between the united states and the uenta water conservancy district. the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the chair recognizes the gentleman from illinois, mr. jackson, for 30 minutes. mr. jackson: i thank you, madam speaker. tonight i want to speak from the subject jobs, jobs, jobs, will restore faith in

government. invest, build, an grow. one does not have to be a christian to understand or believe what the bible says about three critical things that are important to living our lives, faith, hope, and love. today i want to connect the idea of faith to faith in government. hebrews 11:1 says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. what are some of those things that are hoped for and not seen. -- seen? when we drive a car, we have faith that when our light turns green and we go, the person driving the car in the other direction will obey the light when it turns red and stop. when we stop for a red light, we have faith that the car behind us will also stop and not ram us in the rear. we have faith that pedestrians will obey the yield sign and not run out in front of our moving car.

we have faith that if a driver turns on the right-hand turn signal, they will not suddenly turn left in front of us. we have faith that other drivers will not recklessly engage -- endanger our lives by not driving drunk. so whether driving to work or to play, it is faith that allows us to drive. if another person runs a stoplight, doesn't break behind us, doesn't obey the yield stein, suddenly turns in front of us or drives drunk, they have broken the faith. in other words, when you're driving, the only thing that stands between you and death is faith. if you fly on airplanes you have faith. you have faith in a pilot that you've never met, that they're well trained, that they know how to take off and land. can handle a storm in the air, can handle an emergency, is physically fit, psychologically stable and is not drunk or on

drugs. you have faith in the flight attendants, that they've been trained to handle unruly passengers or an emergency situation. you have faith that the maintenance people have properly serviced the plane before it takes off. you have faith that the t.s.a. employees have done their job and have not made an error that will put your life or the life of passengers in danger. you have a reasonable faith in the regulations of the f.a.a., that the fuel, the engines, the body of the plane and the runways are safe. a critical error anywhere along this line will damage and destroy your faith in air travel. train engineers have faith that drivers and pedestrians will not drive or walk around railroad crossing gates and endanger themselves or the train. bus passengers have faith that the driver is not intoxicated,

on drugs or experiencing emotional problems that could endanger the public or their riders. look, madam speaker, at how faith operates during medical emergencies. when we're at our weakest, if suddenly we become ill and need to be rushed to the hospital, we have faith that a well-trained ambulance and emergency medical technician will arrive quickly and provide us with care. we have faith that drivers on the road will pull over when they hear the sirens to allow our ambulance driver to get us quickly and safely to the hospital. we have faith in the doctors, the nurses and the medical staff that they will provide us with the highest quality of care possible regardless of our perceived ability to pay or whether we have medical insurance. without the faith that our judicial system has laws that are rationally and morally sound and faith that our judges will conduct themselves in a respectful and fair way towards prosecutors and dividends, we cannot have a justice -- defend

ant, we cannot have a justice system that endures. i spent a day with a family during their family's harvest season. as we were sitting down from lunch, mr. johnson led us in a short prayer to thank god for the successful season's harvest. through his prayer, i quickly learned how many factors a farmer has to rely on for a good harvest year. when i pray over my family's dinner, it's always, god is good, god is great, thank you for the food that i'm about to receive, for the newerishment in my body, for christ's sake, amen. and then my family sits down and eats. but what i heard from mr. johnson's prayer, there must have been a dozen unseen factors on his mind that small family farmers depend on for their way of life. he expressed gratitude for the sun, gratitude for the rain, gratitude for the soil and gratitude for the harvest. he prayed for protection against things that can destroy his crop

and support for their equipment. his prayer was a mighty different prayer than the prayer that i normally pray over my food, but the johnsons and other small family farmers also believe in the federal government. if something bad does happen in a season, the federal government is there to provide crop insurance and disaster insurance to get them through tough times. they rely on the federal government to provide research that enhances production and yield and genetic engineering of the crop and seed breeding. they have faith in their government that their government will be there in their time of need. it doesn't matter whether you're a christian, a muslim, a jew, a buddhist, a behindue,ing a notic or atheist. it is impossible to live without faith. our auto industry almost collapsed so we can only have so much faith in general motors and

chrysler and ford. our financial system did partially collapse. so we can only have so much faith in our banks, lenders and investors. question only have limited faith in the private sector because it has $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion sitting on the sideline, money that it refuses to invest in jobs and the american people. and if congress passed and the states ratified a balanced budget amendment it would mean that the federal government could never meet the american people's needs or correct gaffs among our people that need to be corrected and we would lose faith in our government. we need to have faith in the federal government. which is supposed to be a government of, by and for the people. but we can only have such faith if it meets our people's current needs. without such faith and the deliverance by our federal government, we cannot survive as

a nation. what is the greatest need of the american people today? that a government of, for and by the people should respond to? jobs. the problem with this dysfunctional congress it sst not keeping the fate with the american people by providing them with their greatest need, jobs. every member of congress takes the following oath, i do solemnly swear or affirm that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic. when we take that oath but leave 25 million people either unemployed or underemployed, internally we are creating potential domestic enemies. i think i've demonstrated that all of us have faith. men cannot live by bread alone. and we couldn't live if we didn't have faith. but to have faith in a government means that the

government that is actually of, by and for the people must be responsive to the people's needs. so when congress or members of congress say through words or deel deeds or actions or inaction that the federal government can't help, it destroys the american people's faith in their government. the greatest material need of the american people today is jobs, jobs, jobs. the greatest need of the american economy today is aggregate demand. the most effective and efficient way to meet the need for jobs and aggregate demand in the spirit of f.d.r. is for the federal government to directly hire workers, to do the work that needs to be done. the result of the federal government investing, building and growing the economy and creating full employment will be the restoration of faith in government. for the last 30 years we've been bombarded with ronald reagan's

conservative negative government rhetoric. quote, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem. that's an interesting phrase. how can a government of, by and for the people be the problem? logically it says either we don't have a government of, by and for the people or the people are the problem. so the first thing we must do to counter this negative reagan propaganda is to have the federal government do positive things to restore the american people's faith in government and in themselves. among the many things that the addition of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the constitution did during reconstruction after the american civil war was to restore the people's faith in the federal government's capacity to solve a problem. in taking over herbert hoover's massive limited federal action

and inaction, the first thing that franklin delano roosevelt's new deal did by the closing of banks to stop the run on currency and gold. social security for the ages, regulation of investment by the s.e.c., agricultural assistance to needy farmers, the wagoner act that benefited working men and women, the civilian conservation corps, the c.c.c. and the works progress administration, the w.p.a., that put people back to work was to restore faith in the federal government. linden johnson's great society, whose war on poverty worked and reduced poverty, medicare for the elderly, medicaid for the poor, elementary and secondary education for students, the 1964 public ac dations act, the 1965

voting rights act for african-americans, for most americans restored faith in the federal government. today in order to restore the american people's faith in government, the federal government must jumpstart the private economy by priming the pump. and creating jobs. what do we need to do? madam speaker, we should move the money. jobs, not cuts, tax the rich, stop the wars, bring home our troops. what does move the money mean? it means we need to create a second economic stimulus, not because the first one failed, it worked. it stopped from us going into the abyss. but because the whole was -- hole was deeper than we originally thought we need a second stimulus. my conservative colleagues in both parties are like the man whose house caught on fire and tried to put it out with his garden hose and it didn't work. you know what he concluded? he concluded that water does not put out fires.

but that was the wrong conclusion. he should have concluded that he needed more water and a bigger hose. president obama's original stimulus has given us 20 months of private jobs growth. but we need more to get us back on track. we need the president's american jobs act. we need jan schakowsky's emergency jobs to restore the american dream act. and we need the plan that i'm putting together, the invest, build, grow and full employment act. in march of 2009 congress passed the first economic stimulus which included $757 billion intended to save or create 2 million to 2 1/2 million jobs over two years. it succeeded. but it wasn't enough. in deets, -- december, 2010, congress passed an $858 billion bill extending bush era tax cuts, which is expected to create three million jobs over the next two years.

it may, but it's not enough. that's 1.-- $1. trillion over four years that we've invested to create five million to 5 1/2 million jobs and we'll probably succeed. but it's not enough. we need a plan that fits the size of the problem. we need something more and something more efficient and effective to put 15 million americans back to work. tax cuts are the worst and most inefficient way to create jobs. by congressional standards, $900 billion is not a lot of money. especially when it's used to jumpstart the $15 trillion gross domestic product that is the american economy. if we can afford $712 billion to fight a war abroad in iraq, we can afford $900 billion to put americans back to work right here at home. we can move the money from those who can afford to give more to

those who need it and not hurt anyone. that's how we keep the faith. we need to do what f.d.r. did during the great depression, have the federal government directly hire workers. in times of economic crisis, government has a crucial important role to play. people matter and results count. and we don't need to go too far back in our history to find examples, said michael hilsick, an author and reporter who explored this issue in his latest book "the new deal: a modern history." for those of my conservative colleagues in both parties who say the government can't and doesn't create jobs, he writes, the w.p.a. produced 1,000 miles of new and rebuilt airport runways, 651,000 miles of highway. 124,000 bridges, 8,000 parks,

18,000 playgrounds and athletic fields, some 84,000 miles of drainage pipes, 69,000 highway lighting standards, 125,000 public building permits and buildings built, rebuilt or expanded. among the latter, 41,300 schools, the transformative power of this effort is inestimateble. f.d.r. using the federal government directly created jobs because it took jobs to do all of that. f.d.r. invested in and built up an entire region with the tennessee valley authority. the public works administration built the grand coolly dam in the state of washington and put 8,000 men to work starting in 1933, using materials from 46 states. the w.t. -- p.w.a. helped

replace school buildings destroyed by an earthquake, march 10, 1933. in florida the p.w.a. built the overseas highway, 127 miles of causeways and bridges connecting the mainland and key west and transformed the island into one of america's premier tourist attractions. in new york city, the p.w.a. built the bridge that connected three of the cities five areas and has funded the building of laguardia airport. hoover dam once known as boulder dam is located in the black canyon of colorado river. on the border between arizona and nevada. it was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the great depression and in july, 1934, it employed over 5,000 workers building the dam. and in my home city of chicago, the lakeshore drive bridge was started in 1929 but the great

depression prevented its completion until the w.p.a. delivered funds in the mid 190s. when completed in 1937, the bridge was 356 feet long, 100 feet wide, making it the world's longest and widest bridge, moveble. or draw bridge. a type of bridge that was developed and perfected in chicago and used for many of its river crossings. so we already have an economic model, the c.c.c., the w.p.a., the p.w.a., and f.d.r.'s new deal. if we just had, madam speaker, the political will, the first phase of an overall six-year, 2.2 trillion proposal, we can take $600 billion, jumpstart this economy by hiring 15 million workers at an average annual salary of $40,000. some will make $20,000, some $60,000 depending on the job, to

invest in america this project will rebuild our infrastructure, put americans back to work and create aggregate demand, the greatest need of this economy. and the aggregate demand will bring the $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion of private moneying sitting on the sidelines back into the game. the investment of private money will create even more jobs and all of these workers will be paying taxes, the number of americans dependent the federal government for unemployment compensation and food stamps will be reduced, which will help lower the deficit and debt faster than any current proposal. the american society of civil engineers have proposed a similar five-year $2.2 trillion plan to build and rebuild america's infrastructure for the future. in 2011, according to the national association of state budget officers, states have a combined debt of almost $200

billion. the federal government should bail them out and give democratic and republican governors and state legislatures a clean economic slate. our cities and counties are in debt. set aside another $100 billion to bail out most, if not all of them and give democratic and republican county presidents and commissioners, mayors and city councils a clean economic slate. $700 million in chicago. $48 million in the district of columbia, for example. so for a mere $900 billion, which is slightly more than each of the last two stimulus packages, we can bail out all states, most, if not all of the counties and cities, and put 15 million americans back to work. the only thing that we lack in this congress is the political will. so i again say we need to restore people's faiths, move the money, jobs, not cuts, tax

the rich, stop the wars and bring our troops home. robert writes in his latest book, after shock, argues that the central heart of america's ongoing economic predicament is to, i quote, so americans save more and borrow less from the rest of the world, it's to rebalance america's economy so its benefits will be shared more widely within america. in other words, america's jobs and aggregate demand problems cannot be solved through the maldistribution of income and wealth which is at the heart of our economic problems. what am i talking about? according to the most recent nonpartisan c.b.o. report, and again i quote directly, the top 1% of earners more than doubled their share of the nation's income over the last three decade. in addition, government policy has become less redistributed

during the less 1970's to reduce the amount of income, the equalizing effect of income was smaller in 2007 than in 1979. as the composition of federal revenues shifted away from progressive income taxes to less progressive payroll taxes. also federal benefit payments -- as a growing share of benefits like social security goes to the older americans and regardless of their income. from 1979 to 2007, the average inflation adjusted after-tax income grew by 275%. for the 1% of the population with the highest income. for others in the top 20% of the population, average real estate tax household income grew by 65%. by contrast for the poorest fifth of the population,

average real after-tax household income rose only 18%. and for the 3/5 of the people in the middle of the income scale the gross in such household income was just under -- the growth in such household income was just under 40%. the warfare that republicans have been complaining about is exactly the opposite of what they say it is. it hasn't been class warfare by the poor and the middle class against the rich. the middle class and the poor are not jealous of the rich. and they are especially not jealous of those who are part of the greedy rich. the middle class and the poor have not been attacking the real job creators. yes, there are opposed to giving more tax breaks as republicans want to do to the so-called job creators who already have $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion sitting idle on the sideline and have not used

that money to create jobs. but make no mistake about it. there is class warfare going on. the nonpartisan c.b.o. just documented that it's been class warfare by the rich against the middle class and the poor. that's what's really happening. we live, madam speaker, in a representative democracy. democracy is a government of, by and for the people. a government of, by and for the people will be responsive and meets the material needs of its people and its people's economy. we really don't have an economic problem, at least one we cannot solve. instead, we have a political problem with my conservative colleagues with both parties in this congress. we have a problem the american people not demanding that their federal government meet their need for jobs and the resulting economic aggregate demand.

the people occupy wall street, occupy la salle street, occupy oakland and the other 99% movements that are springing up and becoming active around the country and around the world are beginning to demand that democratic governments everywhere address the existing economic inequality and be responsible for the jobs at meaningful wages. in 2010 the tea party movement became politically active and moved congress in a more conservative direction. if the occupy movements are to bring about real change, they must become politically active in 2012 and beyond. they need to move congress in a more progressive direction, a direction that fits their needs. just like the ultraconservative tea party movement, pressured moderate republicans to stiffen their backs on conservative things republicans say they believe in, so, too, do the occupy movements must pressure democrats to stiffen their

backs on the liberal things that democrats say they believe in. madam speaker, we already know that my conservative colleagues in both parties believe in states' rights and deregulation which will allow the private economy and market forces to wreak havoc on the economy and most americans like it than the first decade of the 21st century. madam speaker, we already know conservatives in both parties believe in trickled down economics that never trickle down but always flood up. madam speaker, we already know the consequences to the economy, workers and society of laysa fair policies, failed corpses, sdast us home foreclosure crises, high unemployment and corrupt politics. madam speaker, we already know what conservatives on both sides of the aisle bring us, but will progressive democrats

advocate for bringing the american people anything better? so i want to challenge myself and my progressive democratic colleagues to do more. we say we care about the poor. well, let's give the poor some booed straps so they can lift themselves up. we say we care about the working class, well, let's advocate for a solution that fits the size of the problem and create enough jobs to employ the american people who are unemployed and put all americans to work, not by 2017, not by 2018, but by the end of the month. try missing a bill for four, five or six years. only washington could conclude that unemployed or underemployed person has until 2018 to worry about bringing down unemployment numbers. we say we want more homeownership. well, let's propose meaningful solutions to address the housing foreclosure crisis. we say we're for the middle class. well, let's advocate for policies that will restore the

middle class' previous standard of living. we say we support students. well, let's help them reduce their college debts. we say we support small businesses. let's advocate for policies that will help small businesses grow and enable them to hire more workers. we need to stand with family farmers like the johnsons in my new congressional district and against agra business when they threaten to move the johnsons out of business. so i say, madam speaker, in conclusion, let's put america back to work. enough of the games. invest in america. rebuild america. grow the american economy. end the housing foreclosure crisis. and restore the american dream. enable college students to go back to school. retrain our workers. save our children. save our family farms. rebuild our bridges, our ports, our sewers and our water systems. build high-speed rail, public

transportation, ports, levees and new airports. invest in alternative energy sources -- wind, solar, biomass and geothermal. we can do better. register and vote for politicians who will better represent the real economic interests of the american people. we can act. we can change things. we can restore faith in government and the private sector for the american people. we must invest. build and grow to accomplish full employment. we must do better, madam speaker. we must put the american people to work and most important we must honor our highest obligation as members of this institution. and that is to restore the american people's faith in the capacity of their government to bring about change positively in their lives. i thank the speaker and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the chair would be happy to entertain a motion at this

time. mr. jackson: madam speaker, i now make a motion that the house do now adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on the motion to adjourn. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is adopted. and accordingly, the house stands adjourned until monday,

there is no reason for democrats to delay action on these bills and long-term. the house has been working all

year on our plan for american job creators. it is time for the senate to do their work. all of the stalled bills have bipartisan support. some are backed by the obama administration. i urge the present to call incident democrats to bring these common-sense bills to a vote. as long as these bills -- i think it is unacceptable for the white house to be anything less than 100 percent side engaged in the legislative process. >> the job numbers are out today. i think that we see that the unemployment figures in this country are still way too high. unemployment at 9% is unacceptable. that is why we are here again trying to tell harry reid, please join us and bring these measures to the floor for a vote. if they do not pass, fine.

