as such, i think the onus will be increasingly on him to bridge the credibility gap which is increasing between the king and the public rather than entrust government with doing so until such a time when jordan will have political party-based culture and government and sort of the ownous or the responsibility and accountability can fall on the government. i think much of that challenge is going to rest on the king's shoulders in the foreseeable future. let me stop with that. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> thank you very much.

>> thank you. let me start with some remarks on the initial reforms before i look more closely at the king of more ok owe -- moracco. we are seeing what's happening in egypt. we are seeing what's happening in libya. we are seeing what's happening in syria. these are countries which are devastated which can lead to a long series of conflict before the countries settle down. so before the monarches can institute reforms, the reforms can become very overwhelming. the problems we are seeing, that

we seem to be witnessing with the arab monarchies at this point, unless there is a lot of pressure from the law, they don't see the incentive or they don't feel the time pressure as marwan was saying, to try to introduce those changes now. you have vast amounts of power and so on. why make your life more complicated by giving away some of this with organized political parties and so on? so what we are seeing is that in many cases, and this is not just in the arab world, monarchies don't want any other government to introduce reform when it is almost too late. in other words they start moving

when the mind has been set and they cannot manage the process. there is a caution ri tale here if you look at the monarchies now in the case of bahrain, where in the initial response to the protests in bahrain, the situation has come now where it seems clear to me that nothing short of a real transition for the monarchy is going to decide the process. in other words, the monarchy itself is in a corner. it is in a position of losing much of its prerogative and in danger of losing its position completely. it is a pit of a situation that we see, whenever there is a --

people know essentially, people who follow these things, know that before long there are going to be starving people, and yet nothing is done, unless the people actually start into the streets. there is a parallel here in that the monarchies really don't move until something happens. what is happening at this point is either unlst willingness to move, which characterizes the gulf monarchies, or there is extreme caution in the reform policies, which manwar is outlying in the case of jordan and i'm going to outline in the case of moracco. all these monarchies know they are in danger. in other words, there is no monarchy, no other government in the arab world that is saying this is not -- the kind of

uphevals that have chaken other countries cannot take place in my country. it is clear that all the monarchies are worried about what is going on in other countries. they may pretend that everything is fine, but they are extremely worried. for example in saudi arabia where the king praised the population essentially for not rising up and for not going out in the streets and protesting. at the same time the king is giving incredibly high amounts of money to the population which shows they are worried about what might happen there. the other situation that we see is that while none of the monarchy -- monarchies, particularly the gulf monarchies, have used significant reforms in their countries, more and more they

are reacting to other countries saying they should introduce major reforms. but all the arab monarchies have come out telling syria that they have to make changes. in other words, there seems to be an underlying theme here that reform is necessary, but not yet at home, but not wise at home. so it is a paradox cal -- par adoxical reaction that we are seeing. first of all, talking about morocco, because it is in many ways a very interesting example. in morocco the king has tried to stay ahead of the protests.

within two weeks the king went to television and announced a new constitution would be drafted. and he did so. he gave the committee a few months to prepare the constitution, and the constitution was presented to the king to sign. which was probably easy because it was written by a small committee of experts. and the constitution was overwhelmingly approved by the population. i think the moroccan government may have gotten carried away when they said the yes vote was 98.5% which kind of rings alarm bells, because i don't think anyone wins anything by 98.5%.

but there was no doubt there was support for the new constitution. because people supported the king, and the king presented the new constitution and therefore people voted for the new constitution. the problem -- the king moved very boldly. the problem problem is that the constitution as enacted -- it is a big word, constitution. it is a constitution that could very much lead to a real turning of the power of the king. could lead not to a constitutional monarchy or a parliamentary monarchy but could lead to a monarchy where the parliament has substantial power. but it could also also very much leave the stat usteous quo relatively untouched. there are loopholes in the constitution that lieu -- allow

the king to maintain most of the power. whether or not the king will use this loophole is going to depend on how the -- whether the political parties, whether the parliament allows him to do so. the parliament probably will allow the king to retain the power. what are the loopholes? the king is keeping for himself various areas where he is in charge of the decision. three areas. one is the religion. the second is security. the third is decisions of strategy. these are the loopholes you can drive a truck through. because straseegtiegic importance is very much in the eyes of the beholder. you know, education is not an

area, but there should be a proposal for a complete revamping of the curriculum, the king could declare that is a strategic decision and he's going to maintain control of it. so what that means is the king can maintain control on anything he wants by declaring it something of strategic importance. the question is the political process. are they going to allow him to do so or will they push back if he tries to use as much power as he has done in the past. the elections have not taken place. the elections are now scheduled for november. we don't know the election results. but there are two indications

that suggest to me that probably there is not going to be an active parliament. there are two main keppeders in the election. one is a coalition of parties that is organized around the party for modernity. it is someone very close to the king. under the new constitution, the king pulls an individual from the winning coalition and makes them prime minister. what happens in this case is that the king's friend becomes the prime minister, and that is not a particularly encouraging way to see the power of the prime minister vis-a-vis the

power of the government. the party that gets the plurality of the vote is the party for justice, which is the islamist party. it is a party that tells you today clearly that the main goal in this electric is to complete the integration of the slammists in the political system. well, a party that has its major goal to put its integration in the political system is probably not going to upset the apple cart too much. it is probably not going to push too hard.

the problem in moracco, the -- morocco, after the king has taken the initiative, is probably going to be very much like it was before. why is this a risk? it is a risk because there is -- you know, in morocco, you have another political organization that has so far stayed under the fighting lines of the political system. it is very much opposed to not only the constitution that the king has presented, the new constitution, but from time to time they are beginning to question the legitimacy of the monarchy as a whole. no one knows exactly how much

support this organization has. it has never competed in the election because it refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the moroccan base. it is by far the largest political organization in the country. by moving so cautiously, the king may end up -- he has acertainly won the first round, if you want. he has maintained much of his power. he has maintained the flex e flexibility, but he may find himself in a very different type of position. the real test of how successful the king has been when we see the voter turnout. moroccans for several election cycles have now expressed their dissatisfaction by just not voting. the last electric was about 37% of voters cast a vote.

over one-third of the ballots cast were protest votes. we may see a similar situation. if we see low turnout, we will see that he has not been as successful as he thought he was. he is staying ahead of the protests in managing the process ahead, but like many other leaders, he may have to deal with a very dissatisfied population rather than being able to produce the result he wants. let me move on for a moment to one more country, and it is bahrain.

bahrain is, in a sense, a caution ri tale. it is the opposite of what has been happings happening in -- a -- in other countries. i think they are missing an opportunity to move more decisively. the opportunity is still not gone. the legitimacy is very high. in bahrain we have a very different situation. in other words, the monarchies have pretty much lost their legitimate legitimacy in the eyes of the population. even the most modern members of the opposition are calling for the constitutional monarchy. that is a mob amonarchy where the king does not have any power. where the king rules but does not govern.

they are of course asking for the overthrow of the monarchy completely. tomorrow, 7:00 in the morning, washington time, the commission will present the results of this investigation on how the country handles the protest. briefly, for those of you that have not followed bahrain closely, first of all, bahrain has a long history of political convulsion of stri fefment where the population does not have much push against the monarchy. there was a 10-year period of upheaval during the 199 owes -- 1990's. finally they reached some agreement. and at the beginning of the

year, as protests broke out in other arab countries, the protests in bahrain started again. we will know more clearly. so far we have, you know, they will say one thing and the monarchy says another thing. the report that comes out tomorrow is supposed to be the definitive study done by an independent commission from outside bahrain that will tell how the -- what actually happened. i think judging on the way in which the government and the embassy here is becoming proactive in telling everybody their goal is to larne from the mistakes, i think their vote

will be critical of the government. we will know more tomorrow. clearly, the bahrainis are worried. no one has seen the report yet. i think it is not a good report. the point is, the thing that faces the bahrain monarchy, by honing in saudi troops and troops from other countries are now in the country have failed to maintain all this, by doing this the monarchy has lost a lot of its legitimacy and has lost its capacity to introduce informed reform.

the kind of reform by the sheer population will be different. let me stop here, and then we can open it up. >> thank you for giving context to what monarches can do with their time, and giving an example of a country like morocco where the king seems to be leading with reform from above and perhaps political change and a consumer -- country like bahrain that has clearly missed the boat, as it were. i turn it over now to jon alterman. >> thank you very much. it is very nice to be mere at carnegie.

i want to commend carnegie for looking at this. we got lazy because the last time we had the fall of the monarchy in the middle east was more than 40 years ago, and we all had a sense this problem had been solved. the ability of monarchies had been solved. i think what we have seen in the last year caused us to reinvestigate it, and i commend you for doing so. it seems to me there are three pillars on which arab monarchies and other monarchies rest. i always find sort of a hard concept too grasp. it always feels to me like i never quite understand what people are talking about when they talk about the king. the way people talk about the king, the way people are educated to talk about the king or not to talk about the king are deeply engrained in societies ruled by kings.

it takes going to morocco and jordan and a number of the arab states that you understand, it is not just the language, there is clearly something else in there that is deeply part of the educational system, deeply part of the religious structure, and there is a way that the kings in this region enjoy a serious comprehensive legitimacy which is foreign to us coming from nonmonachical systems. i think part of being a king in this part of the world is the king is an arbiter. the king does not fight. that keeps the king pure. the king is sort of like a crooked referee. he throws a call every once in a while toward the side he favors,

but nobody doubts the authority of the king to be the judge of what ais inbounds and what's out of bounds. i think kings that lose sight of that role, as the shaw of iran did, end up k former kings. you want to have a ferment within the system. subsidiary to that, or related, all these are related, is the confusion of power in monarchies. we think of kings as absolute rulers. kings can do whatever he wants. that's not the way arab monarchies work. in many cases they try to diffuse power. they try to give power to relatives. my friend wrote a book called "all in the family."

a senior member of the royal family is the defense minister, the interior minister, and the foreign minute store of every g.d.p. state. either that is a whacky coincidence or there is something in the structure of how this works is you want close relatives running these things. part of that is close pate ronnage. you can get money out. if you are a senior member, you have a stake scomprks there is an advantage to having a -- and also you have sort of an incoherence because a number of people in society have a senior royal fighting for my interest. a shaw is an example who held it all too closely. he had too clear a plan where he wanted to lead iran. he did not have enough

incoherence in his government, and as a consequence of that, it was too easy for people so -- to say, i have no stake in this system. clearly, if a successful monarchy we see the monarches use the family, they use money to coopt important people and tribes and groups that a large number of people feel they have a stake. again, the monarchy is the referee. the other thing related is money. monarchs tend to have money they put around here and there. it is not only employed within government it is employed between governments. as you saw, the saudis looked at the neighborhood and not only put $130 billion, that's 30% of g.d.p. into saudi arabia. $10 billion to the armanis. who knows what the jordanians will get. there is an interest among all

the monarchies in preserving other monarchies in a sense that you can use money to help do this. money helps lubricate the system. if you can't find enough money, you have to find other ways to lubricate the system. it seems to me, for all of this, where the public fits in, if you look at the polling numbers, there are generally not overwhelming polling numbers saying we need democracy. some want a greater voice, but if you look at a country like kuwait, the parliament is not a great advertise foor the better results you get -- for this is a better result with the monarchy as without one.

the last hospital built in kuwait was 1976. if you look down the gulf, you have rulers that have presided over this incredible wealth and opportunity and travel and all the kinds of things people want. my sentence is for many people they want better outcomes. they don't necessarily need to vote. they don't have anymore faith in democratic systems than the 81% -- 91% of americans that disapprove what congress is doing. people want better outcomes. to my understanding they don't care as much about the outcomes to get there. we could argue the only way to get there is representative government, but i think to a

certain extent that is not something solved in the arab world. we see the pre-emptive effort to get people to announce the intention of giving people the right to vote. in u.a.e. they hand-pick the people allowed to vote for the government. the government picks the people that can vot for the government. they expanded that considerably in the last round. very low turnout. about 25%. there seems to be a commitment to give more people to vote. they have said they will expand the vote as well. it is a pre-emptive move driven by demand. it seems to me in many cases

that is something poorer states have tried to do because they haven't had the easy salve of money to solve the problem. i think what most masterfully used the franchise and political process to sort of regulate the political space in the country is morocco. the king of morocco has done a masterful job of more than a decade of always being on the verge of fundamental reform. there is always a latest and greatest that is going to really change things. i remember in 2004 there was a decentral zation of power that was touted. i'm not saying these things are nothing. they are real. they have effect. but the effects are always longer term, more subtle than they are initially announced to be. i think by doing this, the way the king does this, the king

decides what are the issues? how are the issues gade? who are the people that decide the issues. and the public because the king has so much legitimacy, the public trusts the king to do this. it is an effective way of managing public demands. part of the reason the king was able to issue the constitution so quickly is because people have been talking about the constitution. not because people have been demanding a constitution but because people decided we should be serious about a constitution. there is already an elite discussion that can help keep that debate down. i think one of the other things the king has done effectively, i'm not sure we 100% agree on this, it seems that one of the things the king has done by having a legal set of islamists in politics and an illegal set outside of politics is he puts the islamists in power. there are people that say i have

nothing to do with the system. there are people that say we will work with the system. part of what that does is that it means islamists never overwhelm the system. you could argue it is brilliant, you could argue that's not what is really going on. it seems to me that part of the strategy here is regulating who can participate in debate and how they participate in debate as a way of maintaining control over how the system works. to move on to bahrain, it seems to me that bahrain is a terrible situation for jordan. let me tell you why i think that's true. in bahrain you have 30 pevert population -- 30% of the population that clenks clings to the monarchy. in jordan you have perhaps 40% of the population which feels

that it belongs to the state, and the state belongs to it. and for those of you that haven't had conversations with jordanians in government service and military especially, there really is a sense that i've gotten that palestinians are interlopers, they are busy making millions of dollars in the private sector while real jordanians do the hard work much building. it strikes me as a sort of eerie echo that many sunis have in bahrain that they are the ones surve serving in the police and the army and others are busy out doing their thing, but they are not wholly bahrainians the way palestinians are not wholly jordanians. and one of the things that worries me is that the feeling i

increasingly get, is that the king identifies more with some of his subjects than others. he's not above the palestinian east bank phrase but is part of it. i believe there are lots of ways to divide the jordanian politics, but it seems to me you have an east bank elite and a west bank elite deeply died to business. -- tied to business. the two of them see each other as threatening the nature of the state rather than see themselves as inherent parts of it. all that, i think, suggests the need for politics to help lead it. it seems to me the report from everything i've seen in writing it is that any report will be a political document. it is intended to be a political document. it is not a criminal indictment.

