guest: the nafta deal with china and other deals, central american free trade agreement, they are all out of this same broth. there were agreements that pretended to be balanced but were heavily balanced toward the country on the other end of the deal. there were not enforcement mechanisms in case the workers' rights in those countries were not respected. if there was fancy language of our respecting it but no way to enforce it. this is how we lost jobs to mexico and a lot of the jobs in mexico shifted to china. we lost a huge number to china and other countries. wisconsin was one of the most industrial bases of the country

and we took a huge loss in places like green bay, sheboygan, and also the loss of industry in a city like milwaukee which was once one of the greatest manufacturing towns. we still have some, but we have lost many jobs because of the trade agreements that were paid for with soft money that both parties were involved in. host: baton rouge, louisiana, good morning. you are wrong for russ feingold. -- you are on. caller: how are you doing this morning? i'm a ron paul supporter. i do not mean to put you on the spot, but i have read part of the previous guest, pat buchanan's, book. my question comes down to the economy and how we invest in

foreign aid. i get in trouble when i say this because a lot of people take it the wrong way, and i hope you do not, senator. i think we are a bankrupt nation. we will never get out of this debt with the policies that we have. i think much of it has to do with the security of israel. i'm not against the security of israel, but us going into iraq, on the verge of going into iran to try to prevent their nuclear proliferation, and there is no proof that they have these weapons or that they are really trying to have the advantage to get them, i guess what i'm trying to say is that at some point we're going to run out of money to help these foreign countries, paying israel to stay one step ahead, paying their neighbors to not attack. when our money runs out, what will happen to the state of

israel? china will not take them under their wing. the only outlet they will have will be to go back to europe. when they depend on europe, the jewish people always get in trouble when they go there. we simply cannot sustain this. host: russ feingold? guest: iran is not just a threat to israel. they are also a threat to the u.s. if they get nuclear weapons. because israel is an ally as well as the threat to our security, i think we need to take seriously what is going on in iran, but that does not mean i advocate an attack or invasion. as to foreign aid, i agree with a little bit. i do not want us to just throw more money at different countries in order to solve our problems. but i say in my book, "while america sleeps," it is to help reach out and improve our

knowledge of these countries while having a more positive relationship with these other countries. let's be citizen diplomats. maybe we should go for two or three weeks per year to help them learn certain things that would be of use to them and it did help us learn things as well. there's one guy in wisconsin named damon. he came to me in 1994 and told me he was a dairy farmer. he went to the former soviet republic and visit a dairy farm there. this farmer went out and he said there were so much bacteria in the milk that it could have walked to the market by themselves, that is a wisconsin joke, but it helped them come up with better techniques. 10 years later, he has gone to something like 30 other countries and has done the same thing. he is helping us sure that america's interest in other people, that we want to share

information and skills, and he learned about another country. he was able to come back to pulaski, wisconsin, and tell people what it is like. we lack a scouting report on other countries. even football teams go and scout the other teams. we're at a huge advantage when we do not have a significant knowledge of the rest of the world and we really need to bring up our game in this regard. host: ohio on the democratic line. good morning. caller: a have a lot of respect for you, senator fine gold, and i hope you run for office again. feingold.r the general was recently on zakaria on cnn. he was a rational and had a deep

understanding of foreign policy and he said the iranian regime was an actor. he said a strike at this time would be, in his words, "destabalizing." iran has never threatened the u.s. and comments from ahmadinejad have been misrepresented by the very same people who that is into iraq. i believe you voted against the iraqi war revolution and you were on the intelligence community -- committee at that time. guest: i was not, but i voted against it. caller: senator durbin was and voted against it. do think those operating out of the office of special plans in the pentagon, those who created and disseminated false intelligence, should they be held accountable?

on c-span, they have often had the former head of the cia, michael shearer, on and he's in the three issues on what people are angry with the u.s. is our support for dictators in the region, the u.s. support for israel matter what they do -- no matter what they do, and also our military bases to access the oil in that region. if you could talk about the core reasons of people in that part of the world are so angry about with the u.s., as michael shearer has talked about. guest: one of the stories i tell in my book has to do with, frankly, my first experiences meeting with a large group of islamic americans and foreign students in madison, wisconsin,

did you days after 9/11. they had an open house to have a dialogue. they had a wonderful reception and had a great time talking. i asked the question the basically asked, what the source of the the dealings in the middle east war. there were comments about israel and the palestinians, and part of the iraq war, no-fly policies come humanitarian issues at the time. the overwhelming criticism was that we supported dictators and despots in the middle east, as you said. that is the big one. we have these values of democracy, human rights, women's rights, and yet we support people like ben ali in tunisia, mubarak in egypt, yemen, and even on occasion working with saddam hussain when it was convenient for us. this is what people say. it galled them that this is what

we claim that we cared about it we picked some died like musharraf and went with him instead of making connections with the people. that is a fundamental flaw. i know what people say. you do not what you're going to get. -- do not know what you're going to get. we have to figure out a way to work with the actual people in the country and not just pick some strongman that will repress people and cause them to hit us much longer. the root of our relationship with iran have to do with the relationship we made in this regard in the early 1950's. it had finally gotten a free leave chosen prime minister. with the cia and others, we took him out of power. this was a great frustration for the iranian people that led to the dominance of the shah of iran. this is the kind of mistake we have made.

host: back to campaign finance, last friday in "the new york times," if the head of the progressive policy institute and former finance director for the democratic national committee had an op-ed. here is just a little bit of what was written.

guest: he could not be more wrong. we saw his comments in "the n.y. times." my director responded. it is like saying there's one series of organized crime's alleged open up another to balance it. we've already seen what this system of soft money did before mccain-feingold. as i write in my book, we talk about the bad the been actually hear people talking about these corrupt contributions on the floor of the senate while voting on it. the idea that this gentleman thinks it's a good idea to go back to unlimited contributions to the party, that is a complete defeatist attitude. what he is forgetting is that things are much better in the 2008 election when we did not have these huge contributions because citizens united had not yet occurred and we had banned soft money to the party. what happened?

people want more democratic -- went the more democratic route. people who felt that they could not be part of the political process went back to giving $10, $20. corporate america saw that and they were worried. this saw the face of democracy and they were terrified. what did they do? the engineered a decision like citizens united. they said we would never be able to deal with that because we cannot get the decision overturned, so let's get rid of that. it's the most defeatist approach i could think of. host: tweeting this question -- of that's what i do every day. it is what progressives united is all about. i pounded it with some people i have worked with in the past ride around the anniversary of

the citizens united decision. you can go to citizensunited.org and be part of a group that is working to make people aware of citizens united and also to support legislation, such as the disclosure act to make sure people know where contributions are coming from, get rid of the federal elections commission which is a joke, but also to call up the candidates, democratic republican or anyone else, if they want to get involved in corporate money in this game to the unlimited contributions. this is a system that, i believe, is devastating for those who are progressives. we believe money should not control policy, that people should. we worked every single day, and i think with great success, to highlight everything from the super committee, which we were worried would give away the store and create a bad budget, to commanding that there be a

real investigation of what happened on wall street and the president took steps in that regard after we raised the issue. we're proud of what we have done and we want to encourage people to join us because we are specifically focused on this, but we have worked with other groups like democracy for america of and moveon.org instead of just shrugging our shoulders and saying this is the way it has to be. host: another call from wisconsin for you. an independent. caller: hello, senator. i was just wondering if you give your take on everything that is going on in our state right now. i do not know if you covered that already, but i got a late start in watching this. guest: we have not. he is calling from the granite capital in the world. our state has been thrown into a

horrible situation. gov. walker got elected. he won the election and it was one where all the democrats lost and he got into office. but for him. the problem is he decided to attack our state. he did not want to work with the other side and work with the people. he wanted to attack the public bargaining rights have been around for decades. weaver the first-aid in the country to have these laws. -- we were the first ever in the country to have these laws. it is a basic right. he used every brutal tactics, every unfair approach. i served in the wisconsin state senate for 10 years and he broke every tradition and he had a desire to destroy this lot. he has succeeded for now. i was over 1 million people to sign the petition to recall this governor. we do have a recall law, so what is it for? it is for a situation for when a

governor has waged war on the working people of the state in a way that no one could have predicted that has divided families and friends, but a state that it usually very genteel and cooperative, community-oriented, and he has turned it into a war zone. we need to reverse that. i think we have a good chance of replacing that probably as soon as early june. host: our last call view is from kansas. a republican. caller: good morning. how are you today? guest: fine, thanks. caller: i just recently completed "the world american made." one of the points he makes is that americans, we have an involvement all around the world. we are a superpower. the american instinct is two fold. on one hand, we want to get involved in something and as soon as the get there, we're

looking for a way out. the instinct, i think, as part of the humanitarian feel. we were watching the news out of syria. we are told that we do not have a heart. it was tragic to see what was going on in syria. we were talking to each other and when we say someone has to do something, it has to be house that does it. and we were watching the news in afghanistan, the people in the streets rioting, the two american soldiers that have been killed over the burning of the qoran, and we think we just need to get the hell out of there. we want to be engaged in these things, but at the same time i'm really looking for the exit. how do we get our arms around all of that and do the right thing and see the job through?

guest: this is one of the chapters in my book, while america sleeps, talking about in for a penny come in for pound. once we go into a situation, we have the attitude that we have to stay there forever. getting the job done is a meaningless term. what does that mean? we resolve the differences that have been there for thousands of years? that's absurd and will not happen. our purpose going in was to get osama bin laden. , got him in pakistan. what are we still there? it's crazy. it is not making any sense and it is sapping our economy. president obama showed great wisdom in regards to libya. he did not have to send in boots on the ground to have people there three years and years because of the argument that once you are there you cannot leave until it's all taken care of. he very wisely engaged the

community. we did things to make a difference to keep the tipping point from going against gaddafi. we got rid of the guy. that shows the wisdom. that shows a president that gets it instead of the crazy idea that you have to invade one country at a time and stay there like we're playing a game of risk a set of having a better relationship with the rest of the world. host: russ feingold's new book, "while america sleeps." thank you for taking the time to speak to c-span this morning. we will be right back with our friday america by the numbers segment looking at college graduation rates. more when we come back.

>> bui got started because there were a lot of conservative think tanks that were to cross the issues. -- we got started because of these think tanks. there was no progress of think tank that was working on economic and domestic policy. >> neera tanden from the center for american progress on the washington-based think tanks. >> those within and ideology behind a particular argument in washington, there were very little facts behind them. part of our job is to make the argument and the factual

arguments, the evidence-based argument behind our own views. i do think when the facts do not argue our position we reexamine them because we fundamentally believe the most important thing is to be right about your views. >> a look at the center for american progress sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on c-span's "q&a." >> one of the three kids things about writing this book for me -- one of the freakiest things for me was that rights were straddled on the moral imperative and the aspirational ideals about more practical and formal mandate. >> on distributing food in the port in india to sex trafficking in japan, defining human rights and how well-meaning western reform can increase explication

saturday night at 10:00 p.m. eastern. also, on saturday at 7:00 p.m., as house historian looking at the african-americans who have served in congress. at 11:00, a book party for the likes of senator al simpson written in by his former press secretary and chief of staff. "booktv" every weekend on c- span2. live, on american history tv on c-span3, 5 civil war historians make their case for 1862 pocks in person of the year. the all-day forum from the library of virginia in richmond. c-span3 yours can join the discussion alive saturday starting at 9:30 a.m. eastern on c-span 3. [video clip] -- "washington journal" continues.

host: record number in the u.s. have college degrees and a milestone is passed as 30% of u.s. adults report having a college degree. we will introduce you to the gentleman at the census bureau that develops this survey and is reporting these results. his name is kurt bauman and he is the chief of the education and social stratification branch. thank you for being here. along with him at the table is jeffrey selingo, the editorial director of the chronicle of higher education. hiring aking about vacation rates and what effect it has on important things like jobs. he has been covering up for their publications. thank you for being here. mr. bauman, can you give us the headlines behind these newspaper headlines? what is significant about 30% of u.s. adults with a college

degree? guest: this is the first time have crossed this 30% threshold. it's exciting in a sense that it's a new level of vacation all attainment that we have reached. -- a new level of educational attainment. 30% of our population 25 years and older has a college degree or higher. host: how long has it been at the 25% level? guest: we have been seeing some continuing growth in the number and percentage of people with a bachelor's or higher. host: we will open up our phone lines, as we always do. we thought it would be interesting to engage in a general conversation about the values of a college degree. especially in this tough economy, many people going back to school. people with degrees are unable

to find a job. now we have these new education attainment rates, and it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on collagen education and its value to your life. the president -- on a college education and its value. the president has a desire to increase the college bread ration rate. how does the u.s. compared to other countries around the world? guest: we are in the top 10, but in the bottom half. part of the reason is how it is counted. other countries include two-year degrees and we do not in some cases. we have so many more students going to college and other countries, and so many more today than 20 or 30 years ago. not everyone is prepared to go to college, so about half of them and up dropping out of the

system. host: we will look at some numbers from the census and then began taking your calls. look at this let's overall chart as education attainment of a part of the population. how does this stack up? guest: we have people at various different levels, 12% of people who have less than a high-school diploma. we have 31% who have a high- school diploma or the equivalent. 26% have gone to college and neither has gotten an associate's degree or did not complete a bachelor's. that is an important part of the population, as well. then there are a number people with advanced degrees, a 11%. host: did you ask motivation in

this survey? we probably know young people who graduated from college and you have gone back for hire education because they cannot find a job. as that factored into what is driving people to seek higher indication? -- has that factored into higher education? guest: we do not ask their motivations. we are not that nosy. our main concern is to just keep track of the basic numbers. it really has been steady growth. host: here is a chart that suggests since 1947, since the gi bill coming to today. you can see the growth rate going up. what about federal policies and how much of an effect has that had?

guest: there is no doubt it affects people's decisions to go to college. there were $10 billion in student loans last year. between federal loans, other grants to colleges, and the pell grant which is the primary financial aid policy of the federal government to help lower income students. without that money, we would not have even close to this attainment rate in higher re- education. host: in "the consumer press." groups about minority and what is going on with their colleges education? guest: we have seen a really large growth about the percentage of the adult population in hispanics with a college degree. the number went from 2.1 million to 3.8 million.

that is 80% growth. we think that is an interesting point, obviously. the black population also showed large growth. overall, there has been growth treated to look at the chart, the hispanic population has grown as a proportion of the total population. 4.4% at now up to 6.1%. the black population went from 6.7% to 7.6%. if you look at the adult person with a bachelor's degree, you are more likely to find someone

that is black or hispanic now than 10 years ago. host: if you're specifically asked to compare these numbers to the white population, how is the white population as it is a single doubt? guest: the white population has also been growing in bachelor's attainment. i do not have the number right now. it has been growing along with the asian population. it has been growing at a steady clip. we see a growth year in addition to continuing growth in the white population. host: which brings us to the 30% threshold. staying with that, looking at it occasional attainment of native- born and foreign population. what do we learn by the gang at this? guest: the foreign-born

population, there is a large number that to have every will level of vacation. this is a chart that shows the distribution of the foreign- born, in terms of their education, as well as the native born. 32% of the foreign-born has less than a high-school diploma and 11% of the native-born is at that level. there is the lower level of vacation in the foreign-born. what is also true, and i do not think everyone realizes this, but there is a large portion of the foreign-born indication -- with very high education. if you look at doctorate and professional degrees there is a high percentage. >> 1.9%? -- host: 1.9%.

guest: yes. host: we will listen to the president talking about his administration's and their goals about hybrid occasion. then we will come back and talk about what did ministration is trying to do and what the committee's reaction is with regards to effecting college degree attainment. let's listen in. [video clip] >> because of you, we could take money that was going to subsidize bank selling the student loans, and why do we not send that money directly to students? as a consequence, we now have millions of young people who are getting higher pell grants or are eligible for the first time, or are seeing their student interest loans lower and have access to college and keys to the american dream. that happened because of you. that is what change is.

when kids graduate, and want them to be able to afford to go to college. if they worked hard to get the greatest good college, i do not want them to cut their dreams short because they do not think they can afford it. right now, americans owe more in tuition than they do credit card debt which means congress is going to have to stop the interest rate on student loans from going up. they're scheduled to go up in july. colleges and universities are going to have to do their part. i have met with presidents and we are going back to help students to keep affording to go to college. you have to do your job in terms of keeping tuition down because taxpayers cannot fund this forever. hire education cannot be a luxury. it is an economic necessity, an economic imperative, for every family in america and they should be able to afford it. host: jeff selingo, what is the

administration helping to do, in a general sense, for people returning to were going to college? guest: they want to increase the attainment rate, increasing the number people going in the graduating. they want to reward colleges and keep tuition down and graduate more of their students. that has been what the obama administration wants to do were they move from a bank-based system of giving loans to direct lending. now the government directly lands and does not give that subsidy to the banks. -- now the government lends. host: are the schools getting an equal amount? guest: state universities get direct subsidies from their state governments, so do the private universities getting it through grants.

the biggest problem, 80% of students going to public universities and public universities of the last few years have been really hurt by state appropriations. state legislatures are cutting appropriations public colleges and increasing tuition as a result. the only thing that has been really helpful is the stimulus money, which has now run out. that is what you're seeing a big increase in public college tuition at a time when more and more students take a college. host: this is not a census bureau chart, but it looks at the reductions in state funding to college. these blue lines are the ones that have increased raids. these are neutral. and these are those that have sent less. we will get some of our callers

in. let's take a call from pueblo, colorado. you are on the air. caller: thank you. there are a lot of reasons why kids are entering colleges and dropping out, but it is a horrendous burden on our college kids. they keep you in college for a very long time, longer than you should have to. the course work really needs to be modernized to fit the needs of the students today. i did my entire third year of a college without books because they gave us workbooks. these professors write these textbooks and every year they change it to you have to buy a new one every year. host: what kind of school did you go to come a state or private? what area of study? caller: i started out in medicine and ended up in accounting. i went to a state school. i started out in a junior

college. it was a wonderful experience for me. i was an older student because i was a single mom. i ended up dropping out of the school several times, which is another thing. when you have other expenses, it's really difficult. student loans volume around forever. i respect -- student loans followed you around forever. i respect president obama for what he is trying to do for college students. i think they should make a note to let people know stimulus money went to colleges. guest: the caller mentioned a couple of things i think are important, one is student loan debt. this became a huge issue during the occupy wall street movement. uc students with $100,000 in debt. the average undergraduate graduate with about $25,000 in debt, so when you hear these big

numbers those students are on the outer limits of loans. the caller did bring up an important point, that student loans are not discharged through bankruptcy. this is a huge issue that they're related follow students around for the rest of their lives. host: dan, harder choices back up overall with what you have learned about what people are selected for their bachelor's degrees? guest: we have been asking people about the majors to have selected and the results are interesting. 35% of people in the general population with a bachelor's degree who had studied science and engineering which would include engineers, math, a physical science, biology, psychology, social science.