what are the democrats, afraid of? the bills we have on our jobs agenda are real concerns and they address the real issues that small-business people are facing. i was recently down in my district in richmond and i held an event. the kinds of issues that were raised there are issues that these bills confront. just yesterday, we passed four bills in the house having to do with access to financing for small businesses. that is what small businesses want. they want more access to capital. just allow the use of votes -- so that people can see that washington is working for their interest and -- to create jobs. >> as an individual that took a

risk at age 20 to start his first company, i built it in my garage. i took my investment, i took a risk on my credit card. when i think today weather i could -- whether i could even do that, i could not. if you watch what has transpired on the floor. the backside is growing because the senate is not acting. we added four more bills that could help small business actually get capital to create new jobs. bipartisan bills. yesterday, on the floor, the two that we passed had more than 400 votes in support of that. i do not know what harry reid need to allow it to come to the floor. the american people cannot wait. america is frustrating -- is frustrated with what is

happening in the senate. >> in the obama of economy, we have just seen our 28 month where unemployment has been at 9% or higher. in the obama of economy, one in seven continue on food stamps. recently, we had a steady -- a study. america has dropped from third in 2007 to 13 and ease of starting a business. in the obama at the economy, the federal reserve just announced a downgrade for their economic outlook for both growth and for unemployment. we cannot wait. this is not about the president's personality. this is not about politics.

this is about his policies. his policies do not work. house republicans have a plan for america's job creators. unfortunately, all of these bills continued to stack up in the democratic controlled senate. a lot of our bills have to do with easing the regulatory burden on small business. it is not just me saying it. every single day, we hear from our constituents. just last week i heard from don in texas talking about the president's health-care plan. he said, we're giving up this part of our business to do federal regulations. this is just one small example of how excessive government regulation is stifling business. only one person here will lose his job. in a small company, that is a

large layoffs. the federal government is regulating small business out of business. mr. president, senator reid, we cannot wait. work with us together on our plan for america's job creators. >> we continue to hear about the 14 million americans who are out of work. just to put that in perspective, if you started the line in my state of washington state, it would extend all the way to maine. there are 9 million americans or working part-time who would like to have a full-time job or have completely dropped out of the workplace. while the president is out campaigning, the house has been dizzy legislating. we have been working on are forgotten 15 as all other bills. one of our top priorities has been to reduce the regulatory

burdens on our businesses. america has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. in addition to that, the average small-business owner will spend double that amount in complying with regulations as they will on their taxes. this jobs report today underscores that we can do better, we must do better. we must do it together. >> a couple of questions. >> i have a conference to run about 10 minutes. >> should you be nervous about the super committee? >> i just left a meeting would senator murray and we continue to negotiate. we have something to announce, at you will hear something soon.

>> i have not changed my position from day one. i've approach to this process with high hopes and tempered expectations. >> you talk about the need for finding common ground. the debate on the debt ceiling led to a decline on consumer confidence. given the house's busy schedule, do you think there is a risk that problems in congress will cause additional problems for consumer confidence? >> we have to continue to work with our democratic colleagues and tried to find common ground. when you look at our plan, and you look at the 20 buildings that we have passed -- bills that we have passed. almost all of those passed with bipartisan support. many of them backed by the obama administration. it is time to continue to work

together, find common ground. >> you are saying, why don't you pass the bills that we have passed in the senate? they are saying, wait a minute, why can we get things done there? to the public, this looks just like a shoving match between the two sides. >> the house has acted in a bipartisan fashion. 20 times. all we are asking for is some cooperation with the other side of the capital. >> [inaudible] >> a look at the bipartisan vote yesterday in the house, over 400 votes for these two bills that will help small businesses have access to capital. our founders gave us this giant

body in the middle of our government called the congress. 535 people. it is hard for everybody to get along. on the house side, we have worked together, democrats and republicans, to try to do the right thing every day. >> republican leaders from earlier today before they began work on the programs and policy bill. they did vote on the number of amendments. they will likely finish that bill when they returned from their district work period of the week of november 14. live coverage on c-span. much more road to the white house coverage this weekend.

tonight, the republican presidential candidate gathering for the ronald reagan dinner. rick perry, newt gingrich, michele bachmann, rick santorum. that will be live tonight at 8:00 on c-span2. herman cain and newt gingrich will square off tomorrow night at 8:00. >> this is the formal part of filling out the declaration for candidacy. that has been completed. >> altria needs is a signature. i can do that. -- all it needs is a signature. i can do that. >> this is a slogan.

we do this every four years. >> we have a great secretary of state. you have done a great job and you will do so for the next 40 or 50 years, bill. it is the responsibility and an honor that new hampshire richly deserves. i am happy to be part of that process. i hope that this time it will take. i will be able to become the nominee of our party. >> the new hampshire primary is set for january 10. you can follow campaign 2012, with the c-span video library. the c-span video library. it is washington, your way. >> would you continue your statement? >> i am prepared to wait for my

answer until hell freezes over. >> he was the u.n. ambassador for president kennedy, a former governor of illinois. adlai stevenson is featured this week on "the contenders." it is live tonight at 8:00. for a preview, good or special website for the series. >> president obama spoke today at the closing of the g-20 summit in france about the u.s. economy. they developed a plan that includes a pledge to boost the internet -- the imf to assist struggling economies like greece and italy. he also discussed the newly released unemployment figures and promoted his jobs bill. this is 25 minutes. >> good afternoon, everybody.

i want to begin by thanking my friend president sarkozy. i want to thank the people of cannes. over the past two years, we have run together to rescue the global economy, to avert another depression, and to put this on the path to recovery. we came with no illusions. the recovery has been fragile. since our last meeting, we have experienced a number of new shops. disruptions in oil supplies, the tragic tsunami in japan, the financial crisis in europe. as a result, advanced economies are growing and creating jobs, but not nearly fast enough. emerging economies have started to slow. global demand is weakening.

all around the world, hundreds of millions of people are unemployed or underemployed. put simply, the world faces challenges that put our economic recovery at risk. the central question coming intocannes was this. can the world's largest economy confront this challenge squarely? after two days a very substantive discussions, we have come together and made important progress to put our economic recoveries on a firmer footing. with respect to europe, we came to cannes -- events in greece over the past 24 hours have underscored the importance of implementing the plan. having heard from our european

partners over the past two days, i am confident that europe has the capacity to meet this challenge. i know it is not easy, but what is absolutely critical, and what the world looks for in moment such as this, it is action. that is how we confronted our financial crisis in the united states, having our banks submit to stress tests. none of that was easy and it was not always popular. we did what was necessary to address the crisis, but ourselves on a stronger footing, and to the address to the global economy. that is the challenge that europe now faces. make no mistake, there is more hard work ahead and more difficult choices to make. our european partners have laid a foundation on which to build. it has all the elements standard for success. a credible firewall to prevent

the crisis from spreading, strengthening european banks, and confronting the structural issues that are at the heart of the current crisis. we have moved the ball forward. europe remains on track to implement a sustainable path for greece. italy has agreed to a monitoring program with the imf. tools of been identified that will better enable the world to support european action. european finance ministers will carry this work forward next week. all of us have an enormous interest in europe's success and all of us will be affected if europe is not growing. that certainly includes the united states. if europe is not growing, it is harder for us to do what we need to do for the american people, creating jobs, lifting up the middle class, and putting our fiscal house in order. the united states will continue

to do our part to support our european partners. we agree to stay focused on jobs and growth with an action plan in which each nation does its part. and the united states, we recognize as the world's largest economy, the most important thing we can do is to get our own economy growing faster. back home, we are fighting for the american jobs act, which will put people back to work. we also made progress on our rebalancing agenda. countries with large surpluses and export oriented countries agreed to take additional steps to support growth and boost demand in their own countries. in addition, we welcomed china's determination to increase the flexibility of the rmb. it will be a critical step in

boosting growth. finally, we made progress across a range of challenges to our shared prosperity. following are reforms in the united states, the g20 adopted high level financial reforms to grant a crisis in the future. we agree to keep phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies. even as our country's work to save lives of from the terrible famine in the horn of africa, we agreed on the need to mobilize new resources to support the development that lips nations out of poverty. i want to thank president sarkozy -- at less nations out of poverty. i want to thank my fellow leaders for their partnership. with that, let me take a few questions.

i will start with ap. >> new jobless numbers today back in the states, you are on a pace to face the voters of the highest unemployment rate of any post-war president. does that make you vulnerable? given that you have just witnessed the difficulties of averting economic problems beyond your control, which state the think the economy will be and when you face reelection? >> i have to tell you, the least of my concerns at the moment is the politics of the year from now. i am worried about putting people back to work right now because those folks are hurting. the u.s. economy is

underperforming. everything that we're doing here at the g20 mirrors our efforts back home. held would boost growth? -- how do we boost growth? how do we shrink our deficits? how do we make sure that our workers are getting the skills and training they need to compete in a global economy? not only does the american jobs act to answer some of the needs for jobs now, but it will also lay the foundation for future growth through investments in infrastructure, for example. my hope is that the folks back home, including those in the united states senate and house of representatives, when a look at today's jobs numbers, they

will think twice before they vote no again on the only proposal out there right now that economists say would make a dent in unemployment right now. there is no excuse for inaction. that is true globally, and true that, as well. i will keep on pushing it regardless of what the politics are. >> thank you, mr. president. there was some sort of dispute between you and european leaders about how to fund this bill out. you emphasize the fact that tarp was done with u.s. funds. there was not any international involvement. are you confident that the european leaders are going to fund this bailout fund themselves, not looking for handouts from other countries?

how hard was a to convince these folks to do stimulus measures? your own stimulus measure is not going anywhere on capitol hill. >> we did not have a long conversation about stimulus measures. we had a discussion on what steps could be taken to consider new -- to continue to spur economic growth. the rebalancing agenda is one way in which we can make a big difference in spurring on global demand. it require some adjustments, some changes in behavior on the part of countries. it does not necessarily involved fiscal stimulus. there was not a dispute with the europeans. they agree with us that to it is important for -- to send a clear signal that the european project

is alive and well and they are committed to the euro. they are committed to resolving this crisis. if you talk to european leaders, they are the first ones to say that if that begins, with european leaders are writing not a common course of action. -- arriving at a common course of action. we have seen all the elements for dealing with the price is put in place, and we think those are the right elements. the first is having a solution to the specific problem of grace. although the actions of -- of greece. although the referendum got a lot of people nervous, the truth is that the general approach, which involved a voluntary reduction on the part of those

who hold great that -- greek continuing of structural change, that is the right recipe. i was encouraged by the fact that despite all the turmoil, even the opposition leader in greece indicated that it is important to move forward on the proposal. the second component is a recapitalization of europe's banks. they have identified that need, and they are resources that need. -- resources that need. that is going to be critical to further instill confidence in the markets. the third part of it is creating this fire wall, sending a signal to the markets that europe is going to stand behind the euro. all of the details, the structure, how it operates, are

still being worked out. what we were able to do was to give them some ideas, some options. the international community is trying to stand ready to assist and make sure that the overall global economy is cushioned by the gyrations in the market to and the shocks that arise as europe is working this issue through. the european leaders understand that it ultimately, what the markets are looking for is a strong signal from europe that they are standing behind the euro. >> [inaudible] >> what we were saying --

creating additional tools for the imf. that is an important component of providing market's overall confidence in global growth and stability. that is a supplement to the work that is being done in europe. based on my conversations with president sarkozy, chancellor angela merkel, and all the other european leaders, i believe they have that strong commitment to the euro and the european project. >> thank you, mr. president. i am curious what you would say it to the americans that, that have watched their -- back home that of watched their 401k's

recover. >> if you are talking about the movement of the u.s. stock market, the stock market was down when i first took office about 3000 points lower than it is now. nothing has happened in the last two weeks that would suggest 401k's ehow people's have been affected the way you described. am i confident that this work? i think there is more work to do. i think there will be ups and downs along the way. i am confident that the key players in europe understand how much of a stake they have in

making sure this crisis is resolved. the euro zone remains intact. i think they're going to do what is necessary in order to make that happen. how difficulte this is. i have sympathy for my european counterparts. we saw how difficult it was for us to save the financial system back in the united states. it did not do wonders for anybody's political standing because people's general attitude is if the financial sector is behaving recklessly or not making the decisions, other folks should not have to suffer for it. you layer on top of that the fact that you are negotiating with multiple parliaments, european parliament, a european

commission. there are a lot of institutions here in europe. [laughter] i am not sure weather it was president sarkozy court angela merkel lewis said, a big joke with me that i got a crash course in european politics over the next -- the last several days. there're a lot of meetings here in europe as well. trend to coordinate all of those different interests -- trying to coordinate all those different interests is laborious, time consuming. but i think they're going to get there. what is also positive, if there is a silver lining in this whole process, it is the fact that european leaders recognize that there are some structural reforms, institutional modifications, they need to make if europe and the euro zone

is to be effective as they wanted to be. i think what this has exposed is that if you have a single currency and you have not worked out all the institutional coordination and relationships between countries, that creates additional vulnerabilities. there is a commitment on the part of european leaders. i think they examined those issues. those are long term. and the short term, they have to make sure they're sickening -- sending a signal to the markets that they stand behind the euro. if that message is sent, i think this crisis is averted. some of this crisis is psychological. italy is a big country with an enormous industrial base and has

had substantial debt for quite some time. the market is feeling skittish right now. that is why prime minister berlusconi is invitation to the imf to certify that the reform plan that could place is one that they will follow its example of the study confidence- building measures that need to take place in order for us to get back on track. >> thank you, mr. president. the world leaders have stressed growth, the importance of growth. it brought back at home has been anemic. 88,000 jobs added. the republicans in congress have made it clear they're going to

block your jobs bill because they believed the tax hikes in it for small businesses. at what point do you declare still made to reach common ground? do you predict stalemate -- still made to reach common ground? do you feel like you have been an effective leader? >> forever republicans indicate an interest in doing things -- wherever republicans indicate an interest in doing things that will grow the economy, i am right there with them. they have said passing trade bills was job-creating. those got done. with significant part in partisan support. they suggested we needed to reform our patent laws. that was something that was part of my long term program for economic growth. we've got not done. all those things are nice and

they are important, but if we want to grow the economy right now, we have to think bigger. we have to do something bolder. we put forward the american jobs act, which contains ideas that are supported by democrats and republicans. the rebuilding our infrastructure, putting teachers back in the classroom, providing tax breaks to small businesses. you say that the reason they have not voted for them is because they did not want to tax all business. actually, if that is their rationale, it does not fly. the bill that they voted down yesterday, a component of the jobs bill, essentially said, we can create hundreds of thousands of jobs rebuilding our infrastructure and the entire program will be paid for by a

tax on people making $1 million a year or more. in the united states, that is about 300,000 people. there are not a lot of small businesses across the country they're making that kind of money. less than 3% of small businesses make more than $250,000 a year. what they have said, we prefer to protect the 300,000 people rather than put hundreds of thousands of people back to work and benefit 300 million americans who are hurting because of low growth. we're going to keep on pushing. there are steps that we can take absent congressional action. the refinancing proposal that we put forward in las vegas is an example of that.

helping students with stallone's. we will keep on rolling out -- helping students with a student loans. we will keep on rolling out -- if we're going to do something big to jump-start the economy, congress is going to need to act. in terms of my track record on the economy, here is just a simple way of thinking about it. when i came into office, the u.s. economy had contracted by 9%. the largest contraction since the great depression. a low over a year later, the economy was growing by 4%. it has been growing ever since. is that the enough? absolutely not. we have to do more. as soon as i get to some signal

from the congress that they're willing to take their responsibilities seriously, i think we can do more. that is going to require them to break out of the rigid ideological positions they have been taking. the same is true when it comes to deficit reduction. we can solve all our problems, we can grow our economy, put people back to work, reduce our deficit. you get a surprising consensus from economist about how do. from the left and right. it is just a matter of setting politics aside and remembering that the election is one year away. there is no reason why we cannot solve these problems. thank you, everybody.

