we want to come home. it is time that we disengage. we have secured those areas. will the afghans be able to keep them secure? i don't think any reasonable person can predict what afghanistan is going to look like in 2015. host: we have time to -- that as a we have four on "washington journal." we will be back tomorrow at 7:00 a.m.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> here is a look at our live coverage coming in today on c- span. at noon, we have a panel discussion on changing the u.s. tax code with representatives from in -- from a number of think tanks. we talked about taxes and the buffett rule which requires those that earning $1 million to pay at least 30% of their income in taxes. that is at noon here on c-span. on c-span2, at 1:00 p.m., the

major league baseball players association discusses collective bargaining. it will be at the national press club. owners and players reached a deal back in november. this calls for an increase in the minimum player salary to four and $80,000. that is live at 1:00 on c-span2. coverage of the indiana republican senate debate between u.s. senator richard lugar and the challenger, richard murdock. -- mourdock. tavis smiley recently moderated a forum at new york university. speakers include suze orman and hilda salis. the panelists talked about short and long term solutions to combat poverty as well as education, violence against women, voting rights, and reproductive rights. this is two hours.

[applause] for performing arts here in new york. i'm honored to be joined by an all-star panel on poverty in america appeared at want to ask you to think this panel for being here and giving up their time. please, thank them for joining. [applause] on is being heard live around the country. specifically here in the great city of new york.

i want to jump into the conversation as i get to them. i want them to jump into this the conversation. we're going to do this for three nights. let me start by asking me to think and why you for having us here. >> i want to starts by going first to the labor secretary. i said that i was so delighted that you want to be here. it seems to me he cannot have this conversation without talking about the numbers. that is a dreaded statement for many of us. i know a lot of us who do not like numbers are talking about

numbers. women and children are falling faster into poverty than any other group of americans. it is the case that you get this out. the younger you are, the more likely you are to be poor. something it seems to me is wrong and nation that allows its women to fall into poverty faster than anyone else. why is that the case? while our weapon in children falling into poverty faster? please welcome our labor secretary, hilda solis. >> one of the things that the president did was help provide funding to provide support and a safety net for all of these possibilities. the emphasis here.

education and training is what the key is here. it is about jobs. let's make sure that young people have opportunities. what we have seen is more participation on the part of one man because they have fallen out of the work force. they have been stagnated and part of their wages. they still have the 80 cents on the dollar. it gets harder when it is a minority women. our efforts have been tried to pick more people back into new kinds of jobs. it is also stretching our imagination. it is fitting funding and did things that did not exist. i have to give that to the folks who gave funding.

now is that the time to put away that safety net. there folks in washington that like to see us go back. . 50 million more women are taking a advantage of our work forces. that tells me that we have a long way to go. when the to make sure be incentivize tax breaks so we can create jobs and allow for individuals to stand up on their on. they also need to look for their own jobs and create their jobs. we are about people to do work sharing, stay on the job. and to start of your own business. that is exciting for women. many of us are the full breadth earners. you have seen a lot of minority kids dropping out of school. to some of our programs are the hardest to serve programs.

right now we need to see these programs expanded. >> i find in credulous of the relax to the people who do not want to just change the conversation to what i said that they want to change the conversation to one a deficit reduction. how is it possible that anybody in his or her right mind in washington possibly think that austerity is the answer? part of the mess calculation is that you cannot do both at the same time. this is what the priority for this administration is. there is also that very bright

torch has effort to expand our job training programs. i am happy the president is doing that. he is making a concerted effort to do that. we have funded our community colleges. if he did i get it right, you will keep finding things that do not show a good project. we are showing the way we talk to businesses. we are looking at jobs that will be a real jobs that pay well. they also bring professionalism. it'll help 2 million people. these people do not even get minimum wage. we are pushing out rules to allow that.

women can look at each other's wages across the board with different corporations. they can start making some assessments and negotiating for higher salaries. we should not have to wait for major legislation. we were talking about pay equity. no one should have to be discriminated during the same job a man is doing. those women and many like her have lost out. that money was not put into their paycheck went to his working 20 or 30 years on the job. the labor sector would give me all the room i needed to run with. i want to go first to my friends.

she is the president's of the college for women. please welcome dr. julianne malveaux. i am glad you're here. you are one of the nation's most brilliant and ernest and should telling economists. i want to ask you whether or not the belief the numbers that we are being given coming out of our governments. we are told that there are about 50 million of us living in poverty. we are told if you combine those living in poverty and near it there are 150 million. that means one and two americans are in. let me start by not covering this question too much.

do you believe the numbers that we're told tax is where's? it is certainly wars. the secretary would can see this. it details the unemployment rates. if the unemployment rate is 8.3%, the alternate measure is something like 13%. capt. americans and members almost 25%. i think that is important. we have not talked about the people that have dropped out of the labor market. we have not talk about what it costs to look for it. it is an expensive proposition. you have to get your clothes claim.

i'm not trying to be trivial. in 90, the average congress had a net worth of $250,000 excluding their home. by 2010 they had net worth of $750,000 of slitting their home. what happened to congress said they could triple their wealth? for the rest of us, everybody else the same level but these members of congress found a way to enrich themselves. i'm not hitting on members of congress. people who have that kind of wealth did not understand some of that needs an extra $40. when you get mad romney betting

$10,000 in there, how many months you have to work to get $10,000 tax the average white african american household has $31,000. he is walking down with a third of black people pay. the numbers that we see, let me put those up there. we need to understand them. that overall, our poverty rate 15.2 percent. again, that's almost one in six americans. for african americans, the number is 27.4 percent. for latinos it's 25.8 percent. for asian americans the numbers are lower, and interestingly, ceci, the numbers on native american people are not published. theoretically, the sample size is too small.

now, how do we have people in our population, and their sample size is too small? well, i know why. but i'm just saying, rhetorically speaking - >> no, no, tell us why. >> well, under a president that will go unnamed, but he was president about 1981, they actually wanted to stop collecting racial and ethnic statistics. they said, "we're all one america." this is this post-racial notion. well, when i have a post-racial unemployment rate, then we can be post-racial. when black folks have the same unemployment rate as white folks, as everybody else. the native data, the native american population is one of our smallest populations, but it seems to me that we ought to invest the resources in finding

out what's going on with this vital population in our society. see, we're cutting education. president of bennett college for women, the most challenging thing, we got young sisters and brothers who want to go to college, but the dollars are not there. the pell grant is $5,500. tuition, room and board at bennett is $25,000. so where's a sister going to get the other $19,000 from? loans. now, if you take out a loan for anything, you should take it out for education, to invest in your education, but i don't understand why -- and suze might disagree with me -- but suze, i'm a college president. i need those students enrolled in my college. so to cut education while the president has said he wants us again to lead the world in the number of people with aa and ba degrees, it's foolhardy. this is like a farmer that decides they're going to eat their seed corn as opposed to planting it next year.

we should not be cutting education. while you have these task forces looking at the middle class, which we do care about, let's also look at poverty. >> since we're in new york, when he hears me ask this question on national television he'll probably run down here, so don't be surprised if bill clinton walks in the back door in about 10 minutes. but let me just ask you forthrightly and directly, specifically with regard to women and children in poverty, how much of this is bill clinton's fault? you know what i mean by that -- 15 years ago it was our friend bill clinton who pushed through this welfare reform bill, and peter edelman, the husband of our dear sister marian wright edelman, who's the most courageous fighter in this country on behalf of children, her husband quit his clinton administration job over this issue. so let me just ask you how much of the -- are the chickens

coming home to roost? how much of this mess right now is bill clinton's responsibility? >> well, certainly. you call it welfare reform, i called it welfare deform. because you took a system that may have worked imperfectly, and you made it even worse.

you have a lifetime cap on the number of -- how long you can stay on public assistance of five years. that makes no sense. bill clinton was pandering, frankly, to the right when he did welfare deform. we all love bill clinton, but he was pandering to the right, and he was excoriated on the floor of congress. but let's be clear that right now i don't think anyone has an appetite -- this particular

congress is one of the worst i think that we've seen in a very long time, especially around issues for women and children. they don't mind cutting anything. they're running around the country basically talking about austerity at the same time that we're seeing people falling into poverty. >> faye. so dr. malveaux says that this is the worst congress in recent memory with regard to the rights of women. i want you specifically to connect this war on women specifically now being waged in washington, this assault, with poor women and their babies specifically.

>> well, there's always been a war against the poor. this is not a country that has had a tremendous sympathy for poor people, so i think that the notion that somehow we have slipped into an era in which poor people don't matter is not quite the way our history would define it. we really don't care much about poor people. so when we think about what is happening today against women in public life and in political life, it really isn't something that is new to our particular society and to the political landscape. it's been going on for more than 30 years, and americans really -- these are not acts of god, no one came down from the mountain and struck lightning and said, he used the term economic justice. >> to new? you look at reagan who always talked about the 13 kids. there's the woman with 13 kids. no one has been sympathetic to

poverty. we changed it from a social problem to a personal problem. i know the timing of this was so propitious given this war that is now being waged against women. i am honored to have the first african-american woman to the national president of planned parenthood. please welcome faye. they say this is the worst congress in recent memory. with regard to the rights of women. i want you to connect this war on women specifically being waged on washington.

>> there has always been a war against this. this is not a country that has had this. there is the notion that somehow we have slipped into an era in which poor people do not matter. it is not the way our history would define as. the johnson and ministration saw to change that at a time when the country was going through an enormous change out of the civil rights movement. there was a tremendous upward mobility for this country to be a different country. unfortunately just as rep construction -- reconstruction was cut short, this is taking us to a different place. it was cut short by the right wing political movement that took wing in the early '80s.

now that we think about what is happening against women in public and political why it life, this is nothing new to the political landscape. it has been going on for more than 30 years. no one came down to the mountain and struck lightning and said you shall oppose women and you shot takeback women's right and you shall invade women's vaginas and ordered to advance your political agenda. this has been a very long time coming. we have allowed it to happen. women still do not have first- class citizenship. all this there have been working for that. it is a very long journey. what we see going on is a very long legacy.