9% of the population had studied architecture. 20% had studied business. education was 14% of the population. the rest would be arts, humanities, literature, fine arts, communications, and various subjects accounting for 23%. host: does that also tracks where the jobs are? guest: not necessarily. virginia, beginning this spring, will allow students and parents to look at average wages by major and by institution. before you go to college, you will notify major in architecture at virginia tech, here is what graduate from virginia tech who work in virginia ended up making. here is the median salary. this is an important piece of consumer information missing right now. when students are 18, they're

not necessarily mature enough to make decisions about a career. having this piece of information, and do not think that the only reason to good colleges to get a job, but it's a huge reason. disinformation will be very helpful and virginia will be the first state to do this beginning this spring. host: science and engineering- related fields, there has been an enormous projects nationally called stem, science technology engineering and math, and it is a public-private partnership where they send money so students in the area can go to school. is this what we are seeing in the growth? is it having an effect? guest: that is a purely recent effort in the last decade, so i'm not sure if these numbers show it right now, but there has been an effort to get more students majoring in those areas. part of the problem is that

competitively we are still lower than any other rising countries, especially in asia. host: you cannot compare these numbers to about one decade ago? guest: this is the first time we asked. we have some idea of a trend going back to 1984. host: have science and engineering been growing? guest: to certain degree, but i'm not sure. host: what is the significance of this map? guest: almost half of the people with science and engineering bachelor's degree is a live along the coast. washington, oregon, california and, and the the northeast coast from massachusetts and virginia. host: kines speculate why that

might be? -- can you speculate? guest: the northeast has the highest proportion of private colleges. that does leave out texas and florida, but most graduates end up staying closed with a graduated from, so they go to stanford or mit, there are likely to stay close. host: lafayette, louisiana, you are on the air. caller: i have a bachelors of from degree university of louisiana lafayette, and i have been a watcher of "washington journal" for a long time. i'm working against a glass

ceiling, so at 54, i went back. like the first caller, i'm in debt and i returned for a mster's and am writing about the music of the area. after 35, it seemed there was no help at all. paying a loan off followed you everywhere. i do not see and stats about black women going into grad programs. i used to count the number of young black men on campus. there are more now. fdon't know hwow they inish. young people do not have a goal

in what they will be doing. i was very entrenched. nonetheless, i would go back and do it all over again. my money has not gone up, but while it is steady, and when i worked on my degree i toured, did gigs. in my final year, 2008, i did not have a single day off. on thanksgiving, i got turkey to go. host: what is your instrument? caller: french music, i was in l.a. for a while, austin for 15 years, then back here because my grandfather and my family is here in black creole music. now i'm playing bass in a band. i have played with and number of cajun and black creole as well

as zydeco. host: i love zydeco and creole. thank you for calling in. can you look at the population of college attendance to see whether there is an increase in the age of people going to college? he suggests people are going back later in life. guest: there is some of that. it does not turn out to be as permanently these statistics as you might think, the number people going into college older. it's not an amazingly large number. that is not part of the attainment report because we're talking about who is enrolled at this point. he did also talk about the difference between black men and women and attainment. there isalmong women,

a higher level of attainment in the higher degrees then there is among men. that is an interesting fact and it is especially true in the black population. host: looking at gender, six distribution within the fields of bachelor's degrees. -- sex distribution. engineering is dominated by men. guest: it is one of the most prominent things you see when you look at the distribution of men and women across fields of study. it makes a difference in a lot of other factors. engineering degrees, 87% men. host: but education is overly dominated by women. and the ones that are about

people are which? guest: the ones in the middle are things like biological sciences, liberal arts, social sciences. off of twitter -- [laughter] guest: there is a lot of debate about that. i'm the son of a musician. there is a lot to be said about liberal arts in general. there's a lot of research that shows musicians make a very good medical students. there's a big focus right now, and a little bit of concern, on some college campuses that there's too much focus on science and engineering. the end goal is competitiveness and a belief that asian countries, in particular, are doing better and that most of the developments in technology, quality of life, from food and water, are all produced by

scientists and engineers. if we do not have enough of them, we will not be as competitive, especially with asian countries. host: next caller. go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. i'm an on-line professor for two major universities. i get a lot of feedback from my students, and there's great concern amongst my students mainly about not getting their degree or whatever, and but it is afterwards, the jobs. where are the jobs? i think there is also a great concern about the debt, as you have talked about. i have seen that -- i guess there are so many ph.d.'s walking the street because they cannot find a job, but the issue

is jobs. where are the jobs when you get your degree? you can have all the degrees in the world, but the jobs are not there, is your degree worth it? i will let you guys respond to that, thank you. host: we will talk later on about the correlation between degrees and jobs in the numbers. i wanted to ask you, talking about women, whether we looking at here and what do we learn from it? guest: you asked before if we had information on a field of degrees going back in time, and this does show degrees, by sex, going back to 1984. business has been a big growth area for women. it went from 27% female in 1984, for the general population, a

45% in 2009. in the same time, we have had a growth in engineering from 13% up to 18%. you may not think that is very high, but compared to 13%, that's a reasonable amount of growth. the natural sciences, which include biological sciences and physical sciences, went from just about even between the sexes to predominately female, 62%. education, it does not show any sign of change. it is still predominantly female. host: in 1984, most people seeking indication degrees were women and it stayed pretty steady, now at 80%. do you have any comments on that? host: this is a big issue in hire education, women in

particular. in most campuses now, women are the majority. over 60%. a lot of schools are struggling to attract men. these are issues that start a lot earlier in the indication process. a lot has been written about the struggle of boys in school right now. colleges right now our just starting to see the effects of that. when they get there, they do better, a graduate on time, and that's why i think we're seeing all some of these trends post- grad to ration. host: our last caller was an instructor for online education. the duties county police in your studies? -- do these count equally? guest: we asked people if they attend college. that is the way we get at the information. it keeps track of some of the same trends.

they would have to work through different channels to track down those kinds of students. host: charles in atlanta. good morning. caller: how are you doing? i am a recent college graduate. i'm 23 years old. i'm glad you were talking about this issue. the president hit it right on the head. in would be more competitive, and we need to graduate more of our citizens. the real problem, in my opinion, are the colleges and universities. they do not do what it takes to make the environment more suitable for the students. i believe, based on graduation rates and attendance, that is how much funding they should get. the gentleman says about half of the students dropping out, but that a lot of them that of

recently graduated [inaudible] what can be done to make sure that they keep students? they should invest more in their students. otherwise, we will continue to fall behind in a vacation and we will not see an increase until the colleges and universities take it upon themselves to take care of the students. host: of the past 25 years, prices have far outpaced inflation. what can you tell the audience about what you have learned? guest: private college wishes very expensive because a lot of it goes back out the door in terms of financial aid. there is a sticker price and the net price. the federal government has done a good thing by requiring all colleges to tell you what your net prices, we will pay. very few people pay the sticker price. colleges and universities, just

like health care, law firms, accounting firms, they employ a lot of highly educated people. unlike factories, where we were able to produce more widgerts per hout, for the most part we still educate the same as we did in 1980, a teacher in a room whether they're teaching 20 or 200 students. technology has changed, by having more online class's or hybrid class as, but for the most part we still perform indication the same way we did 20 or 30 years ago. -- we still perform education the same way we did. host: have sports programs kantor did to the rise of tuition as a general trend? -- have sports programs contributed? guest: sometiems they make a profit, but in other places not.

most big sports programs are at public universities and those are the ones being hit hardest right now with the cutbacks in state appropriations. it's a good question for some of these universities to mask. host: the most important part -- what is the payoff? what have we learned about the value of a college degree? guest: we have had a real growth in unemployment. you can see that it hit a different people with different levels of vacation in a different way. the top line of the graph shows people with less than a high- school diploma. they were hit especially hard. the unemployment rate went very high during the recession and hit a peak in january-february 2010 and 17.9%. that was compared to 5.9% and

people with a bachelor's degree. that's a big difference. when you hear the difference about people with a bachelor's degree, people with higher indication being -- higher education being hit by the recession, it's true, but education still does have the effect of making it less likely that you will end up unemployed. host: if you had less than a high-school degree, you were more than three times likely to be unemployed than someone with a college degree. guest: correct. host: what have we learned about salaries? guest: the more education you get, the higher your expected salary will be. this is the median income for people with various levels of indication. at the low end, people with less than a high-school diploma. they are earning on average $25,000 per year. on the high end, $74,000 per year.

it is arranged pretty neatly. host: is there a discussion about supply and demand, the more people with degrees the less valuable they will be? guest: there was a movement last spring to encourage some people not to a college. peter thiel, who found paypal, page didn't to drop out of college to start businesses, bill gates, mark zuckerburg. for every one of those, i can assure you people in the unemployment line. you might do better because you have to forgo wage is by going to college, but in the long run, as you can see, going to college has a huge payoff. host: from pennsylvania, a quick question? caller: i would like to talk

about gpa in college. some of the good things that the colleges are seeing, the university of drexel had the highest gpa in the school's history. university of pennsylvania had similar results. there were is the same tarp performance in their freshman class's and they are seeing results of the no child left behind, which i know is a dirty word, but results is being seen in the college environment. i would like to know about that. i know it is a republican thing, a george bush thing, but it's really showing up in these colleges and i think we should talk about it. host: we are almost out of time, so we will leave it there. grade point average. guest: it is alive and well. there's a movement that has been true in higher ed, it consumer

movement, so the believe as i am paying a lot of tuition and i deserve to get a lot back, especially in terms of a's, but there's a trend in this direction. they are more reliant on students to enter into contracts and get them renewed every year. host: i will close with the census number, and the high percentage of women in education. what happens to them in the get their earnings compared to those studying engineering? guest: this graphic shows two things in once, the areas that people studied verses education. the higher bar is people with an education -- a bachelor's degree. guest: engineering is on the

left and education is on the right but there is a variety. not only by education but in certain cases you can actually earn more getting an associate's degree in engineering and with a bachelor's degree in education. we find that to be interesting. it matters very much what's subject to study in school. host: that is it for our time but you could look for the census bureau's work in this area. census.gov has more details about who was going to college and what affect it can have been earning power later on. thanks to our guests on this friday morning. now for live coverage of the u.s. house of. of. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] and in its place give the courage of daniel who

faced the lion's den with confidence and who lived to see a new dawn . do not let us cower but stand before with power and love and self-control. give the members the courage to talk to each other and give them the courage to lead. o god, make speed to save us. in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit. amen. the speaker pro tempore: the chair has examined the journal of the last day's proceedings and announces to the house his approval thereof. pursuant to clause 1 of rule 1 the journal stands approved. the chair will lead the house in the pledge of allegiance. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

pursuant to clause 4 of rule 1, the following enrolled bill was signed by speaker pro tempore harris on tuesday, february 21, twelve. -- 2012. the clerk: h.r. 3630, a bill to provide incentives for the creation of jobs and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the house now stands adjourned until 2:00 p.m. on monday, february 27, 2012. >> the house returns for legislative work on wednesday with votes -- on monday. when the house returns, we will have live coverage as we always do on cspan. mitt romney talked about his tax and jobs plans today at the detroit economic club and you could watch live coverage on

cspan at 12:15 eastern grid he released some details of the plan yesterday in arizona and it includes abolishing the inheritance tax, cutting the corporate tax rate to 25% and raising the retirement age for social security. the national governors' association kicks off its annual winter meeting this weekend and we will have live coverage here on c-span at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow with the opening news conference. the two sessions after that on what states are doing to grow their economies and encourage entrepreneurs is live tomorrow on c-span and we're also live on sunday at 9:30 a.m. eastern with a look at what governors are doing to end childhood hunger. later at 2:00 on sunday, a discussion on the changing role of the national guard, all that this weekend live here and cspan. ." >> we got started because there are -- there is a lot of

conservative thinking that works across issues but before cap there had been no progressive thinking done on economic and domestic policy and national security. >> the president and ceo of the center for american progress on the mission of the washington d.c.-based think tank. >> we think there is an ideology behind particular arguments with very little facts behind the man part of our job is to make the argument and the factual arguments and evidence-based arguments behind our own views. i think that sometimes when the facts don't argue with our position, we reexamine that. we believe the most important thing is to be read about what your views are. >> a look at the center for american progress sunday night at 8:00 eastern on cspan's "q &a." >> the committee for responsible

federal budget says three of the four republican presidential candidates have economic plans that would increase the federal debt. mitt romney, rick santorum and newt gingrich have not identify spending cuts to offset the tax cuts they are proposing. of the gop candidates, only ron paul has explained how he would reduce the deficit. the committee for responsible federal budget release the findings yesterday and this is an hour and a half. >> good morning and thank you for joining us. this is our budget watch which we started last campaign season and the purpose of this project is clearly to focus on the important fiscal impact of campaign promises.

last time around, it was a big success in that it was heralded by cnn as the most detailed analysis of mccain and obama's budget plan. we want the focus of this to be to look at all the campaign promises that get made throughout the campaign through a non-partisan lens and look at how they affect the deficit and debt. today we are unveiling our first major policy report of this campaign, primary numbers, the gop candidate, and the national debt. the project is so important during the campaign. it is emphatically non-partisan. our board of directors are the leading budget experts in the country. they have led to the cbo, the omb, the treasury department, the fed, the budget committee and all the look of this from

either a non-partisan or partisan perspective on fiscal responsibility but we come together as an organization and don't think about this politically at all. that is our number one commitment, to bring the numbers out and make and transparent and provide something for voters to use during the campaign were the issue will be critically important. let me also tell you what this project is not. the report today is not the end of the story. all the campaigns are continuing to develop and fill in and alter their proposals as they go along and this will be a living, breathing document as the campaign proceeds and we will update the numbers and fill them in and work with the campaigns. we were pleased last time around that we sat down with the campaigns, with their advisers, went to the numbers and understood all that and tried to create a useful voter guide and gave ideas and what things affect fiscal policy in different ways.

we look at ourselves as a resource as well as something that provides information for voters. it is not the end of the story and we will be providing other policy reports. one thing we don't do in this report is look at the long-term effects of all policy promises. and things like social security reform and medicare reform which would likely be saved and are critically important to the fiscal health of the country and we would issue another report on a long-term effects of how the fiscal promises would affect things beyond the eight-years. we look at these numbers on a two-term presidential. . period. this is not just a mouthpiece for the campaign's print as well as closer to what they put out and what their policies are, we really go to the impartial sources to get this corporate we look at what cbo has said, the congressional budget office, a joint tax committee, the gao and

the tax policy center and provides valuable resources for this report and beyond in terms of scoring the tax policies for campaigns. we talked to the campaigns about the numbers and go beyond and bring to you what the scores from the -- those outside experts are and we sometimes have to come up with our own scores. we're transparent readies come from and we also have different scores based on low-debt, medium-debt, and high debt scores. this is not a comparison to president obama. we will do that. we will look at how the republican nominee and president obama's plans look at go through all them together but we thought was important to recognize in the primary that the work is not finished yet and we will continue as we did yesterday to see new proposals coming out of the different campaigns. we will update those and bring

president obama's numbers into the picture. we do an analysis of the president's budget but we will bring an apples to apples comparison when the time is right because it is fair and important to recognize that the republicans are still building out their proposals. this is our best analysis, our best attempt to make transparent the promises the campaigns have made. you can just go through this report and see what all the policies on the tax and spending side that have been promised and what they are a look at the overall effects on the bottom line. before i jump into the meat of what they have put out, i want to make two very special thanks to our project director who has run this entire project and done a phenomenal job of digging into every policy. he is not here today because he is vacationing with his family after many, many long knives of this but he has been invaluable. and our ever critical and

important policy director who has shepherded the project along with others for the committee and knows these numbers and policies and knows economics better than anyone else. thanks to the two of them and all the other staff to put together this report. i want to move on now to the policies if we have somebody moving the slides. is it me? [laughter] we might not be able to move on. ok, just to back up a little bit and anybody who's come to these events before is familiar with our unwavering focus on this important issue but why does it matter so much? the country's debt is nearing historical levels. it is well beyond the historical average was was below 40% of gdp and headed in a dangerous direction. it is now on a path that would result in a fiscal crisis if we do not make changes. we decided to look at the debt

levels. that is important for our markets respond and the economic effect of the fiscal situation of the country and look at how the debt levels would change over that roughly eight-year period. we start with the committee for responsible federal budget baseline very we assume that all the tax cuts would be extended. this is not our preference but it is a realistic basis beginning point. we assume that all the tax policies -- the tax cuts would be extended. we assume that the alternative minimum tax would be patched. the doc fix part of medicare would be patched. we assume the drawdown of the war and finally we assume that the sequester would not go into play. that is our starting point against which we compare all the policies.

in terms of how we make this comparison -- there are three scenarios and they are based on three critical differences but we have low debt, intermediate debt, and high debt and the differences are based on bowl level of specificity of any policy. if we score it differently of somebody says that we will cut spending or we will cut spending by doing x, y, z. it is great to talk about cutting spending and the deficit and the hard part is being able to get specific in allowing the country to have a discussion about the trade-offs inherent in all this. this is so much talk about this becoming a mandate on what to do about fiscal policy. i have no idea whether that will be the result of this election. i could see their be playing -- plenty of promises of what not to do.