>> president obama from earlier today at the conclusion of the g20 summit meeting in france. prior to his comments, president nicolas sarkozy spoke to reporters. >> ladies in downtown and, good afternoon. -- ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. after today's of discussion, and an atmosphere that was characterized by the need for the international community to be united, we worked both on short-term matters to reduce the scope of the crisis and long term matters to allow the world economy to get back on the road to growth. i would like to share with you in a few words of the three messages of the summit. the first concern is europe.

it has done everything to find credible solutions to the crisis. it is essential for europe to arrive united. we've also had the unanimous support of our partners and it seems to me that we has made progress. the first point is a firm attitude on europe and greece. these conditions are now falling into place and we are seeing a consensus emerged increase -- emerged in greece. the atmosphere in greece has nothing to do with what we saw

the beginning. i would like to welcome the efforts made by italy, u.s. taken the necessary measures -- who has taken the necessary measures to restore confidence. it's a leap is a country that is absolutely essential -- italy is a country that is absolutely essential to the euro zone. i would like to welcome their decision to call upon the european commission and the imf to certified the results they had obtained on a quarterly basis with results that will be published. finally, we made a commitment to strengthen the means of the disposal of the imf, if necessary. we have created the conditions necessary to meet that goal. the imf must play its role as a

stalwart against systemic risk. we have not decided on all sorts of different specific measures, but the orientation is clear. strengthening the means of disposal for the imf. we decided to use all the margins maneuver that we have to support growth. the situation is much more complex than was in 2009. there is not a single answer to this problem. washington and london want to have growth stimulation. toronto wants measures for reduction. in cannes, we have a

differentiation of situations from one country to another. those countries will use automatic stabilizers and will be ready to take new measures for growth. we have come out of the status quo. it gave rise to an opposition between countries on this subject. countries that have substantial external services have committed to stimulating domestic demand and accelerating the flexibility of their exchange rates so as to reduce the accumulation of exchange reserves and to -- the

big economies and have made those commitments. it is an excellent bit of news. the action plan for growth takes full account of the social dimension of globalization. it is the first time the country's indicate there will to set forth a social security platform. it is a commandment -- is a commitment to a level of protection that is favorable to growth. i think this is the first time that an international summit state so clearly this ", stating that social protection is favorable to growth. one last point, strong advances made under the authority of the french share on financial regulations.

we have decided to publish the financial stability -- the financial stability council will publish a list of 29 international banks of systemic importance who will be submitted applications of transparency. the second element will be the publication by the global forum of 11 countries, who we feel to be tax havens. barbados, panama, trinidad, europe why, -- uruguay. we do not want to have any more tax havens in the world. this is a very clear message. we do not want any more tax havens. the countries which go on being tax havens, with hiding as bank

information, it will be excluded from the international community. we have made a lot of progress. we must make more progress. switzerland is not qualified for phase 2 as long as they have not filled in certain gaps that have been identified. systematic publication of each of our summit of the list of countries of not done what they need to do to take themselves off the list of countries that is inadmissible. we have decided no longer tolerate this. in london, three years ago, i had to threaten to leave their room if a list of non cooperative jurisdictions -- we also decided on the reform to

make it into a world finance organization. the possibility of agreements with other organizations, the broadening of management, has to be able to implement decisions. in the international monetary system. this is something we have been working on for a long time. it gave rise to all kinds of skeptical commentary. everybody considers it is the project for the years to come. we set forth a framework for the management of capital flows, recourse capital controls. it this is a very important. now consider to be an acceptable stabilization measure. there was an error that basically making a parallel between freedom of trade and

capital controls can be necessary. also the review which could cause us to use new currencies. the on is a currency given the commitments i have noted with china's part to convert to gradually of their currency. things have developed a very much indeed. the imf, we have a short-term liquidity instruments that this up systematic shocks. this is the first time in agriculture that agriculture has been on a g-20 agenda. it is an issue we did not talk about much before. increased production is necessary to feed the world to

talk population. transparency is necessary. we have considered the regulation of derivative financial markets. there is an agreement in place. to give all the power necessary that the position limits in order to avoid a single market player can manipulate prices through disproportionate purchases or sales. we do not consider that we can come away without this type of result. the forbidding of export restrictions on food programs. innovative financing and infrastructure. innovative france -- innovative financing is in the final communique patient explicitly made up a financial transaction

tax. there is a willingness in certain countries to take out innovative finances. there is now also a certain number of countries who have joined france's fight when france began this fight, let me remind you france was entirely alone. today besides france, the european commission, germany, spain, argentina, the african union, ethiopia, south africa. the secretary general of the united nations, and brazil who told us how interested they were in this way of proceeding. they are all in favor of the principal of a tax on financial transactions. the g-20 recognizes the initiatives made by certain member countries to tax the financial sector for different

reasons including a tax on financial transactions to support development. you cannot imagine the combat that such a tax represents. let's be very clear about this. france considers that if we wanted not to miss our rendezvous with development, we have to be innovative. given the very difficult situation in which all countries find themselves. we have said that in the bill gates report, there is a certain amount of financing -- second element to reconsider edit is absolutely indispensable for the people of the world to know that the financial players who have led the world through the terrible situation that we are all aware of be obliged to contribute financially to repair the harm the health cost. that is the goal on the tax of

financial transactions. the project of the european commission, which is the only concrete project on the table at the present, shows the possibility technically speaking of such a tax on financial transactions. it will be discussed at the table of ministers at the beginning of next year. france will fight for that tax to become a reality. france considers waiting for the rest of the world to adopt such tax measures is not a sufficient argument to refuse to implement it today. clearly we are going to do everything we can to base ourselves on public opinion in each of our country's to resort -- to arrive at a result. i would add that i was happy to

see how open and available barack obama was on the principle of the contribution of the financial sector to the resolution of the crisis. he has not gone as far to accept the tax itself, but he is opening -- he is open to envisioning a financial contribution be made by actors of the financial markets to help us out of the crisis. let me remind you we were actually stock at the outset. now the tax on financial transactions is an element that is an accepted part of our debate. i would hope it would become a concrete element actually implemented beginning in 2012. there is quite a lot yet to be done, particularly concerning the earmarking of the money raised by such a tax. it is interesting to discuss how we would use the money raised. montreal reconsider the principle of the tax has made so much progress that we need to discuss how we will spend the

money we might raise and such a way. france considers an important chair to be defined after the total of this should be earmarked for development. finally, we had a debate on world governments, an excellent report prepared by david cameron. ladies and gentlemen, i am sure i went over the length. i am open to all of your questions. >> currently, how many countries of the g-20 have committed to come and help the countries in the year rose on financially to help them exit from the crisis? another question -- is it true you are thinking about -- have you moved on in terms of the

issue of a secretariat for the g-20? do you think that texaco, -- mexico will achieve that? this is a general agreement we have reached. all countries developing and the emerging countries of the agreement. there is a second agreement which is to reflect on how we can work together -- how the imf can work together with the european fund to extend the capacity of the european fund. what the ministers are going to be working on is the fdr's have been identified.

this will be the option adopted in february. in february we should have a bath and a general agreement on the part of everybody -- the u.s. and developing countries. in terms of the g-20, we want to institutionalize -- the current presidency. france will be part of that next year. the g-20 is not very enthusiastic about the idea of creating a general secretary at because the g-20 needs to remain a body fora for informal dialogue, free dialogue. we would like to have strong implication from the presidency.

i think basically that summarizes the spirit of the debates. there was an excellent point and david cameron's report. the only one that was not agreed on. i am from chinese television. in a speech in 2008 in greece, what would you say about the destiny of greece if there is a change in the greek government? the second question is, do you convey a message about the credibility of the euro and europe? have you also tried to convey messages of confidence to the potential investors from the emerging countries like china, for example, which has decided

to put some of its currency reserves in europe. in terms of greece. while i have said everything that needed to be set, and i talked about a complete change in the political atmosphere in greece. what was basically shocking was not the principle behind the referendum calling behind the citizens, something shocking that this is something vital for europe. what was shocking is that none of your partners of greece had been warned of this. secondly, this can't be a referendum on just one plant. if you talk about the 27th of october plan, you have to do a referendum of other plants as well. the other question is whether it greeks should belong to the euro. i think this message was expressed. it is a message of the french ship toward the greek people. it is a message that we wanted

to address to the majority in the opposition in greece. it is up to the greece people to choose their own leaders and policies that need to be implemented. we have set the guidelines. it is not something i regret to. when you invest in a currency, you want to that currency to value to increase, not to decrease. if you compare the euro's to the other countries in the world, is it going up or down? is going up. those people who have their money in your roads have a good deal. that proves confidence in the euro. we will fight to defend europe and the euro -- angela merkel talked about the spirit is not about speculation. nobody else will have a final word on this.

we have no intention whatsoever to expect that this be dismantled. if this does happen it will be because the people decide so. and the message is very clear, germany and france -- we are going to stick to that objective. >> after this the g-20 summit, will you be having a meeting to set and the authority plan? it is one of the not written conclusions that france also needs to make rapid savings. are we going to reduce spending? if so, which spending? are we going to increase revenue? he had just given a lengthy speech. i can't really answer that. you know why there is a

ministerial meeting on monday, that is because we did not have one last week. we did not have a meeting last monday because we were preparing for the g-20 summit. i took a decision with the full agreement of the prime minister. now i decided to post, last week's meeting to this monday. that is all in terms of what to call an austerity plan, perhaps this is something you would like to see. we will make sure that the budget for france is completely consistent with the announcements that were pronounced by the prime minister when they came to growth for our country. when you talk about growth of 1.75, you should aim higher.

if you want to be serious about this, you have to make savings. you have to make the necessary savings so that you were spending to try to increase growth. this is something we have to decide on. what does count, however, that france follows the path is a decided state. 0 deficit into thousand 60. this is a subject we have said. is the basis of everything. up until now, we have respected and kept this object -- these commitments. we will take all measures necessary to achieve that. there was a summit in brussels, here we are in the g-20 summit. we have to take things step-by- step as we think.

>> it is quite sure for you and angela merkel, you have tried to change governments in italy and greece. how is this fair? what she started this process, will be the outcome of it? >> what i like about your question is that it is a very obvious question traded is -- if it is obvious, what are you asking it? you are expecting an answer because you have already expressed your conviction which you have a right to do. yes or quite sure that you are wrong. very wrong. we did not want to change the government either in greece or italy. that is not the role we play. that is not my idea of democracy either. it is quite clear that in the

europe and perhaps you come from an island, you can't understand the subtleties of the european construction. i am sorry to say that there are some rules. there are some rules to be respected. if we don't abide by the rules, we will have to leave europe treaty is as simple as that. as for greek and france, what ever government is in power or whatever government they choose, we will work with the government. since i have been a president, -- something for the uk. i have worked with mr. brown and cameron in very good conditions.

this is reality. we have to democratically respect him who is aware of the uncertainty of the market in terms of the application of this plan. he has asked to the commission and the imf to have it monitory system put in place. why should we create or try to change government and one country or another? we work in europe. we work with people. we cannot have this kind of reconciliation if we were to go against all the roles that have been set. we have to work with our citizens and said, we are going to lend money to this or that country. this country has to abide by the same rules that we impose on our own citizens. i really did not think we need to be talking about this.

we needed to bring europe closer to the people. this is a real it does that mean we are moving europe further away from the people. >> can you give us a name of the french banks that are on the list of risky banks? he said there were 29 in total. >> the other one --you have not got the fourth name then? >> thank you to the person in the first row for that

contribution -- for helping me out a. >> were you shocked to hear him announced in terms of respecting the new regulations that they are going to fire hundreds of people? >> well, what i was most shocked by in terms of the financial community was the compensation that they pay, the bonuses, distribution of dividends to shareholders rather than strengthening their own equity. for me, i think this practice is extremely irresponsible -- shocking. we have produced a legal arsenal against that. i would not like to see the increasing measures -- i am talking about equity.

i would not like that to have a bad impact on credit to companies and to individuals. when it comes to restructuring, i want to judge people before i actually see detail on what is going on. there may be redundancy plans. i would have to look at this in more detail. >> i did not really understand what is going to happen if --

and italy. the eff, will that be strengthened if there is another crisis? >> well, there are some institutions within europe. i will give you the names. we have the european central bank and other institutions who are ready to intervene if there is a need. the question i was asked was whether we were going to strengthen the resources. yes, we are. the plan on the 27th of october is indeed a very current one. italy is not standing on its own. this is part of european solidarity at all. >> three years ago, he talked about reforming the system. what conclusions do you draw from that ambition three years

down the line? we don't live in the same world anymore. >> we no longer are living in the same world. there are 11 tax havens. there were several of those when we were in london but we did not call them tax havens. they now have greater powers. we have bank equities that have been the strength and. there is a big difference between what we call normal banks and a systemic banks who have had more stringent rules imposed upon them. i don't remember in the course years things movingr along so quickly if there is

still a lot to be done. things have progressed exponentially. we can now have a g-20 talk about transactions and put this in the -- people would not have believed it this last year. what they call the robin hood tax was something that they said we would never talk about this at a leaders' summit. so moderate -- moderating compensation, bonuses, bonuses paid over a couple of years. it is completely different world from the one we had three years ago.

we have to recognize that we have indeed moved forward and make great headway on this. this has become a normal subject conversation between the finance ministers. this is a subject that has never been brought up before even in europe. that's monaco, other countries. it was a taboo subject that we have now signed a tax that takes counters off the blacklist. would you have a imagine that be possible in three years? last question. >> we are rather disappointed. we think -- to you share that view?

the strike against iran, was that on the agenda? to talk about this with president obama? is it something that worries you? >> i understand that they might be disappointed. we have not really talk about poverty in the world, famine, the need for development. this is something in which his absolutely vital. i understand why they are disappointed. basically, we have moved forward. they also told me this. he think there will be one trade union member in the world -- the g-20 would actually need to get it. it would get around the table. countries like china and india and talk about minimum social

protection flaws. nobody imagined that we would advance to that extent. you said that you are a little bit disappointed that is good, monday up -- nonetheless, because ngo is to want things to progress. to defend the cause is enthusiastically. everybody has seen the objections of the french presidency. have not set week -- we cannot say there have been no progress is being made. when we talk about the up check actions -- or talk about the objectives under the french presidency, people said it was too ambitious. we would never achieve anything. talk about this. who believe in this anyway? who thought it would be possible? nobody. the ngo are very enthusiasti

andc people .' access to show how much progress we have made. there are a number of countries that are looking at this issue seriously. germany for example in the european commission. that is progress. perhaps some of it is too upbeat. i am sure you won't be as upbeat as i entered that is not the role you are supposed to play. as far as the strike, i am not sure what you mean by that. behavior and their desire to acquire nuclear arms goes against all international rules. france condemns that with great

not respect ofs international rules. perhaps talking about a preventive strike, that is a little bit excess of. things did not go that way. we have to go to dialog first grade of dialogue does not achieve anything, we have to impose sanctions. if that does not work, we have to impose other sanctions. the international community cannot solve everything by the use of weapons. whether we are talking about the ivory coast, libya, we have solved these problems working under the agency of the united nations. we did not have to wait for disaster to occur. his are very serious issues. these are things we can't just raise these summits of leaders and say, what about organizing a strike against such and such

country. if israel was threatened, then france would not stand by and do nothing. we consider the existence of israel after what happened during the second world war is a major political issue for the 21st century. we are not going to change our stance. talking about the preventive strike, the sanctions -- there is along the way to go between the two. last question. >> i am not asking you to be optimistic. that is not your role. i just want you to look at the difficulties of these problems that we have to deal with. the tests -- the debts of these crises and the initiatives we

are taking to show that unlike what is being said, governments can indeed act. we are not just victims of these situations. this will be my conclusion. if there is an idea you need to take it with you, it is the idea that we can act. he should never give up. the people have suffered from the crisis, and we need to provide them with answers. those responses are not just about demagogy and i talked about this and reducing the deficit. the referendum in greece. any here, we want to action with results to accept this crisis. then, it is up to you to decide whether that is enough. thank you.

i would like to thank the mayor who has received us and hosted us quite magnificent leap. --magnificently. we have had some wonderful social opportunities, nevertheless. this is a wonderful event. i would like to thank you. i know that you want to have slept an awful lot between different meetings. due to the complex city of different issues. thank you. [applause] >> with the iowa caucus < two months away, we are back in the state tonight for the ronald reagan dinner.

five republican candidates all will speak. our live coverage getting under way tonight on c-span to. then it is on to houston texas 4 herman cain and newt gingrich will face off in what is being called a lincoln douglas style debate on social issues and the economy. that is being hosted by the two- party -- the tea party. >> i am prepared to wait for my answer until freezes over. if that is or decision. >> he was the ambassador for president kennedy during the crisis. he twice ran as the democratic nominee for president and lost. adlai stevenson is featured this week on "the contenders." live tonight at 8:00 eastern.

for a preview including more on his speeches, go to our special website c- span.org/thecontenders. >> now i discussion on changes in the traditional american household. the director of the census bureau is our guest this morning on washington journal. this is 35 minutes. robert groves is our guest. we will be looking at the changes in household demographics. dr. groves, i tell people that this lot was something you talk to c-span about. numbers and form the policy debate in the country. as an example of that, i wanted to assure our audience the op-ed in the new york times.

similar measures published in the past suggest safety net programs have played -- this is a great example of how your numbers are used. what is happening here with poverty? guest: it is a fascinating story of both academics and a those worried about policy affecting people to get it right over several decades. there have been observations

that the real lives of people depend on a variety of sources of income and a variety of sources of expenses. to really characterize poverty in our word that reflects the reality, we need it to reflect all the sources of income at all the sources of cost as best possible. for several decades, there have been national academies of sciences efforts to improve the process. we had developed with the help of interagency group from the office of management and budget a new measure, a supplementary policy measure that we all begin to watch. along with the traditional measures. that is an effort to get better and better as time goes on. >> overall, would add the additional measures, how do things stand in the poverty level? >>i will tell you what the new york times is reporting.