it is a long legacy. it will take place in states across the country. it has occurred over this last decade. it is interesting that that chipping away always seems to focus only on sexual decisions of women and our reproductive decisions. we have to really ask ourselves why are there more children in poverty? why are families and disruption? women are primarily the heads of households now. we are not perceived as real first-class citizens. there is an effort being taken to take us back for real to the traditional role that we have played in society which is mother and tear caked your ass to women who deserved the did nancy -- we have played in society which is mother and

daughter, who deserve dignity. this is really pretty stunning at the beginning of the 21st century. we are engaged in a really serious and political conversation with all that is before us and all the challenges of our society. there is desire for peace in the world. they had used as in many ways as a template for the aspirations of peace that our conversation has evolved into a conversation about what birth control pill you will use. it is unbecoming of a nation that we are engaged in this kind of conversations. >> i want to ask a follow-up

before i do that. i want to acknowledge that this conversation is being recorded for c-span. a lot to ask a question about women in washington. thanks c-span for carrying this conversation. i want to thank them for carrying this. they follow us around these -- around the country. i want to thank them for being so kind for letting people be a part of this. there's nothing he said i disagree with. i did not get to church this morning. mama's on the front row. not the 1992 was the year of the woman. there's so many women running for national office. they are running for high office. many even one. just 20 years ago, we are celebrating the year of the

woman. 20 years later there is a war on women. how did that happen? i hear your point. we are celebrating not to 1992 that women were making a breakthrough. now women are being under attack. what role do women now have to play to reverse that trend? >> we may have been celebrating. the fact that we were celebrating one year as the year of a woman is demonstrative of the status of women. we're celebrating one year as the year of the women. >> we have to be careful about our friends. sometimes our friends mask the war that continues. after 1992, at there was a tremendous amount of complacency. why should women's rights ever

be based and pivoted on who's in the white house? we do not talk about press censorship based on who is in the white house. we do not talk about a lot of our fundamental rights. they are not right that is generally talked about. there is no question that women's reproduction is still a very difficult issue for a lot of people not the least of which is the catholic church and hierarchy. we have to be careful bop falling in complacency when we think that our friends will take care of us. the only thing that has ever taken care of freedom in this country is ourselves. we have to work to protect our freedoms. there is really no substitute for that battle and the

recognition that is a long distance battle. i in the grandchild of a slave born grandmother. i knew her. that is how very short our history is. this is a very long distance journey. this is a journey that if we lose vigilance we fall back. we let people occupied the public space and dialogue. we say let's be quiet about this. let's not get into controversy. if we are quiet we would not have all of this conflict and difficulty. when people are engaged in rhetoric that is designed to deny any citizens are fundamental rights, we have to speak out. there is another voice that is heard. >> let me say something real quick.

this came on the heels of the humiliation of anita hill during the clarence thomas nomination. but that these women ran in reaction. they were walking down. the year of the woman was not about empowerment as much as it was about reaction. >> let me ask you very quick follow up. how do women then the compelled to exercise their agency to run for high office? whether we like it or not. that is the. in which these issues are addressed. we can all speak out. we need to be a part of that. >> women have to support women. sometimes we are our own worst enemy. the difficulty that women

running for political office have is finding that early support that does not say if you are guaranteed to be a winner any more than men are guaranteed be a winner when they go to their donors to say support me. a have to do the research necessary. women simply do not find that kind of resources available to propel us. this is going to be over. we are half the population. there is no reason for our me children to be in poverty. there's a willingness of women to do what was done in the first part. it made it possible for all busted is sitting on this platform. >> women are not just half the population. they make of the majority of americans. i want to of and that. i'm not disagreeing.

-- i want to augment that. i am not disagreeing. >> women make up the majority of americans in poverty. i raise that only back to what the labor secretary said earlier. i want to get everybody involved. they're people waiting that have not spoken. i want to come to cecilia. cecilia fire thundered. i want to come to you. all this woman have compelling stories. she was born on the south side of chicago. everybody has a great story. she has a story that is just mind-boggling for me.

so often we do not include our native american brothers and sisters. i'm glad to have her here for that particular reason number one. my friend was in the case, we started this on a native american reservations. we asked them for this documentary. what about the recession index has impacted you? do you know what they said? you know what the women said to us? "what recession? what recession? it's always this way for us on the reservation." and so, cecilia firethunder is a single mom back in the day. she has two kids, she goes on to become a nurse so that she can take care of her kids. she later runs for office and becomes the first woman to be the president of her sioux tribe. it's a wonderful story of single mothers -- of single mothers exercising their own agency. so that when dr. malveaux says that we don't even keep track

of what happens on the reservation, cecilia firethunder, tell me what it's like for women these days, poor women and their children, just trying to navigate life on a reservation where the recession means nothing to them because it's always so much worse? >> first of all, i'm one of millions of american women who identify as native american. we represent a little over 500 tribes in america, large and small, the largest being the navajo, of course, and the second largest is mine, reservation, 2. 5 million acres of land, 40,000 citizens living in my country. over half of our population are 18 and under. he talks about "what recession"" during the depression i can recall my father and uncles talking, "what depression?" so in america, unfortunately, there is a huge piece of land

between l.a.and new york city called middle america, where we live. many of the indian reservations are in middle america. we have much land, lots of poverty. one of the things i like to remind the audience is that the american indians are the only ones mentioned in article vi of the united states constitution where in fact the quote is "to honor all treaties made by this government and the united states of america." so the question arises if we are mentioned in the constitution of this country's founding documents, then why are we always hustling around trying to get more money to address the poverty in our communities? the other thing i want to be very clear is that we have at this point, that the majority of the women who work in tribal communities are women.

most of the college graduates in our tribal communities are women. many of the positions held in our tribal communities, whether they be principal, superintendents or teachers, are women. so when you take a look at this huge leadership amongst women in our tribal communities, people say why are women, indian women, taking the lead? we have a lot of entrepreneurs, we have small businesses. one of the greatest challenges that we face in our tribal communities is access, access. we are so rural and so isolated it's really difficult to get from point a to point b. then you factor in poverty, then that makes access even more difficult, to get to a grocery store, to make sure your food dollars go farther, to get to a town to see a specialist. so when we begin to take a look at where indian people live,

we're looking at isolation and large miles between point a and point b, and that makes it difficult many times. in a city you have subways and you've got mass transit. out in our rural communities, we don't have that. yes, poverty exists and it has existed for many, many years in our tribal communities, and it will continue to exist unless some changes are made to be able for young women to go back to school. we changed the laws, we changed the snap laws, what we call the tanf laws. there are many, many federal programs that may look good, but actually, when you start to implement those programs it makes it difficult for people in rural communities to be able to use those types of services and programs. one of the other things that's been really successful is just getting our young women back into school. we have a high dropout rate, and our dropout rate is connected to other social problems. and i'm not going to -- i could

sit here and talk about everything, however, in many tribal communities like mine, women have stepped up to leadership roles. as the first woman president of my tribe, white women -- i'm sorry, white women have a glass ceiling. how many of you have heard of the glass ceiling? well, in indian america we don't have a glass ceiling, we have a buckskin ceiling. the buckskin ceiling works like this. okay, buckskin is pliable, so it stretches. so for many years they made it -- we felt like we were really making progress, and we'd get only so far -- bang, it just knocks us flat on our rear end. then what it is is that that internalized oppression, and how in our communities of color we hold each other back. not only women -- thank you for making that comment -- women hold us back, but sometimes some of our men hold us back, and this is where the buckskin

ceiling came into play. one of the things i wanted to share with you is i took my oath of office to be the leader of my nation, i was given a knife, a symbolic gesture, to use this knife to cut through red tape and to go -- there's places where there's barriers. so i always wanted -- i tell this story because it's so true. the first person who cut that buckskin ceiling, made a little cut, was wilma mankiller. the next person who jumped up and made another little cut might have been winona laduke. so as we take a look at indian country, there were women who were cutting that buckskin ceiling. so on the day of my inauguration i took my knife and i went and it opened up.

>> i want to go to randy and a second. we spent some time on a reservation. give me a sense of what life is like for a poor child on a reservation. >> when you take a look at poverty, is tribal community is one, 2 , 3. one is the river. we had eight tries in south dakota. many of our children are in communities where there are many financial challenges. being poor has been several generational.

it has been ongoing. one thing i want to be really clear about is occupational systems, our children have access to a pretty good education. they come to the school which is paid for by the government. they go to the classroom which is paid for by the government. 20 have high rates of poverty, but the children go without. -- when you have high rates of poverty, the children go without. one thing i notice is that everybody has a television set. they can find a way to put their resources down there to get something that they can benefit from. because of the poverty, we have many households that are mixed. we have many people living in

one household. the housing situation is at its highest. we have multiple families living together. it creates another problem. the statistics are out there in terms of who we are and where we are at. my sister talked about the move very little data on indian women and poverty. i just wanted to celebrate the tenacious this of indian women. indian women are so awesome. they are really smart. many auto mechanics. >> you got me on that one. i cannot encapsulate that in just a short amount of time the donna website you will find that data. >> as i said earlier, this would

not be possible iit or not for the generous support of teachers. please welcome randi weingarten. the link between education and poverty is so well established. even republican agrees that there is a link between miss education and a ruling -- lack there of. what is the link between poverty and the trout ability to learn in the classroom? >> let me just start by saying thank you, because we don't ever talk about poverty enough and

it's always a one-off, and the fact that you are making this a priority so that we shine the light on poverty so no one can say it can be ignored. thank you very much. >> i appreciate it. >> i find it in my field just morally reprehensible that the debate is a total false choice. of the moment you utter the word "poverty," if you are a schoolteacher, you immediately get, "well, you're using it as an excuse." now, i don't want to use it as an excuse, i want to mitigate it. i want to make sure we address it. there's a bunch of things we need to do in terms of the advocacy, which this town hall is a part of, but also in terms of the interventions which people don't believe we can do. so i think that you have to have both tracks at the same time. so the question we asked was about the interventions. so right now, what we see, and this is pre-recession, there's a 40 percent achievement gap between rich and poor kids.

>> four-zero? >> four-zero. that is double the achievement gap between black and white kids -- 40 percent. that is before the recession. 44% of the children in the united states of america live in low-income households. this goes back to the point about priorities. i want to give back to rural education. priorities. we know that 1/3 of the achievemen achievement gap, whir about, happens for a child between zero and five years old, because kids are so nimble then, that's when they're sponges. they pick it all up, right? one-third. we also know that when there is a good early childhood program

-- everybody, republicans, democrats, everybody loves early childhood -- that there is a rate of return on investment of $7 for every $1 you invest in early childhood. don't know too many investments that are better than that. so less than 30 percent of 4- year-olds are in publicly funded 4-year-old pre-k programs in the united states of america. so we know it works, we know it's a great rate of return, we know particularly for kids who are poor, if we can get them in, it's fantastic, and we don't. take a place like new york, my hometown. it's harder to get into a pre-k program here than it is to get into harvard. so when you talk about the issue of austerity, this is an intervention that we know will work, and why are we not doing

it? not just doing it in a pilot program, and secretary of education has a pilot program trying to put some money together, secretary of labor has been fantastic in trying to find ways to put pieces of money together for these interventions. but that is the measure and the caliber and the character of are we going to solve the problem. this is an intervention that works and can work hugely well. rural poverty is ignored more than urban poverty. tavis knows that my unit is involved in a pretty audacious experiments. we essentially have taken the county of mcdowell.

middle appel asia. alachia. as we have said that we have to improve the education system. we know we have done a lot of wrong things. we have to address that, including the fact that we have to focus not only on fairness but insuring quality. if someone cannot teach, we have to say that they can. we also have to make sure that we give people the tools and conditions. all of us have to step up and take more responsibility. [applause] what we have done is say "can not be the teacher. it cannot just be the parent. we are looking to a multi strategy intervention. "

we are the lead partner of 40 partner. we all sides a covenant that says we will revitalize the entire community. we're going to talk about transportation. we're going to talk about technology. we're going to talk about housing and do something about housing. we're going to talk about education and do something about education. that kids are bored. if kids are sick, and what we're seeing in places around americawhat we're seeing in lotf places around america, two- thirds of kids have their only real meal, nutritious meal, in schools. teachers these days are spending on average $25 a month to feed kids.