we think it is important to recognize that the more specific a candidate is willing to be about how they would get something done, the more likely it is to take place. it is easier to say i would cut spending and to specify how that would happen. we recognize those differences. secondly, we look at differences between the scoring of the outside credible sources which i mentioned and the candidate's own scores. if there is a difference and how they estimate how much something would save, and investment accounts and other places, we recognize those in the different scenarios and get credits -- and give candidates their own credit. finally, the policy parameters are left vague. we recognize the different scenarios and play out the different situations. in general, we will give them

more credit, more specifics than they are. two other things that we don't do. we are not able to capture any affected long-term proposals when they come in this window of time. we will look through other reports that the effects of long-term reforms which are critically important. in standard budget scoring and the way we do this, they don't show up in a short term unless you actually make those changes with in the first decade or so. we were not able to capture those here. secondly, the way the cbo and joint tax forced scores, with delicate matter dynamic effects of tax policy. when you lower tax rates, it may well spur economic growth but that is not captured in our scores. we look at the mike: dynamic effects and behavioral effects. -- we look at the overall

dynamic effects and behavioral effects. this is a quick summary of the deficit under all the candidates' proposals. i would note that there is a lot of talk about balancing the budget, the last cycle of fiscal responsibility. i would point out that none of the candidates balance the budget nor is the budget ever balanced under our realistic a baseline. that is reality. unfortunately, we are not in a place where a budget will be balanced in the near term unless there is high levels of economic growth which would be tremendously helpful but we should not count on that it is helpful to understand the devils as between the candidates but also to understand that the

focus of most of this is on how you get the debt to a manageable level. one thing we talked about at the committee is how you get the debt to where it is not growing faster than the economy overall. that is a metric that many people want to focus on. let's quickly go through the individual candidates and then i will turn over to our panelists to talk more about fiscal issues and campaigns. first we will look at candidate gingrich. under the three scenarios, and i will focus on the middle line, and intermediate scenario which reflects the balance between those three levels. if you compare where we are headed, at this end of this time, the debt is likely to be 85% of gdp. under the gingrich proposal, the

debt would increase by $7 trillion compared to that amount and the debt levels would reach 114% of gdp. there are ranges. it could be higher or lower than that but under all the scenarios, by our projections so far, it would increase the debt rather significantly. you have the report and report is posted on line. we are about to be posted on u.s. budget watch.org. you can also pull up the report of there. we will go through all the specific policies will focus on the major ones from candidate gingrich. the largest tax policy which would lose revenue in this case are a two-tiered tax system, an alternative tax of 15% as a flat tax. that would have a significant effect on the bottom line and second reduction in corporate taxes down to 12% which is a

significant cuts. in terms of spending, most of the savings under this plan come from block granted medicaid and cutting about 100 other means- tested programs and there are also reforms to social security implementing private counsel to something that would have more savings over time. over the short term, it is costly. on candidate ron paul -- overall, we find he would reduce the debt compared to the standardized baseline by $2.20 trillion and that the debt levels compared to our 85% starting point would come down to 76% at the end of the two terms. there is only one scenario, where he would increase the debt. generally, the debt comes down and he does the tax policies that cut taxes, both the income

tax which he would rather retail but in the interim, he just get rid of a lot of components depuyt tax. he reduces corporate taxes that he is specific about his spending cuts they would look at. he would eliminate a number of agencies as this of the cuts he would have an cut block grants and defense and in most cases, the cuts would outweigh his tax cut. moving on to candidate mitt romney. this is one of the things the campaign has said they intend to do but we find it is basically deficit neutral. there is a views ranged over all, we find it would just be a marginal increase of $250

billion over 10 years. it is basically a deficit neutral. the range, depending on how the tax plan would work or just fill in the new details, he offers a number of reforms to the tax code including income and corporate. many of these are offset by base-broadening efforts. on the spending side, similar to the other proposals, there would be blocked grants and cut the workforce and cut domestic discretionary spending and we were told there would be more on entitlement reform which would more affect us in long term. the ranges that could basically be a deficit neutral, go down to as low as 75% of gdp or up as high as 94% of gdp but the range is tighter than a number of is we have seen. finally, on candidate rick

santorum -- there is major cuts in income taxes and corporate taxes under rigid corporate taxes under this proposal and they would have a negative affect the overall impact. at the same time, the candidate does at a significant handle on entitlement reform. the only can they? it starts to make some of these within the window seat start see these changes, and later iron and they're starting to be more such specific about what they look like. with other candidates, you see block grants and rick santorum cops -- talks about freezing defense. he identified the number of other cuts. the biggest issue is that he talks about cutting five trillion dollars from spending. he does not test the said aware that $5 trillion come from. the numbers are highly dependent on whether you score that as a cut or not. t is low.e that as a kapp

one of the things we will see if whether you fill in that $5 trillion in cuts which it would have a strong impact on the bottom line. the rains here is that in a low- debt scenario, that would end up as 34% of gdp and high debt is up to 100%. that will be the biggest thing to watch whether the 500 trillion dollars gets set out. we can talk more specifically about all the proposals after you look at the report. when the benefits of this report is it is a voter guide. you know how something where you can look at each candidate and see what proposals they have made two different taxes. on the spending side, what have they set about defense and how

would a cap on discretionary if they could? what's the support programs have been put out for elimination? what things would they spend more money on? you have a voter guides. you have a range of the estimates for the settings are cause they would provide very you are able to look at the bottom line. i recommend that everybody understand this as a living, breathing document and as the campaigns go forward and in many details the details will be filled out and the campaigns will provide more information because there maybes more savings are there may be less and will continue to update these. i think it is useful and important and beneficial to people to have a resource and impartial nonpartisan research that will look at a cost of these proposals and will look a the bottom line and that'll keep the focus on specifics. this campaign level lot of discussion about this the responsibility. here is a way to look at how those numbers add up. i am very pleased that we have

three of our board members today. i would ask you to come up. we are joined today by three board members for the committee for responsible federal budget. two are former members of congress from different sides of the aisle and committed to fiscal responsibility from where they said. of course, there is alice rivlin who has had a congressional budget office and the office of management and budget and vice- chair of the federal reserve. we are thrilled to have them involved in the committee. and to have been with us today to lead as a discussion about the fiscal issues in this report but more broadly, how during campaign season we talk about fiscal policy and how specific this critical campaign is. we think the issues of fiscal policy will unfold and what nafta after, everything is open. i look for to their comments and we will have a rich discussion the bank of joining us today.

alice, would you pick us up, please? >> sure. my views are mine only and not those of any of the organizations with which i am associated including this one. the committee for responsible federal budget has done a really signal service to the press, the public, and to the candidates. the proposals at this stage of any campaign are understandably not totally spelled out. if you cannot imagine how hard analysts have to work to figure out what these proposals actually are and how they would impact the budget. the dense footnotes in this document will give you a clue as

to how hard the staff worked to make these estimates. there is admittedly much uncertainty at this stage. alternative assumptions are necessary. some of the proposals are not primarily budgetary. my favorite was, wearing my old federal reserve had, is ron paul's proposal to end the federal reserve. what is the impact of that on the budget? well, the federal reserve actually makes money for the treasury so you couldn't say it saves money but think about it -- is this great nation, the largest economy in the world, did not have a central bank, what what happened? none of us know.

the impact on the budget would be likely to be major. it is inherently un schoola ble. it is too much at this stage to ask cabot -- candidates to give you finish proposals with all the details. it is not too much to ask that they be fiscally responsible. i think the questions are the ones that the committee put as principals earlier this year. they boil down to -- did the candidates recognize that the united states budget is on an unsustainable track and we must take steps to save -- stabilize the debts. the new definition is can week

-- the new division of responsibility is can we get the debt to a point where it is not rising faster than the commonly is growing. that is a real common-sense definition. we don't have to balance the budget. we just have to get back to a situation in which at least the dead did not rise faster than the economy. whatever your ideology is that economics, you can recognize that a country whose debt is growing faster than its economy and pop -- can possibly grow is in deep trouble. that is where we are. are they making proposals that risk making the debt problem worse?

well, that is i think a major question. are they proposing things that might actually be expected to happen? i am a veteran of two of the many very serious bipartisan efforts to rein in the death. - the debt. there is no solution that does not involve bending the cost curve and health care, rating in the cost of health care entitlements, putting so security back on a sound track, and raising more revenue from a reformed tax system. toon't expect republicans propose raising taxes. it seems to me that one definition of responsibility is

or is it can you reform the tax system? are you proposing to reform the tax system in whatever way you think is best? you are hoping that does not make the situation worse. on that score, all these candidates fail. they all reduce the revenue available to the u.s. government over time. it is not realistic to say that we will absorb this tsunami of seniors and their need for health care with the revenues that we are on track to have. i would give them low marks on that score. , ay don't make many of them serious proposals, on the entitlements and on the health

entitlement and social security that can be scored in this window. as was pointed out, that is not terribly surprising. why is this a service to the candidates? i think is best. it is saying to the candidates remain non-partisan group that what you said matters. this report does not have all the scoring answers but its main contribution, i think, will make the candidates think. and i really proposing something that i could do as president? am i saying something responsible about it? that is a big service. i expect that next week, maya

will get angry phone calls from all these campaigns. that is terrific. that means they are paying attention and the staff there may have to correct some of the numbers and change some of the assumptions. it will start a conversation in a realistic realm that has not been going on before, thank you. >> i want to say thank you for that voice of reality and how this works. it will never be perfect. none of the numbers will ever be perfect a mob of -- and none of the best scores in the city can get all of this party. the focus is to put it out there at at positive pressure to do the right thing and say people are watching the effects of these promises. we also know it is hard to get

out there and talk about the real policies that would chase the tax code, particularly those that would raise revenues and reduced spending. in some ways perhaps, this can land a countervailing force when people talk about the tough choices that are required, they will get a positive score for doing so. it will never be perfect, we know that, and i will forward those calls to alice. alice has been so much time and different administrations in different roles and knows all the different sides of budgeting. >> thanks to all of you for coming. the committee for responsible federal budget, we have always worked hard to inform the american people about the fiscal promises made by politicians and make sure those politicians

spell out the promises in as much detail as we can get from them. this particular analysis, the primary numbers that you received it today, is an important but only a very initial first look at what the republican candidates -- and we will get to the president later -- proposed to get the budget back in shape. as the candidates flesh out their plans, we will be releasing future studies. the 2012 campaign in which we have begun now comes at a crucial budget time. it has been explained that our deficit and debt is a trajectory going forward and takes as well above any kind of reasonable

ratio between debt and gdp. currently it is somewhere north of 70% and going up towards 100 depending how these people who are elected in this election react. our target has been somewhere around 60% of gdp. that is normally achieved within a decade. and then trying to lower it to somewhere near the post-war average so that we would at least be in shape to handle emergencies that may come along in the future. candidates in this election can work on the budget issues and the they can show us and exactly how they intend to deal with them. or, in some cases, they may not. may simply then throwing a

slogan or two at us. victor and i have been through this process and in the heat of battle, sometimes the message gets lost but we will do the best we can to be sure we bring it all to you. we hope that every american understands that you cannot solve the problem by cutting what we call it improper payments or fraud waste and abuse. we cannot solve the problem by eliminating foreign aid or lowering congressional salaries. we have to be specific and had to concentrate on the spending and tax problems that are putting us into the position we are now in. there are real ways to get back on track. we will probably not hear a lot of that in the primary campaign that as we get into the general election, we will be looking more at process reform and more

at details. process has always been a favorite subject for the committee for a responsible federal budget. one of those process reforms is closer attention to long-term budget. i have described some of our problems have maya has indicated that in health care and certain other entitlements, the long-term difficulties need to be looked at and have to be assessed even as we work on our short-term budget. we have to start buzzing for longer-term with special attention to social security, health care, and revenues. in the shorter term, we have to set goals and establish targets to get that deficit -- to get that debt down to 60% and stabilize that dead. we want to push it down on a declining path. the rules are not the final

answer. congress has proved itself willing to break all of its rules. rules help. they point the finger at those who are reneging on the promise. in the long term, we need to aim to balance the budget. it will take a. timtime. none of the primary promise are some republican side get us to a balanced budget in 10 years. , even in the most optimized -- optimistic in -- predictions. it will take time but we have to get there. it needs to be a goal of ours. any of these candidates that we are witnessing today or the president will face a tough four-year period. nobody expected miraculously covered.

we cannot recover. it is going to take decades but nevertheless, if we don't start now, it will be impossible. nobody knows where the to pinpoint a - tipping pojnt will come. the miraculous recovery will take a long time in fiscal sobriety exists of the end of a long and difficult road. in addition to a concrete plan for spending and taxing, we should be thinking about the processes that got us into this mess. we need to resolve to try to avoid them as we move forward. it is easy for the politicians to make promises. again, rules will figure importantly in the final solution. there will not save us but they will be a great help to us.

thank you. >> thank you so much. >> it is a great honor to be here on this panel. perhaps i need to make a particular disclaimer given the fact that i have had a fairly well-known partner in a democratic background with congress. my ability to sit here and judge objectively republicans running for president may be called into question. i do so as a member of this body because under the leadership, we brought together a fairly broad- based bipartisan group of members who come from different points on the political spectrum but all of whom believe that deficits and debt are important issues that to be addressed. as i began to review the proposals made by these four candidates, i look to this organization's burwell

principles of fiscal responsibility that they hope to be injected into the debate in this campaign as a way of going about analyzing what has been put before the voters. , certainly in the primary states of the benning gazed so far. i think the top priority is to make deficit-reduction a priority. i think we all know the path we are on is unsustainable. we have heard a good deal for these candidates about cutting spending but in fact, not much progress. some significant harm is done as well. this is partly driven by tax proposals that are largely driven in the direction of

cutting further. at the same time, we have an historical low rate of taxation for gpa. i think we are in the 15-16% range and spending in the 23-24% range, that gap has to close. and most if not all of these tax proposals would widen its. spending cuts are easy to talk about in theory but in reality and detail, they lose a lot of their political luster. candidate are loeathe to get into proposals about spending cuts. a pub -- a couple of proposals jumped out at me. newt is talking about a block grant and cutting spending on one of + hundred federal programs that are means tested and saving to quite $4 -- part

in may, $2.40 trillion over time. this is a nice idea but the reality has to be made explicit for the average voter to understand what programs are being discussed. there is a general category of spending called reducing improper payments. all of these candidates seem to have found a way to save $160 trillion over 10 years. this is a huge amount of money. it is an undesirable way of going about it. ron paul talks about ending wars and reducing non-defense spending by huge amounts of money which are completely not available in any detail. there is a question that cutting

federal workforce costs may be a wonderful concept but the idea that mr. romney and mr. santorum and others have put out of that regard is completely untethered to some sort of specific fiscal reality. there is no detail. that detail is what voters deserve. it is also important that we not perpetuate the budget mess. deficits and debt don't matter, we don't hear that myth much an award nor have we heard it for five or six years. tax cuts paid for themselves -- as maya indicated earlier, there is no question that there is some economic growth based on some tax cut proposals. to have dynamic scoring become

an underpinning of how we go about reducing deficits by making people believe that tax cuts are actually going to help grow the economy is a canard and cannot be abided with some say that cutting waste fraud and abuse will solve all our problems. like to put a plug in for that kind of savings. it is illusory. it never is ever score of bulgaria is a nice phrase. president reagan made it very popular david stockman would tell you how often they came up short in finding waste and fraud abuse that had been discussed.

earmarks and foreign spending is that everyone's laced -- list. we talked about nation-building. we spent billions on nation- building in the interim. medicare and social security on the left are often cited as programs that are burned benefits and therefore need to set by themselves, not be included in this debate. i think we all realize they have to be on the table. they have to be reined in. there is no way that they cannot be fundamental to deficit- reduction going forward. there is no such thing as a free lunch. candidates more often than not perpetuate the myth that somehow these spending cuts, $5

trillion over five years, as rick santorum is advocating, have no downside for cost. the other thing we need to do is refrain from pledges. i want to congratulate steve latourette of ohio to bring all the pledges from left to right from those a run in party primaries. they are the greatest impediment to bringing the bipartisan solutions we all know will be required if we are to get our debt and deficit on the down rigid -- to director reported i want to encourage -- on down this trajectory. i want to incur as the candidates to get serious over the next six-eight months. everyone talks about the tremor

-- train wreck that could occur in a lame-duck session of congress when a number of policies will be required to be dealt with including the tax cuts that would terminate. there is a lot of leverage on both sides, a good deal of policies to be engaged. we were talking earlier about the possibility of just taking the can down the road in the lame duck session. it will not be long before the next president and congress have to grapple with these issues. the more specificity, the more willingness to be honest about what needs to be done that can occur in the silence of this election will make it that much easier for policymakers to find the solutions that are absolutely essential to get as to where we need to go which is not a matter of balancing budgets by just getting our trajectory in line with the

economic growth of the country. with that, i would be interested, as i am sure the other panelists are, in discussing some of these in more detail with you. >> thank you to all of our panelists. i want to draw out "themes. the first is of the suspects in the second is on the long term. you said that some of the specifics you did not find to be realistic. i think i am a little bit more sensitive to how hard it is to get specific which is why we went ahead and gave the candidates credit in places where they were not specific. if you say you'll cap spending a 25% or $500 trillion, we should be specific. it is very difficult to expect them to be that specific at this point in the campaign because the political reality of how you'll get beaten up for it and they're just getting started.

then have a full government institution backing them and giving them the support and scored their plans like a satyr -- like a sitting president -- president does. when you look at our low debts that era, one thing i was quite encouraged to see is three of the four candidates bring the debt down to where we expect to see it on our realistic base line. does not bring it down to where it needs to be. it is actually started the right direction. part a this is a judgment call for anybody to make. what can we expect in terms of specifics right now in a campaign? how you balance the political reality during a primary with a need to create a mandate so going forward, those candidates can look at what they actually promise. how the balance those two. ? >> i think one is how specific

do they get and there you can expect them to at least to give you examples of what they are talking about. vague notions of $5 trillion which means nothing to anybody are not responsible. i think you have to expect that they would look at weather - whether the aggregate proposal is realistic. i don't think that cutting revenues further is a responsible thing to do and they all do it. i don't think cutting discretionary spending whether specifically or not, way below where it is under the cuts that have already been undertaken is

a realistic view of what the american public want. if you are proposing it, you then have to say what are we bought -- we really going to do about federal presence and air- traffic control and national parks and all those things within this total which is so much lower than anything we have had before. >> these freezes we have already put in place had yet to be felt for the details are still to be determined by congress and not get elected as ellis says, cutting discretionary spending is a lot easier to do in general that it is in detail for the public will recoil to some degree from a number of the cuts that would be made in programs that we care a lot about their these cuts will have to be made.