the policies have shown less poverty among children but more among older americans. lost among blacks but more among asians. less among cities more about cities and suburbs. we have a statistic in this about the poverty rate being affected by the number of people in a household. why don't we start there and you can tell us how these two portraits lincoln understanding in america. guest: if you go to that chart, it is a little complicated chart. let me talk you thru it. first of all, we are zeroing in on people who are 25 to 34 years old. this is a chart about them. it is reflecting a phenomenon we are seeing the increasing over the last few years. that is this group of people are returning to their parental

homes. they're staying in their parental homes a little longer. this chart on the ferry left side says that 15% of the entire age group would fall under the official poverty rate. if you zero in on those who are living with their parents, that is a lower rate. he might say there is a benefit of staying with mom and dad that. if you ask the question, what of those the same people were living by themselves, what would their poverty rate be? that is the last bar. it seems up to 45%. this does not answer the question of why they are doing it. it illustrates that to their income would be -- their household income would be terrifically different if they live by themselves first as living with their parents. one suspects that is related to

these decisions. >> which is, we hear so much about young people returning home to live with their parents much longer than they have in the past. we will dig into this. for our discussion with you this morning, we really want to bring you into the conversation to tell your stories. tell us a sense 2008 in particular since the downturn, has your household composition changed? have you brought aging parents into the house? have you added renters into your house? have you been other decisions about the composition of your household as the result of the economy? we will supplement that with the national portrait shot by the numbers about what is happening to the american household. can you talk about it in a general sense? guest: first of all, what we are talking about today is us really. civilizations have always developed a groupings of people who share housing. generally share resources. they eat together, they live together.

those patterns of clustering have changed over time. it is a fascinating look at how the american society has changed over time on the very basic thing. in these times, it is quite relevant to the macro economy. how many housing units are needed by archer week -- choices of how we closer together. this is important stuff for all of us. host: definitions are important and is. a single person household of what constitutes a family. in the eyes of the census department, what does that mean? guest: this is kind of geeky jargon. is important to language rights. we will be talking today about families. by that we need people who are related by birth or marriage or adoption. these are husbands and wives, sons and daughters, brothers and

sisters. when we talk about households of people who live together in a housing unit, we have a special term in measurement of households in this country called the householder. that is the person who pays the back door pays the mortgage in whose names those documents like. those are the key terms will be using. host: he started to touch on this, but here are the bullet points. i will let you take it away. guest: if you ask why we are forming these clusters of household over time, there are three big things to keep in mind. one is, we have changed in the united states gradually are patterns of marriage. we are delaying our marriages. that affects how we cluster together in households. the second thing is what we have

to started with. there are more adults and housing units than in the past. that is the returning phenomenon of additional adults. then you will see at the end the number of earners and a household has changed over time. we have more households that are multi all -- a multi corner households. have a different course over time. this is a long-term snapshot. 1953 last year. guest: this is a dramatic societal change. it looks like data through many developed countries. let's zoom in on 1960 which is the highest are there. the blue part of the bar describes the portion of households -- proportion of

families who are married couples with children. the stereotype of what a america looked like. the red portion of the bar are those with children but with a single household -- there is no spouse present. as we go from left to right, that is how the height of the bars close down. we have fewer households with children. then notice how the share of the household with children is getting more on the roadside. those are single households without a spouse present. this is a pretty dramatic societal change. >> since you are involved in the middle of this debate over policy. as an example, were the many avenues that these types of statistics affect policy discussion? guest: all of our issues with regard to children first of all.

that blends into education. what is the parental home base of those families that have kids? also, deeper if we drove into these, what are the characteristics of the households with kids? are those increasing? those changing of the time? this is relevant to all types of policies. host: when this summer to stop being a child? guest: arbitrarily we used the age 18 as the foot point. at that point to become an adult in our turn. host: let's take some calls. we will begin with scottsdale, arizona. we're asking you to tell us a little bit about your own story. has your household changed since 2007 and 2008. guest: good morning. i feel like my situation, unfortunately, is probably indicative of what is happening

to a lot of people across the country. i am in the lumber business out here and arizona. in 2007, i still have a job. i have gotten divorced. i have since been able to keep my house there a little modifications. i have taken on two printers. one got a stays with me now became unemployed from the home depot in colorado. i think it is pretty indicative of what is happening to a lot of

people around the country. host: thank you for telling us about your story. under your classification, somebody who went from being a nuclear family is not a single house holder with two printers. guest: in the statistics we talk about today, we would label his new household as a non family household. he is there with it sounds like a couple of renters. mores story is even pertinent to everything you are talking about today. or occupation of construction in arizona is relevant to what we are talking about because we are seeing vacancy patterns of housing units across the country changing as a function of the recession. the need for housing construction changing. tony's story is shared by a lot of people. these are the kinds of things we are talking about today.

host: we have just gotten the new unemployment numbers. a little bit of movement downward trend the unemployment rate at 9%. 80,000 jobs were added in the weekly look at unemployment in the united states. we will add that statistic to our backs. let me take one more call and we will go back to the numbers. this one is from chelsea, michigan. kemp -- michigan has also been hard hit in the economy. caller: i heard there was a big boom and north dakota. i have been thinking about going out there. i have heard a lot of good jobs -- mcdonald's is hiring at $13 an hour. there was an article in the paper by bloomberg from new york and he said the number one that the economy boom was in north dakota and no. two was michigan. i said, there were 672,591

residents in north the kiddo. there are 9,000,883 -- that is a lot of people compared to north dakota. i was just saying, how can that be an economic co with michigan being second. does that not make michigan look bad? host: it sounds like you are citing a statistics from the census bureau. i am with you entirely on what you are doing. bill is a word that has many different definitions. you are citing those statistics and population differences is right, i assume. smaller states, what should know, are easier to grow fast. i point out which ended last two censuses has been growing at a high rate.

but like north dakota, it started out with a relatively small population. i suspect some of the north dakota articles had to deal with that. that is a different issue with regard to occupational opportunities. host: we are seeking your stories of your household and how things may have changed or if they haven't. things are going to all for you. tell us about it as well as we look with dr. robert gross in the changing landscape of the american household. next one up his unmarried couples, the one window frame is from 1996 until 2010. guest: over this period from 1996 until 2010, we are measuring the amount of households that have on married

couples in them. this is a phenomenon that is growing. but me help you read this. the dark portion of this graph describes couples that are married. you can see it does increase somewhat over the years. the lighter color are those that are unmarried. that is increasing on a much greater rate. there is one other feature on this graph that i have to point out. we actually improve our measurement of unmarried couples starting in 2007. notice the big break there in the series. notice the big jump. what is the jump about? that jump is about our ability to measure on married couples that are not nearly coupling which the householder but maybe another one. let me give you an example of this. this might be a mother was also relationship and then an

unmarried female -- look at the right portion of that. great increases in that phenomenon over the past two years as we go through the session. the unmarried couple link appears to be disproportionately high in those groups of lower income. and lot of these new couples, a lot are unemployed and they have moved in together. as we dig a little deeper and unmarried couples with children, can you tell me a little more about demographics there? guest: we will. we have a few other charts. we will illustrate those. host: let me give a little more

detail with somebody who treated to ask what the former of unemployment rate was. the 5.1% in october traded has just edged down to 9%. economists had protested that the thousand jobs increase, and in fact, the u.s. added 80,000. we will see how the market reacts. next call is from cleveland. caller: good morning. i am 34 years old. cleveland has been hit pretty hard since 2008. my best friend as well. this is the first time in my adult life i had to go back home with my mother. host: how old are you? caller: i have four children. host: so you brought your four kids with you? caller: i had no choice. there are no jobs.

there is -- as far as vacant housing, there is no housing. baucus said, my best friend is in the same situation. she had to go back home. host: let me understand the composition of your household. was your mother living a long before you came home? caller: my mother was living with her godmother who was 92- years old. host: how old is your mother? caller: my mother is 63. host: how old are you? caller: i am 34. host: what about your four children? caller: my mother is also fostered by two nephews. host: how is that going for your family? caller: because times are so hard, we pull our resources together so we are able to make it. unfortunately, is or not able to save up any money to get my own place because we are just making it. host: how many people in the

household are employed it? caller: both me and my mother are receiving disability. guest: this is a common story. your household -- the challenge of all these people living together. also, the richness of multiple generations and the learning that goes on for your children from their grandmother and great-grandmother. this is another part of the phenomenon. we are tracking the this movement overtime. in one sense, one measure of our recovery would be the change in these housing patterns over time. it is an important thing to watch. >> because she wishes to move out with her kids. when you see that happen in a meaningful way -- guest: this is a fascinating

charge. i could show you the same with other developing countries that looks quite similar. this starts in 1960. a long time ago it goes to this year, 2011. the height of that land is the% of the households with only one person in them. these are single person households. it started out in 1960 about 13%. it is more than double to 28%. this is the real reflection of delay in the marriage and also the fact that we are living longer. people who are unmarried it tended to live by themselves. as we age and spouses die, that produces other single person households. this is a great reflection of how our society has changed on marriage and a life expectancy.

host: here is simple household by age. more detail. guest: this tells the same story. these are 2010 estimates. host: but your eye goes right to the 65 +. lots of a brave americans living alone. guest: absolutely. the big contrast here is between the 65 + groupon the left -- on the right of this chart, very high. and then compare that to the 35 to 44 year old group that are disproportionately married. as we age, a few things happen. divorce is kick in as we age and that creates more single person units. and then a death of a spouse, widowhood occurs. that is a very common pattern of single person households by aids. host: next telephone call,laura

in kerry, pennsylvania. caller: good morning. i work with medicaid pregnant ladies. sadly, 90% are unmarried are coming into our clinic looking for that. i wanted to ", we finally got to the point i wanted to address. according to the u.s. census bureau, the poverty rate for single parents was 36.5% in 2008. compare that to carry the couples with children was only 6.4%. you needed to address the fact, just like the cleveland caller, there was no merit in that equation. she had four children. she had what she called two and nephews. where are the fathers in these households? marriage drops the probability of child poverty by 82%. we are not even addressing it. it is just another part of the

equation. it is not. it is the most important part. marriages protected. we need to start encouraging not only marriage initiatives with tax credits for people who do commit to each other and children, but also for abstinence education. if they are taught to not engage in sex before they're married, they would not have babies out of wedlock. it also will not get infected with many of the s tds we are talking about, hiv aids, it is all related to what we reward. right now a married couple coming into my clinic does not qualify because they make too much. we should be saying, if you are married, you get many more benefits because it is healthy for society. guest: this is a great observation. it illustrates what the census bureau statistics operations are all about. my job is to give to you and the

entire u.s. public estimates of what is going on in the country so that you can have this discussion in an informed way. you are part of the feedback group and a democracy. we are giving back to the citizenry information about their lives and how the welfare of the society. it is with those estimates that we hope these kinds of discussions will be formed. we don't take policy side in this. our job is to give you the best information that we can so that the debate will be informed. host: this chart. guest: this is important. this is 2010 data. look at the light blue bars first which describe the% of the households by age where there is

an unmarried partner household. you can see this is a phenomenon that is disproportionately among young people. we label that the delay of the marriage decision. contrast that with the dark blue bars, much larger. these are the married households. you can see how that climbs to the middle age group of 35 to 44. debt funds out and declines because of widowhood as the ages go on. host: i've read stories about the fact that more and more seniors might be moving in together unmarried because of economic reasons and also, just social protection as they get older. that number is not very high here. guest: no, that number is not very high. now, some of those would fall out and be labeled non-family household with rammates.

so there's a lot of ways that seniors can get together and share housing. host: let's look at another set of definitions. why are these important to talk about? fwoip well, there's been a lot of discussion recently about whether households are doubling up as a reaction to the economy. we talked about this a bit. as it turns out, that's a complicated thing. what do we mean by doubling up? so we have used this notion of having an additional adult in the household. and we've labeled that a person who's 18 years or older who isn't renting or owning a house and isn't a spouse of the person renting or owning the house and is not enrolled in school. so we're trying to cash rise doubling up through this notion of an additional adult.

and then we have a distinction between adop relationships and married and unmarried. host: an ohio caller who moved in with her mom bs family household, and the phoenix-divorced dad, living by himself, who took in two representers not related to him as a non-family household. guest: perfect. we have two examples. host: let's go back to call. we have mike from new york city. caller: hello, how are you? thank you for c-span. let me share my story here in new york city and then i have a question for the director. my story is is that -- and this is kind of segueing on the young lady who just called. i'm a dad. i have three children. and i've been married close to 20 years. in 2008 i lost my job here in new york city. i found out that what i had to to, thank goodness i had a

401-k plan that kind of took us through the first year. so i took some lower-paying sales jobs. to me it seems as if the types of jobs that are out there, especially in new york city, are some of the lower-paying jobs. what i had to do was to put in my mind, hey, mike, what you need to do is to do for some of these lower-paying sales jobs, for a while do what i have to do, and that's what i did. luckily recently i just was hired with u.p.s. so i go from a job paying, you know, $90,000 per year, $75,000 with bonuses, some years even more than that, and i had to sort of reconsider myself to say, hey, those days are over. 401-k plan, things have changed. what i think that i'm doing

that's different at this particular point in time is i want to definitely continue with this job at u.p.s. as they bring me onboard, but also, i'm hooking for something more of an entrepreneurial type. host: how about that question also for the director? caller: yes, so my question is shall it seems that you have a lot of information and sticks. my question for you is, would you say the number one way to get more americans out of poverty, would it be tax cuts for the rich or would it be more jobs? thank you. guest: well, that's a great question, but i'm not a good person to answer that question. as i said to an earlier caller, our job in the statistical system of the u.s. is to give you as much information as possible to allow you to form

your own opinion and presumably after nain is formed exercise your role as a citizen in voting and other political action. host: back to the census department's charts about american household. this is percentage of american households with one additional adult. this is since the economic decline in 2007. we see it peaked in 2010 and it's starting to edge back down a little bit. guest: these are mild changes, i think one might say. so in 2007, about 19.7 percent of households had one of these additional adults. then it went up to about 21.8. there toes appear to be a leveling on these things. both family households and non-family house holds saw that increase. it will be fascinating to watch whether 2012 brings us another decline on these numbers. they appear to be calming down

and declining, and we all need to watch that. >> this is a distribution of total adult population. what's going on here? >> this chart and the next cart really answers the question, who are these additional adults? it's tricky to read. if you go to the top bar, look at the number 13%. that's of all adults, 13% are in the 18 to 24-year-old age group. and if you go one more age group, 18% of the 25 to 34. so that's of all adults in the country. host: so under 34 years of age we're looking at here, all right? guest: right. now go down to the lower bar, and these are these additional adults. look at how -- what a greatly increased percentage are the young, 18-24 in that middle group, 25-34. so what does this chart tell us? it says these additional adults

in these households are young people basically. and that's just the stereotype of story that you told. host: let's go on to the next one. how many of them are the child of the household and how has that changed? guest: we're zeroing in now on the 25 to 30-year-olds. we've separated it by sex. and you see from the mid 1980's to the present a pretty dramatic increase in these child -- adult children living with their parents, basically, over the past few years. and notice the contrast between males and females here. this is an important contrast that we're seeing in this recession. an earlier program you had, susan, talked about how male occupations were disproportionately hit by the recession. and it looks like males are

staying with their parents longer, or moving back with their parents to a greater degree than females. host: steve from mobile, alabama, and we don't have much time, so tell us briefly about your story. caller: i was laid off in january of 2010 at a big new york money center bank. i've had two part-time jobs since then. one was working five months in the local area with doing the census. recently i just started, like the other caller, as a u.p.s. seasonal helper for the holidays. host: what's happened to your house as you've gone through this? caller: the house has stayed the same. we have three grown children. fortunately, they've all got good -- mostly in tb -- jobs. host: and none have moved pack. caller: well, they did before -- we said over the past 10 years, yes, each one of them spent their time back with mom and dad.

since that time they've all gotten out on their own. they're all working currently. the two girls are in marriages where both spouses work. host: can apologies, we have to run because we're out of time. as we talk about how this contributes to the economic stability of household, we have about 10 or 20 second for the last slide. married and unmarried household. >> this relates to an earlier caller. this chart merely says that households with higher nbs tend to contain married couples. households on the lower side of the income tend to be -- host: look at the difference. guest: these are dramatic differences. and this is a property of marriage choices and stability of marnls as a function of income. host: thank you so much for being with us this morning. an interesting set of calls from our viewers who demonstrate the census at the

present time's -- census bureau's numbers about the changing american households and the special focus on what's been happening over the past four or five years. dr. robert groves, our guest, heads up the census. >> we spent part of this morning's program looking at a comparison between the job creation proposals offered by republicans and democrats. congressman jim jordan, who's chairman of the republican study committee, joined us for about 35 minutes. host: he is a member of the house judiciary committee and a member of governments reform and oversite committee. thanks for being with us. >> good to be with you. host: we want to talk jobs. but the republican study committee has been very strong about deficit reduction needs for quite a while. so we want to start by asking

you about the deficit reduction super committee. all the reports in the paper suggest that they're at an impasse. what are your thoughts? depoip we hope they're actually going to cut spending, which every single american knows we need to do. my big concern based on some of the news reports we've heard this week are that some on the committee and some members of the overall congress are looking to raise taxes. i think that would be a big mistake. what we need to do is reduce spending. i told the folks back home, we're not one-to-one. we have a $15 trillion economy and we have almost a $15 trillion debt. any time you get in that range it's very dangerous. the countries who are in trouble in europe, they all got to that one-to-one ratio. we've got to be very nervous and very concerned about where we're at and cut spend willing. as you pointed out in your opening remarks, the republican study committee has been focused on that for the last 11 months. we've introduced a budget that actually got to balance within