but we are bringing a partnership together. let's let's each take a role in this to do work force development and may schools into communities. we can do some college education on school premises. we can open schools up 20 hours a day. we can have a social services there. we can do the kind of things that turner community does. we have to give up the ghost and say that education is here and everything else is here. bring it all together, use schools as the hub and also focus both on fairness and quality at the same time. >> i've got a thousand follow- ups once i -- there is no community pushing harder right now on this issue than our

hispanic brothers and sisters. this dream act has got to get passed. it has to get passed, it has to get passed. it's got to get passed. nely galan is a latina, obviously. she is an entrepreneur, has her own company, doing a lot of great work at the adelante movement to engage and involve women. you know her from "celebrity apprentice." please welcome nely galan. i have never seen a community that people want to exploit more politically, socially, economically, culturally. people want to exploit them in so many ways, and yet i've never seen a community that madison avenue here in new york craves more.

they are trying to get to latina moms more aggressively than any other consumer in the country right now, and i wonder if you might speak to that dichotomy between being exploited on the one hand - >> mm-hmm, right. >> -- and being craved on the other hand. >> it's very difficult for all of us to read continual statistics about us that don't really explain who we are, and that's why i related so much to what you said, that kind of are a downer, that make us feel like we are -- and that kind of are framed in a way that make us feel like something's wrong with us and we are taking something away from this country. the dichotomy is that when then you go to consumer products companies and to advertisers, they look at us as we're like the greatest thing since sliced bread, and that's because their numbers are nice numbers. their numbers show that we're living in a multicultural society, 30 percent of the country is multicultural, and 16 percent of that group are

latinos. by the year 2030 we will be 30 percent of this country. do you know that latinas come from countries in latin america where, we or our families come from latin america, where we've seen governments come and go, where banks have defaulted, where we live in cash societies, where someone like me could

never grow up to be me, ever? i could never be an entrepreneur in some other latin america country. so we come here in gratitude and in hard work, and when we hear things about poverty and our relationship to poverty, it almost is like -- we say in spanish [speaks in spanish]. it's a little shocking, because we don't live in a state of mind of poverty. we think it's a transitional thing. we've been in and out of poverty for generations, and it doesn't mean we're stuck there. i think that's very important. latinos do not see ourselves as stuck in poverty, ever. when latinos were in the worst boat, latina moms, out of nowhere, were striking in the numbers. i saw how they looked at stat istics. numbers? the good in the middle of the worst economy, when everything was horrible, latina moms were

starting businesses. when they went further and said, why, what is it? they don't want to be rich, they don't care, they don't want to be famous -- none of the american values. because they didn't want their kids to go under the bus. when i've looked at the numbers, what are the women missing facts what is it they need? if they went from here to here, they make more money. the companies want us to make more money. they said what will it take for these women to go from here to hear? -- here to here? what they need this community. what they need is women to come together. latinas for latinas. they also need african-american

women, white women, to bring in information they do not have. they need to know how to access capital. they need to know how to get a government contracts and advertisers that give away dog tracks. -- contracts. i decided i am going to start a movement for latinas. there has never been a movement for latinas, and it's called the adelante movement, because "adelante" means "move it, move forward." and it's true. i engaged advertisers. it is like talking to the wall with politicians. let's talk to people that are they get them. advertisers know the most important thing we have in this country is our buying power. and what we purchased, we have right for that purchase power. we do not realize that if we

just bought from each other we would all be rich. so we started a tour in december and we're going to go through the country, and all the information all the other people get, we're going to give it to latinas. we have to remember something else that i hear in these board rooms all the time. if we want to ask people for something, then we have to come through too. if we're asking the government to do something for us, then we have to vote. if we're asking somebody -- if we're asking a corporation to give us money, we have to buy their products. if we are asking a network to put more african american and latinos and native americans on tv, then we have to watch their shows. it can't just be a one-way street. we are no longer in a world -- the world has changed. it's not about them giving to us. we have the power to make or

break their companies. we are bigger than the main -- we are the mainstream. [applause] >> that's a nice segue to suze orman. please welcome susie are meze o. suze's latest "new york times" best seller -- they all are, aren't they, thanks to you -- "the money class, how to stand in your truth and create the future you deserve." how's that for a segue? suze, last time you and i saw each other, you said something to me that just arrested me, and i must tell you i've been using this line across the country, and i ain't going to lie, i haven't been giving you attribution for it either. >> i bet i know what the line was. >> what was it? >> that there is a highway into poverty and there is not even a sidewalk out. >> that's it, that's it, that's it.

>> i know when i say something that's good. >> that was it, by the way. >> i know. i heard you. but i have been stealing from suze oreman. >> but if that's true across the board, how much more true, then, is that for women and children, that there is a highway in but not even a sidewalk out? >> yeah. i've been sitting here and i've been listening. aren't you all surprised how quiet i have been - >> i was. >> -- this entire time? because i've been listening deeply. i'm listening deeply because they're all good reasons that we are here. the congress this, the education this, native american, latina -- the whole thing -- and it all, in my opinion, boils down to what is every single person in this audience today, what is every single person who

is watching this program today, tonight, listening to it on the radio, what are you going to do for yourselves? women are very interesting to me, and it is no doubt that women have the ability to give birth, in most cases. in most cases, women have the ability to feed that which they have given birth to. so on some level, it is a woman's nature to nurture, and she, in my opinion, will nurture every single person -- spouse, family member, pet, plant, employer, employee -- before she will nurture herself.

the reason i think it affects women and children more than it affects men, is women stick by their children. women stick to what they have brought into this world. when they are alone, if they do not care. they will rise to take care of their children. but it is not until a woman is about 50, 55 or 60 and she is all by herself, her spouse has left her, her children now are grown and still living in her house -- it's true -- that she finally starts to say, "what about me?" [applause]

we can sit here all we want. we can quote stats and blame this. i am here to tell you that every single one if you in this room that are watching this, you are not the victim to your circumstances unless you want to be. you can pick yourself up. you can be more and you can have more. but you have got to do it for yourself. now when women come together, rather than working against one another, which girlfriend, they do. i cannot even begin to believe how much women love when i fail, as if when i fail at something it's going to make them a bigger success. their ratings will be better on

their tv shows, people will buy more of their books. women, we have got to stand by one another. we have got to -- we have got to help one another. [applause] today i am sitting here. i am lucky enough to meet cici and she's telling me what is going on in south dakota and out of these women and kids do not get to eat because they're trying to cut expenses from feeding their children. tell everybody the stats when someone does not eat, what happens to them ta? >> it can affect the brain's of children. it can affect their bone development. it can hinder their growth. >> what do i do? i am going to reservation.

i am going to speak. she is going to bring them all together. i'm going to do it i might die to see what we can do to teach them -- on my dime to see what we can do to teach them about money so they can stay away from the payday loans that people takingebut then to keep out. -- want them to keep taking out. the solution, tavis, in a very strange way, is everything everybody's doing right here on stage, but it's what you're going to do for yourselves as well when you go home. are you going to stop giving the store away to family members who could be working but they're not working, so you're supporting them? are you going to stop doing things that squander all of this money that you are making?

ladies, the day that you mattewh the money? ladies, the day the matter to who you are, to yourselves, and you're willing to not come off of that point that you matter, is the day that true change in the united states of america begins. [applause] >> i love having these conversations. this is the nectar and get 30 minutes to delve into these topics. -- this is the night when i get 30 minutes to delve into these topics. there's so much stuff to follow. there's one other person who has

not spoken. >> i want to hear from sheryl. sheryl has done expert work on global poverty, and so this is not just a domestic thing. i want women to know that they're connected to women around the globe. the gap in poverty between men and women is wider in this country than anywhere else in the western world. that tripped me up. someplace else, maybe. but not the western world. the gap in poverty rates between men and women is wider in this country than anywhere else in the western world. of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty around the world, 70% are women. 1.3 billion people living in poverty of around the world, 70%

are women. please welcomethe co-author of "half the sky," she's pulitzer prize winner, sheryl wudunn. the book is called "half the sky" because women hold up y."lf the sk one of the things that we know works in terms of solutions is biker financing. we see women all of the world in various countries who are starting their own businesses courtesy of a micro financing loans.

>> i am honored to be on a panel with all these women. there are many things here that echo what i have seen in global poverty. i am not in the field helping people. i am the messenger. it is a very broad view. in the first case, i think overall in this country we tend to look at poverty as a drag on the economy. julie and explain some of these statistics. why do we have to pour more of our budget into this effort? what we have to do is move from the discussion of the problem.

if we're trying to grow the economy, wherewhere are we going to get people to do this? you need education. i have seen solutions are around the world. they could really work well here. some places in kenya and cambodia have done a better job with education than they have here in the west. that is kind of embarrassing considering we have such experts here. [applause] i would like to draw on the experience of china. and as a lot of people think china is run by dictators. they have a purity of also done something remarkable. 20 year-- and they have also doe some been remarkable. 20 years ago, most of the were in poverty. they were under a communist

society. not only did they have to come back to an economic challenge, but the king back to a political and social challenge. -- but they had to cut back to a political and social challenge. there's a lot of bureaucracy in the world. the u.s. is still full of bureaucracy. there is so much bureaucracy. 20 years ago, and they said education was critical. if we can educate our girls, even if they can just get to the middle school level they can work in factories. there were the best alternatives that a lot of graduate had. they worked their butts off. the factories were located near the community. he could take something that gives a goal for the people in

the impoverished community to look for. if they know that they can just graduate from middle school they can, even if it's a vocational school, they can just get that job at that local shop or that local factory. that's what happened. so girls were educated, they actually were able to, as they became women, they were able to work in the factories. they started bringing home a paycheck, and that elevated their status in their household and in their local village and in their local region. that's what's so critical, is giving people a way out of poverty, and there are ways out. so i know, suze, you were saying the highway into poverty, you go on the highway, but there's no side streets out. there are side streets out, and i think that we need to make sure that the conversation focuses on solutions, not the drag that poverty presents. >> now, i want to -- thanks for being so patient. we're going to shorten these answers. i thank you for your understanding. madame secretary, sheryl said something now that i want to

come back to you on first. for those who are watching this program right now who will invariably say that this is the absolute wrong approach, for government to be making poverty a priority, that we have already spent more money than we should have spent trying to life women and children out of poverty, to them you say what? >> i say they're absolutely wrong. that we need to continue that safety net. you can't make choices about cutting back during a time when we are not fully in recovery mode. we still have very high rates of unemployment. you heard it here -- 8. 3 whatever percent. we know it's even higher in some communities. women have suffered the most. while we're represented in the workforce, we're not making the same wages comparable to where we should be and with men. i keep saying that. so the real answer here is about more investments and training and certification. that's why the president is putting a proposal forward to put in $8 billion to put into k-12 and also community colleges. we want two million people to

come out of community colleges after a year with certifications and licensing. employers keep telling me, and when i travel around the country, "i want better-trained people, i want them to be flexible, adaptable. i don't want the ph. d. i want the person in the middle, the technician." there's a lot of folk out there that can be trained for these kinds of jobs. so i'm saying let's make it happen. but something that was said earlier about empowering women to run for office, emily's list is a good example of starting to help to give funding to support women. i was someone who ran for office and got early support, early money, from women, always women, but also learning that you have to build coalitions with other people. women look at issues and problems very differently from males. we look at not so much to get credit for the solution but how we work together to get that solution done well. that is what i say continually with many of the woman i serve with in congress.