to just layer additional cuts on top of those that have already been called for is going to be a lot more difficult and anyone can imagine, including many members of congress who have not been given the opportunity to sit on the committees and actually make these choices. the details are important and we need to get beyond generalities and talk about specifics and agencies and falcons of government that will need to be reduced. that is an important level of honesty that the voters really deserve to hear. as it implies, is the entire may infrastructure. i believe, ultimately, there will be more consensus in this kind of political environment we are involved with now. >> in a primary session, it gets

to be sort of a bidding match between candidates as to who will do -- i want to cut more or want to cut taxes more -- i think it is not a season in which we expect or are going to get the kind of specificity we are going to insist on in the general election campaign. when the republicans selected their campaign -- their candidate, then the face up extends bridging between president obama and the republican candidate -- we will have much better luck in demanding specifics from the two of them very of obviously, it

will be democrats trying to defend entitlements and republicans trying to defend against tax increases. that is to be expected but the final solution, which most of us believe has to include both revenues and entitlements, we hope will be some sort of consensus that only the politicians can negotiate between themselves. >> bill is more optimistic about the general election than we have a right to be given the past history. if inldn't it be great the general election because there is a chance we will get more as the civic vitter. this issue is on the voters' minds and voters are not to a well ahead of politicians than they would welcome the realistic laying out of what will cost to fix this problem.

be interesting if we had a debate in the general wear it basically laid up the question to the two main candidates -- how would to save the $4-$6 million dollars that nays to be saved. it seems less far-fetched to me in this election than the ones past that that could happen because there is a focus on the issue. >> i think they would probably decline. >> you mean there would not show up? [laughter] >> they might but this is what they would say if they did. would be important to recognize that in that situation, both candidates would no that they were entering a negotiation and they would not be expected to put a final solution to say how -- how far would you go, they

could only be expected to say here's sarah lee officer. my opening offer. the obama budget announced recently and it should be seen as the democratic offer in a negotiation yet to happen. >> i think we all regret the opportunity that simpson balls provided was not seized upon by the administration. i think there is a great deal of regret that the work that alyce and pete domenici did was not seized upon by members of congress or the administration. i think there was an effort to get back to in the discussions the president and speaker john boehner had but was unfortunately unattainable. i think we are now in a dark period where we will not get

realistic about the competing points of view. i think that has to happen immediately. beginning in november after the election, those blueprints that are out there will ultimately serve as the basis upon which some agreement will come together. there are not a lot of other options. i think all the good work that alyce and others have done the last year will not before naught. >> i will not give up on the because i believe you put out a full plan, it is difficult to say here is how i would cut $6 trillion in spending. do, just on people making over $1 million. when you have to fill in the details, it starts to forge the compromise. it is hard to do it on the two ends of the spectrum. i still think it will be interesting debate.

to switch to the point that you all touched upon, the importance of the long term. that is the big theme here of the problems our country faces and the potential solutions that have to look at what is driving the problem, health care costs, the aging of the population, a huge and jupiter. from the progressive perspective, social security, medicare reforms have to be on the table. everyone talking about the need for a comprehensive plan that looks at everything, but the entitlement reform has to be part of this. it is difficult to have that reflected in the numbers. we focused on the savings. how do we look at long-term savings? alice has been someone that has been in charge of the institutions of this country. if you get the longer term spending for fiscal problems under control, it can buy us

more breathing room in the short term, what we're still trying to have economic recovery takes hold. is there a way to focus attention on that? >> i hope so, but it has not happened. the theme that seems to me to be missing from all of these budget discussions is the timing. we do not need to balance the budget tomorrow. if we did, it would be a catastrophe for the economy. we are beginning to see in europe the adverse affects of the extreme austerity in the short run. what we do need to do is get back on a sustainable track. that mainly means, as we have said several times, reining in entitlements that they are not driving up spending faster than the economy can grow, and hopefully finding new revenue by a reformed tax code.

the impact of those major changes will not hurt people in the beginning. you do not want to raise taxes right away or cut entitlements right away. they will take effect over a longer period, and you have to do the scoring for the second decade, beyond the 10-year window. that is always very uncertain, but it is not that on certain, the idea that you cannot do it. of course you can, you have to make some realistic assumptions, and then do it. it is quite possible. it is irresponsible not to think about what happens in the second decade if we do not make changes now, especially in the entitlements. it takes a long time to phase them in. >> one of the thing i think progressives the to work on is the degree to which debt service is increasingly crowding out other forms of spending which

often go to the least among us, to children. we have, unfortunately, without addressing in town of reform and in exorable generation transfer, more money going to older people, less money available to go to children, to the most needy among us. that is the inevitable result of making policy changes in the entitlement area and not reining in the debt, which increasingly costs plus annually additional billions of dollars. so i hope progresses can see that that is an important value they need to hold high as they enter into this debate and ultimately compromise. >> i talked about the long-term a bit in my discussion. we do need targets for the long

term, and as we work through a decade, we need to have enforcement mechanisms, that if we do not reach the targets in the deficit each year, there is some kind of penalty, some kind of sequester, what ever it takes. the congress has to except -- accept or override. that would be wonderful to help us get into debt stability. social security and programs that are that long, we have a pretty good idea what the long- term outlook is. that is a matter of mathematics or political negotiations. it is not hard to do. you simply have to decide how you want to do it.

more importantly is to set those long-term goals and targets and then have an enforcement mechanism to help you get there. they will not guarantee you will get there, but they will help. >> i think it is all important and we will issue one of our next the sports -- reports looking at the budget bill. in fort the mechanisms have to be part of any plan. the longer out you are making plans, it is harder to know how they will stick, making the more credible. i would like to open up to the audience for questions. if anybody has a question, raise your hand, please identify yourself, and then speak to the microphone so that the audience can hear. >> my name is jim moody. i served with several people on the panel. back to the long term, alice, we

know how counterproductive it is to reach a balance especially when you are recovering. what is the optimal deficit? i look at the deficit as a form of international trade. we are providing a service, value to the rest of the world. they are parking their money here. they are receiving a very low net rate for that. they are lending us money. what is the balance within that? a zero deficit is not a good idea because that takes away liquidity that is very helpful and for us. is there a long-term goal that we need to set? >> it is a great question for this group. you all members of the peterson- pew commission spending hours

discussing topics just like that. alice? >> my answer to that question is implicit to what i said about the increase in the debt. we should not have a deficit that is more than 2%, 3% of our gdp because we cannot grow much faster than that. i am not alarmed about current deficits. we are in a deep hole, we were in a deep recession. we need to do the things that will get us out of this recession, and we need to keep on giving them until we recover. but over the cycle, we need to come closer to balance, not that

balance. over the long run, you do not want a deficit that is growing your debt faster than your gdp can grow. >> my opinion is, in normal times, we should balance our budget and not have a deficit. the target of the peterson-pew commission was to take the debt to 60% of gdp in a decade, maybe slightly more. and then try to work that debt ratio down to what we might consider the post-war average, 40-plus percent, and if you can maintain a debt level like that, or lower, then you are well suited for emergencies in the

future. as a follow-up on your question, jim, i am not sure it is a great idea that poorer countries ought to be financing us. i would like to see us financing ourselves, and then to use their money to improve their own many needs in their countries. >> [inaudible] >> yes. >> one of the things we discussed what we were debating this issue on the commission was, it is almost two steps. you want your debt not to grow faster than the economy, but you want to get your debt down to lower historical averages. part of the reason for that, the reason we were able to respond to the recession, even though

our deficit was higher than we would have liked, our debt was pretty low. you certainly want that fiscal flexibility when you are hit with an economic downturn or any other crisis from the outside. right now, we do not have that because of where our debt levels are. you have got to bring it down to a level where you have flexibility. one idea we had, when every president puts their budget out, it is a 10-year budget. you cannot expect all of those out years to happen because they will put out another budget. but it is a good idea to put out a budget that balances over the 10-year period, because that is reflective of the normal business cycle. seems like a reasonable approach.

>> i wanted to ask about medicare and premiums support. first, a technical question. when the candidates here were evaluated for the support of the ryan plan, i assume it is the first plan, not the new one, which is slightly different. i also wanted to ask -- obviously, alice believes premiums are the best way to support reforms. is it the best? do you see any support for anything like what you propose, what ryan proposes, or any other scheme that would help to reduce the cost? >> when you say premium support is the best, that does not reflect, actually, what i

believe. i think we do not know. the proposal that former senator pete domenici and i made is the following. we keep traditional medicare and we keep the efforts that we now have in the affordable care act to bend the cost curve by figuring out what are the most efficient ways to spend money on health care and introduce new incentives into medicare. but that we also take advantage of the idea of competition on a federally-set up exchange, set up an exchange in which seniors, if they wanted to, choose among

plans that would cover the same benefits as medicare, and would compete for their business. they could choose the traditional medicare if they wanted to. the important idea here is that the federal government's contribution would be defined over time, and would be capped at a reasonable rate of increase. now, that is a very long answer, but it avoids the simplistic notion of what you said, bring in support. we do not know what regulation will be the most effective in bending the cost curve. we need to give seniors the chance to choose. >> i will jump in and say one

thing that is encouraging is all the candidates have talked about the need for longer-term medicare reforms and embracing the paul ryan medicare premium support plan. i believe that is the first version of it. we are also seeing different versions of that coming out, so alice and pete are coming out with similar versions. it is moving toward the discussion. one candidate that has been more specific on this is senator santorum, who has talked about bringing down these cost controls early on. he has been more specific on his support for premium support. we are starting to see that discussion on the campaign trail and in the public discourse. >> the question was whether or not you see support developing -- either of those notions.

perhaps some of you see it in the congress. i do not. >> if i am not mistaken, all of the republican candidates said something positive about ryan- widen, which is interesting. >> in this time, getting democrats to step up to endorse this, is unlikely. based on the work that alice and pete did, that these two bipartisan senators have picked up on, there is a way to the future. but we also need to look at how we deliver health care. we have to incentivize changes in that regard. the best place to start with that is with the srg, reporting positions and others based on their willingness to bend the cost curve, getting i.t., a group practice involved, among

other things, which is something that many of our providers have been loath to do. >> health care will be the gift that continues to give. we know that we will not get it done in the first round. we will continue with this for years to come. it does seem to me an issue that is percolating and will be discussed pretty richly during the campaign, which will help us move on needed reforms over time. laurie, in front. >> i have a question about the idea that tax cuts pay for themselves. we heard a lot about it from the republicans during the super committee process. yesterday, glenn hubbard, representing the romney campaign, said they could cut by an additional 20%. there will be all this extra economic activity, the deficit will be fine.

can we summarily dismiss this idea, how should we think about it? >> i think there is no evidence that tax cuts pay for themselves when you think about how much faster the economy would have to grow to make up for the revenue of any tax cut. you realize that is unrealistic. i am surprised glenn hubbard actually said that. what is true, you can show, cutting taxes, especially from very high rates can be helpful in increasing economic growth, but if that is all you are doing, you are making the

deficit larger even though the economy is growing. he would have to say, what else happens? do we make the deficit larger, does that put up or pressure on interest rates, does that negate any game you might get from marginally increase in by cutting taxes? that is basically where the cbo is on the scoring. they reduce to score an growing thetax cut, economy, without thinking about what else happens. they will score a whole budget proposal and give some credit for tax cuts, not credit for raising interest rates, cutting certain kinds of spending to make up the difference. >> i think alice is correct.

there are an awful lot of things going on in the economy. it is really hard for somebody to isolate the particular a fax of a tax cut. all of us who like low taxes would like to believe in the supply side formulations, that we will get a great deal of revenue kick out of cutting taxes, but i believe we have to rely on the estimates of the joint committee, cbo, who are doing the best job they can based on information available to them. so i do not believe tax cuts probably develop as much as the sponsors believe they do. certainly, the largest of them are unlikely to pay for

themselves. >> it is wishful thinking translated into political policy. i look at the fact that the revenues are 15.4% of gdp. even mr. romney says he wants to bring government spending down to 20% of gdp. should we focus on the 4.6% gap that even he would admit needs to be filled by revenues, instead of talking about the new tax cuts, which in the current context are just ephemeral? >> i will clarify the reason that the levels are where they are now part from a hangover of the economic recession. current projections are that revenues would grow significantly as a share of the economy without making changes. so you have to look at the difference between structural

deficits and where you are in the economy. i think it is clear tax cuts do not pay for themselves, but we have entered a period where people are looking at more fundamental changes to the tax code. bowles simpson talked about broadening the tax rate down dramatically and then buying back from those tax expenditures. when you are talking about rate reductions, certainly, the result will be economic growth, and there will be economic variables. one will be how much will that add to the deficit? right now, it is likely to dampen economic growth. and then all the other factors that are going on. the problem is not that it is unfair to say that there would be some growth from cutting tax rates, it is getting to the specific estimates. but when you are talking to economists on this, i think you

can take what they are discussing, and frame it quite seriously. there is a situation that would grow the economy, but that is different compared to how it would be captured by the government. >> i have a question of clarification on your description of romney's impact on the deficit. you described it as deficit neutral. i wanted to clarify, that is a deficit neutral based on the committee is based on proposal. the debt actually rises under that, so i am not sure that that is a neutral scenario. >> deficit neutral is compared to a baseline. anybody who is exposed to this knows the world of budgeting baseline is a more confusing one. when you are talking about saving, it is always compared to what? from the campaign has not told

us what it is deficit neutral to. we assume it is a similar base line because they assumed tax cuts are extended, which is what we do. it is the most likely proposal. yes, the scenarios have the debt rising, which is why we tend to look at this as a share of the -- gdp, and whether it will be growing faster there, and under these proposals, it would grow and then start to come back down. >> fill joyce, university of maryland public policy. i am much less concerned about the canada is not getting specific about what they will do, that i am about getting specific about what they will not do, in a way that is not

ultimately helpful to get out of this problem. i'm interested in whether people on the panel are worried about this, how worried about it we should be, and if there is anything we can do about it? >> i am very worried about it, particularly on the tax side. i think taking a pledge that says i will never raise taxes, especially if it means i will never raise revenues, as opposed to tax rates, is a very dubious and not helpful kind of pledge to make. as i said earlier, i think it is totally unrealistic that we can stabilize the debt over the long term without both increases in revenues and reductions in entitlements. i would be equally worried by a

candidate that says i will never cut the medicare program or social security benefits, but we do not hear that from the republican side. >> same response. it is very dangerous if candidates pledge never to cut entitlements or never to raise taxes. we are not going to get there if they stay in those positions. we hope they are opening bids, but it is a dangerous situation. vic just pointed out, i think we ought to build an altar for him in every town. >> it is not just grover norquist who loves all the attention he gets, but it really is across the spectrum.

in primaries, people are particularly in vulnerable to wanting to pledge their fealty to one cause or another. it could be a club for growth, a committee to protect and preserve social security and medicare. there are all kinds of groups that circling these things and candidates feel compelled to pledge their loyalty to the cause, but when it comes down to a point of needing to break down these barriers, it is making it that much more difficult, and we all understand it. >> the one encouraging thing, i feel like the public's understanding and awareness of the ash to reject issue is increasing. we're always trying to discuss whether we can start a pledge not to take pledges. -- issue is increasing.

you can see the irony in this. at least we are moving to a place where candidates know they have to govern. nobody wants to back themselves into a corner, as tough as the election season is for them. you can see them, when they are trying to keep some space, i think the situation has changed where people aren't trying not to back themselves into a corner where they cannot govern. whoever is in office will have to start to turn the situation around, and it is all that much harder if they have made promises about what they will not do to get us there. one final question. >> bill crosby. i spent 24 years on the house rules committee. that is where a lot of the waivers of the budget act took place. i want to follow up on the question of budget process and budget enforcement mechanisms.

do any of you have specific suggestions for enforcing mechanism that might work better than some of the things we have tried at this point? >> i think we can devise better mechanisms that spotlight the targets, and perhaps china more light on the congress when its -- shine more light on the congress when it attempts to read it on its promises -- renig on its promises. the first thing we are told is the congress can buy into a future congress. if a future congress decides that previous promises are no good, they can certainly welshed on them, and do so with some

regularity. if they are made prominent, if targets are well understood by people, i think it will become more and more difficult to welch. also, you have to make the enforcement such that it is not to stern -- too stern. if you make the penalty too tough for meeting target, congress can be expected to try to avoid it. you also have to anticipate there will be times when it is necessary to avoid it, a war, for instance. there is a way to make them better, but not perfect. >> at this point, i am concerned that we do not have a budget process, and appropriations process that works. we have simply stopped doing even the reconciliation bills that used to be done periodically because somebody

wanted to pass a tax cut with 51% of the senate. we have a level processes to deteriorate to the point where the highly partisan and toxic environment on the hill has made it impossible to function in even the most basic ways, let alone impose rules and regulations that would make it more difficult to avoid taking a gimmick approach, waving something that we ought to all adhere to. i think it is more basic than your question. i hope we can get into a new environment in the next congress where we can at least allow the process to work as it was supposed to. >> i would take issue of your characterization of the process of the rules of the past as totally not working. the issue, i think, is that they did work. the budget enforcement act had quite good rules that worked for

the most part, give or take a few waivers towards the end of the period. i expect the caps on discretionary spending will work because most of the congress wants them to. our problem is, although the old rules were pretty well, the situation now is the entitlement programs drive spending up, even if you do nothing, so you need a new set of rules that says we are not going to do anything that increases the debt faster than a particular limit, and we need to evolve what those rules are. as my colleagues said, a consensus that we want to enforce them. nothing will happen unless we have that consensus. >> one of the recommendation that came up here were the three traders,ets,

transparency. as we start the process now, we do not lay out where the budget process will go. -- triggers, transparency. but set a benchmark for when you're trying to achieve and then put forth proposals on how to get there and then a valley with them. we have started to see triggers, as with the sequestration rate. there are some tried to get rid of the sequester, which would be risky and lead to perhaps another downgrade, but the reality is nobody should want us to get that trigger. it is a terrible way to do policy and incentivizes putting in place smarter policies to get to where you need to go. as the fiscal situation becomes more dire and people are less willing to talk about situation than they were, those traders

have more of an effect. finally, transparency. when you look and other countries, one of the things the kids their budget on track is that the budget -- public knows what you're trying to do and holds policy accountable if they fail to do it. when we talk about stabilizing the debt, it is a little bit more challenging. two years ago we had a party where we put stabilize the debt on cookies, trying to make it into a bumper sticker. you need the public to know what you're trying to do and hold politicians accountable. i think having these default policies, triggers -- if you do not make these changes, they are going to happen automatically. that is not the best way to govern. hopefully, politicians can come together to make the right choices.