as much fact-finding as one can do sitting at the ritz carlton with a lot of people who weren't in bahrain very much, it is intended, this goes back to the first the point, it is intended to enhance the power of the king within bahrain. when i was in bahrain a little more than a month ago, the perception was that the king had become the third or fourth most powerful person in the country. that the guys in charge of military had more power, that the prime minister had extraordinary power. the king was third or fourth in the power structure. this is intended, others i understand it, to give the king a way to reis sert his centrality. this is intended as a way to

help the king get more of a central role. but the king of bahrain is dependent to be the ash ter and because of really -- arbiter, and because of a breakdown in the politics, a breakdown in managing the system between a suni population that feels strained from the shia population, it is that breakdown which marginalized the king and the political past of reasserting his position as arbiter is a caution ri tale of how politics can get away from you in divided societies which is what we're seeing in jordan and other places in the region. >> thank you very much, jon, for that rich sense of comments and insight. you have about a half-hour for q and a and there are microphones on all different parts of the

room. >> it seems that in jordan you have an imbalance between on the one hand the minority and majority of east jordanians who have most of the power. the second question is the move by the monarchy to have some kind of overture to hamas and relate that to the king. >> a few more questions to the

person in the back. >> my question, first of all, thank you very much. i enjoyed the conversation about top-down reform and the process fects expects. i want to ask a question about bottom-up demand in these countries. we talked about apathy in morocco. what could potentially trigger the kind of magnetic poll of protest movement that we've seen in other places in the region? >> one more question for this round? here in the front? >> thank you. jim michael p l i have a principle focus on the rule of law. it seems to me that this top-down, and it is related to the previous question, i think, has to interact were -- interact with a civil society that has some values of things like equality of treatment, a belief

that the institutions of governance and justice can make a positive difference for the society, and where you have the different groups contending and competing in acceptance of the idea that if you are east bank you get reated differently than if you are west bank. you get treated differently if you are a woman than if you are a man. these divisions in society, and a skepticism, which i've found in talking to people in the region, a skepticism about whether these reforms are modern zation or whether they are really transpour mational -- transformational in the society. some of these reforms, like the constitutional process have not been very transparent or participatory. how does civil society have a culture that will encourage a

reform process into this? if it doesn't, it isn't going to be a sustainable process. >> the traditional relationship between the different sectors in society and the regime is changing. today it is a fact that most of the people on the street are east jordanians. part of the population has consciously decided not to go to the street, because they don't want to end up being blamed for what is going on. they don't want to be rid of the rights they have. for many reasons they have not gone to the streets. it seems to me this traditional formula where you have a system

where you buy loyalty with favors, is coming to an end. in other words, there isn't a degree of satisfaction that was there before. from that part of society, which now sees that the state is setting its axis and the state is moving away from a privileged few at the expense of others. i firmly believe that if a reform process is to succeed in jordan, it has to be -- we alone today can't creditably claim that he represents all the sectors of society, those that are east jordanian and those of

palestinian original yifpblet he can creditably claim thafment he can not alone introduce the reform process that is not incloastclusive torks go to your question. any reform process, i think that applies not just to jordan but to the rest, that is written by the government and then handed over to people and says, this is it, guys, is not a process that is going to work. if it is not developed by the different sectors of society themselves, it has no chance of succeeding. i mean, that's a necessary but not sufficient condition, if you want. we have a successful experiment in jordan of writing such an inclusive blueprint after the agenda in 2005 when old sectors of society, political, social,

did participate in the writing of the document. then of course it was put on the shelf because the system thought it was too far reaching. today the national agenda is out-dated. today people are calling for more than the national agenda. when there was any talk about any constitutional amendment. today already we have 42, and people think, you know, it is not enough. you need to do more. so a participatory process is indeed a must. it is a sign of the seriousness of the regime. a constitutional amendment committee, although if introduced would work in jordan, one of the major criticisms of course is that it has no opposition members. none whatsoever. that's -- you know, that's not credible in my view.

the question about the monarchy and hamas, there is no question that the regime in jordan is warming up to hamas more than it used to. by happen to believe that political islam, i think, needs to be included and needs to be talked to. without talking to political islam in the riege -- region, you are excluding a powerful sector of society. i believe in a political islam movement that is peaceful, but i think that's with regard to the arab-israeli conflict. it is not useful nor, in fact, credible to exclude any party. can we imagine a situation where you have a peace agreement with israel without hamas involvement? it is just not going to work in my view.

but a lot of people have interpreted that to mean that hamas is going back to jordan, is going to open offices in jompled i have no way of telling whether this is true or not. the official position of the government is that this is not true and there are no plans to bring back hamas to jordan. finally, the question by mr. alterman, this is the question of arab monarchies face. so far the overwhelming majority of the political and bureaucrat players around the regime in arab monarchies are telling these leaders, these monarches, don't worry. you know, the number of protesters in the street in jordan is no more than 5,000 at best. therefore you have no nothing to worry about. and of course the concert

argument is, don't wait until the 5,000 becomes 30,000 because then it will be too late. the best way to avoid such a situation where the streets become the pacesetter is a reform process brought about which, in my view, is totally doable in jordan, but then the monarch and the system would have to change or adjust the traditional relationship between the regime and the public. rule of law has to apply. everybody has to see whether they are east jordanian or palestinian. they have to see they are being treated fairly. i think as people see that, and people see a credible reform process, that might take five or 10 or 15 years, but if they see a credible system that is

participatory and is being implemented rather than just talked about and then put on the shelf, if they see one that is credible, i think people are patient. but what people people have stopped being patient about is reform that is not followed up with implementation. >> thank you. marina or jon any comments? >> sure. first of all, i would like to point out, there is no arab monarchy that in that -- secondly, a push from the bottom is necessary for reform from the top to be implemented. in other words no one is going to just out of the blue start implementing reforms if they

don't feel that there is a push for it. the problem s. many of the arab monarchies, with the exception of jordan have tried to respond to unrest in the countries by essentially trying to buy off the population. i think -- by and large, the position of the monarchs is they can stay on top of the situation without having to give in to pressure. but they know why they are

acting the way they are acting. concerning the participation, yes, i think it is crucial. but it is not going to come if you have moral reservations. in the case of the monarch. they decide to make a radical constitution in the writing process a quote unquote participatory process. so they use this other mechanism . they are supposed to be the one that provides, that allows the civil society to make a change. it would never happen. they would have to make the submission. they were never consulted again. i think the problem there is, i don't want to say it was their fault, but the fact is, they were not organized enough to really force the hand of the

king for him to take into consideration what they wanted. so the bottom line here is, reform from the top is only going to come if there is sufficient push from the bottom. the problem is the push from the bottom -- there has to be compromise. >> two quick points. i think what drives the demand for different political sims is a sense a different political system will get better results. so to the extend tent that people think a more democratic system or representative system will give them better results in terms of justice, economics, and other things, that drives people toward it. to the extend tent that they see democratic systems in iraq and elsewhere leading to chaos and

social conflict, that is a disincentive to pursue them. another piece of this important to keep in mind is that liberal voices that push for a more representative government are not the ones who always capture the government that becomes more at the point representative after wards. there is something -- a sort of unfortunate passivity for many liberals. you look at how egypt played out. there is a whole group of activists in cairo that don't have links to the broader country. they don't have links outside of cairo. we have seen other parties, less liberal, that have extensive national networks. part of opening up this system means you have to do politics in a serious way. i think one of the things monarchies have been ex successful in doing, is they keep both the religious

conservatives and the social liberals under their wings, protect them against each other, and become the arbiter. that in many ways, protects the centrality of the monarchy and makes both sides fearful of what really happened when you have a more democratic system and it ends up continuing the system rather than opening up to political reform. >> thank you, gentlemen. let's take another round of questions. >> thank you. margeurita ragdul with the -- i'm wondering if the monarchies are damned if they do and damned if they don't in that no government, certainly the monarchies, have not had a long experience of really working in

a democratic fashion. i'm wondering if any government in the middle east now can manage the unrealistic expeck tage of -- expectations of infiniti prosperity. much of what they are speaking goes to what mr. alterman was talking about in the sense of a better life. i am wondering if they can get that even with the reforms that these governments will do. thank you. >> thank you. >> dr. mausher, you mentioned in your remarks about the jordanian situation. i wonder if you could explain more about where you see that going and how it might end up to affect jordan. if there are no other questions, let's go to our panelists and go in reverse order.

>> my sense is that on the one hand oil exporting states are in eye good position because of where oil prices are. that means they don't have to do what many of them did in the 1990's when oil prices were lower and you have to start thinking about all kinds of political views. i think what happens in iraq and what happens in egypt and what happens in libya and we're still going to see what kinds of transitions we have when, and think both in syria and yemen they are coming. how those play out will have a dramatic effect over the next five years on demands for opening up systems. because if, you know, unwrapping the package means all the worms get out, people are going to leave the thing wrapped up.

also, where oil prices are for the next 10 years has a profound effect on how much demand there is for change because either people will feel greater prosperity or less prosperity or people will feel it is growing at the right rate. if i knew where oil prices were going over the next 10 years i would be much wealthier than i am. it seems a nontrivial barrier that we don't really think about in general. the higher oil prices are, the more can con strains political demands and political demand in oil exporting states. the lower they are, the more it forces change. that's beyond my ability to project. to your question, i think there is a sort of regional recipient -- regional interest in what people see in the region. i know they have projected

images in framing the discourse of how this all works. i think that most of the g.c.c. states have decided they have seen enough of popular revolution demanding change. and my own judgment is that they are going to be looking for solutions in countries which do not involve negotiating with the street and instead will involve forces coming in and establishing control and making deals with people from on high rather than opening up a messy process of negotiation. that's a gut sense. i think if you look at how the countries are looking at yes, ma'am -- looking at yemen and looking at seriousia, i think that's what i see. i think one of the reasons i think they find egypt so

disturbing right now is because they don't know where it is headed. egypt is the center of gravity for the region. in a sense, egypt is going to collapse into competing demands is very threatening to a lot of these countries. they see their relations within the region and more broadly in the country the kind of effect egypt might have from morocco all the way through to iraq. >> thank you. >> i am not also convinced the problem for these countries are going to be unrealistic expectations. i think people need to know there is not going to be prosperity. i was covering the transition in south africa. everyone was saying the country will be bankrupted because the african population is going to expect to be paid at the same salaries as the whites were receiving. of course that was simply not feasible because of the way the

whites were paid such high salaries is the african population would take a very low salary. people knew there was no way much balancing the two. either you say, yes, there are expectations, you watch walk around with cars and you bus people no matter where they go, but by and large, the countries have tried to solve the problem not by making political reform but by making economic concessions. for example in egypt two or three years before mubarak was ousted there was a lot of small protests all over the country. as long as they were kept to strictly economic, the

government could not give in. i would argue it is not so much an unrealistic expectation but it is the governments that have saved money rather than facing the problem of reform. that is something that in the long run these countries have huge problems. not even countries that pay off people still haven't solved that problem. particularly young people on the dole does nch expect trouble. >> i think whether you are excited or worried about the arab spring, i never like to call it the arab spring from day one. it is because this all depends on the time priss many -- prism that you are looking at. this romantic notion that need

immediately these people overturned their autocratic regime to almost instantaneously democratic regimes is unrealistic. it was simply not going to happen. so if people are looking at a few months, of course everybody is worried. if people are looking at this as a process that will indeed go through a lot of mistakes, it will hopefully arrive at a stable and prosperous society, then it is a different ball game. i mean, i'm not surprised what is happening in egypt today with the army. anyone who thought the army was a democratic institution, let them argue with me. [laughter]

of course it is not to protect democracy. anybody could have told you that. so i think we need to be one, realistic, that these transitions are going to take time. that there are different conditions in different arab countries. so some countries will do better than others in eastern europe. poland did much better than russia. in the arab world, you asked the question whether any government can manage. look at tunisia. yes, it is a small country. yes, they have the coalition government. the head of the -- the next head of the country now is a secular nexus agreed to by the largest, you know, party that won the electrics, the islamists.

the head of the constituents, another secular, well known secular in the country, et cetera. this transition is going well in tunisia. that doesn't mean it will go as well in other arab countries. .

>> it has been six months since the announcement of the attention to invite jordan and morocco. nothing has been done for different reasons. the saudis are, but maybe it stops there. many questions are being raised. other questions have to do with whether this is full membership or partial membership. these countries go through phases. they have free trade meant -- free-trade agreements. then they have the monetary union. for jordan, the alert is they would have free movement of labor and capital so they could work without having to get permits.

also, more investment from the gulf would come to jordan. it is interesting to me that this is not a new demand. i was in government 15 years ago when the first best for membership in the gcc. when you ask the people of jordan on the street today, the answer is not an automatic yes. it is what is the catch here? [laughter] >> i am not necessarily saying that there is a catch against reforms. all i am saying is people to understand today that their problems are not purely communal, and it will -- economical, and it will not go

away as their profits become fuller. >> thank you very much. if there are no more questions, thank you for coming this morning. thank you to our panel. please join me in thanking our panel this morning. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> this past july 4, in a ceremony held in the boston harbor, simon winchester, author of "the professor and the madman" became an american citizen.

>> i decided i would take all the necessary steps and the 10 questions. i have to confess i got one of the questions from. i had an australian friend who is also up for citizenship. i told her i had one of the questions wrong, and she said not the one above what color is the white house. that when i got. it was what is the american national anthem? i blurted out america the beautiful. the immigration officer said in my view it should be, but it is not. >> the author of 21 books, the latest, a call at lancet" is now in paperback. >> on monday, republican presidential candidates discussed his campaign strategy at a new hampshire "union leader" editorial meeting. he also talked about his role

with freddie mac, the super committee, and a plan for social security. this is an hour. s you know going around the country. it's joe and gary and the chief editorial writer, and gary's taken on 6,000 new assignments in the last few weeks, and he'll be in the state house bureau for us when he's not here. we said, gary, come down here to do this one. we got some good in-depth interviews with the candidates in the last few weeks, and right off the bat, i want to ask you about what is in the news overseas, which is the report that perhaps a dozen cia informants have been captured and maybe killed in both iran and lebanon. which leads me to ask you what's

your reaction to that, and if you were president of the united states, what more would you need before you sanctioned or participated in or helped somebody take out the iran nuclear plants? >> well, i think that our goal should be to replace the regime. i think if you take out the plants, the dictatorship stays there, the plants come back. i would adopt the reagan, pope john paul ii strategy by maximizing every pressure on the regime, ask congress to repeal most of the restrictions on the cia so we can go back to the real spying. i would have a fund set up to support anybody who was -- thank you -- but i would support any group in

the country, as much as we did in poland, elsewhere, and in the cold war. i would be prepared at a point where if we get to a point where the military believes that they are truly on the verge, and i'd be prepared to use military force, but i'd try before that to do everything i could to disrupt and wake the regime, including, you know, maximizing covert operations inside the country, and i would also be prepared to cut off their gasoline supply. they are unique about lots of crude oil. they only have one major refinery that makes 60% of their gas gasoline, and i would look at finding ways to impede their refineries, to basically wage economic warfare against them until the regime broke. >> you don't think we're doing that now? >> no, not very effectively. >> what about the internet

warfare? >> my guess either we did or the israelis did, and that's good. i mean, i think the next thing you want to see is an israeli effort to break up the whole thing, not just the nuclear part, but for example, go into the bank system, a variety of other places, and break them up electronically to cause division, and we could wage real cyberwarfare against iran and be remarkably effective at closing it down. >> you would argue -- >> i would do everything we could short of war to replace the regime, and if that failed, i'd sadly agree to military action to stop them from getting nuclear weapons. >> you also said, and you said it to me before, that you think we need to reassess our entire foreign policy military situation as it applies to afghanistan, and elsewhere, which sounds a little like hillary with a reset button. what exactly do you mean by

reassess? specifically with regard to afghanistan? >> the strategy for afghanistan does include a strategy for pakistan, and we look at pakistan and realize they were sustaining for the last decade, at least six or seven years, he was in one of the major military cities. you have to assume large elements of pakistan are active, and i think you got to back up and say this is part of why i'm for an american energy strategy. you have to be able to take risks in the region that the world's oil supply doesn't currently allow you to take because the disallocation would be so extraordinary. look at the iranians, the saw -- saudis. we tolerate it because we're afraid to make them mad at us because of energy. >> how do you go after that? first build up --