10 years. the only one in congress that did. this summer during the debates we brought forward the cut tap and pal, cap a pest taj of our economy as we move forward and focus in on getting to a balanced amendment requirement. so we've been focused on that and we'll continue to, because that's what we need to do in order to make sure -- to make sure our country is going to be this great nation that we've got to enjoy bs to make sure our kid and grandkids will have the same opportunities. host: as you know, the way it was set up by the legislation is that if it doesn't reach agreement, there will be something called sequestration, automatic cults. we're seeing reports in the paper that some members of congress have cited ways around sequestration, in other words, hold off on having those reductions take place automatically. what would your thoughts be? >> look, as i said, we need to cut spending. if they want to do -- instead of using the -- or having the

sequester kick in for the defense cuts, national security cuts and the cuts that are designed to happen in health care, instead of going there, if we can find other areas to get the same amount or frankly more, which is what we need to do, then they're willing to do that. if it's just to kick the can down the road and not redust spending at all, that's a big mistake. host: your group has put forward a jobs program. at the heart of it, what do you think this country needs as its base to create more jobs? guest: it's real simple. every speech i give back home, whether it's rotary will you be or any meeting of a group of constituents and families and business owners, the first question i ask is how many people think we need to change the tax code? every single person. they're saying let's get rid of the tax code. i asked them how many people think we need to regular hate business more? they say no, we need to stop it. and i also asked, how many

think we need a comprehensive energy policy? this is not rocket science. the american people, as with so many issues, are way ahead of the politicians. we understand we need to reform the tax code. they understand we need common-sense energy code and get rid of the additional burdens we put on business owners. so that's what our plan does. it focuses on those three areas. we think it's good, common sense. and if it's implemented, if we get the president to agree with some of these things, we could begin to foster a climate that is conducive to creating jobs and growing our economy. host: we pulled the numbers for unemployment in your own district, which at the height of the crisis were 11.5%, now down in the 10's, high nines. what's happened there to move the needle that much? >> our district is diverse in that we have strong agriculture. agriculture has had three or four good years. part of it is agriculture-driven. manufacturing is starting to rebound here.

i visited with several manufacturers across our district and across our state and they all tell me -- in fact, there was a headline in the "daily news" about eight or nine weeks ago, front page above the fold, said "manufacturing jobs go unfilled." so there are manufacturers out there who are ready to hire. in mansfield, ohio, i was there a few weeks back and talking to the head of their manufacturing council and he said there are 300 jobs waiting to be filled today in mansfield, if we can find people who we can hire. they want to hire. so the reason you're seeing a drop in that number in our part of the state is mfing is starting to rebound -- manufacturing is starting to rebound and we've had strong years in agriculture. obviously it's still tough out there in construction and the contracts for business and housing and that area. so that's the other thing that's holding the whole economy back. but it's been pretty good in agriculture and start going to rebound in manufacturing. host: we'd like to get to your phone calls and also to your tweets, if you'd like to send

your question in that way as well, we'll put all the the addresses and phone numbers on the screen so you can get involved in a conversation with congressman jordan. if you see a rebounding in manufacturing, how has it happened in the absence of fundamental tax code reform or decrease in regulation? guest: well, again, it points to just how dynamic the entrepreneurs and business owners in this country are. americans, even in spite of the goofy government policies bs can win just based on this work ethic and this spirit we have in this great country. so part of it is that. but if we really wanted to unleash strong economic growth across all sectors, then you would look at a plan like ours where we say, for example, we're going to lower the corporate rate from 35% to 25%, we're going to allow dollars for big mill tee national companies, the profits they have, and other countries will allow that money to come back home and not be taxed again. so we put in place the kinds of things that are good for

business. on the personal side -- remember, a hot of businesses pay their taxes via the personal rates. we move to what we call the taxpayer choice act modeled after the plan that my col hetion, like congressman ryan and others put together. on the personal side, let's go to a two-rate system. 15% and 25%. let's give generous dependent exemptions or deductions, so that it's a pro-family-type tax code. but let's get to a simpler model. and simmer seems to be conducive for growing the economy and creating jobs. we think it makes a lot of sense on the tax side, not to mention the regulation and the deregulation side and the energy component as well. host: we're one day and two years out from the election. this morning governor romney has a piece published by "usa today" on his spending and debt program, and this headline in "the washington post,"

"campaigning in new mexico -- new hampshire. romney lays out deficit-'s ducks plan." what do you think of that? guest: it's healthy. they're all talking about it. mr. perry came out with a plan that sounds similar to our plan. he calls it cut, balance and growing, as his growth component. it's similar to what we put together. mr. cain has really, i think, depeand a great deal of appeal with republican primary voters with his plan. whether you like his 9-u 9 or not, the fact that it's out of the bock and recognizes the fundamental fact we need to throw out the opportunity tabs code is appealing and all candidates are focused on this out-of-control spending. it's all positive and every single candidate is coming up with a plan that is pretty bold. host: speaking of presidents, former president bill clinton has a new book out and it's written by "the associated

press" and published in "the washington post" this morning and it's called "back to work -- why we need smart government for a strong economy." and former president clinton describes the state of the country as "a mess," and largely blames the anti-government sentiment embodied in the tea party movement. goes on to say he recalls his eight years in the white house in glowing terms, writing about how his economic policies helped create 22 million jobs and substantially reduce the federal debt. he strongly criticizes republicans for taking the country deeply into debt under george w. bush's presidency. guest: this idea that more government involvement is going to help our economy, sues ann, think about this. if big government spending, if big government regulation and taxes are going to get us out of this economic mess, for goodness sake, we would have been out of it, because that's all the government's did for the last three years. so we have a different approach. let's not look to government to create jobs, let's look for government to set the proper

framework, get out of the way so the private sector can create job. fundamental difference in the approach. mr. clinton seems to advocate more government, which is, again, what we've done for the last three years. frankly, i would agree with one part of former president clinton's statement -- we did spend too much money and have too much government in the last administration. but this administration has taken it to a whole new level. it's not like we can just blame the other party. i think the bush administration, particularly the last few years when they started the tarp and the bailout had too much involvement. but this administration has taken it to a new level. that's why we have the largest deficit, $1.3 trillion this year. think about this fact -- i give this in every single speech back home because it conveys how serious the situation is on the spending side. this year we will spend $231 billion in interest payments to service this $15 trillion debt. interest rates are what, right now? record low.

historic low. they can't go any lower. they're going to go up. and on the current spending path, if they go up modestly, within 10 years we will be approaching close to $1 trillion in interest rates. if they go up dramatically, we'll be getting real close. within 10 years we'll go from paying $231 billion to paying more in interest than we currently spend on national defense, which begs the obvious question -- if you're a nation spending more to service debt than you are to defend yourself, how in the world do you sustain that model? that's why the republican study committee and the republican congress has been focused on this congress reducing spending. host: let's get to some calls. we're talking about federal debt and also the u.s. economy. marilyn is watching us from charleston, south carolina. go ahead, please. you are on. caller: with all tue spect, sir, you talk a good game, but

the fact is, it's only after i come up with this solution. you fice got to realize, you are not the president. president obama is the president. and every time he comes out with a plan, you know, you sit there and you talk real sweet and all thabs but that's just generating for what we do. give the man a chance. he is the president. you just go around the bush, and it sounds good. but you'll find out come voting time what's going to happen. it sounds sweet -- guest: we've got an election in a year and you're right. the american people have a way to decide this and we'll forget about what the politicians say and they will vote. the first two years of this administration, the president got having he wanted. he got the stimulus pa package, the tax increases, everything he wanted. this idea that he didn't get to implement his policies is not true. fankly, i would be willing to

work with the president on some of the things he's said this year. if you go back to january in his state of the state address -- excuse me, state of the union address, he talked about vee forming the corporate tax code, lowering the corporate rates, things that would make sense and be bs feign, help set a framework for job creation and economic froth. we're willing to work with the president on those kind of things. i think we should reform the tax code and allow dollars to come back. let them bring the money back home and invest it an create american jobs. we're willing to work with the. . we just want the president to sit down with us and let's fete to work. host: at the white house this week they released essentially a report card comparing the president's american jobs act with the republican alternatives as proposed in the senate. but similar themes to the ones you are talking about. as you can see all the way down, the scorecard is negative for republicans in jobs added and taxes for working families going up under republican plans, going down under the

white house. fewer teachers in the class ram doesn't help get construction workers back on the job. why are you sure that your plan will create job and the president's won't? guest: ask the american people. the president's plan is the same old-same old. the president suggests raising taxes on certain americans, more infrastructure, all the things we talked about in the stimulus pack kang and we saw how good that worked. we have a plan that builds on what the republican conference -- we've sent 15 different bills, after this week, it's even more -- to the senate. and they have yet to act on them. every business owner will tell you the word we've heard now for the last couple of years is the uncertainty that exists in our economy today. and business owners are saying, you know what, i'm not sure if this health care law is going to kick in, what it's going to cost me. i'm not sure if they're going to raise the taxes. the president talks about raising taxes every single day.

we're not sure about that. we have keep have additional regulations and additional burdens added to us. so instead of taking that risk we would normally take that would help us get out of the stagnant economy and grow jobs, most business owners are saying, i'm just going to wait. so we need to get rid of that uncertainty by saying we're not going to keep adding regulations. we're going to get rid of the ones that don't make sense. reform the tax code and have a common-sense energy policy. that would make a lot of sense and everyone instinctively understands that. host: where are you on business taxes? there are ranges all the way from corporations are unfairly taxed, some paying too much, some paying too little, to flat-tax proposals. >> our plan goes to 25%, takes it from 35% to 25%. we instruct the appropriate standing committees in congress to look at those deductions, those elmingses that companies currently -- exemptions that companies currently get and see which ones make sense. we moved to lower that rate.

also focusing on a territorial system. i use the example of procter & gamble, because it's a big company that has operateses all over the globe. when they make profits in, let's say, india, they pay taxes there. if they want to bring that money back to ohio or back to the united states and create jobs and do things with it, invest it here, they are taxed again here in the united states. we're saying if you're taxed over there when you bring it back, put it to work creating jobs. the government shouldn't hit you again with additional taxes. host: you said we will look at those exemptions that make sense and keep those. guest: yes. host: so it's not completely flat, as you proposed it. there would be some -- guest: the move to a flat rate for corporations. but we leave that up to the expert in the ways and means committee. that's the appropriate way it's supposed to work. host: next is burlington, north carolina, for congressman jim jordan. this caller is debbie.

good morning. caller: good morning. i hope everybody is doing well. host: thank you. caller: in my humble opinion, i'm not a rocket scientist. i am just an average american citizen. but i pride myself on having some common sense. and common sense tells me that if the private sector that funds the public sector, we have to do what we can to strengthen the private sector. guest: well said. caller: so my point is, number one, we need to go to a flat tax. we need to get rid of the loopholes in the tax system. government needs to get out of the way of picking winners and lazers. guest: well said. caller: that way we can all be winners. and if spending more government money was the answer, hey, i'm looking outside my win do. my highway is not paved in gold. so my point is we have got to put out the "open for business" sign here in the united states

and do what we can to help the private sector make jobs for all of us. thank you and have a blessed day. guest: thank you. i couldn't have said it better. i think debbie has hit on something that i sense is happening across the country. americans are so frustrated with the current tax code. and they view it from a fundamental fairness perspective. the fact that we have -- most numbers are around 46%, 47% of the population not paying income tax. that bothers americans. this is the main tax. they think everyone should be contributing. and then you have, on the other end for whatever reason, you have general electric's second quarter not paying corporate taxes. and americans say any tax code that allows those two things to happen is fundamentally unfair and we need to reform it. debbie said it better than i think any elected official can say. so, again, i think moving

towards a flatter, simpler system is what's needed. host: next up is a call from washington, d.c. this is steph nea. stephanie, you're on. >> a note for c-span, first. everybody keeps putting out this 47%. c-span, have you ever done a program that tells you -- that breaks it down exactly what that 47% is? i would really like to know. host: ok, thank you. caller: also, i have a pro-republican thing and an anti-republican. shows you i'm a real independent. first of all, the pro-republican. everybody kneads to look at buddy roemer, r-o-e-m-e-r, buddy roemer, 2012. the republicans are desperately trying to keep him out of every debate. and the guy down in florida just -- even though he has 7% approval down in florida, the chairman down there just automatically cut him out. so everybody look at buddy

r-o-e-m-e-r 2012 and see why they're cutting him out. host: stephanie, how about a question for the congressman, please. caller: regulation, congressman, regulation equals rules and laws. and people wonder why nobody from wall street went to jail. because they did away with regulation. that's why you keep wanting to do away with regulation, because if you have rules on the pooks and laws that people can break, they can go to jail. isn't that correct? that's why you want the deregulation in everything? guest: no. but would you agree, stephanie, that you can overregulate and make it burdensome and dollars will have to be used to comply with federal regulations, the paperwork and everything else that's there? and when you do that, there's an opportunity lost to use that -- those resources to create jobs. i'll give you a great example. a great example of a regulation that didn't make sense and has actually been repaled.

in the democrats' signature piece of legislation in the last congress, the health care law, there was a provision, the 1099 provision, which was going to be extremely onerous on small business owners and businesses across the country. and everyone understood this. everyone said this is ridiculous. even though it was contained in the signature piece of legislation for the other party, it was revealed because people said this is a regulation that is going to hurt job creation. and the democrats and republicans need to come together and get rid of it. to say that government never adds a regulation that's going to hurt job creation, of course we do. all you have to do is talk to small miss owners in your state and my state across the country and they will all tell you the things we have to do to comply. i had two good friends of mine, brothers, who were in manufacturing. i'll remember this story. they said to me -- we were talking one day and they said -- the one guy said, jim, the thing that frustrates me is i love being in business, but the thing that frustrates me is

being an employer because of all the things you make me do -- pointing to me, talking about government -- that government makes me do when i hire someone. that's what we have to understand, when people take the risk to hire someone, there are all kinds of things they have to comply with that makes it difficult for them to hire someone and create a job. host: we were talking about your proposal for corporate tax rates. the joint committee on taxation released a report this week. i know you're aware of it, to show it to our viewers, bloomberg is reporting on efforts to cut corporate tax rates without increasing deficit. report from the chief congressional effort without increasing the budget deficit or shifting the cost to any other taxpayers. it's scrapping the existing corporate tax break and would generate enough revenue to hero the corporate tax rate to 28%, according to the joint committee. estimate was requested by democrats on the house ways and means committee and provided to bloomberg. guest: again, when you look at

something in a static world, saying if you're going to do this and hero the rate here, you've got to remember our economy is dynamic. every time we have engaged in lowering the rates for -- on the personal side and frankly on the corporate side, over time you get economic growth, which then brings in additional revenue to the treasury. i think we have to look at that concept when we're thinking about tax reform. host: next call for you, sir, is from bonnie lake, washington. early morning out there. this is barbara, a democrat, you're on. caller: good morning, and thank you for c-span. i am one of the 99% and i want government for the people as it was originally designed. we don't want sun elected people like grover norquist and others setting policy for this country. now bs mr. jordan, think about

this fact -- we have more poor and hungry americans in our country now than we have ever had before. and we need revenue. think about their uncertainty. think about the people who can't feed themselves and can't take their kids to any social events or have them play in sports or anything, because they have no money. this is who needs the revenue. the people need the revenue. not all the rich people, not the 1%, the 99%. we need revenue like you get guest: barbara, the party you support, they control the government. until 11 months ago they controlled all the government. 15 months ago, nm the election of scott brown, they had a super majority in the senate. they could pass any law they want. so why is that the case? host: i have moved on to another caller, so she's not going to be able to answer you. let me go back to your first statement about the importance not to raise taxes. a number of your colleagues, as you know, 40 of them all told,

including cynthia loomis, a member of your group, joined 60 democrats suggesting all options need to be considered for the super committee, even looking for new revenue. have they broken ranks with you? how do you feel about that? guest: i think you have to ask each of those 40 what they mean by revenue. i know what a lot of folks in this town mean, and they mean tax increases. i am strongly opposed to that route. i assume that some of those members of the 40 republicans when they're talking about revenues, they're not talking about tax increases. but i am very nervous that there is a will around here for some to -- by some to look at tax increases in this super committee report that is due in just a few weeks, and that is the exact wrong approach in my opinion. to add the additional uncertainty to business owners out there that we're going to increase the tax burden is exactly the wrong way to go. host: does that include the

speaker, who you think might be willing to accept it? guest: the speaker's been strong throughout the whole summer in saying they're not going to support tax increases. during the debt ceiling debate, this is an issue that was raised then. there was talk of revenue from the other side. and our team was very strong in saying we are not going to raise taxes. i don't anticipate a tax increase, but i am concerned, obviously, by the talk this week of both the letter signed by members of congress that seems to indicate some would be willing to entertain tax increases. and frankly, the report earlier this week of the group of six within the group of 12 that talked about at least the willingness to consider tax increases. host: we're speaking of the speaker, john boehner. "politico" has a front-page story, "house speaker john boehner still searches for keys to his house." it suggests in the piece that house speaker john boehner's mantra is the house should work its will. it's telling that his will and that of the house are so often