with that, i want to thank our wonderful panelists. [applause] anyone who would like to download the report, it is available on crfb.org. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> four days until the michigan primary. mitt romney talks about his tax and jobs plan at the detroit economic club. you can watch that here at 12:15 eastern. he released details of the plan yet today, including cutting the corporate tax rate to 25% from

the current 35%, and raising the retirement age for social security. the national governors' association kicks off its annual winter meeting this weekend. we will have live coverage at 10:00 tomorrow with the opening news conference. and then, two sessions on what states are doing to grow their economies and encourage entrepreneurship. coverage begins at 9:30 eastern with a look at governors are doing to end child under. and then on tuesday, discussion on the changes in the national guard. >> there are millions of americans that are willing to sacrifice for change, but they want to do it without being threatened, and what to do it peacefully. they are the nonviolent majority who are for change without violence. these are the people whose voice i want to lead. >> as candidates campaign for

president this year, we look at 14 men who ran for office and lost. go to our website, c- span.org/thecontenders to see video of those individuals that had a lasting impact on politics. >> now we have the most violent, crime-ridden society in the industrialized world. can you live with that? >> c-span.org/thecontenders. >> during one of his brief florida fund-raiser just they, president obama said the republican candidates are wrong about america. this is about 20 minutes. >> hello, miami. [applause] it is good to see all of you. thank you so much. have a seat.

first of all, i want you to know that i am resentful i am not going to the game tonight. [laughter] i am mad about that. it is not right. it is not fair. [laughter] but i wish you guys all the best. i want to and knowledge a couple of people in the audience. first of all, you just heard from somebody who i do not know where she gets her energy from, but is doing a remarkable job as our dnc chair, debbie wasserman schultz. [applause] your senior senator, who i expect you will send back to washington, bill nelson, is in the house. [applause] and my great friend and florida finance chair, kurt wagner, is

here. [applause] and of course, all of you are here, and this is a good-looking crowd. [laughter] you especially. [laughter] you are raising your hand -- that is me. miami, i am here today is not just because i need your help -- although i do. i am here because your country needs your help. there was a reason that so many of you got involved in the campaign back in 2008, and it was not because barack obama was a sure thing in the campaign. when your name is barack hussein obama, the odds are not in your favor in any election campaign. the reason you got involved was not because of me. the reason you got involved was because we had a shared vision

about what america could be, what america should be. we had an idea of a shared vision of an america in which everybody who works hard, everybody who has a vision of where they want to take their life, they can succeed. it does not matter where you come from. it does not matter what you look like. it does not matter what your name is. that idea, if you worked hard and took responsibility, then you could buy a home and send your kids to college, retire with dignity and respect, put a little bit away. that core american dream felt like it was slipping away for too many people all across the country, and we shared a vision

in which we started making good decisions about energy, health care, education. and instead of trying to divide the country, we tried to bring it together. and that we could assure him that america for the next generation and generations to come. that is why you got involved, because of that shared vision we had for america. three years later, i am a little grayer, a little dinged up here and there. but the message i have for you is, because of view, that changed you believed in, has begun to happen. as tough as these last three years have been, think about everything we have accomplished together. because of you, we've perverted

a great depression. -- we diverted a great depression. when i took office, 700,000 jobs were being lost every month. last month, we gained 200,000 jobs. we are moving the economy in the right direction. that is because of you. [applause] because of you, there are millions of people around the country who did not have health care and either already have health care and soon will have it, and one never again have to think about going bankrupt just because they got sick. that happened because of you. [applause] because of you, we were able to take $60 billion that was going to subsidize the banks in the student loan program and said, why don't we send that money directly to students?

as a consequence, we now have millions of young people across the country getting higher pell grants, or are eligible for the first time, or are seeing their student loan interest rates lowered, have access to college and the key to american dreams. that is because of you. [applause] changes to rescue the auto industry from collapse. there were a lot of people that did not believe in that. even when some politicians said we should just let detroit go bankrupt, we stepped up. as a consequence, 5 million jobs were saved and the american auto industry has come roaring back. gm is now once again the no. 1 auto maker in the world. that happened because of you. [applause] changes in decisions we made to

start doing something about our oil addiction, not waiting for congress. so, in an historic step, without legislation, we doubled fuel efficiency standards on cars, applied them to light, heavy trucks for the first time. it will save consumers billions of dollars, it will help our environment, it puts us at the forefront of the electric car industry, the forefront of the clean energy industry. that all happened because of you. because of you, people across the country will still be able to serve the country they love regardless of who they love. don't ask, don't tell is history. that happened because of you. [applause] change is keeping an uproar

press i made back in 2008. for the first time in nine years, there are no americans fighting in iraq. [applause] we have refocused our efforts on those who carried out 9/11. al qaeda is being dismantled and osama bin laden will no longer walk the face of the earth. that happened because of you. [applause] a lot has happened in three years. and none of this has been easy. none of this was automatic. oftentimes, we faced enormous opposition, and obviously, we are still recovering from the worst recession we have had in our lifetimes, so we have so much more work to do. but as i said, the good news is, we are moving in the right direction.

over the last two years, the private sector has created about 3.7 million new jobs. [applause] our manufacturers are creating jobs for the first time since the 1990's. our economy is getting stronger. the recovery is accelerating, america is coming back. which means the last thing we can afford to do is to go back to the same policy that got us into this mess in the first place. [applause] that is what we cannot afford. that is what the other candidates want to do. i do not know if you have been watching the republican primary debates. [laughter] in case you need an incentive. [laughter] they make no secret about what they want to do.

they want to go back to the days when wall street played by its own rules, when insurance companies could deny you coverage or jack up your premiums without reason. they want to spend trillions more on tax breaks for the wealthiest individuals, for people like me who do not need it, were not asking for it, even if it means adding to the deficit, cutting our investments in clean energy, education, making it harder for seniors on medicare. there philosophy is simple. we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves, everyone makes their own rules, a few do very well at the top and everyone else struggles to get by. that is their core vision for america. we have a different vision. we see america as a bigger, bolder place. i am here to tell them they are wrong about america.

in america, we understand, yes, we are rugged individuals, we do not expect a handout, we would do everything we can to make it and will build our dreams, but we also understand we are better together than on our own. we are better off when we keep an american promise, if you work hard, you can do well, you can exit -- can succeed. you can own at home and send your kid to college and put something away for retirement. that is the choice in this election. it is not just a political debate. it goes to who we are as a people. we are in a make or break moment for the middle-class and people trying to get into the middle class. we can go back to an economy that is built on outsourcing and bad debt, phony financial profits, or we can build an economy that lasts, and a comet that is built on american

manufacturing, skills and education for american workers, and american-made energy, and most importantly, the values that have always made america great. hard work, fair play, shared responsibility. we have to make sure the next generation of manufacturing ideas take place right here in the united states of america, not in factories in europe or china, but in detroit, pittsburgh, cleveland. i do not want this nation to be known just for buying and consuming things. i want to be selling and making products and inventing products are around the world. that is who we are. [applause] it is time for us to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas. we need to report companies that are investing and hiring right here in the united states of america. [applause]

we need to make our schools the envy of the world, and that starts with a man or woman in the front of the classroom. [applause] a study recently showed a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of the classroom by $250,000. a great teacher can help a child escaped or circumstances and achieve their dreams. i do not want to hear folks in washington-teachers, defend the status quo. i want to give schools the resources they need to keep teachers on the job, reward the best ones, give schools flexibility to teach with creativity. [applause] stop teaching to the text. replaced teachers who are hurting our kids. we can do that. we have teachers in the house.

[applause] when kids graduate, i want them to be able to afford to go to college. if they have worked hard, have gotten the good grades, i do not want them to cut their dreams short because they think they cannot afford it. right now, americans own more in -- zero more in tuition debt than in credit-card debt. that means congress has to stop the student interest rates from going up. they are set to go up in july. colleges and universities have to do their part. i have met with college and university presidents. we are going to continue to help students afford going to college. you have to do your part in keeping tuition down because taxpayers cannot find this forever. higher education cannot be a luxury. it is an economic necessity, an economic imperative for every family in america, and they should be able to afford it. [applause]

and america built to last is one where we are supporting scientists, researchers, try to find the next breakthrough in clean energy. making sure that happens right here in the united states. we subsidize oil companies for a century. it is time to end 100 years of subsidies for an industry that has rarely been more profitable and make sure we are doubling down on clean energy that has never been more promising. solar power, wind power, biofuel, that can break our addiction to foreign oil, create jobs in america, is good for our national security, is good for our economy, is good for your pocketbook. we need to build our infrastructure. i am a chauvinist. i want america to have the best stuff, the best airports, the best approach, the best ports, right here in miami, that can create the best jobs. [applause]

let's take the money we are no longer spending on war, use half of it to reduce the deficit, let's use the other half to do some nation-building right here at home. let's get to work. [applause] and we have got to make sure everybody is doing their fair share. everybody needs a fair shot, everybody needs to play by the same set of rules. when it comes to paying for our government, making sure the investments are there so that future generations can succeed, everybody has to do their part, which is i put for the buffet rule. if you make more than $1 million a year, you should not have to pay a lower tax rate than your secretary. that is common sense. [applause]

we said, if you make $250,000 a year or less, you do not need your taxes going up right now. but folks like me can afford to do a little bit more. that is not class warfare, that is not envy, it has to do with simple math. if somebody likes me -- like me get a tax prevent the country cannot afford, either the deficit goes up, which is irresponsible, or we are taking it out of somebody else. that's too bad that suddenly now have to pay a higher student loan rate, or the senior debt has to pay more for medicare, or the matter that is not getting the help they need after having served our country. that is not right. that is not who we are. everybody in this room, we are here, successful, because somebody down the road was not

just thinking about themselves. they were taking responsibility for the country as a whole. they were thinking about their future. the american story has never been about what we do by ourselves, it is what we do together. we are not going to win the race for new jobs, new businesses, middle-class security, if we are responding to today's challenges with the same old, tired, you are on your own economics that have not worked. while these are -- what these other guys are peddling has not worked. it did not work in the decade before the great depression. it did not work in the decade before i became president. it will not work now. [applause] and this is not just a matter of economics. we all have a stake in

everyone's success. if we attract an outstanding teacher by giving her the pain that she deserves, giving her the training she needs -- pay that she deserves, giving her the trading she needs, and she goes on to teach the next steve jobs, we all benefit. if a store owner in rural america can sell their products around the world, if we build a bridge that saves a shipping company time and money, workers, consumers, all of us benefit. this has never been a democratic or republican idea. this is an american idea. it was the first republican president, abraham lincoln, who launched a transcontinental railroad, the national academy of sciences, the first land grant sciences, -- colleges, all in the middle of the civil war.

i am sure that some people were saying, what are we doing that? i do not want to pay for that. but that laid the groundwork for a national economy. teddy roosevelt called for a progressive income tax. dwight eisenhower build the interstate highway system. republicans supported fdr when he gave millions of returning heroes, including my grandfather, the chance to go to college on the gi bill. everybody here has a similar story. think about florida, think about miami. it is a microcosm of the country. people from all over the world coming here seeking opportunity. and the reason that people came here, continue to come to america, it is because there is a recognition that, in america, we will create the plot form for people to succeed if they work

hard. that is what is at stake in this election. i have to tell you, that sense of common purpose that binds us together, regardless of our backgrounds, that still exists today. it may not exist in washington, but out in the country, it is there. you talk to folks on main street, at town hall meetings, go to a vfw hall, a coffee shop, it is there. you talk to the incredible numbers of our armed forces, men and women in uniform, it is there. you go to places of worship, that sense of a bond to something larger, it is there. so, our politics may be divided, and obviously, the media loves

to portray conflict. but most americans understand we are in this together. no matter who we are, where we come from, whether you are black or white, latino, asian, native american, gay, straight, disabled or not, that we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. that is what is at stake right now. that is what we are fighting for. that is what we have been fighting for for the last three years. the main message i have for all of you is, as tough as these last three years have been, that vision you had that led you to get involved, you are not alone in that vision. i know the changes we fought for in 2008 i know have not come as fast as we have wanted. there have been setbacks.

there have been controversies. with everything that has happened in washington, it is tempting to believe, may be a change we hope for is not completely possible. but remember what i said during the last campaign. people do not remember. people have a revisionist history. they remember the time from grant park until the inauguration. they do not remember how hard it was to get to grant park. i told you then, real change, big change is hard, and it will take time. it takes more than a single term. takes more than a single president. most of all, but it requires is individual citizens like you who are committed to keeping up the fight. to pushing and struggling and nudging their country, so that it slowly inches closer and

in 2008 the the thing i told you was i an not a perfect man. if you had not talked to michelle. [laughter] i am not perfect and i said i would not be a perfect president. but i told you i would always tell you what i thought and would tell you where i stood and i would wake up every single day fighting as hard as i can for you. [cheers. i have kept that promise. if you are willing to keep pushing with me, if you are willing to keep struggling with me, if you are continuing to reach out for that vision of america that we all share, i promise you, change will come. if you are willing to get just as involved and engaged and

motivated as 2012 as you were in 2008, i promise, we will finish what we started. [applause] if you stick with me, if you press it with me, we will remind the world once again why america is the greatest country on earth. thank you, everybody. god bless you. god bless america. [country music playing] ♪ [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

learngotta live to takes chances loveed to lh to and take all life has to give live to love as you learn to live ♪ ♪ after years of running around

and searching i found and woman who love me or me ♪t f

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♪ you're the real thing even better than the real thing ♪ ♪ >> coming up, mitt romney will talk about his tax and jobs plan, speaking to the detroit economic club, watch a live at 12:15 eastern on c-span. dealss facebook question with the corporate taxes, mitt romney will talk about that this afternoon. are u.s. corporations taxed too much? you can log onto facebook.com/ scpan. here's what's in washington journal viewers had to say on

this morning's program. >> you can post on facebook if you would like. if you are a friend. here's a little bit of what some of our viewers have had to say. viewers have had to say. let's listen to a call from mike, a republican in sarasota, florida. you are on the air. caller: good morning. thank you for allowing us to make calls. i believed tha we need to look e fact that a lot of the expenses which would be taxes can be

obsessed with deductibles. that means investments in machinery and in the assets necessary to run a business. therefore, i guess you could say, there would be an advantage to corporations to pay a little bit more. corporations, if they are not willing to do their equal share, we will be squeezed at the lower m pole thattolte it will be detrimental. if there is any advantage in the tax laws, it should be towards corporations that are buying and selling in america. host: we appreciate your comments. we have the phone lines on the

screen. asking the question -- are u.s. corporations taxed too much? here is a tweet -- and here's a chart from the wall street journal from yesterday. this is effective actual corporate tax rate by industry. if the public tax rate is 35%, utilities have been paying in the range of 14%. next is a call from sarasota once again. this is peter, an independent. good morning. caller: i am an independent.

i want to address the construction and retail industry paying 31%, susan. those are two critical industries in the state of florida. that affects voters in jacksonville. one of the things i am noticing in my travels is the construction industry leveling off in the state of florida and the retail industry has increased here. the importance of increasing the minimum wage up to $9 an hour is important, that the retail sector i am referring to. as far as the corporate tax issue, right now obama's current situation as has been debated on the nightly business report, anywhere from the 25% to the 28% range as opposed to ron paul on the low end with 15% corporate

tax issue. so i have not come out on my web site yet with reference to that. but the one issue you will find on my web site address to voters in the state of florida is increasing the minimum wage to $9 an hour. i will leave it at that. thanks for your time and keep up the good work in washington. host: thanks so much, peter from sarasota. and this tweet -- our last caller from sarasota was talking about the overall tax plans of the candidates. there are stories in the paper this morning about an analysis of various overall tax plans that the gop candidates are putting forward including their plans for corporate taxes. here is coverage of this morning in the washington post.

let's listen to governor romney as he talks about his thoughts on corporate tax rates. >> higher taxes do not create jobs, they kill jobs. this president does not get how his policies are hurting america. what was my plan for taxation? first, four corporate entities that are taxed a corporate level, i will reduce the tax rate from 35% to 25%. that makes us competitive with other nations around the world and would be an enormous stimulus for job creators. host: he has a major economic

speech scheduled for today in advance of the detroit primary. it is at noon eastern time. we will cover that. it is sponsored by the detroit economic club. it is at ford field. on the front page of the detroit free press, talking about the staging for today's event.