>> [inaudible] i would say we're going to keep them not gist to be independent, but have a surplus of energy to sell into the world market so you're not frightened so there's two problems. you got, you know, the iranians on one side, the saudis on the other. >> don't like each other? >> that makes it to our advantage, but the threat of the saudis is the spike in price and crippling the world economy, and the iranians close the straits and block the persian gulf. that's why the people surround us. when you face the people who are clearly actively hostile to your civilization, you have to think seriously about how much pressure you're prepared to bear, and the saudi regime is not a strong regime. i will be clear to the saudis that they have to get control over the money spent on this. they have to change the nature of what they are doing.

they are exporting which is thee most extreme form all across the world, and we, in effect, are paying for saudi wealth to be used to undermind our own civilization. >> they export it elsewhere hoping to keep the lid on it at home; right? >> right. >> and if you disrupt the saudi kingdom as it now stands, aren't you going to have a huge arab revolt? >> you see the tunisians now talking about becoming more islamist. you see the libyans now probably being led by people from ben gay cy who are -- ben ghazi, and even a place where we supposedly won, it should disturb every american in

iraq after the american victory, quote, unquote, why do 700,000 christians leave a country we win? i think that's why we have to reassess the whole thing. i don't see any great result out of the last decade to lead us to believe we're winning. >> drew, any thoughts on that? do you want to jump into domestic? >> domestic's good. >> domestic's good? okay. in with domestic, harry. >> well, this morning, we're hearing there's not any agreement at all, the supercommittee. number one, did you think that was a good idea in the first place, and number two, what can be done at this point? >> well, first of all, i said early on, it was the dumbest idea i'd heard of. i mean, to take 535 people who are supposed to represent us declined to 12 so over 90% have

no representation, and have them hand picked by political leaders and think they are going to accomplish something? i'm this was an act of desperation by people who couldn't fix anything. i said it up front. i mean, if i were in boehner's shoes, i don't know if i would do any better than boehner because the difference is obama. bill clinton was from arkansas, tried to build a moderate wiping in the democratic party and leadership counsel, spent 12 years negotiating with the conservative legislature, and we could talk, and we understood you got to get something done meaning i got to schedule it, and he's got to sign it. if i won't scheduling it, he's not signing it, and if he's not signing, we're not getting it. there's not a lot done in the three year period. i don't see any of that happening here. part of it is frankly, being clever. i tried for two or three months

now to convince the house republicans to pass the web warner bill to allow for development of oil and gas off virginia. these are two democratic senators, it fits the bill that republicans say they believe in. it provides for 50% of the feds, 37% to the common wealth of virginia, 12.5% to land conservation infrastructure. if they passed with no amendment, send it to the senate, and reid has to decide whether to bottle up two former democrats, and one running for the senate is for the bill. or do we pass it? if they pass it, goes to the white house, and in this economy, does the president veto a bill that creates american jobs and american energy and revenue for the federal government? that would be an act of suicide. he might, but it would be pretty amazing. >> what's wrong with the sequester that now looms as a result of the super committee?

>> well, the idea of cutting $500 billion out of defense is a political exercise. strikes me as crazy. i mean, you ought to design the national security policy around simple things -- what threatens you, what are the goals, and what do you do to achieve the goals, okay? i'm for reforming the pentagon. i mean, i'd apply that, find the military caucus in 1981. i think there is waste in the pentagon, but you don't start with a politically defined, this is what the british did in the 1920s, and it came back to haunt them because, you know, you start politically defining it, and you say to the military, well, tough break, you know, start taking risks. fine, what risks do the president and the congress want us to take? >> phil gramm wrote last week about sequestering, that most of this from the domestic side, all of it is just cutting back on

the increases that we've had in the past few years, and that before 2013 rolls around, a republican congress would repeal the defense cutting, is that not something to campaign on? >> well, i would campaign on the approval of the defense cutting, but i also say what strikes me is there's three paths. there is the fantasy path that obama's on that leads to greece, and he's been wandering around the country like a 16-year-old with his first credit card. i'm sure he'll bring money in some form, okay. he says to students, you don't have to pay back the loans, here's an extra billion, and it's all fantasy. the second pats that washington -- path that washington loaves is painting prosperity. i think there's the third path which is innovation and growth. it's the path that reagan was on, the path we did in the

1990s. strong america now believes if you apply modern management to the federal government, you'd save $500 billion a year. .. >> let's say they're off by a factor of three. that would be as much as the super committee is trying to find. we did a study and found the level of corruption, the level of pain crux that medicare and medicaid is between 7100 $20 million a year. we talk soup mastercard, visa, and ibm, and all of them believe they can save as much as $70

million. that is almost as much as the super committee is trying to find. they're designed to change trillions of dollars. martin feldman -- martin feldstein has argued that if you have a capital-based system the income is to substantial -- the output is it is -- substantially increase in growth. >> what is the plan you have brought forth of your architect today? >> the plan is basically everyone who wanted to could choose a social security savings account. you would build it up over your working lifetime for 14 or 16 and basically the easiest model is you are allowed to put your half of the social security tax

and to your own savings account the over half goes to sustain the current system. you look at that and it turns out half the amount of the social security built up over your lifetime comes to to three times. the record of broken galveston and chile. there's no question historic we that over time you do that. we would also keep the guarantee because we would never fall below the social security minimum level. so if you had terrible investment you would still get the tax paid karen t. in 40 years they never paid a penny. >> the part time hours would start with cleaning the schools.

>> explain this. >> i actually do believe those places we are endowed by our creator in the pursuit of happiness in the generation bringing it to the very poor so you are in a very poor neighborhood and you have no money and no work habit. so, you're trapped. the first simple thing you can do is redesign the school system so kids can in fact take care of the school. part of the place the got this from as college of the ozarks which is a terrific work study program and college of the ozarks says you cannot apply unless you need financial aid. they are the fifth most selected right after colombia. the total number they get the

account for a very small number. they have no student aid. you work 15 hours a week to 40-hour weeks during the school year and that pays tuition and books. 40 hours a week in the summer but that pays room and board. 92% of the courage of its own. there's an alternative. 8% on average $05,000 because they bought a car the same year and i went around the campus in the brand new library they have a general contractor. all of his workers were students everywhere you went in the school you had people working most of the clerical work was the students. you now public universities which cost more than private universities and you wonder why the price goes up.

what if 80% more students per student loans and student work? my life as a part of her financial package in college topped out she had 20 students a week she taught and went to part of her tuition. we have to rethink the roundup. the poorest neighborhoods in america and that means the most important because we think the work ethic. when i talk to the first generation successful people all of them started working they got to have their work, have their money come have savings. a much longer time horizon to be successful because they started much earlier. we see people in poor neighborhoods don't work, drop out of school, have no habit of

showing up or staying all day. it's not really your money. it's tragic what we've done to the poorest people. >> you mentioned the center on health studies there was a report out on a lot of money that the senator has made over the years or a lot of it dealing with is not the government then big business and pharmaceuticals which are dealing with the government and last week i think on one of the six brazillian the dates you were asked about your fee for helping if kody and your initial response was i may historian and it was 300,000 bucks and then eight got up to one point -- >> how much was it in total? >> i think it was 1.6 million. it wasn't paid to me personally the adoptions in three cities

and did a lot of different things. i think we had over the course of the years involved to think they had 300 pounds of the various places. >> what i am getting it isn't going to be viewed especially if he were to get the nomination as same old same old washington insider gets the money based on his name. you went before the house republican group to argue in favor of, which amazed me, the medicare part b which was the death knell for a lot of republicans winning again. and you said that was because you wanted to bring them up into the modern age, but there were no cutbacks with that bill, right? there was more spending. >> created medicare advantage. >> get paid for rich people to have their drugs paid for.

>> at a time when didn't have the money. >> first of all i think to have a medicare program that says we will give you open heart surgery but not lipitor is very destructive. >> understood. i think you have to modernize the system. i offered you but not paying the crux, okay? i'm a cheerful of the dating and the only one has done that for four straight years so i would be happy to walk you through how to balance the budget, but in the case of health care to take the example, i've been a very clear in my positions. i wrote a book called saving lives and saving money as a moral issue. first you save the life than you save the money. if you can take 40% of the cost of health care. we did a study with the gallup poll and jackson health two

years ago and they went out and asked doctors if we came back with this $800 billion a year defensive medicine see you want to talk about saving money in the health care you talk about payment reforms you talk about tom pryce bill to successful people to contract out i would take part of paul ryan's bill and i would do it next year. i would say we are going to have a premium support model has an option you want it you can take it and if you combine that with tom pryce, some people can come along with really good insurance packages and they are going to opt out so you can create a medicare plan that has a variety of traces which begins to be i think expensive. >> when you get to the site of paul rollin and's plan that it was too radical. >> i was asked should we impose

on the country something the country thinks this deeply unpopular. and didn't reference ryan. >> we are talking about the rye in plan? >> the question i asked i said there's a lot of pieces i don't like. the fundamental principle which is when you do something which large, what we are doomed to do with social security, you have to have a conversation with the country where the country decides that in fact they will accept the change. i am against imposing radical change in the country and i think they've fired you when you do that and they should. europeans don't want to have any popular vote on any of these reforms because the eletes in node they will be repudiated. paul, i like going into a country can be repeated so when we did welfare reform, 92% of the country favored it and we

carried have the democrats. one of the reasons obamacare is repealed laws because they get no republican support that matter, they were not capable of getting get back to the senate and they ran it through any way. >> does it make any difference whether the supreme court opposed or rejects obamacare? >> my contract for repealing obamacare line for repealing obamacare no matter what the supreme court does. >> pretty analytical prolifically does it help or hurt the republican nominee, say you -- >> helps repealed, repudiated. it's one more blow at how unconstitutional obama is. >> on the obamacare mandate, the heritage foundation he said responsibility as mitt romney and you reform that. you see since then you come to different conclusions.

i'm curious between then and now at what point do you realize an individual mandate at that level wasn't constitutional? >> i never focused on the federal level. i talked about it at the center of the state level and what we are trying to solve, and i finally come would you couldn't do it, it is too hard because what it does is it politicizes what do you mean by health care. once you run into mandates you start getting is this an or is that in and what is required you rapidly politicize the system from being the doctor patient relationship. what we are trying to get there is the challenge of the fact that in the very significant number of people who are over $75,000 a year in coming and they are basically taking the position that they are prepared to be a free rider on their neighbors if something happens to them and we have had a

psychology of health care frequently people won't pay their hospital bills. so, as we work with hospitals and the challenge of collecting, people who show up through any other business because they bought a car or bought a house they went on vacation they would just expect to pay it and if for some reason you create this mind set in health care it's a very real problem for hospitals and that is what we are trying to get at is how do you encourage responsibility for people who otherwise -- john goodman has had a model of that under the inpatient power you get a tax credit if you don't want to take it you don't have to buy insurance you share the tax credit then sent to the high-risk pool. and if something does happen you are taking care of by the high-risk pool and that means you have to have a double room you don't get a single room and it means a variety of steps.

it's a half step towards saying if you don't take care of yourself we will get you basic services but you don't have the right to demand what everybody else has erred because they have been responsible and they have done the right thing. >> a mandate that the federal level in your view is unconstitutional. why? >> this is something again where the heritage found themselves as you work through it at the time it was designed the more you thought about it the more you realized the congress which can compel you to do something like that can compel you to do anything. what is the limit to the congress power to dictate your life and there will be a hard argument about the supreme court. >> the known mandate [inaudible]

the problem you were raising before is the social security also the program and health care, obamacare and medicare and medicaid [inaudible] >> there are two pieces. part of - education as we went through this. in 85 the federal means tested programs the amount spent on them is enough if we spent directly on the poor there would be no poor left. what he's calling them now the empire in the welfare state which is all the bureaucrats are living, managing all the regulations and all the structures for 185 federal programs. so when you start block granting that the savings are

extraordinary. second, there is no evidence washington knows how to solve any of these problems. when we do health care reform we are driving and the only speaker who's actually brought in state governors and state technical people and put them in the draft room so the federal drafters actually involves the people who actually implement the bill. the whole federal attitude of why are these guys here. >> you mentioned before clinton dealt with the legislature. you were also a historian whether you like it or not and history tells me the people who get to be president are destined for most governors senator very rarely if ever a member of the house of representatives, so

what is it in your background that is going to convince the american people that on like all of these governors who got caught there with real experience dealing with these problems that you can do it? >> you can probably argue james capel is the only speaker of the house to get there. and he had actually been the governor of tennessee. i think if you look at the scale of what we did in the 90's, you look at the size of the contract with america campaign in the 360 districts you look at actually getting the balanced budgets and will form enacted. i have a fair amount of management experience when i step down i had to enforce my companies and some business experience much smaller nonetheless the business experience and frankly people who felt i was did in june and july would have to confess we are voting in the previous

campaign and we now have the five offices in new hampshire and five to seven in south carolina and so in terms of management skills i have a reasonable track record of having done that. i also think that if you want to change washington what you need is a leader who can attract managers. it's different from being a manager. the job of a president is to the head of the american government in that order. and the biggest job actually is to communicate with and educate and set standards for the american people. >> whether that means herman can deal with the complexity of congress and federal budget i was very fortunate to step down first because clinton appointed me to the commission she and i

had created together so i spent three years of the national security act of 2005 and then when bush became a in with friends like tommy thompson and human services, rumsfeld, georgia the cia got me deeply involved in the executive branch so i actually spent six years on a pro bono basis inside the executive branch and the strategy and rethinking the system so i have had more insight experience trying to understand how problems are solved and what works and what doesn't work and any one of the legislative branch of the same time 20 years in the legislative branch saw a pretty good understanding of that branch and the question we have to ask is look at the available candidates. who has anything like this in the national experience and second, the background of the national security to work with 79 and work for the defense

department in general since the early 80's and the foreign policies. >> when the third countries looking you mentioned insider, the inside experience the involvement of these government agencies and people are fed up with anything from washington and looking for something else. >> the reason is they are mature enough to say okay i want somebody whose values are a outside washington who actually knows about washington to be effective and the just tried three years of amateurs and i think you can make a pretty good case that hiring somebody that doesn't know what he's doing this hasn't been a big win. >> the editorial for welcoming the president. >> so to make a good case on the

one hand i had the experience, on the other hand quickly my values, my positions, if you look at the contract with america.org it is clearly an outsider document it is an outsider attitude >> it's rather unusual it seems and that you have become your own worst critic on your web site by bringing out charges of both personal and professional attempting to answer them. were they going to come out anyways? >> we are having a national conversation which i think is the biggest waste since 1860. i think this is an extraordinary moment in american history. and you either believe in the american people which i did, or you don't.

you believe in the american people then you have to say anybody can ask anything they want because i am asking them to lend me the power to be president of the united states and therefore they have every right to say tell me about this, tell me about that. rather than half msnbc distort something with no answer i would say if you have any questions, right here on move toward and here are the answers and make of lowercase this, you know because you guys reported a job in number of them are just plain false. here are the facts. i have tremendous faith from the american people sorting through this coming up with a reasonable conclusion. >> the facts are too short changed positions. drew mentioned the health care

option making people buy the insurance even though we was at the state level and you were famously on the couch with somebody talking about climate change and there have been others over a long career. the big charge against mitt romney is he is a flip-flopper. if he is, isn't new gingrich a flip-flopper? >> i don't think so. my career rating is 90%. >> i think that is relatively high. my record of balancing the budget is the only person to have done it in your lifetime, my position on the national security back in 1979 my record of wanting to cut taxes and working goes back to the mid 70's. now i would say two things. one is sometimes things change. i voted for the department of

education in 1979. i wouldn't vote for it today. gist i've looked at how it's evolved. life looked at the national education establishment, and my conclusion is you need a very, very dramatic changes. plus the 32 years ago. on other things i've been relatively stable and a couple things i just made a mistake. it is truly the dumbest thing i've done in the four or five years because she is so radioactive just literally you can't explain that. second, i'm probably not going to meet your standards but i don't know about the climate change. there are a lot of grit to double standards, there are a number of standards to say that it's not real speech tuesday

night to the truth is the climate change the fact is 1978 indicating become an ice age i was recently at the field museum in chicago looking at dinosaurs in the antarctic. if there are dinosaurs in the antarctic there is no -- >> they wouldn't call you a dinosaur though. >> the campaign of newt and proud to be here. >> [inaudible] >> how was your help? >> i work seven days a week working for president i probably put in 100 hours -- >> how was your blood pressure, how is everything?

okay this is the strangest thing you not only decided to be a catholic but a golfer, but are you, nuts? >> i've tertian to catholicism with my golfing. no, my wife's golf since she was lying and the only person i gulf with and if there was a way to go out and be away from telephones it is a nice walk in the woods and i may truly bad golfer. i have no investment in my golf psychologically committed >> good otherwise it will eat you up. who is the president who golfed the most? >> by reputation, eisenhower. >> willson. he did the game and his dr. mix prescribed it after his first initial mild stroke and he played every morning, naim holes, he did it.