at odds. guest: with the senate, yes. mike: members of your own party within the republican conference. how is he doing as speaker? guest: he's got the toughest job in the town. here he is speaker of the house and he's got a fairly diverse group of 240-some republicans. and i think he's doing a great job. he's got to deal with harry reid who won't pass any of the good legislation we're sending over there. he has to deal with the white house. it's the toughest job in town, but i think he's doing a good job. host: does your friendship, fellow ohioans, give you a special ear to him? >> he listens to the entire -- he'll listen to any member who wants to visit with him. he's very good about that. the thing i appreciate a great deal about the speaker as well is the openness of the process. if you go back to the first bill we dealt with in this congress, hr-1, which was a continuing resolution of the budget bill, i forget how many hundreds of amendments, open

process, allowing members to get their best hold, take third best idea, come to the floor, offer it as an amendment and participate in a process, that's the way it's supposed to work. members who wept over 700,000 people in a district are supposed to come with their ideas and take their best shot. he's been very receptive to that process throughout his tenure as speaker. host: our next caller is from round rock, texas. this is ardell, a republican. good morning to you. caller: good morning. first i'd like to ask you, did you sign grover norquist? guest: of course i signed it. caller: that was a pledge that republicans made that no matter what, they wouldn't raise taxes. guest: i think some democrats signed it, too. caller: let me finish. it's been disavowed by most republicans. 11 from the senate have not re-signed the pledge and 40

from the house have not re-signed the pledge and are willing to put taxes on the line, and that's because of the 99%, the people that's protested against wall street. i can't understand why you can sit there and say that the corporations need more money, when in arkansas, whirlpool laid off thousands of workers and cost the state of arkansas $61.15 billion. but they made a profit of $134 billion. host: let me stop you right there. thank you so much for your call. guest: i would say to the gentleman, is raisinging taxes on -- the example you used is whirlpool. so raising taxes on whirlpool would add jobs? this idea of raising taxes on oil companies, is that going to lower the price of gas? how many people believe that? the idea is we knead to reform

our energy policy to lower the price of gas and help families and help our economy. the idea of somehow raising taxes is going to create an environment that's more suited for job creation, i fail to see the logic, and i think most americans understand that as well. raising the taxes on the small business owner, raising taxes on the wealthy, that's going to -- it's just not going to work. every time it's tried, it doesn't work. the truth is, we've been doing this approach the last three years. more taxes, more spending, more federal control, more regulation, and look what it's got us. 9% unemployment. $15 trillion debt. largest deficit in american history and an economy that is stagnant and just meandering along. host: governor norquist was on the program this week and many callers echoed the sentiments that we heard from this gentleman. thinking that the pledge supersedes the ability to provide compromise in washington. guest: ask any american -- do you think america is taxed too little and needs their taxes

raised, or do you think the problem in washington is politicians spend too much money? on a fundamental level every likes to spend money. in washington, politicians get to spend other people's money and never have to be held accountable to do what every family has to do, live within their means. we get to borrow and spend, which is another form of taxation. that's taxing future generations. this idea that we need to raise taxes makes no sense. what we need to do and what the republican study committee and the republican conference has been focused on doing is cutting spending. host: this observation from atlanta progressive, who tweets g.o.p. arguments never to raise taxes are the same against clinton. he raised taxes and had massive growth. guest: and they reformed things. they got a balanced budget under the work of our governor in ohio, john case -- kasich, who was the chairman. host: last caller from charlotte, north carolina, good

morning. caller: good morning, sue, good morning, congressman. on the subject of jobs, i keep hearing this statement made, let's grow jobs, ok? jobs are directly related to the economy. jobs are not created by giving a tax reduction to a business. please don't interrupt me. i understand your position on raising taxes. but what happens is there's no businessman who you lower his taxes is going to hire three or four new people. they need to hire new people comes from needing to ramp up business because demand is high. and demand is not high because the consumer does not have money to spend. he's afraid of losing his job or doesn't have one right now. so i don't want to hear any baloney about -- guest: how would you create demand? caller: the jobs have to come back to the united states somehow, through these poor trade freements, and number two, we have to stop importing

workers from other countries at the rate of one million per year. how can we make a dent in the unemployment figures if we are having unlimited defendant worker programs in this country? host: we're out of time, so caution your response. guest: look, the part i want to talk about, where we deal with the immigration policy, we have to follow the law when it comes to particularly illegal imfration. and, you know, i keep coming back to -- our job is -- i think the caller is right on this, our job is not to create jobs. our job is to set the proper frame whork so there is growth in our economy and the growth will create jobs because it makes sense for their business. the government says we'll give you this tax break, whatever. businesses create jobs because it makes sense for their business, because they have to, as the caller pointed out, meet

demand. but it makes sense for them to do it to create a profit and move their business in the right direction. host: the republican study committee has its own website if you'd lake to read more about their jobs plan. this is what it looks like. it is also connected through the congressman's website. rsc .jordan.gov. thanks for being here to talk to our callers. guest: glad to be with you. >> with the iowa caucuses less than two months away now, we're back in des moines tonight for the ronald reagan dinner. five republican candidates will be there speaking. rick perry, newt gingrich, rick santorum, ron paul and michele bachmann. live coverage getting underway on c-span two at 8:00 eastern. here on c-span tomorrow night in houston, texas, what's being billed as a lincoln douglas style debate between herman cain and newt gingrich talking about economic and social

issues. that's tomorrow on c-span. and on c-span radio. >> would you continue your statement, please? >> i'm prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over, if that's your stigs. >> he was the u.n. ambassador for president kennedy during the cuban missile crisis, a former governor of illinois and twice ran as the democratic nominee for president and lost. adlai stevenson is featured this week on c-span's series "the contenders." from the stevensons' family home, live tonight at 8:00 eastern. for a preview, including more of his speeches and other videos, go to our special website for the series, c-span.org/thecontenders. >> obama re-election campaign manager told a college student summit that president obama will be re-elected in 2012 by "building the biggest grass-roots effort in political

history." the young americans for own held this kickoff event as part of the obama campaign's greater initiative targeting voters 18-29, from the university of pennsylvania in philadelphia. this is an hour and 10 minutes. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> ok, everybody give it up. i mean, you are the man. the black-eyed peas and president barack obama. i think they go together. he's a rock star, right? ok, you guys, it is a pleasure to be back in philadelphia, and i want to welcome all of you to the obama student summit. whether you're here at the university of pennsylvania or you're joining us online -- yes, upenn. let's give it up for all the students logged in from 80 campuses from around the

country. i'm megan gomez and i'm honored to be the moderator. before i made my way to hollywood, i lived in philly from 8 years old to 14. so i'm a philly girl. what's up? but i was born in detroit. we call detroit the motor city, because detroit builds cars, and cars built detroit. now, the folks who work at these factories sometimes work pay check to pay check, but they work hard. you guys all know what happened there. when the economy collapsed, the industry host jobs faster and just -- than just about anywhere in the country. president barack obama took office right afterwards while the economy was still hanging on by a thread. one of his first decisions that he made that proved just what kind of leader he was, he decided to save the auto industry. and in doing so bs he saved 1.4 million jobs. but he did more than that. he saved that city and others said it was a waste of money. some even said he should let

detroit go bankrupt. some said it wasn't the right political move. and some said it wasn't the right time. but president barack obama said it was the right thing to do. and in the end he's been proven right. taxpayers got their money back and the american auto industry is stronger now than it has been in years. now, tonight we're going to talk about that leadership and about the stakes for the future of our country. but if there are any history majors here tonight, you know -- hey, history majors in the house. you know that before we can talk about where we're going, we have to talk about and know where we came from. it's important to remember that when president obama took office, he inherited the worst economic and financial crisis since the great depression. and today, instead of losing hundreds of thousands of jobs every month, we are creating them. yeah, you guys go ahead, take a seat, get comfortable. you guys are this nation's next generation of workers, and also

its next generation of voters. just over a year from now many of you will be voting for the first time ever. who's that? who's going to be voting for president? yeah, that's right, get out there. you guys will decide what kind of country and economy you want to inherit. that's the choice in next year's election. and it's what our distinguished panelists will be discussing here tonight. tonight we'll be hearing from the philadelphia mayor, michael nutter. [cheers and applause] obama for america campaign manager, jim messina. [cheers and applause] and democratic strategist melody barnes. [cheers and applause] now, we're very fortunate to have them as our panelists for an honest conversation about some of the most pressing issues facing young americans today, issues like making sure you can afford a quality education. that's right. making sure when you graduate you can find a job that pays

well. that's right. like making sure that if you get sick you aren't going to be left to fend for yourselves. and making sure we have a president for the next four years who knows what he believes and who does the right thing. [cheers and applause] now, for each topic, a student will join our panel, because students should have a seat at the table, too. your voice needs to be heard. that's what greater together is all about. on education we'll be joined by grahamwise from the university of pennsylvania. [cheers and applause] and on jobs, we'll bring up david lopez from temple university. [cheers and applause] and joining us to talk about health care willing be elliott griffin, also from temple. and we're going to take questions from the audience here in philadelphia and also via twitter, from those of you watching online. you can tweet questions with the hash tag greater together. now, we're looking forward to

hearing what everybody has to say. now, it's my pleasure to introduce obama for america's pennsylvania state director, the woman who's leading president obama's groundbreaking, grass-roots campaign right here in philly and across the state, olathia henry. give it up for her, guys. [cheers and applause] >> thank you, regan, for that introduction. welcome, everybody, to the obama student summit. i'm glad you all decided to join us here tonight both here in philadelphia and online. i have to say i am truly inspired seeing so many young americans who care about their future. you know, four years ago we saw an unprecedented number of students and young americans take part in choosing their future by workinging to elect barack obama president of the united states. you got what you worked for. you got a president who wakes up every morning thinking about how to make it easier for you to afford college and get a job when you graduate. you got a president who helped you pay for school, who

believes there is no place in america for intolerance or discrimination, who doesn't think that you should get left behind or who tells you you're on your own when times get tough. you know -- he's also a president whose job isn't done yet and he needs your help to get it done. we need you here in pennsylvania and across the nation to stand up and make sure the rest of the voters out there haven't forgotten what your voice sounds like. so we need you to get involved, volunteer, organize on your campuses and your high schools and neighborhoods. we need you to help make sure brohm gets another four years in the white house -- barack obama gets another four years in the white house to finish the job that so many americans sent him there to do. we need you to get out your smartphones right now. go ahead. get them out. we all know you have them. we want you to text the words "greater together" and your zip code to the number 62262. now that used to spell obama back before they inconveniented the blackberry.

so it's 62262, text "greater together" and your zip code. this will allow us to follow up with you and het you know what's happening in your local team and make it easier for you to stay in touch with local americans for obama. you'll hear from amazing speakers don't. when you do home log on to barack obama.com/greatertogether so you can learn about how to become part of young americans for obama. i'm sure many of you have friends who couldn't be here today. they probably have a late class or they're studying or maybe they're not quite as engaged as you are bs at least not yet. it's up to you. it doesn't mean those friends can't get involved. you have to tell them to go online to the website, sign up, fete the information they need and join you as part of this incredible movement. we are depending on you to spread that word. for those of you who are here and those of you watching online, as regan said, we're going to be taking your questions directly from the audience and on twitter, using

the hash tag greater together. so keep those smartphones out, log on to twitter. some of you are shy. it's ok. it's not lecture. you can have them. we wants you to make greater together a trending topic by the end of the night. we're going to be talking about three topics, jobs, health care and education. get your questions up there and get them up there early, so we can get your voice on this panel. i want you to remember as we do this that greater together is more than just a hash tag. it's sa symbol of everything that young americans for obama stands for. it's about you and stunts lake you across this country can achieve when you make your voice heard. it's about knowing that the next election will depend on you as a generation of young leaders to get the word out about the kind of country that you want to live in. and now, it is my distinct pleasure to hand the stage off to a man who supported president obama for years and who knows just how important all of your voices are. please welcome the mayor of this beautiful city, mayor michael nutter. [cheers and applause]

>> well, good evening, philadelphia. [cheers and applause] and 87-some other colleges and universities all across the united states of america. welcome to the university of pennsylvania. welcome drexel, welcome to the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection, the city that will support president barack obama's re-election and the suburbs and pennsylvania. we're taking it all right here, and it will start right here in philadelphia. so we are tremendously excited about this event tonight, the kickoff of this kind of event. you'll have more of these events all across the united states of america. this election is about you. it really is about your future. it really is about what happens in health care and jobs and education and what this country is really all about and the nonsense that we see, that the president has to dale with on a daily basis in the congress. it must come to an end. they're not working, they're talking.

they're not working, they're talking. [applause] and talk is interestinging, but action beats talk each and every day. what we want is action. the first action is make sure everyone is registered to vote. get the folks out and win this election on election day and that will happen when you're engaged and involved in your future and our future is all tied to president barack obama and the 2012 election. so, again, we're going to have a great night tonight. welcome to the city of philadelphia. we cannot be more excited to be hosting this first-ever event right here in our great city. thanks a lot. [cheers and applause] i appreciate that. i didn't do what i was supposed to do. ladies and gentlemen, here in philadelphia, not the first time, been mere a number of times and will be back many, many times. the campaign manager to re-elect president barack obama

-- i know his name. i was waiting for that -- to re-elect president obama, the campaign national manager, jim messina! [cheers and applause] >> fired up? fired up? fired up? [cheers and applause] that's what i'm talking about. what's going on, philly? well bs greetings and welcome to the largest grass-roots campaign effort in american political history, the 2012 barack obama re-election campaign. thank you for joining us. thank you for joining us for the greater together. we are very excited to have you. let's talk a little bit about what we are building. block by block, person by person, student by student, we are going to build the biggest grass-roots effort in american political history.

it started this summer by 1,400 summer organizers around the country going door to door every day. our fall interns, raise your hands if you've done one of these things. that's what i'm talking about. in the house. thank you very much. over 1,000 fall interns. if you're joining us for our winter internships, thank you. you can go to barack obama.com tonight and apply to be one of those people. they are literally kanging the face of american politic. not too many years ago barack obama did the same kind of organizing on the south side of chicago that you are all doing today. people, when he started out running for president -- i remember those early meetings where people said he can't win and a lot of you joined him and said, no, we're for him, he can win. he went from small in the polls to winning the presidency. people said, how did he do it? person by person, door by door, organizer by organizer. that's what we're building in this campaign. you know, people talk all the

time about it being the most historic campaign in a very, very long time, and it was. in part he was elected by young people across the country. what people don't focus on is there's eight million registered voters 18-21 who weren't old enough last time who will cast their first vote and they're going to do it for barack obama. raise your hand if you're 18-21. [cheers and applause] you all get to seas the future. you all get to be part of this. your older brothers and sisters started it and you're going to complete it. we've talked about and we're going to talk tonight about all the things this president has done and those are important things. historic health care reform. ending the war in iraq and getting people home by the holidays. doing historic don't ask/don't tell. [cheers and applause] those are all incredibly historic achievements, some of them health care took 70 years. wall street reform took 60 years. don't ask/don't tell took almost 20 years. they got done because you elected the right leader.