that's a preview of governor romney's speech on economics in advance of tuesday's michigan primary and also arizona primary. now massachusetts, good morning to devin,. a, caller: good morning. if corporations can spend without limits in our elections, why should they not pay the same tax rates that we do? if we are not -- regarding corporations -- if we are not regarding corporations as people and adjustments are made in their tax rates, then we should make adjustments in their rights to contribute to our elections. host: thanks. next, a markhaymarket, virginia outside the d.c. area, dean is a

republican. caller: problem we have is not the greed of corporations but the greed of government. if we looked at the parable of joseph in the bible, no more than 20%. get rid of withholding taxes. we don't need withholding taxes and more. have them put into a bank account and under your control. on october 15 you write a check to the government and in november and you go to vote. that would be term limits. this would bring our country back to where it was supposed to be. this is the reason why everybody left europe to get away from inbred stupid bureaucrats that we are under the control of now. host: cast-iron strawberry on twitter -- next is a call from fairfax,

virginia. hugo, an independent. caller: thanks so much. we need a tax structure that encourages cooperation. we cannot penalize corporations. it is what has built the nation. they do have to pay their fair share. if you have a mom-and-pop shop, the bigger companies can create loopholes and work around them. we need something for them to not avoid that. [unintelligible] we need a flat rate. with a consumption tax i will get [unintelligible]

penalize them,o the companies, because they are an engine of growth. we cannot penalize these companies for being large contributors. thanks for your time. host: thank you. he is listening to c-span radio from the washington d.c. area. john tweets -- let's listen to jay carney, the president's spokesperson talking about the president goes in new corporate tax proposal. it will create a lower tax rate for american businesses and that will make them more competitive, a broader base to ensure that the reform does not add a dime to the deficit, and a situation

where the american manufacturing sector and in particular the advanced manufacturing sector is further incentivized to grow, and where small businesses , where the environment is made easier for them to deal with taxes by simplifying the tax code for them, allowing them for example to expense up to $1 million. there are a variety of other measures that would make american business is much more competitive. nec's host: to a call on this topic, albuquerque, betty, republican. caller: thanks for taking my call. it was released recently that 30 of our largest corporations paid more to lobbyists than they did in taxes. i don't see how anybody can say that the system is fair. i, as a small working person, probably pays more in taxes than

a great many of these corporations do. exxonmobil last year not only paid zero in taxes, they got a $400 million rebates in the bargain. too much offshore at going on and too much tax evasion. you have companies paying zero taxes. i have also read that google paid none. there was a long list. these may be the engines of our economy, but they do need to pay their fair share just as warren buffett has suggested. he has said much and has been marked by many people on the right because of what he said in regard to what he pays in taxes versus his secretary, but his on the money. we have not had a deficit problem. it's been a revenue problem all along. host: thanks for your call from albuquerque. scott tweets --

and bob in venice, florida e- mails -- let's listen to what the president had to say. >> $4 billion of your tax dollars subsidize the oil industry every year right now. $4 billion. they don't need a subsidy. they are making near record profits. these are the same oil companies that have been making record profits fall off the money is spent at the gas pump several years now. how do they deserve another $4 billion from taxpayers in

subsidies? it is outrageous. [cheers and applause] it is inexcusable. >> you can watch all today's washington journal online any time at our video library at c- span.org. we want to take you now to detroit where mitt romney will talk about his tax and jobs plan. >> we bring you a world in debilitating war, our military and spread across the globe with heart wrenching losses of limb and life, we bring you a world of hatred, neighbor no longer accepts neighbor. we bring your people and afflicted with fear, a deep destructive leaders and institutions, struggling to find answers to issues of the scene beyond our solving and yet from lady liberty through the great lakes to the golden gate there are glimpses of hope on the rise and.

in michigan we see a-board lit up with a promise as leaders of labor, management, education, and government commit to find solutions in a climate of mutual support. now be with us, god, nourish our bodies as we seek to continue to uls inh our minds and solois the days ahead. amen. >> thank you, reverend wright. you can sit down now. we have so many vip's here today. i apologize for not being able to recognize all of them. if i want to welcome our attorney general for the state of michigan. he is with us today. thank you, mr. attorney general. our senate majority leader. i saw randy earlier. thank you. and the honorable speaker of the house.

mr. speaker, where are you backover? over there. how did you get so far over there? welcome. anyway, once again, it is a pleasure to welcome you to this meeting of the detroit economic club. if i want to take a moment to welcome our student guests. thanks to the generosity of the wonderful people and companies that support this organization also known as our sponsors, they make it possible for students to attend literally every detroit economic club meeting. i would like to thank mark davidoff and the great folks at deloitte for making it possible for livonia public school students to be with us today. jesuits high school students are here. the great folks at ford motor company, thank you for making it possible for brother wright high school for joining us. the great folks at the suburban collection as well. thank you to the great folks at

walbridge as well. i would like to ask you folks to welcome the students and thank the great folks that made an that made it happen. and the charter one bank made it possible for students from east detroit high-school to be here today. thank you, sandy, my friend. [applause] we have lots of announcements. we welcome you to join our ranks of membership. we would encourage you to go to the web site. we have terrific programs coming up for you. today we are doing it a little differently. after the program we will have a lovely strolling lunch upstairs. we hope you'll join us for that. i am not going to say anything else now because we are here to hear our guest of honor. johnnie first in welcoming our presiding officer today.

david is the chairman and ceo of the suburban collection and walking in with him is governor mitt romney. >> ♪ [country-western music playing] >> good afternoon. this is truly an honor for me to be here this morning or this afternoon and to make this introduction. this is a iswho is no stranger to this club or the state of

michigan. introducing governor romney is truly a treat. our country has never elected a president who was born and raised in the state of michigan. it is clearly time for change. [applause] our state has never elected a car guy. our state --some of you may know that i am a car guy. in detroit we know what it means to say someone is a car guy. mitt romney's father was one. mitt grew up appreciating the workmanship and dedication that the american automotive industry requires. the problem, the prospects, and the future of the automobile industry were often discussed at the romney dinner table. we in detroit and michigan need

someone with a proactive voice in washington. we need someone who understands our state, understands complex manufacturing, understands our industry and we have one who will be speaking here today. mitt romney is much more than just a car guy or a son of michigan. as important as those things are, he is the only candidate in this race who has the background, experience, and the vision to bead barack obama and then go on to serve our country as our next great president. if we are going to change washington, we need someone who is not of washington. his experience and record is about results, success, and kept promises. he is the only candidate in this race, republican or democrat,

who has not worked in washington. i think that is a big plus. [applause] he has never been in congress, never been a lobbyist. he has not been shaped by the distorting atmosphere in washington. in fact, this story is the opposite. he has had 25 years in business balancing budgets, eliminating waste, and keeping away from washington. he started new businesses, he has turned around broken ones. i know that he is not ashamed of the fact that he was very successful at it and i am incredibly proud that he was very successful at it. [applause] in 2002, and the salt lake olympic games were mired in scandal and controversy, many suggested they could not be salvaged. the olympic committee and

community called on mitt romney and he answered their call. he went to salt lake and restructure the games, cut budgets, eliminated inefficiencies, and he restore the faith of the country, and the donor community, and the olympic committee. in the end, the salt lake olympics were considered to be the most successful to date and left behind a surplus. can you imagine? and then he went to massachusetts and was elected governor and led an incredible turnaround. you think washington is bad? you should the governor in massachusetts. 85% of the legislature was democratic and yet he was able to cut taxes 19 times and left a rainy day fund that any governor would be proud of. i'm not going to spell out what the governor is going to say

today, what he plans to do when he becomes the next president. that obviously is up to him, but i do know this -- our country remains locked in an economic crisis. millions of americans cannot find work. they have lost their homes, and their future is clearly not what they have planned. here in detroit, we know that feeling firsthand. we have experienced the crisis probably more carefully than most. i know that great crises have a way of bringing forward great leaders, and, quite frankly, we have a great leader in front of us today. please welcome a man of great integrity, great vision, a dear friend. ladies and gentlemen, i give you the next president of the united states -- mitt romney. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. wow, thank you so much. thank you, david. thank you for your warm reception and response. have to put a plug in for david

-- suburban auto group, right, david? he is a car guy, too, and i love cars. i appreciate the warmth of your welcome and the chance to speak with you. i guess it is noon. i hate standing between you and lunch, but want to talk about policy today. this is not exciting and barn- burning, but it is important. i want to give you a chance to think about the various plans i have to get the economy going again nationally and here in michigan. i also want to thank the economic club for hosting us this morning, and i want to thank the folks at ford field for making this space available. i guess we had a hard time finding a large enough space to meet, and this certainly is. by the way, congratulations to the lions and the great season, and to the next great season. [applause] it is good to be back in michigan. this is where i was born and raised. i was actually born in hartford

hospital, and i grew up here. i remember the first day of kindergarten. i think it was at hampton school. there were about 30 kids in our kindergarten class. i looked around and imagine their parents had dropped them off as the school each morning, and those parents were confident that our future would be brighter than even the lives that they had enjoyed. our parents believed in america's promise. they believed that if you build a good home and talk your kids the right kind of values, major your kid's got an education and taught them to work hard, that their future could be prosperous and secure. in those days, we all believed that the future was full of possibility and prosperity. we felt that joyful optimism that comes from being raised in a land of opportunity, a place where if you are willing to take risks and work hard, get education and have the right values, anyone can have a better life. we are the land of opportunity.

that deep confidence in a better tomorrow is the basic promise of america. but today, that promise is being threatened by a faltering economy and, in my view, by a failed presidency. for 36 months, the unemployment rate has been over 8%. 24 million of our fellow americans are struggling to find work. there are some 3 million missing workers in america, people who have dropped out of the work force. home values are down. foreclosures have been at a record high level. national debt is way too high, and opportunities in the nation are too few. wherever i have gone on this campaign, i have met americans who are suffering as a result of the obama economy. you can see it in their faces and hear it in their voices. they are anxious, scared about their future. i met moms and dads struggling to get by. one works the day shift while

the other works the night shift, so they can barely make ends meet and rarely meet for dinner. i met kids facing huge student loans and a bad economy and about to graduate from college. they are worried they will not be able to get a job. if you have heard, by the way, the new definition of the american dream -- dick armey said, "the american dream is not owning a home. it is getting your kids out of it." everywhere i go, i hear stories that are sad reminders of the failed presidency we are seeing before us. president obama said he would fix three things if he became president -- first, he said he would hold unemployment under 8% if we let him borrow $787 billion, and we've had 36 months with that, as having been broken. then he said he would cut the deficit in half. he has doubled it. third, he said he would make medicare and social security solvent for future generations. three years later, he has not offered so far as i'm aware a

single serious proposal for either medicare or social security's solvency. we have not seen a failure to communicate. we have seen a failure to lead. that is why i'm running for president. i want to restore america's promise. that means more jobs, less debt, and smaller government. in the campaign -- i'm offering more than just a change in policy. i'm offering a dramatic and fundamental change in perspective and philosophy from washington and for the nation. you may have seen that earlier this week, i put forward a tax reform policy to get our economy moving again. today, this administration is focused on unemployment benefits, but where workers in michigan and around the country really want is a good job and rising wages. reforming the tax code is in my view one of the surest and quickest ways to achieve economic goals. first, i'm going to make an

across-the-board 20% reduction in marginal individual income- tax rates. one% down across the board. [applause] -- 20% down across the board. think about this. by reducing the tax on the next dollar earned by all taxpayers, we encourage hard work, we encourage risk-taking. we encourage productivity by allowing americans to keep more of what they earn. by the way, businesses that pay taxes through individual income tax entities -- they account for -- guess what percentage of american workers work for those kinds of businesses? personal income tax companies? over half of all american workers work in this kind of companies in the united states. this kind of tax cut encourages small businesses to hire, to raise wages, and small business is what pulls us out of recession and gets this economy going again. that is part one. second, i'm going to make our

business taxation competitive globally. i'm going to reduce the corporate tax rate to 25% from the current 35% with the highest in the world -- that has got to end. let's get competitive again. [applause] i'm also going to make the r&d tax credit permanent so we can encourage the type of permanent investment and innovation that drives economic growth long term, and i'm going to end the job-killing repatriation tax, so american companies who do business overseas will bring their profits back home and invest them over here. i do not know whether you know what those things are, this repatriation tax, but those not familiar with it will find it interesting. if it is an american company like for that has a division in china making cars in china and they make profits there -- right now, if they keep their profit in china and invest in china, there is no u.s. tax, but if

they bring the money home to invest here, then we charge them up to 35% tax. this makes no sense. that has got to end. we have got to and the repatriation tax and bring dollars home. it is estimated to be over one trillion dollars -- $1 trillion sitting overseas. i will get it done. [applause] of course, i will maintain the 15% capital gains tax rate. that is the right course to keep our economy going. i will eliminate the tax entirely, by the way. those low tax rates encourage americans to save and to invest, and they will encourage business investment and economic growth. finally, i will repeal the alternative minimum tax, and i will abolish the death tax. it is simply not fair.

let me make it clear -- these changes i will not allow to raise the deficit. spending cuts and broadening the base will offset the reduction. americans will continue to enjoy the tax benefits that favor important priorities, including home mortgages, charitable giving, health care, and savings, but there will be some changes in current deductions for higher income americans. those who receive the greatest benefit from that 20% cut will see the most significant limits in some of the deductions and exemptions so we can a code. they are going to increase red wages, they are going to grow jobs. that is what we have to do in this country. let's get a tax policy that encourages growth and investment and does not penalize people for being successful. [applause] let me mention something else --

all of you who have experience in business are familiar with the balance sheet. i find it interesting that the largest enterprise in our country, the federal government, does not publish a balance sheet. but in fact, we have one. if we are going to get our fiscal house in order, we also have to fix our national balance sheet. today, we face $62 trillion in unfunded promises in our entitlement programs -- medicare and social security being the largest. we talk a lot about the $15 trillion of deficit debt that has been piled up. it is the $62 trillion of unfunded promises that keeps most of us up at night. we can also say -- save future generations. tax hikes will be off the table. younger generations who enter

that system have to have a system strengthened for the coming system. when it comes to social security, what i will do is slowly raise the retirement age. we will also slow the growth in benefits for a higher income future retiree. then when it comes to medicare, tomorrow's seniors will have a choice among insurance providers, including traditional medicare offered by the government, and, as with medicare part a,d the private sector will also compete to offer insurance and will provide coverage at the lowest possible price. seniors will then receive government support to ensure that they can afford that coverage. with medicare, like with social security, lower income seniors will receive the most generous benefits. starting in 2022, new retirees will participate in the system, gradually increase the medicare eligibility age by one month each year. in the long run, the eligibility age is for both programs will be

indexed to longevity, so that they increase only as fast as life expectancy. look, those are the kind of common sense changes we have to have. we have got to fix our balance sheet. instead of having $62 trillion, we will have a balance sheet that is actually in balance, and it is tight -- time to get that done. one more thing -- my administration will also make the hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts necessary to reduce spending to 20% of the economy by the end of my first term, and i'm going to cap it at that 20% level. then, without sacrificing our military superiority, i will balance the budget. there are three things i got to do to get that done, and they are not easy. first, i'm going to cut programs. i'm going to look at every single government program and ask this question -- is this program so critical that it is

worth borrowing money from china to pay for it? if not, and going to get rid of it. of course, i'm going to start with the easiest cut of all -- i will get rid of obamacare. it is a trillion-dollar entitlement that we do not want and cannot afford. it is bad medicine, bad policy, and when i'm president, the bad news of obamacare will be over. we will also cut things that a close subsidies that a lot of people like -- subsidies to amtrak or funding to planned parenthood or union giveaways to save taxpayers, by the way, $100 billion over 10-years. -- over 10 years. that is part one. the second part -- we are going to take a lot of federal programs and send them back to the states. i'm going to send medicaid back to the states and capped the program at the rate of growth.

states are better able to perform these kind of functions, and by the way, once the economy is really growing again, i believe we should return our spending levels on these programs to the pre-recession level and kept the rate of growth and give the states flexibility and control over the programs. those who need the benefit of these programs will find they are more effective and efficient and responsive if they are run at the state level. there are such differences between states. being poor in massachusetts different than being born in mississippi or montana or michigan. let states craft their own programs. welfare reform showed us how well a state-led approach can really work, and i want to extend that conservative, small government philosophy across the entire social safety net for those that are in need of our help. finally, i have said, one, cut programs to balance the budget. kit below, send programs back to states where we capped the

growth rate but the -- let states manage those programs in the way they think best. the third thing to do is to make the government that remains -- that government itself has to be more efficient, and i'm going to shrink the size of the federal work force initially by 10% through attrition, and i'm going to link the pay of government workers with the pay that exists in the private sector. i do not think public servants should get paid more than the tax payers are paying for them. [applause] now this is a plan to get america back on track. talking about entitlement reforms, so our balance sheet gets fixed, spoken about deficit reduction by cutting spending, cutting programs out, sending programs back to the states and making government more efficient. but i also want to take a moment to think about michigan, what it takes to get michigan on track in addition to what is happening at the national level, and that

revolves in many respects are around the auto industry. for michigan to be strong and vital, the auto industry has to be growing and thriving. i hope we learn lessons from the experiences of the past. in my view, the industry got in trouble because the uaw for too much, management gave too much and made other mistakes, and the government standards hurt domestic automakers and provided a benefit to some of the foreign auto makers. by the way -- the results of those missteps was a cost penalty per car of about $2,000. i will tell you -- even the best designers and engineers in the world -- and they are here -- could not overcome that kind of cost disadvantage without the customer being able to tell. as we look forward, it is important that the uaw takes care not to impair the long-term future of the industry. cap a standards have to be worked out between the

government and private sector so they do not become burdensome and put our domestic manufacturers at a disadvantage. companies have got to invest in new technology and take advantage of the massive new markets. largest markets in the world are going to be in indonesia and brazil and china and india. we should get the government out of general motors so that the future of that company is determined by the demands of the marketplace, not by the preferences of bureaucrats in washington. [applause] detroit should not just be the motor city of america. it has got to be the motor city of the entire world. i want to make sure that happens. [applause] what i have described, i believe, our economic plans that will strengthen america and strengthen michigan by making bold cuts in spending and common sense reforms. we will make our government simpler, smaller, and smarter.

through pro-growth policy, we will get our economy back on track and get our citizens back to work. taken together, the plant i'm proposing represents the biggest fundamental change to the federal government in modern history. these are conservative, pro- growth policies that will not only jump-start the economy, but they will stop the dangerous slide of this country into a society where values of entitlement our esteemed higher than values of opportunity. we have got to restore the promise of america with more jobs, less debt, smaller government. i know that president obama is going to criticize my proposal. so be it. i believe the american people are ready for real leadership. i believe they really do deserve a bold, conservative plan for reform and growth. unlike the president, i actually have that kind of plan, and i'm not afraid to put it on the table.