>> eisenhower was one of the better ones but the best one was kennedy. i never thought of kennedy as a golfer. >> nobody confused my game for serious golf. >> the mengin your answers on the website one of the points you bring out in the ethanol mandate it's for all of the above energy policy that's part of it and you would rather have energy from on the above than from the persian gulf, but then why does it follow that the federal government has to subsidize it? can the government just get out of the way -- >> the government retains saying

most people in the business now don't think the tax subsidy is going to survive. there are two questions. everybody get a big oil will give you this. if obama comes and says let's get rid of the ten to 14 billion in the oil exemptions would you let anybody jump up in the business? annuity that has tried to kill ethanol on behalf of the world probably jumped up and said -- and half right by the way and i am against in fact apply overwhelmingly to the small independents who knew all the exploration in the field. on the one hand they understand exactly why they want the subsidy for oil so this isn't a

purity this is a practicality. you have two sources of energy fighting each other to keep the small independents to find oil and gas in fact i want to open federal land to be able to find oil and gas. north dakota all of the development on private land and the reason north dakota has 92 per cent unemployment is the bolten field formation has tried 25 times bigger, 2500 per cent figure in the u.s. geological survey thought it was. >> [inaudible] >> i voted for ethanol and gas in 1984 when ronald reagan signed it and in 86 when he signed it and in 1998 and helped it survive. my record on this the position

let me be very clear about this i had a very successful speech business. i had a very successful general business. there isn't a single position taken that involves bnp i'm happy if people who like my positions and no cases on know of where i say please, don't pay me, but in fact these are all positions i have had over a long public career. so in that sense they said we are concerned would you give us advice and i said sure. >> what exactly where your company speed for to do by freddie mac? >> largely strategic advice and i think in one article 1 of them says that. the lobby for the strategic

advice. i read a book called the art of transformation which is a pretty good introduction to how you get very large scale change, and our specialty was talking to people, listening to people tell what their problems were and then trying to help them think through how they could solve what they are up against. in the case of housing tenth and starting in the mid 80's on how do you help your people get into housing and there is a conservative way to do with which is to teach them budgeting and how to take care of their house, there is a kind which allows relatively poor people to own homes and be successful at it. you don't just hand them money to buy a house that they don't understand, etc. triet support if it is how would you think seriously about meeting these goals, how would you try to do it? >> one of the directors quote to the story recently saying we were hoping he would write

something in support of the model and get conservatives and republicans on board but i don't think that ever happened. was that communicated to you? >> again, the government sponsored enterprise goes all the way back to the founding of america. they have not necessarily -- they can be useful. noeth rational person is going to advocate creating a bubble. that is to teach economic history i know the book miniet crashes pretty well and the fact something is good if you do that after this point but in sing and if you commit to this point doesn't mean suggesting you do that to this point puts you over here. dividing we ought to try to find ways to halt the relatively poor people in the united states? of course. does that mean we ought to create a bubble and have people trapped in poverty?

no. so i think that there is a big difference. >> were you in a position to see the bubble coming? did you write about it? >> i think if you go back and look at my speeches it wasn't obvious at the starting and initially it wasn't fannie mae and freddie mac. it was things like countrywide but the minute he started getting people with no credit, no money down, these things are in same. i would say that consistently because again, people would come to say -- first of all i had no access to the internal information. i wasn't on the board of directors, i wasn't brought in with the general votes. anybody who had said to me do you think we should be giving the following five things i would say no. these are all the things in fact dodd and frank wanted done and

the other difference which doesn't seem as i wasn't in congress. i was a private citizen. private citizens are allowed to be in business, a totally different operation. i checked with for a sample rosio and the reform bill passed against the opposition levels and said they always supported these reform efforts and never mentioned fanny or freddie to him and so in my public role i think i was very clear about where i was going and what i was doing and it's very important to understand that. as a private adviser, had they come to me and, again, every time somebody says to me here's what's happening which will be occurring pretty late i would have said this is unsustainable

because if you state economic history is just clearly not possible to do this. so, to examples a good friend of mine who's a very successful investor in the early 1989 we worked on all and the ground of the japanese had approximately the same value as the state of florida and said in a passing that is a bubble. he sold everything that he had in japan just before the u.k. crash and its a random conversation. it doesn't take much to figure out they are not going to be sustainable. >> they are going to be getting out of whack on the education part which you mentioned. you have sort of a long list of education ideas, reform ideas, one of the pell grants for the

k-12 and the charter ideas and then on your web site at the end you say that you are going to shrink the education department to as small as you can get to read the pell grant for k-12 doesn't that further the federal government? all of those are -- >> i want to draw a distinction on the president's role as the leader of the american people and say here are 12 things i hope the state government does and the leader of the president's manager of the federal government and different rules ronald reagan understood this thoroughly as the leader of the country i can advocate a series of things for it satellite think every state should adopt a law that says states will encounter the declaration of independence every year that they are in school. i don't think the federal government should but i would actively advocate that in every single state because the declaration of independence is central to who we are as a

people. speaking would be data collecting analysis and -- spec all of the federal dollars, you've got lunch programs and subsidies. >> school lunches and used part but if agriculture. you would have to make a separate distinction about whether in fact -- remember we went to school with a world war ii because of the malnutrition. originally sponsored by richard russell who was pretty conservative because so many young men were incapable of serving in world war ii because of basic health problems and the was the original theory behind date and i haven't taken the position on school lunch and something i don't think about but i think you'd be cautious before you automatically jump off the cliff and sage we are going to disband its.

is that a problem do we need to take a look at? >> a small percentage is growing but i would argue that if you're to go to the average school if you would take from new hampshire how much the federal regulation costs you how much time do you spend filling out forms it's like when you talk to doctors about the number they now hire to fill out the forms federal aid also meant federal regulations you might find it was more of a break even than you think. >> in manchester we can't -- some 70 languages almost a spoken in the school system that want to take the state's and not test them for federal testing for a year or two but we can't. >> that is inaccessible something that is just crazy. if you have someone that shows up from ethiopia or somalia or

cambodia and say i'm glad you've been here six months let's test you and they get average into the schools -- the second part of that is i'm adamantly in favor of english being the official language of the government and in favor of all people 60 or 70 languages. i think in nursing in english is the first step towards prosperity. >> in the gingrich administration we have now currently every now and then they will pop up because there's some government documents in miami and some printed in spanish or california and texas. >> you have the department to print the voting documents in every language in the country. theoretically in california i forget the total number of languages to print the voting ballot in but it is an absurd.

>> what we have the evan patrician -- >> english. >> mr. speaker, in that cabinet of yours you've been talking about good when and the rivals so where would you put their rival mitt romney in the team? >> governor mitt romney is an extraordinarily competent manager with an immense amount about business and finance and has a wide range of possibilities. >> when i suggested that to him -- the part about him serving in the team of rifles. >> that might have just about the serving his team of rifles. none of us want to. we got into this because somebody said the other day what do unequivocally say no to the vice president and following

ronald reagan in 1976 he said he was really glad that ford didn't offer it because he wasn't sure how you would turn on the president. i said to clarify gingrich must think that -- this is back when i was like eight per cent he must think he's not going to get the nomination. so, he is the front runner or should we think anything less than winning the nomination. >> i guess no good reason have you got a campaign now you said you have eight staffers here and eight in iowa. he's got a great future in this business. he's a very good natural political leader. >> so you don't have to pay him. to complement him nicely. do you have a campaign to sustain yourself with?

that historians have to finish in new hampshire to go on with any hope of winning the nomination. >> we got to be the top three in iowa and new hampshire. i would like to be first in online and in new hampshire and we will see, but i think if we go south and i'm a viable candidate i would win the south carolina, and i think that changes for florida. so, to me these are important building blocks. what we don't know yet is whether one of us can run the table, you know, in which case it gets over early or better because of proportional representation of what happened to hillary and obama and still struggling with that in may and

june and i think you have to prepare for both u.s. to say it's true i like to be the best i can in all the early primaries but i have to have the ability to assist in the campaign all the way. >> when you say top three in this team states and my lai and new hampshire ron paul seems like of a wild card in this film. is wrong paul -- should he be viewed as one of the regular republicans? i mean he has his followings in his positions. >> he may do surprisingly well. >> certainly as we learn more about how bad the federal reserve is and how much money if it is thrown around the plan that he has a better case in the foreign policy it's a little bit harder for people to accept but i think that ron paul is going to depending on the turnout and i applaud it could be significant the bigger the

primary. i think that he will be reported as a factor. >> he's also said he won't rule out the third party. >> i saw him on tvd of the morning he said flat he would not run. he said he wouldn't automatically guarantee the republicans so he might be passing that he said what he wouldn't run as a candidate. >> you caught up with this on the internet where the former bush campaign official claims to have $24 million to get on the ballot in 50 states and the you're going to have the process of the six most likely candidates with internet voting and then put one on the? >> if we nominate somebody that is reasonably articulate and clearly conservative no third-party ticket will because

people will walk in and say let me get this straight i can beat obama or vote to re-elect obama and if i don't vote for the only major candidate against obama i just voted to re-elect him and will be the tendency this year in a modern times because the desperate desire to beat obama is great. that is the biggest that i have because if you say to people who would you like to see beat obama overwhelmingly they would say the. i was leaving des moines in the other day and of a woman that was checking said we are so excited about your idea. my husband and i are already planning the debate parties. i thought that was an encouraging sign. >> do you have any follow-up or are we all set? then it is who had the best

third party and it didn't do the republicans any good. >> he was a unique figure. >> woodrow wilson to the system again this year give us obama. >> i found out with a son-in-law was. i didn't know that. the provision series which was great. thank you for coming. we will no doubt be covered in your social security. come back when you get a chance. >> thank you. will that make c-span happy. one of my major goals in life [inaudible] in alba conversations [inaudible conversations]

>> tonight on c-span, a look back at bill clinton's 1992 run for the white house. the former president is joined by former advisers and strategists in little rock, arkansas. that is at 8:00 p.m. eastern. after that, we will show the cnn presidential debate from earlier this week. 8 republican candidates gathered in washington, d.c.. that starts about 9:20 p.m. here

on c-span. >> u.s. postmaster general patrick donahoe says that if congress approves what the postal service recommended, the service will be out of the red by 2013. those comments came during a question and answer session. this is one hour.

>> you can visit our web site and donate to programs offered to the public through our national press club journalism institute. on behalf of all our members worldwide, i would like to welcome our speaker today as well as those of you attending today's events. our panel includes journalists who are club members. if you hear applause in the audience, members of the general public are attending. it is not necessarily evidence of a lack of journalistic objectivity. [laughter] laughter is encouraged. i would like to welcome our c- span and public radio audience. we have a weekly podcast from the national podcast -- from the national press club. you can also follow the action

on twitter. after our guest speech, we will have q&a and answer as many questions as time permits. again in this political season, the journalist present at the head table does not signify an endorsement of the speaker. i would ask is up -- each of you to stand up briefly as your name is announced. max is so confident we call him bbs. also joining us today is the club member and vice president of the global business. drew is among several presidents gracing our head table today. he is the retired public relations director with the national association of letter carriers. also joining us is john cosgrove. he is the organizer of the first

post-gulf war room. for those of you who are not club members, he was inaugurated a 51 years ago next january. he was inaugurated when jfk came over and offered him congratulations. i am happy he can join us today. ron is the deputy postmaster general. skip over to the podium for a minute. angela is the new chair of the speaker's committee. she is also our members secretary. we have the organizer of today's luncheon. she has done a fabulous job. she is the anchor for federal news radio. thurgood marshall jr. is vice chairman of the board of governors from -- for the's service. he is the incoming chair. nice to have you here today. the list of former presidents goes on and on.

jerry is the bureau chief of the buffalo news. sean is a reporter for the federal times. mike is a senior reporter for federal news-radio. now please give them a round of applause. [applause] popular lure tells us that for the postal service, near -- neither snow nor rain stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. . the postal service is in need of a new business model. it cannot simply fold.

it is under a legal mandate to serve all americans no matter where they live. the letter carrier goes down -- goes door-to-door in downtown washington and to remote this -- remote villages in alaska. it is authorized by the united states constitution, article 1. the workers, businesses, and communities that rely on the postal service see it as the linchpin for their survival. it is part of a more than $1 trillion industry that employs more than 8 million people. it might be regarded as too big to fail. it continues to hemorrhage money and build your continued to be a possibility, if not an option. continuing blame is placed on technology, making the classic handwritten letter seemingly obsolete. as mail volume declines, revenue continues to fall.

in 2011, the postal service lost $5 billion. and there is its own retirement health-care plan. it must pay prepayments toward retiree health benefits. the man who is tasked with fixing all this is the postmaster general. patrick donahoe has been with the postal service for 35 years. he was named postmaster general less than one year ago. he has his work cut out for him. the weekly cost for the postal service is about $1 billion.