we lost more women in congress because we had a bad recession. more people had to work. it is still not easy for an elected individual or women to be able to balance everything. so let's have fairness in the workplace. let's treat women easier and better if they decide to go into professional careers as an elected official. i don't want to say politician, i want to say elected official, because i take that very personal. there are a lot of women who ran for office that are not rich, and i know many of them. they gave up a lot of lucrative things, even the security of their families, to serve the public. we consider ourselves in many ways public servants. so i want people to remember that, that it isn't a bad thing to do, and there are a lot of good women that i know that serve in congress that care about domestic violence, that care about women getting an upper hand, getting a good job, making sure that they have retirement security and that everyone has a fair shot at education. >> randi, i'm coming in one second, i promise. dr. malveaux, since madame secretary raised this issue again, the numbers are clear. black and latina women are twice as likely to be in poverty

in this country as white women. dr. julianne >> mm-hmm. >> the numbers are clear about that. black women, the numbers right now are so abysmal for black women in particular - >> yes. >> -- for black people more broadly, the numbers are worse for us, but black women in particular. there's a deafening silence in black america with regard to the obama white house and this administration and what they ought to be doing about poverty across the board. to my mind, the president, respectfully, hasn't use the word poverty enough, hasn't talked about the poor enough. that's my own assessment and we can debate that another time. but what we cannot debate is that there has been a deferential silence on the part of black people more broadly, and black women specifically. i love barack obama, i love

michelle obama, i love the two kids, i love the image, i love all of that, but there's been a deafening silence in our community about poverty. why, how, can black women be so silent about their own poverty right now in this area? >> that's a great question, tavis, because when you look at melanie campbell and some people had a thing friday, and she talked about the voting patterns of african american women. we are the most loyal democrats that there are. we voted overwhelmingly, 97 percent, someone said, for president obama. now, having done that, what have you done for me lately? that's really a question that we have to ask. but i think there's a schizophrenia in the african american community about president obama. everybody loves him. i love to love him. the brother's fine, he's smart, he's got it going on. >> he seems a little bit. >> the singing does not impress

me. i refused stereotypes of all black people have to sing and dance. the schizophrenia, we bought them on one hand. the law and is a lot of people silent. this president has had enough challenges. people think he has so many challenges, why pyle its contacts you're not piling it on. your talk about what really needs to happen. -- you are talking about what really needs to happen. tactically, given the recession, i think that the president should have done jobs first and then healthcare. by doing healthcare first, he used up a lot of political capital, took a long time. then he gets these republicans and tea party people who do not understand that they get social services. >> yeah. >> yeah, tea party's people's mamas get social security, because [unintelligible] not

supporting him. their kids go to publically supported schools, but they're sitting here saying, "cut, cut, cut, cut." as faye said, they diverted the conversation by talking about reproductive rights as opposed to economic rights. if you don't like abortion, don't have one. that's all. it's real simple. african americans, i think, are extremely understanding of president obama, but that >> the end of 2011 had district of high employment. they oppose the jobs bill. it is disgraceful. you saw mr. john boehner with his posse behind him. we're not going to pass the jobs bill. four days later, you saw him standing there pitiful by himself sagging "we will do it for two months."

african-americans are extremely understanding of president obama but that should not prevent us from speaking in our own self-interests, and it should not prevent african american women from talking about this poverty, our children. president obama has done some wonderful things. he did the lead better act in his first week in office. it talks about equal pay. the fact that you can see appeared she cannot sue because she did not know she is getting an equal pay until years later. she said the statute of limitations had expired. there was a pay equity act that was passed. that pay equity act has never been in force. under president carter, there were attempts to expand child care. everyone has talked about what happens with women. 3% of the fortune 500 companies offer chop here on site.

some say -- child care on site. some say they say that but it is a hot line. there are things that women can say. everyone has talked about the way women have been working against each other. we do not have the coalitions among the as we need to have. -- among us that we need to have. y's list did not s upport her. we do have to be louder. here's the other piece. okay, can you imagine a president gingrich or a president romney or a president santorum? we might as well just check our wombs at the store if president santorum would be president.

so for any flaws we see in president obama, i think in this season he is better than any alternative that we can look at. he needs to be turned up. we need to speak up. i am so glad that we have a latina on the supreme court. i'm so mad we do not have an african american women. if you vote for someone, give me seven. >> this whole -- what is interesting, and their three things i want to say. this notion about individual responsibility and collective responsibility. they both have to happen. beterms of elections, let's a little bit real about citizens

united and how much money it costs to run. that is also a self-fulfilling prophecy we need to deal with. think about this do conference. it is not the people's house anymore. the one thing i would broaden is that -- look. i am part of the labor movement. i'm giving you one statistic that is sobering. between 1973 and 2000, the number of people who were in unions went from about 34% to 8%. in the same time, income and inequality rose 40%. that was a way of creating a collective work, creating a community and labor together, having the coalitions. but the little real. -- let's be real.

it is not a war on women. it is a war on voting. i looked at what was going on in terms of alabama. worse than the war on the voter i.d. laws is the fact that in alabama we have the most vital anti-immigration law. if anyone that is perceived to be anundocumented can no longer reach their house for fear of being arrested. what we have right now, and this is part of how we need to fight this, is you have teed of the zero very different philosophies. -- you have two very different decilphilosophies. there is a philosophy that basically says we're going to take away rights from people.

that is what we have to fight about right now in the next few months. >> i just went right to them. >> i want to get back to the question posed to julianne. whether they are the markers of health-care whether there are studies that have demonstrated that we get the least desirable care, whether they are economic statistics, whether they are educational system six. what we have not discussed seems to be the political forum is the enormity of the power of popular culture and the media to define black women in terms of non-

dignified, and non-working. that we're not worthy of being perceived as being equal. the characterization's and the stereotypes that are reinforced about black women in our society really deserve an uprising among black women at this point. the lack of are prevalent in closer and advertising and imagery that sends a very strong visual messages that say this is equal and the individual deserves the same respect and treatment are fading in a way for those that came about in the '60s and '70s is shocking. the larger society values system is really something that we need to challenge. popular culture in the media and

public conversation really all need to be challenged. >> give me one second. i am glad you said that. you are the honorary black women. >> i am a black woman trapped in a white woman's body. to face one about media, that poverty is just a question, an issue, particularly women and children in poverty, that we just don't find sexy enough t this is the most difficult

symposium my people have ever produced. that is why i am thankful for the radio right now. if you are watching on c-span, i think c-span. if you're watching on pbs, i think pbs. because i've done so much of this, you put together a panel of experts. i got a few friends on the industry. it is not difficult to get the platform. this has been like pulling teeth, to get the focus and attention on this issue. what say you about this? poverty is just a question, part of the early women and children that we do not find sexy enough to talk about. >> what is interesting about me talking about money every week is that for 11 years now i've had a show.

for the past for five years it has been the number one rated show on cnbc. you would not know that. even i hear anything about it. you will not seek the support that somebody truthfully of my stature should have. i am telling you i do not have it. i have to fight and crawl and begged and scratch for every single thing that i still to this day create. women do not have a basface in media. they do not have it the way that they should.

women hold up half the sky. >> i take care plan. >> i wanted answer your question. it is very difficult to talk about poverty. in a country whose [applause] that's true. when you classify yourself as poor, you might as well be a leper. nobody wants to call themselves poor and, even when you read it, it's uncomfortable. >> but half of us are, nely. >> we are, but i'm telling you why it's painful to talk about it. i'm answering your question. it's part of our collective, but it's a part of a collective

that we deny. what we haven't said is that what's going on in the collective in our country is that the values in this country have gone to hell. they've gone to hell. [applause] what we see in the media with what's going on with the republican debates is embarrassing. and what we see in the media and what we've seen over the last few years in the media, what we put out in the world is that money is god and, if you don't have it and by any means necessary to get it, you're nothing.

i think the important thing is that what we know is that women are the holders of the values in our families and we have to go back to upholding what is really good. when we say that immigrant children should not have education, what happened to a country that, from the time it was founded, we wanted all children to have education? what happened to those values? i think that's why you're right. it's painful to discuss. it's very shameful. it's shameful in this country. it's not shameful to be poor in other countries. people don't ask you right away, "what do you do and how much money do you make?" they ask you, "who are you? who are you? who are you in our community?" [applause] >> sheryl wudunn, you respond any way you want to respond. i take nely's point and i agree

with it. >> i just want to give the point of view from the media because i do think that's why, in "half the sky," we say that the moral challenge of our time is gender inequity. >> exactly. >> poor women, poor girls, lead to gender inequity even in the u.s. as well, so it applies in the u.s. as well. but i think that one of the major problems why it doesn't get so much coverage, why people aren't so interested partly is, you know, the way we tell it. you know, so much of what is covered in the news media, in the television, is how you tell stories. i think much more investment and thought needs to go into how we tell stories.

we tell individual stories of women who have come out of those challenges. i think that's really important. there are many, many ways of helping.

we need to focus on that. >> dr. malveaux, if i say to you that, to my mind, there is a bipartisan consensus in washington -- and you know how difficult that is to get. if i said to you there's a bipartisan consensus in washington, that poverty doesn't matter, that the poor don't matter, political or moral, there's a consensus in that town that the poor don't matter, it's just not a problem in this country, you say what? >> i say absolutely, tavis. i mean, one of the words, you've talked about the [inaudible] of discussion about poverty, but there's another word we don't talk about very much. that's capitalism. we don't talk about what the flaws of capitalism are. i know suze orman's going to come get me, but let's just be clear that what capitalism does is it creates poverty. i mean, the people who have the payday loans, they're making fun off poor people. -- making money off of poor

people. the people who are using these credit cards -- you've got a great credit card product that i hope you'll talk about -- but the people who have these prepaid credit cards, they're making money off people. back in 1963 or 1964, a man named david caplovitz wrote a book called "the poor pay more"" it talked about the many, many ways that poor people are extorted. so dr. martin luther king in 1968 in "where do we go from here," he talked about economic structure. he said there are 40 million poor people in america and you have to ask what kind of country creates 40 million poor people? when you ask that question, you have to ask about the very structure of our economy. the income distribution becomes unequal. he went on to say, who owns the oil? who owns the iron ore? if the world is two-thirds water, why do we pay water bills that do not try that with the water company. it will not work. [laughter] we are only second to sweden in

the inequality of our income distribution and nobody wants to talk about -- if you talk to the other people, they will say, oh, this is class warfare when you begin to talk about the differences of who earns what, or they need to work hard. i'm going to tell you, there's nobody harder working than an undocumented person who is cleaning up somebody's house and getting paid under the table. >> i want to go to secretary solis and to cecilia in just a second. but since dr. malveaux raised these prepaid cards, you have a card that is called the approved card that's different than anything else out there. julianne -- offered an opportunity for you to respond to that, i want you to respond and tell us about what makes this approved card different. >> let me first say there is big business in people being poor. the more poorer you are, the more you pay for insurance, the more you pay for everything, the