my plan for america requires leadership and calls for sacrifice. does not require a leader to promise bigger and bigger benefits and something for nothing. let me underscore that -- it does not require a leader to promise bigger and bigger benefits. it requires a leader if you need to call for sacrifice. if i am elected president, i promise you this -- we are going to restore america's promised here in michigan, the future will once again be full of promise and prosperity. parents will not have to wonder if their children will have a better life. they will know they will have a better life. together, we can get our debt under control. we can pursue the spending cuts that imperil our future. entitlement reforms will tackle our long-term debt, and a pro-" tax policy is going to create jobs and encourage investment again, fostered risk-taking and innovation. that is the magic of america. if we pursue the policies i have just described, you will see a

michigan with rising home values again. your kids will come out of college and find jobs that are consistent with their skills. businesses will come here because of your uncurled work force, skills and is digits of higher learning, michigan will once again be known as the engine of innovation. i'm not promising that every day will be easy or there will not be sacrifice and hard work. but i am promising that every day will be on a track to get things better and better, and together, we will make america strong again. but to do that, i need your help. next tuesday, and i will need your vote. that is part one, right? if you want to make this election about restoring america's greatness, then i hope you will join me. this is a critical time for our country. i love the foundation of this extraordinary land. i think it was spoken of and written by the founders of this country, when they wrote the

declaration of independence. they chose their words carefully. they said, "we were in doubt by our creator with our rights, quarter may not by government, not by the king. among those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. -- "we were endowed by our creator with our rights." it suggests that in america, people pursue their happiness in life as they choose. it would not be limited by government or by the circumstance of their birth. and because of these freedoms, our freedom, our liberty, and our right to choose our course in life, america became the place on the planet where people came with innovation and pioneering spirit. that is what built this city and built this state. pioneers and innovators, hard workers that came to work for them and built this extraordinary land. we have a president today who i think is trying to transform america into something we would not recognize. i do not think that is the right

course for america. i love what we are. i want to restore to american principles that made this the hope of the earth. i want restore freedom. i want to restore freedom and conviction that people pursuing their own path in life will pursue a better future, so i come to you and ask for your help. i want to restore the greatness of america, relying on the greatness of the american people, their dreams, their education, their hard work, there innovative spirit. that is what makes us who we are. this is a critical time for america. we have to choose who we are, what the soul of america will be. are we going to be a nation lead and government by a massive government in washington? do you realize government accounts for about 35% of our total economy? we are inches away from no longer being a free economy. i want to get more jobs and less debt and shrink government, get back to the american people being able to pursue their course in life. i love this country. i love what it stands for.

i love life vision of what i have for the future. i'm convinced that the american people, it led by people who are actual leaders who know how the call for sacrifice rather than call for bigger and bigger benefits, that americans will rise to the occasion. i believe that despite the challenge we have, that if we have a president that will tell the truth and live with integrity, who actually knows how lee, who, by the way, like cars, and will call on the greatness of the american people, we will see michigan come back. we will see america come back, and we will see america remain the hope of the earth. thank you for coming this morning. thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] governor, >> that was fabulous. thank you very much.

we have been provided with a few questions from the audience, if we may. first question -- "china is a growing power on the world stage. what should the united states do to nurture a strong and positive relationship between the two countries?" >> china is smart enough to know that in a free enterprise system, you are in competition, and it with everything they can to strengthen their hand relative to us. that is what competitors do. they have taken advantage in ways that in many respects are unfair. the reason we have laws and regulations is to allow entities to play on a level playing field so that the most effective competitor succeeds and the less effective competitor weakens and perhaps does not succeed. china has taken advantage of the fact that we have not been watching very carefully, that we have not insisted that they

abide by the rules. for instance, they hacked into our computers, government computers. a look at the designs of our new aircraft for some two years before we figure that out -- they looked at the designs of our new aircraft. they go into corporate computers. the millions and millions use been developing new products they get for free. they also have other practices. stealing intellectual property. designs, patents, know how, brand names -- they take those. things used and, again, and millions and billions of dollars to build. they take for free. finally, they have a practice of manipulating their currency, which is holding down the value of their currencies so their products are artificially low price. the impact of those practices have seen americans go out of business. you have to have a president who is willing to call them on the carpet and say, "we love free trade." i want to open up more markets

for free trade. i applauded the colombia, panama, south korea deal. we cannot compete on a level playing field, we might as well lock the doors. but we cannot have people like china cheating. they recognize that. they have got to be sitting back and asking what it has taken us so long to figure this out. people say that it would crack down on them, there might be a trade war. this is how much they sell to us every year. this is how much we sell to them every year. they are not about to start a trade war. we have to make sure we get back to a level playing field. china can be an ally. if we do, the consequence for our kids and their kids is unthinkable. the time has come for a president that will stand up to china. i will declare them a currency manipulator and necessary apply tariffs were i think they're

unfair print -- trade practices are killing american jobs. thank you. [applause] i was >> actually thinking right along the same lines -- >> i was actually thinking right along the same lines. a second question is what should the united states do in response to the growing nuclear threat to iran? >> this is one i hope we think about with some sobriety. we are tired of conflict. following 9/11, we have been through some long and challenging conflicts in afghanistan, which still goes on, and iraq, and any thought of further conflict is the furthest thing from our mind and the minds of our leaders and the minds of our citizens. at the same time, iran is on the cusp of developing nuclear capacity, building fissile material which they can use in weaponry. the consequence to the world and to us, if they have fissile

material, is unthinkable. if iran, the world sponsor of terror, has nuclear material, provides it to hezbollah or hamas -- by the way, hezbollah now is working in venezuela, other parts of latin america, mexico, and they are there not so much to disrupt those places as much to disrupt this place. we cannot allow a nation to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, to brush that aside comfortable of nuclear weaponry, put it right into the hands of terrorists, and potentially use it against us. they have even threatened that they would use nuclear technology against israel. they called israel a one- pollination, small enough that one nuclear weapon would wipe them out. -- a one-bomb nation. i laid out steps that were

needed to keep iran from being nuclear. sadly, none of those steps were being taken pure 1, crippling sanctions on iran. as president five -- did not get to my place. finally got forced to try them out. we are at the cusp of the developing nuclear technology. this should have been done long ago. second is standing behind the dissident voices in iran. it took to the streets looking for voices to support their freedom, and our president had nothing to say. inexcusable. 3, developing military options and communicating that we have military options to iran so they understand that combine with crippling sanctions, dissident voices on the street, and a commitment on our part to take military action if necessary to prevent them from becoming nuclear, that combination, i believe, would keep them from going down that path and prevent them from having to take military action, but they have to know that it is unacceptable to the president of the united states and the people of this great nation to have our future and our kids future threatened by a nuclear iran. [applause]

>> this will be the third and final question -- do you think you are the republican candidate with the best chance of defeating president obama? >> i not only think i have the best chance, but i have the only chance. i may be overstating that. my family is leading the applause. [applause] it is always hard to defeat an incumbent president even an ineffective one like jimmy carter. it is not easy to defeat someone who has got the white house and in some respects can effect -- affect the national agenda and can raise money in massive amounts. he will have hundreds of millions of dollars coming in from organized labor. not from members of unions to choose their leaders but they have money and that goes into

pacs that the leaders of the union's choose to spend. if you took money out of your employees' paychecks, can you imagine if you control that? he will be hard to defeat. the only way to defeat him is to have someone runs against him who is very different than he, who can present a clear contrast grid i have not spent my life in washington. the other couple of guys i was debating the other night, ron paul spent time on health care and is also different than the president but newt gingrich and rick santorum are fine fellas but they spent their career in washington. their background is the same background as his. i will have credibility on the economy. i will be able to talk to him about when he says he turned around america's economy, i will say no, everything you did make it harder for this economy to recover. obamacare did not encourage

people to hire more people. dodd-frank did not make it easier for people to make loans. when you force unionization, those actions all made it harder for the economy to recover. i can say that with credibility. i believe the best way and the only way we really have to get president obama out of the white house and get someone in who will put americans back to work more jobs, less debt and smaller government is if we nominate someone whose career is not politics, who has lived in the private-sector, and his passion is caring for the coming generations and that is what i represent. i want to thank youtube david and death for welcoming me here and i apologize for keeping you so long from your lunch. i love this country. i actually love this state. this feels good being back in michigan. [applause] the trees are the right height. the streets are just right.

i like the fact that most of the car as i see our detroit- made automobiles. i drive by mustang and a chevy pickup truck and ann drives a couple of cadillacs. i used to have a dutch truck. . a dodge truck. i appreciate the state, the city, and the country and that i am lucky enough to be president of united states, a governor snyder will have a friend and ally and the white house. i will work to help michigan, america, and detroit to make sure we have a brighter future for our kids in your kids. thank you very much, good to be with you today. thank you very much. [applause] ♪ >> i want to take a moment to share with you all governor romney mentioned at the beginning that when we first announced to this meeting, 90 minutes later, we were sold out of our previous venue.

i want to thank the great folks at ford field who made this possible. great job presiding and governor romney, what an honor to have you back home and won an honor to have to not only at the detroit economic club but to unveil such important policy information. ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for investing your time with us and i should invite governor romney back to the economic club as president of the united states. how about that? thank you very much. thank you, governor. [applause] and ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] ♪n ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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♪ >> mitt romney was speaking to the detroit economic club gathered at ford field in detroit, home of the lions, they sold out their regular venue and moved into a bigger location for it will open up our phone lines to ask you the question that we started today with about u.s. corporations. mitt romney was talking about the economy and reiterated his corporate tax plan. our corporate tax is too high, too low, or just about right?

the numbers are on your screen. make sure you knew your television or radio so we don't get feedback and if you want to weigh in on line, our facebook page is open. you can post your comment and here is one -- let's go to calls next, laredo, texas, good afternoon. caller: yes, sir, i just want to say that ran on may -- mitt romney, go all the way, i hope you win. i m and hispanic american and i think we are getting taxed too much. i want to know what he will do about it and see if he can help

us out. host: next is a democratic call from hamilton, indiana. caller: good afternoon, the corporate tax rate is only too high or too little depending how good your accountant is. number two, i have been watching mitt romney and he always says that line that he is not part of washington area the guy has been running for office for eight years. number two, he talks about re- patriating overseas money. does that mean he will get a break when he brings his bank accounts over from switzerland to ireland, the cayman islands? he has like five overseas accounts altogether.

will he bring his money back out of hiding and bring it back here and will that get him a tax break? he is fooling a lot of people and i wish people would understand where he is coming from. he does not want to get his hands dirty with the port or lower class. he talks like he is just a regular guy. host: let's hear from the eastern shore of maryland on our independent line. caller: i think corporations are taxed much too low. i did not hear a thing in this speech that makes me confident that mitt romney will do anything to repair this economic condition. there were no specifics, it was just a bunch of the same old rhetoric that he keeps spilling out. i am very disappointed in the speech that was billed as such a major address on his plans for the economy. he said nothing. host: mr. romney was speaking to

the detroit economic club in detroit and president obama will speak to the uaw workers gathering for their annual conference in washington. troy, mich. on the line, a republican, go ahead. >caller: i have followed this type of situation pretty well and i think that corporations are taxed too low because some of them are not even paying taxes. host: i will ask that you honor our 30 day policy. we appreciate you being a regular viewer but only call once a month. mr. romney is not the only candidate to speak to the detroit economic club. rec santorum spoke to the group that is smaller than last week and he laid out his tax proposals. [video clip] >> i will lay out my economic points and you will hear this

and say that is similar to other economic plans. from republicans. let me tell you how we are a little different than some of the others in this race and how we approach the issue of creating an opportunity where everyone in america can rise and we can create a healthy economy and a healthier country. i believe in process growth economics. ims supply-side economics person. i believe in lower rates and simplification. my comes to the corporate tax, as of april, it will be the highest in the world. i would cut that corporate tax in our plan to 17.5% and make a net profit tax, simple, a flat tax with one exception, i still believe we need to encourage innovations in a knowledge test based economy so we have a 20% permanent tax credit for research and technology. dividend and interest capital

gains tax will be cut free we abolish the ayt and the death tax. - amt. the corporate tax, lower rates. we have a 10% low rate and we expend that and take all the other rates and consolidated to one rate, 28% top rate, a 20% reduction down to 28% which was ronald reagan posset top rates. it is good enough for ronald reagan, it is good enough for me. host: that is rick santorum last week speaking to the detroit economic club and he is speaking this evening in a major announcement. he will unveil his first 100- days economic agenda and we will have live coverage of his comments from lincoln park, mich. at 8:00 eastern here on c- span. we continue the conversation asking you about the corporate tax rate. are they too high, too low, or

just about right? let's go to florida on our democratic line. caller: i think they are too low. first of all, they don't pay the going rate anyhow. the going rate is supposed to be 24% but if you look at what they actually pay, the marginal rate is a pox -- approximately 2%-3% and corporations don't pay anything. it is time we really listen to what mr. runyan says when he talked about cutting taxes 20%. if he does that, our deficit will explode and this country will be down the tubes even faster than it is going. thank you very much. host: we had an event yesterday with a responsible budget and they took a look at all the

candidates' proposals on tax rates. "the wall street journal" the committee said that mr. romney's tax plan revealed on wednesday would neither expensed nor shrink the deficit this is howard in charleston, west virginia, independent. go ahead story that we lost power. let's hear from dave in cincinnati on our republican line. caller: my feeling is that whatever direction we need to go with corporate taxes, we need to make the u.s. competitive with the rest of the world. so we can bring in companies. we don't want to penalize our companies. we want to try to work it out so the u.s. companies will be incentivized to bring things back. whichever direction after go to do that. i am not an economist but i feel

we need to get business back. that way, all the lower taxes will be paid for because we will have more people working to pay in more taxes and it will take care of itself. host: in a minute, we'll show you some statistics about what their rights look like in the rest of the world. here is greenbelt, maryland, what do you think about corporate taxes? caller: i don't think they don't pay enough. i want america to look at what corporate america does to dumb down america. you can look at television and see the programs being produced on television which is a lot of foolishness with murder, rape, rober robbery. they don't have anything on television that will enhance television and bring blacks, whites, and hispanics together. there's nothing about living

together and the environment. that.ations don't want they want us to be stupid. this is what we have to deal with and this is how corporations control america by keeping the public stupids. host: let's take a look at what some of the candidates have proposed so far. in terms of corporate tax proposals, president obama said he would reduce the corporate tax rate from 35% to 28%, mitt romney down to 25%, rick santorum down to 17th and 5%, newt gingrich at 12.5% and ron paul, 15%. as far as the rest of the world, our corporate tax rate is a 35% and japan is that 30% and canada is 16.5% and germany is at 15.8%. the u.s. is the second-highest next to belgium.

let's take a couple more calls from detroit -- excuse me, idaho, republican on our independent line. caller: i am an independent. i am glad you gave those statistics because your viewers are not informed. we've got the highest rate in the world except for belgium. people are talking about mitt romney having his accounts overseas. where are they getting their information? the tax rate on corporations is taxed first and the people that get the money distributed from the corporations are taxed again. it is double taxation and it should be zero. the corporations are not an entity.

they are a whole bunch of little people. host: one more comment. you can still go to our facebook page and offer a comment. tonight, we will bring you live to lincoln park, michigan and a wreck santorum which is a major address where he will bring out is 100-day plan live on c-span tonight at 8:00. >> we got started because there are a lot of conservative thinking but before cap there had not -- had been no single progressive thinking that were on economic policy, domestic policy and security. >> on the mission of the washington-based d.c. think tank center for american progress. >> we think there is an ideology

behind certain arguments in washington with very little facts behind them and part of our job is to make the arguments and the factual arguments and evidence-based arguments behind our induced and i do think that sometimes when the facts don't argue for our position, we reexamine those positions. we fundamentally believe the most important thing is to be right about what our views are. >> they look at the center for american progress sunday night at 8:00 eastern on cspan "q &a." 31 states of laws requiring photo id to vote for it at the national press club yesterday, a supporter and employment of the laws with the issues of voter suppression verses voter fraud. this is one hour. -- a supporter and opponent of laws of the issues of the

suppression verses voter fraud. this is one hour. >> good morning, everybody. hello. good morning, everybody. welcome to the national press club. we are a global body of more than 300,000 members. if you are not familiar, please do visit our website, press.org and become a member and if you're in d.c. you have amazing benefits. with that, i will shift to the subject today. that is the new voter i.d. laws that are coming up in all the state's one by one. and we have two major experts here. we have laura murphy, director of the of legislative office of the american civil liberties union.