the poster service at awaits action in -- postal service act awaits action in the senate. it would allow the postal service to renegotiate existing union contracts, offer buyouts to its employees and read calibrates the requirements for its retiree health benefits. how can the postal service be saved? please give a warm national press club welcome to the postmaster general himself, patrick donahoe. [applause] >> thank you for that introduction. it is a pleasure to be here today. i would like to thank the national press club for

organizing today's events. i have the privilege of leading one of america's greatest institutions. it is an organization that serves 150 million american households and businesses on a typical day. it facilitates trillions of dollars in commerce. it supports a $900 billion industry and employs 8 million people. the postal service is part of the bedrock infrastructure of the united states economy and our society. throughout our rich history, we bound the nation together and we do so today, even in this digital age. we connect every sender to every receiver and provide delivery to remote locations in this country. americans do bang the postal service favorably as a familiar institution -- view the postal service favorably as a familiar

institution. for the institution to survive, it requires a rational business model. the postal service is a business. it is a government institution, but it operates as a business. we charge for delivery of products and services. our revenues go up and down depending on melding trends. we issue quarterly financial statements. we are even sarbanes oxley compliant. contrary to the understanding of most americans, the postal service is not supported at all through taxpayer dollars. we generate all of our revenue from the sale of's products and services. the's service -- all of our revenue from the sale of postal services and products. the postal service must compete.

we operate like a business. but we do not have the flexibility to function like a business. america needs a postal service that can operate like a business. consider the example of a post office. 25,000 out of our 30,000 post offices operate at a loss. we have thousands of post offices that bring in less than $20,000 of revenue in a year that cost more than $60,000 to operate. many of these within a few miles of the next neighboring post office. the reaction from attempting to close one of these low activity post offices is something to behold. people rally around their post office. they do so because it is a cherished institution. that demonstrates the power of our brand and the extent to

which our customers feel connected to the postal service. it makes no business sense. there are better and more efficient ways we can serve our customers. purchasing stamps account or 48% of all the retail transactions in a typical post office. people drive out of their way to go to a post office to buy stamps and they do not have to do that. there are 71,000 locations operated by our retail partners that provide a variety of post al services. they are in grocery stores, gas stations, pharmacies and places that are convenient. part of your regular shopping. most are open seven days a week. it provides a more convenient experience for our customers. in the coming years, we want to

increase the number of retail partner locations. we think there is an opportunity for small businesses to operate village post offices or a retail unit. everything you can do at a post office you can do on usps.com . will there always be a role for a traditional post office? absolutely. there are other created and commis options for providing access to our products and services. we need the flexibility to provide them. we are in a deep financial crisis today because we have a business model that is tied to the past. we are expected to operate like a business. we do not have the flexibility to do so. our business model is fundamentally inflexible. it prevents the postal service

from adapting. looking ahead and facing another 20% body of decline on toppled the 23% we have had already, the postal -- 20% volume decline on top of the 23% we had already, the postal service should be able to change. we are required by law to fully fund a portiere obligation in 10 years. the practical -- fund a sporty -- 40 year obligation in 10 years. that has effectively bankrupt us.

the postal service has been obliged to overpay into the federal employees retirement system. by $11.40 billion over the course of the last 20 years. >> we are the 99%. >> the post office is a public service. to rip off the people. return the overpay pension fund. and the extremes. without these, the post office makes a profit. stop spending postal resources. stop breaking the postal

unions. and destroying our communities. stop laying off the postal workers. the post office is based on human need. hey, hey, ho, ho, donahoe has got to go. booing]ce >> the good thing is they have definitely been paying attention to the situation. [laughter] [applause] at any rate -- [laughter]

if we could only get that $11.40 billion back, we could keep a few post offices. there are obligations over which we have had no control. there was the worst downturn in mail volume in 2009. the operations were profitable. our $6.60 billion losses were due to a $7 billion mandatory health benefit payment that no other business would have made. given the decline we have experienced, that statistics says we do a good job of controlling costs. we are working with insurmountable constraints. we have reduced the size of the work force by 128,000 employees and reduced operating costs. we did so while maintaining a record level service. that is a testament to the

tremendous job our employees do on a daily basis. we are accelerating production. we will reduce the total number of mail processing facilities to less than 200 by 2013. we are going to study post offices or potential closure. we are streamlining our delivery operations with the goal of reducing 20,000 delivery route. as significant as these cost reductions are, they do not come close to returning the postal service to profitability. to get on a sustainable financial track, we have advanced a plan to achieve a $20 billion cost reduction by 2015. as things currently stand, we do not have the flexibility in our business model to achieve this goal. for this reason, we impose

important changes to the law that governs the postal service. we want to transition to a five day delivery schedule. most postal services around the world did this years ago. we propose rebalancing our retirement fund, including the restoration of the $11.40 billion in overpayment into the federal employment retirement system. also a rational federal employee benefit schedule. this would mean leaving the federal government and shifting to private providers. we proposed streamlining our products so we can get to the market quicker. we are seeking the ability to manage our work force more effectively and with greater flexibility. these and other proposals would

enable the's service to operate more as a business does -- the postal service to operate more as a business does. in the entire universe, the stakeholder should be grateful. we have seen a strong commitment to our issues from congress and the administration. there is a big question that needs to be answered about what the final package will look like, how it treats the postal service as a business and how it gives us the flexibility as a business model that we need. it has to do with the concept of speed. the postal service is contending with based getty declined. this is due to the rise of electronic communications -- a steady decline.

we must cut costs faster than the rate of decline of first- class mail. speed is the answer. it is the best way to tell if congress is truly interested in enabling the postal service to act like a business. if we are unable to implement the five day delivery schedule now, we will needlessly carry 8 $3 billion operating costs. multiplying that by several years and you have a pretty big number. instead of consolidating 260 mail processing facilities, mail processing -- we might carry another $3 billion in operating expenses. this would impact our ability to modernize our retail networks and manage our work force and health care costs more effectively. if congress does not pass the legislation allowing for more effective cost control and allow

us to make fundamental changes to our business model, the postal service could be running deficits in the brains of $10 billion. -- in the range of $10 billion to $15 billion. large losses will ultimately burden the american taxpayer. first-class mail volumes will level off. we will see. volume will decline quickly for the rest of this decade. we do not have the ability to cut our costs quickly enough. would be write legislation, the postal service can continue to remain profitable. we need provisions in the final legislation that provides us with the speed to reduce our costs by $20 billion by 2015.

businesses do not decide operational issues for years on end. they make decisions quickly and they act quickly. the legislation currently drafted in both houses of congress would not provide the postal service's with the speed and flexibility they need. -- services with the speed and flexibility they need. they do not come close to enabling the cost reduction of $20 billion by 2015. they must do that for us to return to flexibility. if passed today, each bill would provide a couple of years of profitability at best and many decades of losses. taking the best of the house, the senate, and the ministration approaches, congress can provide the service with the legal framework its needs. it all comes back to the notion of speed.

will the service get ahead of the cost curve or will we be doomed to perpetual losses? congress needs to step back and look at the postal service as a business and give us the business model to allow us to act quickly to lower our costs. people in business have many ways to communicate. we have responded with in the constraints about our current business model. we are more market responsive and efficient and we have been. we delivered more than half of the world's mail and do it with a record level of high service. 95% of mail that comes through our system is never really touched by human hands until a letter carrier puts them in a mailbox. our productivity has increased dramatically since 2000. we deliver the same amount of volume we deliver in 1992 with 170,000 fewer employees.

we record profits and losses, operates efficiently like a business and compete with customers. we have to do a lot more down that path. if we do so, i am convinced that the postal service can have a bright future. we can continue to provide the nation with secure, reliable delivery platforms. we can meet the mailing and shipping needs of many americans for generations to come. we can be thought of as a successful business enterprise that provides a vital national function. it will only happen if congress developed a simple, straightforward piece of legislation that provides key areas of flexibility, the ability to determine our own flexibility, the ability to price products quickly, the ability to control our health care retirement costs, the

ability to quickly realign our retail networks, to streamline government and to provide more flexibility in the way we leverage our work force. all of this needs to be done right now. the postal service is to enter both to the economic health of this nation to be-- integral -- integral to be handcuffed to a business model. i have no doubt that the posstal -- postal or remain an american institution. to do that, we need a great business model. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you for your poise and your speech. i appreciate that. talking about congress, in the news today for other reasons,

the so-called super committee. you are talking about congress meeting to get the job done for you. let's break this down in two steps. where is that legislation you are talking about in terms of moving forward. how do you look at those prospects at this point. the other piece would be, what does the breakdown of the super committee due to affect your operation? >> when we talk about legislation, we are pushing for legislation that will help the united states of america and help the milling industry to make sure the postal service is the focus. there are a couple of things going on. the administration has weighed in on a letter they sent to the

deficit commission. they agreed we should move on the five day and they made changes on product offerings. you have that on the table. there are two bills. one in the house and one in the senate. both of them have gone through a markup process. they are talking about quickly allowing us delivery flexibility. there are some other opportunities for us to control costs and some flexibility from a pricing perspective. in the senate, we have some good opportunities from the standpoint of new-product development. they have the ability to move to the 6 to 5, but there is a problem with time. we would like to get everyone on the same page.

from a super committee standpoint, we do not know what is going to happen. we heard we have been in the bill. no one has come " were to say that we are definitely in there. -- no one has come forward to say we are definitely in there. >> how confident are you? >> people are saying it is going to be a tough year. i think the administration and the congress understand the vital importance of a healthy postal service. if you see the work that has been done from the administration and with senator, lands and senator lieberman. senator collins and senator

lieberman, there is a lot of interest. it is just a matter of getting what is out there thought through so that we can act quickly. >> what is the intent of the issa-ross bill if it will not save the postal service? >> from their perspective, is the best way to save being serviced. it wants to put it in a five day environment. they want to give us the overpayment back from the first system. there are some condition no constraints and that involves the network changes. we have more government oversight with network changes. i think we can do these things more quickly if we act on them now. within the bill, the issa bill has a control board and would

step in and take over the role from our board of governors. we are saying give us the freedom to act like a business now and we will make sure we get a stronger postal service going forward. we do not need another body. >> you announced that the postal service would extend contracts. are you on your way to arbitration and the deal that "favors" unions? >> our employees do a great job. when you see the reductions we have done from a cost standpoint and the productivity, our people, they do a great job. we have an excellent working relationship with our unions. they understand the issues facing the's service. we needed annexed -- they understand the issues facing the postal service.

there may be an issue in there. we are looking to resolve the health-care issue and get more flexibility with our labor. >> what happens if you do not reach an agreement? >> we go to arbitration. i am a glass is half full person. >> you have a $5.50 billion retiree health payment. did you default? if so, what is the consequence >>? we did not default. we are exempt from making the payment until the 18th of december. our proposal on health care which eliminate the need to pre- fund. we have laid out a plan to take all but the plant ourselves. we can eliminate substantial -- to take over the plan ourselves.

this plan needs to get resolved. >> would there be a diminution of benefits to the people it covers? >> there are two big companies that have recently renegotiated their own health care plans. we would not be getting health care from somebody on a street corner. there are big providers. one reduce health-care costs by 40%. the other by 12%. the postal service will pay $72 billion in health care without the pre-funding. if the health-care providers can take 10% cost reduction, that is $720 million. we have been working with our retirees to move them on

medicare. we are overpaying for retiree health benefits for our retirees since they are not required to go on medicare. we think we can get a better deal for them and better cost coverage and battle -- and better health care. >> this question comes from a postal employee. how can you ratify two contracts currently in negotiation when you cannot honor the contract you just signed? >> we have done a lot of work with the apwu. we continue to honor any of the contract we signed with our employees. we have to work to get more flexibility. we achieved that with apwu. >> are you making any changes in your position on post office

closings? senator collins said you endorsed the language that would create a new post office standard. >> we do not want to close up a post office and walk away. the farther out west you get, they are a lot farther apart. we are looking at between a consolidation to a nearby post office, providing additional rural service -- we can provide that service -- matching up the hours which the actual work load. we are open for 8 hours. >> sounds like a good job to have. >> think of how boring it would be. we have those opportunities. we are looking at things

like the village post office. it gives us the opportunity to provide that service. >> do you still have only one week's worth of operating cash? >> write now, we have a ruling that came out that says we are -- we have a- right couple weeks of operating cash. we would like to get the operating cash and pay the debt down so we are much stronger in the future. >> as the service study any international models? can that and new zealand have intriguing postal systems. >> i was in canada on friday. i spoke to a couple of people from different posts around the

world. we have almost 50% of the world's mail because we have a different mail service. bills come through the mail. payments come through the mail. magazines, catalogs. this is much lighter bosnian coast. germany charges 75 cents a letter -- this is much lighter postage cost. from a business model perspective, looking forward, first class mail is going to drop off. that is why we will need to make some changes. from a package delivery standpoint, we think there is an opportunity for us in the digital world. we want to go in that direction. >> besides the five day week delivery schedule, what other best practices can you adopt.

>> we adopt things based on what we see our industry best. we are tied in to fedex and ups on the standpoint of delivering their packages. we have learned a lot from them about customer expectation and flexibility. we have learned a lot from retailers and looking at different options on self service. from a standpoint of best practices, we are open to anyone any business in the u.s. to see how best we do it, . >> where are you with customer satisfaction? >> we say what gets measured gets done. we measure everything. we measured 0.2. service. we measure all the commercial

mail that comes in. we have a dollars- -- 8 billion pieces of mail. we have customer experience measurements. we are constantly looking at what the customer is saying to improve our performance. >> how are you doing? >> our overnight service is 96% on time. we are in the mid-nineties from a customer service standpoint. -- mid-90's from a customer satisfaction standpoint. >> how about the treatment from the counter. how do you work on that kind of situation? >> you have to work on that every day. you make changes. you constantly have to work with

the employees to talk about our employee -- how important it is our good customer service. we have a lot of great people to provide great service every day. >> how many post offices have been closed under delayed disclosing its initiative? how meat processing plants? is there a delay in that process of closing? >> in the last year, we closed about 500 post offices. we are still in the body which in process. we closed 50 processing facilities over the last year- and-a-half. we will continue to do that. as the volume drops, you have to continue to make these changes. >> is there an appeal process for a community says, we are special? >> if you close a post office, you have to have a public meeting. one of the things we have been

learning is that is better to give the people some options. that is an area where we have not done as well going in. it is not that we have not articulate the options. we will go in and a town has an opportunity to come back to us with an objection or with -- to the regulatory commission. we are trying to work with those facilities now. we have a public hearing. we go through that process, too. the key thing for us is that we treat this network down. the most important thing for us to know, from a customer perspective, is that we do not want it to make it more difficult to get mail in our system. we will retain locations where we are closing the facilities so people will not have to go out of their way. our small businesses, we want to have the mail come through the

front door. as we make these changes, we will use technology to make it a much better, from the process. >> can the political process get involved here? you are asking congress to give the legislation to make your operations fiscally sustainable. what kind of involvement politically does members -- do members of congress have as it relates to closing post offices? >> you get opinions from many people. there are 535 members of congress. it would have 535 scores. there are some in congress who are pushing to close. some want us to move from six to five. it is our job to put all the options in front of people. we have to communicate and make

sure people are understanding. i think we will be able to move the public and congress in that direction. 80% of americans are saying move from 6 to 5 day. ys. we do not want to become a burden to the american taxpayers. >> do you have any hopes are plans to change the animosity between workers and unions. >> i do not think there is that much animosity between workers and unions. you are going to have that down three organizations. anywhere you have the unionized work force. our leaders are responsible people. the three people are the head of our management association are responsible people. they have their opinions on things. i like to be able to listen. i know that they have listened to a lot of our suggestions. bottom line with the unions and