more money they make off of you. so i would not disagree with you at all about capitalism. there's a good side to it and there is a horrific side to it. that's true. when you are poor, you have bounced checks. in order to transact business, you need plastic. you cannot have loads of cash. although, tell that to the latino community. they will not walk into a bank. when you have bounced checks, you cannot get a checking account or a credit union account. if you can't get a checking account or an account at a credit union, how do you get a card to transact business? you need a piece of plastic to order something over the internet, to go into the

grocery, so you're not robbed. fine. came the big business where many people brought out what was known as prepaid cards, cards that you didn't have to qualify for, but they were issued and you deposited money on them and you used them. many of them are highway robbery. they charge you $35 to $50 a month to use them. how many of you out there have one of those? uh-huh, quite a few of you. so i decided i was going to do something about it and i created it, funded it myself, something called the approved card. the approved card, if you use it the way that i ask you to use it, will not cost you more than $3 per month and that $3 per month is for four cards. the $. 75 a month, you can pay your bills online for free, blah, blah, blah. you can read about it at theapprovedcard. com. fine, do that. but here's the point. when i brought out this card, i have never in the 30 years that

i've doing this seen such opposition of outright lies from the television community, from the newspaper reporters, from everybody because, if i succeed in this card, the banks fail. if i succeed in this card, the other people who have these prepaid cards that are making a fortune off of you fail. you cannot get out of poverty if you do not have a good credit score. do you understand that? you cannot get a credit score if you use cash or a debit card. if this experiment works, 24 months from now when you use a debit card, it will go onto your credit report and you will

get a credit score, that you can be a viable human being. but you got to work with me here, people, because everybody else wants this project to fail. it's called theapprovedcard. com and, if it starts to succeed, the $3 a month that you're to pay, i vow to you, will go away 'cause i want a card that's better than cash.

i want a card that is better than cash. >> randi? >> i wouldn't be accused here of class warfare, but i was just in china, singapore and japan. what is remarkable and, you know, we talked about the [inaudible] factories. i want to be clear when this administration took office, we lost about -- but say, the first month of the inauguration, 8 million jobs lost. as soon as we got the recovery act in and we were able to put more funding in as a safety net, 50 million americans benefited from that 12 million children. now we come back to another debate that we had almost a year ago because we had a struggle with this new congress that did not want to extend payroll tax credits, poor people, and

working-class people. every time $1 of that benefit is used, it is bent back to the community and generates two more dollars. it keeps mom and pop stores open and gasoline tanks filled. it is a stimulus, if you will. but there are still a lot of people in washington and other places that believe the program itself is something that keeps people at home, that folks are not looking for work, and they are just using that as an excuse. i tend to say that is not true. we need to make our programs work better and not give erroneous arguments to the opposition that say these people are slackers. i know there -- they are not. they're looking for jobs. but when you still have for people looking for one job, we are not creating enough jobs. we have to try to stimulate, but we have to have the partnership with businesses and

corporations. a lot of them are sitting on a lot of money right now. they have made a lot of profit and we need to incentivize and have the public collectively tell the new members of the house and otherwise to get on the ball and make sure that we are passing laws that are fair. all we're looking for in this administration is a fair balance. >> let me push back on this notion of incentivizing them. i appreciate this. that word trip to be up for a second. the word you want now, incentivize, the banks sitting on a trillion dollars, these are the same banks we gave them a trillion dollars to bail them out in the first place. and we did not have strings attached to the money that we gave them. now it is up to us to come up with another government plan or some other process to incentivize them to put money back into the economy? >> is not just the banks, though. we also lost over the course of

three decades of lot of jobs that were out the door. when this president is talking about in sourcing jobs, getting jobs to come back home. we should do that right away. i think this is something that the public agrees with. there are chemical oil companies, other big corporations. we want to bring that back and tax people appropriately. and if you are -- and give you a break if you are creating jobs here in america. i remember a conversation that president obama had when he met steve jobs. it caught covered everywhere. -- it got covered everywhere. and steve jobs said, mr. president, these jobs are never coming back. where are they going? and number two, where is the incentive for any american corp. right now to hire anybody if

they can do more with less? the thing is to squeeze as much proper -- as much as you can for your shareholders. where is the incentive to hire americans? >> let's look at the automobile industry. who said they wanted to make a difference and who said they did not? 100,000 jobs in two years, good paying jobs that put people back in the middle class. i'm talking about men and women, people and -- people of color, a large proportion. now they have profit sharing. you see assembly lines coming up. i'm not saying all of it is coming back right away, but because of the policies put in place to create an incentivize -- create new vehicles that will be competitive against korea and japan. now you have vehicles and batteries being created here,

not abroad. that is what the president is talking about. and we need to do more. whether it is manufacturing overall, let's keep our raw materials here. >> incentivize is a back in strategy. -- back and strategy. they should be made to do it. >> i would not be accused year of klas where it -- class warfare, but i was just in china, singapore, and japan. what is remarkable and we talk about the fox crowne -- foxconn factories. in our terms, they're sweatshops, in their terms, it's upward mobility. but they have in china an industrial policy. this lady over here, and the president -- and i have issues. i think it was put the right way in terms of what the stakes are

in terms of the president and others. we don't have an industrial policy in the united states of america. there are a lot of people in labour who lost a lot of money because of the dual pay scale now and things like that. the auto companies could not access capital anywhere. the government was the capital of last resort. if we lost the auto industry, detroit would be dead. what happened was, they took a risk. the secretary took risks, the auto companies took a risk, the unions took a risk, and right now you see this remarkable change. that was the closest we ever had to an industrial policy. i think we need more of that kind of industrial policy here. i think what we're saying on this panel is it's important to shine the light so people don't feel shamed, but then it is equally important to have a set of strategies that we go forward with, both capital strategies, industrial strategies, educational

strategies, all underlined by values because it is our value in the united states of america. look, we're right by lady liberty, which is "give us your tired and your poor." it is we are a country that will bring ourselves up, have the american dream, but we need those strategies. i think what comes out of this, as i'm listening to the amazing ladies on this panel, is that if we could actually collectively, strange bedfellows as we might be, end up having a set of strategies that we all pursue, that would be a change. teachers every single day see poverty firsthand. >> what do you say to those women and children watching and listening right now who have nothing against industry, but

are waiting on some individual? americans want some fundamental fairness, and they see all this help for wall street and the auto industry. and i'm not saying that was necessarily a bad idea. i say that on main street and on the side street, there ain't no help coming in for women and children. that does not seem fair. >> it is not fair. and part of white we said earlier to austerity, cart -- part of coming out of the deepest recession since the great depression, the worst thing you can do is austerity. we have to stimulate the economy. the fact that we lost the jobs act. there are thousands of schools that need to be repaired. teachers every day see poverty firsthand. they are on the front line of seeing it every day and we fight like hell -- sorry -- to try to keep schools open, to not destabilize neighborhoods. my members take money out of their pockets every single day

to buy supplies, to buy food, to do all of this stuff. you're totally right. we see it firsthand, but we have to have long-term as well as short-term strategies. we have to have a job strategy, but we also have to have a lifeline strategy. >> cecilia? >> that brings me back to this discussion of my reservation, which is 100 miles by 50 miles, 40,000. we have tribal schools, colleges. one of the things that we are doing in our community is taking a hard look at the existing way of educating our people. unfortunately, the western model created by somebody in washington, d.c. trickled down to our community. education, when it began in my community, was only to do two things, civilize us, speak english and be christians.

so when the united states government first invested in education, it was not to teach us how to read and write. it was to say, "our father" and speak english. today we are taking a hard look. we have a captured audience and this is what i like to say. the boundaries of my reservation and everything that goes on inside of there is our responsibility and it's up to us as tribal citizens of that community to look at where we've been, where we are and where do we need to go. one of the areas we're looking very hard at is the educational system. we say education is the key to get out of poverty. however, not everybody can go to college. not everybody's going to be a dentist or a doctor. when you take a look at our community, what kind of jobs do we need to train our people for? our community and our land, we grow hay, wheat, sorghum. we grow rib eye, we have a lot of cows.

in our community we have to take a look at what it is we want our children to know how to do so they can also make a living and live off the land and provide for themselves and the community. so part of the challenge is to take a look at what we can do to change how we do business in our community and that goes back to changing the educational philosophy of this country so that it fits the needs of everyone community in america. [applause] >> i've got less than 10 minutes less -- left of this very rich conversation. two things i have not gotten to in no particular order. i will come to you first. >> just like there's a link between, randi, inadequate education and poverty, there's also a link clearly, faye, between poor health and poverty. talk to me about that link. >> well, there is an enormously strong link between poor health

and poverty particularly among women, especially among women, and it's especially tragic because not only do we fare less well in the healthcare system in our own experiences, but we are also mothers of children and, when we are not healthy, our children can't possibly be healthy. yet most healthcare policy programs are aimed at children as a way of legitimizing somehow taking care of women. speaking of policy adjustments, we need to change that. we are also the caregivers of our parents and other disabled. the affordable healthcare act, however, for the first time will provide preventive services without a cost-sharing, meaning that the individual or consumer doesn't have to put up a certain amount of money in order to get the care. who would have ever imagined that we would engage in a major national debate over whether contraceptive care would be

included as a fundamental requirement under preventive healthcare? when i speak about healthcare, i think we have to also put into that category a freedom from violence against women in our society. in 2010, 20% of women did not have coverage for their health care. what did that result in? that resulted in prescriptions not being filled. that resulted in postponing recommended treatments. it resulted in not going to specialists when we needed to go to specialists. it resulted in a general state of a lack of optimal health care. and when i speak about health care, we also have to put into that category, freedom from violence against women in our society. [applause] the organization that i co- founded a few years ago published a survey among 3,300 women in which we thought that

we were going to find the usual conversation that we've had here today for over two hours, economics, economics, economics. what came back when we asked what do you believe ought to be the number one issue addressed in this country, it was to stop violence against women. [applause] you know, it is a marker of how we value women in this country and our health -- i am speaking to the healthcare question -- when the only time that we're concerned about a woman's safety is when she has been physically injured or has been killed and that we really don't much care about the circumstances of her well-being with respect to her safety and security, her health security, unless there are just enormous threats to her well-being. >> but there's also data, as you know, that links that cycle of violence to poverty. >> to poverty, precisely, and that links that cycle of

violence to the state of motherhood, that a homicide against women is among the highest, among pregnant women. it is important to link the status of health care in this country for those uninsured. they are young women who do not have high school educations. they are women in the hispanic community much more likely than the african-american community. the subcategories of womanhood are still those we must address. i must say over and over again. these are not acts of god. these are acts of complacency. women -- women are not victims. we have the power to change the circumstances and help ought to -- health ought to beat the no. 1 agenda. >> thank you very much. i appreciate it. one of the other issues i

wanted to get to today that we did not get to at all in this conversation, dr. malveaux. you referenced dr. king earlier and quote him a couple of times. king once famously said, as you well know, that war is the enemy of the poor, that war is the enemy of the poor. that's true for all poor people, but is especially and particularly true for women and children because those resources that are being squandered abroad and not being available here at home for women and children's services, tell me more. i feel you agree with it. >> oh, absolutely. dr. king really looked at war, you know, as an act of violence. the combination between war, capitalism, because who makes money from war? what we notice is that, among women who are enlisted in the army, 40 percent of them are african american women. we're 13 percent of the population. there's an economic draft. we don't really have a draft, but there's an economic draft. people go to war because they don't have a job. we have women, tavis, who have left their children with their momma so they can go to war.