[cheers and applause] but you all know all the things he's got to get done that we haven't gotten done yet. all the things you care very deeply about. you saw one of those things last week when the president issued an executive order to make student loans easier to get and to repay them easier and have your payments be lower. those are >> and those are the kind of things we're going to get done in the next four years to re-elect barack obama. so i would like to now have barack obama talk for a second. ladies and gentlemen, on the video screen, we have a short message. >> young americans were apathetic. that you didn't have what it takes to change it. that's not what i saw. you helped to build a movement for change. a lot has happened since then that you should be very proud of. we had combat operations in iraq and all of our troops will

be home for the holidays. [cheers and applause] >> it's becoming a reality. all right 1 million more young adults have health insurance because of it. and we put new rules in place for consumers and congress with recklessness on wall street. it's thanks to you. we have so much more to do. the economic crisis the likes of which we haven't seen since the great depression has added to the middle class and made jobs harder to come by, particularly for folks just out of school. this is a moment that demands everything we have got to put our people back to work and build an economy that works for everyone, not just the folks at the top. that's really what the selection is going to come down to. whether we come together to finish the work we started or sit back and watch as the process we have made gets rolled back. i'm asking you to make your choice. i'm asking you to join me. here is the first step.

go to barack obama.com/young americans and say you're in. then get the word out there. tweet it, facebook it, whatever you want to do and ask everybody to get involved in the work that has already started on campuses and communities all across the country. there are lots of things we don't know about next year's election. but something i'm completely sure of is that this movement needs you in it. you're our new generation of leaders and we're stronger together than we could ever be on our own. let's do this. thanks. and be out there! [cheers and applause] >> one of the reasons why president obama was able to bring historic change to the white house is because of the next woman i am going to introduce. every step in the way melanie barnes was next to the president in passing legislation. she is one of the smartest policymakers in the world. i'm proud to call her my friend and one of the great leaders in

our country. ladies and gentlemen, melanie barnes! [cheers and applause] >> thank you, jim. so tonight is about a conversation. so i have a question for you. are we greater together? are we greater together? [cheers and applause] >> i have some more questions for you. when you leave your campuses, do you want to walk into your professional lives in a country that is leaning forward or one that is leaning backward? >> forward! >> exactly. when you think about the economy, do you want an economy that is built to last, one that is creating jobs for the future, jobs like clean energy jobs or do you want one that is built on a bubble, risky financial deals, loopholes, the kinds of an economy that hurt the middle class, that keeps people living in poverty. which one do you want? do you want an america, do you want an america that is

creating more opportunity not less? and an america that regardless of race or ethnicity or gender or sexual orientation allows for opportunity? do you want one that has a functioning immigration system? do you want an america that is an america for every single person to achieve and to climb the ladder of success? i tell you that those are the choices, those are the choices that will be made every day and especially a year from now in 2012. and those are the kinds of choices that this president is making every single day. let me give you some examples of the things that we have been able to do over the past three years. one example, when it comes to education and i'm here to tell you they said it could not be done. they said you will never be able to pull back the subsidies from the banks to pass the largest education bill, the

largest higher education bill since the g.i. bill, but president obama said oh, yes, i did. and we did it. and as a result of that -- thank you. as a result of that, we're talk about billions of dollars to make sure that more students have pelfrey grants and not -- pel grants, and not only do students have them, but they're larger pell grants. it also created the access. you can have the grades, but if you don't have the resources, it doesn't necessarily matter. also, and jim, i just heard jim talking about it. not a sexy name, but income-based repayment, that same bill making sure that you're able to repay your loans more easily. that those loan amounts are capped to 10% of your discretionary income as opposed to 15% of your discretionary income establishing loan forgiveness for students over a shorter period of time and even

less so if you go into public service jobs. so those are just a few of the things we have done in education. health care. people are talking about as though they can't remember what it looked like before when 34 million didn't have access to health care, but because of the affordable care act, we're making sure that they will. we're making sure that many of you up to the age of 26 and your younger siblings are able to stay on your parents' insurance plans until you're able to establish one of your own up to the age of 26. we're also making sure that there is preventive care for people that didn't have it, that preexisting conditions won't mean that you can't get access to health care when you need it the most. those are just a couple of things we have done with health care. we also having moving forward when it comes to the environment. some of the ways that we have done that, historic, doubling the fuel efficiency of cars and

insuring by the year 2025 that americans are saving up to $1.7 trillion. that's trillion with a t, $1.7 trillion that we're having to use less oil. also the investment, $90 billion of an investment to make sure we're standing up solar and wind and biofuels. when it comes to sexual orientation and making sure this is an america for everyone, they said he couldn't do it again, don't ask, don't tell gone. [cheers and applause] >> we're also no longer defending doma, said it's unconstitutional. and i'm here to tell you, this is a personal one for her the hate crimes bill now is law. i'm here to tell you when i started working on that, when i worked in the senate in the mid 1990's, we fought over and over

and over and we kept bumping into a presidency that did not want to sign that bill. well, this one did. so the list goes on and on. but those are the things that we can talk about later tonight. but i'm hoping tonight that not only do you learn more about what we have been doing, but you share with us your ideas, like we said, this is a two away street. this is a -- two-way street. this is a conversation to find out your ideas. you can find out ways to become involved to make sure we're making the right choice in november of 2012. finally, i hope you'll remember that we need a leader who makes decisions for the next generation as opposed to thinking about just the next election. that next generation is you. that leader, president barack obama. thank you so much. [cheers and applause] >> all right, you guys ready to get this party started?

ok so now, i want to bring to the stage our first student, everybody say hi to david lopez! [cheers and applause] >> i have been told that we are already running a little bit behind, so if you guys could keep your answers short and sweet, i think everybody would appreciate that. ok. melody, how would the american jobs act benefit students and young americans? >> great, glad you asked that. >> you're welcome. >> there are a number of difficult ways and we can talk more about it, but just to take us through a few of them, first of all, just putting more money in your pockets. what the president has proposed is a payroll tax cut. in fact, increasing the payroll tax cut that he fought for last december that will insure that more money is in your pockets because more money is going to be in your paycheck. secondly, there is a pathways to work fund in there. we're talking about $5 billion. those resources will go to

summer jobs as well year-round jobs and we know this works. we did this when we passed the stimulus bill and we literally hundreds of thousands of young people, 16 to 24, that were able to get jobs that otherwise weren't. also subsidized jobs, again, hundreds of thousands of people who are able to get jobs we are working with states and localities to make sure they could go to work. so those are just a couple of ways that we're making sure that this works for young people and when you think about it, for those of you who might want to go into education, might want to become teachers or thinking about your younger brothers and sisters back at home, we're proposing ways to modernize schools that will mean we have more construction workers at work, but it will also mean that the average school that is about 40 years old, we talk about educating students for the 21st century, but we're educating people in schools that were built in the last century, we're modernizing those schools, updating the science labs and the technology

labs, also making sure teachers are in classrooms and not at home wondering why they can't teach their students. for those who are going to go out in being one of the greatest job in school, education. we'll make sure that young people are at work. >> great, thank you! [applause] >> david, what can young americans do to help pass this act? >> i think it starts here. a lot of you are college democrats, correct? it starts with your chapters. it starts with what you do at your campus. it starts at the grassroots. you need to go and knock on doors and let people know about the american jobs act and when it first worked for people. when i first started at college, i wasn't sure to continue with my major. i thought i should switch and have more job security in another area of study. i have seen the changes that we have had over the past few years and i have seen the potential for the american jobs act to take it further. middle class families are affected by this as well as students, the young americans

that are here right now. you can do what have i done so far. i have made phone calls and emailed and tweeted people all the time. let your representatives and senators know. they'll be the people in congress and making the decision about the american jobs act. we can't wait for other people to go and just put off time and let this not pass. we can't wait for others. we're young americans that can change the future and be leading it one day. it's important to remember, we can't wait. [cheers and applause] >> all right. so right now, we're going to open it up to the audience. does anyone have any questions? we can take two questions. there we go, over there. this fine young gentleman here with the glasses on. >> yeah. my question is how will the new pay as you earn -- thank you. my name is george rosa, i'm a student here at penn and my question is -- how will the new pay as you earn plan affect us toward taking on loans for

education. >> jump in whoever. >> i'm happy to answer that. a couple of different ways. one, i mention the income-based repayment plan, that's a program that is already in place. so for people who are out there right now and working, take advantage of that. we know there are so many people who could take advantage of that, have their payments capped at 15% of their discretionary income right now and they're not doing it. but for those of you who are sitting right here right now in school, by the time you graduate, because we were able to move forward with pay as you earn, you're going to be able to benefit from a 10% cap on your discretionary income from your monthly payments. that's laterally hundreds of dollars every month that you are going to be able to save, hundreds of dollars every month. and combined with that and the way we were able to do this is we were able to -- we are encouraging people to consolidate their loans. so some people may have these older subsidized loans from the

fells program. others will have, in addition to that, direct loans. combine those under the direct lending program. you will get a decrease in the interest rate on your loan and that will also save you over the course of the life of your loan hundreds of dollars. so there are two things that we have put together. we were able to accelerate the income-based repayment program two years and that means that you're going to be able to benefit from it by the time that you graduate. >> nice. ok. one more question. right over here. >> i'm a high school student and i'm actually a junior right now so i won't be able to vote in 2012. we want to know what can high school students do for the campaign? what do you have in store for us coming up? >> jim, do you want to take that. >> absolutely. we have barack stars, it's a high school organizing program. it's part of greater together. you can go to our website and sign up for it.

we have a whole special organizing campaign on schools. you may not be able to vote, but a lot of your friends can. we have a whole program just designed around high schools that we're real excited that. felicia butterfield who runs greater together for the campaign who is one of the most kick butt organizerses in the united states of america is on this every single day. go tonight to the website and sign up. the other thing you all can do is go to the website, sign up and all that. your facebook, the average american has over 150 facebook friends, so tonight ask all of your friends to join the campaign. ask them all to say i'm in. get on your twitter feed and ask everyone to sign up and say you're in for the campaign. you all are organizers and ambassadors for the president. take some control of this. ask your friends to join the campaign today. >> nice. ok, i think it's time for a twitter question. let's see, and you guys at home watching online, don't forget to send in your questions.

let's see. have you guys sent in any yet with the hash tag greater together, ok, here we go. ok, what message do you have for those students struggling to pay student loans? >> melody. >> those are some of the things and based on the gentleman's question a few minutes ago that we were talking about. we know that this is tough and one of the things the president has pushed on is the fact that we know college tuition and college costs are going up. we are challenging college presidents and others to try to work to bring those down, we know times are tough. that's why we increased the pell grant so that those are grants that students can have that will cover more of their college education. that's why we fought to pass income-based repayment and why we added this pay as you earn program so that on the back end, we can also help students lift that loan burden off of

their backs. we know you're going out, you want to save. you want to buy a house. you want to start a family. so these are the kinds of things that we're doing to try and help students. we're going to continue to push to make sure that this gets easier for students because what you're doing by going to college, going to a community college, getting that additional certification is absolutely the right thing to succeed in our new economy. >> thank you. ok, we are switching topics. we're going to health care. we're going to do a little bit of musical chairs here. say goodbye to david. [cheers and applause] >> next we're bringing up our second student, the lovely elliot griffin. [cheers and applause] >> hi. ok, go ahead, have a seat. right there there you go. ok, now elliot, how has the affordable care act benefited students and young americans? >> first of all, the affordable care act allows us to stay on our parents' health care

insurance until we're 26. that is amazing for a soon to be temple graduate like myself. additionally i have a little brother. he might be kind of stubborn, big sisters deal with that. he was born with asthma and allergies. my parents have the comfort in knowing that once we're all out of the house, he won't be punished by insurance companies simply because he has these preexisting conditions. so the affordable care act is amazing for young americans and it's what we wanted. i was a high school senior who was able to vote for barack obama and cast my first ballot. it was so exciting because i wanted to be on my parents' health insurance until i was 26, in case i want to graduate and start a small business or maybe i want to go to law school. i have that time where i know that i will still be insured and if something happens, i will still be covered by my parents' health insurance. that's amazing. that is one very small part of why we have to get fired up and

ready to go for 2012. >> fired up and ready to go. all right. [applause] >> now melody, can you explain the new law on preventive care? >> sure, in terms of women's preventive or general? >> in general. >> sure, sure, a couple of things. we know that prevention is the smartest thing you can do to a, stay healthy, but, b, also to reduce health care costs. so by passing the affordable care act, we're making sure that preventive care will be covered without cost sharing, that means without additional cost to you, the consumer. we have already, as elliot was saying, made sure that is available to children. we already have made that available to seniors. so seniors are out there and already getting their wellness, their well person check-ups and that is going to help us reduce health care. another thing that we did this year that i think is very, very important for the first time, we asked when we passed the

affordable care act for an organization called the institute of medicine to look at women's preventive health. for the first time we have actually looked at those issues that are very specific to women. they came back with recommendations that were adopted by the secretary and they will go into law next year and that will mean that in addition to things that were covered by health care like mammograms and other annual exams, that we're going to make sure that contraception is available without cost sharing. [cheers and applause] >> when you start a family and we're going to make sure that breastfeeding equipment and other kind of equipment is available so there are a whole host of things that used to be extremely expensive and we know that that was a challenge for health care for women are going to be available to them as part of preventive care. >> very good, thank you. [applause] >> now jim, this is for you a lot of people want to know the answer to this. account president and congress

actually just appeal a law that was legally passed? >> can congress repeal a law? >> yes, can congress repeal a law that was legally passed? >> yes, if they have the wrong president in there. every republican running for president of the united states against barack obama is promising to appeal health care reform and wall street reform. that stuff is going to happen if we elect the wrong person president. that is why you need barack obama as your president. that's why elections matter and they're so important. the change medical melanie is talking about didn't just happen. it took decade after decade of people organizing and working for these issues. when you elected barack obama president, and a whole bunch of you including people in this room fought for health care for two years and they won those rights. those rights were won after very hard battles. what we can't do like the president he is in the video is go back. go back when you can lose your health insurance because of

preexisting conditions. those are the stories that made health care pass. it matters very much who becomes president of the united states. >> great. this is just a reminder for everybody watching online, please tweet your questions using the hash tag greater together. ok, time to open it up to the audience, there you go. this gentleman right here. you want a mic or speak loudly? >> i have a question about -- [inaudible] >> well, the benefits of the health care law that we are preparing to and for and that we want to kick in, we're fighting all of these efforts of people who want to repeal health care as jim was talking about. by then the exchanges will be

set up and up and running and people will be either, for those who are extremely low income stay on medicaid and we're expanding medicaid. others will be able to go into the exchanges and we're providing subsidies for individuals based on income so they'll be able to afford health care, it will be more affordable and also for small businesses to be able to be there as well and also have options and choices. that sits on top of our system. one of the things the president said, if you like the health care that you have, then that's not going to change. so if you have an employer who is covering your health care, that's great. for those who don't otherwise have access, for those 34 million people who don't have access, they'll be able to take advantage of the exchanges and others will be able to keep the benefits that they already have. >> great. one more question. >> i have a question right here. ok. >> my name is nick, i have a

question for jim messina. during the health care debate, we all saw a lot of misinformation being spread and a lot of people were scared about what would happen when health care reform passed. health care reform passed and the world has not ended and people actually are waking up and realizing that this country is a lot better off and there is a lot more protection for people with preexisting conditions. how can we get the word out and help people to understand the great benefits that this law has made in people's lives? >> that is a great question and one that every single day we think about. look, we really believe that organizing is all about person to person stories. the story elliot talked about, her brother, all of you have your personal health care stories. those are the stories that are going to win the day on this. saying to all of your friends who may be questioning what happened with health care, saying to them, look, i can

stay on my parents' health plan until i'm 26. after that i can go to the exchanges. i can't get kicked off because of preexisting conditions, telling all the facts that matter about health care person to person, neighborhood to neighborhood, group to group. that's how we're going to win this fight every single day. that's how barack obama got elected president and that's how we're going to tell the story of health care. we're seeing that every day. now selfishly, go to barack obama.com tonight, say you're in, join the campaign and start volunteering. the other night we opened up our philadelphia office. we had over 600 volunteers the very first night. that was the kind of grassroots campaign that it's going to take to win pennsylvania. it's what we're building every single day. we hope that every single one of you will be in the office next week volunteering. if you can't get down to the office, go to the website and download some things you can do. download our app and start working from home. there is a whole bunch of things we got to do. we have 3 60-some days before the election, it's it sounds like a lot of time, we have a

lot of work to do. sign up tonight and let's start getting it done. >> may i add one more thing. it goes to the gentleman's question about the sky hasn't fallen. not only has it not fallen, today, today 1 million young people have health care that didn't have it before the affordable health care law bill became law. [applause] . it's getting better. the promise that the president made is being kept. >> the one thing i would add, the young man raises a larger issue and whether it's about the health care bill, whether it's about the financial bill. whether it's about the economic recovery act and certainly the american jobs act, there is a ton of misinformation about the president's record that is out there. so when jim talks about going to the website and when melanie starts laying out the facts and elliot gives a personal testimony, we have to fight every day to get the president's message across.

these folks couldn't tell the truth if you gave them the first three later. they will spend every day trying to figure out how to undermine, how to undercut and basically run the president out of the white house. i mean, we just need to call it for what it is. so there will be a fair amount of misinformation, disinformation, and then just the regular old household lies that the other side will be telling in the course of this campaign. when we have truth ambassadors and truth tellers out in the community, out in the streets and also using the social media to get those messages out, knocking down these misinformation campaigns, that's going to help us a great deal on the ground to let people know what is really going on. >> all right. ok. [applause] >> we have time for money more question. >> hi, i have a question.

in the last year we have watched as reproductive rights have come under attack, whether it's the state level or the national level. whether it's attack on abortion or on contraception. i'm wondering what the president is going to do to ensure that all people still have access to these important health care rights. >> that's a great question. [applause] >> that is a great question. that is absolutely a great question. the president has been very clear in his support for reproductive health and reproductive rights. i can give you a specific example of that. i mean last december when we were fighting and we were working on -- last december we were working on the continuing resolution, the president was -- we kept having a lot of pressure placed on the president to do that in a way

that would undermine planned parenthood, an access to resources for family planning. and the president said absolutely not. i'm drawing the line, absolutely not, and push back in the face of everything else he was facing to make sure that people would have access to family planning because it's crazy to believe that if we want women and men to make smart decisions about reproductive health, about their own personal health and when they're going to start their families that we're not going to give them the access to those kinds of resources. he also, while we were trying to pass health care, made sure that we were maintaining the status quo and that those rights and access to those rights would still be available to people. so this is something that you're right, we have been confronting time and time again, but the president has drawn a line and i think a respectful line understanding that people of good conscience will disagree, but this is a

legal and a constitutional right that exists in our ton and people should have access. >> great, thank you. [applause] >> ok, this is just a reminder for everybody at home, please tweet your questions using hash tag greater together. we're going to go to a twitter question right now. ok, how does the affordable care act improve maternal health in the u.s.? mayor, anybody can jump in? >> i'll leave that up to you. >> well, i was mentioning a few of the things that have happened. one, just because of access to health care and preventive care, making sure that a woman who has made a decision that she is going to go forward, she is pregnant. she is going to start a family, having access to a doctor and having access to those renatal visits which are so essential.