the other stakeholders in this industry is that we have to coalesce and give some things up in some cases. anytime you will come up with a situation,in-win se everybody has got to give. >> senator collins is not among the people who want 5 day delivery. how will you work around that? [applause] >> we have talked to senator collins around this. her concern is, what about rural americans? there are some potential other changes in their. do you go to the reserve holidays and a saturday delivery. bottom-line, there are two things happening. we lost 24% of the mail. we are losing another 25%. the shift that comes from paying

the bills is relentless. we will keep working with senator collins to try to work through these issues. >> here's a question that says, assess your regulator. do they do a good job of helping the postal service remains financially solvent. >> we have an excellent relationship with our regulator. we tried to reach out and communicate. we have spent a lot of time of it last year's weather is -- over the last few years. the things we are looking for our legislative issues. if you give them a list of 10 things to do, that have to do 10 things. if the list is only three things, they only have to do three things. the only thing the regulator has an interest in the american

public and the mailer. >> is it time to start charging members of congress something to use the's service -- the posstastal service? >> we do charge them. we do not take taxpayer money. we recoup postage because of laws that were passed. congress has to pay for products. >> how do you get past each member of congress not expecting post office closings in his congressional district. do any of them see the big picture went on to jobs and services in their home district? >> congress dealing with the

postal service is not different from dealing with the rest of the issues we face in the federal government. we are a microcosm of what is happening now. there is a $7 andb income for $10 spent. you have to find out what is the fairest way to shrink that. when you walk through the options and explain things, they understand. there are few people i have run into who had an adamant and would not listen on any point. if you share the ideas -- and we listen to try to understand boats -- both points of view, that is the approach we would have to take. >> what would benjamin franklin do to improve's service operations? >> i am not sure. the thing that is important about the postal service is that you have to keep the basic

tenets of customer service in the forefront. we have these issues we have to figure out from a financial standpoint. we will do that without hurting our customers. that is what ben franklin would tell us. >> it thousands of post offices to close, what happens to the real estate? >> last week, we sold about $300 million in development. we will continue to do that. it is an interesting test distich -- interesting statistic. we only own about 30% of our building. we own the big ones and least the small ones. that is where some of the push back comes from. having a post office is better than a municipal-bond. do not get rid of that. >> what happens to the employees

was the facility closes? >> we are working on that. from an employee's standpoint, we have reduced headcount by 350,000 people. we have never laid anyone off. and have been a couple of people who chose to live -- chose to leave based on moving somewhere. we are proud of that. i watched it the thought that people get laid out in one fell swoop. when you come to work for the's service, people do a good job. -- the postal service, people do a good job. the one thing we have to our advantage is that there are 155,000 people right now who are eligible to retire. they retire, but they are not unemployed. >> have they had trouble selling in of these facilities

in what is not a great real- estate market? >> two years ago, our feeling was, maybe we should hold on. you look ahead with real estate is not getting any better. you hear about the talk about the bubble and the pricing issues been there for the next 10 years. our fear is sell them, but the money in the bank and don't worry about the -- and reduce the operating costs. >> stalling -- smaller pieces have reversed course load your declining revenue. sed or slowedwe your declining revenues. >> we have increased priority mail. we are advertising right now for first-class mail. that is the first time we have done it in years. first-class mail is important.

we think customers need to think about it that way. we also have some advertisements coming up for standard mail. we hope it will be great, too. >> what are some cost effective ways to use postal service's resources? >> it is a simple way to reach your customers. you can go online and get into the mail without a lot of charges you have when you get more sophisticated. we have a tremendous resource of people out there in the milling industry whether they are direct arms or mailers. it is the best return on investment in any way you can reach your customer. >> one of the union has hired bloom to create a pro-growth

business strategy. >> we talked to ron bloom -- any organization he has been involved with focuses on how you continue to make sure the organization survives. you can provide excellent employment for union members. >> you talked about germany and the 75 cent stamp. how do you know what the right price point is if you are trying to stanch the flow of red ink? why not have a substantial posstal ra -- postal rate? >> we are careful to not price ourselves out of business. whether it is catalog or first class mail or periodicals. each of those are a way to communicate with a segment of the american public.

if you put too much of a price to pay -- to change on standard mail, you will chase people to the internet even though they will not get the same kind of return. >> you said you would stop delivering the mail pass next fall if congress does not pass a bill to help you. if congress does pass the bill giving it everything you want, how soon do you predict pulling out of the red? >> if congress gives us everything we need now, we would be out of the red by 2015. we would be getting that money back and it would go against debt, which would substantially shrink our debt. we would be in excellent shape from a dent -- from a debt to revenue statement. >> someone makes note of the fact that you have prepared to distribute antibiotics because of another bioterrorism attack. god forbid, if an attack did

come, how ready do you feel you are. >> we have worked with the department of human health services. we have our lady -- our letter carriers who have gone to people's doors and delivered antibiotics. we have worked carefully with the carrier unions. based on what we have done, we would be ready if called upon. >> you have 216,000 vehicles you use. what have you learned about alternative energies to fuel them? >> we run a lot of small fleets with alternative energy. we have had the largest natural gas leak going. we have thinned that out a little bit. we have hydrogen vehicles on the west coast. we have been experimenting with

accurate people pitch that all the time. but a new fleet. if we replace our freedom will cost $7 billion. we keep our fleet for 25 years. if you are stuck with this investment for 25 years, you better make a good decision. if we had to make a decision today, i would go with a four- cylinder gas engine because it is still the cheapest to operate in the cheapest from a long-term standpoint. >> is the fleet being reduced in size? >> yes, i think we are down to under 216. we are probably down to 211. we have been replacing the -- we have been providing vehicles to our role carriers. we have been working through that. we probably net reduced in the vicinity of 14,000 vehicles in the last few years. >> the mail recovery center in

atlanta sells a mere 200 lots of undeliverable mail at a profit. one must be in atlanta to bid and by. are you considering internet based auctions? >> eye in not sure we should not be doing that on the bay or something. i am not familiar. we can look into that. --ebay or something. >> who will be the first purpose -- living person on the u.s. step? perhaps lady gaga? >> you have to wait until the citizens' stamp advisory committee figures that one out. >> what is the time line on all of that? "probably next year. they have some excellent ideas. >> can you share a few? >> no, i cannot. >> seat, he is a good reporter. >> thank you. before we ask the very last question, we have a few housekeeping items to take care

of. i would like to remind the audience have a few upcoming things. i will be the next opportunity to see a journalist at the national press club podium. the other thing we do for each and every speaker including postmasters general overtime is to present you with a traditional national press club coffee mug credit >> thank you very much. [applause] here is our last question. the holidays are approaching. when you have to mail something, do you have to stand in line? >> i go to south part p a post office and i do that so i see just how our customers have to mail mail. i buy my steps there and it

works out great. they do a great job. [applause] >> thank you to all of you for coming today. i would like to thank the national press club staff and our broadcast center to organize today's event. that includes our executive director and the assistant to the president. without her, i would be dead. here is a reminder that you can find out more information on our web site. if you want to get a copy of today's program you can check that out at www.press.org. thank you. we are adjourned. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by

national captioning institute] >> the newly designed c- span.org has 11 video choices making it easy for you to watch today's events live and recorded. it is easier to get schedules and new features. you cannot receive an e-mail alert when your program is scheduled to air. there is a section to access the bulls popular series and the popular series"washington journal" and "the contenders." they quickly -- a quick channel finder so you can find out or to watch c-span all across the country. on the all new c-span.org.

>> next, white house education advisers discussed the quality and affordability of college education and help us to engage students in the higher education debate. activists also talk about how to insure that student voices are heard. this event was posted by the center for american progress that just released its first study on the higher education. it is one hour and 25 minutes. >> good morning everyone. i am the director of the post secondary education program at the center for american progress. i want to welcome you all to the event for the release of our new release including more student forces in higher education policy making. for those of you who are familiar with the work, we have spent a good part of the past two years working on the issue of college affordability from a slightly different tack than

some of our peer organizations. the conversation has tended to revolve around how to make college more affordable regardless of the price. but kathy has been trying to do is how to make education more affordable. two corp. bodies of work in that space, one is around consumer information. that has been rolled out by julie morgan. that was basically about improving college choice with the hope of creating a more competitive market. the second disc technology and health technology -- the second is how technology can bring down the cost of education.

today we are bringing in a additional plank. students have typically entered the policy-making process after things have happened. cap is beginning to explore house to the invoice can be more deeply embedded in the government of higher education. this is our first treatment of that topic. i am looking forward to the conversation both today and that it starts over the next few years. to cut us off, i would like to introduce tobin van ostern. >> good morning everyone. it is my pleasure to introduce our first guest speaker today. the senior adviser --zakiya

smith. prior to this was the director of government relations on to the advisory assistance. she also holds a master's degree in education policy and management from the harvard graduate school of information. let me add on a personal note relevant to the topic today, she has been accessible at the white house through questions large and small and has always been interested in hearing the student perspective. please join me in welcoming the

first speaker, zakiya smith. >> thank you. thank you all for being here today and being interested in such a relevant topic. these education policies -- it is one of the most interesting policy that anyone can be involved. it garners a lot of interest. what i think about my colleagues on the staff, there are some people who work on housing policy and others who work on health policy. you don't usually have read the people of the street kelly d. what you should do about housing policy. anyone who tells me here is what i work on education will give a perspective. it is largely in part because everyone has gone to school at some point in their lives. everyone has a perspective on how schools should be. everyone has a perspective on education policy. i focus on higher education policy. college access, college of

portability, college completion. i hear a lot of those perspectives that my personal role outside. thankfully, we have pretty clear direction on what my role should focus on from the top. the president in 2009 outlined 2020 gold for college completion. that is by 2020 we would be first in the world with young adults with college degrees. thinking about how we achieve that goal, we realize we have a college completion crisis in the nation that people do not really think about in the same way we think aboutk-12 policy. nearly half of the people who start to not finished college. that is alarming when you think about it. a lot of people when they hear about why we have the goal think it is it primarily economical. it was to make sure we have the best educated work force. we were to have a strong economy

in the long term. that is certainly true. the president wants to make sure america has the most competitive work force of the role. higher education is much broader than that. would he think about the role of colleges and universities, it is supposed to create citizens who are ready to participate in life. they are prepared to be good citizens. the benefit of higher education to the general public are broader than those of purely economic means. by having a college degree, you are better off. if you have a bachelor's degree, the unemployment rate is about half of those that do not have the bachelor degree. the role of higher education for civic life is something we do not necessarily talk about as much because of the times we are in. it is really interesting that this is the role of higher education. we do not necessarily a model it as much as we should. what i mean by that is, students are supposed to be prepared for

civic life. what better way to be prepared that the walls of decisions made while on campus. being an active participant in your society while you are on campus and thinking about and being involved is a great way to model we would expect of higher education. and the too often that voice on campus is missing. the perspective i hear is those of college president, vice president, dean, student financial aid administered to all have something to say about college and higher education when the end user is the student security person who is supposed to benefit is the student. to tell them we have a student voice. it is not that we'd never hear from students. long after the actual decision has been made to increase tuition, the administrators know

how to deal with that. they realize this is going to make some students on happy. we will figure out how to deal with it for a contain it. of time. when the decision is made to include a football team that is going to stop resources because they will not bring as much and, i went to vanderbilt which is probably -- is the only school in the sec that has not had a violation in the last 10 years. no the raúl castro ball can have on campus, but in many places it is money sucking in a dream. where is the student voice -- the reasons for students not having as much of a voice as they should have in the higher education process are varied. it is a great job of laying them out and explaining the transient nature of student life. if you end up graduating he will not be there after a while.

a college president that is longer lasting is going to be longer lasting than the students. those are things that impacted. i do want to thank the center for breeding this issue for to live so we can address some of the solutions. try to elicit some of the student voice and to empower students with increase influence and power through the use of information and data. when we think about cost and value of college, students in particular and their families have a lot of power. i can vote with their feet. you can't have that influence if you do not know what the outcomes are and you do not know what the true costs are. you are waiting in the blind. this administration has done a couple of things to try to address that. we have a new center for transparency. it looks at the trends in

college cost by various times. we have also increased transparency with information on the fax 5. -- fafsa. that was students are thinking more about graduation rates at different colleges they are attending. recently in the midst of an announcement of student debt and ways we are trying to help students manage their debt, there was a glass mention portion, one i think is important which is a financial aid shopping sheet of sorts that we have developed in conjunction with the financial protection bureau that has a broader range in authority and can also help students better understand differences between the cost and value of different types of college. imagine when you were choosing between colleges if you knew how much your student loan payments record to be, how much would come out of pocket and compare that on a similar basis for every college to attend a.

those are the types of things we are trying to do to empower students and their families with the permission they can use to make a difference. knowledge is power. we're trying to be as transparent as possible. we always look for additional ways. i do not think we have the answer here for how to solve the 2020 goal and all of its problems. we are always looking for more solutions. if we are students and families with information they need, we are more likely to have an impact of the higher education system. the center for american progress is doing a great job opening up on house to the bourse's can make a difference. i am collecting see how many of you have joined the conversation. i am looking forward to the discussion. thank you. [applause] >> she has agreed to take a few questions if anyone has any

questions for her it looks like you might get off easy. i have one question. what is next? >> what is next? for one, the consumer financial protection bureau is ticking and put on the financial shopping. that is one day it could have an impact right now. if you look at it if you might say it is missing something. they're taking feedback. we are hoping to have a final version that people could use in their everyday lives. i think beyond that, we have lists of their of colleges that are increasing cost and looking for better ways to make sure students of that information. >> how about what is next with the net price calculators? >> right now there is a requirement that every college that receives federal financial aid dollars have on their website a debt priced calculator. for those who may not be familiar with the lingo, net price is the difference between

your cost of attendance of a college -- what does it say it costs to go there for years minus the average amount of financial aid and scholarship. something that is discouraging is too often low-income students are scared away a similar expensive colleges because of the cost. they began their bill cost $45,000 or not. -- maybe a vanderbilt cost $45,000 right now. had i known harvard would be free or yale, i might have uplight. that is not true everywhere. you do not know what the difference will be until you imply, fill out your fafsa, and then you get it back. the net price calculator is to help students and families understand before they apply, at the colleges will cost for that. we are looking for ways to pull that from all of the website and

aggravated and make it acceptable so they can have one- stop pricing of their that press calculator. >> any other questions? this lady in the back. >> we represent hundreds of thousands of low-income students and first-generation students. what can we do to encourage institutions to share more information about aggravated a graduation rates and other information so they can make better decisions on where to attend college? >> that is a great point. but also looking to go to college and colleges themselves. one thing is that colleges are required to recover a lot help grant graduation rates.

i'm looking that has a form of the aggregation rate. we do not get that information from every college and university. they do not have to give it to every -- they do not have to give it and we do not have it all on the website. if you call, they are supposed to tell you. maybe no one even knows that is a requirement that they should do that. has an organization like that shaming people when they do not give it to you, ted is a great role for a consumer or the general public to play but there are disclosures that are required but not reporting consequences from the federal government with those things did not happen. >> we will take one more. >> you are talking about resources for consumers and that is good. i work with colleges every day.

are looking for best practices and how they can complete competition. what is the u.s. government doing to help them? >> that is a great question. we are a big believer that institutions -- there are differences in institutions doing good things and others. we get a bunch of kids, we are open access. we take everyone in so you assume our completion will be low. there is a difference when you can probe for things like income and great, low-income status. colleges can do something to improve the quality of their students coming in. what we are doing is in every competition that we have had in the office and post secondary education, most of those we have attached to something called a priority for collins tracking. you get extra points if you are focused on college completion.

the gramm may have been about building your institutional capacity before. i was talking to one of my colleagues and she was like, is that not what they are supposed to be doing? it is interesting opinion as to their customers are, there are a lot of different constituencies. there could be a view that colleges are here and if you are not taking advantage of what they have to offer, shame on you. we take the perspective of, we are providing lots of subsidies for students to attend college. because the public -- the purpose of higher education both for economic and civic feature is incumbent upon colleges to think about things they can be doing. >> thank you for joining us today. i want to take the liberty to introduce our lead offer today.