you have people who have enrolled in the army reserves or somebody's reserves because they could get an extra $250 a month and, the next thing you know, they're over there in afghanistan somewhere. i wanted to say to faye that, you know, we talk about violence against women. battlegrounds are breeding grounds for violence against women. the number of women that are great. -- raped. another thing we have not talked about is -- it's economic violence, patriarchy, another word we have not used, the power of men. patriarchy allows an economic violence against women with the situations that we're put in, the sexual harassment that so many women experience, and people say, well, just go away, quit. some people can't afford to quit. so we women have to be more united. we've accepted a structure that discriminates against us systematically.

it starts with the culture, as you said, with the music videos? that's to say, tavis, what you end up with. as a president of a college, i had to tell some students one day that it is not against the law for you to cover your body [laughter]. nothing bad will happen to you if you don't show your body parts. the war piece is a huge piece that's sucked resources out of our economy and women and children have paid for it. >> gandhi once said -- i love the gandhi quote that "poverty is the worst form of violence." poverty is the worst form. i got a minute and a half to go. i want to close where i began with our secretary here, our labor secretary. in a minute and a half, tell me, if you can, why in this particular moment with all the numbers not giving us reason to be optimistic whether or not you are hopeful and that women and children in america should be hopeful. >> i am hopeful. even starting tomorrow, we're going to be celebrating the passage of the affordable care act where more uninsured children, latino, african american poor children, are

being covered in phenomenal numbers. this is a 70-year span of time where finally this president got something done and no one thought that this was going to be that hard. it was hard, but more people are reaping the benefits. i have hope because, when i look back at the past, 3. 9 million private sector jobs created in a span of, what, three year, two years, two and a half years? part of it is because people have confidence, optimism and hope. 11,000 jobs created per month. we have been able to kick out the numbers. yes, i do believe the numbers can improve if people believe that we can help work with each other, build coalitions, empower each other, and make sure that we're sharing and we're coalescing and that we're really standing up and that we hear the voices of the public. the bottom line, folks, is that our destiny is wrapped up together. it's not the white house and washington, d.c. over here. it's all of us working together

as a community. >> it's the final night of our conversation. let me ask you to thank nely galant for being here. cecilia thunder. fe walton. .ue's ormon brandywine garden cheryl ohlsson, holding up the whole sky. and dr. julia moul vote. [applause] i could not have been more delighted to be here with this august panel of experts on the issue of women, children and poverty in america. and let me thank c-span.

and pbs. >> we are taking you live to capitol hill where john nichols will be leading a panel discussion on changes in the u.s. tax code that including the buffett rule, which pope a lot -- president obama talked about yesterday. my discussion just getting under way on c-span. >> being founded in 1947 by people like eleanor roosevelt, hubert humphrey, and a host of other progressive preliminaries. for the past year, the fund has been holding a series of monthly congressional briefings where we try to bring important national topics to the congressional staffers as well as other citizens. this was the latest. this event is also part of the commonwealth project, which is a

joint venture of ada and the coffee party usa. i have a list of people here to thank. hold your applause until the end. i want to thank our honorary post for today to dedication, the congressional progressive caucus. also, the office of senator brown has been invaluable in getting us this base and all of the attendance facilities. diana has been the point person on that. over on the house side, a amaamanda is a staffer and she s been very helpful in publicizing this event internally and externally. then i want to thank our organizational partner, united for i fear economy. they work on issues -- a ferry cattery. the work on issues out of

boston. specifically, tim sullivan and other who helped with lunch and publicity. i want to thank the staff and volunteers of ada, which includes the executive director of the americans for democratic action, our communications director, and volunteers. today's topic. have to make the tax system more fair -- how to make the tax system fair has been a hotly debated topic this election year. with the nation facing record budget deficits at the same time as slow economic growth, the question of how to raise the revenue necessary to address both is an extremely urgent one right now. next monday, the senate is going

to be considering the so-called buffett rule, which would raise taxes on very wealthy people who have a lot of investment income. earlier this year, the house voted down a budget, the ryan budget, that move in the opposite direction. but, spurred by phenomenon such as the occupy movement and warren buffett's secretary's tax rate, the question of who should pay how much has come to the floor. that is why we are here today. we are going to address this issue with an all-star cast, a dream team, and the other team you want to use for a whole bunch of people who know what they are talking about. at the end of their discussion, we will accept questions from the audience. we have a hand-held microphone that will come around to you. if you're watching remotely come on c-span or -- remotely, on c- span or the internet, you can

tweak questions to this address right here. @adaedfund if you are watching this on tape, we have all gone home. i would like to turn our program over to john nichols, the washington correspondent for the nation magazine. he is also the associate editor of the "capital times" in madison, wisconsin. he published "uprising, how wisconsin renewed the politics in protest from madison to wall street." we can thank everyone. a plug for everyone i just think. welcome mr. nichols. [applause] >> thank you. right up front, i want to thank united for a fairy economy and ada,. . will pulled this together and

pull us into this position. i think we are very excited because it is rare to have this collection of people together at such a critical moment. the president of the united states literally was talking about these issues today. he is on the road. many pundits believe framing his whole reelection campaign now around many of the issues that we will be discussing today. it is incredibly appropriate and timely for us to be in this position. i think that will is one of the more visionary people in america to have put us here today. i also want to note that senator brown did not just arrange a room. he also is one of the senators to i think is more intensely engaged in tax policy than anybody else. he has a constant fascination. while he is not with us, i assume he is watching in his

office on c-span. 100 years ago, robert and la follette -- propose an amendment to the republican party's platform. it read, we collect the revenues to sustain our national government through tax consumption. these taxes upon the consumer are levied upon articles of universal use. they bear most heavily upon the poor and those of moderate means. other countries tax income and inheritance as a progressive rate. the burdens of our people should be equalized. wealth should bear its share. amazingly enough, the republican party of 1912 adopted some elements of that proposal. over the hundred years after, the party wrestled with the issue and may not have come down in the same place. i cite the low follette proposal to remind people that this is

not a new conversation. we are not a right thing -- writing at this point without a lot of history and a lot of frustration. getting fair taxation, an idea of an equitable tax policy to the forefront to the popular debate is one of the great challenges. we seem, for a variety of reasons, to be edging towards a point where that might happen. i give complement to paul ryan, the house budget committee chair, because he has forced some of these issues and gone to what many people see as extremes. he forced people to talk about tax policy in ways they have not up to this point. president obama has countered with discussion of the buffett rule. this begins to address some of these issues. we will go a lot further than the buffett rule today. today, we will try to explain

why it is so very hard to get a good honest debate about tax policy going in america. and, in our congress. we will look at why it is so important to have these debates and daytime whe -- at a time when the alternative fuels to be an austerity discussion. we are talking about what ideas could and should be in play at this moment. we will talk about what our prospects are, politically, for bringing them into play. and, we will discuss the fascinating tension of some wealthy americans to suggest that they should pay more taxes. i know. a novel motion, which we have some real experts on. i'm going to begin with rebecca thiess. before i go to rebecca, i let me take us around the panel.

then we will go to rebecca. what the heck are you doing on this panel? >> i have a microphone. this is so cool. i am making progress. i wanted to talk into a microphone. it is one of my favorite things. i am always at these things. i have been doing this since 1975. you can argue that i am to blame for everything wrong in the world when it comes to taxes. i take no credit for religious strife. to say that people think, oh man, this is always going one way against us, that is not true. we have had some very amazing victories in we have had some staggering losses. are we better off than we were then? hard to say. we certainly have done some good things as well as bad. i am looking forward to pushing that rock up much closer to the top of the hill before it falls

back down on me again. >> you do this as the director of citizens for tax justice? you are supposed to throw that in there. >> -- >> you have been banging away at it. we'll ask you why you have not had more successes in a moment. it rebecca? >> hello. i am an analyst at the economic policy institute and i mostly focus on budget policy. with a little bit of tax policy and social security thrown in there. the things i have been most involved with have been putting together our numerous budget alternatives, which i have really enjoyed doing. we have a document called investing in america's economy that came on november 2010. it is basically your ideal budget picture for the next 25 years, i think. and then we also have been assisting the progressive caucus in putting together their budget alternatives over the last two

years. their budgets just came out a few weeks ago and i highly encourage you to check them out. i spent a good deal of time working on that. >> rebecca thiess is with the economic policy institute and the congressional caucus. it is got 78 votes. a little bit of work there. mike lapham, what have you been up to? >> i am the responsible well project director at united for a fairy economy. faireconomy.org if you want to look it up online. i manage the top 5% who have been used as the poster children for tax cuts. we get them to get into the congress where the voice of greed is well representative in

to give a voice. to say, we need higher taxes on folks like us. we also tried to get their voices into the media and corporate boardrooms on corporate accountability. i would say, we were just at the white house and some of our folks were talking with president obama, who just gave a speech on why we should have the buffett rule. i would venture that i might be the only person who could advocate repealing all of the bush tax cuts. we can come back to that. >> we will have a wrestling match. [laughter] some of the folks you have gotten to speak up for raising their taxes include? >> well, bill gates senior. his son founded microsoft or something like that. he has been a big advocate for the state tax. we have 2000 people signed on. wealthy people who have signed on in favor of having a strong

he state tax. -- estate tax. >> dean baker? >> i am dean baker. and the co-director of the center for economic policy. i am usually in a -- i am usually macro economist. i usually like to tell people that there is a housing bubble. i get ignored. [laughter] >> he will tell you things today that will really matter many years from now. >> exactly. the background there is that is important we understand the macroeconomics context. unfortunately, people make this fiscal policy and they act as though the macroeconomic factors do not matter. and they do matter. what you should know is that the surplus in the '90s were wrong

because the congressional budget office was wrong concerning their macroeconomics projections. we had 6% unemployment in 2000. bill clinton would have not had a balanced budget. the other thing i would like to mention the unpack on economics is that when we look at our long run budget deficits, it is a health care story. it is not public, it is the private sector health care. if we do not six, none of us can think of enough taxes to pay for it. -- if we do not fix it, none of us can think of economic taxes to pay for it. the speculation tax has the effect of increasing equality in making the financial sector more efficient by eliminating a lot of waste in the financial sector in eliminating a lot of the high-income people. the best way to direct -- get

rid of the problem of the money going to the top 1% is to tax it off the top. if they do not get it, we do not have to worry about it. >> dean baker. financial transaction tax is a big goal of national nurses united. you got a mention in the budget. it is in play. chuck marr, you have scoped around -- spoke to run the little bit. what brings you here? >> i am mike lapham from the senate on budget policy priorities where i work on tax issues. right now, the hot topic for us is the ryan budget, which hopefully we will get to talk about today. also the whole issue of tax reform, which i like to raise some flights about. heading into the really big debate this year which is what to do about the bush tax cuts, where we think the for steps to be -- a first step should be.