we have hans -- i hope i pronounced that much. he is now with the heritage foundation but has been in the field for some time. without wasting much time on my blah-blah, i will ask our panel is to introduce his opening remarks -- panelist to introduce his or opening remarks. -- his opening remarks. >> it is a little unusual. we're here today opposing each other on voter i.d.. i should say we are not always

on opposite sides. we're on the same side on the citizens united decision where i filed a brief along with other commissioners and a sealed -- aclu filed. one of the key principles of any fair election is making sure that the person to cast a vote is legally eligible to do so and the fairest way to do that is by making sure that individuals authenticate their citizenship when registering to vote and authenticate their identity when they appear at the polling place to vote. this kind of requirements also increase public confidence in our election process. lincoln chafee, when he signed ryland -- rhode island's new id law, in a state the democrats controlled the senate, he said it was a reasonable request to

ensure the accuracy and integrity of our elections. unlike what opponents say which this can only in person -- prevent impersonation fraud, sometimes it will admit it. others say it does not happen. that is incorrect. it can prevent people from voting under fictitious voter registration names or voting in the names of other individuals like people who are dead. we know because of a study that there are 2 million people who are deceased or on the voter registration rolls. it can prevent double rowling -- coatings -- double voting. also it can prevent illegal aliens from registering and voting. there were examples of that that have occurred around the country. when justice john paul stevens was not exactly a conservative

justice, he is one of the liberal stalwarts wrote the majority opinion that help -- upheld the indiana voter i.d. law he made the point that such examples have been documented throughout history by respected historians and journalists. not only is the risk will but it could affect the outcome of a close election. the idea that this will prevent individuals from voting that claim it is intended to suppress the vote and the elderly has been disproven in the courtroom and is proven in the polling place. the aclu filed a lawsuit against the state of georgia in 2005 when georgia passed its total ideologue. there was two years of litigation. the exact same claims being made today by the aclu, and others that there are hundreds of thousands of people who will

be not able to vote because they do not have a photo id and will not be able to obtain the free flow idea that every state has provided as part of their lot. it turned out the reason they're lawsuit was dismissed by the federal judge is because -- this was from the georgia federal district court. although plaintiffs claim to know people who claim they lack from friday, plaintiffs have failed to identify those individuals. the failure is acute in light of the plaintiff's contention that a large number of voters lack acceptable photo id. the fact that plan gives in spite of their efforts have failed to uncover any one who can attest to the fact that he or she will be prevented from voting provide significant support for conclusion that the requirement does not unduly

burden the right to vote. the interesting thing about this is it can find almost the exact same quotes from the federal district court judge in the indian act case. when the case was dismissed, the judge said despite apocalyptic assertions of wholesale voter disenfranchise, plaintiffs have produced not a single piece of evidence of any identifiable registered voter who would be prevented from voting. what happened in the polling places in indiana and georgia since these laws went into effect, they have been in effect for five or six years. we have had to federal elections, numerous local elections, and contrary to the assertions this would depress the turnout especially of minority voters, the exact opposite happened. in 2001 turnout went out generally across the country,

we had one of the highest turnout in the presidential election in decades. the turnout of democratic voters increase by over six percentage points for over -- in 2004 when there was no photo id law in effect in georgia. they had the largest turnout in an election in georgia in history. that was the fifth largest increase in voter turnout of any state in the country, including many states that do not have photo id. the same thing happened in indiana. they had an increase in democratic turnout of eight percentage points. the largest increase of any state in the country. for those who say that 2008 was a special election, that does not work. you'll get turnout in the 2010 elections, you also had a big increase, the turnout of african-american voters went up by seven percentage points from

2006, the last midterm congressional election when there was no photo id law in effect. in indiana in 2010, the black share of the vote to in the midterm election was larger than the black share of the vote in the two south -- 2008 presidential election. much is made of this idea that there is not any voter fraud in the u.s. there have been cases prosecuted across the country for many different problems and election crimes. there is a case going on right now in new york where 46 voters have testified they did not vote in the election and yet ballots were cast in their name. that case involves an absentee ballot fraud. in fact, if combined with changes to the ballot laws, can help produce the kind of fraud, also.

in october, arthur davis, former congressman from alabama, a former member of the black congressional caucus, wrote a commentary in the montgomery newspaper. he said i have changed my mind on voter i.d. laws. i think alabama did the right thing in passing one. i wish i had got it right when i was in political office. what i was a congressman i took the path of least resistance on this subject without any evidence to back it. i lapse into the rhetoric of various partisans and activists. he goes on to say that for those who say no voter fraud, he saw it in his elections in alabama. he was approached by a vote to brokers who for the right amounts of money would manufacture the ballots needed in the polling place or through absentee ballots. he said some of the worst

victims of voter fraud were in fact in the african-american community. i saw that in the case i wrote about of a federal prosecution in the mid-1990's in greene county, alabama where unfortunately local commissioners and city councilmen were stealing votes and winning elections by doing that and the person -- the people they were stealing votes from four other democratic challengers. people who wanted to clean up local government. the right to work in the u.s. is just as fundamental right as the right to vote. under federal law, if you want to get a job, you have to authenticate your identity and authenticate your citizenship. or your work visa to be able to work as a non-citizen. that is no different than what states want to do in the voting context.

i would end with a quote from john bryan who said, "voting is one of the most important rights and duties we have as americans, and it should be treated accordingly." i certainly agree with that. thank you. >> i am director of the aclu washington legislative office. i am laura murphy. i could not disagree more with what hans has said. his statistics on the state of georgia and indiana are very flawed and several election law scholars around the country in the nonpartisan brannan center have divined his assertion that there is no relationship between the photo id laz in georgia and the electoral turnout that increased in the 2008 elections. the methodology he has used has

been analyzed and it shows that it does not control for certain other factors. there has been a huge migration of a map -- african-americans to the south. it was documented in the "washington post" series. there is -- he wants to say that voter i.d. has not caused a lower turnout. we do not know the relationship to the top of the ticket in 2008. we do not know whether or not turnout would have been greater in 2008. but for photo id requirements. i want to get back to some of the fundamentals. the supreme court has described the right to vote as the right that is preservative of all rights. hans talks about the right to work but voting is a much more cherished right and much more upheld right in our constitution

than any other right. it is protected by the first, the 14th, the 15th, the 19th, and the twenty-fourth, and the 26 amendments to the constitution. unfortunately, there is a tragic history of american political parties using fraud allegations to restrict the electric for partisan advantage. after the 15th amendment was passed in 1870, newly freed slaves were allowed to vote and were able to elect several african-american republicans to the house and the senate. in the democratic party at that time -- the democratic party became enraged and energized itself to alleged fraud by black voters. barriers like literacy tests were erected to circumvent the 14th and 15th amendment. there was a resistance to fundamental constitutional rights that ushered in nearly a century of jim crow laws. those laws were not addressed

again until 1965 with the passage of the voting rights act. the people have to be beaten, fire hose, bitten by police dogs, and sometimes killed in order to win the right to vote. finally lyndon johnson and others said that we need stronger and more elaborate measures. that is how the voting rights act of 1965 came about. fast forward to this era. hans is quick to point out that some democrats have supported photo id legislation. the vast majority of state legislatures that are in -- enacting total id laws and other barriers are republican- controlled legislators who may fear that low-income people, students, the elderly, the disabled, and racial minorities are taking aim at their political power.

so to regain our strength than the electoral advantage, largely republicans and in some small cases, democrats, are foisting upon us the largely faceless and abstract allegations of voter fraud as the rationale for a series of voter suppression laws. in the 2011 legislative session, progressive and burdensome measures were introduced in more than 30 states which -- with 16 states advancing new or expanded barriers to voting. the most common was the voter ideologue. the others include requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote, shortening the time allowed for early voting, eliminating same day voter registration, making it more difficult for a third party organizations like the league of women voters to contact voter registration, and rolling criminal entrenchment -- enfranchisement laws. while these tactics are different, the attack -- the impact is the same.

making it more difficult to vote. with respect to voter i.d. in particular, 31 states have laws requiring voters to present some form of identification to vote in federal, state, and local elections. some laws or ballot initiative passed in 2011 have not yet gone into effect. some also must be pre-cleared by the justice department under section 5 of the voting rights act. in 16 of those 31 states, voters must or will soon be required to present a photo i.d. that in many states must be government issued in order to cast a ballot. voter i.d. laz deny the right to thousands of citizen voters who do not have or cannot obtain limited forms of identification that states except for voting. many of these americans cannot afford to pay for the required

documents needed to secure a government issued photo id. while in some states the fatah id is provided free of charge, the supporting documents, the birth certificates, marriage certificates, the passports can add up to significant costs especially for low-income people. more than 21 million americans of voting age lacked documentation that would satisfy these photo id laws. these americans are disproportionately low-income, racial, and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and disabled voters. to put this in perspective, as many as 25% of african- americans of voting age lack of government issued photo id, compared to only 8% of their white counterparts and nearly one in five americans over the age of 65 do not have a government-issued photo id.

in texas, the new lot permits an individual to show a license to carry concealed firearm will -- but will not accept a college student's idf is sufficient to cast a ballot. furthermore, no eligible citizen should have to pay to vote. the aclu believes requiring voters to obtain a government issued photo id in order to about is tantamount to a poll tax. although some states issue id's for free, the supporting documents, birth certificates and other things i said earlier required to obtain a government issued id cost money and many americans cannot simply afford to pay the for them. state -- millions of dollars when providing id's to voters who do not have them. given the financial strain many states are experiencing, this is truly an unnecessary

allocation of taxpayer dollars. also, what about the additional time and resources it would take to check id at the polling places? aren't the lines already long enough? people say if you do not have a photo i.d., what should you do? state should allow people to sign an affidavit attesting to their citizenship and identity and face prosecution for perjury or other criminal offenses if they turn out not to be who they say they are. stopping voter fraud is a positive rationale for these laws. there is no credible evidence that in person voter fraud, the only type of fraud that friday could prevent is a minor problem. in part this is because in person fraud by individual voters is such an ineffective way to influence an election. at most, it yields one

additional vote. with federal and state criminal penalties for election fraud, in all 50 states, there are severe and effective mechanisms for deterring in prosecuting the rare cases of actual individual voter fraud. there is much more evidence, however, that citizens are disenfranchised by these measures then there is evidence of individual voter fraud. these anti-fraud laws are the real threat to our constitutional rights. our nation should be expanding the franchise. we should end practices which threaten the integrity of elections such as improper purges of voters, voter harassment, and the distribution of false information about when and where to vote. none of these issues, however, are dressed or can be resolved with the photo id requirement. by raising the unsubstantiated specter of voter fraud, proponents of these measures

are imbuing the electorate and the election process with unjustified fear. that is the true harm being perpetrated on the american people. the widespread voter suppression measures enacted by state legislatures and your ballot initiatives is nothing short of a crass power grab by certain groups of lawmakers and interest groups to stop people from voting against those empowered and the ideas they support. the effectiveness of these laws is broader [unintelligible] even though racial minority groups will be affected disproportionately. these laws burden constitutional rights of many other groups. for example, local registrars in college towns have pressured students not to vote and young people do not have the resources to fight back. there are citizens in rural areas who cannot get an idea

because they did not own a car to get to the dmv and public transportation is not accessible. people cannot afford to leave their hourly wage jobs to get to the appropriate state offices during normal business hours. for those with disabilities, of voting is already challenging and these laws interfere with their constitutional rights as well. should these issues interfere with such a fundamental right of citizenship? the state photo id bills have been keeping the three prongs of the aclu's work in full tilt. lobbies, voting laws and state legislatures that we find suppressive, we pursue litigation in courts, and we educate and mobilize our members and others. we have put down briefings and provided testimony on capitol hill. we're also challenging the laws in court. in wisconsin, the national aclu and its affiliate in the national law center on

homelessness and poverty filed a federal lawsuit charging wisconsin voter i.d. laws are unconstitutional. we're challenging the law under the 14th and 24th amendment on behalf of 17 eligible voters who may not be able to vote under the law. they include ruth frank, 84, who has been an elected official since 1996. she cannot produce her birth certificate to get the state required friday because she was born at home in 1927. it includes choral -- carl ellis, whose veterans id card is not accessible -- acceptable in wisconsin and includes anthony sharpe who is 19, a young african-american man who does not have his birth certificate and cannot afford the $20 to get a certified copy of his birth certificate.

i look forward to your questions. i want to end by saying our country has come a long way since the passage of the voting rights act. voter i.d. requirements are a major step backwards in our ongoing quest for a more democratic society. elected officials should be seeking ways to encourage more voters, not inventing excuses to deny voters the ability to cast their ballots. right now, there is the looming possibility that many voters will be to my -- be denied their ultimate and -- expression of democracy. that is voting. i look forward your questions and i look forward to a vigorous debate with tons -- hans. >> thank you very much. that was quite a bit of information.

i would like to add that when you ask a question, please see your name, organization, and please do not start a political discourse. keep your question to the point. is there first question -- a first question? >> i have one question for each of you. first, laura. if so many people do not have id, we keep hearing of cases and elections where it does not seem to be a problem. we have the wisconsin primary this week. by all reports, there were few if any problems with the new id requirement. that is my question for you. and hans, the cases we have

seen of voter fraud have been very organized. they are by one party or another or by election officials. if somebody is intent on committing fraud, why do they not just use fake i.d.? we have fake i.d. all around this country. this election officials are not going to be able to determine what is or is not a fake i.d.. my question is how will id, that requirement going to stop this efforts? >> the wisconsin vote demonstrated those people who were able to get friday and come out and vote. it did not demonstrate the people who did not have the resources to purchase a photo i.d. or the resources to get one. i do not think that you can

judge the outcome of the effect of the wisconsin photo id law unless you look at the cases and the individuals that we're bringing forward and see the barriers that were erected in their participation in that election. >> a quick comment. the same claims have been made now for five or six years. in every election, none of these claims have materialized. on your question, no one says that photo id is a perfect solution to this kind of security problem. i am an election official in virginia. i can tell you there is a series of steps you have to take to provide security in the election process.

yes, if someone gets a fake id, perhaps they will be able to vote. that makes it much tougher to do that. the great example of this is in new york city, brooklyn, kings county. the mid-1980's. a grand jury report was released there and the state grand jury report detailed a 14-year-long organized voter fraud conspiracy to cast thousands of fraudulent votes in democratic primaries and one of the ways they did it is they had crews of people who went from polling place to polling place voting in the names of people who were dead but still on the list, voting in the names of individuals who had moved out of that jurisdiction who were still on the list. they could have perhaps gotten a fake i.d. for lots of people to stop doing that. that would have been much tougher for them to do. it is not a perfect solution. there is no security that is perfect in anything you do including in the voting process. >> i want to add one thing about evidence where we have -- we do have all the laws have interfered with the voting. three years after indiana passed its 2005 voter ideologue, 1000 people showed up at the

polls without identification. most of their ballots were not counted. that is not a huge number compared to the 2.8 million indiana voters who voted in that election. but it does -- the is not include an unknown number who did not vote knowing they lacked id. the question is, what is our default position? our default position should be that if you are 18, if you are a u.s. citizen, you should be allowed to vote. we do have a problem in this country with failure to purge and clean up voting rolls. no one is contesting the fact that there are problems in our electoral system. the problem is not individuals by and large misrepresenting themselves. the problem is we do not have laws that are in compliance with the national voter

registration act, with the help america vote act, we had -- the rules are being cleaned up so people can not appear and show up and vote in the name of a dead person. >> can you respond to the 1000 people who showed up in indiana without id and could not vote? >> they could have easily got -- in the aclu case in georgia, the same claim was made. i got copies of the depositions in that case. in each deposition of a witness that was brought forward it turned out that in the questioning each of these individuals could have easily gotten a photo id. they just did not bother to do it before the election. that is not a problem -- the judge, that is what the judge said. people can read the opinion and

they will see how the case was dismissed. the case was dismissed and the law has been in effect since the dismissal for five years. in that time, the aclu has not gone back to court and come up with any individuals who would be not able to vote because of the law. by the way, half a dozen of the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit in wisconsin are people who have followed drivers' licenses from other states. their complaint is they do not want to have to trade in their driver's license from another state and get a wisconsin drivers license. normally you only get a driver's license where you are a resident. if i have driver's licenses from other states, they could i guess be attempting to vote twice and perhaps the aclu wants them to be able to vote twice because they have photo i.d. from other states where they are supposedly not residents.

>> just to clarify one thing. both of you are mentioning about the photo id. can both of you in two sentences defined a common photo i.d.? applicable ever wear? >> there is -- that is the problem. there is not a photo id applicable everywhere. some states, there are degrees of friday. some states will not allow you to use an expired photo id from the same state. some will not allow you to use a photo id from out of state. some states will allow you to show if you have a driver's license from out of state, you have moved there you can produce a utility bill or something else to show that you are in fact a resident. some states allow that. there are arranged of laws. but what we're seeing is state legislatures are adopting much

more restrictive laws prevented my mother to the polls. she stopped driving at the age of 70. she ran for elected office to times in baltimore. she died at the age of 84. she did not have to use an updated photo id to fly, to enter a government office building, or to vote. she was a very active member of society. i do not understand why this most important expression of citizenship should be so burdened by costs. you look at any congressional district, you will find hundreds of polling places. you are not likely to find hundreds of department of motor vehicle offices. you have to go great distances. a lot of people do not have a photo id in nyc because they do not own a car.

this does not impede people's access to the polls, the idea is ridiculous. if you do not believe the aclu, i would like you and to any of the reporters in the room, i would be happy to send you a 2005 letter from the secretary of state who was but -- betting the governor not to sign the photo id bill into law. she said it was not necessary, it creates significant obstacles in voting, it was not likely to receive pre-clearance of the voting rights act by the justice department. it violates the constitution of georgia. it was hans who made sure that voter i.d. lot got cleared over the objection of six career employees who wrote to congress

to denounce him after he was appointed to the federal elections commission and successfully got him to withdraw his application to be confirmed by the sec because they said he used some of political influence to uphold that lot. hans is deeply invested in voter i.d. laws. he has the right to his beliefs. it is not just the aclu who is concerned about this. there are many secretary of state's who are concerned about the burdens these laws place on the electoral process. >> i did not realize this would devolve into personal attacks. i believe i have the ability to respond to that. the justice department pre- clear they'd laugh because all the data that was submitted by

the state showed it would not be discriminatory. the chief of the voting section, a 30-year veteran of the department testified before congress. his opinion was it was not discriminatory. who was correct, some of the employees who complained? in the aclu lawsuit that was filed against the georgia boater ideologue, a claim was made that the law was discriminatory under the voting rights act. the court found it was not discriminatory. the proof in the pudding is the fact that, in elections since then and the election date that i got from america at university and from the secretary of state's own voting site, show that in fact, turnout went up and they have had no problems with the law. i might mention kathy cox was

planning her run for governor which she then lost. >> thank you. i would like to remind you that this discussion is about the actual and potential impacts of the new law. if the questions and the answers can stick to these, please. >> [inaudible] i have two questions. student voting. the university of virginia has 50% of students out of state. there is a movement that we have to present a student id in order to vote. i would think there is potential fraud there. my second question is about to immigrants voting.

we have -- [inaudible] talking about a new campaign and we know that immigrants are not citizens. how do -- how does the aclu feel that citizenship should be verified? because of the driver's license or a utility bill is not going to verify citizenship. >> your question is addressed to both? >> i think your heritage foundation has done some work. casesre's all kinds of showing citizens, people who are not citizens voting. anyone who wants to see the most recent story, just google an nbc station in collier county. they found 100 individuals in