-- the author today. julie morgan is my we started this work from a simple idea. students are the biggest

takeovers and higher education and they are so often not included in the policy discussions. it can have a huge impact on their lives and how much they pay for college, what kind of services that are getting. what kind of campus they live on. this goes a long pretty well with post high school education. our work has at least partly put us on the idea that higher education should be more student center. they're a lot of different constituencies where they are making their decision. we want to encourage them to take a cut look at the student body. how has the student body changed over time. what we can do to make them serve their students better. it seems silly to think about creating a higher education system without including students in the conversation. that is how i feel this really ties in well with the other work we have done.

we set about trying to find a problem bus to a voice in higher education, we felt there is a problem. he has to be defined pretty well because there are student groups. even our own campus project -- process who are working on issues. i think the occupy wall street movement really helps us to think about the problem here you have these students here at the occupy wall street protests who are demonstrating the fact that a large corporate students are ready to speak out on higher education issues. as tuition rises, we know students are taking on more debt to finance their education. there are graduating into a slump job market. they are frustrated with their situation. they are really struggling to pay down their debt. if you look at the tumbler brought --blog, there are a lot

of students writing about their student loan debt. one student says -- i graduated from one of the company's top he never sees with my masters at what hundred $50,000 debt. i wanted to work in non-profit and helmick the world a better place. i doubt work for business helping companies best coaster product and deceive consumers into buying them. i do this because i have a two year-old daughter that needs to be provided for. within two weeks of her birth started saving for college education because i never wanted her to have the burden of student loans. i want her to follow her dream second never got the chance to. i will still toward her when people tell her she can be anything she wants to be, it is a lie. you can only be what you wanted you have the money and none of the dead. recent graduates are expressing

frustration with their situation. the idea that the whole american dream is a lie is a powerful statement. and lot of students and former students who are protesting at the occupied movements across the country are asking for student loan forgiveness. they have got a little bit in the white house. the president announced recently a plan that would lessen payments on stallone's for students who are involved in the repayment plans and those who can consolidate -- the rapid to a loan with a non direct student loan. but those of us who work in higher education recognize that the problem of rising tuition, there is a steady decrease in financial aid as the institutions. these are a series of solutions. still forgivenesses going to be part of it has the white house has demonstrated. there are other things we need to do. we need to think about ways to cut college cost more and

smarter investment in financial aid. strategic uses of online courseware. even a rethinking of how the bannocks equality of educational institutions. the question that we felt defined this to a voice problem is, can students on a college campus have a stronger voice in these complex conversations to have a chance to make a real change on issues they care about? we think the answer is yes, which is great. that is a great thing to take away from this paper. i reports examine types of student forces that are out there. some of the key barriers the students face and being an effective participant in this conversation. it turns of students have a number of avenues for forcing their opinions and higher education. i will make you. student government is a good way that students voiced their opinions on campus. it is a way -- on the other hand

it can -- it is another club that doles out money to other student organizations and is ignored by the administration. a kind of depends on the structure of the student government as well as how well it really represents the interests of the whole student body. student newspapers can also hold the administration's feet to the fire on university policy issues. are bringing to light -- on the other hand student journalists have to have access to knowledge -- the decision making process on campus of higher education policy issues. we also have statewide and national organizations like purg, usaa, these are larger organizations that work across multiple campuses and have a lot

of potential to support student force on campus. there are also grass-roots student movements. i think the protests and the university of california system are a good example of this period is not coming out of any institutionalized group on campus but a group that rallied around a particular cause. you are working from outside of the university structure. it can cut both ways in terms of the effectiveness. there is also these the institutionalized as divorces. they do not really come to mind what we talk about activist student movements. colleges to have ways to illicit payments from students and get feedback. if that is the way the university is trying to get feedback from the student. the only problem is, it is up to

the university how well they incorporate the student voice and to changes on the campus. each of these avenues have some potential to help students forced their opinion. there are some barriers to their of effectiveness. here are some of the most common barriers. there are practical barriers to organizations. these can be campus regulations or rolls around organizing. we were talking about this before the event that campuses often have rolls around how many students can gather in a place at a particular time. what kind of permits you can gather. also, police presence on campus a round of student activism can be a huge barrier. we have seen pepper spray use on students. i can have a real killing effect on this to the bourse. also, a lack of unity either

within one campus or across several campuses of the policy solution. occupy wall st. gives us a taste of this. there is broad agreement on the fact that student indebtedness is a problem but less agreement on what the solution to the problem should be. the lack of unity on the solutions can deter the student was a bit. there also is a failure to develop strong student leadership. there are strong student leaders who are arriving on campuses all the time. we need to make sure they are coming from all aspects of student life. low-income and minority students who often are the most effected by high tuition and low financial aid. we need to be developing leaders out of those groups.

as more and more nontraditional students enroll at nontraditional universities -- i don't really like those terms because it is becoming the normal and our universities, we need to find a voice for them. students who are enrolled in online programs often times have less of a voice that traditional students who is on a four year campus and feel like they are part of a community where they should be forcing an opinion. i think one of the major barriers to human voice in higher education in particular is a lack of transparency within the university and also with the government decision making around higher education policy. it makes it really difficult for students to be higher engaged when they do not know the

language used in debates. they were not there when decisions were being made. there are only notified of them later on. with the diversity of universities out there and a variety of student at a news forced to divorce, there are a lot of policy solutions we could recommend. there are a couple of common elements. strong student voices need leaders to come from all kinds of backgrounds, particular low income and nontraditional students. strong forces need a place at the table in higher education policy discussion. hawaii includes greater transparency around government and college decision making on policies that affect colleges and access to people and positions of power. in all of these areas, there is a world to be played by the federal and state governments, colleges themselves but also philanthropic organizations like cap that can do a better job of

communicating with students on these issues. this report is meant to be a first step and reporting stronger voice in education. we hope we can delve more deeply into some of these areas. we hope organization will do the same. [applause] >> can i ask a panelist to come up here and it joined to lead. --join julie. there bios are on our web site. i will do it quick introduction starting with the for this to my right. dan herb is campus organizer. to his left, tiffany loftin.

angus johnson. >> i just want to talk to -- it can be their bias but we will get into the interesting parts of what exactly you do. if you what of my talking a little bit about how your organization's work with the students and maybe one of the campaign to have been involved in recently. >> good morning, everyone. eye in vice president for the united states student association. we run our wheat creek -- we have been around since 1947. the artist did that lead organization. eric -- i cannot stress that enough. we have a board of directors of 43 students that is elected every single year. we have the president, vice

president which is myself and we have a full-time staff that works the organization. the staff our graduates. all of our students are still in school, still in college, and we are tearing down barriers for underrepresented it communities and low-income students for a really long time. we are based here in washington, d.c. and we work with state rights association said. we have six states that are direct members of u.s. aid. i can go into what the states are if the questions are asked we have been working around held france -- pell grants right now. the trio program which is a federally funded program which is a pipeline from higher -- high school to colleges and community colleges. we chose a separation for most

it 2012. but what to make sure we are helping folks register and accessing students in student centers and different things like that. those are three different issues that we chose. we know that the super committee is making some crucial so changes to the pell grant. students across the country and including minnesota, we did it postcard campaign this weekend 18% of millennial have a twitter and 80% of congress uses twitter. we thought it would be a smart way to give people -- get people attention. we did facebook. we did a column to representatives to represent students on the federal level of course we gather 45,000 postcards and we are core to deliver them to patty murphy's

office tomorrow morning. we are excited about that. we have lots of students of all in the organizing. we got a lot of the first and second years engaged in the education around the palm print and what it means because a lot of students need the pell grant. and other requirements are changing. we are doing education on what the might be. finding practical ways to keep the boys heard at the table before the decision is made. >> i am the campus oregon is -- organizer. i want to emphasize a student directed and student funded. students working on a whole range of issues. students would pull their resources to hire professional staff, help them run state and local campaigns and are able to

lobby full time on behalf of students. i want to keep it short so we can get more questioned and. i actually did a lot of work in the spring of 2010 on the pell grant program. is similar to the one of the national program. gov. schwarzenegger put programs on the table. he made a lot of students service. it lot of students are dependent on that. a lot of students organize the campaign to help save the pell grant. what we did was get personal students -- personal stores from

students on campus. we got their responses like, i would not be in school anymore because i could not afford it. compiling those stores all across the state, which showed them to legislators. we met with legislators to let them know that this is an extremely important program. the cool thing behind this is governor schwarzenegger came out and completely reversed his position. he came out saying how important the program was and we needed to do everything we can to defend it. that was really empowering for me. being able to train other students on how to create this grassroots movement. i am working with the university students to help empower them with student leaders. >> it sounds like you are doing

some pretty sophisticated methods of getting attention in congress and within the state government. how do you think we could help other students to get involved in those kinds of sophisticated campaign sex >> we run a massive recruitment drive on campus. come to a meeting and get involved. i have close to 40 student interns at the moment -- sophistic campaign? >> if you have an opinion anyone to get involved, look for these institutions. getting involved in student government. what i have come to learn is that students have a lot of the same issues. i think it was very evident that there is a lot of energy around us. making a solid voice and find a solution we can advocate for and get them to start going and set

up lobby dates to go to legislators running these campaigns to make their voice heard. >> key you want to tell us a little bit? you are an expert on allston of voice and activism. i was hoping you could tell us what is going on with the occupied you see movement. a website that has been tracking historical trends and also what is going on in the contemporary world. the rise of occupy wall street has been a coming together of a few different trends, one of which is the student movement that has arisen since the fall of 2008 in the course of the current financial crisis in the united states and worldwide. starting in the middle of 2009, there was a large scale new

student movement coming up in response to cutbacks in state funding to higher education, particularly also increased tuition combined with cuts in enrollment, increases in class size, all this kind of stuff. that movement in california because it's often occupied movement starting in the fall of 2009 has been growing for a while and has merged with the larger occupy wall street movement in the last couple of months. what we have seen their, you have addressed this in your opening remarks, but we have seen is a tremendous amount of stored in organizing. more than 300 students in the uc system have been arrested in the

last two years including 66 students in berkeley. one group was peacefully occupying a building that was woken up -- there were woken up in the night and not given an order to disperse, not given a chance to beat, just arrested and taken 40 miles away and kept so they could not rally against their treatment. police have seen what happened not just that davis a few days ago but berkeley before that. that kind of police force against student activists has become routine in california the past couple of years. what we are seeing now is an interesting moment for us to be having this discussion. with the correct amount of attention that the uc davis incident is getting, we are seeing a much bigger spotlight

on questions of university response >> we in the paper make a bit of a reference to the idea that universities do not always encourage the student voice. we are approaching it from the position that universities should interest to the voice because it is good for higher education policy but it is for student development. from all of your stances, what do you think the approach of the university administration has been to student activation and what you think it should be? >> i had a really positive experience with administrators on the campuses. they definitely try to set up and foster student activism on campus. college park has 207 groups on campus. they are all student government

recognized. the administration is there to help end create a system where they can foster their voice. could it be more effective? yes. but is important are working with students on these issues instead of an animosity against them. santa barbara was similar. i was good friends with the dean of students while i was there because they had a meeting where student groups could go and figure out how to hold the event, what kind of resources were available. they were very accessible and far -- as far as making that happen. >> i have a little different experience. i graduated from the university of california santa cruz in 2007. in my first year of college i went to a student open house government meeting which got me

involved in an internship. she opened up an internship for me and i needed a job so i said, ok, i will do it. i had no idea what i was getting myself into. from then on i ran for vice president of the campus and dublin two terms. my third year i ran for president of the campus, senior term. through those three years in developing and foster relations with students, particularly students of color for my communities, i was able to be a liaison between the students on campus. the four years i was in school, tuition went up over 50%. we traveled up and down the state. we went to you see -- uc davis, berkeley, santa barbara, we want to protest the tuition increases. i have had the benefit of the

fostering relationships with administration and student affairs, not so much in any other departments. student affairs is the first to get cut went budget cuts happen to the college and the state. our vice president for student affairs was laid off because of budget cuts. she was one of the women of color and power that we used to have that we do not have any more. as a woman of color, i had nobody else to relate to. in that position and in that role, we had a pretty good time educating students on campus and getting students involved in the vote campaign and a statewide and nationwide when people -- when things were going down. i had a different experience working with police officers and organizing those protests. i think what can be included as

the university of california student association. the region board represents on 10 campuses. we have one voice. we have been trying to get more students voice on that position on the board of directors and it has not been successful. i think there are a lot of other ways we have been trying to do on share campuses and assured forces. i think we can start to encourage that. by starting with a student on board his the bourse we are trying to use to make sure the change is happening and that we are educating other students in that process as fast as possible. we should be stakeholders' on all the decisions that are happening. >> if you look at it historically, what you find is the late 1960's and early 1970's were a real watershed moment.

the biggest reason for that both directly and indirectly was the response to student protest. in many cases, extremely disruptive student protests. a lot of the student uprisings of the mid to late 1960's were responses to restrictive and analyzing university policies. we think about the 1960's of being the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. but foreign-policy is and that kind of stuff motivated a huge number of students. when policy makers found is that bringing students in the with an actual governance role did a huge amount to transform the nature of student involvement. what we saw in the late 1960's and early 1970's was a rise of

independence for sitting government, control over student fees. he saw the student trusties with voting power. you saw a rise in the independent state and a system wide organizations of still lobbies. student and involvement in the university committees. all of this stuff designed to make students not merely consumers but also stakeholders in the university. to give them an active voice in the running of the university. what we have seen subsequent to that is an actual -- a gradual retreat from those principles. i think what tends to happen is that students tended to be the most likely to protest in an aggressive and disruptive way when they feel like they have no other venue to be heard. even in the case theuc davis,

the chancellor has announced here is going to be a task force to examine policing policies. she has given no indication that the students are going to choose their own representatives or this task force will have any decision making power rather than something that is just consulting. there is no indication that the students have any direct say in the shaping of university policy. i think if students actually had a direct voice, then the nature of what we are beginning to see on campuses would shift. >> that is interesting. i think of the uc movements as a strong burst to divorce than other places but it may be because they have a weaker link to administration. >> i think there are reasons why it has been important for the fact that the administration has

been so recalcitrant has been a major factor. >> i have to ask you this question. i was at a dinner a few nights ago or there were people who were active in student activism in the 1960's. they had a longing for the good old days. students are not the same today as they used to be. i was a student recently. i felt pretty good about my role there. i wonder, is this just a stalled jet or is there actually a difference between the way students participate today? "i think there are a few things going on. as you indicated, students today are much more likely to be older and are much more likely to have kids. there are more likely to have full-time jobs. there are more likely to be graduating with a huge amount of debt that leaves them with less freedom to engage in activism

and organizing. they have a much harder time. the rights of commuter colleges changes the campus itself. that is one piece of it. eight other pieces, i think it is easy to neglected the amount going on on campuses today. one thing that is obvious to me but is often forgotten, look at the american university of 1968. how many campuses had blocks to the unions? how many students -- how many campuses have woman student centers? how many campuses have gay and lesbian student union organizations? the answer to that is a zero. the first was established in 1969. now, every campus has of us. those are active organizations that are performing all sort of students support work.