>> thank you. elspeth gilmore, resources generation. >> hi. i am elspeth gilmore. i one of the co-director of research generation -- resource generation. we work with people 35 and under to mobilize with wealth. we have spent identifying the 1% and figuring out how to mobilize our resources to actually move towards progress of social change. recently, we have been working on a tax equity campaign. it has been really exciting to figure out how the 1% can speak out in a moment in the context of what we are here to talk about and figure out how the 1% can actually say it is in our best interest and bring the voices of young folks. i speak from a personal member and a co-director. i'm living my peers to be part of this movement. >> i want to bring becky and on

some history to give us some frame of reference. do you think occupy roster has played a role in bringing tax policy -- occupy wall street in bringing tax policy to the forefront? >> absolutely. i want to say that the way occupy has shifted the debate has been huge. we are at a moment when the folks in this room, the people i work with a, the people might works with, and the staffers, had a chance to move that moment forward and figure out how to capitalize on that. >> thank you. i think it is significant for anybody to bring something to the forefront because it is never easy. rebecca, you have been working a lot on the history of tax policy. i realize that this very moment there are people across america who are thinking, i wonder what is on some other channel?

i would like you to give us a sense of how important understanding where we came from is to understanding where this debate is today. >> i will run through this quickly. we are coming up on the hundred anniversary of the 16th amendment. that is next february. >> the 16th amendment? >> of course, it allowed the government to put in place the income tax. a big moment in our nation's history. i will go back before that to begin with. we had a federal income tax during the civil war. that was instituted because we needed revenue to help pay for the war. it proved to be unpopular. it was done away with in the 1870's. some politicians tried to bring it back later. it was found to be unconstitutional. i am not a constitutional scholar, i cannot explain why. maybe somebody else here can. >> they said it was communism. [laughter] >> ok.

as we got through the progressive era, people became in favor of the income tax. you saw william howard taft support it. we saw teddy roosevelt support its and an inheritance tax . >> for some of the folks in 20 -- 1912, that was the liberal and conservative wing of the republican party. >> an interesting thing to mention is that both teddy roosevelt and franklin roosevelt framed the income tax as fairness. they did not from a tax revenue. obama is doing the same thing. it is an issue of fairness, not paying for the war or food stamps. those are issues, as well. fairness and closing the

incoming quality gap is important. so, with woodrow wilson's election, we saw the 16th amendment and the income tax come into place. tax rates were immediately raised during world war roman one to help pay for that war. they came down significantly throughout the 1920's under harding and coolidge. the great depression hit and federal revenues took a really big hit. you saw fdr, like i said, come out not only for, you know, america, but for tax fairness in 1935. he propose significantly what we might call soaking the rich. he ended up raising top rates to 79%. i recently read that when he did that, he raised the threshold to $5 million, which is $78 million

into the's world. only john rockefeller pay its that tax rate. -- pays the tax rate. we saw world war ii, and taxes went up again. you could not do much again on the wealthy. their tax rates were high. what happened was we saw a significant base broadening. taxes really went up significantly during world war ii. they came down moderately after the war, but not as much as you might think due to fears of inflation and soviet expansion, which did not allow us to cut the military budget very much. we had high military spending. we could not bring taxes down too much. kennedy and reagan were the two presidents -- kennedy was assassinated before he could actually push through. they were the two president who brought tax rates down. to wrap up, what is important to mention over the last 40 years in tax policy is that we have

seen some pretty interesting trends. the first of which is falling marginal income-tax rates. they used to be 91% baccarat the time of world war ii and they fell to 28% under reagan. they are now 35%. that was put in place by president george w. bush. we have also seen a decline in the income threshold. so, they used to be up around $3 million. now, it is $380,000. that is the amount of money that is taxed at the top rate. we have seen corporate income revenue fall by about half as a share of gdp. profits have not fallen. we have also seen a substantial increase in payroll tax rates. -- i am sorry. so security and medicare. >> thank you.

as you went through that history, i noticed bob mcintyre rolling his eyes and nodding. i told staff not to do that. -- taft not to do that. [laughter] you have been at this since ford was president. you have seen victories. tax fairness can win. you have also seen some frustrating battles. give us a sense of where we are at now as regards a tax fairness fight and also, why is it hard to bring these issues to the forefront and to get a real debate on tax fairness? >> there is any change in the republican party since the liberal years of ronald reagan. that is been a big difference. reagan, you know, put through what could possibly be the worst tax bill in the history of the

u.s. in 1981. he was advised by people like newt gingrich and he was told that if he cut taxes on rich people and corporations, it would increase revenues and he could pay for his defense. he believes that because he was a believing kind of man. when that did not work out, not one year later when he was told there was a budget hole, and reagan looked at him and said, you mean tip o'neill was right? [laughter] speaker of the house of the time. democrat. for the rest of his term, reagan raised taxes by closing on some of the loopholes he had opened up. in 1986, we went along way to getting rid of tax shelters in the individual side of the tax code and making the corporate

income tax into what it was supposed to be. that was a good thing. how did we do it? the stars were lined, but we had a bipartisan congress. we had a democratic house. a republican president. the public was energized. i take some credit for that because i was putting out reports regularly about how general electric and most of the other big corporations were not paying taxes. we made them pay for a while. republican party changed. democratic party lost interest in tax reform. things started to frizzle away. we are having a more interesting debate about who should pay for government, whether we should pay for government, whether we should have tax breaks for millionaires or medicare. that is a nicely to frame it. it is a true story. should we give corporations big

tax breaks whether it is to move jobs offshore to do it they are doing? should we repair the infrastructure so business can succeed in this country? a lot of business people prefer the latter. unfortunately, their lobbyists that are as powerful. i think the public gets annoyed to hear that general electric and boeing and so many other companies are making these enormous profits and they might vote for a guy who says he is going to do about -- do something about it. i do not mean mitt romney making it more negative. >> is obama that guy? is he -- >> he is talking about the buffett rule, but is he saying the kind of thing you are talking about? >> we are working on him. [laughter] he wants to get rid of the loopholes, but he wants to use the money to lower the corporate tax rate because, in his vision,

i guess, corporations are paying the perfect amount in taxes. 1.2% of gdp, which is compared to 4% back during the kennedy administration. >> i think we can talk him out of this. mike, you are at the white house. >> the question is, do we want a tax policy that works for the 1% or the 99%? you know? that is the problem. our tax policy, over the past several decades, has benefited the top 1%. and in their income has gone up. taxes have gone down and we are saying we cannot afford to invest in education and infrastructure. there is this myth out there that one wealthy person, we have to get off of the on japan or who gets all the work -- we have to get off the entrepreneur who gets all the work. we have to get government off

its back. everyone who is rich is a small business person? we have to keep taxes low. otherwise they will not invest and do stuff, right? the reality is, you know, business people do not make business decisions based on the tax rate. i represent a whole bunch of leaders. >> he ran a business for a long time. >> my family was in the paper business for a long time. i was not making a lot of the decisions. >> take one of our responsible members. he said for 25 years on the management committee, nobody ever mentioned the tax rate around that table. it does not come up. business person after business person reinforces the fact that this is not -- the idea we have to keep taxes low or capital gains rates low so that people will invest is hogwash. it is undermining our country by saying we cannot afford to invest. invest in the things that made

these people rich . >> these are outlined in a new book. >> i happen to have written a book called "the self-made myths." there's my book. >> there you go. >> it is true. it is hurting our country. >> the concept that -- one of the elements we want to stick on is the concept that a wealthy person, who may not even be running a business, is potentially going to create jobs. something will happen. >> right. >> romney's money in switzerland will do something. [laughter] >> the one person investing and buying, does not create new jobs. there was a guy who wrote an op- ed in the seattle times by saying he has billed big companies, but i am not a job creator. we need a strong middle class are there is nothing to build companies for. >> chuck marr?

>> there a logical ideas. things that need to be done. i know that you were senior adviser for budget policy at the national economic council. you were also the policy leader and you worked with the budget committee. i would assume that you are personally responsible for these things not happening. [laughter] to a realistict debate about tax policy? what are the pressures on congress that prevent us from getting there? >> we are having a debate right now. in the last few decades, what happened is, in the late 1980's with president h. w. bush, he went back on his tax policy. there was a conservative revolt. you had this grover norquist

deal -- one side of the table has become a sort of litmus test of against texas. -- against taxes. the top priority is taxes on high-income people. there is a drive to lower their taxes. one side of the table is pushing for lower taxes. now, as some mention, we do have this moment of public opinion where after decades and decades of greater inequality, where you do have incomes at the top rising so sharply and middle-class people becoming more stagnant and more difficult, that debate really has been impossible to avoid.

that has bubbled up. you have a different public dynamic now. you are getting this debate on the buffett rule because of that. as you debate the bush tax cuts, you do have this one side who would be reluctant to give anything on that. the public, if there is this debate, which there will be, is siding with -- high income people are doing fine. they did great during the 1990's. we do not need to give them more tax cuts. a lot of budget decisions are coming. they will hit middle-class, working class people and everyone has to be part of that. >> digging in deeper and one thing on working around congress. is there money in politics? is that a component to this? >> money is rampant in politics. it is not so much money. if you think about the corporate tax debate, there is a big

debate right now over whether the united states should say to taxes on foreign profits -- whether they should be taxed. the romney plan, all of the plans, say we should not have a tax. we should have these zero tax foreign profits. why should we encourage china -- investment overseas over investment in ohio? from a company perspective, for multinationals, that is in their interests. i think, you know, what needs to happen is they need to be elevated somewhat because if they can be put in terms that people understand and people get engaged, we have a better chance -- >> is focusing the attention that overcomes the lobbying pressures. >> very much so. let me take you in there because one of the things you have tried to do is to bring some folks into the debate to get attention and to say, as wealthy

people, we think we should be taxed more. they are not simply saying, we are patriots. there is a sense of a -- how you create a civil society. how you create a functional society. talk to me about that . >> just building off of what mike was saying before. we want what is good for the 99%. i think that what we are saying -- what we are all saying is is what is good for the -- what is good for the hundred%. that is what you are talking about in terms of building a civil society. the young people i work with and the people i talk to that immobilizing are around this -- we are seeing public infrastructure with a safety net. we know there is health care, education. the people that are affected by

that are not only -- i went to private school, so maybe i was that impacted, but my entire community is full of people who are relying on public education. i want my kids to go to public schools. i want to not have to be in communities where people are courting wealthy and not having to -- and having to live in that scarcity mentality and worrying, but having a collective net for all of us to have been not just -- not only the 99%, but the 1%, as well. >> dean baker? >you come in addition to saying there was a housing bubble and concerns we want to look ahead to, you have been talking about their taxation, their tax policies, about the role that tax policy plays him in making that civil society. if we have a consensus on the panel, we might be in a moment where we could do some things.