also i was mentioning in the women's preventive health care package that in a year will become part of overall health care, making the decision whether or not she wants to breastfeed, being able to do that at work and have access and a place to do that, have access to the kind of equipment that is necessary. so there are many different ways. one is just the overall health of the woman as she is going through her pregnancy, and then also after she has given birth to a child, making sure she has access to resources. that affordable care act also included a provision for home family visits so those for low income parents making sure that they get resources and those who can work with them to ensure the better health outcomes for the infant, that they have access to information as they are trying to raise that infant in the early years. so there are a number of different ways that the

affordable care act tackles that particular issue. >> ok, right, great. we're switching topics, we're going to do a little musical chairs again. bye, elliot. >> thanks. [applause] >> ok, we're going to bring up our next student, graham white. [applause] >> you guys know graham, ok. he is getting mic'd right now, up in a second. the next topic is education. so you guys get your questions ready and remember tweet your questions using the hash tag greater together. hey, graham. >> hey, graham. our first question is for jim. jim, how has president obama improved the quality of education? >> well, there is a million ways. melanie, you take the first part and i'll take the second. >> wow. we have taken a full spectrum view to education. so starting with early education and in fact we just

announced that race to the top for early learning to make sure that we're establishing quality education for those zero to 3. right now you have children entering kindergarten, think about it, 5 years old, you're starting school and you are 60 points behind the rest of your pierce. we -- peers and we got to close that gap and make sure kids are ready to learn when this get to kindergarten. k through 12, a game-changing program called race to the top that encourages states to compete for grant money if they also took on certain kinds of reforms that we're making sure we're turning around low-performing schools. those are schools that turn out 7,000 dropouts every single day. there are 1.2 kids that are dopping out of high school every single year. so we're turning that around, making sure that we're supporting our teachers and leaders in schools, setting college and career-ready standards so that when people finish high school, they're ready for a career or they're

ready to enter college. then i was talking about some of the other things that we have done in higher education to make it easier for you to have resources so that you can start college and complete college, but also when you're done, we're lifting that crushing loan burden or trying to lift some of that off your backs. i could go on, but those are a few of the things. >> this is a great example. i bet most of those things mel just talked about not many of you knew. this is why it's so important to get the information on the website, start talking to your friends about these things. start informing everyone about what this president has done, about what he is going to do the second term. this is why we believe so deeply in grassroots organizing and it's why education is such a huge part of the president's campaign and what he is doing at the white house. >> ok, great. the next question is for graham. tell us your story of how getting a grant helped you get here and why it's important that college is affordable. >> right. you guys all hear me? cool. the issue of student loans is

particularly important for me because the only reason i'm sitting here with the privilege of talking to you guys right now is because of the university of pennsylvania offered me free tuition to be here. otherwise i would have had to take out all of these student loans and all of that bad stuff. i know a lot of people who go to penn have similar stories about receiving generous financial i'd packages from the university. the truth of the matter is, there are students across the country that have to take out what end up being back breaking student loans to make it through four years of college. there are students who earn admission into great schools and some of them can't go because they can't make the money work for them. that is why i am so proud of being a part of this movement starting here in philadelphia and throughout the country to re-elect a president who has done so much for students. as regional director of students for barack obama, i have had the privilege to work with two other remarkable student leaders, andrew silverstein and colin. we have brought this movement to 65 different colleges and

universities in the state of pennsylvania alone. >> nice. [applause] >> we do big things and we're just getting started. just to wrap up, the president made a promise in his state of the union address, i think it was either this past winter or two years ago where he said, he started by saying in the united states of america, no student should go broke because they choose to go to college. he said that he promised that he was going to take definitive action on behalf of students to reduce the burden that we all face and he has. he doubled, since being elected, the money for pell grants as melanie and everyone else has said tonight. he issued an executive loans that made student loans easier to access and pay back. that's real change. i think that just shows how big the stakes are in this election because you have folks on the other side who are saying, you know, we want our cut, cut, cut, and basically reverse

everything the president has done. that hurts us. that hurts the students here across the country. that is why the election, it matters, it matters, it matters. that's why we got to get the president to a second term. >> there you go. [applause] >> ok, this next question is for mayor nutter. can you talk about some of the programs to make college here affordable. >> sure. i think that when melanie talked about not only at the secondary level, the top program having an impact on the k through 12 experience, certainly you see as was mentioned earlier, many of our colleges and universities trying to get away from the loans. we have been talking to the local institutions here trying to increase financial aid from a grant standpoint. we have a number of great colleges and universities, not only here in pennsylvania, but in the tri-state area, 101

colleges and universities. i meet with the college presidents, college and university presidents on a regular basis. we talk about this issue of afford ability. one, we want more young people in philadelphia to be able to attend a college or university in the tri-state area, try to hold on to our folks and tuition often is a major barrier. the mayor's office of education, our philly goes to college program, we are helping young people get access to the grants and trying to stay away from loans and work with our colleges, our universities to also try to keep down those periodic tuition increases. many of our colleges here recently, though, experienced a cut. it wasn't as bad as originally announced, but that also leads to tuition increases. so we need to make sure that not only at the federal level, but also at the state level that we're investing in education and the president is trying to do the right thing, but, again, needs some help

from congress. we should be investing in the american people and certainly in our young people and making college that much more affordable, not just from a local perspective, but from a national perspective as well. >> nice, thank you. [applause] >> melanie, how would a student reform legislation that was introduced last week benefit students? >> well, this is a pay as you earn program which we have talked about some this evening and i think just to underscore this point, we're talking about saving hundreds of dollars every month when you are just starting out in your career. also by consolidating your loans, also decreasing that interest rate and that is going to save you even more money over the life of your loan. we know that loan debt can be crushing, crushing, crushing. i remember when i first started work and i had an office mate and she had a master's degree, she had a law degree.

she would come in once a month with this big file folder of her bills. she had these big loan payments and she would flip through, ok, which bill am i going to pay this movement am i paying my lights? am i paying my electricity? because she was trying to balance that with her loan debt. that's not what we want people to have to do. that's why we are able to take executive action and add to this pay as you earn program so that we could pull forward a program that we had passed a year before so it would be available to you not in 2014, but in 2012 so it's available to you all and we were also able to make sure that you're able to benefit from that lower capped monthly discretionary income level, 10%. so this is -- i can't say enough and i know the president actually had an op-ed out today, you may have even it talking about this. we're going to continue to work on this. it's critical that students get that certification, go to that

community college, go to that four-year institution because over half of the jobs, the fastest growing jobs in our economy require some kind of post-secondary education. what you're doing is right. what you're doing is important. we want to help you. >> nice. ok, we're going to open it up to the audience. who has a question? >> i think we have one right here. >> go ahead. >> hello, my name is khloe luke, i'm from temp many university. you were talking about how you have plans to give money to schools where they have like higher graduation rates or success rates, but there are a lot of school districts that are having problems with teachers and administrators are forging grades and pushing students along even though they're not ready to graduate or even get into like the next level in their schools so what can we do to fix that problem, but also increase the rate of graduation? >> mayor, you want to take that? >> i'm sorry, ma'am, can you

give me the second part of that question again? >> to fix the problem of principals and teachers forging the grades of students on tests and stuff like that. >> cheating issues. one, we have to send a very, very clear message that as much as we're going to push hard for our young people to do better in school, do better on tests, cheating is unacceptable. send a very strong message. whether it's here in philadelphia, we have heard about other issues and a couple other cities, the state is the entity that oversees the review of all of the various tests. we have had some concerns about a couple schools. i do not believe that it is system-wide. we can never allow the pressure, whether it's from the central administration to the principal to a teacher in the classroom, we can never allow that level of pressure to ever

be acceptable, that somehow we're going to help students. you're really not helping the students. you may think that you're helping them. you're really doing them a disservice. if you're worried about yourself and what is going on in your own classroom, we need to make sure you have the proper support. but giving out the answer, teaching to the test, all those other kinds of issues ultimately don't really help that young person. when they go on to graduate, we want to make sure that when you come out of 12th grade, that you're really a 12th grader. that you're reading at grade level that you know what you're doing. when you come to penn or temple or directional or wherever it is you go, you're not going to get run over because you're really not ready. we're working with the commonwealth of pennsylvania to crack down hard on any teacher, any administrator, any principal, anyone who creates an environment where somehow cheating is going on or folks think that this is acceptable.

>> thank you, one more. there we go. >> hi, my name is danielle. i'm from u-penn as well. i just had a question. back in my home state of florida, the governor said stem courses really need to be focused on because according to him, no one ever did anything with an anthropology degree. so i was just wondering with the direction the country is headed in, with the support president obama has for education, if it's going to be tailored toward specific subjects while herding students in other disciplines or students from a broad area will be able to pursue their goals and succeed in whatever field they have? >> melanie. >> happy to answer that as a proud history major. [applause] it seems to be working out ok.

two things i'll say to that. one, the president does believe that we have to pay attention to stem issue courses and we have a whole initiative around stem and trying to encourage, focus on science and technology, engineering, and math. however, if you look at our blueprint for education, one of the things that we describe is the importance of broadening the curriculum. that it's important, and the president talked about it during the last campaign, i think you may remember he got a little pushback from people on the other side when he said learn a foreign language or two or three. so we're trying to encourage that. it's important to know history. it is important to know geography and geology. all of those things are important to a well-rounded curriculum as people go out in the world and a way of thinking and an approach to education. those are the kinds of things that we're encouraging in this blueprint that we put out and as we also try and lift standards in math and in reading because right now,

we're 17th in the world when it comes to our reading. and we're 24th in the world when it comes to our math scores. that is not going to allow us to be number one. we got to get those up. we got to make sure that students are well-rounded and have the full curriculum that i think that you're talking about. >> nice. ok, we can actually take two more audience questions. other side. we have a question on the other side. there we go. >> my name is gabe delaney from penn. i have a question about whether or not education or the issue of education in this country is more a structural question than just something that should be thrown money to? many politicians and presidents have thrown money at the issue of education and have expected it to improve. while i agree entirely about the pell grant stuff and i'm a supporter, i don't mean this question to be controversial, i'm just saying. teachers have an incentive to

work just towards their tenure and then be protected by teachers unions not to necessarily have the same level of effectiveness that they may have in the course of the five years that may have had at one school and then it sort of drops off. my question is more about how do we fix teachers' initiative to teach those students in a way that i guess makes education as both klein receive and as effective as it really should be? >> mayor, you want to take that one? >> sure. >> we love the support that we get from president obama and the administration. secretary duncan, arnie duncan is doing a great job on the education front. you know as well as i do that while we get federal resources to make things happen, the magic of education happens in the classroom and it happens locally. the federal government does not have direct jurisdiction over

the school district of the city of philadelphia or the other 499 school districts alone in the commonwealth of pennsylvania. so we need to make sure that, one, we have qualified, certified teachers in the clat class room with our young people, that they're getting the resources that they need and the proper support and motivation to help that young person live out their god-given potential. i think that what the president did do, though, and the secretary with race to the top, whether you got one of those grants or not, the standards that were set, pennsylvania, philadelphia at least changed many of its standard in order to be able to compete for the race to the top grants and they were good things for students. so the federal government can fund initiatives, can put out standards, can get people to kind of go after competitive grants, but we need to make sure that local elected officials at the city and state

level are providing the proper support and funding behind education. as i mentioned earlier, the school district of philadelphia as a result of the current economic environment from the state took a $200 million hit in funding for education. we should be funding education and investing in young people, giving the resources to our schools, not taking them away. when i think teachers and parents and students see that kind of activity at the local and state level, it is not a particularly inspiring. >> ok. one more? >> hi, my name is megan mcginnis and i'm a student at penn. i'm from new hampshire. with no child left behind, by next spring, over 90% of our public schools will be labeled as failing. what has the president done and what can he continue to do to support the schools that are struggling to meet the

competitive standards that we would like to achieve? >> that's a great question. >> it is a great question and i'm glad you asked that. just a few weeks ago, second duncan and the president announced that we were using the flexibility that we have under the elementary and secondary education act. right now it's commonly known as no child left behind. that's what the last administration named it and that's the reform law that they passed. we're using that flexibility to off states an opportunity. and that opportunity is if you meet the standards that we're putting in front of you, we're going to waive certain requirements. that goes to that adequate earlier progress standard that you're talking about. you're absolutely right. we are labeling schools as failures and many of them are not fractures. in fact, we had a principal the day that we made that announcement, at his school, he has graduated 100% of his seniors three years in a row, but his school is called a failure. that's crazy.

it didn't make any sense. we got to get rid of those labels that don't make any sense. we got to get rid of what mayor nutter is talking about, instances where people are trying to teach to the test so they can meet a standard. states that said you set the standard here, so what are we going to do to try and meet it, i don't know or you set the number in terms of failing schools here. so in order to not have that number of failing schools, we're just going to lower our standards so we don't have any failing. it's great for the states, awful for the students. the flexibility package that the president and the secretary announced recently gets rid of those bad incentives and instead puts in place incentives going to the young man's question a few minutes ago that it will be encouraging of a smart education system, one that is based on reform, not just putting money behind it, but dollars that are associated with smart reforms and giving states and districts more flexibility so that they

can work with parents, they can work with students, they can work with teachers so people can get a college and career-ready education. >> great, thank you. i have a twitter update. i have just been told that adam levine from maroon 5, any maroon 5 fans out there. adam will he vin and president barack obama have tweeted, so if you want to follow greater together, follow, it's time for a twitter question. ok, universities like ours are seeing cuts in state aid. what can be done on the federal level to combat rising tuition? anybody? >> well, what we have seen and the college board just put out a report about a week ago, the next time we made the pay as you earn announcement, college costs have been going up, up,

up. because of what we have done, because of the american opportunity tax credit, because of that expense of pell grants, we have been able to try and keep net the costs to families and to students about even. but we know that people are also taking out more loans to try and address that issue. graham was just talking about that. so well continue to try and keep the american opportunity tax credit in place. we will continue to fight for pell grants. please know that in congress, we are fighting that fight every day because they want to cut back, republicans want to cut back on pell grants and the expansion that the president was able to put in place. also this pay as you earn program that we are talking about tonight. all of those things are efforts to try and keep college costs and the burden of college costs down. but at the same time, we know we need that expansion in the economy to help states as they're trying to juggle their responsibilities and we're watching tuition prices go up.

>> we don't ever want to forget that states still have their responsibility to state colleges, state-related colleges and universities and the like and what i want to strongly encourage you to do is to also make sure we don't let our state-elected officials off the hook. obviously, there is a role for the federal government, but everyone has to do their fair share. we need to make sure that states are not offloading their costs and their financial responsibilities literally right on your back. and so make sure you stay in touch with your state reps, state senators, and certainly the governor's office from whatever jurisdiction you may be from. states need to make sure they're still investing in all of you. >> i couldn't agree with you more. the president actually made that challenge to college presidents and others last year in the state of the union address. thank you for saying that. >> great. thank you you guys for your participation. can we get some closing

statements from our panelists. melody, do you want to go first? >> i will say thank you, thank you, thank you for being here tonight. i know that you all have lots of burdens, lots of busy schedules. you're in school. thank you for being here. thank you for caring about these issues because your engagement, your participation will change the shape of this next election and ultimately it will change the shape of the country. so thank you for being so involved and thank you for caring about the work that we can do together. >> i would say greater together is your campaign. the more we can all work together, i want you to take control of this campaign to be part of it. please sign up, volunteer, give us whatever time you have and we will take whatever we can get. thank you for what you are doing. thank you for being a part of this and thank you for helping re-elect barack obama as the president of the united states of america. [applause]

>> ike i said before, we know what the stakes are. we are a little over 12 months away from this election. there are so many different ways to get involved. we got to win this thing. there is so much on the line. whether you're at penn, getting involving with the penn democrats or in the state of pennsylvania, get involved with students of barack obama. there are so many ways to get involved. i'm looking forward to working with some of you guys over the next year. >> all right, graham. >> two things, won, if you're in philadelphia there is also an election next tuesday. [applause] >> make sure you vote next tuesday. and then for the next year, we're going to work very, very hard. normally i would say, i'm going to say but i'm going to give you a second part. i certainly want you to vote for president barack obama. but when you think about that, you are really voting for yourself. this is in your self-interests.

president barack obama is our best choice, is our only choice to lead this country, not only through the worst recession since the great depression, but out of it and into a much brighter future. my word for you, vote. thanks a lot. [applause] >> i think we all learned a lot and got a lot of information. we all know what we have to do over the next year and after. get out there and vote. get as many of your friends to vote. thank you for having me and i'm throwing it back. [applause] >> let's give it up for democratic strategist melanie barnes and our wonderful campaign manager, jim messina. [applause] >> and to michael nutter for hosting this event and all of our student panelists. they were amazing. thank you, guys, so much. and of course, i want to thank everybody who joined us tonight in philadelphia, everyone who joined us online. thanks for making greater

together hash tag trend, we appreciate it. i knew you weren't let me down. as you leave tonight, this doesn't end with a tweet or a facebook post, this is where it starts. this is the beginning of the conversation. we want to you go online and sign up, barack obama.com. take your seat at this table. make this movement your own. text us, shoot us a text we want to follow up with you. the number is 62262 and shoot us greater together and your zip code. we'll follow up with you anywhere in the nation to get you involved. you know, the other thing we got to do is we got to make sure that we're showing our leaders that they're watching them and they need to listen to you. we got to stand up and show folks that young americans like you care about our country's future and that we're not going to go backwards or let it benefit only the people at the top or ignore your voices. we need you. we need you to sign up. we need you to volunteer in your communities, your campuses. we need to get your friends to col tier, too.

more than ever, this is about choosing the kind of america you want to help build and we can't do it without you. thank you, have a great night. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> up next, "the contenders." tonight, adlai stevenson. tonight, adlai stevenson.