they are giving counseling. they are giving support. they are engaged with the university administration. that kind of involvement his flying beneath the radar of most of the public. another thing is the 26 amendments in the early 1970's, giving young people a vote transformed the nature of student activism. previously, students were literally disenfranchise. they have no way to directly engage in the political process. after the 267 a, you see the rise of student lobbies, as to the associations, national student organizations, usa and the purgs were creatied in that moment. again, when 1000 students show up for a lot the day, that is

not sexy in the same way a thousand students taking over an administration building is sexy. it does not get the kind of a media attention that the stuff in the 1960's got. it is a question that i hear a lot less than i did at one year ago. it is still a question that rest on a fundamental understanding of contemporary american campus. >> he mentioned the difficulty of organizing students. i wonder if either one of your organizations have wrestled with it or thinking about that issue. >> we are thinking about the issue. on our board of directors, we have a process in which different communities and different spaces or identities are represented -- represented. we have jewish students, african-american students.

the issue is being brought up and discuss. once federal aid grants were taken, it was a heavy burden for us to carry. we did not want to cut off their arms and do something else for us. i think that right now student loan is a big issue. we have to suffer in dealing with that right now. that is the underlying or most umbrella issue we are working on. >> you have been doing a lot more work with community college students in the last year or two then it has at any point. >> absolutely. we have recruited, to campuses. we bring over 200 students to washington, d.c. and train students on the issues and bring community college students and sometimes high schools to come

to washington, d.c.. but we have a press conference in front of the capital. we have been recruiting and educating. is harder with a two cure and a three-year program. the voice is there and the voices are heard. we are working on finding out what pro-active issues we can take stances on. right now it is reactionary. be what to be proactive on policies and king's on higher education. >> i definitely had a similar experience with nontraditional students. we have as far as their internship program goes, commuter students -- is a lot more difficult to planned meetings at 7:00 at night. the biggest way to combat that would be to be overly flexible. i know this is a general problem as far as traditional students. the government runs from 9:00 to 5:00.

if you want students to show up to a lot the day, it is difficult to amalgamate physical people. their job is to go to school and get an education. it makes it difficult for traditional students to do that. for non-traditional students, it is even more difficult. just barely flexible and have meetings on weekends and have meetings when they are available. have those discussions about when that can happen. the organizing in community colleges that vastly different. some schools do not have campus communities. the university of maryland has a large on campus residential life. people feel like it is their house, where they live. with community colleges, it is totally different. people come to school, they have class when they can because

they are usually working. if you want to organize a demonstration, when can you find the time that can work for everybody's schedule? it becomes a nightmare. it disenfranchises them. that is one of the big issues. have meetings on sundays at 4:00, like i did yesterday. that is ok. >> i want to keep time for questions from the audience. let me ask you one more question. what do you see is the biggest problem in higher education right now? how do you think listening to students can give us a better solution? we will go down the line. >> the biggest problem in higher education? from my perspective, it would be the lack of student participation. there is a lot of power that students do have.

the biggest issue is that students do not realize how much power they have. working on things like shared governance, not having reactions to problems. we can talk about access and affordability, but that starts with a student participating in the discussion in the first place. making that a voice more institutionalized and having that work as best as it could be the problem i would suggest first. >> i would say it is cost. we have been talking about -- they are working on campus or they have family problems that town. that is all deferring stand accessibility and time towards

the issue of the cost of tuition. i think it is entirely too expensive. my annual salary is the cost of my lungs. -- loans. it twines with students input. wisconsin has an amazing statute. 36095. students have sole input. no other state has that statute, which i think it is interesting. it encourages students to be involved in the process and to be at the forefront of the conversation around higher education. cost is the biggest issue. stop taking away our financial

aid. i think higher education were just free or lower, it would solve a lot of problems. students are disenfranchised. the cost of education is important to consider when we talk about keeping students in case. when they keep losing these different streams of support services, students start to see these losses and they do not want to stay engaged. it is like their voice is not being heard. >> as they lose out on monday, they have to work more, which takes more time away.

>> the ongoing privatization of public higher education is one of the great stories of the 21st century. it has been really neglected by the national media. if you are an out-of-state student at uc-berkeley and you are living on campus, the cost of attendance at berkeley is now higher than the cost of attendance at harvard. it is more expensive to go to berkeley as an out-of-state student than to go to harvard. not only has that transformation happened, but in the last 2.5 years, the proportion of out-of-state students in the incoming student pool at berkeley has tripled to

30%. admissions decisions are increasingly being driven by the revenue stream. what you have now is at a school like berkeley, a third of the incoming class, from a financial perspective, berkeley is a private university. and not a cheap private university. the way in which that -- and the reverberations around those policy changes, we talk about the increase in cost of higher education far more than we do the radical extent to which state funding has been slashed. the magnitude of that is something that the vast majority of america is completely unaware of. >> thank you so much. let's take some questions from

the audience. somebody will be coming around with a microphone. if you could give us your name and organization. >> i am a graduate student as well as a staff member at gw's career center. a lot of times, students are afraid of breaking those relationships we have with potential employers. can you talk a little bit about the conversations you have had with them? >> at the occupy wall street last week, there was a massive citywide student demonstration. the most tweeted chant was, "f internships."

the way that internships not only cut student purchasing power, but also warp the nature of do is able to go into not- for-profit jobs, entry-level jobs. if you want to be a public interest lawyer, you have to be rich. the only way to get into the pipeline is to work for free. that model is increasingly spreading throughout the workforce. the effect that it is having on class mobility is really profound. >> i want to tell the story of one of my co-workers. she graduated from william and mary.

she had a really hard time deciding if she wanted to come work for us because of her student debt. she could not take an unpaid internships. she was not able to afford it. i had a conversation with a student about unpaid internships. it was taking away entry-level jobs for people who already graduated.

the most important thing for students is to really look at -- what jobs will be available after the internships. what are they getting out of the experience? is that what you want to be doing with your summer? do in your background research. students to have to make those trade-offs, it is an unfortunate experience because they cannot pursue things like public interest lawyers. her dad is the same as your salary. that is true -- her debt is the same as her salary. the same is true for me, too. i believe is that from now on. it has lowered my purchasing power. >> that is a really interesting thing to come out of occupy wall street. students are expressing a frustration with student loans. the recession and joblessness has brought light to the issue

about unpaid employment. can we get another question? >> my name is clarice and i am a student at howard university. i know one of the issues is for-profit colleges and how they are predatory on low income minority students. a lot of these students have the highest loan default rates. a lot of these students do not know what they are getting into. i want to know what the initiatives have been started to raise the student voice in these for-profit colleges and to reach out to these students to get them to stand up for their rights. >> that is an interesting question. that is one of the things that we write about in the paper. can you guys speak to your

experiences? >> we do not have for-profit colleges in ussa. we have been sharing and doing some work would documentation. those students to graduate have been brought dreading with triple what it might get -- my debt is. there is a lot of testimonies and things that have been done in the social media to shed light on the issue. whether or not they are able to have financial aid is an under the rug constituency and a base. we have not been doing too much organizing. we have been sharing a lot of the testimonies of the students. it is a certain stigma. that is what we have been doing.

>> this is an area in which students are voting with their feet. the enrollment at for-profit colleges is plummeting. i believe it is capeline -- kaplin that saw a decline in enrollment. students are abandoning these institutions in in droves. that has been without a huge amount of organizing going on. >> i am a professor, 32 years.

i was a student five times in higher education. all three. i think the biggest for sot in this country and higher education is the word non-profit organization. when a president of a college that has only 240 students at million per year, what do you expect that tuition to be? when the associate dean for that same university, making about $300,000 per year, how can we call that a non-profit organization? the problem is i think that

student activities are always focused on social activism groups, right, but nobody ever questions -- because the idea of a nonprofit organization in this country is income versus the disbursement. the problem as we never questioned whether this disbursement is legitimate or not. that is the major problem. therefore, i know when i went for my first bachelor's degree, my cost for the whole batch the decree was about 10 dozen dollars. when i went for my ph.d., it was $250,000. so that is where the students need to be active, and they should focus on their work

rather than it -- the problem that created this, we started calling the students customers. if you do that, you did not decide how much it will buy that suit for. >> ball into have the panel address this. -- i want to have the panel address this. >> this is where we see a big gap between private institutions and public institutions. students of public institutions have a lot more leverage than students of private institutions. when we're talking about university policies, we have seen a lot more activism coming out of public institutions. in terms of the whole concept of student as consumer, i think there are two different ways in which the concept appears in higher education. one is the way you have been using it, in terms of consumer protection.

i think that is absolutely legitimate. the other is the conception of students as consumers and the consumer is the mentality of students. without going into detail about that, that is an attitude which university administrators often ascribe it to students, but it is an attitude and conception of students that actually arose among the university administrators and the early 1970's and response to the creation of the pell grant and other ways in which students got more power in determining how the money would be spent. but you are right, from that perspective, the student as consumer, that is intended and reducing the student's role in running the university. >> i know that we have framed this as are these schools profit or nonprofit, but students do not have access to enough

information about how universities bring in revenue and what they're spending it on. i don't know of your organizations have run into that barrier. >> we definitely have. the student government on my campus, we have been doing a lot of work because out art director with the african american resource center got fired. the first thing the student government did, ok, where is the budget, we want to see where this is coming from and why are you letting these people off. what are the sciences and physical education getting merge together. we asked for the budget, and were not ready or accessible to us. we tried to get the general budget. we had a meeting with then auditor in the office, and the report was 171 pages long, no

pictures, not in color, and the numbers were not detailed or explained. when students say, ok, when people request students come up with a solution, it is hard to do that when we did not have the necessary and information to do that and we are put into these boxes. there was an amazing article last year which said, all with to do is say, i don't know the answer. we have had that discourse back and forth, the paradigm of the administration calling us kids, because we are not, but we're also trying to empower students. they need to take us seriously and offer us this information so we can come to the table together with solutions.

b>> can we take another question? >> first of all, thank you for putting this on and that for the report. higher education becomes very concrete and the classroom. it affects students and college faculty members and they see the impact that policy has on students. i was going to ask, simply, what role do you see, but educators having an powering students to put their voices out there and encouraging student activism? >> when i worked with pirg, we worked with a coalition, and the biggest advantage we had with that group was sitting with

students. we also had a representative from the workers' union. it was interesting to have students, faculty, and workers' union in the room talking about tuition and budget cuts at the same time. it was interesting to hear their perspectives. they were very aware of what is going on with campus. my experience at maryland, and college park, that has not been happening at all. we work with faculties, so they come to us and have a unified front. obviously, students and faculty and unions have their issues, but there are things that cross boundaries. it was cool for me as a student to be sitting there talking about tuition costs. >> my experience, we have had educators that have been good allies. a lot of them have an

overarching relationships with educators because they have their own issues and they're also getting cuts and access and different resources. educators, please allow students to do extra. we go to the classroom and we try to do 30-second commercials before the class's start sot -- before the classes start soon, and they often allow us to do that if we have a good relationship to the educated. we had amazing educators on campus would let us know about meetings. it has been great to have >>

able to articulate their voice because there have not been students in those meetings. they're supporting student activism. i think allowing students to be educated on what meetings are taking place and what meetings are happening, i know that some of the teachers are conservative and they cannot let us to talk about activism, and they only want to talk about the class topics. but educators and play a bigger role. >> looking at the way that the university of california story has developed, two of the crucial turning points were first, a professor, at uc berkeley being on the receiving end of police violence, a

videotaped so what was not just students beaten up. this was a tenured faculty member who was dragged by her hair to the ground and brutalized, really, by it the campus police. then after the uc-davis incident on friday, the first detailed report on that with an untenured faculty member and describe what happened in extremely graphic and powerful terms out. that kind of faculty activism for students engaging in direct action is something we have very rarely seen in the last few years. i think faculty being willing -- i am a faculty member, i love signing petitions as well as the next guy, but that is what everybody expects us to do is sign petitions and express our disapproval. faculty actually being involved,

actually being present, not necessarily to get beat up, but certainly to observe what is going on in these protests can have a very powerful effect in changing public opinion. >> i know that the west has a question up here, and he is my boss, so we have to take this. >> i will give an example. three weeks ago, the state of washington introduced that it was making an open course library available for all of the curriculum materials for a good 45% of their gateway courses across their system, which would reduce the cost of the average student for textbooks and materials close to 400%. i am wondering how student organizations -- how is that scale that nationally? this is a material cost

reduction. the other thing that sparks challenges are company-based incompetency-based education. yours in the materials -- you are seeing the materials reduce the cost. how was that passed on to the students. the faculty may not necessarily be all that support of if it reduces their numbers. these are key issues that could radically reduced the cost of delivering higher education. how do you deal with those issues, how they're passed on? >> first, we will talk about reducing the cost and the affordability of higher education. my personal stance with online courses is i think it does away with the life experience we're talking about, trying to amend or students and give students flexibility or the skills they need to join the democratic

society, and i think online class's do not do that. we are human beings and it takes with the experience and relationship with the student in the classroom next to you were going to the professor for help and having a relationship. a lot of internships come from professors when the offer them to students, and my experience. i think it is great to lower the cost of education and to take away those different costs, but i don't think it does a good job of keeping the quality of higher education. that is where i would stand on that. >> i have something that actually maintains the affordability and quality that we're working on, affordable textbooks. the average student pays $1137 per year on textbooks. that is about the cost of the

meal plan. the idea being that is a huge financial burden to the education. there are already paying tuition and residential and living costs, and then textbooks on top of that is huge. one of the biggest things professors can do is adopt open source textbooks and materials on line. it is a growing field, and we've had a lot of success. some professors for not aware that these textbooks are available. we've compiled data, had meetings with department chairs, actually getting them to adopt these open source books. this is a monetary example. if 200 students are taking a class and the book costs $100, that is a $200,000 for the whole class. it is a professor at babson open source book, they are saving the

students that much money. i would encourage professors to write more of these books. there is a limited number of these, and the ones that they're available can be adopted in class, it would reduce the cost. it affects everyone. the taxpayer is paying it to pell grants? that is last money -- that is less money that professors need. it is also cool with the professors. you could add to the material and is open to the educators as well. that is a wave of the future that i would love to see more. i know students love the idea of having this online. if you've got like having a text book online at, you just pay for the cost of printing. you just need the information. it