if we recognize there are going to be some people that say we should not do any tax reform -- for people who believe we are in a moment, what are the initial steps we should take? >> the most obvious thing that is on the table is the bush tax cuts. they expire at the end of the year. i think it should be a no- brainer that we want to raise the top tax rate to 39%. for people to forget in the 1990's the economy did well when those jobs creators paid the higher tax rate. i do not see harm in raising that hire. 43%, 44%. even 50%, that is not a problem. a couple of the other things -- we have created this big gap in

tax rates on capital gains income and dividend income in order -- in ordinary income. that is why you have any for the buffett rule because you have the buffetts of the world getting the income. people are paying 25% off of middle income people. if you got rid of that gap -- ronald reagan said, we will have people make money the old- fashioned way, by working and investing. one of the things that it was created the same tax rate for capital gains, dividends, and ordinary incomes. it got rid of hiding income as capital gains and dividends. people cheating the government. that would be a great thing to go back that way. reagan was right. >> reagan is coming out very well. >> there are a few other things. people talk about deductions in the tax code. that is to be expected.

what you can do, and i think you get support from people across the board to, economists across the board, you can cap that. make a $400,000. the government does not have to subsidize some to get a million- dollar home. caput at $400,000. that takes clear of the middle class. that is a great weight to get money. president obama proposed to cap the rate at which you take deductions. we can have wealthy people giving big deductions to charities or whatever, but they would only be able to take the deduction and a 20% rate, the same as a middle-class person. good thing to do. the last thing i will mention that does not often get talked about, but would be a good idea, the federal reserve board holds about three trillion dollars in assets -- $3 trillion in assets. when they hold those assets, guess what happens to the money?

it gets paid back to the treasury. the treasury cut $80 billion from the set last year. -- got $80 billion from bell said last year. -- the fed last year. the fed holds -- plans to not hold that money. i will not go into other issues. there is a lot of money there. in washington, they have the view that the fed is a church and they believe in a separate of church and state sometimes. the fed is not a church. it is the creation of congress. congress cannot tell the said what to do. that is a good way to get $800 billion for the budget. >> we are talking real money. >> that is over a decade. >> let me give you a quick sauce. i want to hear about a financial transactions tax. >> it is great that this has gained momentum.

it is getting a lot of play in europe. it is likely france will have the financial speculation tax and many other countries and the european union are going in the same direction. this sounds strange to people. i say this to people and they say, you cannot do that. i say you have to tell the stupid people in england because they are getting $30 billion a year in revenue and they just tax stock trades. they're not taxing credit defaults swaps. if you had a robust tax, you could get as much as $150 billion per year. the tax proposed by tom harkin and others were scored as raising $400 billion over the next decade. that is a low tax. that is paid almost exclusively by a wall street-types. they will say, your 401k held over. he will not even notice.

anybody who notices is doing something they should not be doing. it is a great tax. i am glad to see it being talked about. >> bob? we're hearing a lot about personal taxes. corporate taxes? anything we should be talking about? >> that is what we should be talking about in tax reform. the individual side, i mean, it is complicated and we do too many things through the internal revenue service. the mortgage interest deduction and the charitable deduction and so forth, they are not undermining taxpayers. on the corporate side, it is an absolute mess. on average, the big companies are paying half what they are supposed to. some of them are playing full freight . >> what do you mean? >> they're not paying its. on average. that is right. some of them are. some of them are paying 35% and some are paying nothing. that is a weird way to even run

an economy as compared to a tax system. who has a lobbying power in washington? if you argy and you hire lobbyists, well, you do not pay taxes. -- ge and you hire a lobbyist, well, you do not pay taxes. i have no problem with retail stores paying 35%. i just saw ge ought to, also. if you close the loopholes allowing this to go on, you could raise close to two trillion dollars over a decade. that is a lot of money. it is more than anybody has talked about raising taxes, even by their phony baloney standards when they are cutting taxes but say they are raising taxes. we more than some symbols and the president has ever talked about. way more than -- weigh more than simpson bowles and the president

has ever talked about. >> in the context of the citizen movement, how realistic is it to suggest that we will be able to get a tax fairness with regard to corporations? is it a political challenge? >> how realistic was a doing ronald reagan would sign onto a program that was a lot like what i just described? it will take effort. it will take leadership. we need a president to start being a little bolder on the issue. if he gets there, the american public will be with him and congress, despite the fact that they are frightened to death of corporate money being used against them, they are out -- they are more frightened of voters not liking them. >> mike, we have touched down a lot of stuff. take me down the state tax --

the state tax road. it was just go as far as -- >> for the record, before we run out of time, i suggested rolling back of the bush tax cuts, not because i think we should not have some of those in place for lower-income folks, but we believe that that is the way we will get them. we will not always get an agreement on where we should draw the line, but, if we get rid of them all and go back to 2001 and start from there and give tax cuts to people who really need them man -- to really need them, that will put money back in the economy. the estate tad -- tax, we have been trying to work on this. bill gates senior signed on. the estate tax has been weakened over 10 years. it is not to the point where the exemption is $5 million per person, $10 million per couple. that is higher than it needs to be before you start paying.

the mcdermott legislation says $1 million or $2 million for couples. obama to texas $3.5 million. that is weaker -- obama's says $3.5 million. that is weaker. there is a letter circulating concerning the rollback of the tax cuts and cutting capital gains, having a strong the state tax and then saying this corporate tax reform. -- strong estate tax. increase the capital gains rate. anyway, that is a matter to congress. >> that what is titled our tax code is written to benefit the 1%. >> rights. there are forms out back if you are here in the room. if not, you can find it --

>> you are a entrepreneurial activists. >> we need to get the voices of wealthy people. those voices making huge difference, when it is the people who would be taxed. >> i just wanted to throw in a little bit about philanthropy. >> let me throw a little frame on it. there are an awful lot of folks that say, if we got rid of taxes altogether, rich people could do nice things. and take care of everything. you are dubious about that. >> i am. that is everything being talked about. i am excited to move on all of these. the financial transactions stuff is going on in europe, that is exciting. whenever we can move through, i feel like i'm not a policy expert, but whenever we can move through moments over the years is exciting. to put the context of philanthropy -- i work with

wealthy individuals. i am a wealthy individual. with people who work in philanthropy. what the amount of money that -- the amount of movie that we -- the amount of money we are moving is nothing compared to what is needed for public infrastructure and all the things we're talking about funding. nothing compared to what the government is moving. just to really put it in that context of what ever we can move forward at any given point. the amount of money will not be covered by individuals. what we give through charity is a completely different ball game. also, what -- when we talk about rights or moral imperatives, it is health care, education. are we leaving that to charity? probably not. >> cannot be voluntary. that is a critical point to

underline. often the way that our media covers these discussions, that there is a sense that there are these wealthy people and if we get out of their way, they could do good things. sometimes, they do. we raised those instances of to be greatly celebrated. be greatlybr celebratedb. backy? we have been talking about what we cannot do. can we save social security, medicare, and medicaid? they seem to be so central to the current debate. can we say that without fair taxation, some kind of tax policy? is it possible to save them? >> that is an easy question.

>> i like easy questions. >> i do not think so. in order to do it in a fair and no.table way qa, the answer is i will say, first of all, it is sort of drives me crazy that people talk about social security at that point in the game. social security is perfectly fine for another 25 years. you know, we have a huge trust fund. you will hear the social security report is coming out soon. you will hear people screaming about cash income deficits. the reality is, social security is taking in less money because fewer people are working. we have a high unemployment rate. that is what we need to be focusing on, now fixing social security. we need to get people working and paying their payroll taxes, income taxes, and the social security thing can wait until our economy recovers. that said, i think that an

answer to the social security problem, now i'm talking about, which i said people were not doing, is raising the payroll tax cap. you can raise that. just to back up, the payroll tax cap is about $110,000. that means that income above that is not taxed at 6.2%. or 12.4%. whatever threshold you want to go with. if you raise that cap, you can still pay a higher benefits to the wealthy people who would be paying that tax and you can solve almost the entire 75-year social security shortfall. asking people who make, you know, $1 million a year, $200,000 a year, to pay taxes on all of their income instead of the first $110,000 of it. that can serve our problems to resolve our problems. >> that is a 4-tax fairness

concept. --for tax fairness concept. >> with rising income inequality, we have actually seen a greater percentage of income above that cap. if we use to cover 90% of income, now it covers 84% of income. income inequality has really 70--eased revers health care is a mess. with the affordable year cack -- with the affordable care act, president obama raised taxes. it is about a trade-off. if we want to continue funding medicare, medicaid, paul ryan does not think so, but i do. >> speaking of paul ryan, chuck?

about paulnything ryan plan -- is in play. that is obviously, as much as the president takes his megaphone and speaks about the buffett rule, paul ryan has become the central figure. he is much discussed as a possible vice presidential candidate. they're democrats that are excited about that prospect. -- there are democrats that are excited about that prospect. is he talking about tax fairness, or an extreme that would be kind of what we have now on steroids? >> right. divided's budget is between spending and tax type -- spending and tax side. his spinning his charge. he goes after all people, medicare, very harsh cuts in food security and a whole range of programs. it puts the main part of the

government on a downward track. almost an impossible level over time. the spending side is very harsh. his tax side is in sharp contrast to that. on the tax side, he starts with making all of the bush tax cuts, including the high income once, permanent. on top of that time he goes much further. he sort of talks about how he deficit neutrality. he never says anything how he would raise money. he just talks about the cuts, which are tilted towards the high income people. the most prominent is he poses to take the top tax rate down to 25%. that will be the lowest rate since herbert hoover. coupled with the same tax rate for corporations. the result is, his specific tax

cut on top of the four trillion dollars of president bush, he did say the other four and a half trillion dollars deeper. -- digs another $4.5 trillion dollars deeper. the one local he takes off the table is the capital gains rate. -- a one lupo he takes out the table is the capital gains rate. -- the one loophole he takes off the table is the capital gains rate. you are left on the table the mortgage interest deduction, the exclusion for health care. all things that tend to middle- class people. those things can be reformed, as being mentioned. president obama's proposal to reform those, that would raise the 500 chilean dollars -- $500 billion. he is implying that the top priority is to cut taxes for the highest income people.

before we go to questions, i want to ask two more things. dean, you do an analysis about how the media covers economics. how did we get to a point where the most talked about tax plan of the moment is seemingly a plan for redistribution of the wealth of board? >> it is remarkable. what is striking about paul ryan plan, nobody knows what chuck just said. that tuesday did not make it clear, but you have to understand the paul ryan plan gets rid of most of the budget. the congressional budget office, under his direction, if we just assume his numbers and that he wants to keep the military spending at its historic levels, somewhere between 2200 -- 2040,

and 2050, the rest of the government disappears. the food and drugs administration, the national -- all of that disappears because there is no money. that is what he signed off on. the fact that is treated seriously, that is incredible reporting. basically, i am sorry, it this is a lunatic budget. you have all of these people running around watching this series proposal on the table. that is not serious reporting. risch -- reporter should have been pointed out that he proposed getting rid of the federal government in 30 years. nobody did that. >> right. there was a little moment when paul ryan plan first came out where he was saying, you know, we will cut four trillion dollars off the debt and we will do that by increasing tax cuts for the wealthy. obama said, we will cut four trillion dollars by rolling back those tax cuts.